The study of the European community: The challenge to comparative politics

Abstract

The theoretical study of the European Community is traditionally conducted by using international relations approaches. However, as the Community has developed ‘an internal political arena’, several approaches have emerged from comparative politics. Contrasting the international relations and comparative politics approaches derived from the same ontological and methodological assumptions suggest that whereas the former (such as neo‐functionalism and intergovernmentalism) may be valid for the analysis of European ‘integration’, comparative politics approaches (such as cooperative federalism, consociationalism, and the Lipset‐Rockan thesis) are more appropriate for the analysis of European Community ‘polities’.