Something New: A Rejoinder to Frank Schimmelfennig on the New Intergovernmentalism

Scholarly exchanges are a rare occurrence in this journal, so we warmly welcome Frank Schimmelfennig's (2015) response to our article on the new intergovernmentalism (Bickerton et al., 2015a). We are pleased that Schimmelfennig supports our call to rethink the dynamics of European integration since Maastricht and that he agrees with many of our observations. His criticisms, however, are even more instructive, and we hope they will serve as the basis for further research. It was, after all, always our intention to initiate rather than settle the debate on the nature of the post-Maastricht European Union (EU). Schimmelfennig's critique rests on three key premises. First, he questions how ‘new’ the new intergovernmentalism is by arguing that the tendency towards integration without traditional forms of supranationalism pre-dates the post-Maastricht period. Second, he argues that the EU has evolved in a direction that is more supranational than intergovernmental over the past two decades. Third, he questions whether the new intergovernmentalism meets the standards expected of theories in EU studies. We take issue with each of his three points. Schimmelfennig is uneasy with our prefix ‘new’, but he gives us little reason to revisit our claim that the post-Maastricht period is distinct from earlier periods of integration. We find his own use of the terms ‘intergovernmental’ and ‘supranational’ to be problematic and this reinforces our belief in the need for fresh thinking about these traditional categories. Finally, his dismissal of our hypotheses as not testable betrays a methodological dogmatism which we have deliberately steered clear of in our collaborative work on the new intergovernmentalism. The spirit of our enterprise is ecumenical and we hope others will take the hypotheses as starting points for further empirical investigation, rather than as a defensive policing of existing disciplinary boundaries. While European integration has intensified over the past two decades, scholars have been wary of tackling this fact head-on. The new intergovernmentalism calls for a fresh debate about old questions, given the changing character of European integration. Our six hypotheses are tentative but they can and, it is hoped, will serve as a focal point for further research in this area (Bickerton et al., 2015b).1 When confronted with a new idea, scholars invariably relate it to what they already know. While understandable, this tendency stifles intellectual innovation and exaggerates the insights of earlier generations, much as in Alfred North Whitehead's dictum that ‘the European philosophical tradition … consists of a series of footnotes to Plato’ (1979, p. 39). Schimmelfennig's reaction to our thesis about post-Maastricht EU integration falls into this trap. He claims that the pattern of integration we associate with the post-1992 period was there in earlier decades, citing European political co-operation (1970), the snake in the tunnel (1972) and the European monetary system (1979) as examples. Our view is that isolated occurrences do not make a trend and our argument is that the direction taken by the EU post-Maastricht has no systematic precedent. Traditionally, students of the EU see the 1970s as a period of ‘eurosclerosis’, followed by an era of renewal in the 1980s. While some have sought to reclaim the 1970s as a phase of quiet progress (see Awesti, 2009), significant pushes to extend the scope of European Economic Community (EEC) policy-making were rare. The 1970s was, above all, a period in which EU heads of state or government were deeply ambivalent about co-operation in new areas of activity. Monetary co-operation before the Werner Plan of 1970 was modest, and thereafter it was short-lived. The ‘snake’ soon expired because of Member States' lack of commitment to economic policy co-operation and the European monetary system, although it enjoyed greater longevity, was less ambitious than its predecessor and even then was not implemented in full. European political co-operation, meanwhile, experienced a rapid decline after 1974, due in part to intra-European tensions (Möckli, 2009, p. 247). Ambivalence of this sort has been strikingly absent from the post-Maastricht period, as evidenced by the persistent attempts of national leaders to extend the scope of EU activity into these and other sensitive policy areas. Today, EMU, economic governance and the question of how the EU positions itself as a foreign policy actor in regional and global politics are at the centre of EU politics rather than its periphery. Moreover, these policy domains have become decisive for the EU's own future – as regards both internal cohesion and external challenges. European integration since Maastricht has seen its fair share of crises but it has thus far enjoyed strong support from national governments. If EU heads of state or government have been steadfast in their commitment to co-operation in new areas since 1992, they have at the same time been sceptical about turning to the traditional Community method of policy-making. What we identify as the integration paradox is precisely this combination of powerful forward momentum and a marked lack of transfer of competences to traditional supranational institutions. This again is another contrast with the pre-Maastricht period. Compare, for example, the central role envisaged for the Commission in economic policy co-ordination under the