Themes in European Integration History Lecture 3: The Milwardcontroversy in European integration his

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Themes in European Integration HistoryLecture 3
The Milward-controversy in European integration
history

• Lecture course 3 November 15 December 2006
• Juhana Aunesluoma
• University Lecturer in Political History
• University of Helsinki
• course pages www.valt.helsinki.fi/blogs/jauneslu/e
  uhistory.htm

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Todays lecture

• an outline of Milwards work on the origins of
  the EC
• the argument, historical cases and evidence
• contextualisation of the work
• contemproary debate, historical scholarship,
  theoretical developments in EU studies
• criticism and debate
• the reception of his work and its subsequent
  influence

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The European Rescue of the Nation-State (1992,
2000)

• an analysis of the forces which brought the EC
  together
• also a study of the evolution of the postwar
  European nation-state
• continuation to his previous work on European
  reconstruction (1984)
• could also be seen as an explanation based on
  historical analysis of the future relationship
  between nation-state and the EU
• the collection of articles in The Frontier of
  National Sovereignty (1993) explores other
  historical cases
• subsequent books on British trade and integration
  policy

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The context

• the emergence of archive-based historical studies
  of European integration since 1970s
• diplomatic history of European interdependence
  and negotiations
• the legacy of the Walter Lipgens-tradition of
  idealist-federalist integration history
• the poverty of big social science
• predictive theory and integration?
• the ECs 1992 agenda
• SEA 1986, Maastricht 1991 etc.
• neoliberal influences on economic and social
  policies in western countries
• R. Reagan in USA and M. Thatcher in UK
• the British debate over Europe in the late 1980s
  and early 1990s
• the rise of the Eurosceptics

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Milwards argument

• integration as a rescue of the postwar
  nation-state
• an important part of strategies of national
  development, welfare and security
• selective and limited surrenders of national
  sovereignty
• strenghtening of the nation-state and the EC have
  been mutually compatible and have reinforced each
  other
• primacy of economic and societal factors
• political decisionmaking conditioned by them
• a wide concept of security
• economic, social, military
• the poverty of
• neo-functionalism
• hagiographies of the founding fathers
• diplomatic history of integration

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Underlying assumptions

• approach state-centric, realist, rational choice
• the beneficial link of state intervention and
  economic growth
• foreign policy an extension of domestic policy
  Primat der Innenpolitik
• foreign policy issues important, but usually
  secondary
• importance of democratic processes in defining
  national preferences
• symmetry of the participating states rescue of
  nation-state all round

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The post-war nation state

• the starting point discredited European states
  in 1940
• economic depression, totalitarianism, ineffective
  in providing security for their citizens
• the reconstruction of the nation-states on the
  basis and in service of a new national consensus
• welfare, growth, security
• nationalisation of concepts (my term)
• national economy, national measures of growth,
  national champions
• democracy modernisation technology
  enlightenment postwar national projects
• gtthe high water mark of the nation in European
  history?

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Coal and the Belgian nation

• Milwards case study on the birth of the ECSC
• the myth of 9 May 1950
• ideas of pooling resources in this way had been
  floating around for years
• the need to manage Western Germanys economic
  rise, French industrialisation, German
  sovereignty
• managing the decline of Belgian coal industry
• supranational solutions crucial for this aim
• integration provided needed, and unembarrassing,
  support for combining the management of
  industrial decline with high welfare and high
  employment (p. 118)

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Origins of the EEC

• the myth of relance of integration after the
  failure of the EDC in 1954
• development of intra-European trade
• massive growth and diversification of trade
  relations in Europe
• Germanys place in the European trade system
• access to German markets investment goods
• German access to protected European markets
  (Italy)
• national strategies of development vs the
  requirements of international exchange
• the interventionist nation-state
• the reliance on foreign trade, access to markets
• neo-mercantilism and the regulated form of
  European capitalism
• form of European highly selective protectionism

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Agricultural protection

• domestic pressures selective, highly
  concentrated in political terms
• agricultural earnings and income considered
  crucial in France
• Dutch export interests
• access to German markets
• the need for a supranational solution
• Would national taxpayers and voters have
  continued so long to pay the costs of income
  support for agriculture had the decision been
  set in a purely national context? Surely not.
  (p. 317)
• the CAP has lumbered on like some clumsy
  prehistoric mastodon, incapable of evolution an
  awesome reminder of the strength which
  integration could add to the rescue of the
  nation-state. (p. 317)

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UK and Europe

• misreading and misperceptions of what was
  happening in Europe in the 1950s
• interests in the US, Commonwealth markets
• Britains own unsuccessful national strategy
• to ease the descent from great power status to a
  middle ranking power
• betting the wrong horse
• the choice to remain outside the European rescue
  of the nation-state weakened Britain
• did not benefit from integration as the six
  original member states did
• Britain locked in within its strategic choices
  until 1961
• alternatives not feasible

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Criticisms and debate

• the nature and aims of the postwar nation-state?
• individual nations different, how far can we
  generalise from Milwards account
• symmetry of actors?
• the Franco-German axis
• the politics of economic advance?
• how do national preferences take form and lead
  into action?
• Milwards theory?
• are the cases studied too different
• testable hypothesis?
• outside influences and patronage?
• US role in Europe, the threat of communism, the
  need for Western Germany to achieve sovereignty
  and unity
• the link between economic growth and political
  action
• what if economic growth facilitated integration
  by widening the range of options for
  decision-makers and not vice versa?

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Conclusion

• Milwards account a radical departure from
  previous EU studies
• the single most influential work on EU history
• revisionist and highly controversial
• has forced other scholars to respond and modify
  their theses
• has widened the agenda of EU history

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Further reading

• Alan S. Milward, The European Rescue of the
  Nation-State (1992, revised edition 2000)
• Alan S. Milward et al, The Frontier of National
  Sovereignty. History and theory 19451992 (1993)
• Wolfram Kaiser, From state to society? The
  Historiography of European Integration, in
  Michelle Cini Angela K. Bourne (eds.), Palgrave
  Advances in European Union Studies (2006),
  190-208
• Reviews of Milwards work
• Perry Anderson, London Review of Books, 4 January
  1996
• Andrew Moravcsik, Journal of Modern History, Vol
  67, No 1 (1995), 126-128
• William Wallace, Times Literary Supplement, 30
  April 1993
• B. W. E. Alford, The Economic Journal, Vol 103,
  No 421 (1993), 1575-1576
• Pierre-Henri Laurent, American Historical Review,
  October 1993, 1197-1199.