How Likely Is It That The European Union Will Disintegrate

461286 EJT20210.
1177/1354066112461286European Journal of International RelationsWebber
EJIR
Article
European Journal of
International Relations
How likely is it that the 2014, Vol. 20(2) 341–365
© The Author(s) 2012
European Union will Reprints and permissions:
sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
disintegrate? A critical analysis DOI: 10.1177/1354066112461286
ejt.sagepub.com
of competing theoretical
perspectives
Douglas Webber
INSEAD, France
Abstract
This article turns existing theories of European integration on their head, exploring the
conditions under which they would predict that the European Union will disintegrate, and
assessing to what extent these conditions currently exist. It argues that these theories,
especially the most ‘optimistic’ ones, have an insufficiently comparative inter-spatial as
well as inter-temporal focus. Combining insights from domestic politics approaches to
international relations and hegemonic stability theories, it suggests that the future of
European integration and the European Union is more contingent than most integration
theories allow. First, they do not take sufficient account of the role of domestic politics
in the member states, in many of which the last decade has witnessed a major upsurge
of ‘anti-European’ political attitudes and movements. Second, they overlook the
extent to which Europe’s uniquely high level of political integration depends on the
engagement and support of the region’s economically most powerful ‘semi-hegemonic’
state, Germany. Even though a fundamental reorientation of German European policy
at the present time seems unlikely, it is not inconceivable. The European Union has
confronted and survived many crises in the past — but has never had to confront a
crisis ‘made in Germany’. The European Union’s current crisis is symptomatic of a
broader crisis or malaise of regional and international multilateralism.
Keywords
Crisis, European Union, hegemonic stability theory, institutions, integration, politics
Corresponding author:
Douglas Webber, INSEAD — Economics and Political Science, Boulevard de Constance, Fontainebleau,
77305 Cedex, France.
Email: douglas.webber@insead.edu
342 European Journal of International Relations 20(2)
Introduction
‘If the Euro fails, then not only the currency fails … Europe will fail, and, with it, the idea
of European unity’ (Spiegel Online, 2010). With these remarks, made as the European
Union (EU) addressed the Greek sovereign debt crisis in May 2010 and later reiterated
(Financial Times, 2011), the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, dramatically described
what she believed was at stake in what meanwhile seems to be a durable crisis not only
of the Eurozone, but also of the integration process itself.
If a ‘crisis’ is defined as a ‘situation that has reached an extremely difficult or dan-
gerous point; a time of great disagreement, uncertainty or suffering’ (Cambridge
English dictionary), the current situation of the EU may well be labelled a crisis — the
‘most serious’, in the view of the long-time German Foreign Minister, Hans-Dietrich
Genscher, in its history (quoted in Spiegel Online, 2011a). However, the EU has proved
an extraordinarily robust and crisis-resistant organization. It survived: the collapse of
the European Defence Community project in 1954; France’s rejection of two British
bids for accession in the 1960s; the empty-chair crisis precipitated by De Gaulle in
1965; the crisis concerning the UK’s contribution to the EU budget in the first half of
the 1980s; the semi-destruction of the European Monetary System in 1992–1993; and
the defeat of several proposed new treaties in referenda in Denmark, Ireland, France
and the Netherlands since the end of the Cold War. Indeed, any observer looking back
at how the integration process absorbed and rebounded after these shocks would likely
concur with the EU’s founding father Jean Monnet’s prognosis that ‘Europe will be
forged in crises and will be the sum of the solutions adopted for these crises’ (quoted
in Barber, 2010).
For the purposes of this analysis, I define the concept of disintegration as referring to
a decline in: (1) the range of common or joint policies adopted and implemented in the
EU; (2) the number of EU member states; and/or (3) the formal (i.e. treaty-rooted) and
actual capacity of EU organs to make and implement decisions if necessary against the
will of individual members. As serious as the EU’s crisis seemed to be in 2012, there was
no unequivocal empirical evidence that the integration process had begun to unwind and
the EU to disintegrate. Still no member state had ever left the EU, while several states
were queuing to join it. Still no issue-area into which the EU’s competence had previ-
ously been extended had been repatriated to the member states. There had still not been
any observable formal or actual diminution of the EU’s decision-making and implemen-
tation capacities. Even the euro crisis had led to more rather than less economic policy
integration. To this extent, the current crisis has hitherto produced no more disintegrative
consequences than earlier ones.
Nonetheless, the fact that the EU has surmounted numerous previous crises does not
alone guarantee that it will prove equally capable of overcoming the current crisis, espe-
cially if it is indeed more profound than its predecessors. Historically, far more regional
organizations have failed, in the sense that they collapsed, than succeeded (see Mattli,
1999) — it would be myopic simply to assume that the EU will defy the fate that most
other regional organizations have experienced. But how can we try to assess the likeli-
hood that the EU will start to disintegrate? In this article, I propose to tackle this task in
two steps. First, I shall discuss existing theories of international relations and European
Webber 343
integration and, turning the latter on their head, identify the conditions under which they
would expect disintegration to occur and assess the extent to which these conditions hold
at the present time. Second, emphasizing the failure of many European integration theo-
ries to provide a sufficiently comparative perspective on the determinants of this process
and in the spirit of Mattli and Stone Sweet (2012), I blend insights from two different
theoretical traditions — specifically, ‘domestic politics’ approaches to international rela-
tions and ‘hegemonic stability’ (public goods) theories of international political economy
— to argue that two factors — benign domestic political environments in the member
states and benevolent ‘semi-hegemonic’ German leadership — were critical to the devel-
opment of the EU as we know it, that the first of these has been eroding fast and the
second has begun to erode and may erode further, and that the future of European politi-
cal integration is therefore significantly more contingent than a great deal of the theoreti-
cal literature on the topic suggests. The article closes with some speculative reflections
on whether the EU’s crisis is symptomatic of a broader crisis or malaise of regional and
international multilateralism with potentially ominous consequences for world stability
and the world economy.
The conditions of European disintegration: Competing

theoretical perspectives
Short of tangible evidence that the EU is already disintegrating, the most fruitful way of
trying to work out what impact the current crisis may have on the EU’s future is to ask to
what extent there has been any change in the variables that have fuelled the integration
process in the past. This section will explore competing theories of European integration,
comparing the explanations they offer for this process and evaluating to what extent the
variables that each theory identifies as having driven this process are still present, have
waned or have disappeared.
Realism — the arch-pessimists

The current crisis of the EU should be less surprising for realist International Relations
(IR) theorists than for the exponents of any other theories of European integration.
Within months of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the American realist John Mearsheimer
portrayed Europe’s future in extremely bleak terms. According to Mearsheimer, if the
Cold War ended and the Red Army withdrew from Eastern Europe and American and
British troops from continental Western Europe — steps he thought were highly likely
— the prospects for major crises and war in Europe would ‘increase markedly’
(Mearsheimer, 1990: 6). Relations among the EU states, he argued, ‘will be fundamen-
tally altered. Without a common Soviet threat and without the American night watch-
man, West European states will begin viewing each other with greater fear and suspicion,
as they did for centuries before the onset of the Cold War’ (Mearsheimer, 1990: 47).
Mearsheimer attributed the failure of this scenario to materialize in the decade follow-
ing his prognosis to the fact that, contrary to his original expectations, the US had kept
its troops in Europe (albeit in reduced numbers) and NATO had survived (Mearsheimer,
2001). Still sure a decade ago that the US would eventually withdraw its troops from
Europe, provoking ‘more intense security competition among the European powers’,
Mearsheimer has meanwhile become less certain that this scenario will materialize,
while continuing to argue that the US military presence is still the main reason for
Europe’s peacefulness (Mearsheimer, 2001, 2010).
From a realist perspective à la Mearsheimer, European disintegration would hence
most probably result from an American military withdrawal from Europe and a collapse
of NATO. However, despite a significant reduction in the scale of the US military pres-
ence in Europe, sporadic tensions in the transatlantic military relationship, and uncer-
tainty as to its future role, NATO has hitherto survived the end of the Cold War and even
expanded. Moreover, uncertainty as to the durability or reliability of the American com-
mitment to European military security has led to more rather than less security and
defence cooperation between EU member states, even if at the level of operational capa-
bilities the EU’s progress has been limited and on some important issues, such as military
intervention in Iraq in 2003 and in Libya in 2011, the member states were divided.
Contrary to what Mearsheimer anticipated, growing distrust among Europe’s big powers
over ‘hard’ security issues is not at the root of Europe’s current crisis. This side of the
dissolution of NATO that Mearsheimer anticipated, but that has not occurred, realism
does not yield any reason to fear that the EU might disintegrate for the time being. The
most pessimistic theory concerning the long-run viability of the EU is based on a sce-
nario that refuses to materialize.
Classical intergovernmentalism — the moderate pessimists

