European Integration Theory and the Future of the European Union after Brexit

In the last decade all four areas of European integration – economic, social, legal and political – have faced a series of unprecedented crises that have shattered the foundations of the integration process and have thrown into question the future of the European Union. Among the many paradoxes that have riddled the integration project since its inception, none is more puzzling than the one the EU faces currently. Arguably never in any other time has the EU been so integrated and so successful as it is today, and likewise, never in any other time has there been a greater cognitive dissonance and distance between the peoples of Europe and the EU. This project argues that the greatest crisis afflicting the European project is an epistemological crisis, resulting from our continued failure to understand the processes and forces that drive European integration. Attempts to address questions regarding the future of Europe are failing precisely because we are attempting to answer Europe’s ontological question, without first answering Europe’s epistemological question, in other words, we are attempting to agree on a future for Europe without first understanding the very nature of the integration process, and if we persist on this fallacy we are doomed to fail in both pursuits, as we have been failing for the last seventy years. This project argues that in order to solve this paradox, in order to determine the future of the EU and overcome Europe’s crisis, we must adopt a systems theory approach to understand the complex adaptive nature of the integration process. A systems theory approach to European integration theory allows us to uncover and to understand the different inputs that both constrain and compel European integration and allows us to create predictive models of future integration and disintegration.

vi hope that one day if I am ever in a position to help someone along their academic path, that they too might recall how these opportunities are made possible, and I hope they too are grateful for Professor Lasser, as I am grateful for Professor Teitelbaum.
To Professor Lasser I am however indebted with two debts. The first debt is for not allowing me to settle on a lesser project. Whatever its actual merits, this project would have been much less interesting where it not for Professor Lasser's unyielding belief that I could do more, and that I could do better. The second debt is for bringing me to Cornell Law School, where I found my "home" and where I have been blessed to meet greatness and great people. I am grateful for our beloved, and deeply missed, Professor Lynn Stout. Lynn was a brilliant scholar and a dear friend, and she helped me navigate the emotional challenges of writing this doctoral thesis, to the very end.
I am grateful to Dean Eduardo Peñalver and to our Cornell Law School community.
Academic success flourishes within a caring collaborative community, and this thesis is therefore a product of that support as much as it is a product of my own work.
I am grateful to the Cornell Law School Library, without whose support I would not have been able to conduct the extensive research that enabled this project. The Cornell vii Law School Library team's added value to this community is unparalleled, they act collectively and uniformly with only one tireless goal in mind, to help each student, scholar and faculty member have all the resources they need to succeed. Their dedication is inspiring, and their contribution inestimable.
I am grateful to my family. We sacrifice so much these days to achieve success, but the greatest sacrifice is borne by our families, and is felt by the time we spend apart in pursuit of our own dreams. This project has taken me away from you for the last five years, I only hope you can be proud of me and know that I love and miss you. I also did this for you.
Finally, I am grateful to my wife Emily, to whom I owe the greatest debt of all, for none of this would have been possible without her love and the fact that she always believed in me. I suspect there comes a time when every doctoral candidate feels like giving up, that the challenge is too great, and the obstacles insurmountable. I don't know how others meet those moments, but I was fortunate never to do so alone, and to have your love to lift me up and carry me forward. All the loving encouraging notes you would write on the many drafts that you proof-read for me, all of your support throughout these years, all of your love made this possible. So much of our success is a composite of the love, friendship and kindness that we receive in life, and in that regards I have been very blessed. Thank you all! xiii List of tables:    No greater things do we forget at our own peril than our history and our values.
When I first started writing this project, as a purely ontological essay about the legal nature of the European Union, I had chosen the above cautionary tale as a reminder of the importance of a certain "European Idea", what in the meantime Joseph Weiler has since described as the importance of Political Messianism. As I delved more deeply into the many malaises of Europe, I uncovered that the greatest threat to Europe was its epistemological failure to grasp the integration project. The joy of this breakthrough was dampened by the realization that I would have to rewrite my preface, or at least to choose a different cautionary tale. As I concluded my project I came to the same realization that many greater lawyers did before me, like Llewellyn, Roscoe Pound, and many others, that law must fit an ever-changing society. My systems theory approach to European integration honors that maxim. The European integration project is a complex adaptive system, and we must understand how each area of European integrationlegal, social, economic and politicalinteract with and permeate each other. But society must aspire to law, to the rule of Law, to certain guiding values that make social life possible, give it scope and even dignity, as Archibald McLeish's words reminds us. The EU's epistemological question is paramount, and needs solving, but once we have solved it, we still need to address its ontological question, and hope that by then it will still be sufficient.

INTRODUCTION AND METHODOLOGY:
The research question, and an underlying premise This thesis project was born out of the research question: how should we conceptualize the European Union (EU) as a polity in the aftermath of Brexit 2 and Europe's political, economic and social crises? The research question stems from the premise that there might be something fundamentally new about this period, that both shifts and puts into question many of the essential paradigms of European integration theory -that we have accepted thus far -that threatens the cohesion and the very future of the EU Throughout the project it will become apparent that this commonly accepted premise is both an oversimplification and a misrepresentation of the true malaise 3 afflicting the integration project. This project will suggest that there is nothing fundamentally new per se about this period, at least not with regards to the design and nature of the EU -there is no unforeseeable or surreptitious event that should not have been long-ago contemplated. Instead, our flawed understanding of European integration theory itself, too long anchored in classic typologies and doctrines of international law and politics, has finally rendered the evolving integration process unintelligible through those lenses.
There is no denying that this period raises several ontological questions regarding 2 Brexit here understood broadly as the formal process of the UK triggering article 50 TEU; 3 The term European malaise has inspired a countless number of prognosis and prescriptions as to the disease afflicting the integration process, but its true diagnosis has remained elusive; the nature of the EU, and more importantly regarding the future of the European project.
While they need to be addressed, those questions have pervaded Europe's unique project since its inception. What is truly unique about this period is therefore not Europe's ontological question, but rather the importance of its epistemological question 4 . How can we uncover what truly drives European integration and disintegration? Are the aggregate of those inputs and outputs, as often suggested, a zero-sum binary process premised on a Nash equilibrium 5 ? Or have unintended integration spillovers made the EU evolve to a complex adaptive system, that can no longer be reduced to any simple game theory problem 6 ? How do we identify which are the socio, economic, legal or political levers that can be incentivized to promote further integration? Lastly, how do we refine integration theory to account for and overcome exit moments?
The epistemological question has never been developed to address these and other questions that the EU's integration process no longer escape. Only then can we correctly 4 The core of this thesis focuses on the dissonance between European integration theory ontology and epistemology, so it is important that I clarify how I am using these terms in that context. For the purposes of this project, ontology is understood as the study of what there is, and epistemology is the study of knowledge itself. Framed as such, in their simplest iterations, these concepts are used as follows: Europe's ontological question is: "what is the normative nature of the EU?" It reflects our metaphysical concern regarding what should be the outcome of the integration process.
Europe's epistemological question is: "how can we know what the normative nature of the EU is?" It is concern with how we attain our knowledge regarding the integration process.
5 For the purposes of this project I am adopting the following definition of a Nash equilibrium: "a solution in which each player evaluates the strategies of their competitors and decides that they gain no advantage by unilaterally changing strategy when all other players keep their own strategies unchanged" (Ohlin 2012, 921); 6 Note Kaiser and Meyer, criticizing the "false assumption of a necessary trade-off in power between national governmental and supranational institutional actors (…as) EU politics is not a zero-sum game between opposed sets of institutional actors." (Kaiser and Meyer 2013, 1); address the ontological question, only then can Europe decide it's future. Interestingly, a great part of the integration scholarship has, with this regard, operated in reverse, and has informed the epistemological question according to a prescribed ontological answer.
Integration theory has therefore and until now been rather monochromatic and two dimensional, when the integration process is nothing but.
The project objectives Underlined in the framing and the development of the research question and its main assumption are two essential purposes, which will be manifest throughout the structure and content of this project. The more obvious and immediate concern is to engage and inform the present and paramount debate concerning the future of the EU, by understanding both the framework and the forces that drive European integration and disintegration. The secondary and perhaps more ambitious goal is to inform the scholarly field of European integration theory itself.
First objective -to inform the debate on the future of Europe The pervasive ontological question: what now for Europe? 7 7 The EU's most pervasive question since its very inception has always been "quo vadis, Europa"? "Once more unto the breach", this project attempts an answer; Discussions over the future of the EU are not new, yet scholars 8 , politicians 9 , economic markets 10 and European citizens 11 alike are signaling that the EU is currently at a unique crossroads, with its very existence in question. In many regards Europe's current crisis moment is historically unparalleled, for it affects all areas of European integration, as documented extensively by a new and flourishing subgenre within the integration scholarshipthe EU crisis literature.
While it would be both interesting and rewarding to interact with this scholarship and explore the web of entangled facts and decisions which led us to this pivotal moment, it should be noted from the start that the purpose of this project is not to provide 8 In parts two and three I visit the increasingly growing "crisis literature", here are just some examples, to name a few: Berend, T. 10 The European financial and economic crisis are well documented since 2008; the sovereign debt crisis led to increased yields on government bonds and the loss of confidence in European markets; 11 The surge in popular support for EU membership withdrawals in several member states, notably France, Netherlands and Italy, have prompted increased concerns over the future of the European project; a descriptive and analytical account of Europe's current crises. It is not focused on explaining, for instance, the possible contributing link between Europe's migration crisis and the United Kingdom's triggering of article 50TEU 12 , or how the economic and financial crisis may have spawned popular and political incentives for a possible Grexit, Nexit or Frexit. To that effect, it does not hope to inform the debate on the future of Europe by providing specific economic, politic, legal and social solutions to Europe's immediate crises 13 , nor discourse or weigh in on specific policies that have been enacted in their response. Extending the malaise metaphor, these are important considerations for those providing vital first aid to the European project, to stop the crisis from worsening, however, I am concerned with the diagnosis and the treatment of the EU's underlying issue.
My desire is to shed light on which framework or frameworks govern the actual construct of Europe, which factors might enable or curtail further integration, and which political and democratic choices might become paramount for the EU to subsist. My hope is to allow for an informed ontological discussion to take place by first providing a better understanding of the subject matter itself. In sum, to discuss how the EU can move forward, or be redesigned, we must understand the forces that shape and govern it. 12 Or the more recent questions regarding the possible role that Cambridge Analytic played in the UK's referendum; 13 Again, this project is not meant to engage directly with descriptive European crisis literary, but rather to highlight how the current crisis stems from past conceptual failures in integration theory; Second objectiveto inform the field of integration theory The neglected epistemological question, not only necessary but now finally unavoidable 14 .
Discussions over the nature of the EU have been equally prevalent 15 over time, forming what is regarded as a scholarly field by its own merit, that of European integration theory 16 . Both law and political sciences have played an important role in this field, competing among and within each other to provide the primary sources of our normative understanding of the EU While some of their most fundamental premises might have been challenged by Europe's recent crisis, much of Europe's epistemological frameworks are still informed by the constructs that these two disciplines have espoused over the years.
Nonetheless, Europe exists as a composite of four distinct orders 17 : Europe's social order, as an amalgamated mosaic of the social orders of its members states, but later also by its own right, resulting from free movement spillovers and, unintentionally, from the birth of European citizenship, which combined to create at least the possibility of an 14 Weiler himself seems to acknowledge this, in his recent restatement of the European transformation: "the current crisis overwhelms current thinking of European integration" (Maduro and Wind 2017, 335); 15 Most of the vast bibliography reviewed for this project relates to the field of integration theory, from Haas to Stone Sweet; from Stein and Weiler to Walker and Lasser; 16 Although the term is more prevalent in political sciences (see Wiener and Diez 2009 for a compehreensice analsyis of integration theory in that field) it describes the process by which the European Union has come to exist and operate, its nature and framework to be more precise. Legal scholars write on integration theory when they talk about the cosntitutionalization of Europe for example, as a process of European integration and operation; 17 This multi-dimensional aspect of the EU is explored in Europe's four constitutions (Tuori and Sankari 2010); emerging European identity 18 ; the economic order, which still lies at the centerstage of the EU as one of its raison d'être, and as a metric for the E.U's success and appeal, regardless of the trends and evolutions in the remaining orders; and finally, both the political and the legal orders, which dispute primacy over the governing framework of Europe.
This project will argue that the mistaken normative dichotomy between traditional legal and political frameworks at the heart of integration theory must give way to a new systemic understanding of the integration process, one that encompasses all forces that drive Europe closer together or further apart. Europe's nature is not static; it was created to avoid wars by entwining enemies, then to seek prosperity by the pooling of resources, and only later to serve as an additional beacon for human rights and a powerful but principled trading bloc 19 .
It is easy to imagine that Europe's future, whatever it will be, will always be dynamic and adaptive. Therefore, traditional narratives explaining the nature of the EU 18 See Checkel and Katzenstein 2009;19 Esteban Gonzalez Pons, European M.P. for Spain, while addressing Brexit and the future of the EU recalls the evolution of the EU, how it's much more than just an internal market, but also how this evolution can be undone if not protected.

Thesis structure
This project will pursue the following structure: parts ONE and TWO offer a revisionist account of the leading integration narratives, from both law and political sciences respectively, as l'état de lárt of integration theory must be properly understood before it can be effectively questioned. This revisionist account will encompass: a) a qualitative review of the leading orthodox narratives within each fieldincluding how each of their fundamental premises and paradigms have been questioned over time, and what is their current standing as a result of Europe's unique moment; b) a qualitative review of what we can label as fringe narratives within each fieldworks that over time have been critical of the shortcomings of the orthodox literature, and that provide alternative and competing frameworks for understanding European integration; c) and a combined qualitative review of the crisis narratives in both fields -recent scholarly works in law and in political science that specifically address the nature of the EU in reaction to Europe's crisis.
My main argument in this regard will be that these narratives have been stuck in mistaken inescapable dichotomies both normatively and methodologically.
Normatively the dichotomies range, for example, between: constitutionalism, and executive or administrative federalism (in law); or between realism, and functionalism, or neo-functionalism and constructivism (in political sciences). But the greatest mistaken normative dichotomy is believing that EU integration theory lies necessarily between traditional legal and political typologies. Methodologically, the mistaken dichotomies take the form of binary spectra, based on linear communication and interaction patterns within what are perceived to be either zero-sum or positive-sum systems.
I will have the opportunity to expand these considerations, but suffice to say for now that the methodological considerations resulting from the revisionist account of the leading integration narratives, will prove to be of great added value throughout this project 20 . Each of these narratives are based on one or more fundamental premises 21e.g. that integration agents act according to hard or soft rational choice theory 22 . The fundamental premises are validated through certain qualitative or quantitative inputs to European integration, i.e. decisions, factors, occurrences or metrics that are deemed as enablers, disablers, or merely triggers of the integration process according to the fundamental premises. Later on, I will challenge the epistemological value of such a priori assumptions, which necessarily condition the intelligibility of the system we 20 In a first instance, and as our understanding of the EU stems mostly from the research produced in both these fields, because most of our understanding of the factors and inputs that shape integration are limited to that same research. They provide as good a starting point as any other; 21 Narratives will often favor one factor or input as being crucial or more decisive than others, either because of a top-down approach, or because said factors further compelled the theory that is being advocated. We will expand upon this criticism later on in chapter THREE; 22 Mark Pollack has written about "Rational Choice and EU Politics", see (Jorgensen, Pollack and Rosamond 2007); purport to study. At the same time, I recognize how much we have benefitted from the vast research and thoughtful analysis that the combined narratives of European integration have produced in terms of identifying and measuring the different factors affecting the integration process. While their analysis might have suffered from purposive selection bias, their individual data, once observed without agenda or limitation, can be aggregated and superimposed to produce a much clearer picture of the system we want to study and understand.
A brief caveat is in order regarding how this revisionist account will proceed. My concern will not be to offer a Linnaean taxonomy nor a descriptive account of each theory, but rather to explore the basic tenets of the main integration narratives. We need to understand the premises on which the foundations of our knowledge of the EU lie, so that we can test them against this unique moment. And it is the assumptions themselves and the data points that are of interest to us, not their normative draping.
Two additional considerations weigh against investing in a rigorous and rigid taxonomy of integration theories. First, it is an effort fraught with diminishing returns, as will become apparent as we expose the main assumptions that inform the different narratives. Secondly, a rigid taxonomy might not even be possible because there is both anecdotal and empirical evidence of a certain confusion in labeling these narratives. As evidence of the former, Alter has objected to being categorized as a neo-functionalist, instead of as a historical institutionalist, primarily because she believes that neofunctionalism as a theory is "actually wrong" 23 . Haas's 2004 restatement of neo-23 "Since my work is compatible with their accounts of legal integration, most scholars think that I too am providing a neofunctionalist account of legal integration. (…) Why do I insist on asserting that my work is historical institutionalist rather than neo-functionalism 24 provides even further evidence to that effect. As evidence of the latter we have Jupille's empirical claim that "scholars are not always explicit about these metatheoretical commitments, which makes it hard to identify what is on offer, what is being rejected, and what is at stake. Finally, because of this, and because these metatheoretical categories are correlated with each other, the debates are often confusing and multi-stranded, with the role played by different metatheoretical elements difficult to disentangle". (Bourne and Cini 2006, 220) Part THREE addresses the second objective of this research project, and will be the core of my contribution to integration theory as a field. I will start by enunciating which shortcomings of the law and political science narratives remain to be addressed. Shifting from the narratives and paradigms of integration theory to the paradoxes of European integration, I will also review the yet unexplained controversies and contradictions in the integration process.
I will then conduct a new blanket qualitative analysis of the economic, social, political and legal inputs that drive integration under a systems theory approach, and under the assumption that the EU is a complex adaptive system 25 . Some of the political and legal indicatorssuch as the number of preliminary references made to the CJEU, the number of cases in which the CJEU followed the reasoning put forth by the European institutions, and several other percentages and statistics relating to the functionalist? I do this because I think neo-functionalist theory is actually wrong" (K. J. Alter 2009, 14); 24 "Because NF's relationship to general theories of International Relations (IR) remains contested, I make it my purpose in this introduction to restate my theoretical objective" (…. stressing) "its relevance to 'constructivism', a theory of which NF may be considered a forerunner as well as a part". (E. B. Haas 2004, xiii); 25 The importance of this study will become apparent in the methodologic section presented in this introduction; European legislative processhave already been extensively researched by political scientists. To these I intend to add a more comprehensive study of inputs from the social and economic dimensions of European integration. Among others, I will be reviewing large-sample quantitative data regarding EU migration movements, EU related national referendums, national constitutional decisions regarding the EU Treaties, and economic indicators such as GDP and employment rates.
I will also conduct a qualitative analysis of national political statements addressing issues of European integration. I will then juxtapose these findings to the periods of successful and strained European integration, i.e. the periods of EU expansion and EU crisis. From this study I hope we can learn: (a) how linear and nonlinear communication patterns occur and emerge within the integration process; (b) which interactions positively or negatively impact European integration; and (c) if there is a baseline requirement for integration to occur. With these results we hope to better inform the ontological question surrounding Europe.
Part FOUR addresses the first objective of this research project, and hopes to be the core of my contribution to the present debate on the future of Europe. A better understanding of what drives integration will, in the very least, make such future normative discussions more informed. It might even allow us to bridge political science and law and develop a framework attuned to the functional, political, economic, social and legal requirements of European integration.
Parts THREE and FOUR are driven by the understanding that frameworks matterit is paramount for us to understand Europe's framework as it really is. Academics are sometimes accused of statescraft 26 , in addressing the tension between de lege lata and de lege ferenda, they compound what is with what should be. While it is vital that academics should be able to inform debates on how society should evolve, but they should do so without compromising what is 27 .
This project precedes the ontological question with a systems theory analysis of the European Union, precisely because it hopes to render the integration project intelligible, accepting no a priori ideology as to what drives, and what should be the outcome of, the integration process. Only then can we bring all interested actors to the table, have a candid discussion of the future of the EU without subterfuge or misrepresentations, and leave the choices to be made and borne by the peoples of Europe. Many scholars and politicians have suggested that loyalty is the only way out of this crisis, and the only way forward for Europe 28 , that the EU requires a new act of volition, and further curtailing of our national identity and sovereignty. That is certainly a possible path for Europe, and in my view the right path, however, the greatest threat to European cohesion is not lack of loyalty, but lack of informed decision-making. 26 Notably by Antonin Cohen in "Transnational Statecraft: Legal Entrepreneurs, the European Field of Power and the Genesis of the European Constitution"; and Antoine Vauchez in "How to Become a Transnational Elite: Lawyers' Politics at the Genesis of the European Communities " (Petersen, et al. 2008); 27 The tension between these two concepts will be further developed infra in chapter 4.4; 28 Recall Gonzalez Pons's speech: "Yo espero que la próxima cumbre de Roma hable menos de lo que Europa nos debe y hable más de lo que nosotros le debemos después de todo lo que nos ha dado." Methodology and a systems theory inspired law-in-context 29 approach As suggested earlier, the two principal objectives driving the pursuit of this project stem from the realization that Europe's crisis moment has revealed itself to also be a crisis in integration theory 30 , and perhaps even a consequence of the shortcomings of integration theory over time. It is therefore central to the second objective of this project to present a new methodologic approach to the study of European integrationrevisiting the epistemological question.
Traditionally, the study of the nature of the European Union has been conducted through several different jurisprudential approaches 31 . Legal scholars have adopted: legal positivism, cosmopolitanism, constitutionalism and new governance approaches.
Political scientists have adopted: realist/intergovernmentalist, neofunctionalist, institutionalist, and constructivist approaches 32 , to name a few. Some, if not most, of these studies conflate the nature of the EU with the process of European integration, and I believe this explains why Walker notes that there is "a tendency towards a reactive, event-driven and context-dependent approach to EU legal 29 "Law in context refers not to theory of or about law, but to a general, explicitly pluralistic, approach to a discipline." In Twining, William. Law in Context. Enlarging a discipline. Oxford University Press, 1997, p 23; 30 Scicluna had already put forward this concern, stating that the Europe's crisis "have also triggered a crisis of integration theory", and advocating for a "radical rethink" of our "scholarly conceptualizations" (Scicluna 2015, 1); 31 "(T)here is not even the level of acknowledgement of an accepted canon of theories in EU Law (…). Neil Walker (…) alerts us to the elusive novelty of theorizing in the EU, drawing attention to the lack of theoretical self-consciousness in EU legal scholarship" Cryer,Robert,et al. p 19;32 Cryer,Robert,et al. p 10 and Hunt and Shaw p 94; studies" 33 . While I will argue that these notions are not necessarily interchangeable 34 , the first step for a new methodologic approach to the study of European integration must be to understand that the nature of the EU is determined by all the processes of European integration, at least until the EU is formally recognized as a constitutional order of supranational law, or formally acknowledged as an international agreement establishing an internal market. Because the EU's is still somewhat sui generis 35 , or distinctive, it warrants that it be understood by its composite processes of integrating Europe's social, economic, political and legal orders 36 .
The shortcomings in integration theory methodology have been increasingly acknowledged, albeit still within the traditional binary framework of law and political science. Nonetheless, several scholars have finally recognized the importance of further bridging the relationship between law and political science in the study of European 33 Walker (2005) p 583; 34 The nature of the European Union is undoubtedly affected by the processes of European integration, e.g. it has been argued that the constitutionalization of Europe created a quasi-federalist polity or a supranational constitutional State. The linear and synallagmatic connection between the normative framework of Europe and the processes that drive European integration is only tenable when you consider only one of those processes. For example, the judicial constitutionalization of Europe does not necessarily enact a supranational constitutional polity; to understand that polity we must also take into account political sovereignty redistributions, social identities and economic realities; 35 Europe's sui genericity is another field of study vastly explored. Europe is unique because it can be equally described as an international or intergovernmental organization with functional constitutional features; Neil Maccormick has written that "neither state nor superstate nor sovereign federal union, but rather the first effective marrying of democratic institutions with the principles of confederal self-government as contrasted with those of full-dress federalism" (MacCormick, The Health of Nations and the Health of Europe 2005); 36 There are arguments against thinking of the EU as being distinctive or sui generis. As Cryer et al note, citing Walker, the fascination with conceptualizing the EU as special as created problems of translation in terms of jurisprudential theories p 19-20; integration, and have further called for such works to take place 37 . 37 "a promising research agenda on the dynamics of European integrationexamples of which, building on Haas's work, have recently begun to appearcould develop if legal scholars paid more attention to the empirical methodologies and explanatory theories of political science, and if political scientists adopted a less reductionist and more nuanced account of law." (…) "while the last decade in EU studies has seen the emergence of a substantial body of research by political scientists on the significance of law, and an expansion in the range of legal scholarship which is attentive to the political and social impact of law, the relationship has not yet matured." De Burca 2005 p 310; "It will be interesting to see if legal scholars explicitly will take over ideas from the second wave in political science and implement them in legal scholarship in the years to follow." Neergaard and Wind 2012 p 278; "this is what one should expect from a theoretical concept which no longer substitutes political processes with legal prescriptions.
(…) this project seems worth pursuing" Joerges and Glinski p 46; "there is simply no single answer to questions such as: what is the legal constitutional nature of the EU, and what is the role of the law in the governance of the EU? (…) there remains significant scope for legal scholars to engage usefully in more constructive efforts towards theory-building, connecting their work more self-consciously and consistently to well-established or newly emerging currents of theory." Jo Hunt and Jo Shaw p 107; "Walker wonders whether EU law requires its own new tools of analysis and new forms of theory building, and we agree that this is a question worth exploring." Cryer et al,p. 20 "European legal integration provides an enduring challenge to social scientists and lawyers, who have not yet been able to establish the integration processes as a coherent scientific object". Petersen et al p1; "The complexity of EU affairs calls for research methods known from a number of disciplines and for the further development of cross-or transdisciplinary research designs. (…) the actual European integration process has now reached a point where more wideranging research strategies, designs and methods are needed". (Lynggaard, Manners and Lofgren 2015, 4); Others, pursuing a polycentric approach to understanding the EU, have argued that integration results from "a dynamic and even somewhat contradictory (plurality of) processes" and subject matters linked to the efforts of integrating Europe's economic, politic and legal orders. Petersen et al defend a "holistic view of European legal integration which incorporate(s) a series of interdependent socio-legal processes" in order to understand "how a set of concurrentand often competingprocesses makes up decisive dynamics of the on-going process" of integration. Important amongst this consideration is that "no single process encapsulates the larger process" 38 .
The approach I will use and advocate for is a systems theory inspired law-in-context approach, which shares some of the same rationales and tools as Petersen's legal polycentricity 39 , in the sense that it adopts a system's view of the integration process.
The law-in-context approach in European scholarship 40 developed precisely with the 38 (Petersen, et al. 2008, 2-5) 39 First among which, the desire to find "multi-variable conclusions to issues that (are) typically categorized (…) in terms of a single structure and thus were assumed to have a single answer". (Petersen, et al. 2008) 40 Ulla Neergaard and Marlene Wind have written a summary on the EU Law in Context approach in part 2 of their article in "Studying the EU in Legal and Political Sciences Scholarship". They state that "one of the first and most significant contributions to the "EU Law in Context" approach was no doubt the 'Integration Through Law' project launched in the early 1980s. The project's initiators were: Weiler, Cappelletii and Seccombe" (p 271). Regarding the approach itself, they borrow the following quotes from: Richard Posner, law in context looks "at the law from the outside from perspectives shaped by other fields of scholarly inquiry, such as economics, political theory, moral philosophy, literarily theory, Marxism, feminist theory, cultural studies, cultural anthropology, structuralism, and poststructuralism…" (p 270); Tamara K. Harvey and Jean V. McHale, "a contextual approach involves treating legal subjects broadly, using materials from other social sciences, and from any other discipline that helps to explain the operation in practice of the subject under discussion" (p 270); Francis Snyder, law in context is "the study and understanding of European law in its social, cultural, political and economic contexts" (p 273); Jo Shaw and Jo Hunt note how the call for a contextual approach in EU law research "has elicited a significant response from the legal academic community, as scrutiny of the pages of journals such as the 'law-in-context' European Law Journal will attest. This realization that law and politics are fundamentally intertwined, and further that the understanding of law must be conducted within its social, cultural, political and economic context 41 . The problem with this approach, as de Burca notes, is that it has historically been used without "empirical support, and seemingly disinterested in the actual dynamics of political and social change" 42 . As Neergaard and Wind suggest, the issue lies with the fact that the law-in-context approach is tethered to law as its starting point and center of interest, "it is not an approach which necessarily is truly interdisciplinary, because law is often meant to be the primary object of study" 43 .
The EU law-in-context scholarship has therefore adopted a top-down approach to answering the question of the nature of the European Union. They award primacy to the constitutional/legal process of European integration over all others, through the constitutional and legal dimension theses. This explains most of the empirical response is most notable in work published in the English language, though such work is not necessarily undertaken by those trained and working in the UK or the US. The imprint of the intellectual heritage of the European University Institute (which founded the European Law Journal) is significant, and this institution has now bred generations of law-in-context scholars, working mainly in English, though initially trained in other EU states, and beyond." p 97; 41 Snyder argues that "European Community law represents more evidently perhaps than most other subjects an intricate web of politics, economics and law … which virtually calls out to be understood by …an interdisciplinary, contextual or critical approach." In Snyder, F. (1990) New Directions in European Community Law (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson) p 167; 42 The disciplinary differences partly explain the immaturity of the relationship between law and political science scholarship on European integration. To the political scientist, legal scholarship often appears to be arid, technical, atheoretical (apart from the 'metatheoretical' branches of legal and constitutional theory), full of unstated or unproven assumptions, lacking empirical support, and seemingly disinterested in the actual dynamics of political and social change. To the lawyer, political science scholarship often appears to be obsessed with methodology, jargonistic, andin particular when it engages with lawremarkably banal, in that pages are spent demonstrating a proposition which lawyers take to be axiomatic (such as that 'courts matter' or 'judges have some autonomy'). De Burca, p 314; 43 Neergaard and Wind,p275; challenges to the assumptions of the integration through law narratives 44 , because they are reached through legal doctrine. Legal doctrine is limited in its sources: it looks primarily at normative and authoritative sources, such as statutory texts and general principles of law, case law and scholarly articles.
As long as it can break away from the legal dimension thesis however, the law in context approach seems tailored for the study of European integration. This approach challenges the classic assumptions of law and political science, that "integration is fundamentally a political process (… in which) the law has a vital role to play" (Cappelletti, Seccombe and Weiler) 45 , and challenges that political integration "is more important than economic and social trends" (Haas) 46 .
The obvious shortcomings of such an approach is that it cannot be undertaken by one scholar alone. Petersen's legal polycentricity results from a collaboration of scholars from different fields and areas of expertise. This however is not truly a shortcoming, at best a challenge, for integration theory should be a composite endeavor of the four fields of study that relate to the four orders that govern the EU My stated goal is not to present a narrative of European integration, but to inform future narratives. I hope to demonstrate that a systems based law-in-context approach is better suited to do so, while maintaining the triangular relationship 47 between research question, the 44 Hunt and Shaw,p 95;45 Cappelletti et al,p 4;46 Haas,Ernst B. "The Study of Regional Integration: Reflections on the Joy and Anguish of Pretheorizing." International Organization, Vol. 24, No. 4 (1970): footnote 31 page 632; 47 Cryer,Robert,et al. p 8; data presented to answer the question and the method in which it is analyzed 48 .
Lastly, it is worth noting for conceptual clarity purposes that often the scholarly fields of Europeanization and Integration theory get muddled. It is important that we do not confuse the concepts. Europeanization is best understood as the "process of change affecting domestic institutions, politics and public policy. Change (which) occurs when political behavior at the European Union (EU) level has a transformative effect on domestic political behavior." (Exadaktylos and Radaelli 2012, 1) While the process of Europeanization does contribute, and in fact brings about significant changes to European integration, it does not exhaust the integration process.
Still, the process of Europeanization warrants reflecting within the complex system that is the EUnot just as an integrative part of that system -but also because of the perception that it generates undue influence within that system, by (perceivably) inverting or subverting the classic "community method". We can all imagine several reasons why this perception occurs, for Europeanization has been prevalent in Europe's 48 Other considerations regarding methodology and scope of analysis: the starting point of my approach is to question and challenge the orthodox paradigms of European integration as seen through the lenses of the most influential works in law and political science since the early 1960's, such as integration through law, constitutionalism, new governance; and intergovernmentalism, neo-  (Cryer et al p. 69), to name a few. The insights of these approaches are invaluable, nonetheless, most of them, except from liberalismthat we could subsume within the wider lens of intergovernmentalism/realism and or neo-functionalismare concerned with Europe's normative framework alone, and as aspirational or restorative values. These values are paramount and should inform EU's normative framework, but my work must start with uncovering first what the EU as it is, so as to, in a later stage, better argue what it should be; response to its financial and fiscal crises, and has had deep impact in national policies and the lives of common citizens, as Radaelli notes 49 . These linear cause-effect interactions become easily instrumentalized in pro/against Europe political discourse, as if they represented or even subsumed the entirety of the process of integration.
It is important to recognize Europeanization within integration theory, but it is just as important to place it within the complex adaptive system that is the EU Summary Since its inception, the future of the European Union has always been in question.
On the brink of failure on more than one occasion 50 , the EU has historically managed to move forwardon the edge of chaos -through mitigated integration and de jure and de facto sovereignty redistributions. Questions surrounding the future of the EU however are becoming increasingly pervasive and paradoxical, how has the EU managed consistently to move forward, while simultaneously moving further apart?
We can no longer ignore that the integration project "faces an interlocking set of political, economic, legal and social challenges that go to the very core of its existence 51 ". The normative and methodological dichotomies between and within law 49 As evident in the following: "fiscal coordination and Economic and Monetary Union are two sectors where the binding and constraining power of the EU on the member states goes beyond the effects of a single piece of legislation. In these cases the EU is trying to transfer an institutional framework (based on an independent European Central Bank in charge of a common currency, the euro) and a governance architecture concerning budgets and, arguably, a culture of responsibility in fiscal policy"; (Exadaktylos and  and political science have provided a compelling and engaging binary framework, but have also blinded us from the larger picture. Integration results from the complex, dynamic and adaptive quadrichotomies of European law, politics, economics and sociology. We must finally understand that European integration is woven in an increasingly composite polycentric web that transcends any one social-normative order alone.
CHAPTER ONE -LEGAL NARRATIVES OF EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: METHODS, PREMISES AND PARADIGMS.

