Foreign Policy Actions of the European Community: The Politics of Scale 9781685853044

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Foreign Policy Actions of the European Community

Foreign Policy Actions of the European Community T H E P O L I T I C S OF S C A L E RoyH. Ginsberg

Lynne

Rienner

Adamantine

Publishers

Press

«Boulder

Limited •Londo n

Published in the United Suites of America in 1989 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 Published in the United Kingdom by Adamantine Press Ltd. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU ©1989 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ginsberg, Roy H. Foreign policy actions of the European Community. Bibliography: p. Includes index. 1. European Economic Community countries—Foreign relations. 2. European Economic Community countries— Foreign relations administration. I. Title. K J E 5 1 0 5 . G 5 6 1989 341.24'2 88-30725 ISBN 1-55587-097-8 (alk. paper)

British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-7449-0022-0 This book is No. 3 in the Adamantine series Studies in International Relations and World Security, ISSN: 0954-6073

Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984.

To the memory of my father Jerome Solomon Ginsberg 1928-1962

Contents

List of Tables and Graphs

ix

List of Acronyms

xi

Acknowledgments

xiii

1 Introduction

1

2 Causes of EC Foreign Policy Activity

9

3 Law, Custom, and Decisionmaking in EC Foreign Policy Activity 4

41

Development of EC Foreign Policy Activity

55

5 EC-Mediterranean Basin Relations

117

6 EC-U.S. Relations

129

7

151

Impact of Enlargement on Foreign Policy Activity

8 Effects of Foreign Pressures and Internal Economic Conditions on Foreign Policy Activity

165

9 Conclusions

179

Bibliography

187

Index

197

About the Book and the Author

vii

203

Tables and Graphs

Tables 2.1

Classical and Alternative Conceptual Perspectives on EC Foreign Policy Activity

3.1

The Law of EC Foreign Policy Actions

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 4.10 4.11 4.12 4.13 4.14 4.15

Inventory of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1958-1972 Inventory of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1973 Inventory of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1974 Inventory of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1975 Inventory of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1976 Inventory of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1977 Inventory of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1978 Inventory of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1979 Inventory of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1980 Inventory of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1981 Inventory of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1982 Inventory of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1983 Inventory of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1984 Inventory of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1985 Summary of Joint EC Actions by Type and Explanation, 1958-1985 Summary of Joint EC Actions by Type and Explanation, Total and Percentages of Total, 1958-1985

4.16

ix

40 53 90 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 102 103 104 105 106 106

X

Tables

and

Graphs

Graphs 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 4.7 4.8 4.9 8.1 8.2 8.3 8.4

Total EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1973-1985 Trends in Types of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1973-1985 Distribution of Types of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1973-1985 Trends in Types of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1973-1985 Distribution of Types of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1973-1985 Trends in Explanations of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1973-1985 Distribution of Explanations of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1973-1985 Trends in Explanations of EC Foreign Policy Actions, 1973-1985 Distribution of Explanations of EC Foreign Policy Actions,1973-1985 Trends in EC Imports as a Percentage of Total World Imports Trends in EC Imports as a Percentage of Total EC Imports Trends in EC Exports as a Percentage of Total World Exports Trends in EC Exports as a Percentage of Total EC Exports

107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 175 176 177 178

Acronyms

AASM ASEAN ACP

Association of African States and Madagascar Association of South-East Asian Nations African, Caribbean, and Pacific States

CAP CET CFMs CMEA COREPER CSCE

Common Agricultural Policy common external tariff Council of Foreign Ministers Council for Mutual Economic Assistance Committee of Permanent Representatives Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe

EC ECE ECJ ECSC EEC EFTA EMS EPC EURATOM

European Community Economic Commission for Europe European Court of Justice European Coal and Steel Community European Economic Community European Free Trade Association European Monetary System European Political Cooperation European Atomic Energy Community

FAO FRG

Food and Agriculture Organization Federal Republic of Germany

GATT

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade xi

xii

Acronyms

GSP

Generalized System of Preferences

IEA

International Energy Agency

LDCs

less-developed countries

MEPs MFN MTNs

members of European Parliament most-favored nation Multilateral Trade Negotiations

NATO NTBs

North Atlantic Treaty Organization nontariff barriers

OAPEC OECD OEEC OPEC

Organization Organization Organization Organization

PLO PRC

Palestine Liberation Organization People's Republic of China

SADCC SALT STCs

Southern African Development Coordination Conference Strategic Arms Limitation Talks State Trading Countries

UNCTAD

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries for Economic Cooperation and Development of European Economic Cooperation of Petroleum Exporting Countries

Acknowledgments

This study was initially supported by a generous research grant from the EC Commission in 1981-1982, enabling me to conduct interviews of experts in the Commission, Council Secretariat, Committee of Permanent Representatives, and European Parliament, as well as scholars in Europe and the United States. Special thanks go to Skidmore College for a faculty development grant to fund a follow-up trip to EC member countries during the summer of 1986 and for support during the summer of 1987, when I completed the project in Washington, D.C. These funds enabled me to bring my inventory of joint foreign policy actions up to date and to receive critical feedback on methods and conclusions. I am grateful to Dr. Henry Nau (George Washington University), Dr. Glenda Rosenthal (Columbia University), Dr. Roy Pryce (Federal Trust, United Kingdom), Dr. Christopher Hill (London School of Economics and Political Science), and Dr. Reinhardt Rummel (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Federal Republic of Germany) for their valued guidance and expert advice from the study's inception through completion. Karsten Geier (Cornell University) ably assisted me in managing and verifying the large volume of data and in preparing the manuscript for its journey. Above all else, I am indebted to my family and friends for their patience and understanding during those more intense times when there was no substitute for tunnel vision to complete a project that consumed a good part of my thinking and writing over seven years. I alone, of course, am responsible for the development and interpretation of the data generated in this study. Roy H. Ginsberg xiii

Foreign Policy Actions of the European Community

Introduction

Foreign policy studies usually focus on the policies of individual nationstates. One body of states that does not lend itself to such traditional study is the European Community (EC). And because EC foreign policy activity defies easy categorization and explanation, it has been neglected as an area of research among political scientists. Foreign policy activity in the EC is a process of integrating policies and actions of the member states toward the outside world.1 The resulting EC policies and actions are generated toward nonmembers and international organizations on political, diplomatic, economic, trade, and security-related issues. Foreign policy activity is based on the need to protect and defend the common interests of the member governments abroad and to respond adequately to global demands and pressures on the EC. This convergence of interests enables a diverse membership to act as one in a number of international issue areas. Although the EC is a civilian actor in the international system, it has taken several foreign policy actions that influence and are influenced by strategic security concerns in such areas as the Middle East, Central America, southern Africa, and the Mediterranean Basin. A civilian actor, according to Twitchett, has no military dimension but is able to influence states, global and regional organizations, international corporations, and other transnational bodies through diplomacy, economic resources, and legal considerations.2 The EC has no explicit treaty-based foreign policy powers in a strictly political sense. Member governments retain sovereignty in most aspects of political and economic foreign policy. When the logic of joint activity does not point to mutual benefit, and very often even when it does, member 1

2

Introduction

governments conduct foreign policy on their own. Nevertheless, the EC, not the member governments, has treaty competence to execute foreign trade policy for the member states. The EC maintains diplomatic relations with 130 nation-states and has close bilateral relations with many of them. In an international system in which trade, economics, politics, and diplomacy fuse to make distinction among these areas almost illusory, the EC's presence in international affairs is more pronounced. As the world's largest importer and exporter, the EC has used its economic weight to influence foreign affairs. When the member states can agree to act in unison, the EC has fashioned policy responses to the demands of participation in the international order through specific foreign policy actions. Often, the EC is forced by outside pressures to act as a unit to address demands of outsiders, to act responsibly as a prosperous and mature group toward the outside world, and to act on behalf of the Western bloc of advanced capitalist democratic states, particularly when the United States' hands are tied. It has well-formed individual policies toward other parts of Europe, both West and East, the Mediterranean Basin, sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean and Pacific states, the Middle East, and toward other parts of the world from Central America to Southeast Asia. It has, for instance, formulated and executed policy responses to the Portuguese revolution, repression in Franco's Spain, the coup d'état in Grenada, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Argentine invasion of the Falklands/Malvinas, political repression in Vietnam, and to the question of a Palestinian homeland. Joint foreign policy activity refers to the process by which EC members and their common bodies coordinate and implement joint civilian foreign policy actions to reap benefits from politics of scale. Joint actions and policies are outcomes of foreign policy activity. They carry the combined weight of the EC members and bodies, are based on EC law, and require membership approval. But an important distinction must be drawn between joint action and joint foreign policy. A joint action is a specific, conscious, goal-oriented undertaking putting forth a unified membership position toward nonmembers, international bodies, and international events and issues. It may be unrelated to other joint actions or may be an end in itself, such as the EC Afghan Peace Plan. It may be part of a broader composition of policy, such as tariff preferences under the EC Mediterranean Policy. A joint foreign policy is a composition of mutually related joint actions that set forth a unified position intended to serve predetermined objectives—for example, the EC Middle East Policy. Both action and policy are taken under the purview of the Rome Treaty; treaty additions (such as the Single European Act) and interpretations (by the European Court of Justice); implied and discretionary powers; and evolved habits and customs (such as those developed in European Political Cooperation). Thus, the EC takes many foreign policy actions but has only a few fully developed foreign policies, which do not together

