II Obsti nate or Obsolete? The Fate of the Nation-State and the Case of Western Eu rope

STAN LEY H OFFMAN

The early 7960s were optimistic years for students of integration. The Europe(ln Economic Community was pressing integr(ltion forward at c1 rapid pace and neofunctionalists seemed to have discovered Ihe means by which advanced industrialized nations could push the in­ternational commun ity beyond the sovereign state and dramatically reduce the possiiJili ty of war. But was thiS, in fact, the end of the na ­tion -state? De C(lu/le's precipitation of the "empty chair crisis " in 7965 indicated to many international observers that the nation-state was alive (lnd well. One of them was Stanley Hoffmann of Harvard Un iversity.

Hoffmann-who was born in Vienna and ra ised in wartime France- argued in this very long 1966 Daedalus art icle (which bears close reading in its entirety) that the states of Europe were still self­interested entities with clea r interests, de~pite their wi llingness to en ­gage in closer cooperation in areas of " low politics," such as agricul­ture and trade. The members of the European Communities stub­bornly hung on 10 the sovereignty thai counts- con trol over foreign policy, national spcurity, and the use of force ("high pol itics ")- while only reluc lantly bargaining (lway control over important aspects of their economies in exchange fo r cleDr material benefits. Thus fun c-

Reprinted With permi ssion from Daedalus, Journa l of the American Acad ­emy of Arts and Sciences, from the issue entitled "Tradition and Cha nge," Summer 1966, vol. 95, no. 3. Notes omitted.

163

164 165 STANI EY HOFFMANN

lional integration, Hoffmann argued, rea ched its limils very quickly, failing to take Europe "beyond the nation-state."

Hoffmann 's approach tu international relations does not fit Ileatly into any single category I At one level he is a "realist " who sees international politics as the interaction of self-interested state's who protec t their sovere ignty in an anarchic world. At the same time, he admits the possibility of cooperation among sovereign stales, the de­velo/Yment of norms governing international behavior; and the impart of domestic politics on state interests . In this sense he is more of a " Jiber'l/. '· These two perspectives come together in his view of Euro­pean integration. Cooperation among European slates has changed the system of state interaction, but it has not eliminated state sover­eignt y. Integration occurs, according to Ho((mann, when sovereign state!>, pursuing their national interests, negotiate cooperative agree­m ents-a ,' iew often labeled "intergovernmentalisnI." fntergovern ­ment,ll bargaining can result in significant cooperation when the in­terests of the negotiating st.Jles co incide. But when states disagree over the best course of action, cooperation stalls, as it did in Europe

in the 7960s . Intergovernmentalism, with its emphasi.c; on the strength of the

natioll-state, provides a theoretical counter to neofullctionali..;m (Chapters 76 and 77) with its accent on the erosion of sovereignty by supranational actors. Hoffmann, as one of the first intergovern/llental­iSiS 10 chJ llenge the core assumptiom of the neofl/n etiunali,ts, laid Ihe foundation for Ihe grea t theoretica l debate of the early 7990s .

The crirical issue for eve ry srudent of world order is rhe fare of rhe narion-srare. In rhc nuclear age, rhe fragmcnrarion of rhe world inro counrless unirs, each of which has a claim ro independence, i, obviously dangerous for peace and illogical for welfare. The dy­namism which anima res rhose unirs, when rhev are nor merely cit y­~rares ()f limired expanse or dynasric ~rares manipulared by rh e Prince's calcularions, bur narion-srares rhar pour inro thcir forci r;n policy rhe collecrive pride, ambirions, fears, prejudices, and images of large ma sses of people, is particularly formidable. An ahsrract theo­risr could argue rhar any sysrcm of auronomous unirs follow s rh e same hasic rules, wharever rhe narure of rhosc unirs. Bur in pracricc, thar is, in history, their substance marters as much as rheir form; rhe story of world affairs since rhe French Revolurion is nor merel), onc more sequence in rhe bailer of sovereign srares; ir is rhe srory of rh c fires and upheavals propagared by narionalism. A claim [() sover­eignty based on hisrorical rradirion and dynas ric legirimaC)' alone has

OBSTIN,\ l[ OR OBSOLETE!

neve r had rhe fervor, rh e se lf-righreou~ assertiveness which a simi LI" claim based on rhe id ea and feelings of narionhood presenr,: in world polirics, rhe dynasric funcrion of nar io nalism is rhe consrirurion of narion-srares by amalgamarion or hy splinrering, and irs emorional funcrion is rhe supplying of a formid ahle good conscience ro leaders who see rheir task as the achievemenr of nationhood, th e defense of rhe nar ion, or rhe cxpansion of a narional mission.