Introduction.
Our foundational knowledge of integration theory stems mainly from the fields of law and political science 52 . These disciplines have, since the 1950's, produced an immeasurable amount of literature on this topic. As Mitchel Lasser 53 has noted, rivers of ink have been spilled expounding the ideas and concepts brought forth by the classic legal orthodoxy of European integration alone. The combined scholarship on integration theory from both law and political sciences has become so vast and complex that it risks becoming unintelligible.
Accordingly, this project's concern is not to offer a descriptive account of all these narratives, nor a strict Linnaen categorization of each scholar into a specific normative theory or -ism. This is because these categories may get blurred, or scholarly works may nest in between different normative categories (intersecting constitutionalism and functionalism for example 54 ). More interestingly, if not further defying any strict categorization, we also see scholars in one field advancing normative frameworks in another, like Joseph Weiler, Alec Stone Sweet and Daniel Kelemen 55 . This trend has 52 For a more comprehensive analysis distinguishing between International Relations (IR) and Political Science, and IR's role in EU studies see (Rosamond, European integration (Isiksel 2016); 55 These two scholars, among many other accolades, have earned a PhD in Political Sciences, but have contributed prominently to been well documented by Neergaard and Wind, as well as Cryer et al. As these same authors note, this tendency has been quite beneficial for the advancement of the scholarly field as a whole 56 , as it has expanded the toolkit with which integration theorists further their understanding of the EU, by bridging the main doctrinal premises from both law and political science.
Even if any categorization was universally accepted, it would not necessarily be useful for the purposes of this project. One of the main arguments put forward by this thesis is that the EU's current crisis moment is entangled with a crisis within European integration theory itself. Seeing that the very edifices of our understanding of the EU are in question, it is only logical that we should reconsider past methodologies, premises and frameworks, and then proceed to wipe the slate clean normatively. But where should we start? Should we wipe the slate clean epistemologically as well? In a way, yes, but not completely.
As will become clear shortly and reiterated throughout this project, integration theory scholarship is one of the most thoughtfully and carefully developed fields in international law and politics. Several of the authors that have written in this field are among the leading scholars of the past six decades, and certainly among those who have given greatest consideration to the normative constructs of law. This project hopes to build on their amazing contribution. the legal normative structures of European integration, and have influenced legal integration scholarship; 56 "the use by scholars within one discipline of the insights, methodologies, approaches, questions or date produced by another will in many instances prove to be profitable" (Neergaard and Nielsen, European Legal Method -in a Multi-Level EU Legal Order 2012, 275) The premises on which these theories were built, and more importantly the unique data sets they relied upon to consubstantiate their claims, are our starting point to refine Europe's epistemological question. They provide us with a baseline from which to start something that we can contrast not only to recent events, but also to all shifts, crisis, progress and regression moments in the construction of Europe.
As also suggested earlier, by focusing on premises rather than on taxonomies, we will attempt to reverse the top down approach, shifting the focus from normative constructs to the inputs (factors) that impact integration. It has been argued that Europe requires a new transformation 57 , similar to the one that brought about the constitutionalization of Europe. But perhaps what is truly required is a transformation in our approach to the study of the EU The structure of this revisionist account will be the same in both chapters ONE and TWO, and will encompass: a) a qualitative review of the orthodox narratives-how each fundamental premise and paradigm has been questioned over time, and what their current standing is as a result of Europe's unique moment; b) a qualitative review of what we can label as fringe narratives-works that over time have been critical of the shortcomings of the orthodoxy literature, and that provide alternative and competing frameworks for understanding European integration; c) and a qualitative review of the crisis narratives-more recent scholarly works in these fields that specifically address the nature of the EU in reaction to Europe's crisis. Journal entitled "The Transformation of Europe." It is hard to circumscribe the reach and influence of this article, which on its own merits and on the coattails of its renowned author has permeated the minds of EU scholars, and arguably has shaped the dominant normative framework of the EU. It is no wonder therefore that "path-breaking" and "seminal" are perhaps the most common terms to describe Weiler's constitutional "transformed EU legal scholarship 59 ", has influenced several scholars and narratives in other fields such as political science, and sociology, and has been praised as a defining moment in integration scholarship. As Maduro notes, it not only provided a "powerful analytical framework to explain how the transformation of Europe occurred" but also a "new methodological paradigm to study EU law and integration". In other words, Weiler 60 It's a shame that scholars most focus solely on the one article, ToE; 61 As Tuori notes, "plurality is not the same as pluralism" Constitutional pluralism focuses on "the co-existence of transnational and national constitutions" whereas constitutional plurality focuses on the different constitutions at the European level (economic, political, social and legal) (Tuori and Sankari 2010, 3) Normative premises of the legal orthodoxy within EU integration theory: Most of these theories and narratives of EU integration share the same fundamental premises, i.e. basic yet foundational normative tenets that inform Europe's ontological question by framing the integration process according to a particular construct or feature.
The constitutional thesis: qualifying the European Union as a constitutional order instead of an international organization 62 63 64 65 ; 62 Very recently, CJEU Judge Rosas has noted that: "whilst not being recognized as a State, the EU has developed into a farreaching regional integration organization endowed with a constitutional order". Presentation of Mr. Allan Rosas, Judge at the Court of Justice of the European Union, during the 55th meeting of the CAHDI. Available at: https://www.coe.int/en/web/cahdi/-/presentation-of-mr-allan-rosas-judge-at-the-court-of-justice-of-the-european-union-during-the-55th-meeting-of-the-cahdi ; 63 The "constitutional thesis", most famously espoused by Joseph Weiler, remains the prevailing narrative characterizing the legal nature of the EU. In Weiler's own words, "the Constitutional thesis claims that in critical aspects the Community has evolved and behaves as if its founding instrument were not a Treaty governed by international law but, to use the language of the European Court of Justice, a constitutional charter governed by a form of constitutional law." In "The Reformation of European Constitutionalism." Journal of Common Market Studies 35.1 (1997), p 96; 64 "a process driven forward by the ECJ and its case law, creates a new species of constitutional framework which underpins the emerging political order." Jo Hunt and Jo Shaw, "Fairy tale of Luxembourg? Reflections on Law and Legal scholarship in European Integration" in Phinnemore, David and Alex Warleigh-Lack. Reflections on European Integration -50 Years of the Treaty of Rome.
Palgrave Macmillan,200,p 94; 65 "The Transformation of Europe" has not only shaped the understanding of the legal nature of the EU, it has arguably been paramount in the constitutionalization process of the EU itself, by providing the hermeneutical scheme of intelligibility in which it occurred. Schemes of intelligibility, as understood by Geoofrey Samuel, as "a term applied to the way natural or social facts are perceived and represented".
Moreover, Weiler's hermeneutical scheme has paved the way to scholars, like Halberstam, to envision further developments in Law itself, such as the transformation of Constitutional Law. Since 1991 however the legal nature of the EU has changed, and this change can only be understood through a dialectical scheme which supplements the hermeneutical.
Weiler's formulation of the Constitutional thesis of European Integration became the template in which the ontological legal study of the EU took place, and now represents the classic orthodoxy of EU Law.
Unlike any other international organization, the EU did not evolve solely through intergovernmental cooperation. The argument goes, that by embedding a preliminary reference system into its legal framework, the Member States unintentionally allowed for an adjudicative discourse to take place that would shape that very framework. From this adjudicative discourse, and from the understanding that there was an organic interconnectivity between the private economic, political and social interests of the peoples of Europe, several doctrines emerged that de facto set forth the constitutionalization of the EU 66 67 .
The main premise of the classic legal scholarship in EU integration theory is therefore that the EU was transformed from a treaty-based and member-driven 66 See J. H. Weiler 1991;67 This theory is fascinating because the constitutional order emerges from a hypostatic trinity that is yet to be reproduced elsewhere: the solidarity envisioned by the Member States (ideals); the judicial review process they put into place which allowed for an unintended adjudicative process that served as a "Private Attorney General model" (structure); for the peoples of Europe and in accordance with their shared private interests (organic inter-connectivity). However, if we consider that the WTO, perhaps the most integrated international organization besides the EU, shares many of these same elements (the ideal of progressive liberalization of international trade; an adjudicative dispute settlement mechanism; and likewise, shared social, political and economic interests), we are left wondering what is different between these two organizations? Granted that the WTO's dispute settlement system is not comparable to the EU's preliminary reference mechanism, but is it really this structural difference that precludes the WTO from its own hypostasis? Was is not the judicial activism of the CJEU, enabled by national courts, that allowed for the preliminary reference mechanism to create constitutional doctrines? And if so, could not a similar activism take a hold of the WTO's DSU? Most likely not, but only due to the WTO's reliance on diffuse reciprocity in its tariff system, to ensure that free trade operates under a Nash equilibrium. organization of international law to a constitutional order of supranational law, akin to a federal state, or quasi-federalist state, by virtue of a series of judicial constitutionalizing doctrines. These doctrines awarded the EU direct effect, primacy, implied powers, and a constitutional mandate to measure community actions against the common human right traditions of its member states. Furthermore, this new constitutional order was not only unique in relation to international law, it had primacy over it, as the AG's opinion in Kadi suggests 68 .
This characterization of the European legal order enacts the most important paradigm shift with regards to its normative construct of Europe, it triggers a Copernican revolution displacing the member states at the center of the integration process. In their stead are the European institutions, and the CJEU, shaping, or at the very least constraining, both the interactions between the member states, and the peoples of Europe.
The constitutionalization process is never truly identified as the impetus of the European integration project, rather its logical conclusion. From early on, the legal orthodoxy settled Europe's ontological question with little regard to its epistemological question.
The legal dimension thesis -elevating the centrality of law in the integration process 69 68 "The relationship between international law and the Community legal order is governed by the Community legal order itself, and international law can permeate that legal order only under the conditions set by the constitutional principles of the Community." Opinion of Advocate General Poiares Maduro. No. C-402/05 P Kadi v Council and Commission. CJEU. 16 January 2008;69 In an article written before his seminal piece on the Transformation of Europe, Weiler and Renaud Dehouse had already noted that: "even if law is not a main catalyst of change in the integration process, many changes are greatly conditioned by legal and 70 ; A corollary from the constitutional thesis 71 , the legal dimension thesis elevates the centrality of law, i.e. primarily European judicial constitutional law, in the integration process. As noted above, the constitutionalization process enacts a Copernican revolution that displaces the members states from the center of the integration process, but it also displaces the traditional processes of intergovernmental negotiation, legislation and politics in favor of supranational European law.
The Copernican revolution affects both the actors, and the means, by which decision-making is attained, or at the very list constrained, within the integration process. In other words, integration through law, not politics, becomes the EU's modus operandi. It should be highlighted however, as Tuori notes, that the legal dimension is made possible by "a deadlock in the political dimension" 72 that had stalled the integration process.
The combination of both the constitutional and the legal dimension thesis has an unparallel impact in our understanding of international law and regional integration. It institutional elements. A legal dynamic can exist when autonomous organs are entrusted with judiciary competence." In Renaud 70 Also referenced as integration through law, or law as both object and agent of integration (Dehousse and Weiler 1990 p. 243;Cappelletti 1985). Hunt and Shaw note how for many scholars' law became "the agent par excellence" p 93; 71 Both the constitutional and the legal dimension theses are brought about by a reconstructive account of the CJEU's constitutionalizing case law.
72 (Tuori and Sankari 2010, 17); creates a new mode of governance between sovereign states that had, until then, been unheard of except in federalist experiments. This new mode of governance challenged the traditional inter-governmental approach that was characteristic in international law by overcoming its inertia.
The judicial empowerment thesis -elevating the role of the CJEU in the integration process 73 ; Here the constitutional thesis intercedes with the Haas v. Hoffmann debate in political sciences and focuses on the unique new actor in supranationalism, the CJEUthe true agent per excellence of the integration process.
Both legal scholars and political scientists 74 have acknowledged the important role of the CJEU in European integration theory. The CJEU not only shifted the locus of integration to the legal system but cemented that shift by allocating joint authority between supranational and national legal courts 75 . 73 The CEJU has been portrayed both as the hero (Bulery and Mattli, Tuori, Weiler) as well as the villain of the integration process.
As Wincott notes "the image of the Court as hero or villain is widespread" (Wincott 2000, 3). See also Tuori's subchapter of "the heroic saga of juridical constitutionalization". (Tuori and Sankari 2010, 17) 74 Weiler's Transformation of Europe and particularly his account of the role of the CJEU in Europe's integration process, The new supranational mode of governance within international law, discussed above, suddenly found itself with two powerful guardians. In effect, by empowering national judges, the CJEU enhanced judicial powers on both levels and, more importantly, further expanded the legal dimension of European integration.
Paradoxically therefore, the supranational mode of governance brought about by framing the EU as a constitutional order (constitutional thesis), governed by law not politics (legal dimension thesis), is sustained by courts of the member states themselves.
In other words, it is the courts of the members states that allowed for the emancipation of EU law from the intergovernmentalism of international law 76 , in exchange for the judicial empowerment.
The equilibrium thesis -relying on a binary and static framework between law and politics 77 .
The widely acknowledged seminal piece on law and European integration 78 put 76 Spiermann provides a different account of this emancipation, one in which the CJEU plays a much smaller role, and in which the the EU Treaties are the really heroes of the integration process (Sipermann 1999). While analyzing the foundational period of the EU, Spiermann argues that "taking into account the far-reaching nature of the Treaties" the rulings of the CJEU were actually "less impressive". This raises an interesting premise, as it seems to put the Member States themselves as actors against their own preferred mode of governance; 77 This binary and static framework has been defined as follows: "the equilibrium thesis is the overarching theoretical construct of TE (…) two strong implications flow from the theoretical framework (that the political legitimacy of constitutionalization rested on a specific equilibrium between a supranational legal system and an intergovernmental legislative system)" Stone Sweet and Kelemen,p. 3; "From a theoretical standpoint, Weiler's equilibrium thesis suffers from having been built from static, binary oppositions: the "Intergovernmental-Supranational" and "Exit-Voice." Idem p. 5; 78 The importance of Joseph Weiler's Transformation of Europe cannot be stated enough. "This article was in many respects pathbreaking and seems to have influenced both EU lawyers and political scientists enormously" Neergaard and Wind,p. 264; "The forward the assumption that there is a static equilibrium between the supranational constitutional order and the intergovernmental legislative system. This equilibrium, which rests on binary notions of exit and voice 79 , transcribes a reciprocal relationship between law and politics, which awards political legitimacy to the constitutionalization process in exchange for the continued completion of the internal market.
The merits of the equilibrium thesis are that: it explains why Member States did not curtail the CJEU's activism and expansive constitutionalization of Europe, as they came to rely on that activism to complete the internal market; and more importantly, it mitigates concerns over output and input legitimacy in the EU. importantly it does not share the same characteristics of the crisis literature. While it is concerned with addressing the current crisis moment, it does so in relation to its earlier premises and is mostly a normative exercise, that does not take into account specific events, nor empirical data from the current crisis period. orthodoxy on legal integration, one that takes into account the current crisis moment.
An issue of legitimacy, and do we need a new equilibrium?
Most of the authors engaged in this restatement see the current malaise afflicting the EU as the day of reckoning of Europe's legitimacy crisis, more specifically Europe's normative legitimacy. While Europe's legitimacy crisis is often discussed with reference to its perceived democratic deficit 81 , and in balancing between input and output legitimacy, the pressing concern now is much broader, and relates to the normative legitimacy of the construct of Europe 82 .
It is important to recall that this normative legitimacy, the "indispensable oxygen 83 " of the European construct, was to be found in the equilibrium between the community's legal structure and its political process 84 . As Maduro notes, it was on the equilibrium between selective exit and voice that Joseph Weiler "base(d) so much of the legitimacy 81 Perceived, because some authors, notably Moravcsik, have argued that concerns regarding the EU's democratic deficit are misplaced: "EU decision-making procedures, including those that insulate or delegate certain decisions, are very much in line with the general practice of most modern democracies in carrying out similar functions" (Moravcsik 2002, 621-622); Others, like Depaigne, go further and note that this type of legitimacy gap "is a feature of the contemporary secular state" (Depaigne 2017); 82 Normative legitimacy as opposed to social legitimacy. According to Weiler: "There are two basic genreslanguages vocabulariesof legitimacy: normative and social. The vocabulary of normative legitimacy is moral ethical, and it is informed by political theory. It is an objective measure even though there will be obvious ideological differences as to what should be considered legitimate governance. Social legitimacy is empirical assessed measured with the tools of social science. It is a subjective measure, social attitudes. It is not a measurement of popularity, but of a deeper form-of acceptance of the politico-regime." (Maduro and Wind 2017, 335) 83 (Maduro and Wind 2017, 334); 84 In Weiler's analysis of his own article and on the European crisis: "the central thesis of the (ToE) concerned a relationshipcomplex at times -between Community legal structure (constitutionalism, normative supranationalism, "Exit") and Community political process (institutionalism, decisional supranationalism, "Voice")". (Maduro and Wind 2017, 93) of European integration" 85 .
Weiler had suggested, or perhaps hoped, that the equilibrium model itself would remain static 86 -that member states were locked in a Nash equilibrium, where the best possible outcome for each member would be not to detract unilaterally from the EU.
While recognizing that the relationship in this community model would be one of "uneasy co-existence", Weiler assumed that the Community and the member states would be tethered by a "an ever-increasing embrace" 87 .
It should be noted that in Maduro's constitutional pluralism the equilibrium is framed slightly differently -what sustains Europe's constitutional legitimacy is not the tension between selective exit and voice, but instead "competing (heterarchical, but equal) constitutional claims of final authority" made by both the EU and member states 88 .
We could argue that both equilibriums have been shattered 89 : Brexit seems to have ended the permanent embrace between Member States and the Union; and the measures enacted to constitutionalize certain budgetary constraints in the European economic order, in response to the monetary and financial crisis, seem to shatter the notion of competing equal authority between national constitutions orders among themselves and 85 (Maduro and Wind 2017, 318); 86 Maduro seems to hint at this when he notes that Weiler "presents the project as having a permanent incremental nature"; p 318; 87 (J. H. Weiler 1991Weiler , 2481; 88 (Maduro and Wind 2017, 319); Maduro makes the claim that "heterarchy is superior to hierarchy as a normative ideal for the European Union" and that "the question of final authority ought to be left open"; He also notes that "it is that practice of constitutional pluralism that is itself constitutive of the legitimacy of EU law" (idem, 320); 89 In 2011, in a draft paper presented in a panel talk at Catolica, I had already put forward the idea that the paradigm between exit and voice had been de facto shattered, that exit had been replaced by exodus; between the EU 90 Both models therefore face the same challenge. They both need to preserve the equilibrium on which their model rests upon -they need to "preserve that permanent tension between equal claims of final normative authority 91 ". I will argue in chapter four that this might not necessarily be true, and that it results from false dichotomies within these theories.
Nonetheless, if in fact a state of equilibrium between EU and member state authority is required as the constitutive element of the EU's legitimacy, and seeing that said equilibrium is being challenged, then the solution to the EU's crisis is to either find a new equilibrium or be forced to find a new source of legitimacy.
With regards to finding a new equilibrium, Maduro suggests that we no longer need to rely on the tension between exit and voice, which sustained the foundational period of the EU 92 . Maduro argues that underpinning the constitutionalization of Europe is a normative and sovereign authority stemming directly from the peoples of Europe 93 . The normative authority of the EU's legal order at times competes with and is complemented 90 Adams, Fabbrini and Larouche's work on "The Constitutionalization of European Budgetary Constraints" 2016, and Beukers, de Witte and Kilpatricks' "Constitutional change through Euro-Crisis Law" 2017, denote how such a claim can be sustained -"sovereign debt loan assistance and the new macroeconomic regime are often described as a shift from soft law to hard law and to the creation of a social straitjacket for the Member Sates". Page 14; in a similar vein, Maduro: "this intergovernmental challenge to constitutionalism is severely aggravated by the increased majoritarian character of EU polity" …there could be nothing worse than a form of intergovernmental majoritarianism" page 327; 91 (Maduro and Wind 2017, 320); 92 Idem; 93 "The treaty is presented as more than an agreement between States; it is an agreement between the peoples of Europe that established a direct relationship between EU law and those peoples. (…) The treaties were constituted by and constituted a new sovereign authority, distinct from the States but founded on the peoples of those States." (Maduro and Wind 2017, 321) by an increased "independent political authority" of the member states 94 . How can we restore the equilibrium between them? Maduro argues that we must first understand the four dimensions of the current crisis, which he summarizes as follows: 1) There is cognitive dissonance between the EU and its peoplesborn out of unrealistic expectations regarding the benefits of the European project, particularly with regards to areas where the EU has little competence to intervene (324) 95 96 . In fact, more often than not, the true benefits of European integration are of a diffuse nature, they relate to peace, to sustainable growth and social development, and to the protection and furtherance of human rights both at "home" and beyond the EU. The cognitive dissonance also occurs as a result of perceptions regarding the costs of EU membership -particularly throughout the EU's financial crisis, when a perception of transference of wealth between some states to others occurred.
2) There is a political gap within the integration process: and resulting from the gap between negative and positive integration 97 ; and resulting from the EU's democratic legitimacy, and from insufficient direct representation or communication between the 94 "the autonomy to define the forms and goals of its political action" , idem at 322; 95 Maduro notes how EU citizens "expect more from the Union (in) matters such as economic growth social solidarity, promotion of peace and democracy, and fighting crime and unemployment, all areas where the European Union either has competences or has only limited instruments to intervene" page 324; Dervis however frames this dissonance differently -more attuned to the intelligibility of the EU by its citizens. "the perceived decline in "democratic legitimacy" of the European institutions is due to a growing gap between what the citizens of Europe can understand, follow, debate, and take into account when voting, and the decisions and policies of their leaders and parliaments"; (Dervis and Mistral 2014, 176 ) 96 Former EC President Durao Barroso referred this as the expectations gap -"people expect more than the political system can deliver." (Durão Barroso 2014); 97 What Durao Barroso referred to as the legitimacy gap; European institutions and the peoples of Europe, generating the perception that social and economic policies are enacted without sufficient debate; 98 ; 3) The EU is struggling with the paradox of inclusion, more specifically with overinclusion, which becomes a threat to the process of integration. Maduro considers how the prerogative to prefer one's own is not only the right, but one of the necessary conditions for a successful political community -"to deny to national political communities the right (…) to still prefer their own would deny their existence" 99 . 4) There is a constitutional gap within the integration process. Maduro sees this as a product of the equilibrium thesis, and the tension left over from the foundational period between "normative constitutionalism and political intergovernmentalism". The constitutional gap is also a paradox, for despite the EU's strong claim of constitutional authority and the increase in the process of legal Europeanisation, European politics and policies remain largely within the purview of intergovernmental bargaining 100 . In the EU's own iteration of "one country, two systems", EU citizens are subjects of a supranational constitutional order, whose rules and policies are decided mostly through self-interested interstate bargaining. This has two negative consequences: first, it prevents adequate political accountability at both the supranational and national levels; 98 Maduro claims that this particularly evident if we consider the Euro crisis, and how "European politics are still national politics that have not even adequately internalized the European dimension of policies" (page 325). Maduro criticizes "the incapacity of national politics to internalize interdependence leads to a failure of European policies in the absence of genuine European politics" 100 "National governments aggregate the preferences of their citizens and EU policies strike a balance between those aggregated preferences." (Maduro and Wind 2017, 327); and it allows for the displacement of political costs that arise out of unpopular decisions.
The constitutional gap takes on a more serious proportion when we consider, as Maduro does, that qualified majority is the most widely used voting method in the Council; and that the composition of the European Parliament is proportionate to a member state's population. The greater danger therefore is not that EU politics are a product of intergovernmentalism, but increasingly that European politics might result from the bargaining of intergovernmental majoritarianism.
Weiler on the other hand seems to attribute greater weight to the EU's political deficit as the main challenge to the EU's normative legitimacy 101 . Weiler's concept of political deficit is a broader crystallization of the EU's political gap; it relates to both structures of political representation and accountability -"the two primordial features of any functioning democracy" 102 . The very structure of the EU, Weiler argues, negates these two fundamental principles 103 : EU citizens feel distanced from decision-making processes; and when dissatisfied with EU policies, they feel that there are no avenues to voice those dissatisfactions and impose the political cost of what are perceived to be bad decisions. Weiler's view is shared by former EC President Barroso 104 , who argued that the political issue was Europe's greatest concern: "the political issue is indeed the first 101 Weiler notes how "the political deficit, to use the felicitous phrase of Renaud Dehors is at the core of the democracy deficit." Idem page 340; 102 Idem page 339; 103 "Thus the two most primordial norms of democracy, the principle of accountability and the principle of representation are compromised in the very structure and process of the Union." Page 341; 104 Barroso notes "the stark dilemma that is at the heart of the discussion on the future: when the people do not like a national decision, they usually vote against the decision-maker. If they do not like a European decision, they tend to turn against Europe itself." (Durão Barroso 2014) one that must be addressed. If I get the question 'so, what is the real problem?', I would say 'It's the politics, stupid!'" An issue of loyalty.
Having identified the challenges that the EU faces, the legal orthodoxy 2.0 moves on to their solutionloyalty. As we shall see, the sense that the European project requires loyalty is a recurring argument within the orthodoxy 2.0, as well as in many other recent integration narratives, and political statements after the European crisis.
But how can loyalty solve the issues afflicting the integration project, and what's in its concept? Maduro and Weiler seem to have different answers.