Introduction

3

constitute an integrated foreign policy in the sense that a nation-state may be said to have a single foreign policy. Politics of scale refers to the benefits of collective over unilateral action in the conduct of civilian foreign policy. Politics of scale enables members to conduct joint foreign policy actions at lower costs and risks than when they act on their own. Members generally perceive that they carry more weight in certain areas when they act together as a bloc than when they act separately. Politics of scale in the conduct of EC foreign affairs has been a major drawing card for such members as the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG); Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg (BENELUX); Italy; and the United Kingdom (UK). In this study, joint foreign policy actions taken from 1958 to 1985 are identified and tabulated to determine trends in activity, test theoretical explanations, and provide a data base for others to draw on for further analysis. 3 Much of the analysis is based on orginal interviews and quantitative data. Interviews of officials in the EC Commission, Council Secretariat, and Committee of Permanent Representatives; members of the European Parliament; and European and U.S. academic experts were conducted in 1981 and 1986 on the question of EC foreign policy activity.4 Foreign policy activity may be measured by foreign policy actions taken collectively by the members over time. Indicators of foreign policy activity during 1958-1985 include: (A) number and content of EC foreign policy actions; (B) trends in EC imports as a percentage of total world imports and total EC imports; (C) trends in EC exports as a percentage of total world exports and total EC exports; and (D) food, raw material, and labor selfsupply rates. In order to make a large amount of data manageable, it is necessary to stipulate that foreign policy actions meet two criteria for inclusion in the data base: First, the action must be goal-oriented; second, it must have been made operational. It must exert physical activity, such as economic leverage (for example, granting or withholding of economic benefits) or follow-up work (for example, dispatching an EC official to confer with a foreign leader on an EC diplomatic initiative). Whether or not the joint action achieved its desired result, it is still included in the inventory, so long as common policy and procedure prevailed in its execution. Further inclusions and exclusions are detailed in Chapter 4. A total of 480 joint actions stretching across a wide swath of civilian international relations were taken during 1958-1985. Of these, 313 (65 percent) were taken in the twelve-year period from 1973 to 1985, compared to 167 (or 35 percent) taken in the fourteen-year period from 1958 to 1972. The relative explanatory powers of three logics—regional integration logic, global interdependence logic, and self-styled logic—are tested in investigating the causes behind the expansion and variety of EC foreign policy activity. The logic of regional integration emphasizes the negative

4

Introduction

effects of internal EC policies on outsiders, who in turn press the EC for compensation, forcing members to pull together to develop joint defensive responses. The logic of interdependence suggests that the current of global politics influences the EC to respond with policies that are rooted not in the internal market but in the international system. The self-styled logic underscores the EC's own sense of mission and independence in the world, whereby foreign policy actions not taken in response to outside pressures are products of the EC's own internal decisionmaking and political dynamic; selfstyled acitons are initiated by the EC, reflect EC interests, and are implemented within the context of the EC's own style of diplomacy. The logic of integration explains 99 percent of all EC foreign policy activity during the 1958-1972 period. After 1972, this logic as an explanation of foreign policy activity has steadily declined, although it still accounted for about 65 to 70 percent of all actions in the early 1980s. When the logic of integration cannot explain foreign policy activity, explanations may be drawn from the interdependence and self-styled logics as the EC copes with foreign policy questions rooted in either the current of international politics or in the EC's own internal dynamic. Three sets of EC relationships with outsiders warranted close scrutiny because they point to the strengths and weaknesses of EC foreign policy activity and test the relative merits of the three logics. The EC policy toward the Mediterranean region was initially triggered by the logic of regional integration but has since become a self-styled, well-formed foreign policy based on a high degree of internal consensus. The Mediterranean Policy meets the definition of a full-blown EC foreign policy because it comprises a set of mutually related, predetermined foreign policy actions designed to serve coherent policy goals. The EC relationship with the United States is not guided by a coherent policy because: (A) the members cannot agree on a common approach; (B) the strategic side of the relationship falls outside the EC's legal purview— rendering it difficult for the EC to respond to certain policy areas affected by the logic of interdependence; and (C) the United States is far from the reassuring shores of the EC, European Free Trade Association (EFTA), Mediterranean, and African states for which EC policies are more cogent and effective. The EC relationship with the United States illustrates the limits of EC foreign policy activity and the influence of complex global interdependence on European policymaking. The third set of EC relationships with outsiders, EC policy toward enlargement, is both a cause and an effect of foreign policy activity. Enlargement is mostly the result of external pressures placed on the EC by nonmember European countries to join the club, thus confirming the logic of integration at work. Evidence shows that the EC's first enlargement prompted an increase in the number of joint EC foreign policy actions. The EC has had

Introduction

5

three enlargements: the first (referred to as El) incorporated the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Denmark in 1973; the second (E2) incorporated Greece in 1981; and the third (E3) incorporated Spain and Portugal in 1986. This study reveals that El: •

•

•

encouraged defensive EC policies toward certain nonmembers, because consolidation of the internal market adversely affected outsiders, requiring the EC to act defensively, triggering foreign policy activity; created new conflicts of interest between members and nonmembers, as insiders enjoy exclusive privileges not available to outsiders; increased the EC's international political and economic clout, as new members brought to the EC their own sets of foreign relations, and EC trade as a percentage of world trade grew such that few countries were untouched by the effects of EC foreign trade policy; broadened the EC's foreign policy base of operations and expertise, as new members brought to the EC their own diplomatic experiences and specialties; and demarcated the EC from the outside world, as the EC became increasingly self-sufficient, resulting in tighter market access for nonmember imports.

The period 1973-1974, during which enlargement, OAPEC's (Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries) oil embargo, and OPEC's (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) price increases occurred, is used as a reference point from which a comparison of the number and types of joint actions is made. This comparison helps to determine if indicators of EC foreign policy activity have increased or decreased. If such indicators show a jump after 1973-1974, enlargement and the oil embargo may be viewed as key catalysts to unified EC action. Key influences on foreign policy activity identified in this study are foreign economic and political pressures and internal economic conditions. The EC is sensitive to the supply and price of raw materials, to global economic recession, and to global political conditions, such as threats to European security and superpower influence. EC vulnerability to strategicgoods imports means that many EC foreign policy actions are formulated with its import and export dependencies in mind. On the other hand, internal economic conditions have had the effect of insulating the EC from the outside world. The EC has achieved or exceeded self-sufficiency rates for many food and industrial products. Rising percentages for intra-EC trade as a portion of total EC and of total world trade and rising self-sufficiency rates for such needs as labor and food point to this growing independence. A European Community less dependent on the outside world bodes well for foreign policy actions that are more independent of external pressures.

6

Introduction

The browbeating that the EC receives from many leaders and thinkers on both sides of the Atlantic is often deserved, especially when the political will so patently needed to achieve more fully the original goals of the Rome Treaty is lacking. However, despite the EC's many political and institutional dilemmas, what the majority of Europeans have achieved at and since midcentury remains one of the most significant peacetime developments in modern international relations. A rebuilt and reconciled Western Europe should neither be taken for granted nor be dismissed as politically insignificant, lest we forget lessons of less peaceful times before the EC existed. Surely, the EC continues to distinguish itself from other forms of international cooperation as it formulates and executes joint foreign policy actions. This study shows that the EC, despite its aches and pains, is still alive and kicking in this critical policy sector. This study comes at a time when new political will is being breathed into the EC, by the member governments themselves, to eliminate internal barriers to trade by the end of 1992. Even if some intra-EC nontariff barriers (NTBs) remain, the EC of 1993 and beyond is expected to be a much more growth-oriented, prosperous economic body than it has been at any time since the early post-war economic boom. A stronger economic community, alongside a community whose foreign policy activity continues to intensify and deepen, will help bring Europeans what they could not achieve as separate states: power and influence in the world based on benefits derived from economies of scale and, of course, from politics of scale. The EC is again on the move.

Notes 1. What is meant by a process of integrating? Integration, by definition, must lead to a terminal condition. One of the reasons integration theory lost much cogency by the 1970s was that the EC was not moving toward the terminal condition of the integration process it predicted—that is, political and economic union. In this book, there is no interest in predicting the terminus of the process of foreign policy activity, at least in the long term. The EC might one day, in the far future, form a common foreign policy framework for the membership. Indeed, it already has individual foreign policies toward some of the world's regions and issues. For our purposes, the terminus of the process of foreign policy activity is the individual joint foreign policy action it produces. Whether the joint actions taken together will one day form a broader terminal European foreign policy is too speculative for scientific inquiry. This limitation should not, however, detract us from investigating outcomes and causes of foreign activity given the data available and the evolving theoretical construction covered in this book. 2. Kenneth Twitchett, ed., Europe and the World (London: Europa Publications, 1976), p. 8.

Introduction

7

3. M o r e c o m p l e x statistical analyses, such as regression, were n o t undertaken in this study. Its chief statistical purpose was to present a wide variety of data on EC foreign policy activities in a parsimonious way and to maintain a balance between presentation of aggregate data and case study. This study does not focus on the intended effects of EC actions, nor on when and where the EC should have or could have taken joint action but did not. Nor does it address the relationship between trends in EC foreign policy activity and the separate foreign policy activities of the member states. It also excludes occasions when the member states chose to act on their own or in conjunction with other groups of states outside the EC and EPC frameworks. These actions are important and should be investigated given the findings of this book, which is designed to be but one step in a broader reexamination of EC foreign policy behavior. 4. The author interviewed fifty-four officials at the Commission, Council Secretariat, European Parliament, and Permanent Representatives. Between one and two hours were spent with each respondent. Most of the Commission interviews were with officials in the Directorate-General for External Relations (DG-I), although several were held with officials from the Directorates for Economic and Financial Affairs (DG-2); Agriculture (DG-6); and Development (DG-8). Interviews w e r e also held with o f f i c i a l s at the C o m m i s s i o n ' s Washington Delegation. Interviews with the European Parliament members were held during the June 1981 session—all were members of either the Political Affairs, External Relations, or Development Committees. Officials from all ten offices of the Permanent Representatives were interviewed. In each case, interviews were held with either the Deputy Permanent Representative or the First Political Counsellor. Of all respondents, twelve were from the UK, eleven from West Germany, seven from France, six each from the Netherlands and Italy, five from Denmark, three from Belgium, two from Ireland, and one each from Luxembourg and Greece.

