Benutzer:Nils Simon/Studien/2007-EU

This paper is part of my "Political Economy of Development" class which I was taking during my 2006-2007 MA International Relations course in Brighton, UK.

What Different Stories Can Structural Realism and Constructivism as Theories of International Relations Tell Us About European Integration?

Introduction

In 2007 the European Union celebrated its 50th birthday. Within some years it might adopt a probably reformulated Constitutional Treaty. It now comprises 27 member states, bringing together countries from both sides of the no longer existing Iron Curtain, and binding together formerly bitter enemies in common institutional decision-making processes. Some more countries have already applied for future membership and introduced domestic reform programs to match the EU's criteria for accession. The European Union is without doubt a success story which nobody had thought to be likely at its creation.

When the Treaties of Rome were signed in 1957, it was only 12 years ago that the long-lasting enmity of European nations had brought the continent unprecedented devastation. The next conflict, the Cold War, was already at full throttle, cementing a systemic antagonism between capitalism in the West and communism in the East. Today, the consequences of these events can still be found in many places, be it physically, psychologically, or within political systems. But their origins have faded, and their reappearance seems to be nearly impossible today. Thus, Europe has undergone a remarkable shift from being the source of some of the world's most brutal conflicts to a civilised system where legal regulation and cooperation dominate (at least the internal) political sphere. European integration is not easy to explain. There is a whole set of theories that have been developed and refined to understand it. These specialised theories most prominently comprise neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism, lately joined by constructivism. The former two are facing their own problems. For example, the more specialised these theories became, the more they lost contact with the mainstream debates in International Relations (IR). The same happened from the other direction: Standard IR theories are not very often used to understand the European Union and its confusingly rich tradition of collaboration and integration. Therefore a need exists to reattach IR theories to the empirical evidence of European integration, to test some of the most important currents in IR with the most advanced political integration phenomenon occurring in the world today.

In this essay, I will briefly present two mainstream IR theories, neorealism (or structural realism), and constructivism, and describe their explanations of European integration. I chose neorealism because it is a very parsimonious theory with a clear-cut account of interstate behaviour, and it has had very little connection to European integration theory in the past decades. Therefore one might expect a serious gap between its premises and empirical European reality. Constructivism on the other hand has just recently become a mainstream IR theory, but has already found a connection to the EU discourse. It offers a confusingly rich mixture of different approaches. Oscillating on a middle ground between rationalism and reflectivism, two of these approaches will be used to offer a deviating view on interstate behaviour within the EU, holding many assumptions about the nature of international politics that differ significantly from those of structural realism.

Neo- or structural realism

In 1979, with the introduction of 'structural realism' Kenneth Waltz presented a crucial refinement of classical realism. His volume “Theory of International Politics” is until today a standard text in the field of IR.1 It will be used in this essay as the basis for testing neorealism against the case of European integration. What are the core assumptions of neorealism, and what do they tell us about the international system?

According to Waltz, a system “is composed of structure and interacting units.” (1979, p.79) For the sake of theorising international relations, both have to be separated rigorously. The structure can only take one of two possible forms, anarchy or hierarchy. In an hierarchic system, all units are subordinated to a superior unit. This is the standard case within national states. In the international system, however, there is no world government. Therefore anarchy is its prevailing order. To explain how states as the primary units in the international system act in an anarchic environment, one has to define what their main motives for acting are. The most important and predominant motive of states in structural realism is survival, which supersedes all other interests (pp. 91). Out of these very basic assumptions, a variety of conclusions derives. Because there is no overarching authority, states have to rely on self-help in order to ensure their survival (pp. 111). Since every unit in the system poses a possible threat to all other units, this means that all states are taking precautions against an attack by other states, most likely by increasing their means of military power to match or even exceed the power of their rivals.2 This armament can take place even when no state actively seeks to attack anyone, only because of defensive reasoning. This has been called a “security dilemma” (pp. 186).

