"Economy, Society and Politics in the European Community: A Framework for Analysis"

[From the Introduction]. European integration has been the subject of extensive scholarly interest as political scientists, economists and lawyers seek to understand the nature of the European Community and the dynamics of the integration process. Integration excites interest because it influences both economic and political well-being and poses particular challenges to political and economic theory. The European Community does not lend itself to ready classification. European integration is creating a common economic unit, a part formed polity, and a profusion of societal ties across the states of Western Europe. As a regional bloc, the Community has a presence in world politics and emerges at the beginning of the 1990s as the core organization in Europe. Developments in European integration in the 1980s, in addition to the challenges facing the European Community in the 1990s, has led to renewed scholarly interest in integration. This paper outlines the approach being adopted by the authors in a research project entitled 'Economy, Society and Politics in the European Community'. The project – which will involve a political scientist, an economist and scholar in international relations – is motivated by conviction that the study of European integration confronts a number of analytical problems. The central thrust of the work is to approach these by taking the emphasis off integration and looking at the economic, social and political realities in European society which underlie integration