Of the theories developed to explain European integration, intergovernmentalism is the
one most similar to IR realism. As for realists, for intergovernmentalists such as Stanley
Hoffmann, nation-states — not supranational organs like the European Commission —
were still the key European actors, could have divergent interests and in areas of ‘high’
(i.e. security and foreign) politics would resist the forfeiture of policy-making powers to
supranational entities much more strongly than in those of low (i.e. trade and economic)
politics. Continuing integration was by no means preordained and the authority of supra-
national institutions remained ‘limited, conditional, dependent and reversible’ (Hoffmann,
1966: 156). The core of Hoffmann’s analysis was replicated in Moravcsik’s ‘intergovern-
mentalist institutionalist’ approach (Moravscik, 1991), but Moravcsik1 I diverges from
Hoffmann by weighting differently the role of international-systemic and domestic-polit-
ical variables and ‘high’ and ‘low’ politics in determining the stance of national govern-
ments on European issues. In Moravcsik I, integration is thus contingent on the degree of
convergence of the preferences or interests of the governments of key member states
shaped by the requirements of domestic politics, not on the structure of the international
system as in realism. Whether such convergence would be reproduced in the future as it
had occurred in respect of the Single European Act in the 1980s was an open question.
However, in as far as two of the ‘big three’ governments (i.e. the French and German)
could credibly threaten to exclude the third (i.e. the British) from the integration process
and thus coerce it to participate, a bilateral Franco-German accord could suffice to keep
the integration process on the rails.
Webber 345
Classical intergovernmentalism focuses our attention on the evolution and degree of

convergence of the stances of the French, German and British governments as determi-
nants of the future of European integration. Trends in this trilateral relationship in the last
two decades do not augur well for the EU’s future. Growing British Euro-scepticism has
made Franco-German threats to exclude the UK from the integration process increas-
ingly hollow — not because such threats cannot be implemented, but rather because the
British government has been increasingly impervious to them. Hence, closer integration
— as with the euro and the Schengen Area — has increasingly assumed a ‘variable
geometry’ or ‘multi-speed’ pattern, with a subgroup of ‘avant-garde’ member states
launching a project and (some or most of) the others subsequently acceding to it.
To the extent that such projects have developed centripetal effects that have drawn
more and more other member states to participate in them, they testify to the continuing
capacity of the French and German governments, when they work together, to promote
closer integration. The Franco-German ‘tandem’ can still exercise a decisive influence
in the EU even after the post-Cold War enlargements from 12 to 27 member states,
especially where the two governments form ‘opposing poles’ in the EU around which
other member states can coalesce (see Schild, 2010; Webber, 1999). However, as the
issue of military intervention in Libya indicated, the French and German governments
cannot always agree and cooperate. Growing political opposition to closer European
integration in both France and Germany—as shown in France by the outcomes of the
treaty referenda in 2005 and the strongly EU-critical tone of the 2012 presidential
election campaign and in Germany by the widespread and growing hostility to ‘bailing
out’ debtor states in the Eurozone—has complicated the task and processes of mediat-
ing Franco-German conflicts and forging common Franco-German positions.
Intergovernmentalism implies that if a fundamental breakdown should occur in Franco-
German relations, this would surely lead to European disintegration. The burgeoning
euro crisis led to intensified rather than reduced Franco-German cooperation, but at the
same time highlighted major divergences in the two governments’ approaches to
economic management and deep-seated strains in their relationship as well as the extent
to which power had shifted in Germany’s favour (see below).
International Relations institutionalism — the cautious optimists

Institutionalist theories of international relations are cautiously optimistic as to the pros-
pects for European integration. This is despite the fact that IR institutionalists agree with
realists that states are the principal actors in European, as in world, politics. They do not
share the neo-functionalist precept that international or regional organizations (‘regimes’)
such as the EU can be influential actors in their own right. However, in contrast to real-
ists, IR institutionalists argue that such organizations can achieve a high level of durabil-
ity or permanence by helping states to overcome collective action problems, carrying out
functions that these cannot (notably ‘facilitating the making and keeping of agreements
through the provision of information and reductions in transaction costs’), monitoring
compliance, reducing uncertainty and stabilizing expectations (Keohane, 1993: 274,
284, 288; Keohane and Nye, 1993: 2–5). However: ‘Without a basis either of hegemonic
dominance or common interests, international institutions cannot long survive’ (Keohane,
1993: 295, emphasis added). Institutionalists were nonetheless optimistic, as the Cold
War ended, that the EU would flourish in the future. Keohane argued that ‘Since com-
mon interests are likely to persist, and the institutions of the European Community are
well-entrenched … the EC will remain a durable and important entity. … [It] will be
larger and have greater impact on its members’ policies in the year 2000 than it was when
the Berlin Wall came down in November 1989’ (Keohane, 1993: 291).
From an IR institutionalist perspective, the critical questions relating to the EU’s
future are thus whether, especially in the enlarged EU, there are sufficiently pervasive
common interests linking member states and whether, much as for intergovernmental-
ists, the ‘most powerful states’ (Keohane and Nye, 1993: 18) — by which the US is as
much meant as the ‘big three’ EU members — continue to support the integration pro-
cess. The institutionalist literature does not specify how the evolution of the incidence of
common interests in the EU could be determined, other than in a post hoc fashion,
according to whether and with what degree of ease or difficulty the EU has managed to
make decisions. Although, other things being equal, growing economic and other forms
of interdependence may exert a countervailing effect, the post-Cold War enlargements
have surely increased the EU’s socio-economic, cultural and political heterogeneity and
thus diminished the scope of common interests among the member states. If common
interests among member states should indeed be declining, then IR institutionalists
would expect the risk of European disintegration to have risen.
The other critical issue for IR institutionalists is whether the ‘hegemonic’ or most
powerful states still support and, in as far as they are EU members, are willing to be
constrained by the EU. If this category includes the US, as it evidently does for Keohane
and Nye (1993: 16–19), prospects for European integration may be less bright than they
were before the end of the Cold War. As shown, for example, by predominantly negative
US reactions to European aspirations to develop a military intervention capacity inde-
pendent of NATO, American support for further European integration has grown more
ambivalent during the last two decades. As the Iraq War conflict indicated, the US con-
tinues to exercise considerable leverage over (non-Russian) Europe and transatlantic
conflicts normally also generate conflicts among EU member states. Among the ‘big
three’ EU members, as noted above, divergences of interest have grown between the UK,
on the one hand, and France and Germany, on the other, but these have not stalled the
integration process or undermined the EU, but rather produced an increasingly differenti-
ated EU. From an IR institutionalist as well as an intergovernmentalist perspective, the
EU’s future seems likely to ride on the evolution of the Franco-German relationship,
which remains close and intensive, but strained.
If common interests should be waning and big powers should become less supportive
of European integration, institutionalist theory would predict integration to wane.
However, this may turn out to be a long drawn-out process. For, even in the absence of
common interests, Keohane explains (1993: 295), ‘organizational inertia, considerations
of reputation, and connections to domestic politics mean that institutions often persist
even when the conditions for their creation have disappeared’. In this scenario, European
disintegration would be a slow process of attrition, in which ever greater difficulties in
adopting new legislation went hand-in-hand with ‘an erosion of the existing acquis
through creeping non-compliance and “institutional hypocrisy”’ (Iankova and
Katzenstein, quoted in Scharpf, 2006: 858).
Webber 347
Historical institutionalism — the (slightly qualified) optimists

Criticizing intergovernmentalism, historical-institutionalist scholars of European integra-
tion argue that, over time, the capacity of member governments to control supranational
organs such as the Commission and the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has declined and
integration has become increasingly irreversible. Pierson (1998) identifies several varia-
bles that explain how ‘gaps’ in the capacity of member governments to control suprana-
tional actors emerge: these actors’ partial autonomy; the restricted time horizons of
political decision-makers in the member states; unanticipated consequences; and shifts in
the preferences of the heads of member governments. Once such gaps have emerged,
member governments face a well-nigh impossible task trying to close them again, as the
supranational actors resist them, the treaty-rooted institutional barriers to reversing the
gaps are high and governments that do or would otherwise champion such changes are
constrained by ‘massive sunk costs’ and the high and rising price of exit, which makes any
threat to leave the EU as a weapon to influence its policies increasingly implausible:
‘While the governments of “sovereign” member-states remain free to tear up treaties and
walk away at any time, the constantly increasing costs of exit in the densely integrated
European polity have rendered this option virtually unthinkable’ (Pierson, 1998: 47).
In the logic of historical institutionalism, the EU’s growing longevity should make it
increasingly immune to disintegration or collapse. Whilst historical-institutionalist
scholars generally focus on constraints and the ‘“stickiness” of historically evolved insti-
tutional arrangements’ and provide ‘explanations of continuity rather than change’, they
nonetheless recognize that critical junctures or crises can bring about ‘relatively abrupt
institutional change’ (Thelen and Steinmo, 1992: 15). Krasner has applied the biological
concept of ‘punctuated equilibrium’ to characterize a pattern in which long periods of
stasis are interrupted by ‘short bursts of rapid institutional change’ (Krasner, 1984: 242–
243). He quotes the evolutionary biologist Gould to the effect that rapid change occurs
when a ‘stable structure is stressed beyond its buffering capacity to resist and absorb’
(Krasner, 1984: 242–243). However, historical-institutionalist scholarship does not pro-
vide any criteria with which we could identify a ‘crisis’ or the conditions under which
what they define as a ‘crisis’ could provoke abrupt or radical changes, such as a reversal
or collapse of European integration. It is difficult therefore to judge whether from a
historical-institutionalist perspective the EU’s current situation amounts to a ‘crisis’ that
could precipitate fundamental institutional change in the EU or even its demise. Still, in
as far as they admit the theoretical possibility of radical change, albeit under exceptional
circumstances, historical-institutionalist analysis is implicitly more circumspect about
the prospects for European integration than contemporary neo-functionalist-cum-trans-
actionalist and liberal intergovernmentalist theories.
Neo-functionalism, transactionalism and liberal intergovernmentalism

