Search Results

Assesses the interaction between developments in EU law and the politics of integration, and is primarily concerned with the impacts of the courts on the evolution of EU institutions (rules and procedures). It gives a broad‐gauge overview of the development of the legal system and considers the impact of adjudicating European law on EU political developments. Stone Sweet then relates both European integration theory and methodology, identifying if, how, and why these theories can help understanding of the evolution of the EU legal system. Proceeds as follows: the first section, Integration and the Courts, examines the sources and consequences of the constitutionalization of the legal system; the second and third sections (The Evolution of the Treaty of Rome, and The Legislative Process) evaluate the role of the courts in the institutional evolution of the EU, and the impact of that evolution on the treaty revision and legislative processes; the Conclusion briefly considers the Europeanization of the law, an important phenomenon implicated in various ways throughout the chapter.

This concluding chapter examines the use that is made in the book of institutionalist theory to address the question of European integration, a use that is described as not typical in the study of the European Union, which is usually approached via international relations and integration theory. Issues that result from taking this institutional approach (i.e. analysing European political integration as institutionalization rather than as international relations) are briefly discussed, before going on to see how the Europe of the last half of the twentieth century has provided social scientists with rich opportunities for evaluating how new political systems evolve and emerge. Some of the aspects examined are: the concept of institutions; the impact of institutions; feedback effects (feedback loops liking actors to organizations, to institutions, and back again); institutional coherence; institutions and society; and the demand for, and supply of, institutions.

Armstrong links macro structures to the micro level (individual action) by providing a critical analysis of the institutionalization of new modes of governance and their impact on civil society and democratic politics. The argument is presented with respect to a particular new mode of governance, the open method of co‐ordination (or OMC), which is seen as posing challenges for integration theories that assume that law and courts would be central to understanding EU governance. OMC does not rest on the instrumental usage of EU law to achieve its goal and triggers law‐production at the national rather than the EU level. Focussing on the application of the OMC to the fight against poverty and social exclusion, Armstrong elaborates the tension (and potential pitfalls and promise) this new mode of governance presents for EU democracy. The six sections of the chapter are: Introduction; OMC and Integration Theory; Institutional Context and Change: Systemic Discourses, Rules and Norms—an analysis of the systemic context of OMC inclusion policy; The Organizational, Procedural, and Substantive Levels of Policy Development; Mobilizing Actors—the roles of civil society actors at national/subnational and transnational levels in the OMC inclusion process; and Conclusions.

This chapter discusses four theories of attention and how studies of visual processing and attentional selection in primates have largely shaped these theories. The first theory is the feature-integration theory of Treisman and colleagues. It then describes its offspring (the guided-search model and the ambiguity-resolution theory). Finally, it discusses the biased-competition account of selection and the premotor theory of attention.

This chapter offers evidence consistent with the proposal that sign languages preceded spoken languages in the evolution of language. Using conceptual integration theory, the authors argue that what may be considered “just a funny story in British Sign Language” contains the human singularities needed to create novel mappings and compressions between pre-existing conventional cognitive parts and conventionally structured cognitive parts that make up human language. While it is arguable that spoken language could do without analogy, framing, and the like (though it would be vastly impoverished), it is entirely impossible for sign language to do so. Thus the fact that these human singularities emerged at roughly the same time as language makes sense if the first human language was signed.

This chapter explores the dominant theory of unregulated market—oriented choice and shows the way in which the requirements for a true market do not exist. It also discusses the consequences of these faulty ideological assumptions for the educational opportunity and school systems.

Robert Van Gulick explains how integration and unity play an important role in a number of current theories and models of consciousness. Normal consciousness is unified in a variety of ways but many disorders of disunity can also occur. What can we learn from them about consciousness and unity? What theories of consciousness might help us better understand the nature and basis of such disorders? Van Gulick first surveys the diverse types of conscious unity. He then briefly describes five theories of consciousness that involve integration, that is, Baars’s Global Workspace Theory (GWT), Tononi's Integrated Information Theory (IIT), Jesse Prinz's AIR theory (Attended Intermediate Representation), Tim Bayne's Phenomenal Unity thesis, and the combination of his own HOGS (Higher-order Global States) model with Virtual Self Realism (VSR). In that context, he discusses three specific pathologies of disunity -- neglect and extinction, dissociative identity disorder, and split-brains–and each is considered in relation to the integration based theories of consciousness.

