Transnational Networks in European Integration Governance: Historical Perspectives on an Elusive Phenomenon

Abstract

This book analyses and discusses, in a long-term historical perspective of the formative period of European integration from 1945 to the 1980s, the role of networks in the governance of what is now the European Union (EU). As we will see below, most political scientists assume that networks and governance are new phenomena that grew on the alleged ‘hollowing out’ of the nation-state in the 1970s. In this understanding, the formation of the European Round Table of Industrialists in 1983 (as the approximate end point of this book) and its forceful intervention in the debate about market liberalization is sometimes seen as the symbolic initiation for networks in governance or as a new form of governance at the level of what was then still the European Communities (EC). As we demonstrate in this book, however, networks in European integration governance is a much older and more multifaceted phenomenon than more narrowly conceived and presentist policy network research would suggest.