2 Causes of EC Foreign Policy Activity

The search for conceptual explanations of EC policy behavior was derailed in the 1970s, when the EC fell short of full-blown economic and political union predicted by U.S. integration theorists of the 1960s. Many dismissed the EC in one fell swoop, either writing off the EC as secondary in political importance to its member governments or subsuming the politics of the EC to those of the international system. Others tried to squeeze the enormous complexity of the EC either into unconnected atheoretical case studies or into the narrow and inappropriate concept of international regime. Apathy toward European affairs in the 1970s, indignation by theorists that the EC had not reached federal statehood by its third decade, and realization that the EC itself was becoming more complex and diverse all made production of grand conceptual works on European integration problematic. In retrospect, the mass abandoning of scholarly interest in the EC was too abrupt, leaving many key developments in the 1980s unexamined, especially in the area of foreign policy activity, an area begging for empirical and conceptual scrutiny. The search for theory or concepts to provide formulas for explaining foreign policy actions is difficult. Most foreign policy theories or concepts are formed with the nation-state in mind. Joint foreign policy behavior of a group of states is so unorthodox in international relations that it defies traditional political science theory. Most conceptual frameworks explain why action eludes—rather than captures—groups of states. As political scientists cannot agree on foreign policy theory at the state level, it would be too optimistic to expect consensus on a theory of European foreign policy. Our central theoretical question is not what causes the absence of EC 9

10

Causes of EC Foreign

Policy

Activity

foreign policy activity but what causes its presence? What triggers joint action? What conceptual perspectives describe and explain the empirical evidence of joint actions? The EC's multidimensional nature—twelve sets of national interests sometimes converge and sometimes diverge—means that no one conceptual perspective can fully describe and explain its foreign policy behavior. David Allen writes that EC foreign policy activity is a process that involves elements of integration, intergovernmentalism, transnationalism, and bureaucratic politics, all operating within a framework that encompasses international organizations and nation-states struggling to maintain independent identities in an interdependent world.1 Leon Lindberg and Stuart Scheingold write that the EC defies categorization as it is neither federal nor confederal, integrated nor supranational, sovereign nor dependent but shares characteristics of all these.2 Should the search for such a conceptual perspective be abandoned because it is elusive? Should we rely instead on case studies that simply detail behavior? Conceptual frameworks help produce various explanations of behavior and allow broader understanding. Case studies unlinked to conceptual frameworks construct knowledge so that there is depth but no breadth; knowledge generated stops with the case study itself. The main propositions of seven conceptual perspectives on EC foreign policy activity are encapsulated into Table 2.1 to compare how different perspectives, on different levels of analysis, illuminate different explanations of behavior. Christopher Hill cautions us that a catalogue of paradigms may evade the issue of how to distinguish between the more fruitful and less fruitful approaches. 3 How then may we determine which patterns of behavior tend to be dominant in which circumstances? What you see may well depend on where you sit, but which seats give the best view in the house? 4 This study tests the relative merits of the integration, interdependence, and selfstyled logics in explaining what causes EC foreign policy actions. The integration logic, by focusing on the effect of common market policies on outsiders, offers a cogent partial explanation of what spurs joint action. The level of analysis is regional. The common denominator of these actions is the impact of the EC's very existence on those outside. The interdependence logic, concentrating on EC participation in the global interdependent order, gives another partial explanation of joint action. The level of analysis is the international system. The common denominator of these actions is the impact of the world on the EC. The self-styled logic focuses on the EC's internal dynamic, its own foreign policy interests, and its own mission and initiative in the world independent of the phenomena that trigger other actions. The level of analysis is the symbiosis that goes on between the national and regional actors. The self-styled logic connects the national-interests and elite-actor models (see

Causes

of EC Foreign

Policy Activity

11

Table 2.1) to the dynamics of decisionmaking at the regional level to illuminate the process whereby certain EC actions are taken. The common denominator of these actions is the EC's initiation of action in relation to the outside world independent of external pressures per se. Table 2.1 also outlines the main propositions of four classical but less ambitious models: national interests, elite actor, domestic politics, and bureaucratic politics. These models are less useful in explaining what triggered action than they are helpful in describing the national and subnational contexts in which action is considered. More often, they suggest what in the matrix of conflicting interests played out in the domestic context impedes or eludes joint action. These models tend to glaze over (A) the process by which separate national interests are hammered into joint actions; and (B) international pressures on the EC to act as a unit despite opposition from national and domestic actors. Models at the national and subnational levels of analysis help frame the internal context in which EC actions are considered, yet they cannot be relied on to frame the external context. We cannot draw on realist or neorealist theory for explanations of EC foreign policy activity. Hans Morgenthau writes that "international politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power. Whatever the ultimate aims of international politics, power is always the immediate aim."5 The concept of pursuit of national interest by use of force is central to the realist approach to understanding the behavior of nation-states. Realist theorists stress that international politics is a state of perpetual conflict. Robert Keohane and Joseph Nye, Jr. maintain that if international politics were a state of conflict, institutionalized patterns of cooperation on the basis of shared purposes should not exist except as part of a larger struggle for power.6 Pursuit of national interest and the centrality of national sovereignty, hallmarks of realist thought, help to explain when EC foreign policy activity either breaks down and the member states go their separate ways, or is not attempted at all. Of course, national self-interest was the chief reason that members joined the EC in the first place. However, realist precepts do not explain members' acceptance of costs associated with participation in the EC. Realism cannot account for trade-offs between national interests and those common to all of Europe that are facts of life in European politics. The purpose of this book is to demonstrate that there is foreign policy activity at the EC level—a concept that breaks through certain assumptions about the EC that have become engrained in the political science literature of the 1970s and 1980s in the United States. These assumptions have produced misperceptions about the actual role and function of the EC as a foreign policy player for the membership and in the international system. The EC has been dismissed as ineffective in harmonizing common policies and as irrelevant to the foreign policy of the European states and to international relations.

12

Causes of EC Foreign

Policy

Activity

But, indeed, joint foreign policy activity has produced a significant number of EC actions over time. EC behavior in international affairs, backed by a body of law and the habit of cooperation, cannot be explained by realist theory. Realism does not fully account for changes in the international system since the 1960s. It does not provide an adequate framework for analyzing the contemporary multipolar interdependent international system and the EC role in it. This system accommodates noncoercive regional cooperation, fusion of high and low politics, and the economic aspects of national or regional security. In this system, unlike the bipolar era and its realpolitik, EC influence is elevated because of the EC's economic and diplomatic weight. The EC need not be a military power to have influence or to act in defense of its interests. It is not necessary to discard realism, only to go beyond it to understand why regional cooperation exists outside the charge of power politics. Neorealist theory, likewise, fails to explain the existence of the EC as an international actor.7 Neorealist premises, like realist ones, posit states as actors, anarchy as the state of international life, and power maximization as the goal of state action. These premises cannot account for the rise and growing importance of the EC in international affairs. Set against an international backdrop that is anarchic and power hungry under neorealist rubrics, the EC is an example of interstate cooperation even when the costs are high to its constituent members. Not a military body, the EC does not seek to increase military power, but rather concentrates on achieving economic goals such as growth and development. Neither can we rely on the notion of hegemony, which has become so prevalent in the political science literature, to explain the EC—unless, of course, the EC becomes a hegemonic power in the international system or returns to a 1950s patron-client relationship with the U.S. hegemon.8 But the EC is not likely to do so in the foreseeable future. It has neither the aspiration nor the capability under its own law. In the literature on hegemonic thought, the EC is treated as an international regime. We know international regimes—such as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the International Energy Agency (IEA), or Bretton Woods—as sets of explicit or implicit principles, norms, rules, and decisionmaking procedures around which actors' expectations converge in given areas of international relations.9 But the EC is more than an abstract set of rules, norms, and procedures well beyond the generally loose, informal, and nonobligatory nature of international regime. It has sovereign powers (outlined in Chapter 3) and long-term organizational goals that cannot be squeezed into the narrower and really inappropriate concept of international regime, which stresses intergovernmental rather than supranational cooperation. Webb argues that there are dangers in too wholehearted an application of the international regime concept to describe the aggregate level

Causes

of EC Foreign

Policy Activity

13

of EC activity. It would be tempting to underestimate the significance and influence of EC law and the normally high rate of national compliance with frequently detailed EC legislation.10 The EC escapes regimes theory, it cannot be accounted for in terms of hegemonic power, and it defies notions of neorealism. Other perspectives will have to be examined for cogent explanations of EC foreign policy activity. The Classical Political Science Models National Interests

Based closely on Morgenthau's realism and Graham Allison's rational actor, the national-interests model helps to explain joint action. It points to the national decisionmaker, in an intergovernmental setting, as the determinant of joint action. The decisionmaker will work to maximize benefits for and minimize costs to the nation-state. Joint EC actions have to achieve support, or at least escape opposition, from national interests in the member states. When cooperation points to mutual benefit and the utility of joint approaches, then members will support joint foreign policy actions. The EC itself is the result of the convergence of national interests. Its power base is, according to the perspective of this model, purely national. When it is not in a member's interest to move EC policy ahead, use of veto power in the Council of Foreign Ministers (CFMs) and a variety of delaying tactics prove effective. The national-interests model suggests EC development is held hostage to member states' interests. Examples of how the model explains the existence and breakdown of joint action follow. The response in four of the member states to the 1973-1974 OAPEC oil embargo of the Netherlands (and the quadrupling of oil prices by OPEC) was the lowest point in the history of EC foreign policy activity. By rushing to conclude separate trade deals with oil-producing states, the French, West German, British, and Italian leaderships chose national self-interest over EC solidarity and so violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the Rome Treaty. Despite attempts by the EC Commission and other member states, the four large member governments dispatched their foreign ministers to the Middle East to obtain the best possible bilateral supply agreements (bartering delivery of oil for arms and other shipments). "Perhaps the most deplorable spectacle was in the establishment of an uninvited delegation of Arab Foreign Ministers of oil producing states who insisted that they be heard at the December 1973 Copenhagen Summit. They turned the meeting into a circus in which the majority of actors were Arab Foreign Ministers, not leaders of the EC governments who were suppose to be meeting to promote European unification."11

14

Causes of EC Foreign Policy

Activity

The model deemphasizes or simplifies influences of domestic politics (special interest groups), public opinion, regional integration processes (relationship between EC bodies and member states in making policy), and international pressures on the production of joint actions. As all European Political Cooperation (EPC) proceedings are held in private and remain confidential, the national-interests model correctly downplays the role and impact of domestic political groups on the EPC process. Indeed, one may argue that the EC itself, the Brussels institutional structure, is rather distant from local politics in the member states (although many pan-European interest groups have formed at the Brussels level to influence European policy). Werner Feld employs the national interests model to explain EC foreign policy behavior.12 He views foreign policy activity from the perspective of member states' economic, political, and strategic self-interests and foreign policy goals. He stresses that the national government is most effective in determining EC foreign policy outcomes. Progress and regresssion in foreign policy activity depend on the particular foreign policy goals of the members and on how their governments perceive the instrumental value of EC bodies in attaining these goals. As the central actor in the making of EC foreign policy, member governments are able to pace its scope and level. Carole Webb discusses intergovemmentalism as a suitable framework for the study of EC policymaking. Intergovemmentalism is the framework in which member governments gather to consider policy on the basis of unanimity rather on majority vote; such a practice, of course, enables national interests ultimately to prevail over what passes through the EC and what does not. The approach explains the resilience of national interests in constraining the growth of EC bodies and their political scope.13 Governments monolithically represent and defend national interests on behalf of their societies. This approach to EC policymaking has been used to explain the evolution of the relationship between the CFMs and the Commission that has resulted in a relatively weakened Commission decisionmaking role after the 1966 Luxembourg Compromise.14 The intergovernmental approach also explains the establishment of the summit meetings of Heads of Government and State since 1969 (and their formal incorporation into the European Council since 1974) as well as the creation of EPC. Christopher Hill and collaborators employ the national-interests model to probe the impact of separate national traditions on the EPC.15 This approach illuminates government and political elite attitudes toward EPC and the relationship between national economic and security interests and EPC. EPC progress to date is a result in part of the perception by elites that their participation in the EPC process is beneficial. "The process of coordination itself calls for a good deal of traditional diplomatic skill and creates a new