This chapter is concerned with the process of finding a visual target amongst other distractor items. It starts with a discussion of traditional theories of visual search, including Feature Integration Theory, Guided Search, and the late-selection model of Duncan and Humphreys. It is argued that all these models are inadequate because they do not account for, or integrate eye movements into the search process. The chapter reviews evidence demonstrating that saccades are a ubiquitous characteristic of search, and then discusses what determines where saccades go in search and what determines when they are generated. The following sections discuss ocular capture and the characteristics of search scanpaths. Finally, the physiology of visual search is reviewed. The chapter argues that the consideration of saccadic behaviour must be at the centre of any model or description of the search process.

The introductory chapter outlines the conceptual tools used throughout the volume. It presents, in brief, the original model of the joint-decision trap and the developments that ensued after its conception. It extends the realm of the debate by highlighting further forms of EU decision traps, working outside the joint-decision mode under the Community method, such as in intergovernmental negotiations or supranational-hierarchical decisions. As a basis for the subsequent cross-policy study, various mechanisms to exit decision traps or to countervail their effects are discussed in depth. The chapter concludes by highlighting the overall importance of such analyses for European integration theory and outlining the research design and the chapter arrangement of the book.

This chapter summarizes the book and argues that market—theory choice actually increases inequality and segregation, while substantial controls on the market aimed at diversity and equity can actually provide alternatives that are better for all students in some key ways and far more equitable to disadvantaged students.

This chapter assesses the contribution of agenda-setting theory to analysing the changing distribution of policy-making powers between the EU and its member states. Based on the agenda-setting literature, the chapter specifies a number of factors that lead to the entrance of issues on the EU agenda. This theoretical framework is then used to outline two pathways to the EU agenda: one in which issues suddenly hit the EU agenda after a major event and one in which impetus for dealing with an issue at the EU-level is gradually built up. Finally, the insights from agenda-setting theory are compared with those from integration theory. It is argued that agenda-setting theory can help us formulate a more specific and nuanced set of conditions that determine whether or not issues will make it to the EU agenda, thus advancing our understanding of policy shifts between member states and the process of European integration more generally.

The EU’s founding fathers had the protection of the EU’s constituent units as a key concern and set up significant hurdles to policy innovation in the absence of unanimous governmental agreement. Over time, these institutional design features were somewhat eroded but not removed. Nonetheless, the problem of how to innovate has, at times, been overcome through eclectic means. There are indeed some well known and quite visible practices as well as some less expected and more obscure strategies that have propelled the EU’s policy system beyond what has for a long time been expected from a situation of ‘joint-decision trap’. This chapter argues that there are two strategic moves the European Commission and, at times, other actors such as the European Court of Justice can use to actively overcome member state opposition: first, sidelining some or even all national governments; and, second, manipulating relevant policy preferences. These two basic strategies can be seen to interconnect the diverging basic assumptions of intergovernmentalism and classic neofunctionalism as ‘passerelles’.

The increasing breadth of evolutionary science, operating across genes and genomes, whole organisms, clades and ecosystems, makes ongoing integration for principles, concepts and methods, both challenging and necessary. This chapter discusses the general theory of evolution - its role, its principles and scientific rationale - as well as how it relates to its constitutive theories and other general theories within biology. It reviews aspects of recent growth for evolution, including expanding on the Modern Synthesis, reticulate evolution, abundant host-symbiont systems and increasingly sophisticated phylogenetic methods. The overall diversity of explanatory aims among evolutionary biologists, in seeking to understand evolution across taxa, at multiple levels of biological organization, and due to many different causes, requires a pluralistic approach to understanding evolutionary theory. This is consistent with the philosophical approach known as pragmatism, allowing flexibility for syntheses across disciplines and countering any tendency towards an overly proscribed general theory. The role of metaphor is also discussed.

The new intergovernmentalism is a novel theoretical framework for the study of European integration in the post-Maastricht era. European Union activity has increased since 1992 in ways that existing theoretical approaches struggle to explain. Policy deliberation among member state governments, the complicity of supranational actors with the new mechanisms for intergovernmental policy coordination and problems in preference formation are key features of contemporary integration. Transformations in political economy and political representation are central to the understanding of these new dynamics of integration. This chapter puts forward six testable hypotheses that seek to elucidate, explain, and understand the implications of the integration paradox for contemporary EU integration. The six hypotheses are aimed at informing new empirical research about institutional change and the evolution of individual EU policy areas in the post-Maastricht period. They provide the main reference point for the other contributions in this volume.