IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/intorg/v23y1969i02p254-290_03.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

An Analysis of the Deutsch Sociocausal Paradigm of Political Integration

Author

Listed:
  • Fisher, William E.

Abstract

Karl Deutsch has argued that since the mid-1950's the structural, or institutional, political integration of Western Europe has come to a halt. What Deutsch means by the halt of political integration in Western Europe is the ending of any trend toward the development or the expansion of the authority of supranational institutions to make major policy decisions. Political decisions will continue to be made by sovereign nationstates and not by any supranational European institutions. Although institutional political integration is the central variable in his analysis, Deutsch reports no attempts to directly measure the decisionmaking capability of any Western European supranational institution. By accepting the validity of his sociocausal paradigm of political integration, which holds that political integration cannot occur until after a process of social assimilation creates a homogeneous transnational population, Deutsch contends that in order to describe the levels of political integration in Western Europe he need only examine data relating to the levels of social homogeneity which characterize that region. To measure the extent of social assimilation in Western Europe Deutsch examines the transaction flow rates of trade, mail, travel, migration, and student exchange data and studies the responses of mass and elite population samples to a complex series of survey questions. Deutsch's analysis of these varied data leads him to conclude that the levels of social assimilation in Western Europe have 1) remained constant for the past decade and 2) are too low to permit institutional political integration to occur.

Suggested Citation

  • Fisher, William E., 1969. "An Analysis of the Deutsch Sociocausal Paradigm of Political Integration," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 23(2), pages 254-290, April.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:intorg:v:23:y:1969:i:02:p:254-290_03
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0020818300031593/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:intorg:v:23:y:1969:i:02:p:254-290_03. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/ino .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.