Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T17:29:49.011Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The change of tide in political cooperation: a limited information model of European integration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

Gerald Schneider  and
Lars-Erik Cederman
Gerald Schneider
Affiliation:
Program Director and Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Institute of Political Science, University of Bern, Switzerland.
Lars-Erik Cederman
Affiliation:
A Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Get access

Abstract

European integration follows a puzzling stop-and-go pattern that traditional international reations theories cannot fully explain. The predominating paradigms only account for either the achievements or the setbacks of the integration process. An information based explanation makes it possible to move beyond structural accounts provided by realist and functionalist scholarship. Such an approach yields solid micro-level foundations of international bargaining and focuses on leaders' use of threats in negotiations about regional cooperation. Situations involving governments agreeing on the necessity of further integration, but disagreeing about its level, create room for strategic manipulation of information asymmetries. This type of uncertainty stems from the manipulator's information and control advantages concerning domestic costs. The analysis of different summit meetings demonstrates the empirical relevance of such maneuvers for the dynamics of European integration.

Type
Articles
Information
International Organization , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , Autumn 1994 , pp. 633 - 662
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. This article refers to the history of the EC. However, because the Treaty on European Union (Maastricht treaty) did not change the logic of the stop-and-go process, our analysis is also valid for its successor organization, the European Union (EU).

2. Schmidt, Helmut, Die Deutschen und ihre Nachbarn (The Germans and their neighbors) (Berlin: Siedler, 1990), p. 96Google Scholar.

3. Ibid., p. 97.

4. Siebert, Horst, The New Economic Landscape in Europe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991), p. 1Google Scholar.

5. See for instance Moravcsik, Andrew, “Negotiating the Single European Act: National Interests and Conventional Statecraft in the European Community,” in Keohane, Robert O. and Hoffmann, Stanley, eds., The New European Community, Decisionmaking and Institutional Change (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1991), pp. 41–84Google Scholar; Sandholtz, Wayne and Zysman, John, “1992: Recasting the European Bargain,” World Politics 42 (10 1989), pp. 95–128CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Garrett, Geoffrey, “International Cooperation and Institutional Choice: The European Community's Internal Market,” International Organization 46 (Spring 1992), pp. 533–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Niou, Emerson M. S. and Ordeshook, Peter C. make this point in “‘Less Filling, Tastes Great’: The Realist-Neoliberal Debate,” World Politics 46 (01 1994), pp. 209–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For similar statements see Moravcsik, Andrew, “Liberalism and International Relations Theory,” The Center for International Affairs working paper no. 92–6, Harvard UniversityGoogle Scholar; Nye, Joseph, “Neorealism and Neoliberalism,” World Politics 40 (01 1988), pp. 235–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. See Waltz, Kenneth N., Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979)Google Scholar; and Jervis, Robert, “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30 (01 1978), pp. 167–214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. Keohane, Robert O., After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

9. Spence's pioneering work on uncertainty in labor markets laid the foundation for this type of modeling; see Spence, Michael, Market Signaling (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974)Google Scholar. Recent advances in noncooperative game theory introduced powerful tools to study signaling in social situations. For a technical introduction, see Banks, Jeffrey, Signaling Games in Political Science (Chur, Switzerland: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1991)Google Scholar. In political science, such models have been most successfully applied to legislative bargaining and deterrence theory. For a comprehensive analysis of the former, see Krehbiel, Keith, Information and Legislative Organization (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991)CrossRefGoogle Scholar on the latter, see Powell, Robert, Nuclear Deterrence Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. See for instance Fearon, James D., “Deterrence and the Spiral Model: The Role of Costly Signals in Crisis Bargaining,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 30 08–2 September 1990Google Scholar.