Weiler's political messianism and hard loyalty.
It is curious why Weiler chose "the things that do not transform" as the title to his recent restatement of his transformation anthology, seeing that he acknowledges that the two main premises that sustained the integration project have been shattered, namely the equilibrium thesis 105 , and Europe's original political messianism. The combination of these two failures has led to the unique situation which Weiler believes the integration project finds itself in, where the two modes of EU governancesupranationalism, and for the first time, intergovernmentalism 106cannot find a solution to Europe's 105 Weiler restates the equilibrium thesis as follows: "the equilibrium between legal structure (as a proxy for the institutional edifice of European integration) and legitimation rooted in national polities" (Maduro and Wind 2017, 334); 106 As Weiler notes: "it has become self-evident that crafting a European solution has become so difficult, that the institutions and the Union decision-making process do not seem to be engaging satisfactorily and effectively with the crisis, even when employing the intergovernmental methodology." Idem page 336; problems 107 .
The equilibrium within the European construct, which was the foundation of Europe's normative legitimacy, can no longer be sustained as a result of "the tragic nature of the European construct" and the demands of national legitimation 108 . Brexit and the uncertainty regarding the EU's future are not the cause of the EU's legitimacy crisis, they are its symptoms. But perhaps equilibrium is not required after all, what is required is loyalty. Weiler, Maduro notes, "expect(s) loyalty to replace the equilibrium and not to be an element of a new equilibrium 109 ".
Before addressing how we can accrue loyalty for the integration process, and how loyalty relates to the EU's normative legitimacy, the more pertinent question should be, whose loyalty? If both supranational and intergovernmental mechanisms are failing to provide legitimacy to the European project, then Weiler believes it is up to the member states to rescue the EU 110 . Weiler suggests that this enacts another paradigm shift, recalling Milward's thesis on "the European rescue of the Nation State" 111 . It is my view that legitimacy and loyaltyin Weilerian termshave always been a synallagmatic blood pact between the EU and its Member States, and I vividly recall a brilliant lecture by Karines Caunes suggesting that the EU's legitimacy could just as easily be 107 Weiler describes this as the "double failure of institutional legitimacy, of Parliament and of Council. Of supranationalism and intergovernmentalism" idem page 342; 108 "in my current work I have come to understand the tragic nature of the European construct. A satisfactory democratic legitimation will, I have come to think, necessarily come at the expense of the normative nobility of constitutional tolerance." Idem; 109 (Maduro and Wind 2017, 328); 110 "the legitimacy resources of the European Unionreferring here mostly to social legitimacyare depleted, and that is why the Union has had to turn to the Member States for salvation." Idem 336; 111 "The pendulum has swung, and in the present crisis it will be the nation-state rescue of the European Union." Idem page 336; understood as stemming from the 28 nation states, and not from the constitutional or intergovernmental construct. The question remains, how do we accrue loyalty, and how can loyalty become the new source of the EU's normative legitimacy?
Moving beyond the classic dichotomy between input (process) and output (result) legitimacy -yet another false binary -Weiler identifies political messianism as the third and most important source of European integration legitimacy 112 , and loyalty is eventually construed through political messianism. To understand Weiler's political messianism we must recall how Europe's political deficit features prominently in his understanding of the current crisis -echoing Barroso, it's the politics stupid, it's not having accountability nor representation. But it is also that we have mistakenly put our faith in output processes to solve the EU's legitimacy issue -Europe's misguided bread and circuses promise to sustain its democracy 113 . Weiler now thinks that output legitimacy is not as relevant because Europe's legitimacy has always been rooted in political messianismthe true mobilizing force of European integration.
"In political messianism, the justification for action and its mobilizing force derive not from process, as in classical democracy, or from result and success, but from the ideal pursued, the destiny to be achieved, the 'promised Land' waiting at the end of the road. Indeed, in messianic visions the end always trumps the means." (Maduro 112 What Weiler refers to also as "telos legitimacy": "whereby legitimacy is gained neither by process nor output but by promise, the promise of an attractive Promised Land" idem page 337; 113 The "panem et circenses approach to democracy". Refining his earlier views, he no longer thinks that "outcome legitimacy explains all or perhaps even most of the mobilizing force of European construct." Idem page 343; and Wind 2017, 345) According to Weiler, political messianism, as penned in the Schuman Declaration, was the birth of the European project, as it gave rise to aspirations of a certain idea and ideal of Europe 114 . Although he focuses mainly on the Schuman "manifesto", it is easy to imagine an anthology of speeches and writings from the many founding mothers and fathers of the European Idea, like Spinelli 115 , Churchill 116 , Hirschmann 117 , Jean Monnet, Spaak 118 , and Veil 119 , to name just a few.
In fact, the words of Simone Veil seem so present in many of the narratives and political statements addressing the European crisis: "We all know that these challenges, which are being felt throughout Europe with equal intensity, can only be effectively met through solidarity.
114 "A compelling vision which has animated now at least three generations of European idealists where the 'ever closer union among the people of Europe, with peace and prosperity an icing on the cake, constitutes the beckoning promised land."; (Maduro and Wind 2017, 347) 115 Who together with Ernesto Rossi wrote the "Manifesto of Ventotene" in 1941 while under house arrest. The  But sadly, prophetically and inevitably 121 , the EU's original political messianism has failed to deliver the promised land, and that failure has brought about the collapse of the EU's normative legitimacy, and strong resentment against the integration project itself 122 . Weiler recognizes that failure is within the very nature of political messianism, which is be best understood as a catalyst for more permanent normative structures, and never intended to replace them. At this unique crossroads Europe requires one or the other. The integration project requires a new political messianism, or more permanent 120 Speech by Simone Veil (Strasbourg, 17 July 1979), available at: https://www.cvce.eu/content/publication/1999/1/1/174d384d-d5c7-4c02-ad78-b1f6efc9740a/publishable_en.pdf 121 "part of the very phenomenology of political messianism is that it always collapses as a mechanism for mobilization and legitimation. It obviously collapses when the messianic project fails. When the revolution does not come. But interestingly, and more germane to the narrative of European integration, even when successful it sows its seeds of collapse. At one level the collapse is inevitable, part of the very phenomenology of the messianic project. Reality is always more complicated, challenging, banal, and ultimately less satisfying than the dream which preceded it. The result is not only absence of mobilization and legitimation, but actual rancor." (Maduro and Wind 2017, 351); 122 The "global wave of populism" that reverberated throughout 2016 certainly had an impact in the demise of Europe's original political messianism, but as we shall see failure is a necessary condition of political messianism. Regarding the populist movements in 2016 see: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/12/19/the-global-wave-of-populism-that-turned-2016upside-down/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.1ec71566d849 normative structures on which to anchor its legitimacy.
It is unclear what Weiler thinks regarding this, as he devotes less than a full page to what should be the answer to Europe's future. It seems unlikely that a new political messianism would be possible, seeing that the necessary supranational and even intergovernmental reservoirs of legitimacy, credibility and capability are depleted.
The answer seems to be that the EU might require hard loyalty from the member states themselves -"it will be national parliaments, national judiciaries, national media, and, yes national governments who will have to lend their legitimacy to a solution which inevitably will involve yet a higher degree of integration 123 ". The only doubt that remains is if the member states are able to take such a step, and Weiler ends his narrative with precisely this question 124 .

Maduro's new equilibrium and soft loyalty.
Maduro's narrative starts with the same realization, that the foundational equilibrium supporting his constitutional pluralism thesis has been shattered 125 , but, unlike Weiler, Maduro believes that a new equilibrium is not only possible but might actually solve Europe's legitimacy crisis. Maduro finds this new equilibrium in his unique interplay between exit, voice and loyalty, where loyalty is molded in very 123 This will entail the "primacy of the national communities as the deepest source of legitimacy of the integration project" idem page 351; 124 "What do we do if we find that those national reservoirs are running low and in some cases even depleted?" idem page 351; Weiler's hard loyalty seems to demand an act of volition, faith and allegiancea kind of rollcall to European integration that asks, very much like Weiler does in his classroom, "are you with me?!". Maduro's soft loyalty is different, it is not empirically binary -yes or no -it is normative in nature, it is the product of our estimation of our ability to influence the integration project, and therefore it can be measured and, more importantly, it can be affected and incentivized by rules, values and processes 126 .
Loyalty depends heavily on what Maduro will identify as systemic voice. 126 Borrowing from Hirschman, Maduro defines loyalty as "the result of the extent to which a member estimates his or her possible influence" (…) meaning, "the estimate of their ability to influence the organization (in our case, the EU polity)" idem page 329; 127 idem page 329; 128 "A deliberative and institutional system favoring proxy politics (where national majorities can be more often than not replaced by cross-national ideological majorities" idem page 330; 129 "This guarantees to any citizen part of the minority in a particular decision a chance to be part of the majority in a different decision." Idem; 130 "Since those that compose the majority know that they can in the next deliberation be part of the minority and have therefore, Due to the importance of these orthodoxic narratives in the epistemological construction of the integration process, it is appropriate to offer the following brief thoughts before moving forward.
Were we asked to explain the content and the merit of these theories to a layman friend, without the rigidity and complexity with which the integration language and meta-language has evolved, we would simply say that these theories have incredible merit but at the same time are too intellectual. They work and operate within the confines of the minds of brilliant scholars who have given these issues unparallel thought, but they are built in reverse hoping to achieve a desired outcome, and they are built without getting their hands dirty in data, in empirical evidence, European realism, and without an honest exchange with the European commoners. I think our layman friend would understand.
By all means, legal ontology should be aspirational, and noble, but legal an incentive to internalize some of the interests of the losing minority." Idem; epistemology must be ideologically neutral and open. Legal ontology should be Joseph Weiler, but legal epistemology should be more akin to Francis Bacon.
Criticism of the orthodoxy 1.0 has been well articulated over the years and have focused on a certain bias towards supranational governance to explain the integration process. Martinsen for instance notes how in "our reliance on the constitutional transformation of the Community legal order, we have tended to treat law and the role of the CJEU uncritically as instruments of integration, disregarding the more complex interplay of law and politics 131 ". Criticism also questions these narratives' prointegration bias (see Scharpf; Martinsen), praising the role of the CJEU when actively engaged in the construction of Europe, but overlooking occasions when "the court was ignored or constrained by political, administrative, and constitutional counteractions" 132 .
With regards to the normative premises of the orthodoxy 2.0, several questions come immediately to mind. Even if we accept that loyalty can answer Europe's ontological question, it is hard to envision how it can answer Europe's epistemological question.
What this means is that, even if we accept that loyalty can be a solution to the current European crisis, it is necessarily only a temporary solution.
But this is probably not the first criticism the orthodoxy 2.0 would be subject to in an open debate. The first question would be: why loyalty, why now? The more provocative scholars would not resist asking why loyalty was never properly considered 131 He further notes how "in our preoccupation with judicial power, we have neglected to study the various ways in which legislative politics may respond to law". (Martinsen 2015); 132 Idem; as part of the essential equilibrium of the integration process, of its normative legitimacy, or as an essential component of constitutional pluralism, even though it was a component of Hirschman's triad which heavily influenced Weiler's seminal piece.
More provocatively still, if political messianism or systemic voice are such an important source of EU legitimacy 133 , how have they been overlooked for so long in favor of input/output considerations?
The orthodoxy 2.0 presents a compelling upgraded narrative of European integration, but these questions raise the same concerns expressed in the past.
Normatively, they demonstrate a bias towards integration, and Europe's constitutional ideal; epistemologically, they are engineered in reverse from that same desired outcome the top down approach so characteristic within integration theory. The analysis of the causes of the European crisis is therefore narrowly construed, referring broadly to certain normative gaps and deficits within the EU's construct. The understandings of the challenges that Europe faces seem to be the product of a certain normative intuition, and not of an empirical analysis, or in contrast with the actual issues affecting the integration project. It is important to stress that this is not necessarily wrong, and that the normative analysis that the orthodoxy engage in is first among any equal. But it is a purposive analysis, it is grasping at refinements of previous concepts and structures to achieve the same desired outcomes, and in some cases, asking for a Hail Mary.
133 Recall how Weiler states: "there is a third type of legitimation which, in my view, played for a long time a much larger role is currently acknowledged. In fact in my view, it has been decisive to the legitimacy of Europe and to the positive response of both the political class and citizens at large. I will also argue that it is the key to a crucial element in the Union's political culture." (Maduro and Wind 2017, 345); Maduro's refined systemic voice asks as its first condition for a systemic identity between the fundamental values of the Union with those of its member states, however, the recent tensions between the EU and both Hungary and Poland, arguably more so than Brexit itself, highlight how systemic identity is not something that we can take for granted.
The EU is premised on values held to be so fundamental that they allow for no derogation. Those values, such as respect for the rule of law, human rights and human dignity are listed in article 2TEU. The Treaty has a specific mechanismarticle 7 TEU, colloquially referred to as the EU's nuclear option -to impose the highest political The very first hurdle for systemic voice is facing a great challenge, but even hurdles two and threea cross-national proxy voting system which allows for fluid, issuebased, majoritarianismsrequire a level of supranational institutional support, and intergovernmental political accord that is currently almost unattainable 136 . Maduro's soft loyalty approach, one that continues to rely on constitutional pluralism, might just not be feasible. Loyalty speaks to the possibility of the European peoples to willingly bear the cost of an imperfect integration process, and in that sense, it is a solution to Europe's current crisis. Nonetheless, loyalty per se would only provide a temporary fix, as it does not address the epistemological and ontological structural deficiencies that threaten the cohesion of the EU.
Finally, Weiler's somewhat pessimistic assumption is that the original political messianism is dead is based on a belief that the EU failed to deliver upon its promised land. Surely this can't be the view that we take away from over 60 decades of European integration, a history of human rights protection, of social and democratic development, of one of the most integrated and efficient internal markets ever created, and of shared hopes and ideas. If we never knew what the EU truly is, how can we measure what it has given us? It has failed to give us a European constitution, but maybe we never needed one to begin with. As we have seen, the classic legal scholarship developed a theory of legal integration based on how the constitutionalization of Europe came about, through the judicial activism of the CJEU, and the preliminary reference system that enable it. From the emergence of what they found to be judicial constitutional doctrines, they theorized that the integration process was mainly driven by lawwhat became known and celebrated as the "integration through law" approach. narratives, and the assumption that these doctrines create a constitutional order that both drives and constrains European integration 149 . Peter Lindseth, in addressing how the constitutional thesis suffers from an error in categorization 150 , argues that the EU legal order is administrative in nature, and the integration process is a stage in the development of Europe's supranational administrative governance 151 .
They also question the role that the CJEU has played in the integration process 152 , and Hjalte Rasmussen goes further, characterizing the Court as an anti-hero, highlighting the EU's problematic democratic legitimacy and its judicial activism, advocating for judicial self-restraint from the CJEU 153 . But even when not going as far as Rasmussen did, the fringe narratives weigh the CJEU's judicial doctrines within Europe's epistemological question, i.e. they measure how these doctrines actually affect the integration process, without the doctrinal draping of the classic narratives. In that sense they contribute to a more systematic understanding of the EU, categorizing events such as these as inputs to the integration process.
Finally, scholars like Lindseth further challenge the classic assumptionat least 149 Matej Avbelj has challenged what he calls the practice of constitutional labeling. "Beyond constitutional nominalism, that is, beyond the pervasive constitutional labeling, what kind of constitutionalism are we actually talking about?" (Avbelj 2008, 2) 150 "To put it bluntly, European governance is administrative, not constitutional (…) with a ruling legitimacy still ultimately derived from the historically constituted bodies of representative government on the national level." (Lindseth 2010, 1) 151 (Lindseth 2010, 58); 152 Recall Lindseth questioning the weight of all supranational institutions in the legitimacy of the construct of Europe: "the legitimation of supranational regulatory power (…) has never been successfully located supranationally, whether in the elections to the EP, in the deliberations of the EC, or even, dare I say it, in the judgments of the ECJ, the ultimate bastion of a seeming supranational constitutionalism." Idem at page 19; 153 (Rasmussen 1986); with regards to the orthodoxy 1.0 -that the source of the EU's legitimacy is to be found supranationally. They argue instead that it is the treaties that allow for and empower the integration process, proving once again that the construct of Europe is administrative and not constitutional 154 .
Adopting 154 Lidnseth argues that the legitimacy of the integration process "has been located, however tenuously, in the enabling treaties themselves, akin to enabling legislation on the national level, empowering the supranational exercise of regulatory discretion within the capacious limits defined by those treaties. (…) This empowerment and authorization is best understood as another expression of the administrative, not constitutional character of integration" idem; 155 De Burca: "The assumption that law does play a significant role in the integration process, and a role which generally furthers rather than hinders economic and political integration, is one which (…) has usually been made without thorough methodological inquiry or solid evidential backing." P 313; respectively.
Isiksel repurposes the constitutional thesis to serve the "functional imperatives of creating and maintaining an economic union" 157 . Isiksel argues that the EU's legitimacy claim is dependent on efficient governance of its constitutional machinery 158 .
Lindseth's functionalism is tied in to his understanding of the sources of the EU's legitimacy. Having argued, as seen above, that the EU has failed to attain democratic or constitutional legitimacy "in its own right" 159 , he concludes that the EU should be understood as having only mediated legitimacythat it exercises powers that are delegated to it by member states, and that its autonomy extends no further than functionally delimited areas of policy.
Perhaps the greatest methodological shift from the classic orthodoxy is Joerge's novel approach, which was inspired by legal realism 160 , by the conflict's revolution in America, and particularly by Curie's governmental interest analysis 161 . Joerges suggests 157 Isiksel adds that the EU's imperative is to create "a policy space that encompasses a single market, monetary union, exhaustive fiscal coordination, and regulatory powers ranging from consumer protection to environmental standards." (Isiksel 2016, 7); 158 Recognizing that the EU's authority "does not comfortably map onto either liberal or democratic conceptions of constitutional legitimacy"at page 6 -she argues that "the EU has produced a qualitatively distinct form of constitutional practice, one whose authority is justified by a claim to govern effectively rather than with reference to traditional principles of popular sovereignty and individual liberty" -idem at page 6. She then considers that "the use of constitutional mechanisms to augment the governing capacity (…) is not specific to the supranational domain. (…and) effective government is a ubiquitous but underemphasized justification for constitutional authority in the domestic context. (… however) the EU is distinctive for the degree of its reliance on this particular justification of constitutional authority." (Isiksel 2016, 8); 159 (Lindseth 2010, 1); 160 "the conflicts-law approach is not meant as an artificial juxtaposition to positive European law, but it does claim to take up the legacy of legal realism, and, hence, to articulate that law's "real life", to help us to see what the law "does". (Joerges 2010, 27) 161 "Joerges calls for an idea of European law as a type of supranational law of conflict of laws based on American conflict of laws methodologies" (Joerges 2005, 2) reconfiguring EU law "as a new type of supranational conflicts law" 162 , Reframing the EU's legal orderproviding alternative narratives of European 166 Joerges argues that "the sustainability of the whole European project seems to depend upon the construction and institutionalisation of a "third way" between (…) the defence of the nation state, on the one hand, and federalist or quasi-federalist ambitions, on the other." (Joerges 2010, 1) 167 "Conflicts-Law Constitutionalism (…) provides an adaptation of the discourse theory of law to the postnational constellation." (Joerges and Glinski 2014, 2) 168 Recall Joerges' example: "In the context of the establishment of Europe's internal market, standardisation was to become the prime example of such arrangements. Standardisation is at the crossroads of economic efficiency and social responsibility. The assumptions upon which the c-l-c narrative was built are that: (1) European law offers the possibility to overcome the structural democratic challenges of the individual nation states 169 ; and furthermore (2) the needs of the peoples of Europe can no longer be met in isolation by each member state, rather they require a collective response 170 . These core assumptions give rise to three types of conflicts within the integration process: vertical, horizontal and diagonal 171 , that call for a "deliberative supranationalism" between political and societal actors.
Taking into account the disintegrative elements of European integration: The assumption that European integration operates through an expansion of the scope of centralized supranational governance is a feature of the centrality of law thesis 172 that Shaw 173 challenged over twenty years ago. At the core of this assumption balancing of these concerns is a political activity, but one with which the political systems and their administrative bodies cannot cope with on their own, not even at national level, let alone in the European Union." (Joerges 2012, 2) 169 Joerges argues that "under the impact of Europeanisation and globalization, contemporary societies experience an ever stronger schism between decision-makers and those who are impacted upon by decision-making." (Joerges 2010, 21-22) but also, "as a consequence of their manifold degree of interdependence, the Member States of the European Community/Union are no longer in a position to guarantee the democratic legitimacy of their policies." Idem page 23; 170 Joerges identifies "the eroding potential of nation states to cope autonomously with the concerns of their citizens"at page 2 -based on the fact that "European societies (…) experiencein many domainsthat they are not, or are no longer, in a position to ensure responses to their concerns autonomously but instead depend on transnational co-operation" (Joerges and Glinski 2014, 32); 171 (Joerges 2005, 15-16) 172 Dehousse and Weiler: "integration must be regarded as a process, leading gradually, with the passage of time, to an increase in the exchanges between the various societies concerned and to a more centralized form of government." p. 246; 173 Jo Shaw: "breaking the hitherto immutable link between law and the integration process and by highlighting strong disintegrationist elements in the present EU legal order. Placing integration and disintegration side by side makes it easier to make lies the pro-integration bias that has been discussed above. Joerges alludes to this bias when revisiting Majone's technocratic narrative envisioning Europe as a regulatory state, whose "operational code is to prioritize integration over all other conceivable values including democracy" 174 . Disintegrative elements of the European integration process have been for the most part overlooked by the classic orthodoxy, or summarily pushed aside and accepted as part of the unique construct of Europe, such as when Weiler, as if addressing with Majone's operational code of European integration, states that "democracy is simply not part of the original vision of European integration 175 ".
The merit of the fringe narratives, and of Shaw's in particular, is that they question the focus of the classic integration's heroic, noble and glorious sagas on pro-integration elements 176which Shaw identifies as "consensus; unity and cohesion; centrality; legitimacy and authority"and ignore what she terms as "disintegrationist aspects" such as "diversity and difference; fragmentation; disruption; illegitimacy and weakness" 177 . Shaw and others allow for a more informed and candid debate to take place, acknowledging the many tensions and opposing forces within the integration process.
a realistic assessment the current state of the EU legal order." In European Union Legal Studies in Crisis? Towards a New Dynamic. Assessment of the fringe narratives.
The fringe narratives offer us, in varying degrees of separation from and contrast to, alternatives views of the European integration process that question the fundamental premises of the constitutional thesis and the classic narrative. Lindseth for example accepts that "European governance is of course multilevel and perhaps even polyarchical", but he refutes Europe's sui generis nature and that it is "autonomously constitutional as conventionally supposed" 178 .
Perhaps the two greatest contributions of these narratives are that: they acknowledge and move away from the pro-integration and pro-constitutional bias of the classic theories; and moreover, they are willing to accept that the integration process is not an idyllic fairy tale 179 , it not always noble and heroic, it has the same tensions, doubts and self-interests that pervade national law and politics, perhaps even more so.
But much of the legal realism that inspires this project is still only normative in essence and continues to lack substantial empirical data and analysis. These narratives, much like their classic predecessor, are written in a sea of words, of highly developed normative language and meta-language sprinkled with sporadic judicial case-studies.
Their openness to the functional necessities of the EU, to the dark-side of the integration story, their adoption of legal realism, and their embrace of European realism, gave us hope that they could escape a purely ontological or normative approach to the European project, and, particularly in addressing those same functional necessities of the that shape the integration process.