— the unequivocal optimists
Neo-functionalism and transactionalism, associated respectively with Ernst Haas and
Karl Deutsch, both provide fundamentally optimistic theoretical perspectives on
European integration. However, the trials and tribulations of the EU in the 1960s and
1970s taught Hass and other neo-functionalist ‘old hands’ that other scenarios than ever
closer political integration were conceivable. In the first half of the 1970s, Haas declared
regional integration theory altogether to be ‘obsolescent’ and like-minded scholars
declared that not only ‘spillover’, but also ‘spill-back’, was possible (Haas, 1976; Lindberg
and Scheingold, 1970; Schmitter, 1971). More contemporary neo-functionalist-
cum-transactionalist theorizing, as exemplified in the work of Stone Sweet and Sandholtz
(1997), is much less ambivalent. In this perspective, European integration — the growth
of European-level governmental structures and formal and informal rules — is the more
or less inexorable outcome of growing volumes of transnational exchange that force
national governments to acquiesce in the transfer of more and more policymaking com-
petences to the European level: ‘As transnational exchange rises, so does the societal
demand for supranational rules and organizational capacity to regulate’ (Stone Sweet and
Sandholtz, 1997: 306). Once the pressures created by growing transnational exchange
have led to the foundation of European governmental structures, similar to the process of
spill-over described by Haas, a self-sustaining dynamic of institutionalization — a pro-
cess by which ‘rules are created, applied, and interpreted by those who live under them’
— kicks in, locking member governments ever more tightly into the EU (Stone Sweet
and Sandholtz, 1997: 310). Institutionalization makes it unlikely that even a profound
economic crisis, which would likely reduce levels of transnational economic exchange in
Europe, could undermine European integration: Sandholtz and Stone Sweet argue that
transnational interactions:
will not drive the evolution of the EU forever … EU rules are increasingly dense; ambiguities
and conflicts among rules are inevitable. Actors facing those ambiguities and conflicts in EU
rules will want authoritative clarifications. The result will be to reinforce EU organizations as
arbiters of existing rules as well as generators of new ones. … The EU polity itself generates
needs that will be met by enhanced supranational governance. (Stone Sweet and Sandholtz,
1999: 152–153)2
From his liberal intergovernmentalist perspective, Moravcsik (II) has reached simi-
larly optimistic conclusions to the neo-functionalist-cum-transactionalists. Before the
financial and sovereign debt crises, Moravcsik concluded that the EU had developed a
‘mature’ constitutional order or ‘constitutional settlement’ that was unlikely to be under-
mined by any new challenges to its ‘functional effectiveness, institutional stability or
normative legitimacy’ (Moravcsik, 2008). In his view, the financial and sovereign debt
crises did not jeopardize European integration, but had rather ‘boosted the European
project’ and made Europe ‘stronger than ever’ (Moravcsik, 2009). Moravcsik remained
confident that the ‘Cassandras … predicting the collapse of the euro, if not the European
Union itself’ would be proved wrong (Moravcsik, 2010). Similar to Stone Sweet and
Sandholtz, Moravcsik II argues that ‘increasing transborder flows of goods, services,
factors, or pollutants create “international policy externalities” among nations, which in
turn create incentives for policy coordination’ (Moravcsik, 1993: 485). In contrast to
Stone Sweet and Sandholtz, however, for Moravcsik member governments remain deci-
sive EU actors, autonomous of the EU’s supranational organs, whose authority is rela-
tively limited. As their vulnerability to negative externalities varies greatly, member
Webber 349
governments do not all inevitably support cooperation to liberalize trade and provide
public goods; so continuing political integration is not to be taken for granted (Moravcsik,
1993: 486). Nonetheless, growing economic interdependence seems increasingly to fore-
close other, unilateral policy options and to compel member governments to forge or
acquiesce in closer integration. This is clear in Moravcsik’s analysis of the euro crisis, in
respect of which he argues that EU members, because they ‘inhabit the world’s most eco-
nomically interdependent continent … have no choice but to cooperate’ and that France
and Germany must support Greece financially ‘to avoid a disastrous loss of confidence in
French and German banks and bonds’ (Moravcsik, 2010: 26).
Comparative federalism — optimists (?) and pessimists

Regional integration and IR theories are not the sole possible sources of theoretically
guided analyses of the EU’s durability. Since the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty at
the latest, the EU may be regarded as a ‘species’ of federal state (Kelemen, 2007: 52;
McKay, 1999a: 179). Hence, one way of assessing its survival prospects is to analyse
the extent to which it fulfils the preconditions of survival of federal systems.
Most federations fail (Lemco, quoted in Kelemen, 2007: 53). Multinational federa-
tions, of which the EU is certainly an example, may be more prone to failure than others
(Kelemen, 2007: 61). Kelemen nonetheless concluded optimistically in 2007 that ‘rumours
of the EU’s impending demise are greatly exaggerated’ and that the EU is ‘built to last’
(Kelemen, 2007: 65, 53). In Kelemen’s analysis, judicial, partisan (party-political) and
socio-cultural safeguards are required to prevent federal states from falling apart. The
judicial safeguards in the EU are strong, given the ‘powerful’ position of the ECJ and the
effectiveness of decentralized enforcement of its jurisprudence, which is secured through
the preliminary rulings procedure and governments’ reluctance to disobey their own judi-
ciaries, which accept the ECJ’s supremacy on issues of EU law (Kelemen, 2007: 57). By
Kelemen’s own analysis, however, the other two safeguards against the collapse of federal
systems are weaker in the EU. As regards partisan safeguards, he notes that although the
power and discipline of party groups in the European Parliament have been growing,
these remain ‘too weak to restrain behavior by national parties that might imperil the
Union’ (Kelemen, 2007: 58). His relative confidence that the EU will not be vulnerable to
collapse as a consequence of centrifugal dynamics unleashed by party-political competi-
tion in the member states rests on his forecast that the gradual transfer of authority from
the national to the EU level will be accompanied by a commensurate strengthening of the
role and power of European-level parties vis-a-vis their national counterparts. Hitherto,
however, the former process has easily outpaced the latter and it is still not evident that
European-level political party groups can ‘discipline’ or ‘moderate’ the positions taken by
their national member parties on EU issues. By socio-cultural safeguards, Kelemen means
that the stability of federal institutions ‘must be grounded in a shared sense of identity and
political culture of federalism’ (2007: 59). Here he notes that although there is no consen-
sus among EU scholars as to how much common identity is necessary to ‘underpin the
EU’, there has not been any substantial increase in European identity in recent decades
(2007: 59). He therefore concludes that ‘for the EU to resist centrifugal pressures over the
long run, the EU citizens and leaders may need to develop a stronger sense of common,
albeit hybrid (i.e. national and European), identity’ (Kelemen, 2007: 61).
Overall, Kelemen’s own analysis thus points towards a more circumspect assessment
of the EU’s durability than his conclusions suggest. McKay’s analyses of the precondi-
tions of sustainable federalism and the EU point in the same direction (McKay 1999a,
1999b, 2004). For McKay, the principal bulwarks against federal states falling apart are
provided by formal and informal institutional constraints and norms that ‘contain central
power and preserve regional autonomy’ (as, e.g., in Switzerland) and by a party system
in which political parties are organized in such a way as to be able to mediate and broker
conflicts between the centre and the periphery (McKay, 2004: 180). While the EU prob-
ably meets the first condition, it does not in his view meet the second. Given that in the
EU ‘all the parties are regional (i.e. national — DW) and all are decentralized’, McKay
is uncertain whether the single currency will prove sustainable ‘in the longer term’, fear-
ing that it could generate acute distributional conflicts and mobilize strong populist senti-
ments and populist political parties (McKay, 2004: 182).
Analysis and critique — the contingency of European

integration
Ploughing the theoretical field of European integration thus yields a diverse harvest of
variables whose presence could have a disintegrative impact on the EU (see Table 1). If
these variables are used as a basis for developing prognoses as to the likelihood of
European disintegration, the competing theoretical perspectives divide roughly into two
groups. Short of an unanticipated process of deinstitutionalization, a collapse of eco-
nomic interdependence and levels of other forms of transnational exchange in Europe, or
a deep crisis that destroys the EU’s ‘very sticky’ institutional arrangements, neo-func-
tionalists, transactionalists, liberal intergovernmentalists and historical institutionalists
all minimize the risk of European disintegration. IR institutionalism and, more so, clas-
sical intergovernmentalism are more circumspect about the EU’s future. Viewed from
these perspectives, European integration is a more contingent phenomenon, resting on
the scope of member states’ common interests, which has arguably narrowed following
successive waves of enlargement, and/or on the extent of hegemonic leadership or con-
vergence of interests among the EU’s three big powers. The latter has diminished in as
far as the UK has proved hostile to closer integration on most issues, leaving the EU’s
fate in these perspectives increasingly in the hands of the Franco-German duo. Finally,
comparative-federalist approaches raise doubts as to whether there is a sufficiently strong
and widely shared common identity and there are sufficiently integrative pan-European
political parties to underpin the kind of federal state into which the EU has increasingly
metamorphosed.
The resilience of the EU hitherto to the post-2008 crisis appears to lend credence to
theoretical perspectives that minimize the likelihood of disintegration. It may nonethe-
less be premature to conclude that the EU will ride out this crisis unscathed. The theoreti-
cal perspectives discussed in this article are informed by the empirical analysis of
political integration only in Europe up to the end of the last century. If, however, a
broader comparative perspective is adopted — incorporating both an inter-spatial
Webber 351
Table 1. Will the EU disintegrate? Theoretical overview.
Main independent (Potential) Theory-based

