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Consensus and Conflict in Functionalism: Implications for the Study of International Integration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

A. J. Miller
A. J. Miller
Affiliation:
University of Western Ontario
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Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , June 1971 , pp. 178 - 190
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1971

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References

1 No complete statement of functionalism is contained in any of Mitrany's essays. The most frequently cited essay is his A Working Peace System (London, 1943). This essay has been reissued under the same title by Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1966, together with a number of Mitrany's other essays. Except where otherwise stated, citations will be from this onevolume collection. Mitrany was born in Romania, educated at the London School of Economics, and was for many years on the staff of Princeton University.

2 The definition of integration subscribed to here is that of Haas, Ernst B.: a “process of increasing the interaction and the mingling so as to obscure the boundaries between the system of international organizations and the environment provided by the nation-state members.” Beyond the Nation-State: Functionalism and International Organization (Stanford, 1964), 29Google Scholar (emphasis in original).

3 Claude, Inis L., Swords into Plowshares: The Problems and Progress of International Organization (3rd ed., New York, 1964), 347.Google Scholar

4 Sewell, James P., Functionalism and World Politics: A Study Based on United Nation Programs Financing Economic Development (Princeton, 1966), 29CrossRefGoogle Scholar, n. 2.

5 Beyond the Nation-State, 22.

6 See Sewell's discussion, Functionalism and World Politics, 48–9.

7 Haas, Beyond the Nation-State, 9.

8 Claude, Swords into Plowshares, 346.

9 A Working Peace System, 82.

10 Functionalism and World Politics, 43.

11 Mitrany, , “The Functional Approach to World Organization,” International Affairs (London), XXIV (July 1948), 356.Google Scholar

12 This metaphor is derived from the “concentric circle” concept of functional co-operation through international organization, first propounded by Reinsch, Paul S., Public International Unions (Boston, 1911)Google Scholar. Claude observes that the concentric circle concept “begs some very big questions in assuming that the dropping of the functional pebble produces a steady progression of ever-widening circles of co-operation, reaching out without limit to encompass finally the whole area of the international pond. This metaphorical concept makes sense only if it can be assumed that the global waters offer a placid surface for the rippling-out process.” Swords into Plowshares, 354 (emphasis added).

13 A Working Peace System, 56.

14 The Progress of International Government (New Haven, Conn., 1933), 79.

15 A Working Peace System, 31.

16 Claude, Swords into Plowshares, 352.

17 The Progress of International Government, 55 (emphasis added).

18 “The Prospect of European Integration: Federal or Functional,” in A working Peace System, 200.

19 “Parliamentary Democracy and Poll Democracy” Parliamentary Affairs, IX, no. 1 (1955–6), 22.

20 The Progress of International Government, 19.

21 Mitrany, , “The International Consequences of National Planning,” Yale Review, XXXVII (1948–9), 22–3.Google Scholar

22 The Progress of International Government, 18.

23 Ibid., 53.

24 Ibid., 52.

25 Compare Mitrany's reflections with those of another functionalist, Asher, Robert E.: “the sense of international community is not particularly potent as of this writing. Nationalism continues strong, and on every continent country after country hasgrown more inward looking, more nationalistic, more assertive about its rights and more reticent about its responsibilities.” “International Agencies and Economic Development: An Overview,” International Organization, XXII, no. 1 (Winte 1968), 434Google Scholar. Yet some pages later he holds that “as the nations of the world modernize and more of them move into a middle-income group, interdependence will assume new meaning.” Ibid., 457.

26 Brierly, James L., The Covenant and the Charter (Cambridge, 1949), 26Google Scholar. See also Claude, Swords into Plowshares, 349–50.

27 A Working Peace System, 73–5 (original emphasis omitted; new emphasis added).

28 Beyond the Nation-State, 12.

29 Myrdal, , “Economic Nationalism and Internationalism,” Australian Outlook, XI (Dec. 1957), 8.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., 12, 16.

31 Ibid., 35, 42.

32 The Nerves of Government (New York, 1966), 205.

33 Deutsch, , “External Influences on the Internal Behavior of States,” in Farrell, R. Barry, ed., Approaches to Comparative and International Politics (Evanston, Ill., 1966), 5.Google Scholar

34 The Nerves of Government, 209–10.

35 “External Influences on the Internal Behavior of States,” 16.

