Identity, integration and security: solving the sovereignty puzzle in E.U. studies.

• Author: Waever, Ole
• Position: European Union - Transcending National Boundaries

Western Europe is probably the area in the world where one meets the most advanced case of border fluidity and transgression of sovereignty. John Ruggie recently suggested that "the institutional, juridical and spatial complexes associated with the community may constitute nothing less than the emergence of the first truly postmodern international political form."(1) Postmodernity in the context of international relations first of all means post-sovereignty. The European Union (E.U.), as it now calls itself, is thus a prominent case to investigate if one is interested in issues like the changing nature of boundaries and the possibilities of constructing political communities beyond sovereignty.

One way to address this question would be to see to what extent politics in the E.U. proceed according to old rules, and to what extent they follow new post-sovereign patterns. However, this is easier said than done. A principle like state sovereignty is neither an empirical designation nor an edict on limits of accepted behavior, so one cannot in a simple sense check empirical events against this description. Rather, sovereignty is an underlying organizing principle, a structure visible to the extent that events can be seen as effects of its particular generative grammar.(2) Thus it is impossible to find conclusive evidence for the status of generative grammars or organizing principles. In observing the simultaneity of European Court supremacy and the persistence of national legal systems, the postmodernist will see proof of new organizing principles, while the traditionalist will argue - legitimately - that the system is still constituted on the basis of sovereignty. As argued by Hedley Bull:

Indeed, it is difficult to believe that anyone ever asserted the "statecentric" view of international politics that is today so knowingly rejected by those who seek to emphasize the role of "the new international actors." What was widely asserted about European international relations from the time of Vattel in the mid-eighteenth century until the end of the First World War was the legal fiction of a political universe that consisted of states alone, the doctrine that only states had rights and duties in international law.(3)

There is good reason to be careful not to proclaim a radical transformation every time one sees change, or what Ruggie has referred to as:

the prevailing superficiality of the proliferating literature on international transformations, in which the sheer momentum of processes sweeps the international polity along toward its next encounter with destiny.(4)

Therefore, it is easy to write entertaining essays on how Western Europe has become "neo-medieval," "post-sovereign" or organized by "fractal politics." But it is difficult to substantiate such claims in a satisfactory way, unless one makes a straw-man out of sovereignty and transfers it from its role as underlying principle to a role of empirical regularity or judicial limitation. In order to overcome this dilemma, this article will look at the E.U. on a different level, through a discussion of the overall dynamics of the process, rather than the day-to-day operations and decision making (although they will, of course, be part of the analysis).

Whether or not the E.U. is beyond sovereignty is an impossible discussion. It is definitely possible to make the case against transformation. The really interesting discussions are those that address the destiny of the project, whether the E.U. points realistically (and not just programmatically) beyond sovereignty; and if it points beyond the sovereignty of the present states, whether this necessarily leads to a sovereign E.U. or to something post-sovereign. This requires a return to the "big questions" of integration and integration theory.

Classical Questions, Unconventional Approaches

and False Starts

To the founding fathers of integration theory, Ernst B. Haas, Karl W. Deutsch and Amitai Etzioni, the theme of integration was so closely related to the two fields of security and identity that one could almost talk of a basic conceptual triangle. Their interest in European integration was driven by thoroughly realist questions, which gave integration theory its radical - almost revolutionary - nature in the history of international relations theory. They took core questions like the provision of security and the identity basis of political authority and community, and transformed them from axioms into subjects of investigation, from factors to variables: Under what conditions can war be ruled out as a possibility in politics, with or without the centralization of power in a sovereign state (amalgamated versus pluralistic communities)? To what extent is the political identity of individuals tied to the nation and to what extent is it transferable to larger loyalties? The classical issues of security and war are not evaded (as liberal theory is often accused of doing); rather, the question of whether security is linked to domestic centralization or to international power balancing is left open. Nor is nationalism denied its powerful role, but affective association with political bodies is treated as malleable material, rather than as an ageless attachment to a given nation-state.(5)

In many important ways integration theory can be seen as the predecessor of most post-war liberal international relations theory.(6) There, international relations is not studied as a sui generis space with its own mechanisms. Social processes, transactions and information flow across borders - the border between states and the one between the domestic and international realms. Whether people establish a national identity or a regional identity is purely an empirical question. The central question of Deutsch's Political Community and the North Atlantic Area considers which factors condition whether war remains a part of political space.(7) There, the classical issues of war and nationhood are not treated axiomatically (e.g. international relations equals a state of war). Instead, they are turned into empirical and relative questions. The classical realists' answers are not excluded; they become extreme cases of nonetheless possible outcomes.

The fate of integration is closely related to the dynamics of security and identity. Although security and identity are the primary obstacles to integration, integration has the potential to transform them. To study integration one must study the triangle of security-identity-integration.

Later integration theory loses sight of these deeper attentions. This is understandable, both as an effect of academic professionalization and specialization (the philosophical questions are put aside, puzzle-solving structures science) and as a correlate of actual E.C./E.U. developments.(8) These developments came about more slowly than expected, and the E.C. became a quasi-stable formation, where one could study relationships among the different institutions, the member states and external actors. Questions about the larger process, the finality of the transformation and world historical change were increasingly viewed as premature and unconstructive. However, in early 1992, with both an acceleration of and a debacle in the integration process - condensed in the struggle over the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty - it became clear that even some of the more mundane questions about the E.U. were hard to answer without a clearer view of the classical concerns related to the dynamic triangle.

The dynamic triangle of the E.U.

It is well-known that peace was a central argument in the resistance movements of the Second World War out of which the integration movement grew, and that the French and German founding fathers of the E.U. were influenced by this same argument.(9) This is also the case in the academic literature on integration theory. The importance of peace is evident in all three classics mentioned above. For instance, Haas and Deutsch point out that one is only studying voluntary integration and not the integration of Europe under a Napoleon or a Hitler. Haas writes:

The dominant desire of modem students of regional integration is to explain the tendency toward the creation of larger political units, each of which self-consciously eschews the use of force in the relations between the participating units and groups ... The main reason for studying regional integration is thus normative: The units and actions studied provide a living laboratory for observing the peaceful creation of possible new types of human communities at a very high level of organization and of the processes which may lead to such conditions....(10)

The study of regional integration is concerned with explaining how and why states cease to be wholly sovereign, how and why they voluntarily mingle, merge and mix with their neighbors, so as to lose the factual attributes of sovereignty while acquiring new techniques for resolving conflict among themselves.(11)

This quote displays how the peaceful management of conflicts among communities drives Haas' interest in integration. Deutsch's interest in integration as a peace strategy, mentioned above, is more well-known. Etzioni also has an extensive body of writing devoted to the peace question, in which he argues against power balancing and for detente and disarmament.(12)

All three were also quite clear that national identity was the big hurdle for the integration project. Would the processes studied eventually be powerful enough to make popular (or, in the case of Haas, elite) allegiances migrate to the regional level, thus creating an effective and affective foundation for the new polity? Or would identity remain the stubborn barricade of nation-states?(13)

Despite the celebratory tone of this introduction, I will not use the approaches and theories of the classics in the following examination. Instead, I will try to address their concerns using contemporary approaches...