Causes of EC Foreign Policy Activity

15

level of high politics for ministries whose monopoloy over external relations has been increasingly challenged over recent decades."16 Hill concludes that the EC member states have been forced to reformulate their national interests in the sphere of foreign policy.17 Elite

Actor

The elite-actor model suggests that the key to understanding whether the EC moves ahead, stagnates, or lapses behind is to understand the perceptions and motivations of political and interest-group elites. The interest of such elites in the EC is based less on what is good for the national interest than on their own perceptions and motivations—whether for or against—common European enterprise. The elite-actor model helps illuminate the impact of elite actors on EC development. In some cases, elites have used their influence and prestige to further European interests as they perceive them. For example, the birth of the EC was largely the work of such political elites as Robert Schuman, Jean Monnet, Paul-Henri Spaak, Altiero Spinelli, Alcide De Gasperi, Konrad Adenauer, and Walter Hallstein. The impact of these and other national political actors was instrumental in extending the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) to the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM). In 1967, the three communities reorganized under a common rubric, the European Community (EC). The same logic of critical elite support for common policy may be applied to the extension of the EC to EPC, European Monetary System (EMS), and the Single European Act. Another example that demonstrates the utility of the elite-actor model in explaining foreign policy action was when West German Chancellor Willy Brandt's policy of ostpolitik (improving relations with Eastern Europe) eventually paved the way for the EC to rethink its relationship toward Eastern Europe. In other cases, elites have used their influence to topple European interests. For example, the Gaullists had their own vision of what they wanted from a united Europe. This would be a Europe not under the leadership of central bodies but under French leadership. This explains the reaction of the Gaullists in 1965 to the growing prestige and influence of the Hallstein Commission Presidency. Not only did President Hallstein predict that the EC would lead to defense integration, but he received foreign emissaries to the EC Commission as if he were a head of state. Attacking the Commission's attempt to usurp the sovereignty of the member governments, the French government under General Charles de Gaulle boycotted EC institutions for six months between 1965 and 1966. Just as the model helps to explain how elites in a single member state could bring the EC to a standstill, it also helps to explain how the departure of those same elites from power in France in 1969 enabled new French elites entering power to

16

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Activity

reverse prior Gaullist policy with decisions to admit the UK and to establish European Political Cooperation. Domestic Politics In this model the foreign policy interests of parochial, subnational, and intranational units are seen as more determinant of foreign policy action (or inaction) than the centralized and insulated decisionmakers of the nationalinterests and elite-actor models. Party, interest-group, and electoral politics are key determinants of joint action. Political elites must be receptive to domestic interests lest they be voted out of office. William Wallace maintains that what most affects EC policies is how national governments define their vital interests. The most important factor in defining what any government considers vital in EC bargaining is the domestic context. Issues in which governments could win or lose votes or prestige are those they define as vital. 18 Stanley Hoffmann examines the EC's paradoxes: Although members are alike in many ways, their common bonds have not developed into further integration. It has either meant—at worst—the juxtaposition of national policies or—at best—attempts at better coordination of national efforts, but neither a real policy of increased EC sovereignty nor a transfer to new central institutions. The cause is a reassertion of d o m e s t i c politics and interests everywhere: each member pays more attention to its own problems and less to the world beyond its borders. 1 '

Thus, members' domestic concerns explain why integration remains an effort that requires specific acts of will with deliberate design by state leaders rather than being the natural tendency or dynamic dialectic of an increasingly interdependent society. 20 Feld warns his readers not to underestimate the strong influence that interest groups have on EC foreign policy activity: "National economic interest groups in the member states and their umbrella organizations formed on the EC level are unofficial actors seeking to make their influence felt in shaping of EC foreign policies." 21 The existence of hundreds of interest groups organized at the European level in Brussels (as the EC allocates resources) are underscored by the domestic-politics model. Domestic interest groups realize that EC decisions may heavily influence their interests. They cooperate with similar groups throughout the EC and organize transnational groups in Brussels. The 1983 EC decision to ban baby seal pelt imports was the outcome of lobbying by domestic groups, particularly in West Germany. The model provides the context for the existence of such groups as the Danish People's Movement Against the EC. The persistence of nontariff barriers (NTBs) to trade is generally the work of domestic interest groups who fear that dismantling barriers would lead to a loss of employment. Domestic interests have been

Causes

of EC Foreign

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17

chiefly responsible for the failure of the EC (by the mid-1980s) to achieve a fully functioning customs union, as prescribed by the Rome Treaty. Although many national politicians appear to have overcome domestic political opposition to completing the internal market with passage of the 1986 Single European Act (a commitment by the EC member states to work toward the elimination of NTBs by the end of 1992), we cannot be certain that lingering or renewed political opposition to the 1992 goal will yet rob the EC of its desired outcome. The domestic-politics model yields little insight into what triggers foreign policy action. Of all the models, it is the most skeptical of foreign policy activity. EC foreign policy activity is not a likely result in terms of this model, as the participation process it poses requires: (A) a national majority on the utility of working with EC partners and bodies, which is very difficult to reach; (B) inevitable domestic concessions; and (C) loss of sovereign authority to outsiders. Costs of EC membership are continuously weighed against benefits. If costs begin to outweigh benefits, subnational actors may become skeptical of their membership in the organization and may call for withdrawal. Bureaucratic

Politics

The bureaucratic-politics model stresses the influence of civil servants on implementation and management of policy. For our purposes, the model may be said to pertain to bureaucracy both at the state and EC levels. The model helps to explain the EC Commission role in influencing EC actions. Not only does the EC Commission have explicit treaty powers that give it license to manage the EC, but it has implicit discretionary powers. For example, there is immense influence in the way the Commission proposes and implements legislation, in the day-to-day running of the EC, and in the Commission's job of representing the EC in diplomatic relations and international negotiations. The model also highlights the way in which bureaucracy at the nation-state level may support the EC, obstruct the EC, or be overshadowed by the elite actors. The model describes and explains the effects of intragovernmental and transnational cooperation within the EC on EC policymaking. Bureaucracies will attempt to "maneuver themselves into strong positions through welltrodden channels that make it possible for governmental officials in one member state to become acquainted with their opposite number working on similar problems in other governments."22 In this model, the EC is pictured as a forum in which its members and their bureaucracies keep channels open to discuss policies and, when possible, reach agreement. For example, the esprit de corps that is developing among a growing number of civil servants from the member-state governments who work on EC affairs may serve as a reservoir of support for the EC in years ahead. Many of these officials are in

18

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frequent contact with one another through various means, including the EC's computer information network, COREU. Over time, civil servants from the twelve member governments working with one another on joint EC questions cut through national barriers and build a widening and deepening level of interest in what they have in common. There are surely also bureaucrats at the national level who are wary of the encroaching EC, and they are apt to bloc any further reduction of their powers. The beauty of such novelties as European Political Cooperation (EPC) is that it allows bureaucrats at the national level, skeptical of losing power, to actually increase their influence as they become part of a new justification for their existence. Yet, the influence and prestige of bureaucracy may be cut short. One need only to be reminded that the Commission, which had grown so powerful and influential up through the Hallstein Presidency, was shot down so abruptly by an elite actor (General de Gaulle). The consequences of the Commission's reduced influence are still with Europeans in the 1980s. Critique of the Classical Political Science Models These four models are limited in describing and explaining the specific causes of foreign policy actions. They are more descriptive of the context in which actions are made or not made. They are more likely to be turned to as explanations for the breakdown of common action or untried attempts at common action than as explanations of what triggers action. Failure to take joint action may be the result of divergent national interests on domestically sensitive policy issues. Untried attempts at joint action may come from ambivalence for collective action or preference for individual state action. The models do not explain situations in which the EC acts as a unit (A) despite divergency or ambivalence at home; (B) in defense of its internal policies toward the outside world; or (C) despite divergent tendencies among its member states. Most joint actions are not rooted in the domestic contexts of the member states but in the EC's response as a unit to external pressures. Understanding the finesse and subtleties of what Leon Lindberg and Stuart Scheingold call the symbiosis23 between national actors and their interests, EC actors and their interests, and the outside world is not possible in terms of these models. According to the classical models, whatever joint action is either contemplated or undertaken by members, it is more likely to be the result of temporarily convergent national foreign policy interests than the kind of symbiotic links that take place between member governments and regional bodies in the everyday empirical world of the EC. An intergovernmental perspective, which stresses national interests, also has its limits as a suitable framework for understanding EC foreign

Causes of EC Foreign Policy Activity

19

policymaking. Governments are seen as monoliths that seek to preserve their hard shells against external penetration by international negotiating forums like the EC; such a perspective cannot provide complete answers. 24 Intergovemmentalism does not cover all the nuances of the EC political process but distorts and overlooks consensus-building mechanisms and the use of majority voting, which sets the EC apart from other intergovernmental organizations. According to this approach, the EC is a zero sum game in which governments are inclined to rigidly define their positions.25 Intergovernmentalists ignore regional coordination that is made necessary by the content of EC issues from the perspective of the bureaucratic politics model. Unless the EC is pictured as a forum in which its members and their bureaucracies keep channels open to discuss policies and, when possible, reach agreement, this approach cannot help us understand EC foreign policy behavior. David Allen struggles to apply the national-interests model to EC foreign policy and concludes that the EC as a coalition is well suited to an understanding of this new level of foreign policy analysis. The EC does not embody the features of statehood that are relied on in the national interests model for organizing thinking about nation-states' foreign policies.26 In concentrating on the EC rather than its member states, we tend to look at the same set of problems only from a different perspective. Close links between members' foreign ministries may extend or develop from national policy frameworks, pointing to early signs of a "European policy framework."27 When one tries to analyze EC foreign policy activity outside the reassuring national interests model, one finds neither a state nor a government to identify state interests. Foreign policy takes on a different meaning in relationship to the community that it is meant to serve.28 There are also limits to the application of the domestic politics model to understanding EC foreign policy activity, which is actually somewhat removed from subnational accountability. Domestic interest groups are unable to get near enough to joint foreign policy deliberations, particularly in EPC, with its secret proceedings, to exert significant influence.29 Hill laments that public opinion within the member states is "sadly ill-informed about and remote from EPC."30 The EC exists in a set of potential conflicts between different elites with a largely indifferent public looking on, according to Lindberg and Scheingold.31 The above analysis of the domestic politics model suggests that foreign policy actions occur despite domestic politics rather than as a result of it. When joint action eludes the Europeans, then we may generally point to the domestic-politics model, which stresses domestic processes over European ones, as a critical explanation. The model is less helpful in explaining what has happened when joint action prevails over failed or untried action,

20

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although there are exceptions to this rule (such as the baby seal pelt action). The model is not parsimonious in providing explanations of joint action as there is an endless variety of potential domestic interests that may or may not influence national decisions concerning EC policy.