Tbis is where the drama lies. The narion-srare is at rhe same rime a form of social organizarion ;3Ild-in practice if not in every brand of rheory-a facror of international non-integrarion; but those who argue in favor of a mo re integ rated world, eirher und er more centralized power or rhrough various networks of regional or fUllc­tional agencics, rend to forget Augusre Comte's old maxim thar on 1'lC

detruit que ce qu'O/1 remplace: the new "formula" will have to pro­vide not (lnly world order, bur also rhe kind of social organization in which leaders, f lires, and cirizens fee l dr home. There is currently no agreemenr on what such a formula will he; as a res ulr, nariOIl­stares-ofren inchoare, economically absurd, adminisrrarively ram­sh;)ckle, and imporent yer dangerous in inrernarional politics-re­main the basic units in spire of all rhe remon sr rati ons and ex hortarions. Th ey go on (autc de l11ieux despite rhe ir <1l1eged obso­lesce nce; indeed, nor only do they profit from man 's incapac iry to

bring Jhout a bcner ord er, hur rheir very existence is a formidahle obsta cle ro rheir replacement.

if there W,IS one parr of rhe world in \Vhich men of goodwill thou~hr rhat rh e narion-stare could be superseded, ir was We,rern Fu­rope. One of France's moq subtle commcnrarors on inrernational politics has recently reminded us of E. H. Carr's bold pl'Cdicrion of 1945: "we shall nor see dgain a Europe of rwenry, and a world of more rhan sixty independent sovereign srares." Sratesmen have in­vented origin,11 schemes for moving Western Europe "heyond the na­rion -sr:He," and polirical sc ientists have srudied their efforrs wirh a care trom which cmorional invol vemcnr was nor missing. The condi­ri ons see med ideal. On rh e one hand, narionali sm see med ar its low­esr ebb; on the other, an adequare formula and merhod for building a subsriture had apparently been dev ised. Twenry years afrer rhe end of World War Ii-a period as long as rhl" whole interwar era-o bservers havc had [() revise their judgmenrs. Th e mosr oprimisric pur rheir hope in the chances rh e future l1lay srill harbor, rather than in rh e propelling power of rhe presenr; rh e less oprimistic ones, like myse lf, try simply ro undersrand whar wem wrong.

My own conclusion is sad and simple . The nation-state is srill herc, and rhe new Jerusalem has been pos rponed because the nari ons

ORSTINAI F OR OflSOL ET F? lC171(,(, STANLEY HOFI' ,\1i\ NN

III \Vestern Europe have not been able ro srop time and to fragment .,p~c e . Political unification could have succeeded if, on the one hand, these nations had not been caught in the whirlpool of different (on­u~ r ns, as a result both of profoundly different Internal circumstances ,Iild of outside legacies, and If, on the other hand, they had been able Dr obliged to concentrate on "community-building" to the exclusion of all problems situated either outside their area or within each one of them. DOJ1lestic differences and different world views obviously mean diverging foreign policies; the Illvolvement of the policy-rnak­~ r <; in issues among which "community-building" is merely one has meant a deepening, not a decrease, of those divergencies. The reasons follow: the unification movement has been the victim, and the sut­viva l of nation-states the outcome, of three factors, one of which cha racterizes every international system, and the other two only the present system. Every international system owes its inner logic and irs unfolding [0 the diversity of domestic determinants, gco-hisrorical Situations, and outside aims among its units; any international sys­tem b,lsed on fragmentation tends, through the dynamics of uneven­Iless (so well understood, if applied only to economic unevenness, by Lenin) to reproduce diversity. However, there is no inherent reason that the model of the fragmented international sy<;tem should rule out by itself two developments in which the critics of the nation-state helve put their bets or their hopes. \'V'hy must it be <I diversity of na­tions' Could it not be a diversity of regions, of "federating" blocs, superseding the nation-state Just as the dynastic state had replaced the feudal puzzlc? Or else, why does the very logic of conflagrations fed by hostility nor lead to the kind of catastrophic unification of ex­hausted yet interdependent nations, sketched out by Kallt? Let us re­member that the unity movement in Europe was precisely an attempt at creating a regional entin', and that its origins and its springs resem­bled, on the reduced scale of a half-cOlltinent, the process dreamed up by Kant in his Inca of Universal History.

The answers are not entirely provided by the two factors that come to mind immediately. One is the legitimacy of national self-de­terillination, the only principle which transcends all blocs and ideolo­gies, since all pay lip service to it, and provides the foundation for the only "universal actor" of the Illternational svstel1l: the United Na­tions. The other is the newness of manv of the states, which have wrested their independence by a nationalist upsurge and arc there­fore unlikely to throw or give away what they have obtained only roo recently. However, the legitimacy of the nation-state does not by itself guarantee the nation-state's survival in the international state of nature, and the appeal of n3tionalism as an emancipating passion