Chapter ONE Conclusions.
European integration narratives from the legal scholarship are sophisticated and thoughtful, but they remain for the most part within the confines of legal doctrine, tied to a pre-conceived normative framework of Europethat of a supranational constitutional order. Even when fringe narratives have managed to break away from the classic constitutional construct, and from its pro-integration bias, they still cannot unshackle themselves from the normative ambition of European integration legal scholarship.
These narratives, as Van Hoecke notes, end up following the same patterns as all legal doctrine: they "(study) law as a normative system, limiting its 'empirical data' to legal texts and court decisions", foregoing the "study (of) legal reality, law as it is. 180 ".
These theories therefore leave the epistemological question unanswered as they fail to ascertain how integration comes about. For example, it is hard to deny the important 180 (Van Hoecke 2011, 2) Van Hoecke characterizes these doctrines as hermeneutic disciplines, and summarizes them as follows: "Legal scholars collect empirical data (statutes, cases, etc), word hypotheses on their meaning and scope, which they test, using the classic canons of interpretation. In a next stage, they build theories (eg the direct binding force of European Union (EU) law), which they test and from which they derive new hypotheses (eg on the validity, meaning or scope of a domestic rule which conflicts with EU law)" idem at page 11; Van Hoecke does not dispute that legal doctrine is an empirical social science by its own right, quoting Alf Ross he recalls how "the interpretation of the doctrinal study of law (…) rests upon the postulate that the principle of verification must apply also to this field of cognition -that the doctrinal study of law must be recognized as an empirical social science" idem page 5. However, "legal scholars are often interpreting texts and arguing about a choice among diverging interpretations. In this way, legal doctrine is a hermeneutic discipline" idem page 4; role that the CJEU's judicial doctrines played in the construct of Europeconstitutionalizing or otherwisebut those doctrines were but one aspect of the European integration process. One of the strongest criticisms we can make regarding the classic orthodoxy of EU law is that it has mistakenly correlated the constitutionalization process with the integration process, by characterizing the EU as a de facto and de jure constitutional legal order, when in fact the constitutionalization process was and is in tension with other processes of European integration.
This correlation, between constitutionalization and integration, leads to two others that are likewise mistaken. First that the CJEU was the hero of the integration process, and the second, subtler but also more misleading, regarding primacy. The fact that EU Law has primacy over national law does not entail that the constitutional process has primacy over other processes and areas of European integration. By focusing solely on the CJEU's judicial doctrine and the constitutionalization process, and by enlarging the scope of primacy to the constitutional order over other areas of European integration including the legal order, the classic narrative became less sensitive to other inputs and events shaping Europe's development.
To put it a simpler way, the classic narrative defines the EU's legal order as constitutional, and then correlates the constitutionalization of Europe with European integration. My argument is that the constitutional order does not fully encompass Europe's legal order, it is just one part of Europe's legal order, in tension with subsidiarity, with the intergovernmentalism, with EU positive law as negotiated and bargained through the Treaties, with national Constitutional courts, with the sovereignty of Member States, and with the democratic deficit that is owed to the peoples of Europe.
In turn, the legal order itself is in tension with Europe's political, economic and social orders.
Integration results from a complex interaction of competing processes and inputs, as will be explored in chapter three, and to understand itas Lindseth notes -"scholars must take the national-supranational relationship as it is, not as they might wish it to be, in order to judge where European governance is and whither it is tending. It is not Eurosceptical to point this out 181 ".
181 See footnote 85 in (Lindseth 2010, 28) in which Lindseth recalls Rittberger's criticism of the classic literature and "on its focus on "redefining the standards by which European governance might be measured rather than asking why perceptions of a democratic deficit exist and what impact these then have an institutional design in the EU."; CHAPTER TWO -POLITICAL SCIENCE NARRATIVES OF EUROPEAN
The previous chapter conducted a review of the integration through law 182 narratives and approaches to European integration theorynarratives that primarily view law as both object and agent of integration. This chapter will focus instead on narratives from the political science field, broadly defined, that have been presented over time largely from the subfields of international relations (IR) and political science 183 .
As explained before in chapter one, both the challenges and the diminishing returns on presenting a rigid descriptive taxonomy of these narratives remain the same, if not further exacerbated by the often-common conflation between political sciences and IR 184 . This project's stated goals remain to inform the debate on the future of the EU, 182 Meant here as a representation of the field of legal integration theory, and not in the narrower sense of the "integration-throughlaw" (ITL) project enacted by Mauro Cappelletti, Monica Seccombe, and Joseph Weiler, although as Azoulai has argued the ITL project "has had a powerful impact on the development of EU studies". See (Azoulai 2016, 449); 183 My purpose is not to question the standing of IR as an independent scholarly field, nor to construe it as a sub-field of political science. Political science, as referred to in this project, is used in its broadest sense as a discipline that focus on the local, regional and international practices of governments, state and other political actors. Although I wish to avoid the "complex arguments about disciplines, subdisciplines and disciplinary/subdisciplinary boundaries" that Rosamond has engaged in (Jorgensen, Pollack and Rosamond 2007), no serious academic overview of these narratives should proceed however before noting the vast contribution of IR to EU integration theory. Rosamond has written extensively on this topic -see primarily (Jorgensen, Pollack and Rosamond 2007, Chapter 1), but also (Rosamond 2000); 184 See supra -I agree with Rosamond and challenge the academic rigor of such a conflation. Nonetheless, some scholars might refer to these narratives generally as stemming uniquely or undistinguishably from either IR or political science; and to inform the scholarly field of integration theory. As such it will focus on the premises that sustain these narratives, regardless of their methodological housing 185 186 , as they provide us with an understanding of how political science sensu lato has explained and mapped the framework of European integration. My belief is that, rather than focus on descriptive terms characterizing methodological choices, such as intergovernmentalism or neofunctionalism, it is more useful for the reader to understand, for instance, that what sets these narratives apart from the legal orthodoxy is that they shift the motor of integration from law to politics, or from law to power 187 188 . It's this sort of analysis that shall be given primacy, focusing on their constitutive 185 Brian Schmidt would argue that "is an intimate link between disciplinary identity and the manner in which we understand the history of the field" and he is right; nonetheless, the current crisis in the field of integration theory prompts us to look beyond disciplinary identity; (Carlsnaes, Risse and Simmons 2002, 16); 186 Additionally, as Rosamond notes, "the standard story of EU studies may be straightforward enough, but it can be organized in different ways and with different purposes" (Jorgensen, Pollack and Rosamond 2007, 9). Wiener and Diez for instance describe a "proto-integration period (that) predates the actual development of political integration", which includes Mitrany's functionalist theory of institutional design and early federalist theories, but surprisingly not Deutsch's transactionalism, followed by three phases: explaining integration (liberalism, realism, neolibrarlism); analyzing governance (governance, comparative politics, policy analysis); and constructing the EU (social constructivism, post-structuralism, gender approaches, etc…). Rosamond distinguishes between mainstream (where political science has primacy over her methodologies, and the EU is regarded as a polity like any other) and pluralistic (where multidisciplinary approaches are preferred and the EU is recognized as unique) models of studying the EU.
Rosamond has published several articles on how different typologies (such as Hix, Pollack, Keeler, Jackson) might place certain scholars in different methodological camps. Rosamond himself will use different typologies to illustrate the impact of certain social sciences on the narrative construction. For instance Rosamond argues that we can delineate a certain period, which he calls the early manifestations of integration theory, which includes functionalism, federalism and transactionalism (akin to Wiener and Diez's proto-integration period) and which emerged out of International Relations "guiding problematique (puzzle), (…) the question of the avoidance of war" (Rosamond, Theories of European Integration 2000, 48); 187 "Political scientists' point of departure is almost always one of 'power' in the sense that they study and see courts and judges as having intentions, motives and a quest for power and influence when they act." (Neergaard and Nielsen 2012, 282); 188 The paradigms of law and of politics being the driving force of European integration will be reviewed in chapter four; elements to be able to provide useful conclusions to the understanding of the scholarly field.

A review of the orthodoxy of political science integration theory
Perhaps the salient feature of the orthodoxy of political science was its concern with uncovering which institutional incentives (political capital, and power) or structural incentives (economic, social or cultivated spillovers) drive integrationwhich denote a more systemic understanding of the integration process.
Underlying these concerns was an uncertainty regarding the future of the nationstate, and regarding post-national forms of regional governance 189 , which led to a much broader range of possible theoretical frameworks to be envisioned than were being discussed in the legal field.
As seen above, most legal narratives adopted the constitutional thesis, imbedding the EU with supranationalism (then debating whether it is dualist, monist, multileveled or quasi-federal). The classic orthodoxy of political science offers a broader framework: scholarly from Hoffmann to Haas; and structurally from intergovernmentalists to neofunctionalists or supranationalists 190 . 189 Zimmermann and Dur "the core normative issue behind the neofunctionalism versus intergovernmentalism debate was the question of whether the nation-state would and should have a future in the twenty-first century" (Zimmermann and Dur 2012, 5).
But note also Rosemond who states that "there were two big political science issues here: the relationship between economics and politics and the future of the nation-state as a viable and desirable method of organizing human affairs in advanced societies" (Rosamond 2000, 1); 190 "The most long-standing of these was fought between intergovernmentalists and supranationalists" Zimmermann and Dur were referring to the fact that Haas' neofunctionalism envisioned "the creation of a central authority (that) would lead to the emergence of supranational trade associations, labour unions and political parties that would increasingly pursue their interests at the European Despite this broader range of theoretical designs, as Wendt and later Rosamond note, the "great debate between neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism" only disagreed on first order questions, while finding unity in all second order matters. This will become apparent when we see for instance how both theories adopted rationalistutilitarian approaches but identified different actors and different incentives. These two theories disagreed on empirical records, "variables, processes and the hypothesized significance of different actors and institutions in the explanation of integration outcomes" but followed very similar paths with regards to "ontology, epistemology and methodology." 191 . The first order differences stemmed, as he himself suggested, by Haas's desire to challenge classic realism and its fetishizing of power. Haas wanted to provide an alternative between the realists and Kantian idealism 192 .
The main premises of the political science integration orthodoxy.
Integration is fundamentally a process of actor-driven institutional politics.
The first premise, shared by liberal intergovernmentalists 193 and early level". (Zimmermann and Dur 2016, 5)"; 191 Rosamond notes how there was broad metatheoretical and methodological affinity between these two fields: "neofunctionalism's ontology is "soft" rational choice: social actors in seeking to realize their value-derived interests, will chose whatever means are made available by the prevailing democratic order" and "liberal intergovermentalists would only disagree on the (… first order) questions of (a) which are the key interest-driven actors and (B) from what interests themselves are derived. But there would be no quarrel with the basic rationalist-utilitarian premises" (Lynggaard, Manners and Lofgren 2015, 25); 192 "NF was developed explicitly to challenge the two theories of IR dominant in the 1950s, classical realism and idealism. (…) I wanted to show that the fetishizing of power, the Primat der Aussenpolitik, was far less of a law of politics than claimed by these scholars (…) But I also wanted to show that the Kantian idealism that saw in more international law the road to world peace was as 197 "The logic of institutionalization has long been at work in the EU, and it is crucial to understanding integration as a dynamic process"; (Stone Sweet 2012, 16); 198 Rosamond then quoting Moravcsik: "the primary interest of governments is to maintain themselves in office … this requires the support of a coalition of domestic voters, parties, interest groups and bureaucracies whose views are transmitted, directly or indirectly, through domestic institutions and practices of political representation. Through this process emerges the set of national interests or goals that states bring to international negotiations." (Rosamond 2000, 137); 199 See Rosamond: "the process emerged from a complex web of actors pursuing their interests within a pluralist political environment"; and how Haas's neofunctionalism reinstates "political agency into the integration process" (Rosamond 2000, 55); 200 While Weiler's Transformation of Europe might have brought the importance of law to the study of the integration process by political science, particularly in the neofunctionalist camp -and with the equally seminal work of Burley and Mattli -the idea that interest paradigm (Grimmel 2017), in which the "pursuit of interests" is seen as the motor of integration 201 . Simon Hix, as Rosamond notes, offers a similar account, in which "the EU is a political system involving various actors pursuing their interests in a classic Lasswellian game of 'who gets what, when, and how'" 202 .
The premise of institutional politics and the quest for finding which actors affect the integration process, according to which incentives or constraints, was, and arguably still remains, the main focus of political science integration theory 203 . As Grimmel notes, "without being able to identify certain rational actors seeking certain benefits in participating in the integration process, an adequate explanation for the course of (political and economic) integration does not seem possible in classical integration theory" (Grimmel 2017, 165).
Integration is driven by a rationalist framework.
Often articulated in conjunction with the previous premise is the understanding that integration is an application of rationalist institutionalism 204 ". The interest paradigm is integration remains a political process driven by rational and self-interested actors remains prevalent; 201 The interest paradigm, Grimmel notes, stems from a "broad consensus that the 'pursuit of interests' may be seen as a major driving force: identifying certain rational actors seeking certain kinds of gains and benefits is a vital part of most explanations for the procedure of the integration process (…) like (neo)functionalism, (liberal) intergovernmentalism, supranational institutionalism, or also parts of multilevel governance approaches" (Grimmel 2017, 165); 202 (Gower 2013, 37) 203 See Grimmel "The central question in integration theory aiming at an explanation for the course of integration was and is essentially this: which actors have been able to exert their interests vis-à-vis other actors while being subject to certain institutional constraints, and how did this foster the integration process? (…) (A)ctors interests and their calculation of advantages (…) are usually seen as the driving forces of integration." (Grimmel 2017, 165); 204 Moravcisk and Schimmelfennig, in (Wiener and Diez 2009, 67);Also see Moravcisk: "the fundamental actors in international necessarily based on a rational actor assumption -narratives and studies conducted by political sciences assume that integration is driven by rational and self-interested actors, who act upon certain incentives and interests 205 206 .
In the neofunctionalist camp this becomes apparent in their neoliberal belief that "the benefits of integration would become apparent to domestically located interest groups who would lobby their governments accordingly 207 ". Politics would therefore follow economics in what they deemed a spillover effect 208 . Intergovernmentalism, as Moravcsik argues, adopted a more neorealist view that "the primary source of integration lies in the interests of the states themselves and the relative power each brings to Brussels 209 ". Haas 1970, 627); And also how: "(…) social actors, in seeking to realize their value-derived interests, will choose whatever means are made available by the prevailing democratic order. If thwarted, they will rethink their values, redefine their interests, and choose new means to realize them." (E. B. Haas 2004, xv); 206 The only conceptual divide is between realists/intergovernmanlists who frame integration as a zero-sum game, whereas neofunctionlists believe it to offer positive-sum possibilities. In Niemann and Schmitter's "Neofunctionalism", in (Wiener and Diez 2009, 48) 207 (Rosamond 2000); 208 Rosamond also notes that: "it has often been said that neofunctionalism contained within itself a conception of 'cultivated spillover' (Tranholm-Mikkelsen 1991), that is a specific theory of how, once created, supranational institutions act as strategic advocates on behalf of functional linkage and deeper/wider integration." (Rosamond 2005, 244); Stone Sweet finds that spillovers occur "when actors realize that the objectives of initial supranational policies cannot be achieved without extending supranational policy-making to additional, functionally related domains." (Stone Sweet 2012, 8); 209 Moravcsik, A. "Negotiating the Single European Act", in (Keohane and Hoffmann 1991, 75); Integration is measurable through a series of empirical hypothesestransaction-driven thesis; Neofunctionalism and intergovermentalism build their theories on rationalist, actorcentered frameworks 210 . Both assume a series of national preferences (Moravcsik) or transnational interests (Haas, Stone Sweet) that drive interstate bargaining and institutional design 211 . Neofunctionalism, however, goes on to speculate an additional moment, where "integration produces unanticipated unintended, and often undesired consequences and escapes the control of the states 212 " which in turn create feedback loops that drive integration forward. These feedback loops result from a functional spillover effect 213 . Both theories, nonetheless, provide testable propositions, ranging from macro to micro, and micro to macro levels, on how integration proceeds.
Integration is concerned with processes not outcomesform follows function thesis; should emerge from the process of integration 214 215 . Unlike legal scholarship, which attempted to provide a framework for integration to occur based on a certain notion of the European polity (whether as constitutional, federalist, or multilevel), political science focused on the dynamics that "would drive integration forward as a process 216 ".
Political science has mostly attempted to bypass the dependent variable problem in systems theory 217 .
Assessment of the classic narratives.
In creating a framework that focuses on processes and inputs, the political science orthodoxy of European integration theory lays the foundations for a systems theory understanding of the forces that drive the integration process. They do however suffer from the same faulty logic as early economic and game theories, by assuming both actor and transactional rationality in integrational interactions. Perhaps the greatest criticism nonetheless is that they maintain a myopic or monochromatic understanding of 214 "Both neofunctionalists and intergovernmentalists are more concerned with the process of integration than with the political system to which that integration leads". (Wiener and Diez 2009, 3); See also Rosamond: "the emphasis on actors and their (…) interaction was illustrative of neofunctionalists' emphasis on integration in terms of process rather than outcomes" (Rosamond 2000, 55) 215 Even recent restatements of neofunctionliams (see Stone Sweet for example), that suggest that the outcome of their theories presupposes the expansion of supranational governance, are not sufficient to shift this premise; 216 (Stone Sweet 2012, 7); 217 Rosamond summarizes the problem: "what is it that theorists are trying to explain when they contemplate the processes of institution-building and integration?"; Haas himself stated that it would be helpful to "clarify the matter of what we propose to explain and/or predict", and that "the task of selecting and justifying variables and explaining their hypothesized interdependence cannot be accomplished without an agreement as to possible conditions to which the process is expected to lead. In short we need a dependent variable". (Rosamond 2000, 11); European integration, much like their counterparts in the legal field, by focusing primarily on politics and political inputsin this regards they simply replaced the legal orthodoxy's focus on law as the agent of integration with politics.
2.2 Turning away from the classic orthodoxythe fringe narratives, and the abandonment of the pursuit to produce a grand theory of European integration Political science narratives have benefited from great scholarly attention over the years but have been analyzed and categorized according to different normative models 218 219 , producing different storylines to retell the same story 220 . As we have seen, neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism constituted the basis of the classic orthodoxy of political science integration theory 221 . They were in fact, as Rosemand 218 Rosamond also suggests that "different readings of the history of EU studies follow from the various oppositions that emerge from alternative models of the study of EU politics." (Jorgensen, Pollack and Rosamond 2007, 18); 219 We have seen the different taxonomies used to distinguish certain phases (Wiener and Diez, Keeler) or approaches (Hix, Cryer et al) within political integration history, and as stated earlier this project's concern is not to engage in an exercise that can only produce diminishing returns for this project's stated purposes; 220 Rosamond's article "The political sciences of European integration: disciplinary history and EU studies" is perhaps the best analysis of this phenomena in EU political science. "The task of writing disciplinary history is far from straightforward. Like all history, the composition of a narrative about a field is undertaken at a particular time and in a particular placefrom a particular 'subject position' that may reflect certain biases which in turn follow from a multiplicity of concerns that follow from those temporal and spatial coordinates." (Jorgensen, Pollack and Rosamond 2007, 7); 221 Rosamond in fact notes that "much of the academic work on the European Union remains under the spell of the classical debate between neo-functionalism and intergovermentalism" (Cini 2007, 118); and elsewhere, that: "these perspectives tend to reassert the importance of the 'national' versus the 'supranational'"; and more pertinently, that "the survival of the nation-state as the primary authoritative unit in European politics remains the most compelling question" (Rosamond 2000, 156); suggests, "the only two 'theories' in the strict sense of the term 222 ". Most of the ensuing discourse regarding the EU echoed these narratives concern with first order questions regarding the integration processmeaning: whether supranational institutions and actors have taken over the integration framework away from the nation-state model, or if the Member States are still in control through the intergovernmental process.
A shift occurred however in the late 80's and 90's, that de facto moved beyond the empirical and normative scope of the classic political science orthodoxy, and ushered a period of great interdisciplinarity. The shift represents a turning point in political science, when classic first order questions give way to second order concerns, and when a focus on methodology takes precedent over the creation of normative grand theories.
One way to summarize the scholarly change that took place would be to say that A different take on this period suggests that this shift results from the realization of the conceptual limits of the "old debate" between intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism; and the scholarly limits of IR to account for this highly institutionalized, complex polity, with its own internal politics and actors that no longer necessarily fit in a binary spectrum of national versus supranational 226 .
Finally, and perhaps of greater significance, these improved narratives emerged also from the conclusion that integration in itself is not necessarily the end-game or ambition of all these different actors 227 . The combined result of all these factors was a new period of broadened empirical scope and new critical perspectives 228 (Wiener and Diez;224 In any case, as Rosamond notes, "the EU has evolved into a peculiar form of polity or political system that does not really fit into any established template for understanding the state". (Cini 2007, 120) 225 This period coincided with: the Delors Commission, which is often celebrated as one of the most driven and successful in terms of European integration; and also, with the far-reaching policy impacts of certain CJEU decisions such as the Cassis de Dijon case; 226 As Rosamond notes: "International Relations is an academic discourse dealing with the polarities of nation-sates or superstates and envisages the state of integration as lying somewhere along a continuum between those two poles"; (Rosamond 2000, 157); 227 "Integration is not central to the everyday deliberations of actors working within this polity" (Gower 2013, 45); 228 As Wiener and Diez claim, this new phase "brought comparative and institutionalist approaches to the foreground of integration theory" (Wiener and Diez 2009, 11); Rosamond).
The main contribution of these alternative or improved narratives is precisely their shift from first to second order concerns, which prompted a new understanding of European Integration. Once freed from theoretical considerations, and liberated from trying to further those same theories, these new narratives opened the hood of European integration and looked at the moving parts and components of its engine.
As a final consideration, and to start merging this analysis with this project's methodological proposal regarding European integration theory, this second phase of political science scholarship represents a shift to the focus on the epistemological inputs of integration, rather than their ultimate normative output. They reverse the top-down approach that was so characteristic of both classic theories within law and political science, an approach which is in line with this project's systems theory proposal, we can only discover the true nature of the beast 229 once we study and accept it as it is, rather than what we want it to be.
The main premises of the fringe narratives within political science The institutionalist turn -why institutions and institutional dynamics matter 230 . 229 The search for nature of the (European) beast is a recurrent theme in integration theory scholarship. See Risse-Kappen in "Exploring the nature of the beast: International Relations theory and comparative policy analysis meet the European Union"; (Risse-Kappen 1996); 230 The practices and interactions within and among institutions impact, as Rosamand notes, "both political behavior and political outcomes (… by acting as) intervening variables between the preferences of actors and the outcomes of those actor's deliberations". (Gower 2013, 45); The institutionalist turn in political science integration theory 231 comes about with the realization that institutions affect actor preferences and behaviors, and necessarily shape political outcomes. Political bargaining therefore has to account for what became known as the institutional variable 232 233 .
The constructivist turnand how interests are socially constructed 234 .
The constructivist turn in political science integration theory resulted from a critic of earlier rationalist approaches and its focus on material preferences to justify the integration process, such as the pursuit of economic integration. Constructivism argues that states evolve alongside the social structures that comprise them, and therefore both state and individual actor interests stem from processes of "social and linguistic interaction" 235 . Social structures replace rational-based theories to explain how actors will often act against their material self-interest to pursue community interests. 231 Rosamond identifies three models within the institutionalist turn: rational choice institutionalism; historical institutionalism; and, sociological institutionalism. Idem; 232 Conceicao-Heldt describes this as follows: "when analyzing EU-negotiations the variable institutional setting also has to be taken into account, since the structure in which a negotiation takes place affects the scope of the bargaining outcome" (Conceicao- 235 See Rosamond, who notes that "the focus of constructivism is on the role of symbols, norms, discourses, and belief systems in the processes of integration and EU governance"; and finds therefore that "the identities of actors, such as states, are not materially given" but "social constructed". (Gower 2013, 46); The governance turnwhy multilevel networks matters 236 .
Perhaps the greatest critique of the classic dichotomy between intergovernmentalism and supranationalism, and the EU's binary modes of governance, came from the understanding that policy-making is enacted through differentiated networks and levels of authority -often mitigated or shared -as the proponents of multilevel governance suggest 237 .
The governance turn demonstrates how, once again, updated narratives of integration theory from the political sciences camp start taking an epistemological interest in a systematic understanding of Europe outside of the normative confines of earlier theories. Multilevel governance is sensitive to the complex nature of the EU and its differentiated networks of shared authority.
Assessment of the fringe narratives.
The new approaches to European union studies are often referred to simply as "turns" within the scholarly debate, as seen above, i.e. the governance turn, the institutionalist turn, etc… While there is a vast literature on each of these methodological approaches, not much has been written about the characterization of each approach as a shift -in other words, why is it a turn, and a turn from what? If the objective was merely to signal a new methodological model or viewpoint they could 236 "Governance is generally defined as being about the organization, steering, and coordination of social systems" (Gower 2013, 46); 237 Marks, Hooghe and Blank, as Rosamond notes, suggest that "the EU is a polity in which authority has been dispersed between levels of governance and political actors are mobile between the different levels. Levels of integration are also asymmetrical". (Gower 2013, 46); have used the term "approach" as suggestedthe governance approach for example.
Instead, the history of European studies is now laden with turning points. It could very well be that the term was initially coined with no great aforethought, as a mere label synonymous to approach, and then gained almost universal acceptance. In the vast spectrum of possible taxonomies of political science stories, referring to a turn makes it easier to allow for a greater margin of specific scholars to be contemplated within the circular axis of each approach.
But the term, or rather the turn, is not accidental, it is in fact constitutive of two fundamental turning points. Each of these turns: (a) rejects the classic normative binary between intergovernmentalism and supranationalism; and (b) enacts a shift from a concern with normative ontology to methodological epistemology -as signaled by the abandonment of the pursuit to provide for a new grand theory of the EU, to focus instead on understanding how integration actually works.
Lastly, these turns within political science scholarship are not only constitutive of a turn from the classic orthodoxy, but a turn from a monochromatic approach to integration theory. They demonstrate how new approaches can: (a) operate under no specific continuumindependently from any particular normative theorization; and (b) operate concurrently with other approaches to fully understand the integration process.

