ABSTRACT
In this chapter, it is argued that the 1995 enlargement of the EU has to be analysed against the background of the structural changes since the early 1970s, often referred to as globalization. Briefly, globalization may be defined as the transnationalization of production and finance at the material level, expressed in the rise in size and numbers of transnational corporations (TNCs) and a worldwide deregulation of national financial markets, and a change from Keynesian ideas to neo-liberalism at the ideological level (Cox 1993: 259-60, 266-7). The established theories of integration are unable to account for the structural change of globalization and thus to explain the puzzle of Austria’s and Sweden’s accession to the EU. Neo-functionalist analyses incorrectly assume an automaticity of integration through the concept of spill-over, based on an objective economic rationale, and neglect the wider world within which integration takes place. Intergovernmentalist approaches, including the most developed liberal intergovernmentalist variant, consider states to be the most important actors at the international level, and consequently overlook the importance of supranational institutions, transnational actors and the independent
role of ideas. Moreover, they incorrectly concentrate on interstate negotiations as the most important instances of integration. (For a more detailed critical analysis of integration theories, see Bieler 2000: 3-8.) In the following section a neoGramscian perspective is suggested as an alternative, which is then applied to Austria’s and Sweden’s accession to the EU in the remainder of the chapter.
