Uses and Abuses of the Concept of Integration

Abstract

A reassessment of the European Union (EU) studies in recent years has seen an increasing interplay among disciplines, resulting in increased breadth and depth of conceptual development. The need for sustained dialogue between EU studies and international relations (IR) has been persuasively argued by scholars, such as, Warleigh (2006), while the need to break down the barriers between disciplines and subdisciplines and particularly what Peterson regards as phoney wars between IR and comparative politics (CP) has, for some time, been a theme in the examination of the state of the study of the EU (Hix, 1999; Peterson, 2001; Pollack, 2001; Rumford and Murray, 2003a). In addition, the study of the EU has often been confined to the study of European integration (EI). European Studies is now becoming more broad and therefore, should include more than EI studies. In particular, it should be more interdisciplinary. This chapter examines the ways in which the concept of integration has been utilized and politically misused by scholars and the EU alike. As long as the term ‘integration’ is utilized to mean a political objective, a theoretical model, a policy process, a set of theories and a paradigm for regional bodies, then overuse of the term will take place. European integration has become increasingly contested as both a concept and a process and it is incumbent upon scholars to subject the EU to analytical treatment that does justice to its contemporary complexity of governance and its evolving nature (Murray, 2000). The chapter argues that the core issues of power and of the direction of the EU’s integration project remain unclear. In particular, it examines how newer and fresher perspectives on ‘integration’ can assist us in understanding the transformation of Europe. It seeks a clear differentiation of studies of the nation state from those that seek to move us forward conceptually in our understanding of the EU’s transformative role in – and impact on – the nation state and in the international arena. It calls for caution in attempts to utilize terms of the past in our study of the present and in forming our pathways to future research. The study of integration theory is not only about EI and the EU but also concerns comparative regionalism and inter-regionalism for example (Breslin and Higgott, 2003; 13