ABSTRACT
The search for the meaning of European integration operates at two levels. It represents a political ideal to be prescribed or resisted depending on the values of the commentator. At the practical level, European integration consists of particular projects. These are closely related concerns. Both aspects of the debate on European integration have contributed to a long and lively discourse throughout the postwar years. The central issue under review here is the limits or otherwise of nation statehood. The idea of European integration has attracted both support and opposition. Support for the idea of refashioning Europe’s political arrangements grew in response to the two ‘great’ wars of the early twentieth century. Regional integration offered a solvent for the intense national rivalries that had propelled Europe into these two disastrous and costly conflicts within a generation. Opposition to the integration prospectus was focused on the belief in the nation state as the natural limit of humanity’s search for a viable political community. From this perspective, regional integration was both unnatural and illusory. It was assumed to be a dangerous experiment which tampered with the natural laws of politics. And one which deflected statesmen from their primary task of encouraging effective government and a stable socio-economic order within defensible frontiers.