Theory variable(s) Disintegrator prognosis
Realism (Mearsheimer) Distribution of military European Disintegration
power multipolarity after unlikely as long as
collapse of NATO US keeps military
presence
Classical inter- Preferences/interests of Divergence of Disintegration
governmentalism 3 big EU powers interests of big 3 unlikely provided
(Moravcsik I) powers France & Germany
cooperate
IR institutionalism Cooperation-facilitating Decline of members’ Disintegration
(Keohane) role of institutions (EU) common interests increasingly
& hegemonic conceivable
dominance/will
Historical Ever-tighter institutional (Generally externally Disintegration
institutionalism constraints induced) Crises or likely only in
(Pierson; Thelen and critical junctures very exceptional
Steinmo) circumstances
Liberal Big 3 powers Declining economic Disintegration
intergovernmentalism & economic interdependence very unlikely —
(Moravcsik II) interdependence & divergent big 3 interdependence
economic interests remains very strong
Neo-functionalism/ Spillover/transnational Decline of Disintegration
transactionalism (Stone exchange & society transnational virtually excluded —
Sweet and Sandholtz) exchange & institutionalization
society; de- prevents even crisis-
institutionalization induced collapse
Comparative Judicial, partisan Weakness of Growing risk of
federalism (Kelemen; & socio-cultural common identity & disintegration with
McKay) safeguards v. explosion integrative pan- growing transfer of
of federal state European political power from national
parties to EU level
dimension that extends to other regions and an inter-temporal one that distinguishes the
politics of the ‘2lst-century’ EU from that of the preceding half-century — a picture
emerges of an EU that rests on less robust foundations and of an integration process that
may be less resistant to reversal than neo-functionalist, transactionalist, liberal intergov-
ernmentalist and historical-institutional theorizing paints.
As if, as Moravcsik (see above) judged, the EU had indeed reached a ‘stable’ constitu-
tional settlement, the theoretical controversy and debate about European integration
waned in the last decade or so and EU scholars increasingly came to regard it no longer as
a form of international organization, but rather as a ‘normal political system’ (Kreppel,
2012: 639). Ironically, this process occurred just at a time when, arguably, the tectonic
plates of European politics were beginning to shift in ways that cast the EU’s future into
doubt. Comparative empirical — inter-temporal and inter-spatial — analysis points
towards movements in two such ‘plates’ that could provoke major political earthquakes in
Europe. Contrasting post-2000 EU politics with that of the preceding half-century, I sug-
gest that European integration is threatened by sharply rising hostility towards the EU in
the domestic politics of the member states. Contrasting Europe with other regions, I argue
that a ‘semi-hegemonic’, pro-integrationist Germany accounts for the uniquely high level
of political integration in Europe, but that there is a significant and growing risk that
Germany’s commitment to the European ‘project’ will wane in future. The first argument
is rooted theoretically in the ‘domestic politics’ approach to the understanding of interna-
tional relations.3 By ‘domestic politics’ I mean here, like rational-choice theorists of polit-
ical behaviour, that the choices of national political parties and leaders on EU-related
issues are primarily influenced and constrained by their goal of maximizing voter support
and thereby winning or retaining political office. The evolution of mass political prefer-
ences and attitudes towards the EU currently gives national politicians increasingly strong
incentives to oppose European integration and constrains their capacity to bolster it where
they nonetheless want to do so. The second argument rests on the theory of hegemonic
stability, which posits that the overwhelming dominance of one country is a necessary
(but not sufficient) condition for the maintenance of an open and stable world (in the pre-
sent context, regional) economy (Kindleberger, 1986; Milner, 1998). Hegemonic stability
theory derives the indispensability of hegemonic leadership for economic openness and
stability from public-goods theory, holding that only large states have a material incentive
to supply non-excludable ‘collective’ goods rather than to ‘free-ride’. Germany has strong
economic and political incentives in the maintenance of a politically and economically
stable Europe that its governments have historically seen as being best secured through
integration, but, with its political leaders also being subject to growing ‘Euro-sceptical’
domestic political pressures, it is uncertain whether it will be willing, let alone able, to
sustain the burdens of hegemonic leadership indefinitely.
The upsurge of national-populist politics and the EU’s increasingly

‘unpermissive dissensus’
The first ‘tectonic plate’ whose movement has begun to destabilize European integration
concerns the domestic politics of the member states. In neo-functionalist, transactional-
ist, liberal intergovernmentalist and historical-institutional theories, ‘objective’ eco-
nomic and institutional constraints trump domestic political pressures in the member
states. Up until the late decade or so, however, domestic political constellations in the
member states were overwhelmingly conducive to closer political integration. First, this
process did not extend yet into many core areas of national state sovereignty so that EU
issues generally did not achieve very high levels of political salience and could be man-
aged by national political elites who did not face very tight constraints imposed by mass
political opinion. Not least compared with the current Eurozone crisis, the material
stakes of EU issues were modest. Second, the political landscapes in most member states
were dominated in any case by fundamentally pro-European Social Democratic, Christian
Democratic and Liberal political parties.
As numerous observers of the EU have already noted, this ‘permissive consensus’ that
provided a benign context for European political elites to forge closer integration and
Webber 353
insulated EU decision-making from mass political pressures has meanwhile collapsed

(Hooghe and Marks, 2008; Majone, 2009; Taylor, 2008; for the original concept, see
Lindberg and Scheingold, 1970). In some member states, notably but not only in the UK,
there was of course always significant domestic political opposition to European integra-
tion. Nonetheless, in the post-Cold War and post-Maastricht Treaty period and especially
during the last decade, hostility towards the EU and closer European integration has
arguably transformed the domestic political context of EU decision-making to the point
where one could more accurately speak of an ‘unpermissive dissensus’ that severely
constrains the room for manoeuvre of member governments on EU issues.
As noted above and contrary to what was anticipated by neo-functionalists such as
Haas, rising volumes of transnational exchange in Europe have failed to produce a cor-
responding growth in European political identity (see Stone Sweet and Sandholtz, 1998:
6; also Kuhn, 2011). The ‘Europeans’ among the citizens of the member states — those
who have ‘deep economic and social ties with their counterparts across Europe’ and
benefit from Europe ‘materially and culturally’ — may account for no more than 10–15%
of the EU population (Fligstein, 2008: 250). In Fligstein’s estimate, they are over-
whelmed by two much larger groups of citizens with either a ‘more shallow’ relationship
to Europe (40–50%) or virtually none (another 40–50%). This relative paucity of
‘Europeans’ among EU citizens in turn makes popular support for the EU and the inte-
gration process contingent upon the evolution of the economic conjuncture and other
short-term variables. As in the post-Maastricht era, through the single currency, the EU
has become increasingly associated with economic crisis and stagnation and austerity,
this support has waned (Taylor, 2008: 26–35). By 2012, trust in the EU among member
states’ citizens had plunged to its ‘lowest-ever level’ (Eurobarometer, 2012: 13). Barely
three out of 10 — 31%, compared with 50% prior to the Global Financial Crisis — had
a ‘positive’ image of the EU (Eurobarometer, 2012: 14).
The growth of ‘anti-European’ or ‘Euro-sceptical’ political sentiment has opened up
political space for the emergence and growth of national-populist parties opposed to
European integration that are now represented in the legislatures of a majority of EU
member states and in some have the power to make or break governments (Spiegel
Online, 2011b). Given the growing political threat that these movements pose, it has
become politically less feasible for traditional ‘pro-European’ parties to ignore the senti-
ments that they represent. As national-populist parties are increasingly indispensable to
government formation and increasingly participate in government, their capacity to
influence member governments’ action at the European level has expanded.
At the same time as the balance of political power in many member states has tilted
sharply towards ‘anti-European’ political forces, the capacity of governments to control
the EU agenda in the member states — a prerequisite for the smooth functioning of the
processes of negotiation and ratification of EU policies — has been eroded. First, they
have faced increasingly irresistible political pressures to legitimize major EU decisions
— treaty changes — in popular referenda. This trend has made the fate of the EU and the
integration process increasingly vulnerable to the shifting tides of public opinion.
Second, as the euro crisis illustrates, the capacity of national governments to implement
the terms of EU accords against hostile domestic interests, opinion, protests and even
strikes has been called increasingly into question. Together these trends have produced a
growing and increasingly acute tension between the requirements or logic of domestic
politics, on the one hand, and those of the EU (and international financial markets), on
the other — a tension occasionally manifested in ‘debtor’ governments’ backsliding in
respect of the implementation of austerity measures agreed to in return for financial aid
as well as in uncertainty as to whether creditor states will pledge the volumes of financial
aid required to keep the Eurozone intact.
During the last decade, the EU has thus entered uncharted territory, in which, to a
much greater degree than in the past, domestic politics in the member states no longer
functions as an ‘ally’ but rather as an ‘adversary’ of European integration. Whereas in the
era of the ‘permissive consensus’ European integration progressed akin to an army
advancing across a flat wide undefended plain, now the EU resembles one negotiating its
path step by step across a treacherous, narrow, steep and winding mountain pass under
enemy assault. As an increasingly ‘unpermissive dissensus’ has developed in the mem-
ber states, the danger that it will fall off one or the other side has substantially increased.
It is only now that the resilience of the EU to a hostile political context in the member
states is beginning to be severely tested. Integration theories that are based largely on the
analysis of European integration before and immediately after the end of the Cold War
may exaggerate its resilience and underestimate the EU’s vulnerability to political oppo-
sition and protest in the member states.
The role of Germany as a (semi-)hegemonic EU power

