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Continuities and Discontinuities between Studies of National and International Political Integration: Some Implications for Future Research Efforts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 May 2009
Extract
The literature on integration has expanded tremendously during the last decade. This growing interest in the problems and processes of integration is particularly marked in two areas, studies of international regional integration and studies of national integration. On the whole, these efforts have been carried out with very little reference to each other. What is striking, nonetheless, is the similarity of much of the material and the relevance of work in one area for conceptualization and theory building in the other. As one who has been concerned primarily with national political integration I would like to delineate some of the major similarities and differences between the foci of national and regional integration studies, to suggest the utility of thinking in terms of a common conceptualization of political integration, and to discuss the relevance of some aspects of the work on national integration for regional theory and research.
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Footnotes
Assistant professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The author is indebted to a number of individuals for their helpful comments and criticisms, in particular, Samuel Coleman, Victor Le Vine, Donald McCrone, Deane E. Neubauer, Stuart Scheingold, and James C. Scott.
References
1 A very useful effort at overcoming these difficulties for regional studies has been made by Nye, Joseph S., “Comparative Regional Integration: Concept and Measurement,” International Organization, Autumn 1968 (Vol. 22, No. 4), pp. 855–880CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Jacob, Philip E. and Teune, Henry have made an interesting, but less successful, attempt to synthesize all integration studies in “The Integrative Process: Guidelines for Analysis of the Bases of Political Community,” in Jacob, Philip E. and Toscano, James (ed.), The Integration of Political Communities (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1964)Google Scholar. Weiner, Myron suggests a synthesis at the national level and a categorization of types of integration in “Political Integration and Political Development,” in Welch, Claude E. Jr (ed.), Political Modernization: A Reader in Comparative Political Change (Belmont, Calif: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1967), pp. 150–166Google Scholar.
2 Ernst B. Haas defines integration as
the process whereby political actors in several distinct national settings are persuaded to shift their loyalties, expectations, and political activities toward a new and larger center, whose institutions possess or demand jurisdiction over the preexisting national states.
The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social, and Economic Forces, 1950–1957 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1958), p. 16Google Scholar.
3 Karl W. Deutsch, and others, describe integration as
the attainment, within a territory, of a “sense of community “ and of institutions and practices strong enough and widespread enough to assure, for a “long” time, dependable expectations of “peaceful change” among its population.
“Political Community and the North Atlantic Area,” in International Political Communities: An Anthology (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday St Co., 1966), p. 2Google Scholar.
4 This conceptualization has been used by many individuals in studying regional integration. Joseph Nye has stated that integration is a
process lending to political community—a condition in which a group of people recognizes mutual obligations and some notion of a common interest.
Pan-Africanism and East African Integration (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press [under the auspices of the Center for International Affairs], 1965), p. 84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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5 Amitai Etzioni defines integration as “the ability of a unit or system to maintain itself in the face of internal and external challenges” in his Political Unification: A Comparative Study of Leaders and Forces (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), p. 330Google Scholar.
6 Leon Lindberg suggests that integration be conceptualized as the
process whereby a group of nations (or other political units) progressively takes on a collective capacity to make decisions which authoritatively allocates values for all their members
in his manuscript, “Europe as a Political System: Measuring Political Integration,” Centex for International Studies, Harvard University, April 1967, p. 2. (Mimeographed.)
7 Myron Weiner describes integration as “referring to the generalized problem of holding a system together,” in Welch, p. 153.
8 Marion J. Levy, Jr., suggests that
the analytic structure of integration in a society or other concrete structure consists of those structures the operations of which make for the eufunctional adaptation of the members and/or members-to-be of the structure to the structure concerned
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12 There are cases in which more than one political entity claims to govern a defined territory (as in the Vietnam conflict). In such cases, however, decisions about which entity will be regarded as the “effective” governing authority are made by other states. Under most conditions the question of effective governing authority is assumed even though as scholars we might question it.
