Abstract
In this chapter I investigate how some of the debates in new regionalism studies can inform research in EU studies. This may seem counter-intuitive; certainly, neofunctionalists argued exactly the opposite in the early 1960s (Haas 1961), and the rich literatures on the various currently-existing regions often highlight how the EU – or Europe more broadly understood – is both similar and dissimilar from their focus of study (for an overview, see Söderbaum 2009.) However, I draw on previous work (especially Warleigh-Lack, Robinson and Rosamond 2011; Warleigh-Lack and Van Langenhove 2010; Warleigh-Lack and Rosamond 2010) to argue that an invocation of new regionalist work can open up new research projects for EU studies scholars while shedding new, or at least different, light on longstanding problems in the field, such as the development of theory and the selection of case studies. This is primarily because such a move opens up two under-used assets for EU studies scholars. The first such asset is a different range of theoretical approaches, many of them of a critical kind, which do not tend to be found in the EU studies mainstream (Manners 2007). The second asset is a fresh range of comparators – other regional organisations and processes – to add to those more commonly found in EU studies (federal states.) Such new forms of comparison are just as suitable for the part-intergovernmental, part-supranational nature of the EU as those to which EU studies has become more accustomed, albeit in different ways; indeed, they may help EU studies scholars re-conceive their work as, at least in part, a contribution to a larger and generalisable research agenda – the understanding of regionalism and regional integration. In this chapter, I proceed in five steps. First, I introduce new regionalism and its studies, and state in more detail why EU studies scholars should investigate work on new regionalism with a view to undertaking comparative work. Second, I discuss the ways in which such work can be done productively. Third, I investigate the problems of such work, be they practical or intellectually substantive. Fourth, I focus on how such problems can be transcended. Finally, I sketch a research agenda which those designing projects in EU studies may find interesting.