ABSTRACT
This chapter views Integration Theory as a modern European wing of the broader theory of regionalism comprising five schools differing mainly over the question whether integration is a process or an outcome. Of these schools, for Federalism, integration can be initiated only by the states themselves, when their foreign policy elites are persuaded that the sheer magnitude of their problems necessitates a dramatic revamping of the system towards a supranational state. Finding favour in the post-First World War practice after the failure of the League of Nations, it entered a period of relative oblivion to experience a revival in the 1990s as Comparative Federalism. Functionalism (of Mitrany) sought to replace the territorial division of the world into states by its functionalist reorganization as the panacea for the problems or conflict and war. Neofunctionalism (of Haas and others) critiqued Functionalism but retained elements of it, and viewed elite interests as the driver of the shift of attention to regional loyalties from national loyalties. To Transactionalism (of Deutsch) communications help in community-building, and volumes of transactions among nations or peoples measurable through a relative acceptance index are the most revealing indicators of integration and cohesiveness among individuals, leading finally to pluralistic and amalgamated security communities. To Moravcsik, a theory of liberal intergovernmentalism coupled with a straightforward theory of national preference formation around a liberal conceptualization of domestic politics and a systemic level exposition of interstate bargaining explained five key moments in the construction of the EU.