When one state becomes too powerful, its companions have several options to face this development. In a recent account of neorealism, John Mearsheimer (2003, p. 156) names three possible reactions. States can either imitate the rising power and socialize with it, they can raise their own means of power and internally balance, or they can externally balance and form alliances with other states. The first option practically was termed “bandwagoning” in Waltz's analysis, while the latter two options belong to the strategy of “balancing”. According to Waltz, states are more likely to balance than to bandwagon in a situation of shifting powers, at least until a winner stands clear (1979, pp. 123). Given that two “sides” in a conflict have developed, structural realism assumes that a yet undecided state will join the weaker coalition in order to balance against the stronger, because it must assume to sooner or later become the target of its partners in the stronger coalition and would then lack promising allies.

The assumptions laid out by neorealism pose serious obstacles towards cooperation between states. According to structural realism, when two states engage in trade they are more concerned with their relative than with absolute gains because they carefully guard their power-position in relation to their rivals. Therefore, even when a trade guarantees profits to both partners, the state who gains less is likely to abandon it. The general mistrust among states prevents substantial commitments, and the effects of institutions as primary facilitators of cooperation are thus very limited. If at all, institutions are likely to influence low-politics areas such as trade or environmental protection, and even there cooperation will be stopped as soon as a state thinks it is being restricted too much. High-politics areas will remain rather influenced by and excluded from institutional constraints, such as sectors like armament which are seen as being directly vital to state survival.

During the past decades far-reaching critique against structural realism has been published, illustrating its major shortcomings.3 As Keohane (1984) has outlined from a neoliberal point of view, even under the condition of anarchy interstate cooperation through institutions can be quite possible. Constructivists argued that neorealism's immovable pillar of anarchy can rather be conceptualised as the constructed outcome of a chosen set of interstate practices, allowing not only for different kinds of anarchy but also for its overcoming (Wendt 1992). Critical theorist Robert Cox (1986) has shown the limits of neorealism as a non-historical 'problem-solving theory', revealing its unacknowledged bond to the historical realities of the time of its inception. By pointing towards neorealism's fallacy of sharply distinguishing between the state and civil society, in his Marxist critique Justin Rosenberg (1994) has laid the focus on capitalism as the main driver behind modern sovereignty in contrast to the convenient notion of the Peace of Westphalia (cf. Teschke 2003). But critique did not only come from these mainly theoretical standpoints. Structural realism has been especially weak in explaining empirical cases in international politics. As Vasquez (1999, p. 212) states, “despite neorealism's ability to articulate the realist paradigm in new directions, it has still failed to produce accurate explanations of international politics that are able to pass empirical test.” The European Union is one possible case to test neorealism against, and as will be shown below it does not do a good job in explaining the EU.

To structural realism, the European Union poses a serious explanatory challenge, and realists so far largely avoided dealing with it. According to Simon Collard-Wexler (2006, pp. 397) “the EU remains dreadfully under-theorized and neglected in the neorealist canon.” Remarkably enough, a whole volume that brings together proponents of “Neorealism and Its Critics” (Keohane 1986) does in its critical part not even mention the European Economic Community (EEC), while to Waltz it is not much more than a side note. This is probably the reason why a contemporary reader on European Union integration theory barely mentions neorealism (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni 20064), and why a standard volume dealing with the EU in general does not mention it at all (Nugent 20065).

Structural realism expects states to balance against emerging power centres instead of bandwagon with them.6 Yet while one could possibly argue that European integration until the third enlargement round in 1986 (which brought Portugal and Spain into the EU) was an act of balancing against the Soviet Union, the fourth and fifth enlargement rounds of 1995 (Austria, Sweden, Finland) and 2004 (Central and Eastern European Countries, CEEC+27) happened after the fall of the Iron Curtain. It was clearly an act of bandwagoning by these states to join the European Union. Structural realism might also point towards the foundation of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) in 1960 as a balancing act, when seven European states created an alternative to the EEC founded in 1957.8 But it fails to explain why one by one its members left EFTA to join the EEC, so that today only Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland remain in it.