Regional Integration Logic Revisited There have been several incarnations of regional integration theory since the 1940s, each professing to define, describe, explain, prescribe, and predict European unity. This section briefly revisits some of the integration concepts that—when reformulated in the context of the 1970s and 80s—still provide valuable insight into the causes of EC foreign policy actions. The first concept of integration was held by the European federalists of the 1940s, led by Jean Monnet, who believed in the creation of a United States of Europe as the way to achieve peace. Federalists saw economic and political integration as a process to achieve supranational union. They were not as interested in the integration process per se, certainly not in the process as the terminal condition but as the conduit to achieve union. States would delegate sovereign power to common institutions. Federalists' assertions and predictions did not materialize because they shortchanged the staying power of nationalism just after World War II with the collapse of the European Defense Community and the European Political Community. Unity would have to be achieved through more subtle, less political means. Functionalists of the 1950s and 1960s, led by David Mitrany, believed that cooperation in one functional (or technical) area, if successful, would automatically spill over into other areas of cooperation. 32 The primary concern of the functionalists was not with regional integration per se but with the attainment of peace, given the trauma of forty-five million dead as a result of World War II. Functionalists maintained that by identifying and acting collectively on apolitical human welfare needs, governments may integrate certain activities at a technical level. Over time, institutions would expand to meet such needs, and historical and political differences between states would be smoothed over. The assertions and predictions of the functionalists explained how the 1951 European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) led to the 1957 European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM), but they failed to predict the resurgence of nationalism in the EC states after postwar economic reconstruction was fully achieved in the 1960s (in 1967 the three communities merged into the European Community or EC). Functionalists were naive about the possibility of separating human welfare from politics. To take into account the shortcomings of functonalist theory and the actual events in Europe, neofunctionalist theory of regional integration was

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21

formulated in the 1960s and 1970s. Although they still stressed the primary importance of welfare, neofunctionalists did not maintain that politics and welfare could be separated. They were first led by Ernst Haas who, in the 1958 publication of Uniting of Europe, defined integration as the "process whereby political actors in serveral distinct national settings are persuaded to shift their loyalties, expectations, and political activities toward a new and larger center, whose institutions possess or demand jurisdiction over the preexisting national states."33 Pure self-interest makes national political actors shift their loyalties to the new center. Thus Haas puts "interest politics" back into the supranational setting; both welfare and integration were maximized by functionally specific international programs. The rationale is that enough politics are used to obtain the desired functionalist accretion, but not so much to endanger the natural spillover effect.34 The original neofunctionalists paid insufficient attention to the role of outside factors in the regional integration process. However, Haas introduced the concept of an external threat (real or perceived) as a helpful condition for regional integration. Haas began to consider the impact of foreign events and actors on integration, which is really one of the earliest attempts to consider EC foreign policy activity. A few years later, Philippe Schmitter and others carried Haas's thought to a well-formed hypothesis on the impact of external events on integration. Haas went on to further revise neofunctionalism, by referring to linkages as not only deliberate but perceived, and then to fully discredit neofunctionalism, because of the difficulty in clarifying the aim of the integration process and where it led. His dilemma was also with the lack of attention neofunctionalism placed on systemic content, that is the historical amalgamation of political, social, and psychological factors that define the political unit. 3S Haas, in an abrupt turnabout, instead embraced interdependence logic (critiqued in the next section). Haas's work was followed after 1965 by that of the revisionist school of neofunctionalism whose members included Schmitter, Lindberg, Scheingold, Karl Kaiser, Ronn Kaiser, Nye, Donald Puchala, Ronald Inglehart, and Roger Hansen, among others. They, like their predecessors, revised theoretical concepts to reflect political realities of the era in which they wrote. (Indeed the EC never seemed to catch up with theories of the 1960s and 1970s.) The revisionist school (Nye later refers to it as analytic neofunctionalism) responded to the French-instigated EC crisis of 1965-1966. The EC Commission was attacked by the Gaullists for allegedly usurping sovereignty of the member states, and France—over a farm budget row—actually boycotted the EC bodies for six months. As a result, the analytic neofunctionalists argued that the road to integration was a rocky one. Spillover was neither automatic nor guaranteed. Neofunctionalists accepted nationalism and sovereignty as realities of

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postreconstruction Europe, and they accepted intergovernmentalism as an alternative route to integration. Still, they clung to the notion that over time integration would occur, but there would be many detours. As far as foreign policy activity is concerned, many of these scholars, including Karl Kaiser and Amitai Ezioni, correctly began to question the impact of external factors on the development of a common European foreign policy, following Haas's concern about external events in the Uniting of Europe. Little was done to formulate hypotheses related to such linkage until Schmitter's work in the early 1970s. Since the late 1970s, many scholars have rejected neofunctionalist writings as (A) too narrowly focused on the EC without adequate focus on international relations; (B) irrelevant to the resurgence of national diversity; (C) out of touch with the descent of supranationalism and the ascent of intergovernmental cooperation; and (D) far removed from the special environmental conditions that gave rise to European integration during the EC's formative years. The whole body of integration theory became passd as theorists became impatient with the failure of their precepts to account for Europe's development in the period after postwar reconstruction. In retrospect, dismissal of the entire body of integration literature as irrelevant to the EC was premature. Evolution of EC integration involves a slow transformation: the balance sheet of successes and failures will never be even. In Peace in Parts: Integration and Conflict in Regional Organization (originally published in 1971 but revised for publicaton again in 1987), Nye maintains that the "analytic neofunctionalist approach has a number of virtues. It has grown out of field work by able scholars and . . . it specifies many of the most important variables in an economical way." 36 In their seminal 1970 work, Europe's Would-Be Polity, Lindberg and Scheingold concluded that the integration process involves not just functional linkage as an aid to coalition formation, but equal or greater doses of the pure political processes of bargaining, log-rolling, and trade-offs among members.37 Schmitter found that functional linkage or spillover was not automatic but is often counteracted by spill-around, buildup, retrenchment, muddleabout, encapsulation, and spill-back.38 The integration process may even lapse into a period of stagnation when movement toward or away from harmonization exists. Yet this does not translate into permanent institutional immobilism. Setbacks and stagnation are natural developments in any common human enterprise. If setbacks and stagnation were to persist over a long period of time (ten or more years), then one could reasonably argue that the integration process had become permanently irrelevant, immobile, or even obsolete. In the late 1980s, however, the EC has begun to move out of a period of spill-back and encapsulation into a new period of spillover and linkage; this move is demonstrated by such activity as the Single European

Causes of EC Foreign Policy Activity

23

Act, with its new rules and commitments to finish the job of completing the internal market, and EPC, with its permanent secretariat and new legal identity. Contrary to the gloomiest assessments of—and forecasts for—the future of the EC, the organization has not entered into permanent institutional stagnation. The integration process continues but with different policy tools in addition to, and not necessarily at the expense of, functional linkage. Outcomes have not met theoretical expectations, but some of these aspirations were functions of the normative views of earlier theorists rather than of the empirical world. The EC will not traverse a steady and smooth growth (or decline) pattern.39 "Whatever else happens to the [EC], it is extremely improbable that [it] will be disbanded. For if some of the original reasons for its formation no longer apply, others have come to replace them."40 Although many of the world's problems exist on a scale far greater than that of the EC, this is not reason for abandoning the pursuit of integration41 nor of regional integration theory building. The Lindberg-Scheingold revised neofunctional approach still provides for a more pragmatic reinterpretation of regional integration. Their basic assumptions have not achieved wide acceptance by EC scholars in the United States, even though their approach explains EC processes and functions as accurately in the late 1980s as when these views were written in the early 1970s. Their three major premises may be interpreted in relation to the modern EC:42 Premise One. No longer is it appropriate to think of the integration process in terms of EC capacity to accumulate "willy-nilly" power to impose decisions on members. Integration should be seen as a symbiosis between EC and national bodies. The symbiotic approach to the study of regional integration does not prejudge the primacy of its parts (members) or the whole (common bodies) but emphasizes their interrelationship in formulating and executing common policy. What distinguishes the relationship between EC bodies and members from the relationship between most other international bodies and their members is that EC members are bound—not merely obligated—to laws and rules. Premise Two. Contradiction and crisis are basic conditions of the integration process. As members are involved in the EC for different reasons, and their actions have been supported by elites seeking particular goals, conflicts are endemic as the result of joint activity is felt and as the prointegration consensus shifts. Premise Three. Not all extension of EC authority is likely to be functional; a viable EC depends on support of effective national power.

