Bellicist Integration. War, crisis and core state powers

While the EU is not usually regarded as a state, some of its deepest crises were related to core state powers, from the failure of the European Defense Community in the 1950s to the polycrisis of the 2010s and 20s. Core state powers are the key action resources of sovereign government: coercive force, money, administration. We argue that the integration of core state powers is shaped by a fundamental competence – control tradeoff: the creation of EU fiscal, coercive or administrative capacities tends to increase European problem-solving competence but also increases risks of abuse and alienation; rigid controls reduce risks of abuse and alienation but also constrain EU problem-solving competence. Standard theories of integration miss the dilemma by privileging one of its horns over the other. Functional theories emphasize competence. They explain how expectations of joint gain fuel and direct integration. Realist and postfunctionalist theories emphasize control. They explain how the aversion of governments and mass publics to losses of sovereignty, identity, or resources block integration. We draw on both theoretical strands to model the interaction between competence-seeking and control-seeking. The model shows that the regulatory integration of core state powers is often control-driven, and not by the search for efficiency and joint gain as functional theories suggest assume. It also shows that control-seeking doesn’t prevent EU capacity building, as realist and postfunctionalist approaches presume, but shape it in ways that undermine problem-solving effectiveness. We explain, why the EU often ends up at the control-end of the tradeoff, and discuss the conditions that allow it to shift towards more competence.