CEVAP:

In post-WWII Western European politics, liberals such as David Mitrany studied the nature of international collaboration and how it could be achieved through apolitical processes in his integration theory named “functionalism”. According to Mitrany, nonpolitical experts could better deal with their areas of technical expertise and initiate collaboration which in time would expand into other areas as well. The ever closer union of Western Europe increased the attention towards liberal integration theories and the question evolved this time around whether political integration could be achieved or not. The pooling of sovereignty to the institutions of the European integration increased the expectations for a European federation and theorists following Ernst Haas put forth the assumptions of “neofunctionalism” that affiliated integration with political processes and the loyalty of the political elites to this idea of integration (Viotti & Kauppi, 2012, 138-139). Haas asked the questions, “how and why states cease to be wholly sovereign, how and why they voluntarily mingle, merge and mix with their neighbors… while acquiring new techniques for resolving conflict among them”. Haas defined integration as “a process for the creation of political communities defined in institutional and attitudinal terms” (Haas, 1970, 610- 611). Among his generalizations for the regularities observed within the industrialized-pluralistic nations (such as the case of economic integration of Western Europe) were: (1) interests of the governments and groups in direction of interdependence and mutual benefits (2) collective decisions, (3) spill-over and (4) the faith of elites in increased integration (618).