does not assure thar the nation-state must everywhere rcrn;lill til(' ba­sic form of social organization, III a world in which many natiOIl ~ ,Ire old and settled and the shortcomings of the nation-state arc obviuu,. The real answers are provided by two uniqtle features of the present international system. One, it IS the first truly global international sys­tem: the regional subsystems have only a reduced autonomy; the "re­lationships of major tension" blanket the whole planet; the domestic polities are dominated nor so much by the region's problems as by purely local and purely global ones, which conspire to divert the re­gion's members from the Internal affairs of their area, and indeed ,yould make an isolated trf;ltment of those affairs impossible. As a result, each nation, new or old, finds itself placed in an orbit of its own, from which it is quite difficult to move away: for rhe attraction of the reg ion al forces is offset by the pull of all the other forces. Or, to cil:Jngc rhe mCLl phor, those nations that coexist in the same app<H­ently se pa LHC "home" of a geographical region find themselves both exposed ro lhe "1llt'1I , and noises that come frolll outside through all their windo ws ;mel doors, and looking at the outlying houses frolll which the interference issues. Coming from diverse pasts, moved by d iv ~n(; lL'lll pt:rs, Ilvi n~ I[l different parts of the house, inescapably yet di fferently suh Jected and attracted to the outside world, those cohab­itallts rea n unl"venly to their exposure and calculate conflictingly how th t: y (o ul e! either reduce the disturbance or affect III turn all t h() ~t: who liv e E' lse where. The adjustment of their own relations within the hULI se becoilles subordinated to their divergences about rhp <.)\il sicil' world; the "regional subsystem" becomes a stake in the r'ival rv or il s members about the system as d whole.

IlowevlT, the coziness of the common home could still prev"il If till" In ha hitants were forced to come to terms, either by one of rhe- IIl , qr hy the fe Ol r of a threatening neighbor. This is precisely where ril t: ~l:l o [\ d unique feature of the present situation intervenes. \X/hat t c nJ~ to pcrpL'W :Jte the nation-states decisively in a system whose Ill1i vl: r<;a li ry seems «) sharpen rather than shrink their diversity is the \le w wr of co nditions that govern and restrict the rule of force: D:l llluL·l c, ' sword h<ls become a boomerang, the ideological legiti­m ,1(;)' 01 th e n,ltioll-state is protected by the relative and forced tame­tl t.:l>S "j rh" wor ld Jungle. Force III the nuclear age is still the "midWife 01 socieries " inso far as revolutionary war either breeds new nations or ~h [\pcs rl:g lllle" ill t'xi5ting nations; but the use of force along tradi­tion;11 hnes, fo r conquest dnd expansion-the very use that made the " pr:: rll1(,;lhlc " feuda l units not only obsolete but collapse and replaced lhem with modern Sl:ltes often built on "blood and iron"-has be­conic too lbngeroLis. T he legitimacy of the feudal unit could be un­

STANLEY HOFFMANN"'\

I, 1I111nnl in two ways: brutally, by the rule of force-the big fish ,lInw illg small fish hy national might; subtly or legitimately, so to

I ". Ihr() ugh self-undermining-the logic of dynastic weddings or 1 1I 1 ~ H lnn ~ that consolidated larger units. A system ba sed on na­

1'"11 d \d~-d ctermination rules out the latter; a system in which !la­,,,I '. 1,IKe establi shed, find force a much hlunrcd weapon rules Ollt

tlu Ii 'I Ill er. Thus agglomerarion by conquest or out of a fear of con-II'I 1,111 .. tel take place. The new conditions of violence tend even to

I I' t ' l l1.lfi onal borders the tribute of vice to virtue: violence which 10 11 11 111(' l loak of revolution rather than of interstate wars, or persists " li, t III rm of such wars only when th~y accompany revolutions or , lIilltlh in divided countries, perversely respects borders by infiltrat­

1111 IIIHln them ratht'[ than by crossing them overtly, Thus all that is If II IlIr un ification is what one might call " national self-abdication"

II .I bncgation, the evenrual willingness of nations to try some­tllII l ' ~ d~e; hilt precisely global involvement hinders rather than helps, 'lId dlL' .Hrophy of war removes the most pressing incentive. What a oIll l t1 " - ~ I:lte cannot provide alone-in economics, or defense-it can

1111 I,r( !v ide th rough mea ns fa r less drastic [han ha ra -k i ri. l li ese twO features give irs solidity to the principle of national

,Ij d,·r .: rmination, as well as its resilience ro the U.N. They also give Ii ' I'rl'~c nt, and quite unique, shape to the "relationship of major ten­

11111 ": the conflict between East and West. This conflict is both 111I1!~d ;1nd universal-and both aspects contribute ro the surviv,11 of rill I1 ~H i () n-state . As the superpowers find that what makes their !ulwr r ove rw helming also makes it less usa hie, or rather usahle only I II dl' ll' r one another and 10 deny each orher gains, the lesser states It ~ \ "",r under the umbrella of the nuclear stalemate th:1t they are

Iii II lll ildemned to death, and that indeed their nuisance power is Im­I'lr, ,,vL'-especially when the kind of violence that prevails In pres­, 111 lIf'cumstances favors the porcupine over the elephant. The super­)lower, ex perience ill their own camps the backlash of a rehellion 1 ~ " ' [I ~ t domination that enjoys broad impunity, and cannot easily

ill.1 \ or coerce third parties inro agglomeration under their tutelage. h i tl ll'Y retain the means ro prevent other powers from agglomerat­III; ,I W ,1 )' from their clutches. Thus, as the superpowers compete,

With fil l'd nails , <,11 over the globe, the nation-state becomes rhe un i­\1" 1\. tl pOint of salience, to use the new language of sttategy-the IIIWI" ! ( ommon denominator in the competition .