Review of the crisis narratives from both law and political science
While a review of both the mainstream and fringe narratives of integration theory offers us a starting point to assess the epistemological foundations, successes and the failures of this field, a review of the crisis literature allows us to understand the current ontological canvas within which the debate over the future of the EU is taking place. Most of the crisis literature therefore focuses on key EU financial and monetary econometrics to explain the failings of the integration project and the current crisis moment. In fact, the EU's economy seems to share the spotlight of the crisis literature alongside the question of legitimacy -and in most cases is tethered to its legitimacy, as its greatest output source 239 , and as its principal barometer for success, or failure.
The legitimacy paradigmthe belief that the EU's output legitimacy, and particularly its economic success, could mitigate its lack of input legitimacy -had not been empirically tested until now 240 . The current crisis period seems to shatter this paradigm, particularly as a result of Europe's output ineffectiveness in responding to the crisis 241 , which seriously puts into question the sustainability of its frail 238 (Scharpf 2003) referencing his celebrated 1970 work "Demokratietheorie zwischen Utopie und Anpassung. Konstanz: 239 As Piattoni reminds us, because of "the inevitable compromises that must be struck at EU level often do not reflect any one group's or national constituency's preferences and because of the sheer difficulty in understanding who decides what (… traditionally) output legitimacy has been argued to be the most appropriate standard of EU legitimacy" (Piattoni 2015, 4); 240 Perhaps, as Grimmel argues: "due to the 'keep going!' mantra the EU has so persistently followed" (Grimmel 2017, 171); 241 Piattoni is one of many crisis scholars who highlight "the ineffectiveness of the Union in solving economic problems such as legitimacy 242 . In this regard, Piattoni suggests that we should reverse the legitimacy paradigm, and recognize instead that the "precondition for EU effectiveness (output) is the perceived democratic legitimacy of its institutional architecture and decisionmaking procedures (input and throughput)" 243 .

It's the politics… and the economy, stupid
One of the harshest consequences brought about by the crisis -"the reduction of policy space as a result of austerity policymaking" (Stefanova 2015) -resulted from the perceived politicization of the EU's response to the economic crisis 244 . The EU's legitimacy seems to be tethered not only to its economic success, but to its political capacityas suggested by the legal orthodoxy 2.0. Several crisis narratives therefore focus on inputs that affect these two fundamentally interrelated aspects of legitimacy, which should be paid more attention to moving forward 245 .
We failed to connect the dots, we were too busy focusing on individual approaches to EU integration theory.
speculative bubbles, skyrocketing national debts, and sluggish economies" (Piattoni 2015, 5); 242 Piattoni makes a similar argument when she notes "any assessment of EU legitimacy based uniquely on its output effectiveness would run the risk of leading to fairly dismal conclusions" and that "the empirical argument that the EU is legitimate insofar as it is effective, therefore, cannot be the sole basis on which to pin its stability and sustainability". (Piattoni 2015, 5); 244 Which Stefanova further argues "represents a major challenge for European societies and the functioning of democratic politics" (Stefanova 2015, 1); 245 To "preserve and safeguard at a time of crisis, and maintain a system of crisis response and transformation", Stefanova suggests the following: "we should focus our analysis on the EU institutional order, and especially on the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), the capacity of public policy to provide public goods, and the quality of democracy in Europe." (Stefanova 2015, 2); As we have seen, the second phase of political science integration theory ushered a new era of multidisciplinary approaches, paved the way for Europe's epistemological question to take precedence, and allowed for a better understanding of the integration system. However, and at the same time, it failed to promote the necessary interdisciplinary habits that a systems analysis would require. If we accept that this crisis is unique precisely because it affected all four areas of European integration 246 , then we must conclude as Grimmel did that "there is no longer a superior form of rationalization in society but a multitude of perspectives of which one cannot say that one is superior to another 247 ".
A great part of the crisis narratives now realizes that Europe can no longer address its malaises solely through isolated approaches nor through the single efforts of law, politics, the European economy or the European social construct. The EU is a unique polity where, borrowing from Luhmann's functional differentiation theory, "every change to a subsystem is also a change to the environment of other subsystemswhatever happens, happens in multiplicity 248 ", as Grimmel has also noted 249 .
The awakening to the realization that the European construct requires serious systematic understanding, as this project puts forward and develops in chapter three, could not be better stated than in Grimmel's narrative: "every reaction within one of the 'big three' politics, economy or lawthen again And "under such circumstances it seems highly unlikely that the European Union can address major problems appropriately within the framework of either its political, economic or legal community. On the contrary, it seems imperative that all three of them play a specific role in crisis management at the same time." 250 These first two considerations -that we failed to located the right inputs to European integration process; and we failed to adopt a systematic understanding of the EU -result from an effort to understand what happened, how the crisis unfolded and why was it so impactful. They tend towards Europe's epistemological question.
The last premise or theme that can be found in some crisis narratives, and that will be covered next, focuses on contributing to the debate on the future of Europe and asking how we can move forward and salvage the integration process 251 . They tend towards Europe's ontological question.
This crisis is unique 252 , we need a grand theory, a new equilibrium, better paradigms, or loyalty.
250 (Grimmel 2017, 161-162) 251 In some cases, it is phrased as a plea. See Stefanova: "policy makers and academics should be (…) asking the right questions not just learning the lessons from the ways the crisis response was mobilized and implemented" (Stefanova 2015, 1); 252 Displacing Europe in this characterizationit is just possible that this crisis is even more uniquemeaning suis geneirs -than the EU itself; This premise is common in different accounts of the current European crisis moment, in both law and political science, and it stems from the realization of the uniqueness of this crisis 253 . Fabbrini has described it as the "litmus test" moment of Europe's institutional design 254 . Grimmel has noted -"the sheer quantity of challenges together with the EU's apparent weakness in crisis management has led to a 'crisis of the many crises', a 'meta-crisis' so to speak, that fosters centrifugal forces and weighs increasingly on the integration process as a whole 255 ".

A new grand theory or a new equilibrium
Rosamond once suggested that giving up on the search for a grand theory of the European integration process was not necessarily a bad idea 256 . That perhaps was true as long as the premises and paradigms of European integration were sufficientor at the very least, had not yet failed -in sustaining Europe's framework. The day of reckoning of the EU's legitimacy, of its epistemology, of its scholarship, has finally come, and those same premises and paradigms that upheld them have failed or have been deeply discredited.
Some scholars want to seize this opportunity to start afresh methodologically, to 253 Several crisis narratives share the sentiment that "no critical event so far, from the empty chair crisis to the failed referendum (1) deliberative intergovernmentalism seems to be the preference in terms of 257 Fabbrini has noted how "the Euro crisis has (raised) the necessity of thinking of a new political order in Europe" (Fabbrini 2015, xvii) ; Stefanova suggests that "a type of 'one size fits all' reform may be necessary and a federal Europe may be in the making" (Stefanova 2015, 2); 258 These scholars note the following regarding the integration paradox:

Member states have pursued integration in this at an unprecedented rate and yet have stubbornly resisted further significant and lasting transfers of ultimate decision-making power to the supranational along traditional lines This paradox poses a challenge to scholars of European integration, who in spite of their differences over the economic and political drivers of integration rely on a shared definition of integration as involving a transfer of competences to
supranational institutions (compare for example Haas 1964 andMoravcsik 1999a); (Bickerton, Hodson and Puetter 2015, 4); 259 They identify these concerns as hypotheses "which together seek to elucidate, explain and understand the institutional and normative implications of the integration paradox" (Bickerton, Hodson and Puetter 2015, 29); policy-building 260 , and even when such deliberative practices are subject to legal constraints, such as in the Kadi case, they spur regulatory backlash 261 ; (2) supranational institutions are not designed to achieve a true supranational governance model 262 ; (3) delegated supranational authority is usually enacted through new intergovernmental inspired institutions 263 ; (4) it is difficult to insulate domestic preferences vis-à-vis the EU from domestic discontentment with both national and European politics 264 ; (5) it is increasingly difficult to disentangle "high and low politics" 265 ; and (6) the current structure of the integration process leads inevitably to "a state of disequilibrium" 266 .

Better paradigms
A grand theory might provide a new value-driven commitment to the integration 260 The first hypothesis is identified as follows: "Deliberation and consensus-seeking have become firmly established as the key operative norms for EU decision-making" (Bickerton, Hodson and Puetter 2015, 29). "This deliberative intergovernmentalism is exemplified by the changing role of the European Council". (Bickerton, Hodson and Puetter 2015, 306); (Bickerton, Hodson and Puetter 2015, 29) 261 (Bickerton, Hodson and Puetter 2015, 307); 262 The second hypothesis is framed as follows: "supranational institutions are not hard-wired to seek eve closer union" (Bickerton, Hodson and Puetter 2015, 308); 263 The third hypothesis is formulated as follows: "where delegation occurs, governments and traditional supranational actors support the creation and empowerment of de novo institutions". These de novo institutions "often have an intergovernmental strand to their governance structure that is more conductive to member state control. (Bickerton, Hodson and Puetter 2015, 32); 264 Hypothesis four is formulated as follows: "problems in domestic preference formation have become stand-alone inputs into the European integration process" (Bickerton, Hodson and Puetter 2015, 33); 265 (Bickerton, Hodson and Puetter 2015, 313); 266 "A key claim of the new intergovernmentalism is that European integration in the post-Maastricth period is an unstable and contradictory process that is tending towards a state of disequilibrium". (Bickerton, Hodson and Puetter 2015, 314); project, but there are other ways to restart the motor of integration -instead of value-  (Stefanova 2015, 2) 268 (Grimmel 2017, 169); 269 "The nature of the crisis itself (…) is largely incommensurate with the interest paradigm of integration" (Grimmel 2017, 168); "the expectation that everyone can still expect more benefits than costs from the implementation of the measures to cope with the crisis is quite simply unsustainable" idem 169; 270 As Grimmel notes, these periods "demand a different type of reasoning (…) one that is demanding such practices like solidarity will solve the EU's legitimacy deficit, but again we have to ask, which loyalty, and whose loyalty? Weiler seems to demand hard loyalty, an act of volition from the nation states, and the peoples of Europe themselves. Grimmel seems to echo at least part of this belief by suggesting that any solution must rely on promises of advantages to the integration actors 271 .
Assessment of the crisis narratives.
While Grimmel is attuned to the "multiplicity" issuewhat I argue constitutes the basis for a systems theory approach to European integrationcuriously he seems less skeptical about the power of either law or economics to be a part of a solution for the current crisis. He argues that law could be more suitable for pursuing new issue-driven paradigms of European integrationbetter paradigms solutions -as law "has the potential to insulate against the direct influence of interest claims and pressure groups", were it not for the fact that "these questions call for public debates and other forms of deliberation other than the law provides" 272 . As for economics he is even more skeptical, claiming that economic approaches have "proven to be a dead-end of integration" 273 . Like Maduro, Grimmel concludes that it is up to politics to solve the and new common rules to cope with the issues ahead". (Grimmel 2017, 169); 271 As Grimmel suggest, we cannot "counter the crises by attempting to create a situation in which the solution of the crisis promises further advantages to those involved". (Grimmel 2017, 168). He notes that "the interest paradigm no longer applies as a regulative principle that enables one to resolve the crisis-laden challenges ahead" (Grimmel 2017, 169); 272 (Grimmel 2017, 171 Fabbrini, in a more pessimistic or realistic tone, seems to believe that the construct of Europe as it is cannot be saved, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Using a comparative institutional approach he suggests a model of "compound democracy 276 ", which would require furthering the institutional and legal separation between euro-area member states and the non-euro-area. This would finally recognize the different integrational interests by the different Member States, respecting those who wish to pursue solely an economic community and those who wish for further integration. He critiques the "dual constitution set up by the 1992 Maastricht Treaty", which imposes greater integration compromises than some member states are truly interested abiding 274 He states that: "in the end, this leaves the main burden of resolving the EU's current problems to politicsand to politics alone (Grimmel 2017, 171); 275 She asks us to consider whether "the crisis further delegitimized the EU, or has the public realized that the EU is not a direct threat to national sovereignty and the welfare state but is rather another resource of crisis response, bailout, and opportunity; in short, a renewed version of the European rescue of the nation-state?" (Stefanova 2015, 3); 276 "A system of separate institutions sharing decision-making power" (Fabbrini 2015, 256) which he believes "is the only suitable model for those federations constituted through the aggregation of previously independent states and politically characterized by interstate cleavages". (Fabbrini 2015, xxiii); by, and advocates simplifying the Lisbon Treaty, removing from it "all parts unconnected to single market policies" particularly those that promote "an ever closer union". His main argument is that "the functioning of a single market is incompatible with a loose form of economic cooperation" 277 . Once the institutional and legal separation is enacted and the Lisbon Treaty amended, the euro-area member states can pursue a compound union 278 . What is crucial in this construct is that it requires "a  regarding what the EU should be 281 -and replaced it with an empirical analysis of the different (self, social, and institutional) interests by which the EU actors operate across a multileveled network of authority. In fact, one of the greatest added value of these turning points is that they ushered forth an even more prolific era of empirical analysis within the political science field, and in that regard further distanced themselves from 281 The "integration' debate has fallen out of fashion in recent years. While European studies used preoccupied with the 'nature of the beast' (Puchala 1971), this approach his given way to a more pragmatic one that accepts the EU as simply 'out there' and seeks to investigate particular parts of it rather than reflect upon it as a whole". (Bickerton, Hodson and Puetter 2015, 12 One of the resounding take-aways from the current European crisis is its dual nature, both systemic and epistemological: a crisis over the future of the European Union, severely deepened by the realization of the crisis in our understanding of Europe's integration process. This realization might, at first, seem to lie with the fact that some of the most important premises of integration theory have recently been shattered. To put it simply, the conventional wisdom regarding the framework and the cohesion of Europe is at a loss to explain these recent developments. A more careful reading of the careful caveats, and the obiter dicta of EU integration narratives shows that this concern has been apparent for much longer, ever since scholars have come to realize the limitations of reductionism in European integration, and to call for more 285 We do not go as far as Puchala did in his criticism. Puchala notes that "in light of the reigning conceptual confusion in the realm of integration studies it is difficult to see why the field has acquired a reputation for theoretical sophistication". My research into the field of integration theory has found highly sophisticated empirical research works, and normative theories, all of which have brought us closer to understanding the EU; interdisciplinary studies of the EU to take place. Any debate over the future of the European Union must therefore start with an understanding of what drives the complex integration projecthow all these legal, political, economic, and social components interact. Early integration theorists were concerned with this question when they asked what is the nature of the EUwhat is "the nature of the beast" 286 ? The framing of the question in this particular way, coupled with traditional social science reductionism 287 , prompted an unintended mistake 288 that resulted in the early top-down approaches to integration grand-theories: when scholars, despite acknowledging that the EU was unique, sui generis, were trying to fit it within traditional legal or political typologies 289 . They were doing so by focusing on certain features that they had identified in the beast 290federalism, intergovernmentalism, multilevel governance; or from new hybrids of these typologies such as functional supranational constitutionalism, supranational administrative governance, conflicts law constitutionalism, and compound democracy. Working within the classic notions and underpinnings of "state" and "international organization", or in a hybrid structure that 286 (Risse-Kappen 1996); 287 "In traditional social science, the usual proposition is that by reducing complicated systems to their constituent parts, and fully understanding each part, we will then be able to understand the world". (Miller and Page 2007, 27); 288 Already in 1971 Puchala acutely diagnosed the mistake, integration theory stated being discussed "in terms of what it should be and what it should be leading toward rather than in terms of what it really is and is actually leading toward"; (Puchala 1971, 268); 289 "The EU is certainly an institution sui generis in the sense that no other international organization has reached a similar degree of integration and regional cooperation. But this does not imply that we need an integration theory sui generis to explain the EU". (Risse-Kappen 1996, 56); 290 "Many of those who have tried to describe and explain international integration have been influenced in their intellectual efforts by normative preferences". (Puchala 1971, 268); superimposes them both at points, or shifts from one to the other in different areas, the study of the EU was thus epistemologically constrained from the start.
Eventually, in political science, scholars moved away from trying to uncover the nature of the beast to accepting the elephant in the room, whatever it may be, and focusing instead on what they understood to be its most important aspects or driversrationalist actor preferences, realist institutional politics, and neoliberal market It is therefore time to reframe the initial question -what is the nature of the beastwithout the constraints of reductionism, or the tired lens of traditional international law and its binary distinction between state and international organization. It is our firm conviction that no fruitful debate over the future of the EU can take place without an effort to finally understand the integration project. This comprises our first object, to inform the scholarly field of European integration theory.

