Differentiated Integration in Europe

Ref. 10429

General description

Period

1957 - 2010

Geographical Area

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Additional Geographical Information​

Europe

Abstract

Since the mid-1990s, flexible or differentiated integration (DI) has been a "hot topic" of academic and policy debate in the EU - triggered inter alia by the opt-outs from monetary union and social policy in the Maastricht Treaty, the Schäuble-Lamers paper on Kerneuropa in 1994, and the discussion of "closer cooperation" in the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference that led to the Treaty of Amsterdam. In the literature of European integration, it is generally assumed that the considerable territorial and functional expansion of the EU in recent times has increased heterogeneity in the EU, and that this heterogeneity is likely to generate demand for DI. Despite the perceived political and scientific relevance of the topic, the state of research is characterized by scarce data and theory-oriented explanatory analysis. In addition to a large amount of prescriptive or policy-oriented work, academic contributions in political science have focused on differentiation in treaty law and have largely been limited to conceptual work, case studies, and ad hoc-explanations. Our collaborative project is designed to fill the gaps and shortcomings in existing research. For this purpose, we propose to build the first comprehensive dataset of differentiated integration in Europe. For the entire period from 1958 to 2009, we will scrutinize the primary and the relevant secondary law of the EU for rules with territorially differentiated validity. This dataset allows for a systematic descriptive analysis of trends as well as country- and policy-specific patterns of DI. We will then conduct macro-quantitative analyses in order to explain these trends and patterns of DI. How has differentiation developed over time? Why has it been more or less pronounced for individual policies or countries? For this purpose, we first develop and then test conjectures drawing on rational-intergovernmentalist, constructivist, and institutionalist approaches to the theory of European integration. In addition to an analysis of DI among the EU's member states, we conduct a small comparative study of those European countries that the EU would have accepted as member states long ago and that are legally integrated with the EU to a large extent: the countries of the European Economic Area and Switzerland. This study is designed to test whether the factors that account for DI among the member states also explain DI beyond the EU. As a result of this project, we hope to gain a thorough understanding of the extent, development, and conditions of differentiated integration in Europe. Our research strives to make a relevant contribution to the study of international institutions and institutional design, to European integration theory, which does not systematically account for differentiation so far, and to European policy debates. In addition, the project's dataset will be made available to the scientific community via our project website.

Results

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