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Although many aspects of integration theory deserved abandonment, several key concepts that helped to explain behavior in the 1970s (and the 1980s as well) were discarded. Two such neofunctional concepts are spillover and externalization, first elaborated by Schmitter as hypotheses in the late 1960s. His definitions, explanations, descriptions, and predictions of foreign policy activity are remarkably accurate as a framework for analysis of joint actions over the life of the EC. Neofunctional spillover is not so naive an explanation of some EC activity as its critics would have us believe. Spillover suggests that the EC's internal dynamic is at play in foreign policy activity. Within the EC there exists an internal dynamic whereby economic integration is linked to other sectors of integration, such as civilian foreign policy. By the late 1960s, the EC reachcd a plateau in achieving internal integation. The common competition and agricultural policies were implemented, as were the customs union and common external tariff (CET). The EC has maximized the benefits from these policies. Although implementation of these policies was considered by many as major accomplishments in the integration process, they did not lead to further internal integration. With an unsatisfied appetite, the EC began to reach out for new related areas of common enterprise in which agreement could be more easily reached. One such area was foreign policy activity. The very functioning of these policies required members to take collective negotiating stances toward nonmembers, necessitating collaboration. Collective action—such as at the GATT—was obligatory. On spillover, Schmitter writes: Frustration with or dissatisfaction generated by unexpected performance (whether better or worse) in a sector for which specific common goals have been set will result in the search for alternative means for reaching the same goals. This is likely to involve collective action in policy sectors not contemplated in the original agreement which, in turn, is likely to lead to an additional delegation of authority to central regional bodies. Spillover refers to the process whereby members of an integration scheme—agreed on collective goals for a variety of motives but unequally satisfied with their attainment—attempted to resolve dissatisfaction by resorting to collaboration in another related sector (expanding scope of the mutual commitment) or by intensifying commitment to the original sector (increasing level of mutual commitment) or both. Tensions from the global environment give rise to unexpected performance or pursuit of agreed upon common objectives. Frustration or dissatisfaction are likely to result in search for alternative means for reaching the goals, i.e., to induce actors to revise their respective strategies vis-à-vis the scope and level of regional decisionmaking. In their search among alternative national actors, they will arrive

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25

at that institutional solution (in terms of scope and linkage) that will meet minimum objectives despite prevailing tensions and will subsequently seek to seal the regional body as much as possible from its environment and thus adopt a self-maintaining set of institutional norms. 43

Creation of European Political Cooperation is in part an example of neofunctional spillover. Surely, external events solidified EPC's functioning, but functional spillover helped create it by sowing seeds of cooperation in earlier years. EPC is a product of the EC. It would not exist had it not been for the prior existence of the EC. EPC was conceived neither in a policy, institutional, nor historical vacuum. It spilled over from the prior base of economic integration at home and existing EC policies and actions abroad. It is based on common attitudes, habits of cooperation, and a certain degree of acquired institutional integration among the members. EPC grew out of several linked factors. By the late 1960s, integration in agriculture reached a plateau. The time had come to sustain, administer, or reform the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), but its basic construction was completed. The initial push of the EC's early years had ended and new momentum was needed. EPC was proposed a short time after the farm sector had become integrated. There has always been a functional link between the advent and execution of the CAP, CET, customs union, and external relations. The EC Commission represents members at international commodity negotiations. The CET, which forced the members to deal with the world as a defensive unit, was largely designed to protect EC farmers from cheaper imports. A good part of the EC external relations, therefore, has been devoted to protection of the CAP and farmers. EPC was built upon a prior degree of collaboration at home and abroad. The Rome Treaty did not clearly provide for political cooperation abroad. By 1974, the EC had neither the institutional nor legal machinery to deal effectively with the oil embargo. As members had common interests abroad, and because they had a history of prior cooperation in foreign affairs, it was no surprise that EPC received momentum after 1973. Schmitter's extemalization hypothesis has been considered by some theorists as a cogent partial explanation of EC foreign policy activity. Yet, the hypothesis has not been extensively tested since Schmitter's formulation of it in 1969 44 Extemalization partially explains why nonmembers press the EC to act as a unit; what effect this outside charge has on the EC; and the outcome of EC foreign policy actions that are executed in response to outside pressure. The hypothesis suggests that the EC will either extend membership or some form of association to nonmembers or will respond defensively to demands it cannot or will not accommodate. Both require joint action. Schmitter elaborates: Once agreement is reached and made operative on a policy

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pertaining to intermember or intraregional relations, participants will find themselves compelled . . . to adopt common policy toward . . . [nonmembers]. Members will be forced to hammer out a collective external position. Several factors suggest . . . that externalization is a likely outcome. If performance in the attainment of original goals is satisfactory, it seems probable that since they are by definition discriminatory, they will elicit a reaction from adversely affected outsiders. The latter may threaten reprisals against the regional unit as a whole or they may try to join it. Even where joint performance is weak and inconsequential, outsiders may decide to treat the embryonic regional body as if it were already a viable, authoritative policymaking unit. Regardless of goal performance the regional actors are likely to seek to exploit their new community by joint appeals and threats to nonparticipants. One of the subsidiary motives facilitating the original convergence is a diffuse desire to increase the collective bargaining power of the area toward other international actors. To the extent that other regions already are engaging in bloc negotiations this enhances the probability that new regional agreements will externalize themselves. Given a minimal threshold of initial commitment and joint policymaking, regional actors . . . will find themselves engaged in the elaboration of a common foreign policy where none existed previously. 45 Six steps in the externalization process may be discerned from the writings of such neofunctionalists as Schmitter, Haas, and Rowe. 46 Step One: Consolidation. EC bodies and members are preoccupied with internal adjustments and policy harmonization. EC is not yet a world force with which to reckon. Step Two: Implementation. EC bodies and members begin to implement treaty provisions for economic policy harmonization, the customs union, CET, and the CAP—most of these discriminatory to outsiders. The result: intra-EC trade begins to increase over extra-EC trade and EC selfsufficiency rates for many products, traditionally imported, also increase. Nonmembers lose historical market shares in the EC. Step Three: External Demand. Step two will evoke offensive or hostile reactions from adversely affected nonmembers who will demand more favorable trade terms and other concessions. Some eligible outsiders will apply for membership, association, or a contractual trade relationship with the EC to lessen the ill effects on their export economies of this new and growing insular trade bloc. Other outsiders will challenge the EC's discriminatory trade practices in the GATT. Pressures mount on the EC to act in defense of its policies and to accommodate nonmember demands for

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action. The impatient outside world will not wait for the EC. Although the EC may not yet be prepared to deal coherently with the outside, external pressures spur foreign policy activity. Step Four: Externalizaticn Occurs. Implementation of the customs union, CET, and the CAP have been largely achieved. Policy harmonization is making headway. Members seek to maximize and safeguard membership benefits reaped and minimize costs paid. EC internal policies and demands made by producer groups have the effect of passing on the costs of integration to close nonmembers through discriminatory trade practices. These include a high tariff wall on farm products, nontariff barriers, usage of export subsidies to dislodge unwanted surpluses at below world market prices, and increasing self-supply rates for labor and most farm products— products that begin to squeeze out certain imports. Intra-EC and intraregional trade increase relative to extra-EC and extraregional trade. The EC unintentionally, but by its nature necessarily, pits member against nonmember interests. External pressures charge the EC by placing on it a myriad of demands that require common responses. In addition to acting responsibly and coherently as the world's leading economic bloc, the EC is expected to exert unified diplomatic influence commensurate with its economic clout. The EC responds to such outside pressures by either expanding membership to close eligible applicants, offering association accords, or trade-and-aid contracts, or opposing external demands that it cannot accommodate. In the case of the latter, the EC finds that there is a limit to what it can do to assist nonmembers that are adversely affected by its policies without eroding the benefits that are at the core of the EC's own existence. Externalization and past EC peformance indicate that members' interests will ultimately prevail over those of even historically close nonmembers. In the final analysis, new conflicts of interest continue to arise between members and nonmembers, particularly those whose demands the EC cannot accommodate because of its own limited resources, as the regional integration process expands and deepens. Steps Five and Six: Repeat of Steps Three and Four. As defined, externalization is a process whose terminal condition is not clearly provided for. Applying externalization to EC foreign policy activity, the following assumptions may be made: the EC is an insular body. The very notion of a "community" means exclusive membership lest special benefits of being inside erode. The EC notion of "community preference" indicates that intraEC trade is always preferred to and protected from cheaper imports from nonmembers. Efforts to insulate itself from outside competition demarcates the EC and its close associates from the outside world. The EC and its regional trade affiliates—the states of the Lomé Convention, the EFTA, and

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the Mediterranean Basin—form a preferred, although large, group in the international economy. Externalization may also apply to enlargement. Enlargement is an EC foreign policy action to permit new members to join. Externalization generally explains and anticipates (A) membership expansion and how enlargement may solidify foreign policy activity; and (B) the influence nonmembers have on EC foreign policy activity. Haas and Rowe suggest that the members of a common regional organization will inevitably consolidate to protect their vital interests vis-à-vis the outside world: The members of a common market . . . may not initially profess many objectives directed against nonmembers. Integration theory . . . suggests that they will very likely develop such objectives whether or not they were initially so committed. In common markets . . . the process of trade liberalization among members soon leads to pressure for a common commercial policy toward nonmembers, which in turn creates pressures for a common monetary policy. Other economic links of this kind abound, thus suggesting that attainment among the members of certain initial economic objectives forces externalization simply to safeguard the benefits reaped. Certain domestic groups that have experienced distinct benefits from the organization may wish to safeguard them by preemptive acts of commercial or legal discrimination against rivals in nonmember countries. All such motives are offensive and lead to steps extending the grouping or sealing it off more completely from the rest of the world. Defensive motives are perhaps even more common. Whenever actors in a setting of regional integration experience dependence on the outside world, they look toward regional unity as a means for obtaining more autonomy. Common external tariffs and quotas . . . serve such a purpose. Other nations in the same region begin to experience the need to join the grouping, or to make special arrangements with it in order to share in the benefits, or at least not be disadvantaged further. 47

Externalization explains in part why the EC has doubled its original membership, why many eligible European countries attempted to join the EC, and why close nonmember countries, especially those in the Mediterranean Basin, have rushed to conclude trade-and-aid arrangements with the EC. The expanded EC has also increased its food and industrial selfsuffiency levels. Three enlargements have contributed to EC surpluses of such products as textiles, sugar, wine, olive oil, certain grains, fruits, and vegetables. These are the items that many close trading partners have traditionally exported to the EC before the enlargements when demand existed for them. As these trading partners lose historical market shares for their products they will

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continue to press the EC to permit continued access to EC markets. EC farmers and manufacturers of these products will press the EC to restrict imports. These actions require joint foreign policy actions and tend to demarcate the EC from many nonmembers. Pressures from nonmembers tend to unite EC members into defensive joint actions. Chapter 7 further tests Schmitter's externalization hypothesis as it applies to EC enlargement. The Interdependence Logic Critiqued Theorists lost patience with the EC in the 1970s and 1980s. Their vision for a united Europe was blurred by other developments that at the time looked as if they would end integration, such as nationalism and interdependence. In retrospect, these developments slowed down integration but did not stop it. Integration became a focus of national policy and this focus kept the EC alive. Nye writes that development of regional integration theory outstripped the development of regional communities; predicted changes were slower than expected. "The transfer of Western Europe into a pluralistic security community is real, and many of the insights from integration theory were transferred in the early 1970s to the growing broader dimension of international economic interdependence."48 The logic of complex global interdependence places foreign policy activity in its international rather than national or regional contexts. It sheds light on the complex EC role as an offensive and defensive player in the international community. It suggests that the EC attempts to deal with international turbulence rather than to achieve regional political integration.49 Subscribers to the interdependence logic correctly conclude that the EC does not operate in an international vacuum. It is as much affected by the currents of international politics and economics as are nation-states. Its limited power and the constraints of domestic politics hamper its ability to act as a unit, much less a decisive unit, in foreign affairs. The EC has taken foreign policy actions that are in response to stimuli rooted not in the process of internal integration but in the rough-and-tumble world of foreign politics. Complex global interdependence characterizes the international system of the 1980s. This perspective derives from systems theory, a systematic approach to the study of relations among international and domestic actors. An international system, a pattern of relations among actors during a given period of time, has its own characteristics and principles of behavior that distinguish it from international systems that preceded it. As the context of international relations molds the behavior of actors in it, the study of international systems enables us to understand conditions and constraints under which such actors as the EC and its members must operate.