Challenging traditional integration theory methodology
"Knowledge is the product of the understanding" (Lee 1943, 67) In chapters ONE and TWO we have reviewed the main narratives of European integration and have argued how many of the foundational assumptions of those narrativesand of the understanding of the European Union -have fallen in recent times. A reasonable course of inquiry would suggest two hypotheses to explain our findings: (1) something is different, something fundamentally metamorphic has occurred that has reshaped the EU; (2) nothing is per se different, but rather our initial assumptions, and our foundational knowledge of the EU, were incorrect. Of course, we could argue that a combination of both hypotheses is also possible -hypothesis 3 i.e.
or domains of the EU system, in which rival hypotheses are tested with a view to increasing the stock of scientifically valid knowledge." (Rosamond 2007, 247); something is different, and we additionally acknowledge that our foundational understanding of the EU was wrong all along -however that would not be correct in our view, as we will attempt to demonstrate by playing out the different scenarios. Hypothesis 2 is more complex, and goes against the sound principle of Occam's razor. Brexit does indeed suggest that something is different within the EUit is certainly not "business as usual", no one would argue -therefore the state of affairs would seem to negate the very start of this hypothesis, which claims that "nothing is per se different" (and that merely our initial assumptions, and our foundational knowledge of the EU were incorrect). But isn't this always the prima-facie case with emergence and emerging events, where "individual, localized behavior aggregates into global behavior that is, in some sense, disconnected from its origins" (Miller and Page 2007, 44)? Von Bertalanffy simplifies this as follows: "the meaning of the somewhat mystical expression, 'the whole is more than the sum of parts' is simply that constitutive characteristics are not explainable from the characteristics of isolated parts. The characteristics of the complex compared to those of the elements, therefore appear as 'new' or 'emergent'" (Von Bertalanffy 1969, 55).
Hypothesis 1 does not answer Puchala's criticism and does not bode well for any future understanding of the "new" EU depuis Brexit. Unless Europe decides to: (a) adopt a formal constitution, and move forward towards a federalist structure (which is a possible future outcome under scenario 5 of the Commission's "White Paper on the future of Europe" 294 ); or (b) recede towards being solely a single market (under scenario 2 295 ); then something is different, but nothing changes in regards to our capacity to understand those differences. We remain unequipped to debate the future of Europe, for all other scenarios currently envisioned by the European Commission maintain the EU as the "unidentified political object" that Delors described in 1985 296 . Pursuing hypothesis 2 seems to be the correct course of action, and has the benefit of wielding the most rewards, but it requires us to rethink our methodological approach.
The importance of methodology in any scientific endeavor has long since been recognized. Our understanding of any subject is intertwined with how we study it: which 294 "In a scenario where there is consensus that neither the EU27 as it is, nor European countries on their own, are well-equipped enough to face the challenges of the day, Member States decide to share more power, resources and decision-making across the board. As a result, cooperation between all Member States goes further than ever before in all domains. Similarly, the euro area is strengthened with the clear understanding that whatever is beneficial for countries sharing the common currency is also beneficial for all. Decisions are agreed faster at European level and are rapidly enforced." (Commission 2017, 24); 295 "By 2025, this means: The functioning of the single market becomes the main "raison d'être" of the EU27." (Commission 2017, 18); 296 "For we must face the fact that in 30 or 40 years Europe will constitute a UPO-a sort of unidentified political object-unless we weld it into an entity enabling each of our countries to benefit from the European dimension and to prosper internally as well as hold its own externally." (Delors 1985, 8); frameworks and assumptions we use; which data we select, analyze and compare; how we collect, verify and interpret said data, and even how we ensure a continuous validation of our claims. All this affects our knowledge. The necessary symbiosis and dependency between methodology and knowledge is expressed in Lee's quote "knowledge is the product of the understanding 297 ".
3.2 The EU beyond components, causations, and correlations.
We have shown that one of most common trends in integration theory, and particularly in the crisis narratives of the EU, is the call for more interdisciplinary studies 298 . We understand these calls as the realization that: a) the EU is a complex polity; and b) that it can no longer be studied nor understood solely by one method or discipline alone 299 . We want to expand on the first point, as it will have a bearing on 297 Lee goes on to assert that "the understanding is concerned with the interrelationships between things or events in our experience.
(…) The scientific method is the method of seeking after knowledge in a systematic and orderly fashion. (…) The insistence on system and order is an attempt to guarantee that the purported knowledge is genuine knowledge." (Lee 1943, 67-68) 298 "The complexity of EU affairs calls for research methods known from a number of disciplines and for the further development how we understand and study the European integration. It is increasingly common for scholars to refer to the EU as a complex polity, or to mention that the integration process is complex, but what do they mean by "complex"? Most will use the term generically 300 -to refer to the composite character of European integration, to its intricate nature, or to both. Such a characterization however still falls within the classic reductionism paradigm: it merely acknowledges that there are several integrational components operating within the system. Their hope is that, through interdisciplinary studies, if we can understand the behavior of each component, we will understand the system as a whole. If this is true however, then the EU is merely complicated and not necessarily complex in the formal sense, as we shall see later in this chapter.
A systems theory approach to European integration 301 A "system" is an ensemble of interacting parts, the sum of which exhibits behavior not localized in its constituent parts. (Chen and Stroup 1993, 448) There is another way to understand the EU's complex nature, one that stems from systems theory, and which we will adopt to sustain our methodological approach. We will argue further that the historically impalpable je ne sais quoi of the EU's uniqueness 300 See Sawyer's criticism: "like 'emergence', the term 'complexity' has also been used somewhat loosely in the last decade". (Sawyer 2005, 3) 301 Bertalanffy, quoting Ackoff, explains why this approach is becoming increasingly popular, as it reflects the: "tendency in contemporary science no longer to isolate phenomena in narrowly confined contexts, but rather to open interactions for examination and to examine larger and larger slices of nature". (Von Bertalanffy 1969, 9); its long and elusive sui generis qualityis its adaptive complexity 302 .
Systems theory 303 approaches to law are not new 304 . Several scholars (Luhmann 1993;, Roe 1996, LoPucki 1997, Geyer 2003, Webb 2004, Hornstein 2005, D'Amato 2014, Wheatley 2016, Belinfanti and Stout 2018 have written about the benefits of using these approaches 305 . Complexity theory is a subset of systems theory thinking 306 which "challenges the notion that by perfectly understanding the behavior of each component part of a system we will then understand the system as a whole" (Miller and Page 2007).
The advantages to adopt a systems approach to European integration seem apparent to us, precisely for the same reasons that we can extrapolate from the unanswered concerns, and the calls for interdisciplinarity of the crisis literature: (a) the EU is in fact a complex system, it is not reducible to, or intelligible as, classical international or supranational systems, nor traditional communication or interaction patterns within international relations; and (b) because within this composite system -of the economic, social, legal and political orders of the EU -linear, non-linear and emergent 302 We will use the formal meaning of "system" and "complexity" within general systems theory. Recall: "complexity has its own terminology and draws on a range of disciplines and fields as sources for it" (Byrne and Callaghan 2014, 17); 303 Based on Von Bertalanffy's "general systems theory"; 304 Wheatley argues that "Systems theory thinking is now mainstream in international law,1 reflecting not only the reality that international law is a "system", but also a recognition that systems theory as a distinctive methodology might help us solve, or at least make sense of, some of the practical questions that confront the discipline."; 305 While the approach has been used in International Law, instances of it on integration theory are still not that prevalent, although they do exist, see notably (Albert 2002), (Geyer 2003)  A systems theory approach to European integration is the most precise reiteration of a true law-in-context methodology.
Is the European Union a system, is it a complex system, and why does it matter?
"Major schools of American legal theory have been so mired in reductionist thought that they have failed to see the system behaviours that throughout time have denied legal theorists the Holy Grail of a predictive model of law" (J. B. Ruhl 1996, 853) 307 .
A "system is a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole", as LoPucki notes, and to "analyze a system is to break it down into its constituent parts, to determine the nature and identity of its subsystems, and to explain the relationships among them" 308 . Systems can be simple, complicated, complex, or chaotic. The preciseness of these terms is of great use to anyone studying system components, and interactions between those components, for they require different methodological approaches 309 . Simple systems are easily knowable, because the causal 307 Ruhl's criticism of reductionism is transferable to European integration theory and finds echo in Mittelstrass, who quoting Mainzer, has noted that even "the social sciences are recognizing that the main problems of mankind are global, complex, nonlinear, and often random" (Mittelstrass 2015, 45); 308 (LoPucki 1997, 483) but also see (Wheatley 2016, 580) "The argument from general systems theory is that we can think of any collection of interacting objects, actors or agents as a "system"; 309 Ruhl as written about the ubiquitous of words such as system and complex in legal writings. "The legal system. It rolls easily off the tongues of lawyers like a single word-thelegalsystem-as if we all know what it means" (…) "of the tens of thousands of references to "the legal system" in legal literature,' few of the authors say anything about it as a system." "One thing over which many authors seem to agree, however, is that there is something "complex" about the legal system, using the two terms in close relationship between their components is perceivable and predictable; complicated systems are still knowable but more difficult to describe, they require expert analysis, because the causal relationship between components is not self-evident; complex systems are not fully knowable 310 , but the causal relationship between components is retrospectively coherent, and reasonably predictable; and finally chaotic systems show no knowable nor predictable causal relationship between their components. What this tells us is that reductionism is only useful to understand and master simple or constructions of Europe (Geyer 2003). Geyer's taxonomy might be differentas we have seen EU integration taxonomies frequently are, due to different approaches and different subject area starting pointsbut if we remove all conceptual window-dressing, the epistemological concern is exactly the same, a concern with the "traditional and increasingly out of date view of the linear nature of the natural sciences. It assumes that the natural world is inherently orderly, stable and predictable, and the epitome of scientific research is reductionism and the creation of universal scientific laws. 315 " The process of European integration however is far from linear, orderly, stable or predictable, as the recent crisis has proven. It results from a dynamic and sometimes contradictory plurality of processes and subject matters linked to the efforts of integrating Europe's economic, politic, social and legal orders (Petersen, et al. 2008).
Moreover, unlike any other polity, the EU doesn't have many of the systemic tethers 313 The characterization of the integration process as operating within a linear pendulum between intergovernmentalism and supranationalism, could more accurately be described as a pendulum whose sinusoidal waves operate between a linear spectrum.
314 As Plaza i Font reminds us, the leading "debate between liberal intergovernmentalist and supranationalism, assumes that the European integration process may only lead to two different (and mutually exclusive) modes of integration: either a kind of XX-XXI Centuries Westphalian system among the European States or, alternatively, the creation of (con)federal-like body, which would agglutinate into a single political unity a particular set of ex ante sovereign actors". (Plaza i Font 2016, 34-35); 315 (Geyer 2003, 16); that shape and bind international states, at least not in the traditional sense. There is always at least one, and often more degrees of separation between the EU as a polity and its population, its territory, its sovereignty and even its governancewhich are the 1 st tier requirements of any state, their essential components. These degrees of separation further dilute and challenge the essential statehood values of legitimacy, identity and loyaltythe 2 nd tier requirements, which measure and validate the 1 st tier components 316 . This of course is an over simplistic, far from consensual, and even incomplete, run-through of the components and requirements that define what constitutes a state, but our purpose is not to engage in that debate.
We wish to merely highlight that, even if we could envision the traditional nationstate merely as a complicated system 317 -fully knowable -and therefore study it according to social science approaches under the paradigm of reductionism, the EU is sui generis. Schmitter's characterization of the EU as a "post-national, unsovereign, polycentric, non-coterminous, neo-medieval arrangement" (Schmitter, 1996, p. 26) reflects exactly why the EU is not as tightly bound to the same moors that define traditional states. Its democratic deficit for instance, or democratic degree of separation between the EU and its peoples, has made it necessary to invert the measure of its legitimacy from input to output. In its pursuit of output legitimacy however, the already polycentric community method has increasingly had to contend with the encroachment 316 Identity, legitimacy and loyalty help us measure statehood by questioning if a group of people that share the same territory also share the same identity; if political sovereignty is institutionally and socially legitimate; if the relationship between those who govern and those that are governed is reciprocally loyal. and transparency of this polycentric decision-making process has been further muddled by the European Council's "behind closed-doors" approach, which as the European Ombudsman has recently stated, "inhibit(s) the scrutiny of draft EU legislation (and) undermines citizens' right to hold their elected representatives to account" 319 . Puetter has noted how "the institutional constellation in EU politics that is emerging after the euro crisis with the European Council at its center may further weaken the EU's ability to be politically responsive" (Bickerton, Hodson and Puetter 2015, 184). Our point is to illustrate how democratic and political accountability is far from linear in the EU, and has more degrees of separation than in traditional states.
But are there too many degrees of separation? Is the EU a chaotic system? Is it not only unknowable, but also unpredictable? Some, like Cohen, suggest that these degrees of separation are too profound, rendering any appearance of systematic cohesion superficial at best. Cohen has noted that "what is wishfully thought as the construction of Europe could be more accurately depicted as a series of heterogeneous and competing 318 "It is part of the paradoxical character of post-Maastricht integration that the growing attention which heads of state and government devote to European Council proceedings" which is "a reaction to the repercussions that EU policy-making has for domestic politics." enterprisespolitical, bureaucratic, legal, academic, economic, militarypartially in tune with one another, partly autonomous and out of tune. 320 " What this suggests is a chaotic system, ultimately unpredictable and unknowable. Another scholar, Plaza i Font, makes this assertion quite clearly, by defining the EU as a "far-from equilibrium" chaotic system 321 .
System approaches to integration theory are not new. In fact they are in many ways present in many of the classic narratives of European integration, and if we look closely enough we may yet find them present in all. Historical institutionalism, for instance, depicts the integration process as continuously oscillating between two competing and aspirational equilibrium states (supranationalism and intergovernmentalism), "without ever reaching none [sic] of them" 322 . The pendulum swings and shifts because ultimately actors are constrained by path dependencies, which lead to unanticipated consequences and gaps in their ability to control the integration process 323 . It could be 320 Antonin Cohen; 321 In no uncertain terms, he states that "the elementary features of any chaotic system are present in the genesis and evolution of the European Union today" (Plaza i Font 2016, 36). He also notes how "Chaos theory warns us of the theoretical and empirical problems that may derive of approaching the EU political system as an ordered system, whose deterministic behavior may be predicted by reducing the ensemble's behavior to that of its parts" (idem 38); 322 "While liberal intergovernmentalism and supranationalism are ready to conceive it as a multistable system (…), with only two alternative states of equilibrium, historical institutionalism could be prone to conceive the European integration process as a farfrom-equilibrium dynamical system". Also, "if one examines (the EU's) history closely, it turns out as a unique sequence of specific modes of integration each of whom may be featured in terms of proximity or distance to the liberal intergovernmentalism and supranationalism corresponding optimal equilibriums" (Plaza i Font 2016, 35); 323 "Gaps in member-state control occur not only because long-term consequences tend to be heavily discounted. Even if policy makers do focus on long-term effects, unintended consequences are likely to be widespread." (Pierson, The Path to European Integration 1996, 136) Note also how "actors may be in a strong initial position, seek to maximize their interests, and nevertheless carry out institutional and policy reforms that fundamentally transform their own positions (…) in ways that are unanticipated and/or argued therefore that historical institutionalism sees the EU as an open system 324 , both externally and internally 325 , where sequencing and path dependence constrain the integration process 326 (Pierson 1996).
In the following sections we propose to expand on the benefits of adopting a systems approach to European integration; and on how a systems reading of past integration narratives can further support our claim, and at the same time assist us in creating a systems representationmodel -of the EU integration process. We shall start however by arguing that the EU is a complex adaptive system.
The EU as a complex adaptive system undesired." (idem 126); 324 "An open system is defined as a system in exchange of matter with its environment, presenting import and export, building-up and breaking-down of its material components." (Von Bertalanffy 1969, 141) Plaza i Font notes that "it's precisely this openness that permitted the European integration process to offset the inexorable process of gain of entropy (Laszlo 1995), by accommodating its organizational structures and establishing new patterns of interrelation among its components, as well as by facilitating the emergence of new bodies necessary to cope with the growing complexity" (Plaza i Font 2016, 36); 325 "it has long established continuous exchange flows with the rest of the international system, as the successive enlargement rounds proof [sic], but also because it has provided itself with paramount mechanisms that permitted the reformulation of the interaction patterns among its components". Idem 36-37; 326 Pierson states that "integration should be viewed as a path-dependent process producing a fragmented but discernible multitiered European polity". Pierson describes how "the notion of path dependence is generally used to support a few key claims: Specific patterns of timing and sequence matter; starting from similar conditions, a wide range of social outcomes may be possible; large consequences may result from relatively "small" or contingent events; particular courses of action, once introduced, can be virtually impossible to reverse; and consequently, political development is often punctuated by critical moments or junctures that shape the basic contours of social life" (Pierson 2000, 251) ; Historical institutionalism therefore, as Moravcsik has noted , "treat(s) sequencing as a more important variable" and views integration as "fundamentally 'path dependent'". ( "Linear thinking and the belief that the whole is only the sum of its parts are evidently obsolete" Mainzer 327 As we have seen, systems theory approaches to law have been attempted before, and they are likewise present in studying societies and cultural systems 328 (Sawyer 2005)  330 "complex dynamic systems, in which cause-and-effect connections are non-linear" (Mittelstrass 2015, 46) 331 See Sawyer: "complex phenomena are those that reside between simplicity and randomness, at 'the edge of chaos'. (Sawyer 2005, 3); or Miller and Page: "systems that are too simple are static and those that are too active are chaotic, and thus it is only on the edge between these two behaviors where a system can undertake productive behavior" (Miller and Page 2007, 129) 332 Sawyer defines emergence as "processes whereby the global behavior or a system results from the actions and interactions of agents". Boccara goes further and states that "that appearance of emergent properties is the single most distinguishing feature of complex systems" (Boccara 2010, 4); systems theory, then it is a multi-agent complex adaptive system, with non-linear causaleffect connections, constantly on "the edge of chaos", where, borrowing from Ruhl we could say, "dynamical forces will inevitably lead to unpredictable, unanticipated behavior in a sociological system, and that such phenomena are necessary for the system to thrive and adapt" (J. B. Ruhl , 1410).
Let's consider these four elements that denote the presence of a complex system in more detail and determine if they apply to the European Union's integration process.
The first element, the presence of a large number of interacting elements or agents, is easily met without much need for further proof. However if such proof was required, we can readily and easily rely on the overwhelming empirical evidence from the political science camp which, as seen earlier in chapter two, demonstrated the presence of individual, state, supranational, and institutional actors interacting within the integration process. These studies furthermore provide evidence of the actor preferences, and the multilevel structures within which they communicate.
The second requirement refers to demonstrable proof of nonlinear selforganization. Heylighen defines self-organization as "the spontaneous emergence of global structure out of local interactions" 333 , a definition that seems to fit the neofunctionalist narrative of European integration where supranationalism is a product of spillovers, of regional interactions. With regards to non-linearity 334 the several  Longo and Murray go further and note how the EU was created and has been continuously shaped by crisis (Longo and Murray 2015).
The fourth element -emergence -is harder to prove. As Miller and Page note, "the usual notion put forth underlying emergence is that individual, localized behavior aggregates global behavior that is, in some sense, disconnected from its origins" 337 . A simpler way to understand emergence would be to focus on features or properties that arise out of a system, and that are not part of their original design or function. Emergence however is not a requirement of complexity, but rather that complexity may lead to emergence. Therefore we do not need to prove this fourth element to argue that the EU is a benefit of the peoples of Europe (organic inter-connectivity).

Modeling the European Integration processan introduction.
"The success of a particular model is tied to its ability to capture the behavior of the real world." (Miller and Page 2007, 39) So far, we have only been discussing one of the two main benefits of adopting a systems theory approach to European integration, which can be summarized as follows: by understanding the EU as a complex adaptive system, we can gain a deeper appreciation of the systemic interactions that shape and constrain the integration process, and uncover which forces and incentives compel integration or disintegration.
This approach seems to answer most criticisms and the unsolved paradoxes highlighted by the current period and the crisis narratives, which call for such a systematic understanding of the EU to take place through interdisciplinary efforts.
The first benefit is therefore that it improves our understanding of the subject matter at hand, without normative biases -it answers the EU's epistemological question. The second benefit is perhaps even more important, and is linked to this project's second objective -to inform the ontological debate regarding Europe's future.
An accurate understanding of the integration process, and of the different political, social, economic and legal inputs that drive the integration process, allows us to create a computational model of that very same process 340 . It is not enough simply to say that 340 As Brodland notes: "the goal of a computational model is to replicate the behavior of the system it parallels and to do so based on actual, known properties of the system components"; (Brodland 2015, 63) the EU is a complex adaptive system, rather to reap the fully benefits of a systems theory approach to European integration, we need to create a representation of that system.
The second application of this approach is that it allows usthrough computational modellingto predict the outcome of certain interactions within the system. What is a model?
The most straightforward way to define what constitutes a model, in systems theory, is to say that it "is a simplified mathematical representation of a system" 341 . We have alluded earlier that traces of system approaches to integration theory could be found in many, if not all, of the classic narratives of European integration. The extent of this claim is only to suggest that each classic narrative could be read as a crude representation of what is perceived to be a simple or complicated system, where communication patterns are linear. We could further suggest that most narratives present integration choices as binary, with actors gravitating in one direction or the other, or towards equilibrium, within zero-sum or positive-sum games.
Our reconstructive analysis of the main narratives of European integration, conducted in chapters one and two not according to legal or political science 341 (Boccara 2010, 6); taxonomies 342 , but according to the core assumptions of each "model", reflects a systems theory review of EU integration theory. Our objective in those chapters was not to produce, what by now should be acknowledged as a tired retelling of the great grand, middle, and mini theories of the even greater European integration scholars. That project has been exhausted, and what remains to be done is vastly more fruitful.
We need to understand the European Union, to create a truer representation of this complex adaptive system, and we have before us several earlier representations that, incomplete or inaccurate as they might be, still provide a wealth of knowledge and insights for future modelling attempts. They provide thoughtful analysis, albeit mostly qualitative rather than quantitative, of all the components of a system: (a) actors or elements; (b) communication patterns and interaction structures; (c) emergent events.
Their isolated focus might be on only one of these components, e.g. on actors and their preferences (liberal intergovernmentalism); or on interaction structures and pathdependencies (historical institutionalism), inter alia, but their aggregate value is that they represent a starting point to a thorough modelling of the EU as a complex system.
What is left to do is figure out what to discard and what to retain for evidentiary value.
Early IT modelsan illustrative case study Let's take Haas' treatise on neofunctionalism -"The uniting of Europe" -as a case study. Haas' integration narrative on "the Uniting of Europe" produced a model that has been recounted many times, and it goes as follows: through functional, economic, 342 For the reasons already allude to in our introduction, but as will continue to become clear; political and cultivated regional spillovers, individuals and groups start shifting their loyalty towards supranational institutions, for "loyalty to the established font of authority wanes as a feeling of separate identity takes possession of the group clamoring for new forms of political organization" 343 . The binary model starts taking shape: regional integration creates linear incentives to shift loyalties from national to supranational institutions.
It is a compelling argument, founded in an incremental syllogistic type of a (functionalist) logic 344 . It is based on "soft rational choice", where "social actors, in seeking to realize their value-derived interests, will choose whatever means are made available by the prevailing democratic order", in pursuit of "the utilitarian-instrumental human desire to better oneself in life" (E. B. Haas 2004, xv).
The gist of the theory is known and readily repeated by students and scholars of European integration alike, like a familiar mantra that is easy to learn and to recount. In himself has had doubts about his initial assumptions, and even doubts about the relevance of neofunctionalism, this theory "has displayed impressive qualities of obstinacy and revitalization in recent years" (Rosamond 2000, 50). The model could be faithfully reduced to the following equation: > 1 ⇒ ( ) = where represents the net aggregate effects of regional spillover effects, which, when they occur and are positive enact a shift of loyalty from national institutions to supranational institutions 346 . The assumption, we recall, was that the net aggregate effects were incrementalfor the spillover effects and dynamics of regional integration was a dependent variable 347 -and did not account for the same, but opposite, linear possibility that if < 1 ⇒ ( ) = . A more accurate mathematical representation of the neofunctionalist model should therefore have been 348 : Most of the narratives of European integration, taken at their face value, could be just as easily reduced to such linear formulations, where core assumptions are construed through certain dependent variables in a linear model. Neorealism for instance, which 346 Recall "(5) Deepening economic integration will create the need for further European institutionalization as more expansive integration will require greater regulatory complexity; (6) In other words, political integration is a more or less inevitable side effect of economic integration." (Rosamond 2000, 52); 347 See (Caporaso and Keeler 1995, 33), and in the same vein Rosamond "the early attempts at theorizing background conditions did tend towards treating spillover dynamics as a kind of dependent variable" (Rosamond 2005, 247 adequacy to represent a system, then the corollary of that is it must stem from all observable data without any a priori conceptions, and under no particular scheme of intelligibility 350 , for otherwise, as Samuel notes, "it is the social end or function that provides the knowledge of the phenomenon" (Samuel 2014, 81). Instead of a true representation of a system, we are left with a reverse-engineered construct, where data is at best sifted through assumption bias, or procured to fit those assumptions.
Returning to our case study, how did Haas create his model? Who are the actors or elements in the system? Prima facie they are interest groups, political parties and governments interacting at national and supranational levels, but not all of them. As To note, that the focus on elites is justified through "a combination of ignorance and indifference toward the issue of integration" by the other groups, although only one opinion poll, and only from one member State, is presented as evidence of this 351 . The reliance on data, or opinion polls, from merely one of the member states, usually France, is repeated a couple of times throughout the work.
Which empirical data did Haas collect regarding the actors of the system? Haas's model is a priori set within a binary framework 352 that reflects "two major There is hardly any quantitative analysis to support this claim, with the exception of two empirical data sources from France alone.
In terms of transnational convergence of political parties Haas reaches a similar qualitative analysis: "temporary convergence of party motives and ideologies (…) Europeanism (…) continues to be a mixture of frequently opposing aspirations.
Certainly, it is significant that a homogeneous movement combating such steps has also  Haas's treatise remains one of the most thoughtful and thorough empirical and normative analyses of the European integration process but falls short in creating an accurate model of that process. Haas's shortcomings are that he often conflates assumptions with inputs; and at times chooses one input as representative of that class of inputs. He also baises his model on a linear binary spectrum. The virtue of Haas's model is that it demonstrates the benefits of mapping the integration process to better understand outcomes of actor interactions.
Modelling requires a careful selection of all relevant data and variables that describe the state of European integration, as these will constitute the inputs to the computational model 359 . A normatively induced cherry-picking of favored variables and inputs will negate the usefulness of the model, as it ceases to be an accurate representation of the system.

Creating a model that represents the CAS of EU integrationa proposal
"Effective models require a real world that has enough structure so that some of the details can be ignored" (Miller and Page 2007, 35).
Modelling complex systems can be challenging as Miller and Page note by using an analogy of models as road maps 360 . They argue that: (1) road maps must filter out a lot of unnecessary information in order to be useful 361 ; and (2) paradoxically, the more information we add to our maps, the more we sacrifice their clarity.
With these considerations in mind, a common approach to modelling CAS is the reductionist approach. Reductionism focuses on making essential simplifications within the system to allows us to construct an effective representation of what we are 359 As Brodland notes: "an important part of the modelling process is to choose (…) state variables". State variables "describe the current state of the model" (…and) "serve as the input to the computational model". "The purpose of the computational "engine" is to faithfully reproduce these interactions using mathematical relationships and computational algorithms." (Brodland 2015, 64) 360 The analogy is as follows: "Maps allow an enormous range of people to easily acquire, and productively use, information about a complex reality. We can use maps not only for making accurate predictions about how to manipulate the world (for example, to get from point A to B), but also to answer a variety of questions that were not part of the map maker's original inters." (Miller and Page 2007, 36); 361 To "minimize distractions and allow us to focus on the questions that we most care about. Good maps are those that have just barely enough details". Idem; studying 362 . In addition to being able to simplify interactions within the system, CAS models must also be able to ignore irrelevant information 363 , meaning that both these exercises require some knowledge of the system. It is always important to keep in mind that complex systems are a cosmos in themselves, comprised of elements, and the purpose of modelling is not to account for all these elements, but to create functional representations of those systems.
Modelling complex adaptive systems such as the European integration process can be even more challenging, seeing that the EU permeates four distinct ordersthe legal, social, political and economic orders. As mentioned above, the ability to create an effective model requires enough knowledge of that system, for the purposes of eliminating irrelevant information, and for the purposes of making simplifications of the interactions within the model. A basic understanding of the EU as a system therefore requires some expertise in those same subject areas. Without that expertise, any exercise in data selection and pattern simplification would be uninformed and useless. Without such knowledge the model would never amount to an accurate or effective representation of the system.
For that important reason alone, the purpose of this project is not to create a 362 Brodland notes how simplifications bring clarity, and "are essential to effective model construction". He also notes how "selecting which simplifications to make in any particular situation and the choices involved in the other steps of model construction require knowledge and insight regarding the system; (Brodland 2015, 65); With regards to simplification and the reductionist hypothesis, Miller and Page argue that: "if we can just get the right simplifications in the model, we will understand everything". (Miller and Page 2007, 41); 363 Note how: "this ability to ignore is a crucial component of scientific progress as it allows us, just like the parent trying to stop the endless regress of a three-year-old's "why" questions, to say "just because". (Miller and Page 2007, 35); computational model of the European integration process, but rather to: (1) argue why such a model is both useful and necessary; and (2) offer some considerations as to the type of inputs and interactions we could select as being essential to create a representation of our model. A thorough modelling exercise, if enacted, would have to necessarily arise out of interdisciplinary cooperation, with the insights of experts from all fields. Still, it is a pursuit very much worth undertaking.
Having argued why such a computational model would be instrumental in addressing both Europe's epistemological and ontological questions, I will now turn to the types of inputs that should be considered.
Inputs to the European integration process.
As we have seen above, modelling allows us to create a representation of the interactions between the agents that comprise a system 364 . That representation then can be used to perform a series of functions such as: test hypotheses; reveal new ways of understanding the system; and trace chains of causation, among many others (Brodland 2015). Agents within a system interact with each other through the exchange of matter, or energy, or information such as is the case with social systems like the EU. Being an open system however, the EU not only exchanges information within itself, but also with its environment. Inputs are the information, energy, and matter that enter the 364 "Another fundamental feature is that complex systems consist of many (or at least several) parts that are connected via their interactions. Their components are both distinct and connected, both autonomous and to some degree mutually dependent. (…) The components of a complex system are most commonly modeled as agents, i.e. individual systems that act upon their environment in response to the events they experience." (Heylighen 2008, 4); system from the outside, and they serve two functions: they initiate the inputthroughput-output cycle that reactivates the system; and they "furnish signals to the (system) about the environment and about its own functioning in relation to the environment" 365the process of feedback -which allows the system to adapt or selfcorrect .
The empirical analysis conducted mostly by the political science narratives of European integration have already identified several of the inputs to the European integration system. As suggested previously however, these inputs have traditionally been carefully selected and considered in isolation under normative premises, or to prove certain assumptions. In that regards, these past exercises analyzing certain inputs to the European integration process failed to adopt a systems theory approach and failed to consider the EU as a complex system. Still, the vast and thorough empirical analysis from integration narratives, written by experts from different fields, allow us to overcome this project's limitations 366 , and suggest which inputs might be crucial to model the integration process.
An important caveat bears mentioning with regards to the subsequent input analysis.
The present division between the four areas of European integration is used solely to present our analysis in an orderly and organized fashion. It is important to bear in mind that such divisions are but artificial distinctions, made up walls that do not necessarily reflect how all agents and elements fit within the system, and how they communicate 365 (Katz and Kahn 1966, 22 examples hope only to illustrate how complex the integration system is, and how inputs can no longer be considered in isolation. Integration theory should recall that the EU is, as Grimmel notes: "a common and enduring framework that not only comprises political, but equally legal, economic and societal integration, based on a set of shared values and practices" 370 .
Political inputs to European integration.
We have seen how politics have been construed as the agent of European integration; but also, how the EU's political legitimacy is its greatest crucible.
Unsurprisingly then, a vast amount of research has been poured into to considering which political inputs are crucial for the successor failureof Europe.
Some of the data collected with regards to the political inputs to the integration process are as follows:    years 1999, 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014, 2017. The CHES surveys also includes data contrasting party ideology and support for European integration. One of the results they uncovered was that: "while in 1984 the relationship between left-right ideology and support for the EU was largely linear, from 1992 until 2002 the association resembles an inverted U-curve where opposition towards the EU is found on the left-wing and right-wing poles of the political spectrum (Hooghe et al., 2002)." 373 Another important metric that is often measured relates to political participation, both at the national and the European levels:   One of the most significant metrics perhaps relates to the outcome of public referendums on European integration. Mean ESS Reported Trust in European Parliament, on a scale of 0 (no trust at all) to 10 (complete trust)

Note: Referendum data. Percentage of "Yes" votes
The following table provides a more detailed account of the same data: Economic inputs to European integration.
As noted previously, the legitimacy of the EU has often rested on the belief that output legitimacy could somehow replace input legitimacy, particularly through the EU's economic success, a premise which is the basis of Gabel's "utilitarian model of public support for European integration" (Gabel 1998 In contrast, they found that for Western European countries, public support for the EU is drawn from political cues, class participation, and a sense of community, with Italy 375 (Hutter, Grande and Kriesi 2016, 4); 376 (Hutter, Grande and Kriesi 2016, 5); 377 "EU citizens in different socioeconomic situations experience different costs and benefits from integrative policy; that these differences in economic welfare shape their attitudes toward integration; and consequently, that citizens' support for integration is positively related to their welfare gains from integrative policy" (Gabel 1998, 336); 378 In (Stefanova 2015, 285); being the only exception to this rule 379 .
While the focus on econometrics has been a constant in the political science narratives of European integration, with regards to their legitimizing output function, they have gain renewed and increased attention after the Euro crisis, arguably more so than any other type of indicators, as we will see later on in this section.
But even if economic inputs were not tethered to the EU's normative legitimacy, they would still be important due to the very nature and structure of the European economic and monetary project. Sometimes it is easy to forget that, alongside its original political messianism and universalist ideals, the EU shares its genesis with neoliberal economic aspirations (Dymski) 380 . In pursuit of those aspirations, the structure of the EU changed drastically after the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, which several scholars note as a crucial turning point in the dynamics of European integration (Bickerton, Hodson and Puetter 2015) 381 (Bitzenis, Karagiannis and Marangos 2015).
In anticipation of the launch of the EU's common currencythe Euro -the Maastricht Treaty imposed increasingly converging macroeconomic ratios to the 379 Idem; The political cues and class participation model is based upon Inglehart's "silent revolution in the domain of political values" as developed by Gabel, "as a proposition on the role of socioeconomic conditions surrounding their formative, or preadult, years" in shaping citizens political attitudes" idem at 272; The sense of community model builds upon Hooghe and Mark's study on "the role of exclusive identity for public attitudes towards the EU. People holding multiple territorial identities are more likely to support the EU". Idem at 273; 380 In "NAFTA and the EU as neo-liberal Mechanism Designs", where he notes: "as an economic union, the core premise of the EU was to use a common currency (the Euro) to generate a large domestic market, encouraging investment and economic development throughout the Eurozone". (Bitzenis, Karagiannis and Marangos 2015, 20);  • "neo-liberal policies particularly as regards both labor and capital markets" (Rossi) 393 ; • "forming a monetary union without a sufficient political union (…) seeing that the currency union and the Maastricht Treaty alone did not have strong enough enforcement mechanisms to ensure adequate banking and fiscal restraint" (Dervis and Mistral 2014, 2). In this same vein Rossi notes how the euro "is a currency without a state" 394 ; • the EU's "failure to internalize the democratic consequences of the interdependence in the EMU" (Maduro) 395 ; • Europe's "dual monetary system"where within the Eurozone, Member States can benefit from free capital mobility, and a stable currency, but in which Sotiropoulos, Milios and Lapatsioras 406 reframe these two narratives as expressing "reflective causality" 407 , and "structural causality" respectively, and offer an additional distinction between the two. They argue that most of the EU's immediate responses to the crisis were based on the premises of the reflective causality, which was born out of a "moralistic kind of reasoning". Reflective causality narratives characterized the economies in deficits as "'profligate', 'reckless', and 'incontinent' living 'beyond their means'" 408 , therefore viewing these imbalances as "bad macroeconomic development".
Paradoxically, as the scholars note, these same account imbalances before the crisis "were welcomed as the optimum means to support and accommodate the catching-up process between European 'core' and 'periphery'" 409 . Dervis  The reflective causality has two consequences: (a) by overlooking the structural causalities and deficiencies of the EU's monetary and fiscal policies, and by assigning blame to the Member States, it introduced a lofty political and social European stigma against countries who deviated from neo-liberal austerity reformsin an expansive moral hazard argument; and (b) it created social tensions and divides between fiscally "responsible" and fiscally "irresponsible" member statesand national citizenscreating or furthering divisive stereotypes between, what were too soon forgotten to be, the sisters and brothers of the European project 411 .
The economic inputs to European integration have thus this dual characteristic: they measure the success of the integration project with regards to an important part of its (monetary and fiscal) functions and aspirations; but they also have become intertwined with the question of EU's normative legitimacy, both as a measure of output legitimacy and, more recently, also as a measureor as a stabilizer/destabilizer -of Europe's cohesion and its shared identity. In the absence of a strong normative alternative, they risk becoming determinative in the further construct, or failure, of the European project.
calling the "euro at ten" a "resounding success" and confirming to its readers the belief that the single currency had proved "demonstrably durable".

