Journal of European Public Policy
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Towards a theory of disintegration
Erik Jones
To cite this article: Erik Jones (2018) Towards a theory of disintegration, Journal of European
Public Policy, 25:3, 440-451, DOI: 10.1080/13501763.2017.1411381
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JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY, 2018
VOL. 25, NO. 3, 440–451
https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2017.1411381
DEBATE
Towards a theory of disintegration
Erik Jones
European and Eurasian Studies Program, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International
Studies, Bologna, Italy
ABSTRACT
Existing theories of European integration offer little purchase on the problems
facing the European Union today. New theories of disintegration are
emerging, but they remain disjointed. The purpose of this comment is to
suggest an overarching theoretical framework. This framework helps to
structure the existing literature and to suggest new areas for research. It also
helps to explain how integration and disintegration interact at different levels
of aggregation.
KEYWORDS Brexit; disintegration; equality of opportunity; Gunnar Myrdal; integration
Introduction
The European project is not doing well. Although recent news has been more
positive in terms of recovering from the economic crisis, it is hard to deny that
the last decade presented a series of major setbacks. The challenge is to
explain why this is happening and whether the many different problems
the European Union (EU) is experiencing are somehow connected to the
success the European project had in the past. Fortunately, a handful of scho-
lars have started to fill the gap in our collective understanding (Eppler et al.
2016; Hooghe and Marks 2009; Jachtenfuchs and Kasack 2017; Jones 2012;
Vollaard 2014; Webber 2014; Zielonka 2014). These scholars have focused
on the forces behind disintegration.
Their starting point is that existing theoretical arguments – transactionalist,
neofunctionalist, intergovernmentalist, institutionalist – are ill-equipped to go
in reverse. Hence, these scholars have brought a new array of hypotheses and
models into the mix. They draw attention to the interaction between hegemo-
nic stability theory and domestic politics (Webber 2014), the dynamics of
political community building (Vollaard 2014), and the competition for
problem-solving authority in multilevel governance (Jachtenfuchs and
Kasack 2017). Building upon a variety of often disconnected or only partial
causal mechanisms, they create conceptual frameworks for operationalizing
© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 441
key variables (Eppler et al. 2016) and for assembling scenarios for the future
(Zielonka 2014).
The most powerful of these new theories is the postfunctionalist account
proposed by Hooghe and Marks (2009) – with commentary by Schmitter
(2009), Börzel and Risse (2009) and Kriesi (2009). Hooghe and Marks (2009)
argue that neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism both trace back to
functionalist origins that give pride of place to economic interests and pay
little attention to identity politics or identity-based political mobilization.
Such reasoning worked during the first three decades of European inte-
gration, when the project was primarily economic, and yet failed to account
for the rising salience of European issues at the mass level once the European
project transcended its economic origins. As a result, European integration
has become entangled in a growing conflict between élites and masses
over the appropriate jurisdictional architecture for Europe (Jones 2012). This
conflict has unfolded in national elections and popular referendums that
have more often constrained than enabled the integration process.
This work is important. Nevertheless, it remains incomplete. The purpose of
this comment is to sketch a theoretical model inspired by Gunnar Myrdal
(1956) that can help pull things together.1 This model shares many features
of the theories for political community building favoured by Vollaard (2014)
(borrowing from Bartolini [2005]) and Jachtenfuchs and Kasack (2017). Never-
theless, it is easier than either of those works to operationalize in the manner
favoured by Eppler et al. (2016).
Such operationalization can help us contribute to ongoing theoretical
debates. For example, this theory shows how economic interests and identity
politics have been intertwined throughout the European project and it helps
us to understand why identity-based political mobilization was less important
in some historical contexts than in others. In that way, the framework provides
a pathway for reconciling the postfunctionalist account favoured by Hooghe
and Marks (2009) with the empirical evidence generated by Hanspeter Kriesi
and his colleagues (Hutter et al. 2016). It also helps to fold the postfunction-
alist account as a mid-range theory into the larger body of scholarship on
integration.
