Economic and political origins of post-war western european interdependance

Completed

Not Energy Related
Fossil Fuels: Oil Gas and Coal(Coal, Other Coal)

Basic and strategic applied research

SOCIAL SCIENCES (Politics and International Studies)

Sociological economical and environmental impact of energy (Policy and regulation)

Professor AS Milward
Department of International Relations
London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

Standard

ESRC

01 November 1987

31 October 1991

48 months

£15,690

No relevance to Underpinning Sectors

London

ESRC Coal

Professor AS Milward, Department of International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE)

Objectives not supplied

The purpose of the project was to improve the level of understanding of the process of European integration by testing existing theories against historical evidence. We examined in close detail, from the public archives of seven countries and from statistical data, three areas of national government policy in which powers were partly transferred to the supranational European institutional level; the regulation of the coal, iron and steel industries, deregulation of intra-community trade, and agriculture. The conclusions were that the economic and social policies of the post-war European state rescued the nation-state as an organisational entity from its collapse of 1929-40, but that in the cases we examined they would not have been achievable without the process of European integration as represented by the European Communities. The Community should therefore be understood not as the consequence of increasing long-term economic and political interdependence, but as the outcome of aparticular pattern of national domestic policy choices designed to reassert the principle of governance by the nation-state. Since that pattern was historically - determined, future surrenders of sovereignty are not an unavoidable trend but will be determined by similarities of policy choices in the nation-states. The research award was held in conjunction with a large award from the Leverhulme Trust and the research and publications which have resulted depended on both awards.

27/10/11