11. Though this article is specifically addressed to European Council summits, our theory is potentially useful for other types of summit meetings, such as those analyzed by Putnam, Robert D. and Bayne, Nicholas, Hanging Together: Cooperation and Conflict in the Seven-Power Summits, rev. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

12. For the analysis of “analytic uncertainty,” see Iida, Keisuke, “Analytic Uncertainty and International Cooperation: Theory and Application to International Economic Policy Coordination,” International Studies Quarterly 37 (12 1993), pp. 431–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. This argument is in line with Christopher Achen, H. and Snidal, Duncan, “Rational Deterrence Theory and Comparative Case Study,” World Politics 41 (01 1989), pp. 43–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. George, Stephen, Politics and Policy in the European Community (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 13Google Scholar.

15. Bulmer, Simon and Wessels, Wolfgang, The European Council: Decision-making in European Politics (London: Macmillan, 1987), p. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This is the most informative study of the European Council from a literature that is mainly descriptive. For the impressionistic observations of two civil servants who participated in several summits, see Butler, Michael, Europe: More than a Continent (London: Heinemann, 1986)Google Scholar; and von Donat, Marcell, Das ist der Gipfel! Die EG-Regierungschefs unter sich (This is the summit! The EC heads of government among themselves) (Baden-Baden, Germany: Nomos, 1987)Google Scholar.

16. The European Council was formally established by a declaration at the 1974 Paris summit meeting.

17. Few procedures other than meeting twice a year govern the unanimously ruled council meetings. Until 1985, the European Council met three times a year. At special occasions, the council convenes at short notice (e.g., after the breakdown of the Berlin Wall). For a description see Butler, , Europe, p. 80Google Scholar.

18. The assumption of unidimensionality is justified as long as no side-payment is large enough to appease the laggard. In other words, issue linkage is possible for minor decisions. Such multidimensional problems are discussed in Lindberg, Leon, “Political Integration as a Multidimensional Phenomenon,” International Organization 24 (Autumn 1970), pp. 694–731CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19. On widening versus deepening see Wallace, Helen, “Widening and Deepening: The European Community and the New European Agenda,” Royal Institute for International Affairs (RIIA) discussion paper no. 23, RIAA, London, 1989Google Scholar; and Michalski, Anna and Wallace, Helen, The European Community: The Challenge of Enlargement (London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1992)Google Scholar.

20. In international organizations other than the European Union, there are important cases where the exit threat was executed (e.g., France's exit from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's military activities and the walkout by Britain and the United States from specialized agencies of the United Nations such as the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization). In his pathbreaking study, Hirschmann refers to several examples of exit from economic organizations in the United States. See Hirschmann, Albert O., Exit, Voice and Loyalty (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 27–29Google Scholar.

21. The selected cases also refer to situations where the laggard did not favor an increase in integration. Our models, however, exclude this contradiction to the liberal explanation. This means that our results are biased in favor of the optimist account of European integration. Early studies analyze some of the same events. Lindberg and Scheingold develop a “fever chart” to describe the ups and downs in the institutional development of the organization; see Lindberg, Leon N. and Scheingold, Stuart A., Europe's Would-be Polity: Patterns of Change in the European Community (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1971), p. 104Google Scholar. For an early ad hoc model explaining both integrative and disintegrative moves, see Nye, Joseph, Peace in Parts (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971)Google Scholar, chap. 3.

22. Schmidt, , Die Deutschen und ihre Nachbarn, p. 145Google Scholar.

23. Helmut Schmidt is quoted in Young, Hugo, One of us (London: Macmillan, 1989), p. 187Google Scholar.

24. The phrase is Thatcher's; see Butler, , Europe, p. 95Google Scholar.

25. Moravcsik, , “Negotiating the Single European Act,” p. 68Google Scholar.

26. Corbett, Richard, “The Intergovernmental Conference on Political Union,” Journal of Common Market Studies 30 (09 1993), pp. 271–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. Waltz, , Theory of International Politics, p. 106Google Scholar.

28. Mitrany, David, The Progress of International Government (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1933)Google Scholar.

29. Little, David, Varieties of Social Explanation: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Social Science (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1991)Google Scholar, chap. 5.