Ot het international systems were merely conservative of diver­H}; th e present system is profoundly conservative of the diversity of

1t,l IIPIl -states, despite all its revolutionary features . The dream of 1 ( 11I 1 ~\t:<1U, concerned both' about the prevalence of the general will-

O BSTINATE OR OflSOLETE? lG9

that is, the nation-state-and a bout peace, was the creation of com­munities insulated from one another. In history, where "the essence and drama of nationalism is not to be alone in the world ," the clash o f non-insulared stat E'S ha s tended to breed hoth nario n-srates and wars. Today, Rousseau's ideals come closer to reality, bur in the most un-Rousseauean way: the nation-srates prevail in peace, they remain unsuperseded because a fragile peace keeps the Kantian docror ;tway, they arc unrcplaced because:' their very involvement in the world, their very incthility to insulate rhemselves from one an othcr, preserves their separateness. The "new Europe" dreamed by the Europeans could not be esrablishnl hy force. Left to the wills and calculations of its memhers, th E' new formula has nor jelled because they could not agree on its role in th e: world. The failure (so far) of an experiment tried in apparently ideal conditions tells us a great deal about con­remporary world politics, and about the funcriona l approach to Ulll­

fication. For it shows that the movement can fail nor only when there is a ~urgc of nationalism in one important part but also when there are differences in assessments of rhe national inrcrest rhat rule out agreement on the shape and on the world role of the new, suprana­tional whole.

Since it is the process of European integration that is its [Western Eu­rope's] most original feature, we must examme it al so. We have been witnessing a kind of race, between the logic of integration set up by Monnet and analyzed by Haas, and the logic of diversity, analyzed above. According to the former, the double pressure of necessity (the interdependence of the social f;tbric, which will oblige statesmen to in­tegrate even sectors originally left uncoordinated) and of men (the ac­tion of the supranational agents) will gradually restrict rhe freedom of movement of the national governments by turning the national situa­tions into one of total enmeshing. In such a milieu, natiol13lism will he a futile exercise in anachronism, and the national consciousness itself will, so to speak, be impregnated by an awareness of the higher inter­est in union. The logic of lhvLTsity, hy contrast, sets limirs to the de­gree to which the "spill-over process" can Illnit the freedom of action of the governments; it re~ rrict.s the domain in which the logic of func­tional integration operates to the area of wel fa re; mdecJ , (() rhe extent that discrepancies ovcr the orhn areas hl'r.,in 1'0 pn:v:lil over the labo­rious harmonization in wl'lhn:, l'ven i ~s ll(, ~ belonging to the latter sphere may become infected by th e: dish;1rmony which reigns in those other areas. The Ingic of integ ration is that of a hlender which crunches the most diverse products, overcomes their different tastes

IJIl STt\I',L[Y HOFFMf\ NN

li d I' ('f illm e's, 8nd r(' places them with one, presllm a bl y delicious Ili lt " U ne lets each item he ground because ont' expects a finer syn­rl h '. I',: th :n is, ambiguity helps rather than hinders because each " in­1",>. llI' l1t" can hope that its taste will prevail at the end. The logic of .l1\ I'r' II 1' is the opposite: it suggests that, in areas of key importance ro ,1.1 lI,n ional interest, nations prefer the certainry, or the self-conrrolled '"1(t'rl.limv, of national self-reliance, to the uncontrolled uncertainty .11 IIte untested blender; ambiguity carries one only a part of the way. I hl' logic of integration assumes that it is possible to fo ol each one of Ill<' ,l ~~ociates some of the time because his over-all ga in will still ex­" 'I,d hl~ occasional losses, even if his calculations turn out wrong here III there . The logic of diversity implies that, on a vital issue, losses are I l ili u >ll1pensated hy gains on other (and especially not on other less ~ I t ,li ) issues: no body wants to be fooled, The logic of integration deems the uncertainties of the supranational function process creative; ti lt' logic of diversity sees them as destructive past a certain threshold; I { LI \~ia n roulette is fine only as long as the gun is filled with blanks. '\ lIllligu ity lures and lulls the national consciousness into integration .\ .. long as the henefits are high, the costs low, the expectations consid­I 1,lhl.:. Ambiguity may arouse and stiffen national co nsciousness into II.1Ii onaiism if the benefits are sl ow, the losses high , the hopes dashed 'II Jefcrred . Functional integration'S gamble could be won only if the IIll,thod had sufficient potency ro promise a permanent excess of gains tlver losses, and of hopes over frustrations. Theoretically, this Illay be [ file of economic inregr3tion . It is not true of political inregration (in Ihe sense of "high politics").