Other things being equal, the expansion of membership of the EU since the end of the
Cold War and of the Eurozone since the euro’s launch in 1999 would in any case have
complicated the task of conflict-mediation in both the Eurozone and the wider EU.
However, the Eurozone crisis easily dwarfs the scale of any pre-existing distributional
conflicts in a period when popular support in the member states for the integration pro-
cess was already dwindling. It has involved the imposition of radical austerity pro-
grammes among ‘debtor’ states in the Eurozone and, to bail these out, the mobilization
by ‘creditor’ states of large volumes of loans and credits that, to the extent that the
debtor states at some stage default, will not be repaid. In this kind of politico-economic
conjuncture — in which, as per the legendary remark of the Luxembourg Prime Minister
and Euro Group chairman, Jean-Claude Juncker, political leaders ‘all know what to do’,
but ‘don’t know how to get re-elected after we’ve done it’ — there is or would normally
be an acute risk of the EU’s strongly consensus-oriented policymaking process being
completely paralysed.
This brings us to the second ‘tectonic plate’ that has been shifting in a way that may
— but will not necessarily — derail European integration: the role played by Germany
in the EU. As the crisis has progressed and deepened, Germany has increasingly visibly
assumed the role of the Eurozone’s and the EU’s ‘indispensable’ member (Sikorski,
2011). By common consensus, the European Commission, the putative champion of
common European interests, has been marginalized. It commands neither the resources
nor the democratic legitimacy to be able to drive the EU’s crisis strategy. With Berlin
displaying ‘bolder political leadership than at any other time in the history of European
monetary integration’, France looked to have been degraded to an ever more junior
Webber 355
partner in any increasingly asymmetrical bilateral relationship — one in which the bal-
ance of power resembled that in the ‘special’ Anglo-American relationship (Moravcsik,
2012: 61; Paterson, 2011). Germany’s unique capacity to make or break the euro surely
explained why, when Chancellor Angela Merkel entered the room, other EU leaders
were prone to ‘fall silent’ (Rachman, 2011). Simultaneously, however, it has become
increasingly uncertain whether, in the longer term, Germany will be both able and will-
ing to sustain this role.
Comparative analysis underscores the uniqueness of Germany’s regional role in
Europe and suggests that a diminution in Germany’s long-standing strong support for
European integration would severely destabilize the EU. For Sweet Stone and Sandholtz
and for Moravcsik II, growing levels of transnational exchange and growing economic
interdependence, respectively, increasingly narrow the range of policy options open to
member governments and constrain them to acquiesce in choices that bring about closer
integration. Cross-regional comparison shows, however, that there is no close corre-
spondence between levels of intra-regional trade and political integration. Thus, in 2008,
intra-regional trade accounted for 42.5% of overall trade in East Asia (comprising the 10
member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, China, Japan, South Korea
and Taiwan) and 40% in North America (Canada, Mexico and the US) — roughly two-
thirds of the figure (64%) for the 27-member EU (Hsiao et al., 2009: 15). Trade between
the 21 member states of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) made up a
slightly higher proportion of their overall trade than between the EU member states.
Levels of trade policy and other forms of cooperation have actually grown in East Asia,
North America and the Asia-Pacific region during recent decades, suggesting that
growing levels of economic exchange and economic interdependence do indeed create
pressures on governments to institutionalize their economic ties. However, levels of
political integration in East Asia, the Asia-Pacific and North America are not even
remotely comparable to those in Europe (on East Asia, see Katzenstein, 1997). Evidently,
the impact of growing levels of economic exchange and interdependence on political
integration is mediated — and circumscribed — by other intervening variables. Europe’s
political exceptionalism cannot therefore be attributed to its having an exceptionally
densely integrated regional economy.
It is rather the presence, in the form of Germany, of a pro-integrationist regional
hegemon that best explains Europe’s comparatively very high level of political integra-
tion. In his comparative analysis of the conditions of ‘successful’ regional integration,
defined as the ‘extent to which integration groups manage to match their stated integra-
tion goals’, Mattli identifies the presence of such a state as one of two key explanatory
variables, as also does Cohen in his account of the conditions of survival of multinational
monetary unions (Cohen, 1998; Mattli, 1999). The rare other ‘success stories’ of integra-
tion — the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) before it effectively became mori-
bund with the accession of the UK to the EU in 1973, the North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) and the 19th-century German Zollverein — would not have mate-
rialized in Mattli’s account without the support of their respective ‘leading’ member
states, namely, the UK, the US and Prussia. However, neither the UK while it belonged
to EFTA nor the US in NAFTA aspired to create anything or much more than a free trade
area, so that the ‘stated integration goals’ were in both cases much more limited than
those associated with the EU. What has made the EU exceptional in respect of regional
political integration is neither an exceptionally high level of economic integration nor the
presence of a ‘leading state’ as such, but rather the fact that, compared with other ‘lead-
ing’ regional powers, the member state that occupies this role in the EU — Germany —
has pursued a much more radical agenda involving the creation of a quasi-federal
European state. Two principal motives have driven Germany’s pro-integrationist agenda.
First, as Moravcsik points out (1998: 495), German prosperity is much more dependent
than that of other putative regional hegemons on trade with its geographical neighbour-
hood: about 60% of its trade is with other EU member states. In 2011, this trade accounted
for more than 80% of Germany’s €158bn current account surplus. Second, and no less
importantly, given its demographic and economic size, its historical role as the originator
of two world wars and perpetrator of the Holocaust, and its geographic location in the
centre of Europe, Germany needs good and close relations with other European states to
avert the risk of diplomatic isolation and a resurgence of traditional ‘balance-of-power’
politics in the region.4
In the tow of hegemonic stability theory, Mattli views ‘benevolent leading’ regional
powers as performing two critical functions in respect of political integration. They, first,
serve as a ‘focal point in the coordination of rules, regulations and policies’ and, second,
help, through the provision of financial aid, to ‘ease tensions that arise from the inequi-
table distribution of gains from integration’ (Mattli, 1999: 42). In the EU, the Federal
Republic has long played the role of ‘regional paymaster’, making by some margin the
largest net contributions to the EU budget. These contributions were instrumental in
financing the Common Agricultural Policy, which was a condition for French participa-
tion in European integration, and the EU’s regional policies, which poorer member states
have regularly insisted upon as a condition for their acquiescence in policies of not only
market liberalization, but also, as the Maastricht Treaty negotiations showed, monetary
integration (Lange, 1992). Germany contributed 27% of the budget of the temporary and
permanent bail-out funds created in 2010 and 2011 to avert a collapse of the Eurozone.
However, prior to the current crisis at least, Germany has not provided a consistent ‘focal
point’ for EU rules, regulations and policies. Historically, it typically preferred to defer
to France on major issues. Although, particularly since the Eastern enlargement, it occu-
pies a ‘central network position’ in EU bargaining processes (Naurin and Lindahl, 2008:
73–77), EU policy choices do not disproportionately reflect German preferences.
Compromise and consensus, not a German diktat, are the rules in EU decision-making
(Achen, 2006: 297; Schneider et al., 2006: 213). In as far as the EU guarantees German
firms’ access to a large European market and protects Germany against the danger of
diplomatic isolation, its very existence provides Germany with substantial economic and
political advantages that have hitherto been regarded as outweighing the cost of Berlin’s
net contribution to the EU budget. As a regional paymaster, but hitherto not typically a
disproportionately influential rule-maker, Germany was long more a ‘semi-hegemonic’
than ‘normal’ hegemonic power in the EU.
The EU’s heavy dependence on Germany’s financial strength makes the EU’s sur-
vival correspondingly strongly contingent on German support for the integration pro-
cess. There are, however, significant obstacles to Germany’s playing the role of a
fully fledged ‘benevolent hegemon’ in the EU.5 First, as exhibited first and foremost
in the reluctance of German political elites and citizens to countenance the
Webber 357
deployment of military force abroad, post-World War II Germany is unaccustomed to

and profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of playing such a role. Second, in as far
as ‘effective’ regional hegemons must be capable of swift and decisive action, espe-
cially to combat financial or other kinds of crisis, the structure of the German political
system, in which decision-making powers are highly fragmented and key EU deci-
sions require extensive negotiations and a broad consensus between the government
and opposition, federal and state governments, and legislative and judicial organs,
also poses obstacles to the German government’s playing this role. Indeed, the recent
jurisprudence of the Federal Constitutional Court, which has inter alia strengthened
the EU decision-making competences of the Federal Parliament, has imposed addi-
tional constraints on the federal government in this regard. Third, the strongly export-
oriented structure of the German economy, of which the quasi-permanent trade
surplus that it maintains with other EU member states is one manifestation and con-
sequence, renders Germany incapable of playing one of a stabilizing hegemon’s key
functions — namely, to provide economically ailing Eurozone member states with the
‘market of last resort’. Fourth, in terms of its economic and financial (not to mention
other kinds of) strength, Germany does not dominate the Eurozone or the EU to the
same extent as other putative hegemonic powers do theirs, so that in sheer material
terms it cannot ‘bail out’ other large Eurozone member states as easily as the US,
for example, could ‘bail out’ Mexico in its 1994 financial crisis.
While these structural constraints circumscribe the capacity of the German govern-
ment to act as a stabilizing hegemon in the EU, various developments since the late
1990s have also reduced its willingness to do so. Especially as the Euro zone crisis has
developed and intensified, the traditionally strongly ‘pro-European’ political orientation
of the German mass public and elites has grown weaker and more ambivalent (Schieder,
2011). This trend is all the more ominous for Germany’s EU role as, at the same time, in
the wake of the end of the Cold War, German foreign policy in general has become
increasingly ‘domestified’ (Harnisch, 2009). Fanned by elements of the press, public
opinion towards the EU has become more divided and critical and, on some issues, nota-
bly the ‘bailing out’ of debtor states in the Eurozone, decidedly hostile. The federal states
(Bundesländer) have likewise become more resistant to the transfer of further policy-
making competences to Brussels. Although the Federal Constitutional Court
(Bundesverfassungsgericht) has not declared any of the recent European treaties as
incompatible with the German Basic Law, its judgements appear to circumscribe the
extent to which further powers may be transferred from the national to the European
level. ‘Anti-European’ or ‘Euro-sceptical’ currents have gained ground and are visible
and vocal in several political parties, notably the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU),
Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Left Party (Schieder, 2011). Reflecting genera-
tional changes in the German political elite, political leaders’ European discourse has
become less idealistic and more interest-based (Becker and Maurer, 2009; Bulmer and
Paterson, 2010, 2011; Paterson, 2011). Collectively, together with the magnitude of the
material stakes of the Eurozone crisis, these factors explain why, at the risk of rekindling
long-extinguished flames of anti-German sentiment, the German government has
recently become much more overt and assertive in the exercise of its power in the EU.6
Berlin is faced with the increasingly intractable task of reconciling the minimum of what
it must to do to ‘save the euro’ with the maximum that it can sell to domestic political
actors and constituencies without triggering a political revolt.
Nonetheless, no fundamental paradigm change has yet occurred in German European
policy. When the German Interior Minister warned other member states in the early
phase of the Eurozone crisis that Germany was going to defend its national interests
vigorously and ‘act just as other European countries do in Brussels’, he took care to add:
‘this will not make it automatically anti-European’ (Financial Times, 2010). German
national interests in the EU are not necessarily the same as those of other, traditionally
more ‘Euro-sceptical’ member states. The political pressure on the governing centre–
right coalition to make a fundamental shift in its European policy orientation — while it
is growing — is not as strong as in many other member states. There is still no significant
anti-European, national-populist political force in Germany and the principal federal
opposition parties, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and, even more so, the Greens,
remain resolutely pro-European. If the next German federal government should be a
Grand Coalition of the Social and Christian Democratic parties, it would be more solidly
‘pro-European’ than the existing coalition, as the FDP with its vocal ‘anti-Euro’ minority
would be relegated to the opposition and the Christian Democrats would be prevented by
their participation in government with the SPD from yielding to the temptation of anti-
European populism. If the next federal government should be a ‘red–green’ coalition, it
would likely be more ‘pro-European’ than the existing government, precluding a funda-
mental reorientation of German European policy for the next several years. But a ‘red–
green’ government might be confronted by an increasingly Euro-sceptical centre–right
opposition that, if and when it returned to office in Berlin, could be driven by domestic
electoral calculations to adopt a significantly more confrontational stance towards the
EU and European integration, especially if in the intervening period the crisis of the
Eurozone has not been resolved and its actual or potential costs for Germany have con-
tinued to grow. This temptation might grow even stronger if, as seems likely, German
prosperity should become gradually less dependent on exports to other European econo-
mies and more dependent on those to Asia, thus eroding one of the two pillars underpin-
ning German ‘pro-Europeanism’ (Ewing and Dempsey, 2011). A Grand Coalition of
pro-European Social and Christian Democrats, on the other hand, may, as the experience
of other EU member states suggests, spawn the emergence and growth of new national-
populist parties and/or, for electoral-political motives, the transformation into Euro-
sceptical movements of those established parties that would then be in the opposition.
Conclusion
The spillover process is far from automatic. … It depends on the continued division of Germany
and the tacit recognition of that status in the minds of West German leaders. (Haas, quoted in
Keohane and Hoffmann, 1990: 248)
Historical-institutionalist, liberal intergovernmentalist and neo-functionalist-cum-

transactionalist theories of European integration posit that cooperation between EU mem-
ber states is meanwhile so highly institutionalized and the ties of economic interdependence
that bind them together are so strong that the EU cannot or can hardly disintegrate. My
analysis implies that the EU’s future is more contingent. It identifies two principal and
Webber 359
interrelated threats to the durability of European integration. First, contrary to the

above-mentioned theories and in line with some comparative-federalist research, it sug-
gests that the EU is very vulnerable to domestic political backlashes manifested in the rise
of national populism in the member states, particularly so long as few citizens in the
member states share a strong European identity and there are no strong pan-European
political parties that can effectively integrate and mediate their conflicting interests. This
vulnerability is particularly acute in the context of a monetary union whose crisis has
unleashed severe distributional conflicts within the Eurozone. Second, it argues, in
hegemonic-stability-theoretical vein (and in partial agreement with IR institutionalism,
not to mention — see above — with the original neo-functionalist Haas), that the EU
stands and falls with Germany. It is primarily due to German engagement and support for
a quasi-federal European state that Europe has become the world’s most densely politi-
cally integrated region. German domestic politics therefore matters more for the EU’s
future than that of any other member state. ‘Objective’ economic or financial constraints
may just finally override domestic political resistance to EU-imposed austerity policies
among the smaller, poorer and more deeply indebted member states and dissuade them
from choosing to opt out of the Eurozone and the EU. Germany, however, has relatively
greater autonomy to follow a European policy reflecting domestic political preferences.
Hence, it is not at the ‘periphery’, but at the ‘centre’, in Berlin, that the Eurozone’s and the
EU’s fate is more likely to be decided.
It is difficult to envisage exactly how the EU might disintegrate, save to say that such a
process, should it occur, would very likely begin with a — partial or complete — disinte-
gration of the Eurozone. Kelemen, for example (2007: 61–65), has distinguished between
four EU disintegration scenarios: dissolution, limited secession, atrophy, the growth of
variable geometry and civil war. It is possible, as Moravcsik (2012: 68) has recently argued,
that ‘even a collapse of the Euro would not jeopardize the existence of the EU’. However,
the reverberations of such an event would undoubtedly give a massive boost to anti-EU
movements across the continent in the first instance and require an immense and sustained
collective effort on the part of existing pro-European elites to ‘hold the line’ against a pos-
sible downward spiral of disintegration. Not only the euro, but also the ‘four freedoms’ (of
movement of goods, services, capital and people), the ‘basis of the entire [European] pro-
ject’, could be swept away (Mény, 2012: 160). However, this analysis claims only that,
particularly as domestic political constellations in many member states have become much
more inimical towards the EU, German engagement and support is indispensable to the
durability of the euro, the EU and European integration and that there is a very significant
risk that this support will wane and no longer be able to sustain the European project in the
future. No paradigm change has yet occurred in Germany’s traditional staunchly ‘pro-
integrationist’ European policy orientation, but, particularly if the Eurozone crisis cannot
be brought under control, it is conceivable that such a change will occur within the next
decade. If it should, then the prospects for the EU and the European integration process
would look a great deal bleaker than they do today. In more than 60 years, the European
integration process has confronted and survived many crises. But it has never so far had to
confront a crisis ‘made in Germany’.
Future scholars of Europe, European integration and international relations may look
back on the current crisis of the Eurozone and the EU and see it as having been specific
to this region, precipitated by a decaying social model that collapsed under crippling
burdens of government debt and exacerbated by an overly ambitious single currency

