ABSTRACT
In examining the impact of European Union action on member states, the concept of state autonomy is in many respects preferable as an analytical tool to its older and more juridically rooted counterpart state sovereignty (see Kassim and Menon 1996). It captures the range of mechanisms by which member-state governments are constrained to pursue particular policies even when, in formallegal terms, they are free to do otherwise. The distinction is certainly not a new one, and in the twentieth century it has shed light on the ways in which, for example, economic interdependence, transnational flows of information, and massive differences in military power, have affected the capacity of states to
obtain objectives in pursuit of which, formally speaking, they retain de jure independence. As the introduction to the first book in this series put it, ‘sovereignty identifies one attribute of the state, it does not capture all aspects of its power’ (Kassim and Menon 1996:3)
The concept of autonomy is especially apt because, as most contemporary commentators observe, policy making in the EU is pursued through multi-tiered institutions, and through complex and often obscure processes, many of which are informal. The actors involved often have multiple objectives and divided loyalties, and the networks in which they become involved cross national boundaries and operate in overlapping legal frameworks. Students of the modern state, and its autonomy in relation to domestic political and economic interests, have long recognised the significance of its inability unilaterally to determine its own destiny. The modern liberal state is not ‘autonomous’ and those who control the offices of government, albeit by democratic election, are not able to choose policy goals freely or to implement their policy preferences as they desire. They are constrained by the checks and balances of liberal institutions, and by the social pluralism that creates the powerful interest-group actors with which they must reckon. It would therefore have been surprising if the literature which has developed on European institutions and policy making over the last two decades had not developed a similar conventional wisdom about the impact of action and policy development by the EEC/EC/EU on the autonomy of member states.
