The New Constitutionalism and the Impact of Spill-wer
| Author | Mark Evans |
| Published date | 01 June 2000 |
| Date | 01 June 2000 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/095207670001500202 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The New Constitutionalism and the Impact of
Spill-wer
Mark Evans
University of York
Abstract
This article provides a preliminary examination of the political
consequences of constitutional reform for the territorial management of the
British State. Drawing on European integration theory, it argues that the
constitutional reform process can best be examined through the lens of a
modified neo ficnctionalist approach which allows the political scientist to:
(1) study constitutional reform as a process; (2) describe what appears to be
going on in the process; (3) identify factors of integration and disinte-
gration; and, (4), predict future outcomes. It concludes that although the
New Constitutionalism is likely to be plagued by factors of disintegration
that will undermine territorial management and administration, these will be
counterbalanced by factors of integration which will increase the radicalism
of reform and the scope and intensity of change.
’In the more complex society of the modem world, a major problem is that an attempt to
solve one peripheral problem cannot be insulated from the rest of the state: a spill-over
effect is almost inevitable’ (Stein Rokkan in S. Rokkan and D. Urwin, 1983, pp.146-147).
Introduction
There are forces at work across the ’nations’ and ’regions’ that will
fundamentally alter the nature of politics in Britain. Indeed, there is already
enough evidence to suggest that constitutional reformers should be optimistic
about the long-term prospects of radical constitutional change in Britain.
While it would presently be difficult to describe New Labour’s programme
as ’radical’ it is likely that existing reforms will spill-over into other areas
and thus increase the radicalism of reform and the scope and intensity of
change. The political, social, not to mention economic and cultural signifi-
cance of the rise of the New Constitutionalism is certainly far-reaching; one
need only read the newspapers to confirm this. For the political scientist, too,
5
they are of consuming interest, for we can observe the actual processes
whereby political actors move beyond Whitehall as a basic framework for
action and create new political communities. Yet despite the growth of an
exhaustive literature on the emergence and development of the Labour
Party’s constitutional reform programme (see Blackburn and Plant, (eds.),
1999; Evans, 2000; Foley, 1999 and Hazel, (ed.), 1999), very little attention
has been paid to the impact of constitutional reform. This is a significant
oversight, for it is impossible to provide a true measure of the transformative
achievements, potential and indeed, failures, of the Labour Party’s constitu-
tional reform programme without such studies.
This article considers the political consequences of constitutional reform
for the territorial management of the British State. It will present an approach
that will help measure the extent to which the creation of a broad programme
of constitutional reform and the activities which take place in its framework,
give rise to factors of integration and disintegration. It offers an approach to
the subject, an argument, a research agenda and a preliminary sketch of the
impact of political, geographical and technical spill-over and spill-back that
has resulted from the process of constitutional reform after three and a half
years of Labour government. This will allow for some initial reflections on
three of the key research questions to be explored at this conference: (1) what
constitutional and administrative problems are caused by an essentially ad hoc
approach to reform? (2) have there been any unintended consequences of
action?; (3) is constitutional reform an integrating or disintegrating process?
The Argument
In the 1950s, 60s and 70s, Ernst Haas (1958, 1961, 1964, 1970) made a visionary
attempt to map out the contours of the process of European integration that
appeared to be leading to the creation of a new political community:
’We are interested in tracing progress towards a terminal condition called political
community. Successful nation-states constitute such communities and subsequent
amalgamations of several such states may also form communities. A variety of consti-
tutional and structural factors are compatible with this notion that a political
community exists when there is a likelihood of internal peaceful change in a setting of
contending groups with mutually antagonistic claims. The process of attaining this
condition among nation states we call integration, the process whereby political actors
in several distinct national settings are persuaded to shift loyalties, expectations, and
political activities towards a new and larger centre’ (Haas, 1961, pp.366-67).
Haas’s approach to European integration was termed neo-functionalism and
was based on an argument, a critique and a methodology. His argument was
that economic integration was ’based on political motivations that frequently
beget political consequences’ (1958, p.12). This was a direct critique of
David Mitrany’s (1943, 1966) functionalism. Functionalism was not a theory
of European integration but a prescription for how to prevent further conflict
occurring in Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War. His claim
that ’Peace will not be secured if we organise the world by what divides it’
6
(1943, 1966, p.96) led him to the view that community-building at the
nation-state level could only occur if there was a focus on
technical/functional co-operation rather than political/constitutional co-
operation, as the latter would inevitably lead to conflict,
’Our aim must be to call forth to the highest possible degree the active forces and
opportunities for co-operation, while touching as little as possible the latent or active
points of difference and opposition’ (1943, 1966, p.58).
This method of conflict avoidance emphasised the importance of the role of
technical international organisations, experts and rules as a way of side-
stepping nationalist tendencies. Mitrany’s work greatly influenced the
thinking of the two main architects of the European Coal and Steel
Community, Jean Monnet and Robert Schumann, particularly with regard to
the functionalist method.
In contrast, Haas argued that the functionalist division between technical,
non-controversial issues and political and economic issues was untenable and
lost sight of the multi-organisational dimension of integration. He claimed that a
shift in loyalties due to self-interest maximisation from nation state to the
European level would make the emergence of a new European polity a rational
choice. Haas’s research therefore focused on the study of collective action
between states with an emphasis on the process of integration itself, that is, the
role of social actors and technical experts, the interaction between belief systems
and the learning of integrative habits by political elites. In order to do this he
developed the concept of spill-over as a method for studying these processes.
Haas identified three main forms of spill-over; political, technical and
geographical. Political spill-over refers to the degree of convergence that
occurs between national elites as a consequence of the development of
supranational institutions (for example, the European Commission or the
European Court of Justice). The argument goes that as the process of institu-
tionalisation matures a transfer of loyalties would occur from the nation state
to the supranational organisation. In response, national elites would then
refocus their political energies towards attempting to influence European
institutions and processes. It was contended that political spill-over begets
technical spill-over. This refers to a situation in which the attempt to achieve
a supranational goal, for example the development of a coal and steel
community, becomes possible only if other, unanticipated, co-operative
activities are also carried out, for example its harmonisation with transport
policy (Cram, 1996). In this way co-operation in one sector can spill-over
into co-operation in another, previously unrelated, sector. Geographical spill-
over focuses on the impact of the European Economic Community (EEC) on
non-EEC members. It was argued that co-operation between one group of
member states would impact on the behaviour of excluded states either
because it would alter the pattern of trade or because, if successful, it would
lead to demands for membership. Geographical spill-over within the domain
of European integration is clearly associated with the issue of enlargement.
Haas was not the only integration theorist working from a neo-function-
7
alist perspective. His colleague Leon Lindberg (1963, p.7) focused on
analysing the conditions that the process of European integration required in
order to be successful:
(1) Central institutions and central policies must develop.
(2) The tasks assigned to these institutions must be important enough to
activate socio-economic processes to which conventional international
organisations have no access.
(3) These tasks must be inherently expansive.
(4) The Member States must continue to see their interests as consistent with
the enterprise.
By implication these conditions could also act as factors of disintegration if
not present to a sufficient degree. In essence, Lindberg brought a
prescriptive/predictive element to the study of European integration that will
prove valuable to this study.
Viewed from the context of its time, neo-functionalism may be regarded
as an innovative approach that combined...
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