project that disregarded major, ultimately unbridgeable, economic divergences between
its members. That would be one possible future interpretation. Equally, however, depend-
ing on how the EU weathers the crisis and how closely events in Europe are paralleled in
other regions and internationally, they may look back and see it as one element or chapter
in a larger ‘story’, that of a gathering, broader crisis or malaise of regional and interna-
tional multilateralism. The plethora of regional and pluri- or minilateral trade agreements
signed across the world over the last decade or so cannot disguise the fact that most
regions in the world remain at best only very weakly politically integrated and regional
organizations therefore cannot be relied upon to institutionalize and secure peaceful
cooperation among their members. ‘Benevolent’ regional hegemons, of the kind that
Germany long incarnated at least in an attenuated fashion in the EU, are notable for their
scarcity and even Germany’s capacity and willingness to play this role in future is, as we
have seen above, questionable. At the same time, international multilateral organizations
are displaying growing signs of fragility and decay. The Doha round of trade liberaliza-
tion negotiations has been adjourned sine die and the World Trade Organization is find-
ing it increasingly difficult to hold the line against growing protectionist practices among
its members. Initial hopes that the G20 could effectively coordinate the anti-crisis poli-
cies of the world’s largest economies have meanwhile been dashed, causing critics to
ridicule it as the ‘G0’ (Bremmer and Roubini, 2011). Whether in respect of the conflicts
surrounding the ‘Arab Spring’ or climate change, the United Nations has regularly been
shown to be impotent in dealing with major traditional or non-traditional security chal-
lenges. Events of the last decade do not give much ground for hopes that regional or
international multilateral organizations or, still less, international law could ensure that
inter-state conflicts are mediated and resolved cooperatively as well as peacefully.
If we are indeed witnessing the early phase of a generalized crisis of regional and
international multilateralism, how might this be explained? In the course of the years,
hegemonic stability theory has been severely criticized (for just two examples, see Lake,
1993; Snidal, 1985). But it has also found numerous — theoretical and empirical —
defenders (Chase-Dunn et al., 2000; Gowa, 1989; Hubbard, 2010). Is it possible that, as
hegemonic stability theory would suggest, the roots of the gathering crisis of interna-
tional multilateralism are to be found in the ‘end of the United States’ unipolar moment’
(Layne, 2006) and the arrival at long last of the long-anticipated decline in the capacity
as well as willingness of the US to play the role of a stabilizing international hegemon?
Is it also possible that, if not only American hegemony is in retreat, but also no other
power, neither a politically integrated Europe nor China, is on the horizon that could fill
the vacuum that an American retreat would leave behind, we are on the verge of an inter-
national era of ‘apolarity’ disturbingly reminiscent of the interwar period (Ferguson,
2004)? To explore these troubling questions goes beyond the bounds of the present arti-
cle, but they are important enough from both a theoretical and, much more so, practical
standpoint to merit at least being posed.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank William Paterson, Fritz Scharpf, Joachim Schild, Jonathan Story,
Stefan Auer, Jörgen Örström Möller and two anonymous reviewers of this journal as well as its
editors for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. The usual disclaimer applies.
Webber 361
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or
not-for-profit sectors.
Notes
1. I use the label ‘Moravcsik I’ to refer to his theory of intergovernmental institutionalism to
distinguish this from his later theory of liberal intergovernmentalism (‘Moravcsik II’), which
differs from the former primarily by attaching decisive weight to economic considerations
as motives shaping the preferences of member governments in the EU. While Moravcsik I
implies that political integration is a highly contingent process, Moravcsik II suggests that
high economic interdependence among member states leaves governments no real alternative
but to persevere with European integration.
2. In a subsequent analysis, Stone Sweet et al. (2001: 27–28) concluded similarly that it was
‘unlikely’ that any future crisis, whether associated with enlargement, monetary union or
the EU’s ‘democratic deficit’, would result in institutionalized cooperation in the EU being
‘rolled back’.
3. The first ‘domestic politics’ interpretation of EU politics was provided by Bulmer (1983).
However, Bulmer was concerned to explain the day-to-day EU policy choices of member
governments rather than integration policy, decisions or trends in these terms. Moravcsik II
(1991: 25–27) also attributes an important role to domestic politics in the determination of
EU politics, but, reflecting the fact that EU politics in the Cold War era were much more elite-
dominated than today, he attached less importance to mass political attitudes in this regard
than to ‘policy-makers, technocrats, political parties and interest groups’.
4. Germany’s geopolitical interest in an integrated Europe is powerfully expressed in the follow-
ing remarks by the former Federal German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt (1993): ‘In terms of
population, Germany today is one and a half times as big as France or England, twice as big
as Poland, five times as big as Holland, eight times as big as Belgium. In all of these countries
there are worries concerning the prospective economic power of Germany; in addition to this,
there are the awful memories of the Hitler era. If our country does not want to isolate itself, if
Europe is not to return to a policy of forming coalitions as a counterweight to Germany, then
we Germans need to be integrated into an EU that functions effectively.’
5. These obstacles are discussed extensively in numerous contributions by Bulmer and Paterson
(see, e.g., Bulmer and Paterson, 2010, 2011; Paterson, 2011).
6. In July 2012, Germany’s overall ‘exposure’ to the Eurozone crisis (i.e. how much it would
cost Germany if the Eurozone debtor states exited from the euro and could not repay their
debts) was estimated by one German research institute to be some €771bn, almost 100 times
the sum of the German government’s net contribution to the regular EU budget (€8.8bn in
2009) (Ifo-Institut, 2012). According to the same source, if such a worst-case scenario should
materialize, Germany would bear some 43% of the costs, equivalent roughly to 30% of the
country’s annual GDP.
References
Achen CH (2006) Evaluating political decision-making models. In: Thomson R, Stokman FN,
Achen CH, et al. (eds) The European Union Decides. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 264–298.
Barber T (2010) Saving the Euro: Bound towards a tense future. ft.com, 12 October. Available at:
www.ft.com/int;/cms/s/cffcc1e4-d643–11df-81f0–00133feabcd0,dwp_uuid=03d1
Becker P and Maurer A (2009) Deutsche Integrationsbremsen. SWP-Aktuell 41. Berlin: Stiftung
Wissenschaft und Politik.
Bremmer I and Roubini N (2011) A G-zero world: The new economic club will produce conflict,
not competition. Foreign Affairs 90(2).
Bulmer S (1983) Domestic politics and European Community policy-making. Journal of Common
Market Studies 21(4): 349–363.
Bulmer S and Paterson W (2010) Germany and the European Union: From ‘tamed power’ to nor-
malized power? International Affairs 86(5): 1051–1073.
Bulmer S and Paterson W (2011) A life more ordinary? Ten theses on a normalization of Germa-
ny’s role in the EU. Paper presented at the European Studies Association biennial conference,
Boston, 3–5 March.
Chase-Dunn C, Kawano Y and Brewer B (2000) Trade globalization since 1795: Waves of integra-
tion in the world-system. American Sociological Review 65 (February): 77–95.
Cohen B (1998) The Geography of Money. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Eurobarometer (2012) Public Opinion in the European Union: First Results. Available at: www.
ec.europa.eu/publicopinion/indexen.htm (accessed 29 July 2012).
Ewing J and Dempsey J (2011) Europe’s economic powerhouse drifts east. New York Times 18
July. Available at: www.nytimes.com/2011/07/19/business/global/Germany-Europes-Power-
house-D
Ferguson N (2004) A world without power. Foreign Policy 143: 32–39.
Financial Times (2010) Germany takes more assertive stance in EU. 21 May.
Financial Times (2011) Merkel promises euro ‘will not fail’. 8 September.
Fligstein N (2008) Euro-Clash: The EU, European Identity, and the Future of Europe. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Gowa J (1989) Rational hegemons, excludable goods, and small groups: An epitaph for hegemonic
stability theory? World Politics 41(3): 307–324.
Haas E (1976) Turbulent fields and the theory of regional integration. International Organization
30(2): 173–212.
Harnisch S (2009) The politics of domestication: A new paradigm in German foreign policy. Ger-
man Politics 18(4): 455–468.
Hsiao C-H, Wei H-C, Hung Y-H, et al. (2009) Prospects for an East Asia Free Trade Area. Paper
available at: www.ueb.edu.vn/Uploads/file/lethuydzung@gmail.com/2010/09/10/IP_Prospect
Hoffmann S (1966) Obstinate or obsolete? The fate of the nation-state. In: Eilstrup-Sangiovanni M
(ed.) Debates on European Integration: A Reader. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
134–159.
Hooghe L and Marks G (2008) A postfunctionalist theory of European integration: From permis-
sive consensus to constraining dissensus. British Journal of Political Science 39: 1–23.
Hubbard J (2010) Hegemonic stability theory: An empirical analysis. ISRJ/th INK Globally. Avail-