13 Some empirical work on national identity has followed Gabriel Almond's and Sidney Verba's study of political culture either utilizing data which they gathered on national identity or pursuing similar efforts. Particularly instructive in this respect is Joseph LaPalombara's analysis of the nonintegrative aspects of political identification in Italy. Italy is neither a newly independent state nor a stranger to modernization. The implications of die Italian case for what we are likely to find elsewhere should encourage further empirical efforts to specify the nature of political identification. Almond, Gabriel A. and Verba, Sidney, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1963)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On national identity see Verba, Sidney, “Conclusion: Comparative Political Culture,” in Pye, Lucian W. and Verba, Sidney (ed.), Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1965), pp. 512–560CrossRefGoogle Scholar and LaPalombara, Joseph, “Italy: Fragmentation, Isolation, and Alienation,” in Pye, and Verba, , pp. 282–329CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 See, for example, Huntington, Samuel P., “Political Development and Political Decay,” and Weiner, in Welch, pp. 207–245 and 150–166, respectivelyGoogle Scholar.
15 See, for example Coleman and Rosberg, especially the introduction and conclusions; and Morgcnthau, Ruth Schachtcr, Political Parties in French-Speaking West Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), chapter 9Google Scholar.
16 Huntington, Samuel P. suggests that political parties are among these structures in his Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1968), chapter 7Google Scholar.
17 Weiner, in Welch, pp. 158–159.
18 These values may be the simple rules for conflict resolution or represent a stratification system which express a justification for differential ranking judgments. See Barber, Bernard, Social Stratification: A Comparative Analysis of Structure and Process (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1957), p. 7Google Scholar.
19 Apter, David E., The Politics of Modernization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), pp. 240–243Google Scholar.
20 A partial exception to this occurs in nations with a strong system of federalism. In these cases the relation between the national government and the partners to the federation more closely approximates a clear exchange relationship.
21 We leave that term undefined for the moment.
22 This is expended considerably in a forthcoming study of national integration in Ghana.
23 There are a number of conceptual difficulties with existing general definitions which also lead me to undertake this effort. While this article is not the place for a detailed exegesis of the merits and demerits of definitions in the literature, the general problems of clarity, lack of stated empirical referents, circularity, and utility create serious difficulties for research based on existing general definitions of integration.
24 In some cases it will be useful to conceptualize each nation participating as “an actor,” in others it will be necessary to deal with the populace or some subgroup of the populace as actors.
25 I use the terms nonorientation and nonadaptation to refer to lack of orientations or adaptations toward a structure. This is distinct from the use of the word negative which refers to orientations and adaptations directed against or in opposition to the structure.
26 have not quantified indices of orientation or adaptation in this article, but I have suggested the types of things one would need to specify and identify in doing so.
27 In some cases it may be easier to focus on nonadaptive behavior since in most nations most people comply with rules and directives where they know about them and can comply. Neubauer, Deane E. and Kastner, Lawrence D. have discussed the measurement of levels of compliance, in “The Study of Compliance Maintenance as a Strategy for Comparative Research,” World Politics, 07 1969 (Vol. 21, No. 4), pp. 629–640CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
28 This is not, however, the process of integration but a measure of it.
29 We see this, for example in work of Jacob and Teune, in Jacob and Toscano, pp. 4–8, and to some extent in the work of Huntington, in Welch.
30 This focus is exemplified in much of the work of Karl Deutsch. Most of those who focus on exchange relationships are dealing with relatively modernized societies and thus encounter this difficulty only if they make comparisons with nonmodernized societies.
31 Some of these assertions are summarized in the conclusions in Coleman and Rosberg.
32 Apter, p. 375.
33 Morgenthau, p. 341.
34 See my “Predominantly Politically Oriented Organizations in Sierra Leone and Senegal” (Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1968), chapter 14Google Scholar.