36 Ibid., 10.

37 Ibid., 16.

38 “The Rise and Demise of the Territorial State,” in Rosenau, James N., ed., International Politics and Foreign Policy: A Reader in Research and Theory (New York, 1961), 84–6Google Scholar. Herz has since retreated from this position; see his “The Territorial State Revisited: Reflections on the Future of the Nation-State,” ibid. (rev. ed., 1969), 76–89.

39 “Pre-theories and Theories of Foreign Policy,” in Farrell, Approaches to Comparative and International Politics, 41, n. 41.

40 Ibid., 42–4, 47.

41 Ibid., 53.

42 Ibid., 65. Moreover “it is sufficiently recognized and accepted by the members of a penetrated society to permit legitimacy to become attached to the direct participation of the nonmembers.” Ibid., 68.

43 Ibid., 54.

44 Ibid., 63–4 and 67.

45 Ibid., 68. Note that the concept of the penetrated system is not limited to penetration of national societies by states. Rosenau includes international organizations as agents in the penetration of national societies. See Rosenau, , “Transforming the International System: Small Increments along a Vast Periphery,” World Politics, XVIII (April 1966), 530–1 and 543–4.Google Scholar

46 A Working Peace System, 95.

47 “Pre-theories and Theories of Foreign Policy,” 53.

48 Ibid., 81. His typology of issue-areas is fourfold: territorial, status, human resources, and non-human resources. Ibid., 82–8.

49 Ibid., 81. Rosenau elsewhere defines politics as “the act of attempting to modify behavior across wide functional distances.” “The Functioning of International Systems,” Background, VII (1963), 113.

50 “Pre-theories and Theories of Foreign Policy,” 73–4.

51 Ibid., 71.

52 The distinction Rosenau draws between these two concepts implies that the penetrated system can only be recorded at the point an issue-area is resolved in favour of integration, that is, at the point of the authoritative allocation of values and not at the point at which an input (in this case an issue-area) is introduced into the system. If, therefore, the penetrated system is an extant feature of the international system the assumption is that issueareas will generally be resolved in an integrative rather than a disintegrative direction.

53 The Progress of International Government, 127–8. For Rosenau's subscription to the identity of function and issue-area, see his “Transforming the International System,” 530.

54 The Progress of International Government, 128 (emphasis in original). See also A Working Peace System, 85.

55 Discussed in Miller, Anthony J., “Functionalism and Foreign Policy: An Analysis of Canadian Voting Behaviour in the General Assembly of the United Nations, 1946–1966,” unpublished PHD dissertation, McGill University, 1970, pp. 89–117.Google Scholar

56 Food and Agriculture Organization, Proceedings of the First Session of the Conference, Quebec City, Oct. 16 to Nov. 1, 1945, 182. Pearson was chairman of the Interim Commission responsible for the establishment of the FAO.

57 Cited in Maclaurin, John, The United Nations and Power Politics (New York, 1959), 321.Google Scholar

58 Cox, Robert W., “Towards a General Theory of International Organization,” Industrial and Labour Relations Review, XIX (1965–6), 102.Google Scholar

59 Haas sees this process as having three stages – autonomy, authority, legitimacy. The first involves the international organization in the acquisition of independent powers of some kind, though remaining heavily dependent upon governments. The authority indicator concerns the degree to which governments accept the recommendations of the international organization as binding without, however, expressing unqualified agreement with it. Finally, legitimacy is a reference to the internalization by individuals or governments of the values embodied in an international organization, so that its values are no only considered to be binding but also to be right. Haas, Beyond the Nation-State, 131–3.

60 Haas capitalizes Functionalism of the Mitrany type so as to distinguish it from other forms of functionalism indigenous to the social sciences.

61 Ibid., 93.

62 For the distinction between functionalism and neo-functionalism, see Lindberg, Leon N. and Scheingold, Stuart A., Europe's Would-Be Polity: Patterns of Change in the European Community (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1970), 7–8 and 12.Google Scholar

63 Haas, Beyond the Nation-State, 126–36.

64 Ibid., 342, 343, 386.

65 A first step in this direction would be the provision of an appropriate set of issue-areas. In respect of functionalism these issue-areas might be derived from the classification of Hovet, Thomas, Bloc Politics in the United Nations (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), 24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Jacobson, Harold K., The USSR and the UN's Economic and Social Activities (Notre Dame, Ind., 1963)Google Scholar, passim. Hovet's classification has greater support in the literature; see Alker, Hayward R. and Russett, Bruce M., World Politics in the General Assembly (New Haven, 1965), 4, n.5.Google Scholar