Neofunctionalism

Neofunctionalism is a theory of regional integration, building on the work of Ernst B. Haas, a German-born American political scientist, and also Leon Lindberg, an American political scientist. The explicit purpose of the neofunctionalists was to utilize the pioneering European experience of integration to generate hypotheses for testing in other contexts.Jean Monnet's approach to European integration, which aimed at integrating individual sectors in hopes of achieving spillover effects to further the process of integration, is said to have followed the neofunctional school's tack. Haas later declared the theory of neofunctionalism obsolete, a statement he revoked in his final book, after the process of European integration started stalling in the 1960s, when Charles de Gaulle's "empty chair" politics paralyzed the institutions of the European Coal and Steel Community, European Economic Community, and European Atomic Energy Community. The theory was updated and further specified namely by Wayne Sandholtz, Alec Stone Sweet, and their collaborators in the 1990s and in the 2000s (references below). The main contributions of these authors was an employment of empiricism.

Neofunctionalism describes and explains the process of regional integration with reference to how three causal factors interact:

Early neofunctionalist theory assumed a decline in importance of nationalism and the nation-state; it predicted that, gradually, elected officials, interest groups, and large commercial interests within states would see it in their interests to pursue welfarist objectives best satisfied by the political and market integration at a higher, supranational level. Haas theorized three mechanisms that he thought would drive the integration forward: positive spillover, the transfer of domestic allegiances and technocratic automaticity.

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