Werner Report with the limited role assigned to this institution under the Stability and Growth Pact and subsequent reforms to EU economic surveillance. It is not without reason that the late Leo Tindemans, a key proponent of European integration in the 1970s, lamented in recent years what he saw as the EU's ‘fateful lurch to intergovernmentalism’ (Financial Times, 29 December 2014). Schimmelfennig takes the European Council as another example of new intergovernmentalism pre-1992. The European Council was established in 1974 but it has changed profoundly in the post-Maastricht period. It has emerged since Maastricht as a centre for governing major new areas of EU activity and is no longer simply a forum for deciding to what extent the EU should become active in these fields (see also Puetter, 2014). The hands-on role played by the European Council in the euro crisis and its involvement in the fine detail of justice and home affairs are manifestations of this trend. This reflects a high degree of ideational convergence amongst national leaders and their reluctance to delegate new powers to old supranational institutions along traditional lines. Delegation, where it occurs, tends to privilege de novo bodies, a practice uncommon before 1992 but now commonplace. Having sought to unearth evidence of the new intergovernmentalism in the 1970s, Schimmelfennig classifies the post-Maastricht period as one of widespread communitarization and supranationalization of hitherto intergovernmental policy areas. He takes issue here with what he sees as our inconsistent application of the terms ‘intergovernmental’ and ‘supranational’. We define these terms at some length in the article, while recognizing that their usage in the literature is inconsistent. Intergovernmentalism and supranationalism often denote a specific set of institutional determinations and a series of behavioural norms. We argue that the post-Maastricht period is characterized by the disembedding of key supranational norms such as deliberation and their presence within settings that are – formally speaking – intergovernmental in nature. No quick definitional fix can get rid of this important and complex development. To claim that we are being inconsistent by identifying it is to try to swap a messy reality for an elegant but inaccurate use of these terms. Conflating integration with supranationalization is also problematic because it downplays the significance of European integration since Maastricht. Whereas intergovernmentalists see this as a period of stasis for the EU, we see it as one of important change. Supranationalists still hope that continued institutionalization might lead to supranationalization, but in so doing they miss much of what is significant about the last two decades. Schimmelfennig criticizes us for claiming ‘that the EU as a whole has become more intergovernmental’ (p. 3), but then observes later on that the new intergovernmentalism is evolving within new areas of EU activity. Our point is that these new areas of EU activity are precisely where the integration process has developed most dynamically in the post-Maastricht period, both in terms of scope and intensity. These new areas of activity are no longer peripheral to the EU's core activities. In fact, they have become themselves the core of what the EU does. The extension of the ordinary legislative procedure in successive treaty revisions does not eo ipso signal more supranationalism. Pushes to expand qualified majority voting and legislative decision-making competences to the domain of social policy-making, for instance, have failed to generate a new wave of legislation, a centralization of power or the harmonization of social standards. The new intergovernmentalism seeks not only to conceptualize European integration since Maastricht but also to explain and evaluate it through a series of six hypotheses. Schimmelfennig is right to question these hypotheses – that is what they are there for – but his reluctance to engage with them is puzzling. This is true of the hypothesis that deliberation and consensus have become guiding norms of day-to-day decision-making at all levels (H1), which he sees as mis-specified because deliberation and consensus-seeking are ‘attributes of supranationalism’ (p. 3). This is a curious reading of contemporary EU studies research, which predominantly associates them with intergovernmental decision-making; it also misunderstands our claim. Our hypothesis is not that deliberation and consensus-seeking are new. Nor do we take these norms as evidence of intergovernmentalism. Rather, we argue that they have been increasingly uncoupled from supranational dynamics since 1992. This deliberative intergovernmentalism (Puetter, 2012) can be seen in the increased intensity and informality of dialogue between national governments from the European Council down to senior expert committees, and in the focus of such discussions on co-ordinated rather than centralized policy solutions. Schimmelfennig is also reluctant to take a swing at Hypothesis 3 – that where delegation occurs, governments and traditional supranational actors support the creation and empowerment of de novo bodies – and opts instead for a semantic query about our distinction between traditional supranational institutions and de novo bodies. De novo bodies are diverse in their institutional design but they are quite distinctive from the Commission. The Board of Governors of the European Stability Mechanism, for example, is made up of