Finally, this theory allows us to connect the two levels of analysis deployed
by Webber (2014) and to bring more coherence to the scenarios offered by
Zielonka (2014). In this way, we are better able to interpret events unfolding
at the present and to anticipate how they will develop in the future.
Given its short length, this comment is more of a manifesto than a demon-
stration. It is also only allusive in the sense that it does not develop and refer-
ence the many strands of literature it mentions in passing. The exposition has
four sections. The first presents the model as a theory of integration and dis-
integration. The second shows how it can be operationalized empirically to
explain how integration starts, how it changes pace, when it will stop, and
442 E. JONES
how it could move into reverse. The third introduces variation across levels of
aggregation and issue areas while at the same time multiplying the patterns
of interaction. The fourth concludes with what this model can help us learn
about the present and the future. The goal of the theory is not to answer ques-
tions irrefutably, but rather to help structure empirical research.
A cumulatively causal theory of integration and disintegration
Integration is a process that brings things closer together in some respects; it
has a kind of reinforcing momentum or feedback loop (which means it builds
on its own success), and yet that momentum or feedback tends to exhaustion
(meaning that the reinforcing mechanism that connects one success to the
next diminishes over time or gives rise to ever-strengthening countervailing
forces). These features are characteristic of complex system dynamics
(Meadows 2008). The elements left out are (a) the purpose or function of inte-
gration and (b) the precise causal mechanisms that generate either reinfor-
cing or balancing feedback loops.
Myrdal (1956) energizes his theory of integration with a liberal purpose.
The goal, he argues, is to promote ‘equality of opportunity’. Obviously, it
is possible to announce a range of other objectives for the architects or
founders to want to achieve. Peace, justice and collective security top the
list. The point for Myrdal is that ‘equality of opportunity’ feeds into a specific
set of causal mechanisms. We can debate whether the architects of Europe
really sought equality of opportunity. That is an empirical question to be
judged on the back of memoires, oral histories and archival documentation.
If we accept for the moment that equality of opportunity was a possible
objective, then it is fair to consider where the pursuit of that objective
would lead.
The promotion of equality of opportunity takes place through the main
European institutions. In grand terms, we can think about the decision to
create a framework that offers member states with different endowments a
(relatively) equal voice in how decisions will be made. We can also think
about the elimination of barriers or the promotion of common rules or
norms. This is where most scholarship on European integration focuses. It is
also where we see most attention from journalists. But it is hardly the end
of the story.
Equality of opportunity should promote a more efficient allocation of
resources; it should also lead to greater acceptance of the rules of the
game by the different participants (which Myrdal [1956] calls ‘solidarity’).
Moreover, those two responses to enhanced equality of opportunity should
be mutually reinforcing. The more participants can focus on doing what
they do best, the less incentive they have to oppose the rules that define
the new arrangement; and the less time and effort participants expend
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 443
resisting the new arrangement, the more they can focus on doing what they
do best.
The critical point is that these are positive and conditional claims rather
than normative claims. The links between the extension of equality of oppor-
tunity and greater efficiency or acceptance can be empirically tested, as can
the positive reinforcement between efficiency and acceptance. We can also
empirically test (or debate) the operationalization of equality of opportunity,
efficiency and acceptance.
I will emphasize this empirical ‘testability’ repeatedly as I present the
model. The reason is to underscore not only that the model connects to
the empirical world, but also that the causal mechanisms can fail in practice
as well as in theory. Politicians can introduce institutions to promote equality
of opportunity that might not lead to greater efficiency or that might give rise
to politicization and conflict. This potential for failure is what makes the model
more consistent with a world that displays ‘punctuated politicization’ (Grande
and Kriesi 2016: 279) than a world that moves from ‘permissive consensus to
constraining dissensus’ (Hooghe and Marks 2009).
If the promotion of equality of opportunity does lead to greater efficiency
in the allocation of resources and greater acceptance of the rules of the game,
then this combination of factors should promote economic prosperity. Again,
this is not a normative claim. Rather, it is a reflection of the reality that not all
efforts to extend equality of opportunity with be welfare-enhancing to the
same extent (if, indeed, they turn out to be welfare-enhancing).