The Sllccess of the approach symbolized by Jean Monnet de ­IwnJed, and depends still, on his winning a triple gamble: on goa ls, li lt methods, on results. As for goals, it is a gamble on the possibility o f substituting motion as an end in itself, for agreement on end ~ . It is .1 bct that the transnational integrationist elites did not agree on whether the object o f the community-building enterprise o ught to he the construction of a new super-state-that is, a federa l potential na ~ tion , a fa U.S.A., more able because of its size and resources to pby Ihe traditional game of power than the dwarfed nations of Westt: rn Furope-or whether the objen was to demonstrate that power poll ­fi .:s could be overcome through cooperation and compromi s(:, to

huild the first example of a radically new kind of unit, to achieve ;) change in the nature and not merely in the scale of the game. Monnet hi Jl1 self has heen amhiguous on this score; Hallstein has been leaning in the first direction, many of Monnet's public rela tions men in the st:cond. Nor did the integrationists agree on wheth er the main goal was the creation o f i1 regional "security-community," that is, the

OIlC, rlNM F OR ( InS()1I.lI: i 17 1

pacifi ca tion of a form er hotbed of wars, o r whether till' 111.111 \ gil,' I was the creation of an entity wh ose position and might COllid tin I sively affect the course of the cold war in particul a r, of inrern;J(ioll ,d relations in gent'ral. Now, it is perfectly possible for a mOVCllll'!lt [0

feeel on its harooring continental nationalists as well as anti-power idealists, inward-looking politicians and outward-looking politi­cians-but only as long as there is no need to make a choice. Deci­si ons on tariffs did not require such ch oices. Decisions on agriculture already raise basic problems o f orientation. Decisions on foreign pol ­icy and membership and defense cannot he reach ed unless the goal s are clarified. One cannot be all things to all people all of the time.

As for methods, there was a gaJl1 ble on the irresistible rise of supranational functionalism. It assuJl1ed, first, that national sover­eignty, already devalued by events, could be chewed up leaf by leaf like an artichoke. It assumed, second, that the dilemma of governmellts having to choose between pursuing an integration that ties their hands and sropping a movement that benefits their people could be expl oited in fa vor of integration by men representing the common good, en­dowed with the advantages of superior expertise, initiating proposal s, propped against a SC'[ o f deadlines, and us ing for their cause the tech­niqu e of package deals. Finally, it was assumed that thi s approach would both take into account the interests of tht' greater powers and prevent the crushing of the smaller ones. The troubles with this g :llJ1 ­

hie have been numerous. One, even an artichoke has a he:][t, which re­mains intact after the leaves have been eaten. It is of course true that a successful economic and soc ial integration would considerably lilllit the freedom governments would still enjoy in theory for their diplo­macy and stratE'gy; but why should one assume th:n th t y wo uld not be a\'v'are of it? As the artichoke's heart gets more and more cienudcd, the governm ents' vigilancE' gets more and mo rE' alerted. To he sure, th e second assumption implies that th e logic of till' movement would pre­vent them from doing anything 3bout it: they wmdd hc powerless to save the heart. But, two, this would hc tru c (J nly if governments neve r put what they consider essential interc s t~ of the nation above the par­ticular interests of certdin categoric: .. of natio na l, if superior expertise were always cither the COll1l11i s.. ion's monopoly or the solution of the i""'ll' at hand, if pacbgl' dc,,\', wcrt' ef(ective in every a rgUIl1CIlt, and, <lhove all, if the govl'l'lImL'nl,' rcprcstnrari ves were :1lways determined ro behave as a "col1lmnnity organ" rather than as the agents of states th :H arc nor willing tn ;l C(Cj 't a l"(,l11lllunil'Y under any conditions. Fi­n:1l1y, function:ll inrcgr:l tiOIl may indecd give lasting satisfaction to the ~1l1;)II(:r powers, prcci , el), heca use it is for them that the ratio of "we l­fare politics" to high polilic, is highest, and rh;]t the chance of gaining

17 STANLEY HOFFMANN

hClldits through intergovernmental methods that reflect rather than cor rect the power differential between the big and the small is poorest; hut this is also why the method is not li kely a la longue to satisfy the hi~ge r powers as much: facing them, the supranational civil servants, for all th eir skill and legal powers, are a bit like Jonases trying to turn wha les into jellyfish. Of course, the idea-ultimate ly-is ro move from an essen ti ally ad ministrati ve procedure in which supranational civil servants enter a dialogue with na tio na l ministers, to a truly federal one in which a fed eral cabinet is responsibl e to a federal pa rl iament; but what is thus presented as linear progress may turn out ro be a vKious circle, since the ministers hold the key to the transformation, and may refuse it unless the goals are defined and the results al ready achie ved arc sa tisfactory.

