Two Analytical Narratives about the History of the EU
| Author | Iain Mclean |
| Date | 01 December 2003 |
| DOI | 10.1177/146511650344006 |
| Published date | 01 December 2003 |
| Subject Matter | Conference |
06McLean (bc/t) 14/10/03 8:24 AM Page 499
European Union Politics
Forum section II
[1465-1165(200312)4:4]
Volume 4 (4): 499–506: 038141
Copyright© 2003
Two Analytical Narratives
SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks CA,
about the History of the EU
New Delhi
Iain McLean
University of Oxford, UK
In the past 15 years, the study of the European Union (EU) has undergone a
theoretical revolution. I review two recent efforts to tell analytical narratives
about the EU. An analytical narrative ‘combines analytic tools that are
commonly employed in economics and political science with the narrative
form, which is more commonly employed in history’ (Bates et al., 1998: 10).
Both authors are eminent social scientists: an economic historian (Milward,
2002) and a political scientist (Moravcsik, 1998; 2nd edition, 2003).
For the first three decades of the existence of the EU and its predecessor
organizations, almost all social science literature on it of which I am aware
was purely descriptive. This literature, although essential to understanding
the Union, gave no insights, no read-across to or from comparative politics
in general, and no testable predictions about the behaviour of actors in EU
politics. In the subfield of international relations, the dominant tradition
treated the EU as an intergovernmental body in the Westphalian system of
states. Few scholars were prepared to treat it as a supranational body, despite
the decision of the founding parties to create a supranational High Authority
(Rittberger, 2002; Milward, 2002: 46).
The sources of the theoretical revolution have been game theory and the
theory of social choice. Both of these are variously regarded as intimidating;
as mathematization and obfuscation for their own sakes; and as adding little
or nothing to descriptive accounts of EU politics. I will try to show that these
views are incorrect. Previous reviews in this slot (Dowding, 2000; Hug, 2003;
Albert, 2003) have shown that the technical literature from game theory and
social choice has a lot to offer the EU, although it should not be swallowed
whole.
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European Union Politics 4(4)
It has become commonplace for political scientists to talk, unfortunately
rather loosely, about ‘path dependence’. The phrase has a technical meaning
in social choice. A choice rule is independent of path if the outcome is the same
regardless of the order in which the component partial decisions are taken.
Conversely, it is path dependent if a given profile of preferences leads to
different outcomes according to the order in which the sub-routines for making
a choice are taken. In this technical sense, path dependency should be avoided
at all costs. It is a fatal objection to choice rules that suffer from it (such as the
Borda count as used to select winners in the Eurovision Song Contest).1
But it is too late, and too pedantic, to try to rescue ‘path dependence/y’
for its correct technical meaning. It has become more commonly used to
convey the idea that the path that is available for us to follow was set a long
time ago. In this sense, path dependence may be bad but it is inevitable. Marx
put it more elegantly:
Men make their own history, but they do not make it just as they please; they do
not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances
directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past. (Marx, [1852] 1968: 96)
The circumstances we encounter, given and transmitted from the past, are the
constitutions and practices of the Union and its predecessors since 1950.
Milward (2002) and Moravcsik (1998) between them give the best account of
the circumstances we have directly encountered, given and transmitted from
the past.
Milward (2002) appears in a series so venerable that it dates back to the
First World War. It is an Official History, no less. As neither the title nor the
subtitle is very helpful, I should make it clear that it is an official history of
the UK government’s attitude to (what is now) the EU between 1945 and 1963
– years that completed the UK government’s transition from imperialism to
Europeanism. This Europeanism was not, by 1963, yet embraced either by
other EU member states or by the British electorate.
Milward is rightly somewhat embarrassed by his format. An official
historian is normally granted privileged access to unreleased public records.
This...
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