35 There are numerous government statements and “white papers” which make this point. Speaking on the need to introduce a “democratic one-party state” in Sierra Leone, the former prime minister, Albert Margai, argued:
When you go to the Provinces, to some of the villages, you will find that the opposition is trying everywhere to divide the people. By a c aign of lies, they have put the people against the Chiefs and the Chiefs against the people. What benefit do we get from such disunity? When it comes to development and the people select a project, and A.P.C. comes and turns their minds from it by false propaganda. And so the country surfers.
“The Honourable Prime Minister's Address on the Introduction of a Democratic One-Party State in Sierra Leone,” delivered at the Queen Elizabedi II Playing Field, January 28, 1966, mimeographed by Ministry of Information, pp. 7–8.
36 For example Myron Weiner argues that the competition of groups is a useful integrative force as long as no group predominates in his The Politics of Scarcity: Public Pressure and Political Response in India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), chapter 3Google Scholar.
37 LaPalombara, in Pye and Verba.
38 An extensive effort to examine attitudes cross-nationally was made by Almond and Verba. More subjective assessments are found, however, in much of the literature on nationalism. See Hodgkin, Thomas, Nationalism in Colonial Africa (New York: New York University Press, 1957)Google Scholar; Emerson, Rupert, From Empire to Nation: The Rise to Self-Assertion of Asian and African Peoples (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1960), who describes (p. 95)Google Scholar the emergence of the nation and the attitudes which this involves:
The nation is a community of people who feel that they belong together in the double sense that they share deeply significant elements of a common heritage and that they have a common destiny for the future. In the contemporary world the nation is for great portions of mankind the community with which men most intensely and most unconditionally identify themselves, even to the extent of being prepared to lay down their lives for it, however deeply they may differ among themselves on other issues.
39 Most of the literature on development has focused on political “elites.” We see this in Coleman, and Rosberg, ; Apter, David E., The Political Kingdom in Uganda: A Study in Bureaucratic Nationalism (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1961)Google Scholar; and Pye, Lucian W., Politics, Personality, and Nation Building: Burma's Search for Identity (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1962)Google Scholar.
40 These assumptions are expressed by political leaders in resolutions on tribalism, religious separation, and traditional institutions passed at the close of the All African People's Conference in Accra, December 5–13, 1958. They are also discussed in Gertz, Clifford, “The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States,” in Gertz, (ed.), Old Societies and New States (London: Free Press, 1963)Google Scholar.
41 Wallerstein, Immanuel, “Ethnicity and National Integration in West Africa,” in Eckstein, Harry and Apter, David (ed.), Comparative Politics (Glencoe, 111: Free Press, 1963), pp. 665–670Google Scholar.
42 Weiner, Myron, “India: Two Political Cultures,” in Pye, and Verba, , pp. 199—244CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
43 Fox, Richard G., “Varna Schemes and Ideological Integration in Indian Society,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 01 1969 (Vol. 11, No. 1), pp. 27–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
44 Eckstein, Harry, “Theory of Stable Democracy,” in Eckstein, Harry, Division and Cohesion in Democracy: A Study of Norway (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1966)Google Scholar.
45 See, for example Riker, William H., Federalism: Origin, Operation, Significance (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1964)Google Scholar.
46 See Van den Berghe, Pierre L. (ed.), Africa: Social Problems of Change and Conflict (San Francisco, Calif: Chandler, 1965)Google Scholar; Fraenkel, Merran, Tribe and Class in Monrovia (London: Oxford University Press, 1964)Google Scholar, Young, Crawford, Politics in the Congo (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1965)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
47 The political party literature assumes a high correspondence between promises, performance, and integration. See Coleman and Rosberg; Hodgkin; and Morgenthau. In several studies the limited success of national integration is asserted as a consequence of the ineffectiveness of government performance. See Zolberg, Aristide R., Creating Political Order: The Party-States of West Africa (Chicago: Rand Mc Nally & Co., 1966) and PyeGoogle Scholar.
48 Lindberg, Leon and Scheingold, Stuart, Europe's Wotild-Be Polity: Patterns of Change in the European Community (Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall, 1970)Google Scholar.
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