How can sociology contribute to the understanding of the social and political transformations that are affecting contemporary Europe? The article proposes that sociological accounts of European integration should focus around the basic problem of internal differentiation and external adaptation...

Integration may occur through coercion and intergovernmental bargaining - through blackmail, tradition, functional adaptation, copying, diffusion or exit - but it may also occur through reflexive reason-giving and entrenched commitments. The usefulness of such an approach to transnational and...