(…) Ironic as it was
Germany that originally got the rules relaxed because its own slow growth period had caused it to chronically exceed Maastricht limits on deficits and debts. And it is all the more ironic that loosening the rules allowed Greece to build to the higher debt ratios that Germany now admonishes" (Bitzenis, Karagiannis and Marangos 2015, 47) We have seen some examples of economic inputs, that have been selected overtime as essential to understanding the integration process. Below we can find further examples: Table 9 Examples of Economic Inputs to the Integration Process by the Integration Literature

Key indicators for the euro area 412
Information the most relevant economic statistics concerning the euro area.

European Commission
Percentage change in GDP from previous quarter (Stefanova 2015);     Eurostat: government deficit/surplus, as a percentage of GDP Table 13 Total general government expenditure, as a percentage of GDP Table 14 Total general government revenue, as a percentage of GDP when we consider a paradigm shift that has been enacted in recent decades, and become more determinative during the crisis, which is that European integration is no longer a project whose outcome depends on political elites 417 . As Guerra and Serrichio note, "European citizens' attitudes increasingly influence and constrain the process of European integration. (…and the current) crisis further widened the gap between mainstream elites and mass publics. 418 " With the added threats of populism, and globalization's discontent, social convergence within Europe becomes paramount. That social convergence depends on several different inputs that Mistral explores, inputs regarding education, poverty rates, life expectancy, social security, among others 419 .
Here are some examples of social inputs to the integration process:

151)
At risk of poverty rate (Dervis and Mistral 2014, 151) Life Expectancy at Birth   Mean ESS Reported openness to immigrants from poorer European countries on a scale from 0 (allow none) to 3 (allow many)     Eurostat reported At-Risk-of-Poverty rate Legal Inputs to European integration.     1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012 2014 2016 EUR-Lex: aggregate number of regulations and directives related to issues of European Integration  Political Aggregate Table 28 All economic inputs plus aggregate of economic inputs Table 29 Aggregate economic inputs of EI Economic Aggregate     4 1990 1990 1990 1990 1990 1990 1990 1990 1990 1990 1990 1990 1990 1990 Legal Aggregate 420 "I should think that those of us in the field (of integration studies) would be rather embarrassed at the fact that after fifteen years of effort we are still uncertain about what it is we are studying" (Puchala 1971); 421 "that lawyers were characterizing the Community of that epoch as a "constitutional framework for a federal-type structure,"' whereas political scientists were speculating about the "survival of supranationalism." (J. H. Weiler 1991Weiler , 2411; 422 Examples of conflicting characterizations: (Kaiser and Meyer 2013) and (Bickerton, Hodson and Puetter 2015). See also Kaiser and Meyer, who note that: "the financial crisis could encourage another round in the debate over the more intergovernmental or more supranational character of European integration and EU politics. However, this perennial debate, which still underlies a fair share of writing about European integration, has increasingly become fruitless." (Kaiser and Meyer 2013, 1) Yes, the integration process is multileveled, multifaceted, occurring in different policy areas at different speeds in different countries, and it's greater than the sum of its part, but that does not entail that it cannot be studied and understood. If we accept that the EU is a complex adaptive system, then we can embrace new methodological approaches, such as system theory, and make use of new methodological tools, such as computational modelling, to understand, predict and promote the integration process.
Surely Europe deserves this pursuit, or at the very least, Europe deserves better from its scholars. Moreover, it is hard to envision any fruitful debate over the future of the EU, such as the one that is currently taking place, without an information understanding of the integration process. Hard loyalty might require more than the member states, and the peoples of Europe, are willing to give at this stage; and a new political messianism will only go so far 423 before it gives way to renewed concerns of legitimacy and a cognitive dissonance between the peoples of Europe and their EU. A systems theory approach however gives true systemic voice to all agents of European integration and addresses both the legitimacy paradox and the cognitive dissonance issue of the integration process. 423 Dervis on the original political messianism and the ensuing cognitive dissonance between the EU and its citizens: Another way to phrase this would be to say that, by failing to understand itself as a polity, and by ignoring how the integration process operates, Europe is struggling to sustain its future, and to reinvent "the idea of Europe".
The stated goals of this research project have been: (1) to inform the scholarship of European integration theory, and therefore contribute to our understanding of the nature of the EU, and how it operates; (2) and at the same time, to inform the debate over the future of Europe, shifting our attention from how the integration unfolds, to why it should unfold, under which frameworks and values.
The rationale behind addressing Europe's epistemological question, before its ontological question, lies with the fact that when integration narratives fail to correctly consider the economic, political and social areas and inputs of European integration, a 424 The recent European crises have given us pause to consider that we still know very little about the European integration process; Gillingham argues further, as I do, that we need to "reassess the EU's past in an effort to discover what went wrong, how it might yet be righted, and what might come next". (Gillingham 2016, 3) cognitive dissonance and distancing occurs between the peoples of Europe, their politicians, lawmakers, and their legal scholars. This leads to different perceptions of Europe, different expectations and a more strained dialogue between all actors and stakeholders. The cognitive dissonance between Europe and its citizens has been recognized both in the 2017 Whitepaper regarding the Future of Europe and in the EC's 2018 State of the Union address, as a major concern threatening Europe's cohesion, potentially limiting its future form and functions. As shall be discussed further down, the European Commission has been promoting a series of initiatives to reapproximate Europe to its citizens.
This cognitive dissonance at the same time has led to a mistaken discussion over the future of Europe, which is taking place asymmetrically and independently in all areas of European integration. In each area the discussion has different outcomes (i.e. what future for the monetary union, for the internal market, for the EU's external action and common commercial policy, among others), without a unifying or holistic answer to the correct discussion over the polity itself.
In chapters one and two we conducted a brief revisionist account of some of the most prominent theories of European integration, focusing on their foundational premises and the different legal, political, economic and social paradigms through which European integration was understood to operate. As we have seen, traditional legal narratives of European Integration suffer from a myopic methodological focus on legal or judicial doctrine and a law-centric approaches to domestic and supranational issues of autonomy, legitimacy and governance. The tenets they have held true for so long are now in cognitive dissonance with the EU's reality 425 .
More recent "improved narratives" of EU law have also been subject to criticism, either by focusing solely on the EU's functional necessities or by being unable to reconcile the EU's normative imperatives with the Unions actions during the current crisis period. Consequently, they remain insufficient to address Europe's complex and polycentric crisis.
Chapter three presented a different way of understanding integration theory, one connected to a systems theory analysis of the EU This method hopes to create a new baseline, both polycentric and interdisciplinary, to study the European Union, more specifically, how economic, social, political and legal forces coalesce to weave the mosaic fabric which is the European Union.
Finally 426 , aiming to address the most pressing questions presently surrounding Europe, and pertaining to its future, Chapter four moves onto to this project's second goal, and considers what lies next for the integration project, and what is now the idea of Europe. As mentioned before, these are questions that should not be considered separately from a better understanding of the European integration 427 , and this too is 425 Gillingham notes how the main classic theories "rest on serious misperceptions that beg for correction"; 426 Why spend so much time looking back? Why not put forward instead an aspirational framework for European integration that can soothe both academics and European elites? It is this project's belief that that would be akin to the proverbial plugging holes in a damn, and that such exercises and such scholarship have the same merit and outcome as the band that played on "nearer my God to Thee"; 427 As historian John Gillingham states "The present crisis of the European Union makes it painfully evident that the history of the EU must be re-thought, re-cast, and re-written. (…) More is at stake than merely setting the record straight. At one and the same time vast and parochial, the existing research on the EU not only defines the current intellectual parameters of the subject and provides the language that shapes discussion: it also establishes the contexts of policy-making, guides political action, and opens reflected in the recent efforts by the European Commission to foster more dialogue between all stakeholders. Europe's framework and future are no longer solely dependent on its elites and their aspirational values alone 428 ; it is a complex adaptive system that requires a balanced address and redress to all areas of integration.
It is important to bear in mind however, that considerable noise and confusion surrounding the debate over Europe's future has recently been exacerbated by populist trends, and the growing discontent with globalization and universalist values. The Brexit vote, for example, may be regarded a byproduct of this new world order, and the subsequent and strenuous Brexit negotiations their testing ground. Whatever the outcome of these negotiations, all actors and stakeholders are keenly aware of the broader picture. In the end, Brexit might not benefit neither the U.K., nor even the EU, but only serve as a means to safeguard other interests, send a message, or to make a stand (i.e. from the EU's perspective, a most vehement deterrence for future exists; from the UK's perspective, to save political face over the party's decision to hold the referendum).
The question surrounding the future of Europe is therefore, in some ways, intrinsically linked to the outcome and the success of Brexit, for the following reasons.
By shattering many of the long held, and essential paradigms of integration theory, such as the paradigm of exit and voice, (a) Brexit threatens both the cohesion of the EU and new sources of legitimacy." Page 1 428 Gillingham furthers the transnational statecraft criticism: "Directly or indirectly, the European Union has funded the bulk of the scholarly literature written about it. For most of its life, and even down present, the EU has also been the beneficiary of an ideology of Europeanisma secular faith that it is an ordained agent of human progress. The many scholars, commentators, assorted experts, and like-minded journalists who have spent careers doing EU research are nearly all devotees of the Euro-cult."; the existing framework of European integration. It prompts a new framework to be enacted, and a new balance of interests to be drawn. Moreover, by triggering Art 50 TEU for the first time, (b) Brexit will determine the political, legal and judicial roadmap, and transaction costs for future exits. Finally, precisely because of the high stakes of both (a) and (b), it is already evident that the Brexit negotiations go beyond the question of the UK's withdrawal from the EU and have to accommodate the additional transactional and political costs that would otherwise not be present but for these untested waters. Yes, as Grimmel has noted, "brexit is clearly a no-win situation (… where there) are no winners, only losers" (Grimmel 2017, 169), but still, the allocation of the bulk of that loss, or in other words, who bears the greater cost, will result from whatever deal can be negotiated between the UK and the EU.
Brexit is therefore not just about the UK's withdrawal from the EU, it's about political capital for each party vis-à-vis their constituents, for example, to the EU a good deal on Brexit can signal a clear end to the European crisis. Brexit however cannot and does not exhaust the question of future of the EU, even if it ends up conditioning the EU's scope of action or, through negotiated concessions, creating long-term pathdependencies within the integration process.
Chapter FOUR will address the different possibilities for the future of the EU, by tackling these and other issues as follows. Part ONE explores Brexit and its possible implications for Europe's futurebefore attempting to tackle the question of the EU (de lege ferenda), it is imperative to understand what our starting point is (de lege lata).
Part TWO explores how the EU itself has recently envisioned its own future through a series of different initiatives and public consultations -the EU's introspective exercise in reimagining the idea of Europe. Part three addresses the needs of a new grand theory of European integration, by asking what remains after the paradigm interest has fallen.
Finally, part four takes the proposed systems theory approach into account to consider how to supplement the debate regarding the future of the EU, and how to implement a new vision of Europe.

Brexit and the EU de lege lata
If 2008 was the catalyst of the European crisis, then 2016 was its apotheosis. The EU's cohesion was tested beyond measure with the Brexit vote, and the now abated but still very present risks of Nexit, Frexit, Itealeave, and Grexit -although to be fair, Grexit should be more adequately remembered as an externally forced exit, and not an internally desired exit, perhaps with nickname Gretout 429 . The next couple of months will mark the final opportunity for the acceptance of the Brexit deal, and there are vastly different stakeholder interests at play. From the EU's perspective, this could mean an opportunity to close the chapter of the European crisis. Many have suggested that the campaign promise to hold the referendum was a political strategy 435 to appease dissent within his own party and to not lose ground to the UKIP 436 . It was a political gamble, of high reward and (seemingly) low risk, as 431 January 23rd, 2013 EU speech -Prime Minister David Cameron discussed the future of the European Union at Bloomberg https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/eu-speech-at-bloomberg 432 A campaign that was named "project fear". https://www.politico.eu/article/david-cameron-brexit-project-fear-economy-jobsterror-warning-britain-leaves-eu/ 433 https://www.ft.com/content/1b0ad01a-0132-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5 434 "Despite his instinctive Euroskepticism and passionate opposition to the euro, he has never supported withdrawal." https://www.politico.eu/article/david-cameron-accidental-european-brexit-referendum-conservative-tory-euroskeptic/ 435 "Peter Mandelson, former British trade minister and European commissioner, said: "History will remember David Cameron simply as the prime minister who took us out of the EU. I don't think there will be anything else. A man who took this tactical risk, which then turned into a strategic blunder." See https://on.ft.com/2DLgN5k See also https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/brexit-david-cameron-didn-t-make-a-mistake-in-promising-an-eu-referendum-a7409006.html While almost all polls indicated that the margin between "remain" and "leave" was narrow, most polls and poll aggregations over time indicated that the UK would vote to stay in the EU 438 .
membership of the EU, his former communications chief has said. Sir Craig Oliver said Mr. Cameron would have been hit by a wave of Conservative defections to Ukip if he had not promised to give the country the opportunity of an in/out vote." https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-latest-david-cameron-pm-feared-ousting-eu-referendum-commitmentconservatives-a8147961.html 437 In "Unleashing Demons: The Inside Story of Brexit" Craig Oliver reveals anecdotal facts about the Prime Minister's first reaction to his aides after the vote, which was " "Well, that didn't go to plan!".
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/oct/17/unleashing-demons-inside-story-brexit-craig-oliver-david-cameron-review 438 "on the eve of the vote, the poll tracker was predicting a Remain victory by the narrowest of margins -51 per cent to 49." Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/24/eu-referendum-how-right-or-wrong-were-the-polls/ The Bloomberg poll showed 46.2% remain vs. 44.3% leave on June 22nd. They also presented a moving average: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-brexit-watch/ The FT's poll of polls -"calculated by taking the last seven polls from unique pollsters up to a given date, removing the two polls with the highest leads for 'remain' and 'leave', and calculating an adjusted average of the five remaining polls, where the more recent polls are given a higher weight"showed a 48% in support of remain, versus 46% support for leave on June 23rd 2016. Source: https://ig.ft.com/sites/brexit-polling/ An analysis of polling results since 2016 indicated the moving averages shown above.  Betting firms were even more optimistic, placing odds on that outcome at nearly 90%. 439 The unanticipated Brexit result prompted an urgent but informal meeting with all other 27 heads of state or government to discuss the "political and practical implications of Brexit 440 ". This European Council meeting took place on June 28-29. Realizing that the outcome of the referendum pushed the EU into uncharted territories and represented an unprecedented challenge, the group of 27 reiterated that they were "determined to remain united" 441 . This meeting also served to start the important debate on the future of the EU, the first step of which would be to reconvene again on September 16 th , 2016 in Bratislava to discuss concrete measures to that effect.
Bratislava Declaration -The EU remains an indispensable project.
Recognizing that this was "a critical time for (the) European project", leaders from 27 Member States met on September 16 th 2016, to "diagnose together the present state of the European Union, (…) discuss (their) common future", and offer their citizens "a vision of an attractive EU they can trust and support 442 . The declaration starts by 439 Sources: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-24/how-did-the-bookies-get-it-so-wrong-ladbrokes-tries-to- Cognizant of the key challenges facing the EU, the declaration issues a list on concrete measures to be taken in certain key areas, with an overarching concern of improving communication between the EU and its citizens and addressing their concerns regarding migration, terrorism, and economic and social welfare 444 445 .
In terms of migration and external border control: they discussed further implementing the EU-Turkey Statement to stop irregular migration flows from Turkey to Europe 446 ; and engaging with third countries to procure joint efforts to reduce 443 Idem; 444 These concerns have been highlighted in recent Eurobarometer polls as the most important challenges that the EU facesinfra; 445 "These objectives include: • restoring full control of the external borders • ensuring internal security and fighting terrorism • strengthening EU cooperation on external security and defence • boosting the single market and offering better opportunities for young Europeans" Source: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/european-council/2016/09/16/ 446 One of the main initiatives aimed at addressing the EU refugee and migration crisis, was the EU-Turkey joint action plan, activated on November 29th, 2015 and reiterated in the EU-Turkey statement, signed March 18th 2016. Measures included: • "All new irregular migrants crossing from Turkey into Greek islands as from 20 March 2016 will be returned to Turkey." • "For every Syrian being returned to Turkey from Greek islands, another Syrian will be resettled from Turkey to the EU taking into account the UN Vulnerability Criteria". •

"The fulfilment of the visa liberalisation roadmap will be accelerated with a view to lifting the visa requirements for
Turkish citizens at the latest by the end of June 2016. Turkey will take all the necessary steps to fulfil the remaining immigration flows. Recognizing how the 2015 refugee crisis deeply threatened the institutional and political cohesion of the EU, Member States added that it is imperative not to allow for such uncontrolled immigration flows again. Immigration will be further discussed below, as the third and final threat to the future of the EU.
In terms of internal security, and the threat of terrorism, Members States vowed to increase cooperation and information exchange; to adopt and implement a Travel Information and Authorization System (ETIAS); as well as "a systematic effort against radicalization, including through expulsions and entry bans where warranted 447 ". The ETIAS regulation 448 was adopted on September 12 th and entered into force on October 9 th , 2018. Similar to the United States ESTA mechanism, it allows the EU to "identify those who may pose a security threat before they reach the European Union and deny them the authorization to travel. 449 " Finally, in terms of economic and social development: they decided to extend the requirements;" • " The EU will, in  The EFSI 2.0 has since extended the mechanism until the end of 2020 and has raised available investment funds from €315 billion to €500 billion 451 .
The Bratislava meeting was not only a declaration of intent, but more importantly it was a roadmap to the saving of the EU, a blueprint carefully tailored to the concerns of its citizens, more so than to the actual challenges Europe faces, as shall be argued below.
The key metrics that drove the Bratislava agenda were based on Eurobarometer polls on "the two most important issues facing the EU at the moment" 452 . The agenda highlighted the six most important issues for its citizens, which can be grouped into three areas: external security (migration); internal security (terrorism, and crime); economic and social welfare. 450 In the words of the Commission, the EFSI "aims to tackle the lack of confidence and investment which resulted from the economic and financial crisis, and to make use of liquidity held by financial institutions, corporations and individuals at a time when public resources are scarce." https://ec.europa.eu/commission/priorities/jobs-growth-and-investment/investment-plan-  Source: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2016/10/13/tusk-speech-epc/ To note that the President later clarified that: ""The EU27 do not and will not pursue a punitive approach. Brexit in itself is already punitive enough. After more than forty years of being united, we owe it to each other to do everything we can to make this divorce as smooth as possible." Source: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2017/03/31/tusk-remarks-meeting-muscat-malta/ 459 It was agreed that the negotiation procedure would be as follows: In terms of broader political commitments, the EU and the UK reiterated that they will continue to work in unison "to safeguard the rules-based international order, the rule of law and promotion of democracy, and high standards of free and fair trade and https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2018/09/20/remarks-by-president-donald-tusk-after-the-salzburg- The relationship between the UK and the EU is envisioned 475 to be one based on balanced rights and obligations, however that such balance must ensure equally the integrity of the single market and its indivisible freedoms, as well as the UK's sovereignty and its ability to develop an independent trade policy.

The Withdrawal Agreement 476
The almost 600-page agreement provides for an understanding in several key areas important to both citizens and business of the UK and the EU. The concern was to safeguard certainty and clarity throughout the implementation and transition period, and beyond.
• Part one: common provisions (articles 1-8)  With regards to citizens' rights, the concern was to provide certainty for UK nationals residing in other EU countries, and for EU citizens living in the UK. These rights related to residence (articles 13-22), to work (articles 24 to 26), to equal treatment and non-discrimination (article 23 and 12), to mutual recognition of professional qualifications (article 27 to 29), as well as a commitment to continue to abide by EU regulations on social security coordination (articles 30). Both EU and UK citizens falling within the scope of the agreement will continue to enjoy the rights to live, reside, study and work as before 477 .
The separation provisions are meant to stipulate how the "application of the EU legal order in the UK is brought to an orderly conclusion" 478 , but also cover the future arrangements regarding: goods placed on the market; ongoing customs procedures; value added tax and excise duty matters; intellectually property; police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters; among others 479 . These provisions offer a vital safeguard for legal certainty, at least until the UK and EU more thoroughly decide the future of their economic relationship.
The provision regarding the transition period, also referred to as the implementation period, stipulate that this period will "start on the date of entry into force of (the) Agreement and end on 31 December 2020" (article 126). The general rule is that EU law shall continue to apply in the UK, subject to the exceptions provided in the agreement (article 127) 480 . However, during the transition period, the UK shall no longer 477 With regards to residence: "UK nationals who have been living in a Member State of the EU continuously and lawfully for five years at the end of the implementation period will have the right to reside permanently in that Member State. Equally, EU citizens who have been living in the UK continuously and lawfully for five years at the end of the implementation period will have the right to reside permanently in the UK. 480 "This will mean that businesses will be able to trade on the same terms as they do now. The agreement is of mutual benefit, building an important bridge to our future relationship, and giving citizens and businesses in both the UK and the EU the time and be able to submit proposals, initiatives or requests to EU institutions (article 128.3), most notably those foreseen in Articles 7, 30, 42(4), 48 (2)  The Northern Ireland / Ireland Protocol.
The Northern Ireland protocol addresses one of the more serious concerns regarding the UK's withdrawal from the EU, which relates to the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, and the peace process between these two countries 484 . The issue is both sensitive and complex, and is another source of opposition to the Brexit deal as shall be seen further below. Were the House of Commons to approve the deal, and introduce it as Bill, the agreement will then have to be approved by the European Parliament in a plenary vote.
The vote was scheduled to take place on December 11 th , 2018 but has was rescheduled on the day prior due to fears that the vote would fail, instead May's government faced a vote of no confidence on that same date.
The "Meaningful Vote" on the withdrawal agreement was rescheduled for January to 306and announces a "Plan B" 493 , an attempt to secure certain concessions from the EU, particularly regarding the Irish backstop. May's "plan B" is criticized however because in all other regards it largely resembles "plan A" 494 , and because the EU has been adamant against renegotiating the agreement 495 .
A second "Meaningful Vote" is currently scheduled to take place on March 12 th , 2019, and if it fails a "No-deal" vote will take place the following day, March 13 th , 2019, following the UK's prime-minister's pledge that "The UK will only leave without a deal on 29 March if there is explicit consensus in the House for that outcome" 496 . Should the "No-deal" vote be rejected, then the more likely scenario is that the UK will seek the EU's agreement for a delay of its formal exit from the EUan extension of Article 50

