ABSTRACT
For those at entry level in the study of federalism in the European Context a first call should be made on Michelle Cini’s edited text European Union Politics (1st edn, 2003). In this book, there is a concise section on theories and conceptual approaches where Michael Burgess’s robust defence of federalism as a conceptual framework for explaining European integration is juxtaposed with alternative approaches including the neo-federalist, intergovernmentalist, institutionalist, social constructivist and international political economy theories. The great advantage from this choice of texts by Cini is that it highlights the contrast between the structure/process theories and the normative theory of federalism, a goal sought by Burgess in his efforts to reintroduce federalism in the study of European integration:
When studying theories of European integration, it has been customary for both students and academics either to downgrade or completely overlook the significance of federalism. Even when federal ideas have grudgingly been recognized, they have tended to be subsumed within other theoretical or conceptual categories, such as neo-functionalism, so that until fairly recently federalism has been almost invisible in the study of EU politics (at least in the English language). (Burgess, 2003: 65)