30. For examples of classical sociological theory, see Parsons, Talcott, The Structure of Social Action (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1937)Google Scholar and The Social System (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1951)Google Scholar; and Merton, Robert K., Social Theory and Social Structure (New York: Free Press, 1963)Google Scholar. For a sophisticated extension within the Parsonian tradition, see Luhmann, Niklas, Soziale Systeme: Grundriss einer Allgemeinen Theorie (Social systems: Ground plan of a general theory), (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1984)Google Scholar. See also Colomy, Paul, ed., Functionalist Sociology: Classic Statements (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1990)Google Scholar; and Colomy, Paul, ed., Neofunctionalist Sociology: Contemporary Statement (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1990)Google Scholar.

31. Harsanyi, John, “Rational Choice Models of Political Behavior Versus Functionalist and Conformist Theories,” World Politics 21 (07 1969), pp. 513–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32. Elster, Jon, Explaining Technical Change (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983)Google Scholar. Little aptly summarizes these objections: “Functional explanations are suspect in social science. … In particular, they must be supplemented by detailed accounts of the social processes through which the needs of social and economic systems influence other social processes to elicit responses that satisfy those needs.” See Little, , Varieties of Social Explanations, p. 102Google Scholar.

33. Compare Jacobson, Harold K., Reisinger, William M., and Mathers, Todd, “National Entanglements in International Governmental Organizations,” American Political Science Review 80 (03 1986), p. 142CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the discussion of economic process explanations in Keohane, Robert O. and Nye, Joseph S., Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977), pp. 38–42Google Scholar.

34. See Haas, Ernst B., The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social, and Economical Forces 1950–1957 (London: Stevens and Sons, 1958)Google Scholar; and Haas, Ernst B., Beyond the Nation-State: Functionalism and International Organization (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

35. Haas, , Beyond the Nation-State, p. 48Google Scholar; italics original.

36. Quasi-functionalist thinking is nowadays present in some strands of neoinstitutional economics. For a discussion, see Knight, Jack, Institutions and Social Conflict (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 40CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37. See, for instance, Lindberg and Scheingold, Europe's Would-be Polity. For a recent summary of the literature, see Keohane, Robert O. and Hoffmann, Stanley, eds., The New European Community, Decisionmaking, and Institutional Change (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1991)Google Scholar.

38. Hoffmann, Stanley, “Obstinate or Obsolete? The Fate of the Nation-State and the Case of Western Europe,” Daedalus 95 (Summer 1966), pp. 862–915Google Scholar.

39. Lindberg and Scheingold, Europe's Would-be Polity.

40. Scharpf, Fritz W., “The Joint-Decision Trap: Lessons from German Federalism and European Integration,” Public Administration 66 (Fall 1988), pp. 239–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41. Haas's, Ernst B. “Turbulent Fields and the Theory of Regional Integration,” International Organization 30 (Spring 1976), pp. 173–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar, marked the end of the first wave of integration research. See also Kratochwil, Friedrich and Ruggie, John Gerard, “International Organization: A State of the Art on an Art of the State,” International Organization 40 (Autumn 1986), pp. 753–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42. Sandholtz, and Zysman, , “1992,” p. 127Google Scholar.

43. Moravcsik, “Negotiating the Single European Act.”

44. See ibid., pp. 75 and 67, respectively.

45. Cameron, David R., “The 1992 Initiative: Causes and Consequences,” in Sbragia, Alberta M., ed., Euro-politics, Institutions, and Policymaking in the “New” European Community (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1992), p. 65Google Scholar.

46. Andrews, David M., “Germany, Maastricht, and EMU: The Limits of Integration Theory,” paper presented at the annual convention of the International Studies Association, Atlanta, Ga., 31 03–4 April 1992Google Scholar. See also Sandholtz, Wayne, “Choosing Union: Monetary Politics and Maastricht,” International Organization 47 (Winter 1993), pp. 1–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47. Laursen, Finn, “Toward European Political Union: An Analysis of the Intergovernmental Conference on Political Union,” paper presented at the annual convention of the International Studies Association, Atlanta, Ga., 31 03–4 April 1992Google Scholar.

