History meets Politics: Overcoming Interdisciplinary Volapük in Research on the EU

Abstract

This article surveys recent political science literature on the EU, which draws upon its history. It addresses its shortcomings from an interdisciplinary perspective before proceeding to discuss current historical scholarship on the EU. It argues that this research can – inter alia – help to test neo-functionalist theoretical assumptions, understand the origins of bargaining as a multi-level game, explore competing institutionalist assumptions empirically, and introduce a temporal dimension into the study of networks in and as EU governance. It is high time that history-sensitive political scientists and social science-literate contemporary historians make more of the unexplored opportunities of interdisciplinary co-operation.

Keywords:

• EU history
• governance
• institutionalism
• interdisciplinarity
• networks.