Whose Europe is it anyway? The 1998 Stein Rokkan lecture

Abstract

Abstract. This article addresses the issue of whether a model of deep European integration might be envisaged in a continent–wide process that might accompany eastern enlargement of the European Union. The paper argues that deep integration in Western Europe has been built on three dimensions: the functional; the territorial; and affiliational. The articulation of these three dimensions has evolved through not only the EU, but also a dense pattern of other transnational linkages, including those between immediate neighbours. Moreover, different west European countries have been linked into this process through varied patterns for ‘domesticating’ Europe. Efforts to develop an EU polity require the interplay of all three dimensions of integration, a tough goal for post–cold–war Europe in the western part of the continent, let alone in ‘pan–Europe’.