48. Garrett, “International Cooperation and Institutional Choice.”

49. See Schneider, Gerald, “Getting Closer at Different Speeds: Strategic Interaction in Widening European Integration,” in Allan, Pierre and Schmidt, Christian, eds., Game Theory and International Relations (Cheltenham, England: Edward Elgar, 1994), pp. 125–55Google Scholar; and Schneider, Gerald and Weitsman, Patricia A., “The Punishment Trap: Integration Referendums as Popularity Contests,” typescript, Graduate Institute of International Studies, GenevaGoogle Scholar.

50. Wallace, William, “Less than a Federation, More than a Regime: The Community as a Political System,” in Wallace, Helen, Wallace, William, and Webb, Carol, eds., Policy Making in the European Community (Chichester, England: John Wiley and Sons, 1977), pp. 403–36Google Scholar.

51. See, for instance, Aumann, Robert, “Survey of Repeated Games,” in Aumann, Robert, ed., Essays in Game Theory and Mathematical Economics in Honor of Oscar Morgenstern (Mannheim, Germany: Bibliographisches Institut, 1981), pp. 11–42Google Scholar; Fudenberg, Drew and Maskin, Eric, “The Folk Theorem in Repeated Games with Discounting and with Incomplete Information,” Econometrica 54 (05 1986), pp. 533–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; or Van Damme, Eric, Stability and Perfection of Nash Equilibria (Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52. Axelrod, Robert, The Evolution of Cooperation (New York: Basic Books, 1984)Google Scholar. See also Axelrod, Robert and Keohane, Robert O., “Achieving Cooperation Under Anarchy: Strategies and Institutions,” in Oye, Kenneth A., ed., Cooperation Under Anarchy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), pp. 226–54Google Scholar.

53. Sandholtz, Wayne, High-tech Europe: The Politics of International Cooperation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), p. 30Google Scholar.

54. See Snidal, Duncan, “Relative Gains and the Pattern of International Cooperation,” American Political Science Review 85 (09 1991), pp. 701–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Snidal, Duncan, “International Cooperation Among Relative Gain Maximizers,” International Studies Quarterly 35 (12 1991), pp. 387–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55. For an example of the viewpoint that there is no such thing as self-induced changes of taste, see Stigler, George J. and Becker, Gary S., “De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum,” American Economic Review 67 (03 1977), pp. 76–90Google Scholar. See also von Weizäcker, Carl Christian, “Notes on Endogenous Change of Tastes,” Journal of Economic Theory 3 (12 1971), pp. 345–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Summaries of this literature include Elster, Jon, Ulysses and the Sirens: Studies in Rationality and Irrationality (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press, 1979)Google Scholar; and Schneider, Gerald, Time, Planning, and Policymaking: An Evaluation of a Complex Relationship (Bern: Peter Lang, 1991)Google Scholar.

56. For the original argument on relative gain-seeking, see Waltz, Theory of International Politics. For a game-theoretic formulation of the concept, see Grieco, Joseph M., Cooperation Among Nations: Europe, America, and Non-tariff Barriers of Trade (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

57. This point has also been made by Knight, , Institutions and Social Conflict, pp. 142–45Google Scholar.

58. For the original argument, see Putnam, Robert D., “Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-level Games,” International Organization 42 (Summer 1988), pp. 427–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Critical extensions are presented in Mayer, Fredrick W., “Managing Domestic Differences in International Negotiations: The Strategic Use of Internal Side-payments,” International Organization 46 (Autumn 1992), pp. 793–818CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Iida, Keisuke, “When and How Do Domestic Constraints Matter? Two-level Games with Uncertainty,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 37 (09 1993), pp. 403–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

59. Evans, Peter B., “Building an Integrative Approach to International and Domestic Politics: Reflections and Projections,” in Evans, Peter B., Jacobson, Harold K., and Putnam, Robert D., Double-edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining and Domestic Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 397–430Google Scholar; the quotation is drawn from p. 409.

