Defence and European Integration

This article examines neorealist and neofunctionalist theoretical approaches to the issue of defence and European integration, and specifically the prospects of adding a defence component to the European Union. It sets out the difference between the core assumptions on these issues and argues that these theories provide different and contradictory explanations and predictions about the relationship between defence and European integration. However, when these two approaches are set against the historical record, neither neorealism with its notion of high and low politics, nor neofunctionalism with its notion of spillover, provides a parsimonious explanation as to why the defence issue has developed in the way that it has over the last 50 years.