European Integration: From Nation-States to Member States

by Christopher J. Bickerton

European integration confuses citizens and scholars alike. It appears to transfer power away from national capitals towards Brussels yet a close study of the EU reveals the absence of any real leap towards supranationalism. The EU is dominated by cooperation between national representatives and national officials yet it continually appears to us as something external and separate from national political life. This book takes on these paradoxes by arguing that European integration should no longer be studied as the transcendence of states or as merely an expression of national interests. Rather, we should approach it as a process of state transformation. This transformation is from nation-state to member state. The book explores in detail the concept of member state, arguing that it provides us with the best tool for understanding the European integration process. Member states differ from traditional nation-states. They are not founded on the idea of popular sovereignty or the nation. They rest upon the idea that the governance of domestic societies requires external frameworks of rule that can bind the hands of national politicians. National authority is thus exercised through external rules and norms. Member statehood differs from earlier forms of statehood because it rests upon a presumption of conflict between state and society rather than an identity of interests between ruler and ruled. The book outlines in empirical detail these mysteries and paradoxes of European integration. It then outlines in detail the theory and history of member statehood. It applies the concept of member state to the study of two EU policy areas: macro-economic governance and foreign and security policy.

230 pages, ebook

First published October 17, 2012

About the author

Christopher Bickerton is a Professor in Modern European Politics at POLIS and an Official Fellow at Queens’ College, Cambridge. He obtained his BA in Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE) from Somerville College, Oxford and his Masters from the Graduate Institute in Geneva. He obtained his PhD from the University of Oxford (St John’s College) in 2008 and since then has held teaching positions at Oxford, the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and Sciences Po in Paris.

He has published numerous books and articles that span a number of different fields within social and political science. These include three research monographs, European Union Foreign Policy: From Effectiveness to Functionality (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011; paperback in 2015), European Integration: From Nation-States to Member States (Oxford University Press, 2012) and Technopopulism: The New Logic of Democratic Politics (Oxford University Press, 2021, co-authored with Carlo Invernizzi Accetti). His 2012 book on state transformation was awarded the Best Book prize by the University Association of Contemporary European Studies. His articles have been published in the Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS), Political Studies, International Politics and the Revue Française de Science Politique. In 2011, he co-edited a special issue in JCMS on the EU’s security and defence policy (with Bastien Irondelle and Anand Menon).

In 2016, he published the best-selling The European Union: A Citizen’s Guide with Penguin, which was submitted for the Baillie-Gifford prize, the UK’s leading non-fiction literary prize. He is currently under contract with Allen Lane/Penguin in the UK and Penguin Press in the USA for a history of Europe since 1989. Beyond academic publishing, he has written articles for the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, New York Times, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs and The Big Issue. He is regularly interviewed for national and international radio and has been a panellist on the Talking Politics podcast.