Governing Europe: Charting the Development of a Supranational Political System

Abstract

From its very outset, the process of European integration has been about the transformation of the economy and politics of Europe through the building of supranational institutions. Early historians of the process recognized as much, faithfully relaying multiple comments by Jean Monnet, the initiator of the 1950 Schuman Plan, about the importance and enduring nature of institutions. And yet oddly, despite this early insight, historians were very slow actually to study those institutions which were established. As Michael Gehler discusses in his chapter, the initial focus of serious historical writing about European integration was overwhelmingly on the different national motivations which underlay the start of European integration and on the various national actors — individuals, governments, and political parties — who committed themselves to the establishment of a supranational Europe. There were admittedly a few notable exceptions. Peter Ludlow’s innovative investigation into the birth of the European Monetary System appeared as early as 1982 and contained a great deal of information about both the interaction of the member states within the recently created European Council framework and the role of the European Commission (Ludlow 1982). Hanns Jürgen Küsters’ (1982a) study of the negotiations leading to the treaties establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) published the same year revealed much about the bargains which had brought the Community’s institutional system into being. But the main thrust of the first decade or so of serious writing on European integration history was not directed at the institutions of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the EEC themselves. Scholarly literature about these last hence remained the almost exclusive preserve of lawyers and political scientists, plus the occasional memoir left by some of those involved in the initial stages of the Community’s evolution.