June 11, 2003

Important distinctions

People often confuse two issues that are quite distinct from each other:

The level of integration - Should X be decided on the EU level or the national level? and the level of supranationalism/intergovernmentalist debate (Should X be decided by the Parliament/the Commission/the ECJ vs. The Council of Ministers?)

Secondly, people often say federalists when they really mean supranationalists.

This is misleading; intergovernmentalist governments are often as keen on integration as others, while most small countries support for the commission isn't because of a committent to federation.

There's obviously a significant degree of correlation between integrationism and supranationalism and between supranationalism and federalism, but treating them as interchangeable is wrong and makes informed debate impossible.

Posted by David Weman at June 11, 2003 11:04 AM
Comments

Nice new blog!

These distinctions are very important, I agree.

However, I wonder if characterisation of the factors' correlation as "some" is enough - at least in the long term, "integration", ie decision making at the center vs. execution in the periphery, will always tend to increase multilateralism. "Neo-Functionalist" argument, true, but I suppose it still holds over time.

Thus, most single dimension analysis/research is still quite useful for the long-term, general outlook in my opinion.

Posted by: Tobias Schwarz at June 11, 2003 07:09 PM

You're right, "some correlation" was a poor choice of words, the result of rewriting the sentence too many times.

Posted by: David Weman at June 12, 2003 08:50 AM

My perception is that beyond "people often say federalists when they really mean supranationalists" usually federalism is being used in a context where centralism would be the appropriate term.

Posted by: Chris K at June 20, 2003 10:41 PM