There was a gamb le abou t results as well . Th e expe ri ence of in­teg rat ion would enta il net benefits fo r all, and bring about clear progress toward community for mation. Such progress could be mea­sured by the following ya rd sticks: in the realm of interstat e relations, an increasing transfer o f power to the new common agencies, ;:\l1 d the prevalence of so lutions " upgrading the common interest" ove r other k.inds o f compromises; in the realm of transnational society, an in­creasing flow of communications; in the area of national conscious­ness- which is important both for inters tate relations, becallse (as seen above) it may se t limits to the sta tes men's discr('[ion, and for tran snational society, hecause it affects the sco pe a nd meanin g of communica t ion fl ows-progress would be measured by incfl'asing compatibility of views abo ut ex ternal issues . The results achieved so far are mixed: negative on the last count (see below), limited on the second, and marked on the first by features that the ('nthllSi ;l~ts of in­teg rat ion did not ex pect. On the o ne hand, there ha s been some strengthening of authority of the Commission, and in variou<' areas there has been some "upgradi ng of common imerests." On the other ha nd , the Commission's unfortun ate attempt to cOllOolidate th()se gains at de Gaulle's expense, in t he spr in g of 1965, h:t s brought about a sta rtl ing setback for the whole ente rp rise; moreove r, in their negotiations, the members ha ve conspicuously failed to find a com­mon interest in some vita l areas (energy, Engla nd's entry), and some­times succeed in rcach ing ap pa re nriy " integra ti ng" decisi ons onl y af­ter the most un ga inl y, tr aditional kinds of bargaining, in such unco mmunity-like meth ods as threats, ultima tums and reta li ato ry moves, were used. In other words, either the ideal was not reached, or it was reached in a way tha t was both the oppos ite of the ideal and ultimatel y its destroyer. If we look at the institutions of the Common Market as an incipient political system in Europe, we find th at its au-

OIlSTIN i\TF OR OIISOI ril l 1n

thority remains limited, its Structure weak, its POl'lILlf h. l ~c I nlll~ l , d

and di stant.

There are twO important general lessons one can draw from ;1 stlld y of the process of integration. The fir st conce rns the limits of the (U IK

tional method: its very (if rel ativ e) success in the rebtivr ly painle's<; a rea in which it works relatively we ll lifrs the participants to the level of issues to which it does nor apply well an ymo re-like swimmers wh ose skills at moving quickly away from the shore sudden ly brings them to the point where the wa ters a re storm iest and deepest, at a time when fatigu e is setting in, and none of th e quest ions about the ultimate goal, direction, and length of sw im has been answered. The functional process was lIsed in order to "make Europe"; once Europe began being made, the process col lided with the qllestion: " ma kin g Europe , what for?" The process is like a grinding machine that can work only if someone keeps giving it something to grind. When the users start qua rreling and stop provid ing, the mach ine stors. f or a while, the mac hine worked because the gove rnments poured into it a comm on determination to integrate thei r economies in o rder to ma x­imize wealth; but with their wealth increasing, the questi on of whar to do with it was going to arise : a tec hniqu e capable of su ppl ying means does nor ipso (acto provid E' th e end~, and it is about those ends that quarrels have bro ken out. They might have been avoided if the situation had been mo re compelling-if the Six had been so cooped up that each one's ho rizon would have been nothing ot her th an hi s five partners. But this has never been their outlook, no r is it any more their necessity. Each one is willing to li ve with the others, bur nOt on terms tOO different from hi s own; and the Si x are not in the position of the three miserable prisoners of No Lxit . Transform­ing a dependent "subsystem " proved to be o ne thing; defi ni ng its re­lations to all other sllhsys tems and ro the internat ional sY" tem in gen­eral has turned ou t to be qu ite anoth er-indeed, so formidable a matter as to keep the transfo rm ation of the subsystem in abeyancE' until those relations ca n be defined.

The model o f functi onal integra tion, a substitute for the kind of instant federati on which gove rnm ents had not been prepared to ac­cept, shows its origi ns in important respects. One, it is essentially an administrative model, which relies on bureaucratic experti se for the promotion of a policy defined by the policy authorities, and for the definition of a polic), that political decision-makers are rech nicall y in ­capable of shap in g- so meth ing lik e Fre nc h planning under the Fourth Republi c. The hope was th a t in th e interstices of politi ca l

OflS·IINI\l[ OR ORSOLL I L I 171 STAN LEY HUel-i\\.-\ NN 174

bickeri ng the ad ministra tO rs co ul d build up ;) conscnsu~; but the mis­take was to be lie ve th at a fo rmula that works well within certa in lim­its is a panacea-and that even within the limit s of "welfa re politics" admi nistrati ve sk ill can a lways overcome the disastrous effeers of po­litical paralysis or misman age ment (d. the impact of infl a tion, or balance of payment trou bles, on planning). Two, the model assumes that the basic political decis ions, to be prepared ,tod pursued by th e civil se rvant s but formally made by the gove rnm ents, would be reached through the process of short-term bargaining, hy politicians whose mode of o perat ion is empiri ca l muddling through, o f the kind that put; immedi<lte adv8nta ges above long-term pursuits: this mode l cor responds well ro the nature of parliamentary politics with a weak Executive, fo r example, the politics of the fourth Rep ublic, but the mistake was to believe th8t all political regimes would conform to

thi s ra th er so rry image, and also to igno re the disastrous resllits which th e origin;)1 example pro duced whenever conflicts over values and fundamental choices made mere empirical groping use less or worse th:ln useless (cL deco lon iza ti on)_