Assuming that the promotion of equality of opportunity does enhance
prosperity, we can then look at ways to close the feedback loop. Groups
with more income should experience a type of economic convergence.
There is a strong form where the poorer members catch up to those that
start with superior endowments. But the mechanism does not require such
an extreme form of convergence to work. The differences among participants
do not have to diminish in absolute terms; they could just become less impor-
tant as the average-per-participant increases. Again, this is an empirical ques-
tion. The answer is likely to depend upon the type of equal opportunity that
was created (or how it was created) and the specific efficiencies that were nur-
tured as a result.
There is – at least potentially – a political dimension to this convergence as
well. As the promotion of equality of opportunity results in greater prosperity
which brings the participants closer together in economic terms, it should also
create incentives for them to experiment with other forms of equal opportu-
nity. To the extent to which enhanced prosperity relaxes material constraints
on those who started off with the poorest endowments, it should create new
priorities along the way (as in the transition from materialist to post-materialist
political priorities). Once again, there is no tautology in these assertions. These
are testable hypotheses. And where they are validated, the result is likely to
444 E. JONES
encourage greater efforts to promote equality of opportunity – which starts
the cycle all over again.
This model for integration runs in the opposite direction just as easily.
You can start by introducing discriminatory measures that restrict equality
of opportunity. This would lead to a reduction in efficiency and a rise in
potential conflict. The group as a whole would become less prosperous as
a result. That does not mean the misery would be shared evenly. On the
contrary, some would lose more than others, and this would create
tension between the haves and the have-nots. In turn, this distributive con-
flict would create opportunities for further discrimination that could start the
cycle all over again. This negative spiral contains much of the adverse poli-
ticization that Hooghe and Marks (2009) identify. The point to note, more-
over, is that each step in this chain of reasoning can be tested both for
the existence of a causal connection – say, between discrimination and inef-
ficiency – and for the strength of the relationship. Myrdal’s (1956) theory
sets out cumulative causal mechanisms that describe both virtuous and
vicious cycles (Figure 1); only close examination of the empirical world
can tell you which of these you are experiencing.
Testing and building on the model
The model for integration and disintegration can be tested in three ways. Two
of these have already been mentioned. We can ask whether the promotion of
‘equality of opportunity’ (however operationalized) was an intended or unin-
tended consequence of the diplomatic efforts to engage in European inte-
gration. We can also ask whether we find any evidence that the promotion
of equal opportunity in some specific way resulted in efficiency gains or
greater acceptance, whether it made Europe’s economies more prosperous,
and whether this in turn nurtured support for further efforts to promote
equality of opportunity (or to engage in other ventures where further equality
of opportunity was an unintended consequence).
Figure 1. Integration and disintegration as a cumulatively causal model.
Note: Each of the arrows is causal and can be subject to empirical testing.
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 445
This is an old and well-established research agenda – both in whole and in
the various parts. Just think of F. Roy Willis’ (1968) classic, France, Germany, and
the New Europe. Now think about the myriad estimates of the contribution the
internal market has made to European economic performance. In fact, you can
find the threads of this kind of argument running through much of the corpus
of integration scholarship.
What the cumulatively causal framework adds to this rich empirical litera-
ture is a way of bringing the various arguments into a single frame of refer-
ence. It also suggests how we should examine the interaction between
different lines of argument. These interactions give us a third way of testing
the model empirically – by forcing us to look for correlations between
greater market efficiency, for example, and increased support for European
integration. If we find those correlations, we can ask whether there is evidence
that the causal mechanism really runs through increased prosperity or greater
convergence (as Myrdal [1956] argues) or whether it results from increased
interaction whatever the consequences for aggregate economic performance
(which is what transactionalist accounts of integration would imply).
