International Institutions and Socialization in Europe

Description

Since the path-breaking work of Karl Deutsch on security communities and Ernst Haas on European integration, it has been clear that international institutions may create senses of community and belonging beyond the nation state. Put differently, they can socialize. Yet the mechanisms underlying such dynamics have been unclear. This volume explores these mechanisms of international community building, from a resolutely eclectic stand point. Rationalism is thus the social theory of choice for some contributors, while others are more comfortable with social constructivism. This problem-driven perspective and the theoretical bridge building it are the cutting edge in international relations theory. By providing more fined-grained arguments on precisely how international institutions matter, such an approach sheds crucial light on the complex relationship between states and institutions, between rational choice and social constructivism, and, in our case, between Europe and the nation state.

Jeffrey T. Checkel is Professor of Political Science at the University of Oslo. His research and teaching interests are international relations theory, European integration, politics in the former USSR and West Europe, and human rights. He is the author of Ideas and International Political Change: Soviet/Russian Behavior and the End of the Cold War, and has published widely in leading European and American scholarly journals.

'... an intellectual challenge and stimulating reading for both rationalist and constructivist-oriented scholars of European integration and international relations ...' Political Studies Review