ABSTRACT
Scholars may focus on explaining the past as well as understanding the present, but we may also reflect on the future. That is what policy-makers and journalists expect us to do. The better our theories, the more informed such speculations can be. If we have detected general patterns in the past they may help us think about the future, or likely futures. Our problem is of course that we do not have single factor explanations of the past. We use a number of independent variables and intervening variables to construct a causal model of European integration. The big theoretical debates are about finding the variables with most explanatory power.