the finance ministers of euro-area members. The EEAS structure integrates Member State resources into pre-existing EU-level assets and is led by the High Representative, who is an appointee of Member State governments and also the spokesperson of EU foreign ministers. Further research is required to understand the origins of de novo bodies, but to ignore these manifest innovations in institutional choice since Maastricht is to overlook much that is interesting and important about European integration in this period. There is a long tradition in EU studies of crying foul over methodology in debates between competing theoretical perspectives. The defenestration of neofunctionalism, for instance, was driven by an insistence that it lacked scientific rigour. Rosamond (2007) was right to consider these criticisms as absurd, given how methodologically self-conscious scholars such as Ernst Haas were. Even liberal intergovernmentalism, which for Schimmelfennig is the approach that sets the ‘standards of theorizing European integration’, was criticized at the time of its inception for failing to provide a ‘theory of integration’ (Wincott, 1995, p. 598). At the core of Schimmelfennig's criticism here is his claim that our hypotheses are assumptions that cannot be tested. The generality of our hypotheses is a conscious choice. We preferred not to formulate our research questions in either rational choice or constructivist terms, as to do so would have been to shift attention to questions of methodology and ontology rather than to the substance of our investigation. All our hypotheses are empirically testable, however one may understand this exercise, and Schimmelfennig's critical essay is a testament to the fact that the new intergovernmentalist framework is hardly incontrovertible. What we really take issue with in Schimmelfennig's critique are his attempts to close down, rather than to promote, empirical debate. Take, for example, our hypothesis that supranational institutions are not hard-wired to seek ever-closer union (H2), which Schimmelfennig sees as being ‘unlikely to fail because a single instance of a supranational institution preferring the status quo over more integration is enough’. This is his (curious) vision of empirical research rather than ours, as we believe that in-depth empirical investigation is needed to form a definitive judgement here. There is already much evidence to suggest that the Commission has a more ambivalent attitude towards the pursuit of ever-closer union. This comes from analysis of the Commission's reticence as a supranational entrepreneur under José Manuel Barroso (Hodson, 2014; Peterson, 2015) and micro-level data about the preferences of individuals working within the Commission (Kassim et al., 2013). Schimmelfennig draws attention to core state powers and non-regulatory policy areas as key characteristics of the new areas of EU activity (Genschel and Jachtenfuchs, 2014). Our own concern, however, is to see the integration paradox as a more general constitutive framework for thinking about European integration. Moreover, questions of identity and legitimacy – which we raise in our hypothesis on problems in preference formation at the domestic level and their impact upon European integration – are not confined to only some policy areas and not others. Euroscepticism in its current form, for instance – which has aggravated the disconnect between mainstream political elites and their constituencies on the matter of EU integration (H5 and 6) – has been coterminous with the post-Maastricht period itself. Schimmelfennig acknowledges that liberal intergovernmentalism “essentially covered the era from Messina to Maastricht”, the implication being that scholars must do more to understand the post-Maastricht period. And yet he also asks what is ‘newsworthy’ in the new intergovernmentalism. News may not be the best metaphor here, as theory-building is about more than merely providing information. This caveat notwithstanding, there is much that is newsworthy about our approach. The new intergovernmentalism aims to elucidate, explain and evaluate European integration in the post-Maastricht period. It reinterprets European integration since Maastricht as a period in which Member States significantly extended the scope of EU policy-making, but by and large without empowering supranational institutions along traditional lines. In making sense of this integration paradox, the new intergovernmentalism presents a set of broad but testable hypotheses that challenge conventional assumptions about what member states and supranational institutions want, how their relations with one another develop and where we can find the dividing line between high and low politics. Finally, the new intergovernmentalism offers a fresh look at the vexed question of the EU's legitimacy in the post-Maastricht period. Whereas intergovernmentalists and supranationalists are strangely sanguine about the state of the EU, the new intergovernmentalism integrates the EU's legitimacy problems into the heart of its analysis. It concludes that the determination of Member State governments to press ahead with integration since 1992, in spite of rising levels of distrust in the European project, has created a dangerous disequilibrium that could yet lead to a sharp correction. The fact that Schimmelfennig does not engage directly with any of these hypotheses only reinforces our belief in the need for fresh thinking about how the EU has changed in the past two decades.