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As an international system, global interdependence is characterized by multipolarity, complexity, a fusion of high and low politics (in which militiary security and economic security interlock), and mutual relevance among states. Complex global interdependence replaced the bipolar international system that existed between 1947 and the mid-1960s. In that system, the premium on power politics kept the EC in the shadow of the United States, its passive client in the East-West confrontation. In the current system, less premium is placed on the role of physical force, thus creating opportunities for a larger role in international affairs by "giant middle powers" with civilian means at their disposal.50 Global interdependence helps to explain how the EC has begun to deal with outside pressures in the 1970s, such as reconciling differences with the Eastern bloc, adopting a modus operandi with the Arab League, and participating in the Sinai peacekeeping force. These are areas of foreign policy not connected to EC internal economic policies and their effect on outsiders. The interdependent world strengthens the EC's ability to influence external events because the EC has the economic clout and diplomatic influence to do so. Pursuit of economic security is not outside the EC's legal purview. Its clout in foreign affairs is elevated in the international system of the 1980s because it controls the extent to which the outside world has access to the EC internal market of over 320 million consumers and to extensive foreign aid resources. Webb argues that attempts to globalize the phenomenon of EC integration are merited, as such attempts encourage theorists to focus primarily on political issues rather than be "diverted by parochial institutional problems that infiltrate and obscure the policy debate in Brussels."51 The emphasis of interdependence is on diffusion of power in the EC. Some see this diffusion as a result of the erosion of national government authority and EC Commission inability to command sufficient resources within and across the most significant policy areas to constitute a counterforce.52 Webb argues that interdependence provides a perspective that focuses on the EC as a regional system, its policymaking forum stemming from the tension between external pressures and internal divisions.53 The application of the interdependence logic to EC foreign policy behavior is worth examining. EPC was created in part to enable EC members to better handle the effect of the international system on the EC. EC dependence on global export trade cannot allow it to take a passive interest in conflicts that could disrupt trade flows. Thus, EC integration is driven by interdependence. The logic of global interdependence explains in part how EC export dependence on third market outlets and import dependence on raw materials interlocks the EC with the global economy. The cost of this interdependent trade relationship with the non-EC world is increased vulnerability to the vicissitudes of the global economy.

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EC foreign policy activity attempts to reduce the adverse costs of global interdependence by deliberately coordinating joint policy actions—such as creation and expansion of EPC from its embryonic stage in 1970 to its more sophisticated stage in the late 1980s; the erecting of a high external tariff •wall for imported farm products; and the establishing of a 200-mile fishing zone. As a civilian power in an interdependent world, the EC may pull economic and diplomatic levers to effect political change, whereas in the Cold War era of the 1950s such a scenario was not possible. Although much has been written about the concept of global interdependence in understanding international politics in the 1980s, little work has been done to apply the concept to the EC setting. Disillusion with the utility of regional integration theory, which led many to adopt the global interdependence logic, was partly a response to the work of U.S. theorists who expected too much too soon from the early course of European integration. Functionalism was far more ambitious than were Rome Treaty mandates. Impatience with theory and outcome was partly based on the misconception that Europe in the 1960s was a disappointing outcome rather than an ongoing process. Integration theory failed to deal with the central question of time: How long does an integration "process" take before it reaches its completion? It has been difficult to place the process into a time framework, as there is no identical historical antecedent with which to compare it. The process remains unfinished; its performance to date, not its final outcome, may be judged. Schmitter is correct when he describes the EC as a halfway house on the road to regional integration.54 The impatient confusion over outcome and process, and dissatisfaction with institutional approaches to regional integration, resulted in the demise of regional integration theories by the early 1970s. Although grand schemes for European union are no longer generated, the concept of a unified Europe is still alive. This is evidenced by European-wide initiatives and processes that persist even if integration's peaks and troughs do not always net automatic and immediate functional growth. Indeed, functional growth need not be the only road to regional integration. Intergovernmental cooperation, through EPC and the European Monetary System (EMS), may also achieve regional integration via a different, perhaps more realistic, approach. The case for growth and continuity may be made for EC bodies and processes even though the course of integration is not unfolding as 1960s-era theorists would have it. Administrations of member governments change with elections. National and global moods and issues are equally variable. EC bodies and procedures remain intact and many subtle integrative processes doggedly persist. The Single European Act's goal of completing the internal market by the end of 1992 underscores the EC's continuity of growth. Efforts toward regional integration and harmonization persist. Regional issues

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confronting Western Europe have not changed nearly so much when compared to the greater vicissitudes of the global political economy. Unlike the early 1960s, when the EC implemented such grand integration schemes as the CAP, CET, customs union, and the common competition policy, the integration process continues in the 1980s, but in subtler ways. The nittygritty world of approximation of product standards is not very exciting for newspaper headlines, but it is the bread and butter of the world of integration, and without it the EC cannot further develop. Interdependence theorists argue that forces of global interdependence have subsumed the process and theory of regional integration, as if the two were indistinct. Keohane and Nye maintain that analysis of regional integration in terms of interdependence concepts may help to place integration theory in its proper context—"not as a separate and arcane set of notions applicable only to Europe and perhaps a few other areas, but as a highly important part of the literature in world politics and one that traditionally inclined writers ignore at their intellectual peril."55 Interdependence theorists consider integration theory something of a "hot-house plant" that could only thrive in the "European greenhouse" (and in other limited contexts) but that "could not survive if used to explain the harsh Hobbesian climate of global politics.. . ,"56 It is premature to conclude that global interdependence theory has encompassed all efforts toward a theory of regional integration. This is evident in EC foreign policy activity. Chapter 4 shows that 80 percent of all joint EC foreign policy actions (during the period between 1958 and 1985) were given impetus not by forces of global interdependence in the international system but by the existence and functioning of the common market itself and its effect on outsiders. This is also evident in EC foreign policy actions that often focus on regional over global questions. As the EC is itself a regional unit, it prefers organizing its relations with other regions or regional groups, such as the states of Lomé Convention, Association of South-East Asian Nations, southern Africa, Gulf Cooperation Council, Central America, and Mediterranean Basin. A cornerstone of EC foreign policy is to promote other regional cooperation efforts through EC tariff cuts and foreign aid. Intraregional and intra-EC trade have increased with the creation of the customs union and the association system. To countries that benefit from EC policies, regional considerations have generally remained more relevant than global interdependence. A high degree of economic or political interdependence at the regional level may provide some of the necessary background conditions for the initiation and maintenance of regional economic and/or political integration movements. However, a high degree of economic and/or political interdependence at the global level is likely to be not a process with a definitive terminal condition but a set of conditions that make up an international system at a given point in time. Regional integration may result in part from regional interdependence, but interdependence will not

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likely lead to global or regional integration. Attempts to use the two terms interchangeably will prove futile as they represent quite different levels of analysis. Haas concluded that integration theories have become obsolete, as they cannot address the most pressing and important problems in the contemporary world. 57 As integration is inspired by a sense of orderly process, integration theory cannot capture the pervasive conditions that characterize the whole range of international relations. Haas labels regional integration theories "pretheoretical."58 Haas describes the contemporary international system as one of uncertainty, issue complexity, and turbulence. Turbulent trends of the contemporary world are incompatible with the assumptions of integration theory and have driven "the discussion of further institutional evolution of the EC [to] the point of an institutional crisis."59 However, regional integration theories were neither designed to address nor capture global issues. European integration was conceived as a regional development confined to an exclusive group of states seeking common goals. Furthermore, regional integration can and does continue with or without strong central bodies. Regional integration is not necessarily institutionbound. Member governments find it convenient to seek cooperation in areas not covered by the Rome Treaty. To reiterate, although cooperation may be achieved in areas not covered by treaty mandates and outside formal bodies (such as EPC prior to 1986), the result is still an extension of the integration process, "provided that 'community' be defined in a wider manner than suggested by the mechanistic and legalistic phraseology of the various constituent treaties."60 In his rush to adopt interdependence theory to explain European integration, Haas critiques regional integration theory for what it was never intended to do. World conditions and issues surely change, but this does not make regional integration theory irrelevant There are certain behavioral aspects of common regional organizations that are affected, but not outstripped, by global forces. So long as regional considerations persist, regional integration theory remains partially useful and distinct from global considerations and theory (even though it cannot be totally divorced from interdependence). Haas's revisionist approach to regional integration, as a subset of global interdependence, is hampered by conflicting premises, leading one critic to conclude that Haas comes "perilously close to renouncing his beliefs while refusing to deny his faith." 61 On the one hand, Haas has stated that regional theory "is far from dead"; that integration processes "clearly continue"; that integration theory "remains relevant for analytical purposes as not all aspects of European activity are equally infected with the syndrome of more complex linkages"; that "in some areas of collective concern, linkages among policies are functional"; and that "settings that give rise to integration theory do not

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disappear overnight—obsolescence is a gradual process, not a sharp break."62 On the other hand, Haas has stated that regional integration theory has been "subsumed by interdependence" and that regional integration theory "is obsolescent"; that the growth of interdependence "is incompatible with the orderly march of integration"; that "linkage between old and new issues is unlikely and prospects for further integration are much reduced"; and that a consensus on new postindustrial issues "will not arise in a regional context."63 Haas's reconciliation between the two logics is problematic. He states that integration and interdependence theories function in an "unpredictable mix"; that the two will "coexist only in the short run"; and that we cannot have the two simultaneously, as "growth of one impedes growth of the other."64 Haas's problems of defining interdependence and in distinguishing between integration and interdependence are indicative of those encountered by other writers who place regional integration wholly in the global context. Chapter 4 shows that EC foreign policy actions triggered by the international system of global interdependence account for 16 percent of the total between 1973 and 1985. This indicates the importance of placing EC foreign policy activity in the global context but not at the expense of the regional context, which, despite all, is still the main trigger of joint action. Interdependence concepts are too simplistic and holistic to explain regional integration processes. Many questions of consistency and definition remain unanswered. For example: Where does regional integration end (if it does) and global interdependence begin? Is interdependence a looser form of integration on a global level or is integration a tighter form of interdependence on a regional level? Is the key difference between the two logics in the connotation that integration is often placed within an institutional framework and interdependence is not? Can we have one without the other, one at the expense of the other, one subsumed by the other, or both functioning commensurately or intermittently? Are both mutually exclusive or inclusive? Do the two logics differ only in their geographic and institutional contexts, if mutual dependence is a condition of both regional integration and global interdependence? The Self-Styled Logic Introduced Panayiotis Ifestos laments the many attempts to reappraise integration theory: Despite the analytical depth and sophistication of integration theory, the nation-state itself vigorously resists essential transfers of power to supranational authority, and governments refuse advancement of

