From Theories of Integration to Theories of Institutions

Abstract

What makes the EU so difficult for political scientists, lawyers, historians and many others to grapple with conceptually is that it seems to be a phenomenon without any obvious historical precedent. Things without precedents, with no resemblance to what is already known, have always been difficult to come to grips with and to make theoretical or empirical sense of. However, despite the fact that the EU, as it has evolved, differs quite fundamentally from what we already know, reasoning by analogy — that is, comparing the EU with, for instance, the US, the federal organisation of Germany or the European nation state — is often the first step out of the conceptual deadlock that confronts many students of European politics (see Schmitter, 1991, 1996a, 1996b; Sbragia, 1992).

To be sure, there is a self-fulfilling advantage in speaking of Europe as though it already existed in some stronger, collective sense. But there are some things it cannot do, some problems it does not address. ‘Europe’ is more than a geographical notion but less than an answer.

(Judt, 1996, p. 9)