ABSTRACT
European integration theories, like social theory more generally, involve competing narratives, explanations and sometimes contrasting political projects. In the 1970s, one analyst unflatteringly compared integration studies to the fate of blind men discovering an elephant: each blind man touched a different part of the large animal, and each concluded that the elephant had the appearance of the part that he touched. While no man arrived at a very accurate description of the elephant, a lively debate ensued about the nature of the beast because each man disbelieved his fellows (paraphrased from Puchala 1972: 267).