In addition to offering empirical tests for both discrete and complex causal
mechanisms, the cumulatively causal argument for integration helps to frame
a research agenda. For example, it pushes us to look for evidence of diminish-
ing marginal returns or other non-linear dynamics. Such dynamics are impor-
tant because they help us understand why integration processes are so
uneven – with sudden bursts of activity in some areas or time periods and
lulls in others. These dynamics also help us to explain why integration may
go only so far and no further. The limits could reside in the unwillingness of
different groups to embrace equality of opportunity, they may result from
the small impact of new initiatives on the use of resources or the co-operation
of participants, or they may yield very little in terms of enhanced economic
prosperity. As with any complex system, whatever is relatively scarce can
emerge as a constraining factor.
This kind of analysis is useful for understanding how we move from one set
of dynamics to the other. The two cumulatively causal mechanisms are not
mutually exclusive and can (and probably do) coexist. Both integration and
disintegration create losers as well as winners. Hence, the challenge is to
understand why one pattern of cumulative causality might predominate.
The process of integration might expand beyond a favourable political calcu-
lation of costs and benefits. This is the postfunctionalist hypothesis – and it
has merits. Alternatively, the context may change around the integration
process in ways that make once beneficial institutions seem less attractive
either because they are ineffective or overly constraining. These are real
world possibilities; the point of the model is simply to help us know where
we should be looking.
446 E. JONES
The cumulatively causal model for integration inspired by Myrdal’s (1956)
argument also gives us a window for examining either incomplete or contra-
dictory initiatives. As mentioned, equality of opportunity is not the only
motive that governments have to pursue cross-national integration. The
pursuit of other projects may constrain the introduction of greater equal
opportunity and it may also lead to greater discrimination. Governments
may achieve less than they hoped in economic and political terms as a con-
sequence; they may even trigger dynamics that will push in the opposite
direction, as participants complain about unfair treatment. The point to
note here is that Myrdal’s model is only partly limited to economic integration.
Certainly, he focuses on market dynamics that connect efficiency to prosperity
to convergence. But those dynamics can facilitate other forms of co-operation
by providing additional resources to invest in common ventures or by reveal-
ing other shared values that can be promoted through co-operative endea-
vour. The reverse is also the case. As disintegration diminishes resources,
other joint projects are likely to suffer, and as conflict strengthens attention
to exclusive identities rather than shared values, joint projects may be
abandoned.
Finally, this model for integration and disintegration shows us where to
look for the influence of exogenous shocks, both positive and negative. A
sudden economic downturn could have a powerful and negative effect on
the willingness of countries to work together; the influence of a sudden
burst of economic growth could be the reverse. Technological innovations
might impact on the efficiency of resource use or the yield in terms of
growth. By contrast, disruptive technologies might create inequalities that
would increase resistance and therefore prove harmful to growth.
Again, none of these possible causal arguments is new to the model. The
value added comes from highlighting how these arguments – all well-
researched in the literature – slot into a single, coherent and testable
theory of integration. They also show how that process of integration can
move in reverse. In other words, the cumulatively causal model inspired by
Myrdal’s (1956) work provides a frame that can help us use existing research
on integration to understand the disintegration we are experiencing right
now. I will return to this point in the final section.
Levels of aggregation
Before moving to the present, it is necessary to clarify where integration takes
place and which level of analysis should take precedence. In his work, Myrdal
(1956) was more interested in integration at the global and national levels
than he was in European dynamics. Nevertheless, the cumulatively causal
model he sketched for integration is scalable – and intentionally so. The
same cumulative causal mechanisms can operate among individuals in a
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 447
single community, communities in a larger national society, nation states at
the (macro-)regional level, and regions at the global level. At each level of
aggregation, you can vary the units of analysis and yet the basic structure
for the cumulative causal mechanisms remains the same.
This scalability is a powerful feature of the model for two reasons. The first
reason is that scalability allows us to connect micro-foundations to macro-pro-
cesses. This is useful to avoid the reification of group agency of the ‘what
Germany wants’ variety; in the same vein, it facilitates the decomposition of
national preferences into groups and individuals. It is often useful to
assume that national preferences are exogenous, and yet such assumptions
make it important to recognize how those preferences might change over
time (and why).