Also contradicting neorealism is the minor role relative gain speculations play in European politics. While Waltz expected states to be carefully concerned mainly, if not exclusively with relative gains, in the European Union absolute gains seem to be of much more importance. EU member states even keep cooperating with what on a first sight looks like clear relative losses. For example, countries like Germany act as net payers of substantial monetary sums in order to keep the European Union running, and to help the mostly peripheral states to catch up economically with it. For the latter purpose, the EU follows a cohesion policy with the outspoken goal to reduce the economic gap among its member states. Cohesion policy comprises “a number of policies [...] that are designed to provide a partial counterbalance to the 'natural' effects of the internal market by promoting a more balanced distribution of resources and economic development across the EU.” (Nugent 2006, p. 371).

Structural realism does not allow for a continuum between anarchy and hierarchy in the international sphere (Vasquez 1998, p. 201). Yet it is precisely this continuum within which the European Union can be seen moving. “The drift towards hierarchy can be seen in five examples – the jurisprudence of the [European Court of Justice (ECJ)]; the growing use of qualified majority voting (QMV); the increasing number of Commission regulations and directives; direct democracy within EU institutions; and most visibly in the efforts to draft a European Constitution.” (Collard-Wexler 2006, p. 407) On the other hand, treaties that substantially extend the responsibilities of the European Union like that of Maastricht in 1992 or the Constitutional Treaty still have to be agreed upon by its member states with unanimity. Likewise, the Council of the European Union is a direct instrument of the member-states, two clearly sovereignty-centred elements. These are powerful empirical examples which undermine the theoretical denial of a continuum and prevent neorealism from grasping the nature of the European Union.

The pattern of fostered economic gap-reducing and accepted net-payments through the EU's cohesion policy, and the mixed hierarchy levels both point towards a remarkable stability within the European Union and to the role its main institutions play. Structural realism does not give institutions much credit. But for all what was happening in the European Union over the last 50 years, it is its institutions that have to be seen as central actors and pillars of stability. The observable “degree of cooperation and policy coordination would have been nonexistent had it not been for the European Economic Community, the EC, and the EU.” (Collard-Wexler 2006, p. 403) This means that without the mentioned institutions there would be no single market, no single currency, and no (again, at least internally) boundary-neglecting Schengen Agreement, to name just three major areas of cooperation. Furthermore, the EU is not an institution designed to only fulfil the direct purposes its member states' governments are giving it. It has become a player on its own, an actor “that has broken the monopoly of the state in the management and government of world affairs.” (ibid., p. 412) To structural realism, this is a highly unorthodox phenomenon.

The EU can't be explained by the theoretical canon of structural realism, not only because it fails to account for a continuum between anarchy and hierarchy, its dim view in institutions, and its exaggeration of the meaning of anarchy. Three more important things are lacking. First, European integration has from its very beginning with the European Coal and Steel Community of 1951 and the European Economic Community of 1957 been closely linked to economic integration. This integration took place in a capitalist interstate environment. However, such close economic cooperation in particular and the effects of capitalism in general are not in the scope of neorealism. Yet it is precisely an analysis of capitalism that bears strong potential to explain political change within and between states from the capitalist revolution onwards until today, as Robert Cox (1986, pp. 226) points out. Second, European integration arguably changed the structure of the international polity within Europe. While structural realism does not allow this to happen,9 it is the lack of a theory of change, as John Ruggie states it (1986, pp. 141), which makes the theory miss the historical reality of structural change in Europe (cf. Schroeder 1994). Third, and last in my assessment, is the dominance of the third image or the system-level in international relations analysis that Waltz had introduced in 1959.10 Various critiques have been published regarding the blindness of neorealism towards domestic drivers of change (see Vasquez 1999, pp. 194). For example regarding the Constitutional Treaty, neorealism necessarily remains blind towards the domestic reasons that led the peoples of France and the Netherlands to reject the Treaty in two referendums in 2005 (see Nugent 2006, pp. 125).

For all these reasons, I conclude that structural realism tells us, at best, little about European integration. It is not surprising that in European integration debates neorealism is not much more than a footnote. While it was able to keep its parsimony, it misses an explanation for the empirical reality of the European Union.

