On the Limited Imagination of Neofunctionalism

Neofunctionalism is an appropriate place to start in launching a sustained critical interrogation of European integration legitimation discourse, a way of theorizing which emerged, in the words of its most prominent theoretician Ernst B. Haas, ‘in order to give the study of European integration a theoretical basis.’1 Neofunctionalism has historically been, and in several ways remains, the most influential approach to theorizing about European integration. As Ben Rosamond points out in his seminal study of European integration theory, ‘for many, “integration theory” and “neo-functionalism” are virtually synonyms.’2 Indeed, it may not be an exaggeration to claim, as Rosamond does, that ‘we cannot think about the analysis of European integration without confronting neo-functionalism.’3 In this chapter, I am not concerned with the question that preoccupies most treatments of neofunctionalism in EIS: i.e., the explanatory, or predictive, power that neofunctionalism may or may not hold in accounting for the trajectory of European integration conceived of as a chain of historical events. Rather, I am interested in the question of what kind of ‘Europe’ neo-functionalist discourse seeks to enact.