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Between Sovereignty and Integration: Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Ghiţa Ionescu
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Extract

WHEN KARL DEUTSCH STARTED TO PREPARE THE ‘SECOND THEME’ OF the IXth World Congress of the International Political Science Association held in Montreal in August 1973, entitled ‘Key Issues in International Conflict and Peace Research’ he asked me to organize the Commission which was to deal with the problem: Pathways to Peace: National Sovereignty or Supranational Integration.

The task of trying to disentangle all the questions linked in this rather formidable subject seemed to me to require first of all a working defhition of its various aspects, then a great number of papers* to examine at least those aspects which I considered essential in the light of the working definition; and a good discussion to wrap them together again.

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Article
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Government and Opposition , Volume 9 , Issue 1 , 01 January 1974 , pp. 3 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1974

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References

* The nine papers, in alphabetic order of the contributors, were as follows: David E. Apter, ‘The Premise of Parliamentary Planning’; Max Beloff, ‘The Political Crisis of the European Nation‐States’; David Coombes,’“Concertation” in the Nation‐State and in the European Community’; Leon Dion, ‘Anti‐Politics and Marginals’; Geoffrey Goodwin, ‘The Erosion of External Sovereignty’; ‘Luxemburgensis’, ‘The Emergence of a European Sovereignty’; Dennis Kavanagh, ‘Beyond Autonomy? The Politics of Corporations’; Donald J. Puchala, ‘Internal Order and Peace: an Integrated Europe in World Affairs’ and Herbert J. Spiro, ‘Interdependence: A Third Option Between National Sovereignty and Supranational Integration’. Two further papers by Karl Pomaizl (Prague) and Ioan Ceterchi (Bucharest) were circulated at Montreal by the authors themselves, and were included in the panel discussion as auxiliary reports.

The entire collection will be published as a book under the title Between Sovereignty and Integration by Croom Helm in the early part of 1974.

The present issue of the journal carries a selection of the articles. David Apter ’ s article, ‘The Premise of Parliamentary Planning’ was published in the journal in Volume 8, Number 1, Winter, 1973.

1 ‘The issue of political integration thus arose primarily when people demanded greater capabilities, greater performance, greater responsiveness and more adequate services from the governments of the political units by which they had been governed before’, Deutsch, Karl, ed., in Political Community and the North Atlantic Area ‐ International Organization in the Light of Experience, Princeton, 1957, P. 87 Google Scholar.

2 The recently published Report of the Royal Commission on the Constitution (HMSO, Cmnd 5460, 1973) amounts in effect to a re‐examination of the condition of the sovereignty of the United Kingdom after the more recent national and international events which have affected it.

3 Lord Crowther‐Hunt and Professor A. T. Peacock: Memorandum of Dissent, volume II of Report of the Royal Commission on the Constitution, p. 37.

4 See in the forthcoming volume the chapter ‘Two Views from Eastern Europe’ based on the reports presented by Professor Karel Pomaizl, from Prague, and Professor I. Ceterchi, from Bucharest.

5 First published in Government and Opposition, op. cit.

6 See the forthcoming volume to be published by Groom Helm.

7 The words se concerter and cancertation in French have the literal meaning of solving questions or preparing actions by mutual consultation. They also have the more distant meaning of ‘harmonization’ by association of ideas with ‘concert’. But the expression has acquired a fresh topicality in the current terminology of the Community where it has become a household word for the new procedures and for the complex style of the specific processes of policy‐making of the Council of Ministers. Of late the Commission has taken a more critical view of the politics of concertation as practised by the Council of Ministers, and has recalled that they should be seen as a vehicle towards further integration, i.e. towards further transfers of power of decision‐making, and of implementation to the institutions of the Community.