able at: http://isrj.wordpress.com/2010/05/28/hegemonic-stability-theory/ (accessed 19 July
2012).
Ifo-Institute (2012) The exposure level — Eurozone countries’ exposure, highlighting Germa-
ny’s share, derived from bailouts and other financial support measures for distressed countries.
(10 July)
Katzenstein PJ (1997) Introduction: Asian regionalism in comparative perspective. In: Katzenstein PJ
and Shiraishi T (eds) Network Power: Japan and Asia. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1–44.
Kelemen RD (2007) Built to last? The durability of EU federalism. In: Meunier S and McNamara K
(eds) Making History: The State of the European Union, Vol. 8. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 51–66.
Webber 363
Keohane RO (1993) Institutional theory and the realist challenge after the Cold War. In: Baldwin D
(ed.) Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate. New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 269–300.
Keohane RO and Hoffmann S (1990) Institutional change in Europe in the 1980s. In: Wallace W
(ed.) The Dynamics of European Integration. London: Pinter, 237–255.
Keohane RO and Nye J (1993) Introduction: The end of the Cold War in Europe. In: Keohane RO,
Nye J and Hoffmann S (eds) After the Cold War: International Institutions and State Strategies
in Europe, 1989–1991. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1–19.
Kindleberger CP (1986) The World in Depression, 1929–1939. Berkeley, CA: University of Cali-
fornia Press.
Krasner S (1984) Approaches to the state: Alternative conceptions and historical dynamics. Com-
parative Politics 16(2): 223–246.
Kreppel A (2012) The normalization of the European Union. Journal of European Public Policy
19(5): 635–645.
Kuhn T (2011) Individual transnationalism, globalisation and Euroscepticism: An empirical test
of Deutsch’s transactionalist theory. European Journal of Political Research 50(6): 811–837.
Lake D (1993) Leadership, hegemony, and the international economy: Naked emperor or tattered
monarch with potential? International Studies Quarterly 37(4): 459–489.
Lange P (1992) Maastricht and the Social Protocol: Why Did They Do It? Berkeley, CA: Univer-
sity of California Center for German and European Studies, Working Paper 1.5.
Layne C (2006) The unipolar illusion revisited: The coming end of the United States’ unipolar
moment. International Organization 31(2): 7–41.
Lindberg L and Scheingold S (1970) Europe’s Would-Be Polity. Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall.
McKay D (1999a) Federalism and European Union: A Political Economy Perspective. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
McKay D (1999b) The political sustainability of European monetary union. British Journal of
Political Science 29(3): 463–485.
McKay D (2004) William Riker on federalism: Sometimes wrong but more right than anyone else?
Regional and Federal Studies 14(2): 167–186.
Majone G (2009) Europe as the Would-Be World Power: The EU at Fifty. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Mattli W (1999) The Logic of Regional Integration: Europe and Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Mattli W and Stone Sweet A (2012) Regional integration and the evolution of the European pol-
ity: On the fiftieth anniversary of the Journal of Common Market Studies. Journal of Common
Market Studies 50(1): 1–17.
Mearsheimer JJ (1990) Back to the future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War. International
Security 15(4): 5–56.
Mearsheimer JJ (2001) The future of the American pacifier. Foreign Affairs 80(5): 46–61.
Mearsheimer JJ (2010) Why is Europe peaceful today? European Political Science 9(3): 387–397.
Mény Y (2012) Conclusion: A voyage to the unknown. Journal of Common Market Studies 50(1):
154–164.
Milner H (1998) International political economy: Beyond hegemonic stability. Foreign Policy
100: 112–123.
Moravcsik A (1991) Negotiating the Single European Act: National interests and conventional
statecraft in the European Community. International Organization 45(1): 19–56.
Moravcsik A (1993) Preferences and power in the European Community: A liberal intergovern-
mentalist approach. Journal of Common Market Studies 31(4): 473–524.
Moravcsik A (1998) The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to
Maastricht. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Moravcsik A (2008) The European constitutional settlement. World Economy 31(1): 158–183.
Moravcsik A (2009) Europe defies the skeptics: How crisis will make the EU stronger. Available
at: www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2009/07/31/europe-defies-the-skeptics
Moravcsik A (2010) In defense of Europe. Newsweek 7 June: 24–27.
Moravcsik A (2012) Europe after the crisis: How to sustain a common currency. Foreign Affairs
91(3): 54–68.
Naurin D and Lindahl R (2008) East–north–south: Coalition-building in the Council before and
after enlargement. In: Naurin D and Wallace H (eds) Unveiling the Council of the European
Union: Games Governments Play in Brussels. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 64–80.
Paterson W (2011) The reluctant hegemon? Germany moves centre stage in the European Union.
In Copsey N and Haughton T (eds) JCMS Annual Review of the European Union in 2010.
Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 57–75.
Pierson P (1998) The path to European integration: A historical institutionalist analysis. In: Eil-
strup-Sangiovanni M (ed.) The Debate on European Integration: A Reader. Basingstoke: Pal-
grave Macmillan, 304–324.
Rachman G (2011) Hang on to your purse, Ms Merkel. Financial Times 5 September.
Scharpf FW (2006) The joint decision trap revisited. Journal of Common Market Studies 44(4):
845–864.
Schieder S (2011) Germany: Problematizing Europe, or evidence of an emergent Euroscepticism?
In: Harmsen R and Schild J (eds) Debating Europe: The 2009 European Parliament Elections
and Beyond. Baden-Baden: Nomos, 33–50.
Schild J (2010) Mission impossible? The potential for Franco-German leadership in the enlarged
EU. Journal of Common Market Studies 48(5): 1367–1390.
Schmidt H (1993) Article in Die Zeit 6 August.
Schmitter P (1971) A revised theory of regional integration. In: Lindberg L and Scheingold S (eds)
Regional Integration — Theory and Research. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
232–264.
Schneider G, Steunenberg B and Widgrén M (2006) Evidence with insight: What models contrib-
ute to EU research. In: Thomson R, Stokman FN, Achen CH, et al. (eds) The European Union
Decides. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 299–316.
Sikorski R (2011) I fear Germany’s power less than her inactivity. Financial Times 28 November.
Snidal D (1985) The limits of hegemonic stability theory. International Organization 39(4):
579–614.
Spiegel Online (2010) Merkel warns of Europe’s collapse: ‘If Euro fails, so will the idea of Euro-
pean Union’. Available at: www.spiegel.de/international/germany
Spiegel Online (2011a) Röttgen fordert Europa-Offensive der Regierung. 7 September. Available
at: www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,518,druck-784819,00.html
Spiegel Online (2011b) Rechtes Europa. Available at: www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/bild-
757671–204649.html
Stone Sweet A and Sandholtz W (1997) European integration and supranational governance. Jour-
nal of European Public Policy 4(1): 297–317.
Stone Sweet A and Sandholtz W (eds) (1998) European Integration and Supranational Gover-
nance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Stone Sweet A and Sandholtz W (1999) European integration and supranational governance revis-
ited: Rejoinder to Branch and Øhrgaard. Journal of European Public Policy 6(1): 144–154.
Stone Sweet A, Sandholtz W and Fligstein N (eds) (2001) The Institutionalization of Europe.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Webber 365
Taylor P (2008) The End of European Integration: Anti-Europeanism Examined. London: Rout-
ledge.
Thelen K and Steinmo S (1992) Historical institutionalism in comparative politics. In: Steinmo S,
Thelen K and Longstreth F (eds) Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Compara-
tive Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1–32.
Webber D (ed.) (1999) The Franco-German Relationship in the European Union. London: Rout-
ledge.
Author biography
Douglas Webber is Professor of Political Science at INSEAD, Europe Campus,
Fontainebleau, France.

How Likely Is It That The European Union Will Disintegrate

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

How Likely Is It That The European Union Will Disintegrate

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

461286 EJT20210.

1177/1354066112461286European Journal of International RelationsWebber

The conditions of European disintegration: Competing

Realism — the arch-pessimists

Classical intergovernmentalism — the moderate pessimists

Classical intergovernmentalism focuses our attention on the evolution and degree of

International Relations institutionalism — the cautious optimists

Historical institutionalism — the (slightly qualified) optimists

Neo-functionalism, transactionalism and liberal intergovernmentalism

Comparative federalism — optimists (?) and pessimists

Analysis and critique — the contingency of European

Table 1. Will the EU disintegrate? Theoretical overview.

Main independent (Potential) Theory-based

The upsurge of national-populist politics and the EU’s increasingly

insulated EU decision-making from mass political pressures has meanwhile collapsed

The role of Germany as a (semi-)hegemonic EU power

deployment of military force abroad, post-World War II Germany is unaccustomed to

Historical-institutionalist, liberal intergovernmentalist and neo-functionalist-cum-

interrelated threats to the durability of European integration. First, contrary to the

burdens of government debt and exacerbated by an overly ambitious single currency

You might also like