Rethinking EU Studies: The Contribution of Comparative Regionalism

Abstract

This article introduces the special issue on the contribution of comparative regionalism/regional integration studies to the rethinking of EU studies. It sets out what we consider to be a danger for EU studies, namely its tendency towards introversion, and argue for a sustained engagement with the studies of other global regions as a means to avoid this. We draw on political science and psychology to set out a suitable framework for comparing global regions such as the EU, and show how the various contributions to the special issue demonstrate the utility for EU studies scholars of a more sustained, and more routinised, engagement with the work on ‘new regionalism’.

Key Words:

• Comparative regional integration
• EU studies
• new regionalism

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their comments on our article as well as on the special issue as a whole. The authors are grateful to the European Commission for its financial support of the research used for this article under Jean Monnet project 153918‐LLP‐1‐2009‐BE‐AJM‐IC, comparing the European Union with other regional organisations.

Notes

1. One of the present authors has heard academics describe themselves as, for instance, specialist scholars of the European Parliament, admitting they are unversed in literature on even other EU institutions beyond a basic level. As with scholars of national politics, it is entirely reasonable to have particular expertise in a given EU policy area or institution, but there are signs that the younger EU studies cohort may be being pushed into over‐specialisation, as can be witnessed at job interviews and in the early years of their teaching careers.

2. For exceptions see Mattli (1999); Telò (2001).

3. In fact, ‘old regionalist’ scholarship — especially neofunctionalism — was far less state‐centric than any of its contemporary IR theories. It emphasised the importance of a supranational institution — the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community, and its successor the European Commission — as well as interest groups in driving the process of integration forward. It may be a more telling critique of neofunctionalism that it was overly rationalist in its approach to theorising, stressed the EU as a ‘model’ too much, and that it had an overly formal view of what constitutes a region.

4. These changes are both institutional (for example the rise to power of the European Parliament) and procedural (for example the rise of soft policy and comitology as means of and approaches to decision‐making).

5. In states such as the UK, the context is even more complicated: Scotland, for example, can be treated as a country in its own right, with its own legal system and distinctive culture, but politically and administratively it functions as a region of a ‘Union State’, the United Kingdom.

6. This could be a challenge to Hettne's regionness scale, but we share his emphasis on non‐hierarchical, dynamic understandings of regions and their outputs.

7. Indeed it is very controversial within new regionalist studies, which often consider ‘integration’ to be a specifically EU studies phenomenon associated with neofunctionalism, and thus part of what distinguishes their field of enquiry from those of their EU studies colleagues.