Abstract
One of the most confused issues in the theory of international political integration remains that of the role of transactions—whether community bonds among peoples can be used as indicators or predictors of political integration. This chapter reviews the nature of integration and the role of transactions. It is clear that much remains to be done in refining theory about political integration. These efforts must attend both to deductive theory-building and to empirical testing.
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Notes
- 1.
This text was first published as: “Transactions, Community, and International Political Integration,” Journal of Common Market Studies 9:3 (March 1971), 224–45. The permission to republish this article was granted on 7 October 2014 by Ms. Paulette Goldweber, Associate Manager, Permissions, Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, USA.
- 2.
This paper is part of the research of the Yale University World Data Analysis Program, supported by grant No. GS-2365 from the National Science Foundation and contract No. N-0014-67-A-0097-0007 from ARPA Behavioral Sciences, monitored by the Office of Naval Research. Earlier versions were delivered at the College of Europe in Bruges and the University of Geneva while I was in Europe on Guggenheim and Fulbright awards. I am grateful to Peter Busch, Karl Deutsch, Ernest Flàas, and David Handley for comments. Of course no person or agency is responsible for what is expressed here.
- 3.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958, pp. 4, 7. By citing this early work I do not mean to imply that Haas’s thought has not evolved further. In fact it has, and in directions that tend toward convergence with that of less institutionally oriented theorists to be cited below. The enormous influence of this particular book, however, requires us to treat it as a critical point of reference.
- 4.
Ibid., pp. 17–18.
- 5.
‘A Paradigm for the Study of Political Unification’, World Politics, 1,1 (1962), p. 45.
- 6.
The Political Dynamics of European Integration (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1963), pp. 7–9. See also Lindberg’s recent statement, ‘The essence of political integration is the emergence or creation over time of collective decision-making processes; i.e., political institutions to which governments delegate decision-making authority and/or through which they decide jointly via more familiar inter-governmental negotiation.’ In ‘Political Integration as a Multi-Dimensional Phenomenon Requiring Multi-Variate Measurement’, International Organization, 24, 4 (Autumn 1970) (italics mine).
- 7.
K.W. Deutsch, et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 5.
- 8.
Ibid., p. 36. Because of these two features it seems appropriate to regard Deutsch’s approach as an essentially new paradigm, addressed to questions unanswered and even unasked previously. The difficulty in relating it to previous efforts is therefore understandable. See Thomas F. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
- 9.
Ibid., p. 93. Etzioni, in Political Unification (New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston, 1965) also distinguishes between elitist and egalitarian unions and notes the advantages of the latter.
- 10.
I owe this distinction to Paul Taylor, ‘The Concept of Community and the European Integration Progress’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 7, 2 (December 1968), pp. 83–101.
- 11.
‘Integration and Disintegration in Franco-German Relations, 1954–1965’, International Organization, 24, 2 (Spring 1970), p. 199.
- 12.
Ibid., p. 200.
- 13.
See Leon N. Lindberg, ‘The European Community as a Political System’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 5, 4 (June 1967) pp. 344–87.
- 14.
Bruce M. Russett, Community and Contention: Britain and America in the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1963), esp. Chap. 2, and International Regions and the International System (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967), pp. 94–8.
- 15.
Russett, International Regions, p. 96.
- 16.
Ibid., p. 98.
- 17.
See Lindberg, Political Dynamics, p. 19, and Chadwick Alger, ‘Non-Resolution Consequences of the United Nations and Their Effect on International Conflict’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 5 (1961), pp. 128–4.5, and ‘Personal Contact in Intergovernmental Organizations’, in Herbert C. Kelman, ed., International Behavior: A Social-Psychological Analysis (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965).
- 18.
Lemer, ‘French Business Leaders Look at EDC’, Public Opinion Quarterly, XX, I (1956), p. 220, and Russett, Community and Contention, Chap. 9. The evidence on other kinds of ties is considered at length in ibid., Chaps. 3, 6, 7. Similarly, see the view of J.S. Nye, ‘Comparative Regional Integration: Concept and Measurement’, International Organization, 22, 4 (Autumn 1968), p. 863, of transactions as indicators of social integration.
- 19.
Kelman, ed., International Behavior (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965), p. 573.
- 20.
‘The Pattern of Contemporary Regional Integration’, International Studies Quarterly, 22, 1 (March 1958), p. 51.
- 21.
Arend Lijphart, ‘Consociational Democracy’, World Politics 21, 2 (January 1969), pp. 207–2$.
- 22.
‘Trends in Economic Partnership: The North Atlantic Area, 1928–1963,’ inj. David Singer ed. Quantitative International Politics: Insights and Evidence (New York: Free Press, 1968), p. 288. Puchala at least has since retreated from this position.
- 23.
However, some of the typical indicators refer to elite transactions, and others could doubtless be devised should the theoretical basis warrant it.
- 24.
Russett, International Regions, and Russett “‘Regiona’ Trading Patterns, 1938–1963”, International Studies Quarterly, 12, 4 (December 1968), pp. 360–79. Note that the relationship between transactions and war-expectation may be curvilinear: starting at the zero level, increased transactions may lead to increased conflict, with the relationship reversing at high levels. At any rate a complex interaction with other variables is at issue. See below, and International Regions, pp. 196–202.
- 25.