The second advantage of scalability is that it draws attention to the inter-
action between levels of aggregation (Jones 2003). The basic question is
whether what looks like a positive form of integration at any given level
will have negative consequences for integration at other levels of aggrega-
tion. This kind of question will be familiar to students of Polanyi (2001),
who start from the level of society and look for innovations at high levels
(regional, global) to see whether they are consistent (embedded) or inconsist-
ent (dis-embedded). The richness that comes from Polanyi’s (2001) work is his
embrace of a wide range of norms and values that members of society might
hold to be important. Since these values emanate from idiosyncratic or con-
textually specific social groups, it is easy to understand why Polanyi (2001) pri-
vileges the societal level.
Myrdal’s (1956) argument focuses more narrowly on ‘equality of opportu-
nity’ and the specific causal mechanisms derive from that normative objective.
Whether one level of aggregation is more important than another is an
empirical matter. Wherever contradictions emerge, in the sense that efforts
to promote equality of opportunity at one level results in discrimination or dis-
criminatory disadvantage at some other level, the different cumulative causal
mechanisms can compete for dominance. The results of the competition
depend (empirically) upon the strength of the causal forces operating at
the different levels of aggregation.
Writing in the mid-1950s, Myrdal (1956) argued that efforts to promote
integration at the national level would thwart efforts to promote integration
either in Europe as a (macro-)region or at the global level. His reasoning was
consistent with Polanyi’s (2001) argument about the importance of social
embeddedness and the political reactions that emerge in its absence. Euro-
pean countries used welfare state institutions for health, education, providen-
tial care and employment protection to promote equality of opportunity. They
financed these institutions with taxes on goods, services, labour and capital.
And they distorted market competition both domestically and internationally
as a consequence. Hence, any effort to create equality of opportunity across
448 E. JONES
countries would require a massive and co-ordinated reform to the institutions
that provide for equality of opportunity within countries.
Myrdal (1956) did not believe that sufficient support for welfare state
reform existed; he was also sceptical that any process of integration across
countries would survive the political backlash that would result from adjust-
ments within them. It turns out that he underestimated the determination
of national political élites to move forward with the creation of Europe and
the willingness of national electorates to endure the adjustments that Euro-
pean project entailed. That does not mean Myrdal (1956) was wrong. The
system dynamics worked in Europe’s favour for long periods, as during the
early 1960s or the late 1980s; at other times, as during the 1970s and early
1980s, those dynamics also turned against Europe.
This interaction between integration at the European level and at the
national level helps to reconcile the postfunctionalist argument about the
politicization of Europe with the empirical record that such politicization
has occurred sporadically almost since the start of the European project,
that it has varied in intensity both over time and across countries, and that
it defies easy categorization in terms of party identification or cleavage struc-
ture (Grande and Kriesi 2016). The problem is not so much one of identity, but
of interests, institutions and values in the Polanyian sense (Jones 2006). At
times, and opportunistically, political élites may try to use national identity
as the basis for mobilization against Europe; they may also try to use
‘Europe’ as the basis for mobilization against domestic rivals. But that does
not mean we should expect to see a fixed hierarchy of preferences for national
versus European authority from one country to the next.
The same dynamics of politicization have often turned against integration
at the local level. The institutions that constitute European integration are not
the only ones that can be ‘socially disembedded’ in Polanyian terms. The
welfare state can become disembedded as well, insofar as national institutions
begin to discriminate at the subnational levels and to provoke conflict in local
communities. There is a rich tradition of scholarship looking at these kinds of
relationships between national institutions and local cohesion or resistance.
This is the line of research that Bartolini (2005) uses to enhance our under-
standing of the European Union. That scholarship needs to be brought
more coherently into the arguments we make about European integration.
The scalability of Myrdal’s analysis helps to frame that connection and to
suggest which variables and causal mechanisms are most relevant for empiri-
cal analysis.
What does this model tell us about the present?
Before the debate on European disintegration opened in earnest with the
postfunctionalist account proposed by Hooghe and Marks (2009), it was
JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN PUBLIC POLICY 449
relatively easy to equate European integration with the European Union.