The second lesso n is even more discoura ging fo r the ad vocates of fun ctiona li sm _To reve rt to the analogy o f the grinde r, what h:ls happened is that the machine, piqued by th e slowing duwn of slipply, suddenly sugges ted to its users th8r in th e futllf(' the slipplying "f grin di ng m:lterial be taken ou t of th eir hands and lefr to th L' lll:1chine. The institutional machinery tends to hecome an ~ct()r wirh a st,lk(' in its ow n survival ;) nd expa nsion. But here we de;) 1 not with o ne but with six politica l sysrems, and the reaso n for the incffcuiv('n~~ of th e Council of Ministers of the Six may be the excessive roughness, not rhe weakness, of th e national political systems invol vl,d . In olher words, by rrying to be a force, the burea ucracy here, im:vic) hl y, makes itse lf even more of a stake th at the nati ons rry to cont rol o r at least to affect. A new complication is thus added to :III the ~ ubsr;)n­ti ve issues that divide the participants.

What arc the pros pects in Western Europe? \Xlh at gcncr:Jlil,1tions call one dr aw from the whol e ex peri ence?

It has become possible for scholars to argue borh th :1 t intt:gra ri(lTl is proceeding and that the nati on-state is more than ever thl' basic unit, without contradict ing each other, for recenr definitions o t inlcgr,1tIOn "beyond the nati on-sta te" point not toward the emergence of ,1 new kind of political community, but merely towa rd "a n obsc url ing of l

the boundaries betwee n rhe system of In ternational (l l~d ll l/. lll \l l l"

and the env ironment provided hy member states." Th ere arc tWIl til l

purtant implications . The first one i .. , no t so paradoxically, a vindication of the n.1

ti on-s tate as rh e basic unit. So far, :\n)'thing that is "beyond" I ~ "less " : that is, there are cooperarive arr<1ngemenrs with a varying de gree of autono my, power, a nd legitimacy, but rh ere ha s heen no transfer of allegiance toward their institutions, and th ei r authorit), re­mains lim ited, cond itio nal , dependent, and reversible. There is more than a kernel of truth in th e Federa lisr critique of functional integra­tion: fun cti on alism ten ds to become, ar hest, lik e a spiral rhat co il s ad in fini tum_ So far, the "trans fe rri ng [o f] exclusive expectiltions of hen­efits fr om the nati on- sta te to some la rge r entit y" leav es the nati on-stare both as the main foc us of ex pecta ti ons, and as th e in iti <1 ­tor, pace-set ter, supervis or, <1nd often destroyer of the larger entitv: for in th e internat ional a rena the sr8re is still th e highes t possessor of power, and wh de not eve ry state is a political communi ty there is as ye t no political community more inclusive rh an th e swte_ To he sure, the military functi o n of th e nation-state is in crisis ; hut, insofar as the wh ole wo rld is "permeahle" to n uclear weapons, any new type of unit would fa ce the sa me horror, and, insofa r as th e prosrecr of such horro r makes war mo re subd ued an d co nq ues r less like ly, the decline of the state 's capacity to defend its ci tizens is neirher ro tal nor suffi­cient to force rhe na ti on-state itse lf into dec line. The res i,tancc of the n<1tiOTl-state is proven no t onl y by the fru stra tions of functionalism but a lso by both th e promi se an d rhe failure of Feder;llism. On the one han d, Fede ralism offe rs a way of goi ng "beyond rh e na ti on­state," hur it consists in building a new and larger n8rion-s tatt:. The scal e is new, not the story, the gauge not the ga me. Indeed, the Feder­a li st mode l a rpli es to th e "making of Europe" th e Rousseil uisti c scheme fo r the crea ti on of a nation: it aims at estab lishing a unir marked by central power and based on the ge neral will of :I Euro­pean people. The Fede ralists are right in insisting that Western Fu ­rore's best chance of being an effective en tity would be not to go " beyond the ni1 ti on-state ," but to become a larger nario n-sta te in th e process of formation and in th e business o f wo tld po litics: that is, ro become a sovere ign r olitical community in the form al sense a t le8sL The success of f ede ra lism would be a tr ibute to the durability of rh e nation-state; its fa ilure so far is due to the irreleva nce of the modeL Not only is there no gener81 will of a European peo pl e because there is as of now no European peorle, but rh e in st itu t io ns that could graduall y (and theo retica lly ) shape the se para te nat ions into one peo­ple are not the mosr likely to do so . For the domestic problems of Fu­