Constructivism

Constructivism has just recently been developed as a broad theory of International Relations. Alexander Wendt and his 1992 paper “Anarchy is What States Make of it” can probably be seen as the last push for constructivism to become a widely accepted alternative model to neorealism and neoliberalism. Those were both stuck in the fruitless neo-neo-debate, concerned with arguing whether states pursue absolute or relative gains-policies, while sharing a large pile of common conceptions about the anarchic structure of the international system (see Lamy 2006, pp. 215).

Wendt states that anarchy is not an unchanging structural feature of international politics. Rather, it is the outcome of a chosen set of political practices. Equally, when contemporary international relations can be identified as power politics, then this is not necessarily a consequence of a lacking world government, but of freely employed behaviour of states that construct the international sphere as such. States, Wendt explains, act towards other states not according to a mutual assessment of their power capabilities, but to the meaning they hold for each other. This meaning follows a social learning process, and it is the reason why, for example, Great Britain's nuclear arsenal was very differently perceived by the United States than that of the Soviet Union. Structural Realism cannot explain these crucial differences in behaviour.

Wendt claims against Waltz that structure does not precede process, but that process can change structure. Thus, there are different kinds of anarchy possible, as well as its overcoming. Together with this idea comes that state interests are not longer set in stone and exogenously given, as neorealism assumes, but they can be influenced and altered by the practice of international politics, i.e. by institutions. Self-help and power politics should be seen as such institutions, Wendt writes, undermining the neorealist claim that they necessarily derive out of the anarchic international system. These ideas substantially opened up the possibilities for theorising International Relations in the 1990s, though they can be traced back in time some decades at least. According to Christian Reus-Smit (2005, p. 188), due to the rise of constructivism two earlier major debates in the field, one between neorealists and neoliberals, and the other between rationalists and critical theorists, were subsequently replaced by two new debates. One now occurs between rationalists and constructivists, and another takes place between constructivists and critical theorists. Therefore, constructivism seems to have taken the “middle ground” (Adler 1997) between rationalist and critical theories (though Christiansen et al. 1999 prefer the image of a triangle and replace critical theories with reflectivism, as will be shown below).

However, it is hard if not impossible to describe what constructivism precisely stands for. First, different constructivisms can be identified regarding the level of analysis. Reus-Smit (2005, pp. 199) distinguishes between systemic constructivism, which is mostly concerned with the third image or the state and its interaction with the international sphere, as pursued by Wendt; unit-level constructivism, which follows a second-image approach and tries to explore the process of interest formation within a state through different social groups or other domestic actors, an approach employed by Peter Katzenstein; and holistic constructivism, which combines systemic and unit-level constructivism to gain the most comprehensive insights at the cost of parsimony, as conducted by John Ruggie and Friedrich Kratochwil.

Second, there is a differentiation possible not at which level or 'where', but about “how actors construct their own interests” (Haas 2006, p. 442). Ernst B. Haas names a systemic school, looking at the process of state interest formation, both through a state's own definition of identity and through the role it is playing at the international level, an approach into which he sorts Wendt; a norms and culture school which is mostly concerned with the derivation of interests from an actor's cultural identity background as followed by Kratochwil or Reus-Smit; and a soft rationalist school which believes that actors form their interests from what they think is politically causal, so that an understanding of an actor's internal causality can give us answers about its political behaviour, as stated by Katzenstein or Emanuel Adler.

Because there is such a variety of constructivisms, and no authoritative typology within visual range, constructivists usually have to start their articles with a definition of their own employed type of constructivism (e.g. see Checkel 1999). This means that for discussing constructivism with regards to European integration, some things have to be noted. First, it is not useful to speak about 'the' constructivist theory. Some constructivisms have been applied in fruitful discussions about the European Union, while others have rarely been used. Second, every single constructivist approach may offer insights into certain political behaviour, while it may miss other factors. And third, an evaluation about how well constructivism is able to explain European integration cannot be undertaken here as was done in chapter 1 for structural realism. Rather, the richness of constructivist approaches will be presented by an exemplary presentation of two distinct constructivist approaches, that of Jeffrey Checkel (1999) and of Thomas Diez (1999). Both approaches will be outlined, showing what they can tell us about European integration. They both should be seen as belonging to the canon of middle-range theories, which are not claiming to explain international politics as such, but to give explanations about distinct features of them.

