ABSTRACT
In the United States, regional integration theory was eventually pronounced obsolete in the aftermath of Vietnam. However, while American theorists quickly moved on to interdependence theory, Europeans were understandably more reluctant to accept the non-existence of a theoretical framework for the Community they were living in. The inherited international framework through which domestic policy choices could be advanced had developed since the mid-nineteenth century as one of general agreement to uphold certain principles of economic interdependence in the general interest. The European Payments Union substituted in 1950 a European framework of multilateral interdependence for the worldwide one originally envisaged at Bretton Woods. The historical evidence seems to suggest that until integration has been chosen only in cases where interdependence has been inadequate as a framework to advance important national policy objectives. The integrationist solution was used to sustain levels of welfare and employment in Belgium which would have been much less easily sustainable within a system of interdependence.
