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European countries cooperate in certain fields, then this cooperation will
lead to cooperation in other fields as well - Haas called these ‘spillovers’
As he put it:
Social actors, in seeking to realize their value-derived interests, will choose whatever
means are made available by the prevailing democratic order. If thwarted they will
rethink their values, redefine their interests, and choose new means to realize them.
The alleged primordial force of nationalism will be trumped by the utilitarian¬
instrumental human desire to better oneself in life, materially and in terms of status,
as well as normative satisfaction. (Haas 2004, 14)
There are two types of spillovers: the first, functional spillover, happens when
cooperation in certain sectors of the economy (or society) creates technocratic
pressure for cooperation in adjoining sectors, thereby propelling integration forward
... The second type, political spillover, occurs when ongoing cooperation in certain
areas empowers supranational officials to act as informal political entrepreneurs
in other areas. In order to manage complex technocratic issues more effectively,
rational governments must delegate discretion to experts, judges and bureaucrats,
thereby creating powerful new supranational actors with an interest in cooperation.
(Moravcsik 2005, 352)
A different path for describing integration was taken by intergovernmentalists.
In intergovernmentalism, Europe-wide decisions are primarily made by
Member States through negotiations. This model does not ignore the role
of EU institutions or Member States’ domestic political culture, but it puts
the emphasis on intergovernmental negotiations, and sees governments as
the primary players in European-level politics.
There are, of course, differences in this stream - the more optimistic
(sometimes even utopistic) liberal intergovernmentalism of Moravcsik is
slightly different from the 'new intergovernmentalism’ of Uwe Puetter, which
also reflects on the disequilibrium ofthe EU, the fact that Member States do
not necessarily transfer new competences to the Union, and that adopting
decisions in the European Council is increasingly common practice (see also
Bickerton et al. 2015; Moravcsik and Schimmelfennig 2019).
Contrary to intergovernmentalists, institutionalists believe that there
could be a gap between governmental interests (aims) and political/policy
decisions in the EU, so they focus on the functioning of the common European
institutions. To put it simply: institutions can ‘break out and live their own
life without the limits of governments (Jupille and Caporaso 1999, 438). From
this perspective, the role of EU institutions, the values they advocate, and
the political decisions they make are at least as important as governmental
input, or the social environment.