As was mentioned before, constructivism usually is said to hold some sort of a middle ground on a one-dimensional line between rationalist and reflectivist or critical theories of IR. Christiansen et al. (1999) extend this picture towards a two-dimensional continuum with a semicircle above the conventional line, on which they position some constructivists who published an article in the 1999 Special Issue of the Journal of European Public Policy, from which my two exemplary studies are taken.

Beginning with Checkel (1999), he states to be following a modernist constructivism, which he describes as “staking out a position between positivist and agent-centred rational choice, on the one hand, and interpretative and structure-centred approaches on the other” (p. 546). His aim is to lay out possible strategies for European integration research which are built on the combined insights of social constructivism and sociological institutionalism. To do this, Checkel has to undergo the obligatory constructivist task of laying out his distinct approach.

First, he distinguishes between three branches of institutionalism: rational choice institutionalism, for which institutions are thin and, at best, a constraint on the self-interest of actors; historical institutionalism, which holds that institutions can can alter actors in a long term, but sticks to their constraining effect in the short term; and sociological institutionalism, for which institutions are thick, meaning they influence actors identities and interests from their inception onwards (ibid.). Checkel states that constructivism is very well fitted to describe the impact of European institutions, and he wants to employ it to strengthen the sociological strand of institutionalism. He thinks the emphasis in European integration discourse has too long been laid on the former two strands which preferably asks questions about which institutions matter. Yet, a thorough understanding on how they matter is missing, leaving important questions about the process of integration aside (ibid., pp. 547).

Second, regarding social constructivists, Checkel describes them as seeking to “explain theoretically both the content of actor identities/preferences and the modes of social interaction [...] where something else aside from strategic exchange is taking place.” (ibid., p. 548) This focus should enable his constructivism to contribute to integration studies in various ways, of which he investigates the processes of social learning and of norms setting by actors on the European level in more detail.

Social learning as understood by Checkel does not mean to simply change the strategy when one is faced with constraints, and otherwise sticking to the old goals, as rationalism would tell us. Rather, it means the adoption of new interests and preferences by actors during interaction with other peers on an institutional level, which poses a potentially fundamental change of the own goals through social interaction. For conducting research based on these premises, Checkel encourages students of International Relations to rely on reading, among other things, preferably informal minutes of concrete meetings, and on repeated interviews with participants of these meetings. So it should be possible to trace back the reformulation of interests held by states representatives through time as well as the impact of shared norms and common discourse on them (ibid., p. 550). In a case study about the Council of Europe's Committee of Experts on Nationality, Checkel was able to discover a shift from what had started as a “strategic bargaining game [...] to a process where basic preferences were rethought.” (ibid., p. 551) This research should be transferable to European integration cases and hopefully offering so far unacknowledged insights into the process of interest changing and collective identity formation within the European Union.

Offering a promising departure point for where to start looking, Checkel stresses the role the civil society and elite individuals play in norm-setting processes (ibid., pp. 552). In the first case, visible domestic pressure by NGOs or comparable actors can coerce decision-makers to adopt new norms; in the second case, influential elite decision-makers can undergo a social learning process and internalize new norms. Both processes can be assessed scientifically with Checkel's modernist constructivist theory as the theoretical basis and enable a “better understanding precisely when collective identity formation occurs.” (ibid., p. 557) Turning to Diez (1999), we are faced with a radical shift of focus. Diez has been localised by Christiansen et al. to be the theorist closest to reflectivism among all assessed contributors. He uses elements of post-modern discourse analysis as a tool of constructivist theorising about European integration, thus employing what has been labelled a radical or epistemological constructivism. Again, this is merely an approach and no grand theory of IR, and while it is able to offer some insights so far missed, other aspects of integration may better be described by other approaches.