Some writers, like Jan Zielonka (2007), emphasized the institutional diversity
of the integration process, and yet the presumption that integration would
lead to some kind of finalité politique centred on the European Union
remained strong. Now that commitment is less certain. Zielonka (2014) has
returned to the debate to suggest that the EU could lose its central role in
any of three scenarios: it could collapse spectacularly; it could break down
as an unintended consequence of misguided attempts to fix it; or it could
suffer from sustained benign neglect under the guise of ‘muddling
through’. The result would not be the end of ‘Europe’ or of European inte-
gration, but it would put an end to conceptions of Europe that place the
EU at the centre of the project.
The cumulatively causal model presented above shows how discrimination
(or inequality of opportunity) lies at the root of the disintegrative process. If
there is some spectacular collapse, it will most likely result from the isolation
of one-or-more member states from the rest of the Union. The British sense of
self-isolation is one illustration of this dynamic; the forced isolation of Greece
in the summer of 2015 is another. The danger in both cases comes from the
possible precedent. If one member state can go down this route, how long is it
before others will follow. Britain’s decision to leave the EU may not have that
kind of demonstration effect. It is still too early to tell what will be the political
or economic consequences of that development. The model can tell us where
to look for reinforcing dynamics, but not how powerfully they will operate.
That remains an empirical matter. The effective expulsion of Greece from
the single currency in the summer of 2015 would have unleashed a different
dynamic in terms of speed and magnitude. The structure of the causal mech-
anisms would nevertheless look very similar. European officials insist that they
now have the common resources to contain such dynamics. That is an empiri-
cal proposition that has yet to be tested (and hopefully never will be).
Inequality of opportunity or discrimination also lies at the heart of the
problem of unintended consequences. Here, we might use efforts to lower
risk in the European banking system as an illustration. The banking recovery
and resolution directive requires that a certain percentage of liabilities be
bailed in before any financial institution is bailed out using taxpayer resources.
This is a good general principle and yet it relies upon very different levels of
adaptation from one member state to the next. It is widely perceived in those
member states which much work hardest to adapt as inequitable as a result.
This explains why Italians, for example, have lost so much faith in Europe’s
banking union as a solution to their financial problems. It is at least partly
why Italian scepticism of the European Union is increasing in more general
terms as well.
The best-case scenario in Zielonka’s (2014) analysis is muddling through. As
the cumulatively causal model for integration developed here suggests, such
450 E. JONES
benign neglect will not jump-start the European Union at the centre of the
integration project, but it should not necessarily lead to its disappearance
altogether either. Much will depend upon how the forces for disintegration
and for integration operate across different projects and levels of analysis.
That is why we are likely to wind up in the ‘polyphonious’ arrangement that
Zielonka (2014) describes at the end of his volume.
A lateral shift in the focus of attention to some other form of integration is
unlikely to arrest this dynamic. Europe’s leaders may decide to emphasize
their common security or global leadership as opposed to promoting equality
of opportunity. Such goals are important, and yet they are outside the cumu-
latively causal model outlined above. Hence, it is unclear how such goals will
create positive feedback loops that will operate both politically and economi-
cally at different levels of analysis. It is also unclear how such a project would
counteract the dynamics that we see in the cumulative causal model that
centres around equality of opportunity in the positive sense or discrimination
in the context of disintegration. We have made important steps in under-
standing disintegration, and yet there is still plenty of scope for further
theorizing.
Note
1. Myrdal’s work has found wide acceptance in the fields of economic develop-
ment and economic geography. It has also been cited in classic works on the
economics of integration by scholars like Bela Belassa, Willem Molle and
Loukas Tsoukalis. Nevertheless, it has not found wide use among scholars of
European integration. James Angresano (1997) is a rare exception. The focus
of Angresano’s analysis is on the transformation of Central and Eastern
Europe after the fall of communism. This contribution has benefited greatly
from conversations I had with Jim more than 15 years ago about the broader
relevance of Myrdal’s work to the European project (Jones 2003).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Erik Jones (http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6473-7680) is professor of European studies and
international political economy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International
Studies and senior research fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford.
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