The Limits of Europe: Membership Norms and the Contestation of Regional Integration

286 Pages·2022·1.794 MB·English

by  Daniel C. Thomas

OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 17/10/21, SPi
The Limits of Europe
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 17/10/21, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 17/10/21, SPi
The Limits of Europe
Membership Norms and the Contestation of
Regional Integration
DANIEL C. THOMAS
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 17/10/21, SPi
1
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ISBN 978–0–19–920671–1
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780199206711.001.0001
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 17/10/21, SPi
Preface and Acknowledgements
This book was conceived out of a hunch that the construction of Europe,
including the evolving community’s territorial expansion, was more deeply
contested than one would conclude from the official narrative in recent decades
about enduring commitments to democracy and human rights. The challenge was
two- fold—how to use the theories and methods of political science and the vast
resources available in the EU’s many historical archives to analyse and explain the
arc of EU constitutionalization and enlargement over time, and how to do so in a
manner that also speaks to regional integration processes in other parts of the world.
To this end, I decided to focus not on states’ decisions to seek membership nor
on the community’s readiness to admit particular applicant states, but on the
more fundamental and long-n eglected question of how a regional community
decides which states are eligible for membership. This focus would reveal a great
deal, I suspected, about how political actors understand the nature and the limits
of the regional community that they are building and re- building with every
decision they make. Such a study of the conceptual and geographic limits of
Europe acquired a whole new significance as debates over cultural identity gained
salience across the community.
Of course, no such ambitions could ever be pursued, much less achieved,
without the support and cooperation of many individuals and organizations.
When the project was in its infancy, Yves Mény welcomed me back to the
European University Institute’s Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies,
where I was able to explore ideas with Thomas Risse, Philippe Schmitter, and
other EUI scholars and to work in the EUI’s Historical Archives of the European
Union. Several years later, an International Affairs Fellowship from the Council
on Foreign Relations allowed me to spend a year in Brussels working at the
European Commission’s Directorate General for External Relations, which gave
me new insights into the dynamics of EU decision-m aking. Toward the end of
that year, the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Centre in Brussels gave me a
desk and time to read through countless papers in the official archives of the
European Commission, the European Council, and the European Parliament, as
well as the archives of the Belgian, French, and German foreign ministries. In
later years, I also worked in the Barbara Sloan European Union Document
Collection at the University of Pittsburgh, and repeatedly with two first-r ate
online archives—the Archive of European Integration (www.aei.pitt.edu) hosted
by the University of Pittsburgh and the Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur
l’Europe (www.cvce.eu) hosted by the University of Luxembourg. I will forever be
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vi Preface and Acknowledgements
grateful for the help provided by these organizations, academic colleagues, and
archivist- historians.
In addition, colleagues at the universities where I have worked provided
further ideas and encouragement, including especially Alberta Sbragia and
Gregor Thum at the University of Pittsburgh, and Brigid Laffan and Ben Tonra at
University College Dublin. At Leiden University, when I decided that the book
needed a multi- method statistical chapter to complement the archive- based
process- tracing that was its core, Patrick Statsch co- authored Chapter 4 and the
Appendix while simultaneously writing his PhD dissertation at the University of
Amsterdam. I am deeply grateful for his contribution to the book. Last but
certainly not least, Frank Schimmelfennig has been an invaluable source of critical
comments and friendly encouragement over the years, even when my arguments
departed from his own ground- breaking work on similar questions.
Just as important as these many colleagues and archivists has been the undying
confidence in the project shown by Dominic Byatt, legendary editor at Oxford
University Press. Though I missed deadline after deadline due to parenting
responsibilities overlapping with a move from the USA to Ireland, then a move to
The Netherlands followed by learning Dutch and my duties as chair of a growing
department that left no time for scholarly pursuits, Dominic repeatedly assured
me of his commitment to the project. In the end, when my work was done, he and
his OUP colleagues Céline Louasli, Kim Allen and Saravanan Anandan expertly
transformed the manuscript into a book.
All epigraphs under copyright are reprinted with permission from their respective
publishers or copyright holders. The epigraph by Pierre Werner in the heading of
chapter 4 is reprinted by permission of the Pierre Werner Family archive. The
epigraph by Walter Hallstein in the heading of chapter 7 is reprinted by permission
of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd, © Walter Hallstein 1972.
Above all, I am grateful to Susanne, who supports and inspires me in ways
I could scarcely have imagined when we met years ago in the hills overlooking
Florence, and to our son Julien, who amazes me more with every passing year.
Leiden, December 2020
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 17/10/21, SPi
Contents
List of Figures ix
List of Tables xi
Note on Archival Sources xiii
PART ONE QUESTIONS AND ARGUMENTS
1. The Question of Membership 3
2. Explaining Membership Eligibility 27
PART TWO MEMBERSHIP OUTCOMES
3. The Evolution of EU Membership Norms 49
4. EU Membership Eligibility in Statistical and Comparative
Perspective (with Patrick D. Statsch) 85
PART THREE MEMBERSHIP PROCESSES
5. Membership Eligibility in a Europe of Non- Communist States,
1957–1961 119
6. Membership Eligibility in a Europe of Parliamentary
Democracies, 1962–1969 137
7. Membership Eligibility in a Europe of Liberal Democracies,
1970–2005 159
8. Membership Eligibility in a Divided Europe, 2006–2020 194
PART FOUR CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS
9. Rethinking Europe, Rethinking Regions 219
Appendix: Imputing missing Freedom House data from V- Dem data 243
(with Patrick D. Statsch)
Bibliography 247
Index 257
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List of Figures
A.1. Comparison of Freedom House and V- Dem country- year scores 244
A.2. Correlations between country- year scores in Freedom House
and V- Dem datasets 244