International Institutions and Socialization in Europe
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Getting Socialized to Build Bridges: Constructivism and Rationalism,
Europe and the Nation-State
AbstractBuilding on the empirical findings of the preceding articles, we
advance three arguments. First, while socialization research has typically
been construed as constructivism's home turf, this volume's
emphasis on mechanisms and scope conditions reveals that rational choice
has much to contribute here as well. We develop this claim by undertaking
a “double interpretation” of each essay, which allows us to
advance more fine-grained arguments connecting the two social theories.
Second, while there are good conceptual reasons for expecting a
predominance of international socialization in Europe, the empirical cases
instead suggest that its effects are often weak and secondary to dynamics
at the national level. We make sense of this puzzle by reasoning more
explicitly in longitudinal terms, by drawing on work on European identity,
and by noting that students of European socialization—as well as
integration—have much to gain by “bringing the domestic back
in.” Finally, while our collaborators have demonstrated the
empirical and theoretical benefits of combining a social ontology with a
positivist epistemology, this comes at a cost, with normative perspectives
neglected. This matters—and all the more so in a Europe marked by
supranational constitution- and polity building. Socialization dynamics
may well take us beyond the nation-state, but their legitimacy and
governance implications bring us back—forcefully—to it. a
Footnotesa We are grateful to the project participants and
contributors to this volume for valuable discussions on the themes
addressed here. For detailed comments on earlier versions of this essay,
we thank two anonymous reviewers, the IO editors, Peter
Katzenstein, and Ron Mitchell.
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