It should also be noted that according to Donald Puchala, ‘Mutual attentiveness, responsiveness, relevance, and the like, predate the launching of the EEC by nearly a decade. These transactional phenomena predate strong and widespread support for political federation by almost a decade and a half.’ (‘Patterns in West European Integration’, paper presented to the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Los Angeles, September 1970, p. 41. Also, Lindberg, ‘Political Integration as a Multi-Dimensional Phenomenon’, does recognize that ‘the development of horizontal, identitive, ties among elites, and perhaps mass publics, is likely to be an important political resource, especially if the system is to handle stressful issues’ He looks at survey and trade data, and his category of ‘resources of collective decision-makers’ includes many of what I call capabilities. I suspect further that my capabilities/loads ratio is in fact close to what Lindberg urges with his plea for attention to ‘stress response capability’. Neither of these authors, however, goes so far as to regard these particular items as necessary for institutionalization.
- 26.
In a personal communication, Ernst Haas made it clear that he sees this phenomenon as a manifestation of spill-over—evidence that there is indeed a good deal of convergence in our theoretical conceptions. For economists’ views that economic integration does not necessarily bring political institutionalization see, among others, Lawrence B. Krause, European Integration and the United States (Washington: Brookings Institution, 1967), Bela Balassa, The Theory of Economic Integration (Homewood, 111.: Dorsey, 1961), and Roger D. Hansen, ‘Regional Integration: Reflections on a Decade of Theoretical Efforts’, World Politics, 21, 2 (January 1969), pp. 242–71. It seems to me, however, that these views essentially deal with situations of lower levels of transaction flows than are now emerging in the EEC. For support of my argument see Hans Schmitt, ‘Capital Markets and the Unification of Europe’, World Politics, 20, 1 (January 1968), pp. 228–44.
- 27.
See Richard N. Cooper, The Economics of Interdependence (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968). Interestingly, Cooper sees other capabilities within the wider OECD area as too slight to support successful voluntary institutionalization, so he in fact advocates certain very careful and limited national steps to limit the destabilizing effect of financial movements. In ‘The Politics of Interdependence’, International Organization, 23, 2 (Spring 1969), pp. 311–36, Edward Morse cites Cooper’s findings about increasing international financial interdependence, but, I think, misses Cooper’s point about the strains this interdependence imposes.
- 28.
See Anthony Downs, Inside Bureaucracy (Boston: Little Brown, 1967).
- 29.
1 have developed this point in more detail in Community and Contention, pp. 28–9.
- 30.
Karl W. Deutsch et al., France, Germany, and the Western Alliance (New York: Scribners, 1967) 1 Chap. 13, and Russett, Trends in World Politics (New York: Macmillan, 1965), pp. 36–7; later data in my ‘Interdependence and Capabilities for European Cooperation’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 1970. Incidentally, this is extremely relevant to the criticism many have made of the recent Deutsch book, that it shows an alleged plateau in European integration when some specifically political indicators suggest continued progress. (For example, William E. Fisher, ‘An Analysis of the Deutsch Sociocausal Paradigm of Political Integration’, International Organization, 23, 2 (Spring 1969), pp. 254–90.) From this, those who see continued political progress often conclude that transaction measurement should be discarded. Perhaps it means only that Deutsch’s transaction data should have been interpreted from a slightly different theoretical viewpoint, and hence different indices formed of the same data. This is a theoretical rather than a methodological distinction. The point may be, to use a much over-worked expression, that the very promising baby of transaction analysis should not be thrown out even if one does regard Deutsch analysis as bathwater. (The Fisher critique’s utility is compromised still further because his methods for measuring institutional decision-making are so poorly described that his interpretation of political trends is equally questionable.).
- 31.
To some degree the balance may be achieved by political processes—coalition formation, bargaining, and side payments.
- 32.
An interesting application of this to Sino-Soviet-American relations is P. Terrence Hopmann, ‘International Conflict and Cohesion in The Communist System’, International Studies Quarterly, II, 3 (September 1967), pp. 212–36.
- 33.
See J.S. Nye, Pan-Africanism and East African Integration (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965).
- 34.
In this case I tend to agree with the argument of Lindberg, ‘Political Integration as a MultiDimensional Phenomenon’, rather than with Ernst Haas in ‘The Study of Regional Integration: Reflections on the Joy and Anguish of Pre-Theorizing’, International Organization, 24, 4 (Autumn 1970) on the difficulties of aggregating integrative processes across properties and issue-areas, and the multi-dimensionality of most.
- 35.
M Leon N. Lindberg and Stuart A. Scheingold, Europe’s Would-Be Polity (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), and J.S. Nye, ‘Comparative Regional Integration: Concept and Measurement’, International Organization 22, 4 (Autumn 1968), pp. 855–80.
- 36.
See particularly the work of Ronald Inglehart and David Handley.
- 37.
The evidence that many national actions of this sort are in fact scalable is contained in Robert A. Bernstein, International Integration (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971). I am fundamentally indebted to Bernstein’s study for suggesting common action as an operational definition of integration.
- 38.
Actually this may not be as serious a problem as it appears, since in Bernstein’s coding on a six-point scale the satellites alone rank only 4 and the communist system as a whole ranks 3.
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Russett, B.M. (2015). Transactions, Community, and International Political Integration. In: Starr, H. (eds) Bruce M. Russett: Pioneer in the Scientific and Normative Study of War, Peace, and Policy. SpringerBriefs on Pioneers in Science and Practice, vol 34. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13850-3_4
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