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integration beyond a certain limit which could fundamentally undermine their effective control of national decision-making. This is reflected in the agonizing efforts of integration theorists to reappraise and reformulate their original concepts in a way which avoids the danger of their earlier teleological terminology. 55

Realization of the limits to regional integration and of integration theory has led many theorists to subscribe to the interdependence logic. However, as we have seen, the interdependence logic is also fraught with some methodological, conceptual, and explanatory problems. Global interdependence characterizes the international system of the 1980s and is likely—barring world war—to continue to do so through the turn of the century. The contribution of interdependence logic to the study of foreign policy activity is that it frames EC foreign policy actions in an international context. Its limits are that it cannot parsimoniously and clearly capture decisionmaking and political dynamics that are at play in the regional integration body. Regional integration logic is too dependent on the impact of EC policies on outsiders and what response this triggers. Yet the EC has grown to take a number of actions that are not simply in response to external pressures from either the global interdependent system or from the impact of the EC's existence on others. As integration and interdependence logics cannot explain EC behavior, further explanation is needed. Some key theorists have sealed the circle of theoretical investigation that began in the early post-war period by revisiting realist theory and formulating concepts pertaining to hegemonic power for explanations of international phenomena. Others have returned to such classical models as national interests and elite actor for the same purpose. However, when existing conceptual perspectives cannot capture the EC in action, we need not give up the search for new explanations and descriptions. What logic can assist us to better understand when and why the EC acts in foreign affairs on its own accord, independent of external pressures to act? The self-styled logic at work in causing some of the EC's many foreign policy actions is worth examination, as it introduces the notion that the EC is capable of acting as a unit with its own regional interests to promulgate on an international scale. The self-styled logic offers a synthesis of the theoretical literature. It accepts that the global environment is an interdependent one and that this will press the EC to cope with turbulence and complexity produced by the system. It accepts that the EC must respond to demands from nonmembers who are affected by the policies it takes with regard to the common market. But it also accepts that the EC is more than a customs union with economic effects on others that force it to cope with third country demands. Self-styled actions are caused by the internal dynamic about which

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Lindberg and Scheingold wrote in Europe's Would-Be Polity. There is a symbiosis between the EC and member actors and institutions that produces joint actions that are uniquely European. Thus, in essense, explanations of self-styled actions are rooted in part in the national-interests model, the eliteactor model, and the neofunctional integration logic set within the environment of global interdependence. The national-interests model highlights the impact of national governments in the making or breaking of policy; the elite-actor model highlights the impact of individuals in the making or breaking of policy; and the neofunctional integration logic suggests that members benefit from a politics of scale when cooperating on a regional basis whereby national interests are at times blurred in give-and-take negotiations that sometimes produce joint actions. But none of these alone can explain all joint actions. A better explanation of EC foreign policy behavior results when the context is a state-regional symbiosis. Evidence presented in Chapter 4 shows the EC becoming an initiator of policy actions in a number of cases. Initiation of policy actions suggests a maturing EC, more comfortable than at any time since its inception with its own set of interests and mission in the world. This is an EC that is increasingly independent of U.S. sponsorship and increasingly independent of the Cold War political winds blowing in from the East.

Notes 1. David Allen, "Foreign Policy at the European Level: Beyond the Nation-State?" in William Wallace and William Paterson, eds., Foreign Policy Making in Western Europe: A Comparative Approach (New York: Praeger Press, 1978), p. 135. 2. Leon Lindberg and Stuart Scheingold, Europe's Would-Be Polity (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1979), p. 307. 3. Christopher Hill, "A Theoretical Introduction," in William Wallace and William Paterson, eds.. Foreign Policy Making in Western Europe-, p. 8. 4. I b i d . 5. Hans Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1978), p. 146. 6. Robert O. Keohane and Joseph Nye, Jr., Power and interdependence: World Politics and Transition (Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1977). 7. Robert O. Keohane, Neorealism and its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). 8. Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984). 9. Stephen D. Krasner, ed., International Regimes (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983), p. 2. 10. Carole Webb, "Introduction: Variations on a Theoretical Theme," in

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Helen Wallace, William Wallace, and Carole Webb, eds., Policy-Making in the European Communities (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1983), p. 36. 11. Werner Feld, The European Community in World Affairs (Port Washington, N.Y.: Alfred Publishing Co., 1976), p. 76. 12. Werner Feld, West Germany and the European Community (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1981). 13. Webb, "Introduction," pp. 21-23. 14. Majority voting still occurs in the CFMs, but on issues of lesser important. The 1966 Luxembourg Compromise, in which member governments abrogated a provision in the Rome Treaty calling for majority voting on all matters before the Council, signaled an end to members' willingness to allow their common institutions to gain the upper hand in determining EC policies. 15. Christopher Hill, National Foreign Policies and European Political Cooperation (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983). 16. Ibid., p. 189. 17. Ibid. 18. William Wallace, Helen Wallace, and Carole Webb, eds., PolicyMaking in the European Communities (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1977). 19. Stanley Hoffmann, "Toward a Common Foreign Policy?," in Wolfram Hamrieder, ed.. The United States and Western Europe (Cambridge: Wintrop, 1974). 20. Ibid. 21. Werner Feld, The European Community in World Affairs: Economic Power and Politcal Influence (New York: Alfred Publishing Co., 1977), p. 4. 22. Webb, "Introduction," p. 23. 23. Lindberg and Scheingold, Europe's Would-Be Polity. 24. Webb, "Introduction," p. 23. 25. Ibid. 26. Allen, "Foreign Policy at the European Level," p. 137 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Hill, National Foreign Policies, p. 188 30. Ibid. 31. Lindberg and Scheingold, Europe's Would-Be Polity, p. 78. 32. David Mitrany, A Working Peace System (Chicago: Quadrangle Book, 1966) 33. Ernst Haas, The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social, and Economic Forces (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1958), p. 11. 34. Ronn Kaiser, "Toward the Copemican Phase of Regional Integration Theory," Journal of Common Market Studies, 9(3):214 (March 1972). 35. Ibid, p., 234. 36. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Peace in Parts: Integration and Conflict in Regional Organization (Lanham: University Press of America, 1987), p. 56. 37. Lindberg and Scheingold, Europe's Would-Be Polity p. 32. 38. Philippe Schmitter, "A Revised Theory of Regional Integration," International Organization 24(4):836 (Autumn 1970). According to Schmitter,

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increases the scope and level of commitment to integration spillover simultaneously (e.g., evolution from ECSC to the EEC). Spill-around increases the scope while holding the level of authority constant or within a zone of indifference (increase in nonbinding joint foreign policy coordination in EPC). Buildup refers to an agreement to increase decisional autonomy or capacity of joint bodies but deny them entrance into new issue areas (strategic security matters have been taboo in EPC). Retrenchment increases the level of joint deliberations but withdraws the institutions from certain areas (initial decision to keep the Commission out of EPC). Muddle-about allows bureaucracies to deliberate on a wide variety of issues but decreases their capacity to allocate values (underscores European Parliament role as deliberator and its incapacity to allocate values outside the budget). Spill-back retreats from joint actions and accords (French EC boycott in 1965-1966). Encapsulation responds to crisis by margin modification within zones of indifference (explains in part the concept of externalization). 39. Lindberg and Scheingold, Europe's Would-Be Polity. 40. Roy Pryce, The Politics of the European Community (London: Butterworths, 1973), p. 186. 41. Ibid. 42. Lindberg and Scheingold, European's Would-Be Polity, p. 32. 43. Philippe Schmitter, "Three Neofunctional Hypotheses About International Integration," International Organization, 23(1): 161-166 (Winter 1969). 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46. This section is an amalgam of the writings of the revised neofunctionalists. 47. Ernst Haas and Edward Rowe, "Regional Organizations in the United Nations?, Is There Externalization?" International Studies Quarterly 17(1):5 (March 1973). 48. Nye, Peace in Parts, p. viii. 49. Global interdependence characterizes the current international system, which is a pattern of complex, turbulent, and unstructured political, social, and economic relations among nation-states and peoples. These relations result not only in increasing volumes of mutual transactions but also in correspondingly increasing levels of mutual relevance, dependence, vulnerability, and sensitivity among nation-states and peoples. 50. Panayiotis Ifestos, European Political Cooperation: Towards a Framework of Supranational Diplomacy? (Brookfield: Avebury, 1987), p. 61. 51. Webb, "Introduction," p. 33. 52. Ibid. p. 32. 53. Ibid. 54. Schmitter, "Three Neofunctional Hypotheses." 55. Keohane and Nye, Power and Interdependence, p. 365. 56. Ibid., p. 395. 57. Ernst Haas, The Obsolescence of Regional Integration Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), p. 63.

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58. Ibid. 59. Ibid. 60. Stanley Henig, "New Institutions for European Integration," Journal of Common Market Studies 2(2):136 (December 1973). 61. Kaiser, "Toward the Copemican Phase," p. 212. 62. Ernst Haas, "Turbulent Fields and the Theory of Regional Integration," International Organization 30(4): 173-212 (September 1976). 63. Ibid. Haas's conversion to interdependence has led him to believe that integration theory is obsolescent as its assumptions have become less relevant to behavioral patterns of governments in regional bodies. This theory assumes that a definitive institutional pattern must mark the outcome of the integration process; conflicts of interests involve trade-offs between ties with regional partners and ties with nonmembers that should be resolved in favor of regional partners; and decision should be made on the basis of disjointed incrementalism. Haas writes that the EC has shown that most governments no longer behave in accordance with these asumptions. In an interdependent world, a new decisionmakng rationalization called "fragmented issue linkage" is competing with incrementalist habits, suggesting governments are making efforts to cope with global turbulence to avoid piecemeal solutions. The effort is not likely to lead to any final set of regional bodies. 64. Ibid. 65. Ifestos, European Political Cooperation p. 81.

40

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