Concordia Discors from Cumulative Europeanization to Deeper European Integration

Abstract

The literature on Europeanization has developed impressively in recent years. Since the late 1990s, this concept has brought together scholars from different disciplines with a common interest in the process of change induced by the European Union (EU). Political scientists, anthropologists, sociologists and even scholars of legal studies have focused on agency and the influence of actors on the course of events. The integration process has provided them with a fertile testing ground for comparative theorizing on many questions of key importance for our understanding of complex processes of change across time and space. By trying to better understand how Europe ‘hits home’, scholars have opened two black boxes, one domestic and one European. Historians, anthropologists, sociologists and political scientists have looked at changing institutions, policies, practices, experiences, norms and values (Milward, Brennan and Romero, 1992; Borneman and Fowler, 1997; Favell and Guiraudon, 2011). As Jensen and Kristensen (2013, p. 1) recently pointed out, ‘scholars coming from different theoretical traditions touch upon different parts of the elephant and thus portray a different beast. None of them are mistaken, but none of them have the complete picture either.’ Thanks to this lively academic debate, our theoretical and empirical understanding of the impact of the Union on its member states and on candidate and third countries has improved.