Diez states that integration theorists' discourse is not only an attempt to investigate the objective nature of the European Union. Such a view would mean that there exists an exogenously given political construct called the EU, whose essence scholars of IR and European Union Studies (EUS) are trying to grasp in their articles. Instead, talking about the European Union directly contributes to the construction of its reality (ibid., p. 599). How is this possible? To develop his argument, Diez presents three theoretical “moves” of discourse analysis in the 20th century: the Austinian move; the Foucauldian move; and the Derridarean move. The Austinian move introduced the performativity of language to the analysis of speaking (ibid., pp. 600). This means it revealed that an act of speaking is not a neutral way of describing something. Much more, it consists of two distinct actions, the 'locutionary act', comprising the process of speaking itself, and the 'illocutionary force', which aims at influencing the environment of the speaker. The intention is to figure out what hidden purpose a certain speech act follows. Diez gives the example of the treaty on the European Coal and Steel Community to underpin his point. Surely treaties are not written to be read and forgotten, but to result in certain actions according to their wording.

The Foucauldian move turns the focus towards the politics of language through definitions of meaning (ibid., pp. 602). Central to its argument is that there is no reality outside that of discourse, and that alterations of discourse therefore also alter reality. Understood this way, it becomes crucial to control the meaning of language as it implies controlling reality. The implications for European integration discourse are vast. For example, it becomes much more than a descriptive issue whether we talk about the EU as a system of 'multi-level governance', or whether we theorise it as a 'network polity'. With each wording, perception and reality of the EU are being pushed in a certain direction. The system of 'multi-level governance' highlights spheres of distinct polities, i.e. on the supranational, the national, the regional and the local level. A 'network polity', on the other hand, lets these levels disappear and opens the concept up to actors from other areas, e.g. the civil society. Likewise, the notion of the EU's 'democratic deficit' is seen by Diez to be connected to the dominant discourse of neofunctionalism and its technocratic language, which dominated European integration theorising throughout the last decades (ibid., pp. 605).

The Derridarean move is related to the possibility of change and new conceptions of Europe through language (ibid., pp. 606). To Derrida, language was never complete, but a work in progress that perpetually changes its meaning. Substantial change in this sense is likely to happen in mid- to long-term time scales, since new discursive figures usually need some time to be distributed and established. Once widespread, however, they can become very powerful in reshaping a polity. As an example, Diez presents the different and developing discourses about Europe within the United Kingdom and Germany. In Britain, Europe was seen mainly as an economic community, based on the liberal concept of free trade. This turn away from stressing the political co-operative-part of the postwar European community made it accessible to the quite sceptic Britons. In Germany, emphasis was laid on the economic community from its very beginning, offering Germany a way to re-enter the international sphere in the 1950s. It is important to note that both conceptions about Europe can be held valid, and none can claim to be the only 'true' representation of what Europe really is. Rather, they represent the ongoing contest of defining 'Europe' and by this moving it into a certain wanted direction. Diez names two implications the identification of these three moves brings with them:

“First, the future development of the EU will not depend solely on member states' interests, but also on the translatability of the discourses on European governance that the relevant political actors are embedded in. [...] Second, there might be too much focus these days on the change of institutions in the narrow, organizational sense of the term. The change of institutions [...] is not interesting as a fact in and of itself, but as part of a broader set of practices in which language plays a crucial role.” (Ibid., p. 610)

Conclusion

I have shown that regarding European integration discourse, the International Relation theories of structural realism and constructivism are setting out from completely different starting points. Structural realism is keen to stick to its theoretical parsimony, but fails disastrously in explaining the European Union as a political community. It cannot claim to be tested successfully against this empirical case, but it remains theoretically intact, even if this integrity may now seem hollow. Constructivism on the other side lacks this parsimony. Even more, it misses a coherent overall theoretical framework. But it is compelling in explaining different phenomena of European integration, since it is very adaptive and can build upon and incorporate various external intellectual debates, be it from sociology, social psychology, critical theory, or post-modernism, to name just a few. After this assessment one insight of constructivism, that actors do not only influence their environment, but that this environment also influences them, can equally be put upon constructivism itself. In exploring the empirical case of European integration, it keeps adopting new viewpoints and is being altered in the process. The European Union therefore apparently has a visible impact on constructivist theorising, contributing to its rich and sometimes confusing variety of approaches.

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