17h STANLry HOrFMANN

rope are matters for technical decisions by civi l se rvantS and min~ters rather than for general wills and assemblies (a genera l wil l to pros­perity is not very opera ti onal) . The external pro blems of Europe are matters for exec ut ives and diplomats. As fo r th e common orga ns set lip by the national gove rnm ents, wh en th ey try ro ac t as a European executive and pa rli ament, they are both condem ned to opc r:ltc in the fog ma intai ned around them hy th e gove rnm ents and slapped down if they tr)' to dispel the fog and reach the peop le themselves. In o th er words, Europe ca nnot be wha t some na t ions have hee n: a people that crea tes its state; nor can it be wha t so me of th e oldest sta tes are ami many of the new one, aspire to he: J people created hy the state. It has to wait until the sep:H<lte states dec ide that their peoples a re close enough to Ju stify a Europea n state whose task will he th e welding of the many into one; and we have just examined why such a joint deci­sion has been missi ng. The very obstacles which make th e f ede ralist model irrele vant to nations tOO div erse and divided also make all forms of union shorr of Federa lism preca ri ous. Fu ncti ona lism is roo unstable for the task of complete po liti ca l unification. It lllay inte­grate economics, but ei th er th e nat ions w ilt then proceed to a full po ­litical merge r (wh ich economic integra t io n does nor guarant l" l' l- in that case th e federal model wi ll be vindicated at the end, the new un it will be a sta te forgi ng its own people by conse nt and through the ab­dica tio n of the previous separate states, bu t the co nd itions for suc ­cess described above w ill have to be met-or else the national si tu a­tions will remain too divergent, and fun ct iona lis m will be mlTl"lv a way of tyin g rogether th e preexisting nations in areas dee med of common interest. Betwee n the coo peration o f exis tin g nations and th e breaking in o f a new one there is no stab le mi ddle gro und . A fed ­eration that succeeds becomes a nation; one th at fails leads to seces­sion; ha lf-way a ttempts like supr anationa l fu nctiona li sm IllUst cither snowba ll or ro ll back.

But the na tion-state, preserved as the basic unit , survive, trans­form ed . Among the men who see in "national sovereignty" th e Nemesis o f manki nd, those who put their hopes in th e development of regiona l superstates are illogica l, th ose wh o put their hopes in the establ is hment of a world state are urop ian , those who put th eir hopes in the growth of functional po litica l communiti es more inclusive than the nation-state are too opti mi stic. What ha s to be und erstood and studi ed now-far more than has been done, and certai nl y far more tha n th i., essay was ab le to do-is, rath er than the creation of riv al com munities, the tr ans formation o f "national sovereignty": it has nor been superseded, but ro a la tge extent it has been emptied of its former st ing; the re is nq supe rsh rew, an d yet th e sh rew ha s been

OI3STI NA I F O R OflSOLETr ? 177

somewha t tamed. The model o f the na ti on-sw te deriv ed frolll the il1­terna ri olldl law and re lations of the past, when there was;] Iimirl' •.i number of players on a stage that was les s crowded 3nd in which vi ­olence was less risky, applies on ly fitfully ro rh e siru <lt ioJl of tmLly. The bas ic ullit, having proliferated, has a lso beco me much more hel erogeneous; the stage has ~h r unk, and is occupied hy plavcfs whm,e very numher forces eac h one ro str ut, but its comhu, rihil it)' Ileve rrh e­less scares th em from pushing their luck toO hare!. The IlJtion-sr:nc tod:"!)' is a new wille ill o ld hottl es , or in bottles th at arc " ,lnl"tilJlcs on ly :l med ioc re imita ti on of the old; it is not the same uld win e. What must he exami ned is not just the legJI ca paci ry of th e sovereign state, hut th e de (acto ca p.lcity at its disposal; granted the ~co pc of irs 8uthori ty, how much of it can be used, and with what rc<;u ll s' Th crL· a rt" man)' W8)'~ of going "beyond th e nation -sr3re," and S O!11l" l11 0dify the subs tance without a ltering th e form or creating Il L'W fnrm ~. To be sure, as long as the old form is there, as long as th e n;Hion-q ,l[,· i\ lhe

supreme aut hority, th ere is a danger for peace and for w~ I{;HL'; (;\11­livers tied by Lilliputians rather than crushed hy Ti t:Hl ~ C;ln lV ~ k l' lip and break their tie,. Rut Gul livers tied a re no t rh e ;,:1 r11(: ;1' (.\llli V(' r ~ unt ied . Wrestlers who slug it out with fists and kni ves , prr ~OJ1 L'r~ ill :1

cha in gang, are a ll men; ye t th eir freedo m of action is nnr th l" " 1 11lC' .

An exa minat ion of th e intern a ti ona l impl icat ions of "n:lllnn -"rntL' ­hood" today and yesterday is at least as important ;lS Ihe ritll;! 1 :1(­tack on the nation-state.

• NOTE

I . We have ;lltered our view of Hoffmilnn in rim ("di rifllt h,I ' l'd " " hi, autohlographical art icle: " A Retrospective, " in{uul'll l'1'S rIll fI /I .!:/) lV"rld 1',,1· ities: Autobiographi ca l Relleetions of Thirtv-(our : \ [ <ldr'l l li f li.tt 'I·/rr.<, ("d . Jose ph.J. Kruzel 3nd James N . Rose na u (Lex ington , 1\ \.." , .: I.exin~ron !looks, 1989), pr 263-278.