60. Moravcsik, Andrew, “Armaments Among Allies: European Weapons Collaboration, 1975–1985,” in Evans, , Jacobson, , and Putnam, , Double-edged Diplomacy, pp. 128–67Google Scholar; the quotation is drawn from p. 159.

61. See, for example, Keith Krehbiel, Information and Legislative Organization.

62. Keohane, , After Hegemony, p. 94Google Scholar.

63. Fearon, “Deterrence and the Spiral Model.”

64. We employ the Harsanyi transformation to study this interaction as a situation of incomplete information. For an introduction to this technique, see Rasmussen, Eric, Games and Information (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp. 54–60Google Scholar.

65. For a technical statement and proofs of all propositions, please see the appendix.

66. Schelling, Thomas C., The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), pp. 21–52Google Scholar.

67. This simplifying assumption could be relaxed by introducing double-sided incomplete information. It is likely that similar results hold for this more general case.

68. Such a deduction of hypotheses is not applicable to the other equilibria of the exit game, since the outcome of each is unique.

69. The comparative statics results are derived by partially differentiating the outcome probabilities with respect to each parameter. See the appendix for details.

70. A similar modeling approach has been outlined by Fiorina, Morris, “Formal Models in Political Science,” American Journal of Political Science 19 (02 1975), pp. 133–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

71. Carrington, Lord, Reflect on Things Past (London: Collins, 1988), p. 319Google Scholar.

72. Callaghan, James, Time and Chance (London: Collins, 1987), pp. 492–93Google Scholar.

73. d'Estaing, Valery Giscard, Le Pouvoir et la vie (Power and life), vol. 1 (Paris: CIE Douze, 1988), p. 150Google Scholar.

74. Butler, , Europe, p. 69Google Scholar.

75. Tugendhat, Christopher, Making Sense of Europe (London: Viking, 1986), p. 121Google Scholar.

76. d'Estaing, Valery Giscard, Le Pouvoir et la vie (Power and Life), vol. 2 (Paris: CIE Douze, 1991), p. 463Google Scholar.

77. The game can easily be transformed into one in which Nature moves first by using the Harsanyi transformation. See, for instance, Rasmussen, , Games and Information, pp. 43–66Google Scholar.

78. Wilson, Harold, Final Term (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1979), p. 543Google Scholar.

79. Garrett, , “International Cooperation and Institutional Choice,” p. 543Google Scholar.

80. See Powell, Nuclear Deterrence Theory; and Fearon, “Deterrence and the Spiral Model.”

81. Under majority voting, political integration could become a smoother process than predicted by our theory. In particular, there will be fewer chances for laggards to stall the negotiations. Spatial models analyzing effects of qualified majority voting include George Tsebelis, “The Power of the European Parliament as a Conditional Agenda Setter,” American Political Science Review, forthcoming; and Schneider, Gerald, “The Limits of Self-Reform: Institution Building in the European Union,” typescript, Graduate Institute of International Studies, GenevaGoogle Scholar.

82. For alternative formal approaches, see Hannan, Michael T. and Freeman, John, Organizational Ecology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989)Google Scholar; or Nelson, Richard R. and Winter, Sidney G., An Evolutionary Theory of Economic Change (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982)Google Scholar.

83. Such factors are analyzed in Don Ward, Michael, ed., The New Geopolitics (Philadelphia: Gordon and Breach, 1992)Google Scholar.

84. Banks, Jeffrey and Sobel, Joel, “Equilibrium Selection in Signaling Games,” Econometrica 55 (05 1987), pp. 890–904CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

85. Banks, , Signaling Games in Political Science, pp. 16–17Google Scholar.

86. Fudenberg, Drew and Tirole, Jean, Game Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991)Google Scholar, chap. 11.

87. See Binmore, Ken, Essays on the Foundation of Game Theory (Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1990)Google Scholar; and Kreps, David M., A Course in Microeconomic Theory (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 437Google Scholar.