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Postfunctionalism

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Integration and Differentiation in the European Union

Abstract

Postfunctionalism is the most recent addition to the canon of major integration theories. It agrees with the sociological-institutionalist assumption that jurisdictions build on communities of common culture and identity. Postfunctionalism further starts from the assumption that regional integration has become firmly embedded in the democratic mass politics of states.  The rise of self-determination concerns and the increasing politicization of regional integration constrain the ‘detached’ intergovernmental bargains theorized by intergovernmentalism, the spillovers theorized by neofunctionalism and the supranational community-building prospects theorized by constructivism. 

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

    Dirk Leuffen

  2. Department of Political Science, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich, Germany

    Berthold Rittberger

  3. Center for Comparative and International Studies, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Frank Schimmelfennig

Authors
  1. Dirk Leuffen
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  2. Berthold Rittberger
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  3. Frank Schimmelfennig
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Dirk Leuffen .

Appendices

Self-Test and Discussion Questions

  1. 1.

    How do the functional and postfunctional logic of demarcating jurisdictions and designing multi-level governance differ?

  2. 2.

    Why is European integration becoming more politicized?

  3. 3.

    Consider any pair of European states, e.g. Germany and Italy, the UK and Ireland, or Austria and Switzerland. How would you describe and explain the differential domestic politicization of European integration?

  4. 4.

    Commercial policy is more integrated than defence policy. How would postfunctionalism explain this vertical differentiation?

  5. 5.

    France and Germany participate in all EU policies, whereas the UK was not and Romania is not part of the eurozone and the Schengen area. How could postfunctionalism explain this variation?

  6. 6.

    Can the EU avoid or reduce politicization? And how could politicization become a process that supports rather than constrains further integration?

Further Reading

Hooghe, L., and Marks, G. 2009. A Postfunctionalist Theory of European Integration: From Permissive Consensus to Constraining Dissensus. British Journal of Political Science 39 (1): 1–23 is the seminal paper outlining postfunctionalist integration theory.

For these authors’ analysis of the transnational cleavage, see Hooghe, L. and Marks, G. 2018. Cleavage Theory Meets Europe’s Crises: Lipset, Rokkan and the Transnational Cleavage. Journal of European Public Policy 25 (1): 109–135.

König, T. 2018. Still the Century of Intergovernmentalism? Partisan Ideology, Two-level Bargains and Technocratic Governance in the Post-Maastricht Era. Journal of Common Market Studies 56 (6): 1240–1262 does not use the label ‘postfunctionalism’ but also develops an alternative account to intergovernmentalism based on domestic and party politics.

Hanspeter Kriesi (2016) provides a review of the research on politicization in the EU in ‘The politicization of European integration’, Journal of Common Market Studies 54 (S1): 32–47.

Winzen, T., and Schimmelfennig, F. 2016. Explaining Differentiation in European Union Treaties. European Union Politics 17 (4): 616–637 develop and test a postfunctionalist argument about differentiation in EU treaty revisions and contrast it with an intergovernmentalist argument about differentiation in EU enlargement treaties.

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Leuffen, D., Rittberger, B., Schimmelfennig, F. (2022). Postfunctionalism. In: Integration and Differentiation in the European Union. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-76677-1_6

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