The Treaty of Lisbon was an international agreement signed in December 2007 (Eur- lex.europa.eu, 2017). After being accepted by all the European Union countries, the Treaty of Lisbon did in 2009 enter the force (Eur-lex.europa.eu, 2017). One of the results of the Treaty of Lisbon were the reform of the European Union institutions and the improvement of the decision- making process within the European Union. The Treaty of Lisbon also strengthen the external policies within the European Union and the democratic dimensions and reformed the internal policy of the European Union (Eur-lex.europa.eu, 2017). Furthermore, the Treaty of Lisbon did also bring an end to the EC and the former architecture. One of the goals of the Treaty of Lisbon was to strengthen the European democracy, to develop the legitimacy of the decision making and to bring the European Union and the citizens even closer (Eur-lex.europa.eu, 2017). The powers of the European Parliament are consequently increased. Comparably, the Treaty of Lisbon gives a higher role to the national parliaments within the European Union.
The European Union (EU), is the most institutionalized international organization worldwide. With a welter of supranational and intergovernmental institution, the institution has an increased body of primary and secondary legislation, which is also known as acquis communautaire (Wiener & Diez, 2009). The concept of institution within the European Union is a central concept to political science analysis, as there is a wide diversity across and within disciplines in what types of the relations and rules are interpreted within the concept of institutions. Political institutions approach differs when it comes to understanding three points a) the process that translate the rules of impact and structure and; b) the procedures that will translate human behavior into structure and the rules to eliminate or sustain institutions (March & Olsen, 2017).
This supports the new institutionalism theory as this theory emphasizes the endogenous role of social and nature construction of political institutions within the process of European integration (March & Olsen, 2017). New institutionalism has three main strands; historical institutionalist, sociological institutionalist and rational choice. Historical institutionalism defines institutions as norms, conventions and of being informal and formal within the organizational structure of the political and polity economy. They conceptualize the relationship between individual behavior and institutions in comprehensive terms. Furthermore, they tend to see the institutionalism development emphasize in a dependence path and unforeseen consequences. One of the concerns is to integrate institutional analysis, within the contribution of other factors (Hall and Taylor, 2017). The sociological institutionalism aspect of new institutionalism often begins with the hypothesis that individuals upon a ‘logic of appropriateness’ (Wiener & Diez, 2009 p.127), that most likely takes cues from their environmental institutional as they choose the most suitable behavior for a given
This aspect differs compared to historical institutionalism and rational choice, as sociological identities within the integration process. Sociological institutionalism also in particular focuses on the culture of the institutions and the socialization of the actors, and reflects upon the patterns of persuasion and communication that occur during the pursuit of integration and policy making (Hall and Taylor, 2017).
The rational choice aspect in institutionalism covers the approach that the European Union is built upon a restrictive set of norms based on institutions assumptions that fundamentally have been questioned by constructivist and sociological institutionalism and actors (Testpolitics.pbworks.com, 2017).
Rational choice institutionalism is also interested of the preferences in the actors within the integration process in order to change in institutional rules. An example could be for instance, institutional rules that the individual behavior is the OLP, which could influence how the European actors, in general, pursue their ideal policy outcomes. These aspects play a significant role within the analysis of European Union institutional dynamics as these theories explain the integration process more in-depth by covering the three main factors that have a significant role in the European union (Wiener & Diez, 2009).
Neofunctionalism is associated with the economic, political goals and integration policies. It is mainly focused on the processes of integration, and to further policy development and do not look at the end goals. Ernst B. Haas, founding of the European Coa and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC) originally aim to formulate a theoretical relation between objective and scientific clarification of regional cooperation (Wiener & Diez, 2009).
Despite the fact that the ‘spillover’ is the natural consequence of the integrating certain international policy areas, there is a need for developing harmonization of policies. The shift from intergovernmental to supranational autonomy is in general intended by policy-makers in each country to develop their own national interest (Cini, 2013), in order to transfer power to Europe towards an integration that is in Europe’s interest in general, which also the main reason for why states do integrate (Wiener & Diez, 2009).
It is worth arguing whether the Treaty of Lisbon has become supranational, and therefore caused the European Union to become less intergovernmental. The Treaty of Lisbon has caused many areas to move towards ‘Ordinary Legislative Procedures’ (OLP), which means that automatically more policies are enforced. Hence, the European Union becomes involved so it ideologically has effects, and the commission plays an important role.
This means that the European Union institutions play a more significant role, and the OLP increases supranational as it involves more European institutions and thereby uses co-decision. This can be argued as democracy becomes more increased, as the areas that were used by consultation, are now decided by co-decisions, and therefore certain areas are moved from intergovernmental to supranational. Pollack argues that historical institutionalism choices taken during the past could persist, or become locked in, which thereby constraining and shaping actors later, which in this case could be argued that the Treaty of Lisbon was one of those choices. As mentioned above that it shifted the European Union to become less intergovernmental (Wiener & Diez, 2009).
As the main theorist of the neofunctionalism Ernst B. Haas has defined regional integration “the process whereby political actors in several distinct national settings are persuaded to shift their loyalties, expectations and political activities toward a new centre, whose institutions possess… The end result of a process of political integration is a new political community, superimposed over the ones” (Wiener & Diez, 2009, p. 47). Haas also argued the fact that political parties and interest group is important and the key actor within the development of integration. Even though governments would be reluctant to the integration engage process, interest groups would look at it as an interest to develop further integration and the main reason for that is the fact that interest groups sees integration as a way to resolve difficulties (Cini, 2013). Interest groups do also reorganize their activity to the European Union and pressures governments for further integration (Wiener & Diez, 2009).
Furthermore, the co-founder of the neofunctionalism Jean Monnet, agreed with Haas’s theory, that cooperation in one policy area would create pressures in sovereign states or in neighboring political agendas, which would automatically be leading to further integration also known as the concept of “spillover” within other policy areas (Cini, 2013). This means that cooperation within one policy area includes cooperation within other new areas, which would thereby initiate to an incremental of political integration process. Over time, this process leads to more independency among supranational institutions and development of their own political agendas (Cini 2013).