TEU.
A backstop might be intolerable. however that the UK's economy will continue to grow, even if at a smaller rate, and that the legitimacy of the deal should be analyzed beyond its economic impact, and should consider also issues of concern for the British people, including the benefits of an independent trade policy and increased control over fishing waters. "to reflect on the state of the European Union, and look at the future of the integration process 519 ". The meeting also provided an opportunity to reiterate the EU's unity, and the need for such unity, with the President of the EU Council delivering a passionate speech on the perils of abandoning the European project, and on the courage that is now asked of all EU citizens -"Europe as a political entity will either be united, or will not be at all. Only a united Europe can be a sovereign Europe in relation to the rest of the world" 520 .
The outcome of this meeting was the adoption and the signing of the Rome Declaration, "setting out a joint vision for the years to come". The concerns of the EU citizens were once again at the forefront of the discussions, with the Commission recognizing that the "EU fell short of their expectations as it struggled with its worst financial, economic and social crisis in post-war history" 521 . Hoping to regain their trust, 519 As stated in the event's webpage, source: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/european-council/2017/03/25/ 520 A powerful message in a bottle: "the European Union is not about slogans, it is not about procedures, it is not about regulations. Our Union is a guarantee that freedom, dignity, democracy and independence are no longer only our dreams, but our everyday reality. (…) Nothing in our life is granted forever -that to build a free world requires time, great effort and sacrifice. This is why it was achieved in so few places on Earth. And yet we made it. To destroy such a world is very easy. It only takes a short moment. (…) Today in Rome we are renewing the unique alliance of free nations that was initiated 60 years ago by our great predecessors. At that time they did not discuss multiple speeds, they did not devise exits, but despite all the tragic circumstances of the recent history, they placed all their faith in the unity of Europe. They had the courage of Columbus to enter unchartered waters, to discover the New World. (…) And only a sovereign Europe guarantees independence for its nations, guarantees freedom for its citizens. The unity of Europe is not a bureaucratic model.
It is a set of common values and democratic standards. Today it is not enough to call for unity and to protest against multiple speeds.
It is much more important that we all respect our common rules such as human rights and civil liberties, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, checks and balances, and the rule of law. This is the true foundation of our unity". Speech by President Donald Tusk at the ceremony of the 60th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome; 521 Whitepaper page 6; the EU leaders pledged to work towards: (a) a safe and secure Europe, both internally and externally, with responsible, sustainable and efficient migration policies, and unyielding action towards terrorism and organized crime; (b) a prosperous Europe and a strong internal market, focusing on sustainability; (c) a more social Europe: economic progress must be equally aimed at curtailing unemployment, fighting discrimination, combating social exclusion and ending poverty; and (d) solidifying and strengthening Europe's position on the global scene. These commitments speak to the core of the most pressing issues felt by EU citizens today, as has been discussed previously and will be reiterated further on.
The most important feature of the EU's Whitepaper was its "reflections and scenarios for the EU27 by 2025". Despite the EU being "home to the world's largest single market and second most used currency (... and) the largest trade power and development and humanitarian aid donor", the recent crises have threatened the Union's cohesion, and for the first time in its history, the EU has had to seriously and openly reflect on changing its existing framework and purpose. It has long been argued that the European project represents the most advance and successful experiment both in terms of supranational governance and intergovernmental cooperation. If we hold this statement to be true, then what we are witnessing is an unprecedented exercise in supranational polity buildingan exercise in re-evaluation and if necessary of course correction of the European idea and the European integration project.
Aware of the uncertainty brought about by Brexit, the whitepaper presents five possible scenarios for moving forward. The common denominator and the "starting point for each scenario is that the 27 Member States move forward together as a Union".
Scenario 1 leaves open the possibility of carrying on. If the EU manages to weather the current crisis, it may choose to stay true to its course and pursue its agenda. This scenario recognizes however that although the unity of the EU27 is preserved for now, it may later be tested once again in the event of major disagreements. Scenario 2 explores the possibility of winding down the EU to "nothing but the single market".
Should the current crisis prove that there is no longer the will nor desire for shared commitments in policy areas, then the EU should revert to being simply a single market.
Should member states wish to cooperate on new issues, then they would do so through international bilateral agreements. Scenario 3, entitled "those who want more do more", is the 2017 reiteration of the multi-speech approach 522 . It would allow for differentiated levels of cooperation and integration for any coalition of the willing. Scenario 4 focuses on "doing less more efficiently". The Union remains more than just an internal market, but now chooses only to prioritize areas where there is consensus. And finally, scenario 5 falls short of an appeal for a federalist Europe but does suggest that member states do much more together.
Regardless of which scenario the EU chooses to adopt, the whitepaper reiterates the importance of the European project and its accomplishments. The EU is currently home to the most equal societies in the world, and to the most peaceful. These achievements were made possible through a certain idea of Europe. There are however challenges that lie ahead that call for a continued unity. Regarding its population, Europe is growing older, and it is estimated that it will be the oldest region in the world by 2030  528 "Europe has also reaffirmed its position as a trade power. Our global trading position is the living proof of the need to share sovereignty. The European Union now has trade agreements with 70 countries around the world, covering 40% of the world's GDP." European Economy is strong once more.
Weltpolitikfähigkeit 529 -the EU as a new world player "United, as a Union, Europe is a force to be reckoned with." On the same day that the EC delivered the SOTU, it also presented a communication proposing such a change by asking "whether the European Union wants to be a pillar of the emerging multipolar global order or whether it will resign itself to being a pawn 530 ".
The second recurring theme in the SOTU is the importance of the EU within the global community. The Europe of the old is back and more committed than ever before, as a beacon and guardian of peace, and as a source of stability. The EU acknowledges its "global responsibility": in responding to humanitarian crisis, such as the ones in Ibdil Syria; in safeguarding the values of the international order that arose out of WWII to address such crises, which are now in jeopardy; and in curtailing the type of nationalism and unilateralism that threatens those same values. The EU's message in this regard reads as follows, the international world order is more volatile than ever before, the interests of old allies might no longer be the same, and in fact "old alliances may not look the same tomorrow 531 "; and the world needs a strong and united EU that can continue to foster and promote multilateralism in an unfolding new international order.
The language and the message of the SOTU address goes beyond reasserting the importance of the Europe of the old, suggesting that the united Europe of the new has a larger role to play. The language seems tailored in response to America's criticism of the international order and the new form of nationalism that it is endorsing. In condemning the latter, the EU reiterates that "we should embrace the kind of patriotism that is used for good, and never against others. We should reject the kind of exaggerated nationalism that projects hate and destroys all in its path. The kind of nationalism that points the finger at others instead of searching for ways to better live together. 532 ". This criticism is repeated in an appeal to "reject unhealthy nationalism and embrace enlightened patriotism 533 ".
The reason why these comments should be understood as a criticism and as an alternative to the US new international position, are made clear when read together with the statement that the EU has always been a global payer and it is now time for it to become a global player as well. In recent years the President of the US has repeatedly asserted that, with regards to both trade and geopolitical safety and stability, the US has been doing much more than its fair share, paying a higher price 534 . With regards to NATO the President has often commented on how the US is paying for Europe's protection by financing up to 90% an institution that helps the EU more than it helps the Europe has not only taken an opportunity to reject the US's criticism by claiming that the EU has always been a "global payer", it has also suggested that it should start becoming a "global player", one in which the united economic, political and military forces of its members could shape global affairs 537 . One way it would achieve this is by adopting qualified majority voting with regards to the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Qualified majority voting is increasingly a salient feature of the EU's decision-making process, in fact it is the most commonly used voting procedure in the Council 538 , and it is estimated that about 80% of all EU legislation is adopted with this procedurealthough as we have noted above, and as Maduro states, this also raises a concern regarding a possible intergovernmental majoritarianism. The EU's concern to create a closer proximity to its citizens is also present in the increasing number of polling data that it conducts to assess the EU's democratic legitimacy, and trust and closeness that citizens feel towards the EU, among others.    Despite all these efforts, irregular migration remains a serious concern for EU citizens, even if this concern is born out of a mistaken perception regarding migration numbers, and not actual numbers. official Eurostat data shows, on average, 38% believe that immigration from outside the EU constitutes more of a problem than an opportunity, whereas 31% believe that they pose equally a problem and an opportunity, and only 20% believe that they present an opportunity. In countries such as Hungary (63%); Malta (63%); Greece (63%); Slovakia (54%); Bulgaria (52%); and Italy (51%) more than half of their citizens believe that immigration from outside the EU constitutes a problem. On average, 56% agree that immigrants are a burden on the country's welfare system; 55% believe that immigrants worsen the crime problems in their country; and 39% believe that immigrants take away jobs from workers in their countries.
A special Eurobarometer report on migration issues found that ""only a minority of Europeans say they are well informed about immigration and integration", and it has been shown that "Europeans tend to largely overestimate the number of non-EU immigrants as a proportion of the population of their country" 564 .
A recent paper by Alesina et al, focusing solely on six countriesthe US and five EU countries (France, Germany, Italy, Sweden and the U.K.)went further and found that citizens from these countries are strongly biased about immigrants as follows: "they overestimate the share of immigrants from the Middle East, North Africa, and the share of Muslim immigrants, and they sharply underestimate the share of Christian immigrants. Natives also believe that immigrants are poorer, 564 Special Eurobarometer 469: "In 19 of the 28 Member States the estimated proportion of the population who are immigrants is at least twice the size of the actual proportion of immigrants. In some countries, the ratio is much higher: in Romania, Bulgaria and Poland, the estimated proportion of immigrants is over eight times greater than the actual figure, and in Slovakia it is nearly 14 times the actual figure." more reliant on the host country's welfare state, more unemployed, and less educated than they actually are. All these misperceptions contribute to making natives more averse to redistribution, as they perceive that immigrants are culturally and religiously more distinct from them and that they benefit disproportionately from the generosity of the welfare state. 565  it's determined that they have already applied for asylum in those countries, and to do so within 48 hours. Such bilateral agreements have since been signed or are in the process of being signed.
Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic had long rejected key mechanisms of the EU's response to the refugee crisis, most notably regarding refugee quotas. These quotas were part of the EU's emergency relocation scheme enacted in 2015 573 , and have been systematically ignored by these countries, prompting the Commission to refer the matter to the CJEU 574 .
integration, the Federal Government will continue to play its part -"This is reflected in the budget," declared the Chancellor. Source: The EU's stance on immigration constituted its third and final rupture point threatening its internal cohesion, leading some leaders to reiterate that what was at stake in this summit was once more the fate of the EU.
Triggered by the potential political crisis in Germany, by several reports of Italy closing its ports to NGO rescue boats 575 , and by growing anti-immigration support in Central European countries, the EU leaders met in Brussels on June 28 th , 2018 to reach a compromise. The summit had to find a way to reconcile a) two widely different teleological views on immigration; b) growing anti-immigration support and rhetoric in some EU countries; and c) pressure from countries at the entry points of migration flows, such as Greece, Italy and Spain 576 -also referred to as countries of first arrivals, or frontline Member States -to get the EU and other Member States to share more equally in their burden.
While Italy's president threatened to block the summit until concessions were made 577 , ultimately the summit was heralded a success, with the following outcome 578 : Appeasing Hungary and Poland and other central European states, the EU leaders loosened the requirements for compulsory relocation quotas, instituting instead voluntary measures to expedite processing, relocation or resettlement, through European "control centers" that could weave out irregular migration and asylum seekers 579 . Appeasing political dissent within Germany, EU leaders reiterated the need for safeguards against secondary migration 580 .
EU Leaders also agreed: to continue to fund and implement the EU-Turkey Statement; to continue to support Libyan Coastguard; and to pledge more support to the EU Trust Fund for Africa, realizing that "tackling the migration problem at its core requires a partnership with Africa aiming at a substantial socio-economic transformation of the African continent." 581 These last action points raised some concerns from the UNHCR and the IOM that the EU is outsourcing its migration problem, with dire consequences 582 . Doctors without Borders released a note stating 579 "On EU territory, those who are saved, according to international law, should be taken charge of, on the basis of a shared effort, through the transfer in controlled centres set up in Member States, only on a voluntary basis, where rapid and secure processing would allow, with full EU support, to distinguish between irregular migrants, who will be returned, and those in need of international protection, for whom the principle of solidarity would apply. All the measures in the context of these controlled centres, including relocation and resettlement, will be on a voluntary basis, without prejudice to the Dublin reform." https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/35936/28-euco-final-conclusions-en.pdf 580 "Concerning the situation internally in the EU, secondary movements of asylum seekers between Member States risk jeopardising the integrity of the Common European Asylum System and the Schengen acquis. Member States should take all necessary internal legislative and administrative measures to counter such movements and to closely cooperate amongst each other to that end." https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/35936/28-euco-final-conclusions-en.pdf 581 https://www.consilium.europa.eu/media/35936/28-euco-final-conclusions-en.pdf 582 https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/press/2018/6/5b33d8bf4/iom-unhcr-appeal-region-wide-action-eu-countriesmediterranean-tragedies.html that the "EU member states are abdicating their responsibilities to save lives and deliberately condemning vulnerable people to be trapped in Libya, or die at sea 583 ". The ECFR criticizes the externalization of border control through the EU's Migration Partnership Framework (MPF), a policy that it deems "has little interest in acknowledging or addressing the real causes of migration 584 ". The externalization of borders would create a de facto fortress surrounding the EU, through the creation of processing centers, which are being discussed as reception centers and disembarkation platforms.
During the recent immigrant summit, the European Council called on the Commission to "swiftly explore the concept of regional disembarkation platforms, in close cooperation with relevant third countries as well as UNHCR and IOM 585 ". In a subsequent press release the European Commission reiterated that the purpose of these centers, and of regional disembarkation arrangements "is to provide quick and safe disembarkation on both sides of the Mediterranean of rescued people in line with international law, including the principle of non-refoulement, and a responsible postdisembarkation process 586 ".
This proposal, which could see that enactment of funded processing centers in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Niger, or Tunisia, has gained criticism, and has drawn 583 https://www.msf.org/european-government-policies-condemn-people-be-locked-libya-or-drown-sea The rise of populism in Europe is corroborated in other studies 592 , but the link between immigration and the recent rise of populist parties in Europe should, in theory, be tenuous at best, given the actual numbers of immigration. Nonetheless studies show, and political commentators agree, that issues of immigration drive support for from 12.5 million to 170 million; idem. A detailed report on how populism has evolved in Europe over time can be found here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2018/nov/20/how-populism-emerged-as-electoral-force-in-europe 591 Idem; 592 "Since 2000, the number of populist parties in Europe has almost doubled, from 33 to 63" Source: https://institute.global/insight/renewing-centre/european-populism-trends-threats-and-future-prospects populism 593 594 595 596 . In fact a former Secretary of State of the United States commented that "Europe needs to get a handle on migration because that is what lit the flame" to populism and Brexit 597 . German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has faced strong internal opposition to her welcoming stance on immigration, has recently stated that "Europe has many challenges, but migration could end up determining Europe's destiny" 598 .

Who supports populism?
Studies seem to converge on the demographics that support populist parties: 593 According to the report by the Institute for Global Change: "the influence of populist parties in Scandinavia has probably been bigger than their share of the vote suggests. Especially on issues like immigration, they have also had a real impact on mainstream parties, leading both centre-right and, in some cases, centre-left parties that face new competition from the right to adopt more hardline positions on matters of immigration and social welfare spending." "more and more populist parties on both the left and the right have become willing to combine redistributive economic policies that emphasise opposition to austerity and support for a redistributive welfare state with restrictive immigration policies building on openly hostile rhetoric against immigrants." Source: https://institute.global/insight/renewing-centre/european-populism-trends-threats-and-future-prospects 594 "Leaders of the European Union argued, cajoled and debated for nearly 10 hours until dawn on Friday to come up with a set of proposals on how to handle migration, including the idea of establishing secured centers both inside Europe and in North Africa to screen migrants, identify and distribute legitimate refugees, and keep migrants from moving from one country to another. The leaders were not driven so much by humanitarian concernsthe levels of migration have fallen considerablyas by political necessity. In an important gesture of solidarity, Ms. Merkel's colleagues gave her the "European answer" to her urgent domestic needto face down a challenge to her leadership from her fellow conservatives in Bavaria and her own interior minister, Horst Seehofer." Source https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/29/world/europe/migration-european-union-merkel.html 595 "Hillary Clinton Says Europe Must 'Get a Handle' on Migration to Thwart Populism" source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/22/world/europe/hillary-clinton-migration-populism-europe.html 596 "the issue of migration has had great influence on elections held in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and other European countries in the past year, boosting support for populist and eurosceptic parties." https://www.ecfr.eu/specials/mapping_migration 597 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/22/hillary-clinton-europe-must-curb-immigration-stop-populists-trump-brexit 598 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/28/angela-merkel-warns-migration-challenge-could-determine-europes/ typically, poorer, older, males, with lower levels of education, and who economically vulnerable 599 . Perhaps the more credible link between the rise of populism and the negative perception regarding immigration lies with the fact that both groups are the same in socio-demographic terms 600 .
A starting point to explaining why populist parties have been so successful in accruing support is to consider two different theories: the economic inequality theory; and the cultural backlash theory. The arguments of the economic inequality theory have been widely discussed: as income, wealth, and welfare inequality increases in the West, economic uncertainty, a feeling of both social, and class exclusion prompt resentment and reprisals towards mainstream political parties (Inglehart and Norris, Trump, Brexit, and the Rise of Populism: Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash 2016). The alternative cultural backlash theory shifts the focus from economics to progressive cultural change. The argument is that decades of exceptional economic security in the 599 "low-waged unskilled workers, the long-term unemployed, households dependent on shrinking social benefits, residents of public housing, single-parent families, and poorer white populations living in inner-city areas with concentrations of immigrants" (Inglehart and Norris, Trump, Brexit, and the Rise of Populism: Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash 2016) 600 According to the latest Eurobarometer on immigration: Regarding age -"Around a third (36%) of those aged 55 or more have an overall positive perception compared to 45%-48% of those aged between 15 and 54 who hold the same view. Those in the oldest age cohort are particularly likely to agree that immigrants place a burden on the welfare system (61%, compared with 46% of younger respondents) or that they aggravate the problem of crime (60%, compared with 48%)." Regarding education -"Nearly six in ten (57%) of those who completed their education at the age of 20 or older have an overall positive view of the contribution of immigrants to society, compared with just under three in ten (27%) respondents who left education at or before the age of 15." Regarding economic vulnerability -"Economically vulnerable respondents are more likely to have negative views of immigrants on each of the statements: for example, only a third (33%) agree that immigrants have been good for the economy, compared with over half (55%) of those who do not have problems paying bills." West have allowed for post-materialistic values to take center stage and start a "silent revolution" (Inglehart 1977) that generated support for multiculturalism (embracing others, expanding the group, by expanding its cultural identity), and progressive ideals (embracing liberal ideas, expanding cultural and social tolerance) 601 . Populism now arises as a subset of the original group senses a deterioration of their conditions, an erosion of their quality of life, of their privilege, and of their standing (Inglehart and Norris 2016, 3) 602 . Furthermore, there is a concern that traditional norms and values are being threatened and are at risk of being lost forever.
Populist parties not only lend voice to those who suddenly feel left-out, but also offer them a common enemythe other (represented abstractly in globalization and social liberalism; and more concretely in immigrants, or non-citizens) 603 . Populist parties are the 21 st century materialization of Schmittian politics, where the "specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that 601 Inglehart argued in 1977 that "Western populations have been raised under conditions of exceptional economic security.
Economical and physical security continue to be valued positively, but their relative priority is lower than in the past". Inglehart 602 "Less educated and older citizens, especially white men, who were once the privileged majority culture in Western societies, resent being told that traditional values are 'politically incorrect' if they have come to feel that they are being marginalized within their own countries." (Inglehart and Norris 2016, 29) 603 As Inglehart and Norris note: "these parties can still exert tremendous 'blackmail' pressure on mainstream parties, public discourse, and the policy agenda, as is illustrated by the UKIP's role in catalyzing the British exit from the European Union, with massive consequences." Despite vehement and polarized disagreements on what the EU is, many scholars and political commentators argue in unison that the one thing the EU needs is more "loyalty", which would suggest that whatever the make of the European engine, it seems to run on loyalty. This is an oversimplification of those stated positions to an extent, but loyalty would allow the EU to become once again, or finally, the normative construct they envisioned it to be in the first place. Herein lies one of this project's criticism of European integration scholarship, how it has often operated through expectation-driven approaches (top-down), rather than data-driven (bottom-up). Frameworks, designs and measures of European integration have often been conceptualized by the reserve engineering of inferred structures.
Reverse engineering is a methodological approach common to many sciences (Milkowski), including cognitive sciences (Dennett) 608 , and systems theory. Within cognitive sciences, and in its broadest meaning, reverse engineering is the process of "decomposing a system in order to gain understanding about its function" (Milkowski) 609 " and operates by "inferring adaptive function from structure" (Richardson) 610 . Dennett is critical of top-down approaches guiding reverse engineering efforts within cognitive science 611 , seeing that their start pointing is an inference itself 608 Reserve engineering has also been defined as "the interpretation of an already existing artifact by an analysis of the design considerations that must have governed its creation". (Dennett 1995, 683) 609 (Miłkowski and Talmont-Kamiński 2013, 25) 610 As cited by (Miłkowski and Talmont-Kamiński 2013, 12) 611 "Marr's top-down vision has its own blind spot: it over-idealizes the design problem, by presupposing first that one could specify the function of vision (or of some other capacity of the brain), and second, that this function was optimally executed by the -it's the inference of function from an inference of structure. The same criticism should apply to grand-theories of European integration where constructs of intergovernmentalism, supranational constitutionalism, a federalist or quasi-federalist Europe, even functionalism, have been reverse-engineered from a priori inferences of structures, as argued in chapters one and two. It has been the contention of this project that frameworks matter, as they allow us to correctly grasp de lege lataa norm within its legal, social, political and moral construct or, more broadly, the law as it exists. Knowing the de lege lata should be the starting point of every legal discourse yet knowing it does not per se serve Law's purpose within society. Since Plato's Crito, legal philosophers, and more recently, legal positivists, have given thought to law's purpose, and the concept of de lege ferendathe law as it ought to be. The dichotomous nature of lawof stability and of flux, as intended and as necessary to serve and to fit society (Llewellyn) -rests in the tension and the output machinery. That is not the way Mother Nature designs systems. In the evolutionary processes of natural selection, goalspecifications are not set in advance problems are not formulated and then proposed, and no selective forces guarantee optimal "solutions" in any case. If in retrospect we can identify a goal that has been optimally or suboptimally achieved by the evolutionary design process, this is something of a misrepresentation of history". (Dennett 1995, 684-685); 612 Jean-Paul Jacqué, quoted in (Maganza 2014); between de lege lata and de lege ferenda. The place for legal doctrine is know the former and to propose the latter.
It is challenging to reflect on the standing of legal doctrine within the social sciences without at least tangentially engaging in the debate between analytical jurisprudence and normative jurisprudence, and critical theories of law 613 . Suffice to say that the purpose of this paper is not to consider the nature of law, nor explore the conditions of legal validity, and not even to weigh in on the debate between the overlap, separation and social theses. The distinction I am making between de lege lata and de lege ferenda is certainly not the same made by the separation thesis between law and morality, even if that distinction also considers what law is versus what it should be. In any case, as Marmor argues, those discussions are often riddled with confusion, and fraught with misunderstandings 614 , as the relationship between law and morality is much more complex than that -it's a nuanced mixture of source and merit (Marmor) 615 .
Leaving aside the discussions surrounding normativity and the conditions of legal validity, Law permeates all areas of social life, and, as Archibald MacLeish once said, 613 The divide between natural law and Austin's legal positivism raised many important questions regarding the provenance of law, and the merits of law, prompting Austin and then Hart to endorse the separation thesis, with Dworkin trying to find a third way -"if we treat principles as law we must reject the positivists' first tenet, that the law of a community is distinguished from other social standards by some test in the form of a master rule" (Dworkin 1967, 45). Analytical jurisprudence both common to natural was then challenged by legal realism and a prediction-based jurisprudence, but recall Dorf: "advocates of the prediction model 'begin with the legal realists' correct observation that the formal rules of legal doctrine do not provide a complete account of how judges actually decide hard cases. They then assume that since the rules do not bind the judge, the law is whatever the judge says or will say" (Dorf 1995); 614 (Marmor 2017) 615 "Whether a norm is law or not may well depend, partly, on what values we find in law and what makes law, or laws of that kind, worthy of appreciation." (Marmor 2017, 9) "the business of the law is to make sense of the confusion of what we call human lifeto reduce it to order but at the same time to give it possibility, scope, even dignity". The place of Law as a social science is to carry out that missive, to make sense of the normative constructs that bind us, and to explore how they can meet the needs of a society that is always changing 616 . But somehow Law and legal doctrine seem to have lost their way, and their standing within the social sciences, due to: (a) the cognitive dissonance and distance between legal theorizing and legal practice like two branches that divert at a common root 617 ; and (b) the unfinished work of critical theories of law such as legal realism.
Both these factors have contributed to the devaluing of law itself as a social science, and to the shifting of the primacy in solving society's problems to the second half of all the "law and…" movements, such as law and economics, and law and psychology. The science of law should not be diminished by the concerns raised by legal realism, either by the indeterminacy thesis, or the discretion thesis, nor even by Holmes' highly misunderstood characterization of judicial prophecies 618 which have devolved to breakfast jurisprudence. It will be my contention elsewhere that legal realism and critical legal studies are important steps towards a systems theory approach to the science of law, which relies heavily on interdisciplinarity, but one in which law and legal constructs are at the center. The mistake, in many ways similar to Marmor's 616 society's future normative needs; 617 This results in my view from a poor understanding and explanation of the normative frameworks that continuously model law and societythat is why frameworks matter.

"
The prophecies of what the courts will do in fact, and nothing more pretentious, are what I mean by the law". (Holmes 1897) criticism of the separation thesis was, mutatis mutandis, to suggest that law in books and law in action are different things, and not to appreciate the importance of normative structures in our cognitive reasoning. The erudition of law should have never forgotten law's greatest tenet, that law serves society and law must be applied. Purely theoretical concepts of law may serve a purpose similar to concepts of metaethics such as moral relativism for example -as highly gratifying intellectual and existential exercisesbut law, like morality, is meant to be applied.
The erudition of lawthe law developed in booksshould pursue and serve that function, as should the application of lawthe law applied in actionrecall those lessons. Legal realism and critical legal studies were right that: (a) there is much more to law than formalism; (b) that law cannot exist or ever be applied in a contextual vacuum; (c) that law could remain impervious to moral, social, or economic cost benefit analyses; (d) that it could remain impervious to the inner self of she who applies law; and (e) that it should not continue to harbor illegitimate hierarchies and privilege.
The corollary to these arguments is not however that law is useless as a social science, and that it should give way to economic analysis, or psychological research, or critical race theory, but that it should be informed by these other sciences and theories in its normative constructs. For example, the concept of truth is a highly debated philosophical topic, but the concept of truth with regards to law and civil procedure, or the concept of truth in criminal procedure, is materially different (Landowski) 619 .
619 "Les procédures et les enjeux de la preuve s'en trouvent du même coup envisagés dans une tout autre optique: il ne s'agit plus de révéler la vérité des états de choses réels -vérité en soi -, mais de construire une réalité-une réalité qui fasse sens pour le droit. (Landowski 1988, 49) Philosophy, psychology, even physics can contribute greatly to an understanding of what truth is, and their insights are invaluable, but law has taught us the intricacies of the concept with regards to proof, the powers of the State, and the rights of each individual. There is value in law, in its normative constructs, regardless of what one might have had for breakfast, and the disservice to law has been to suggest that normative constructs do not matter. Returning to my example, any philosophical or psychological breakthrough in our understanding of truth is paramount to better norms with regards to civil and criminal procedure, as they inform the construct of material truth (la vérité judiciaire).
Chapter FOUR conclusions.

"The UK is fast realizing high (if not unbearable) costs of exiting the EU. It
will discover that can exit EU governance but not European interdependence. (…)

The extent of interdependence both between States and between EU policies is such that it renders increasingly difficult any effective form of exit for States. (…)
The paradox is that the more may want to exit, the more difficult the decision to exit become". Maduro 620 In chapters ONE and TWO we explored how the different narratives of EU integration theory explore the framework that govern the integration project, and the challenges that it faces. Divergent theories claim that "it's the politics"; "it's the 620 (Maduro and Wind 2017, 331) economy"; or that "it's both the politics and the economy, stupid…" In chapter THREE we noted how many of the premises born out of these theories lacked a systemic understanding of the EU, and chapter FOUR shows that such an understanding is the right one. Analyzing the EU's response to the crisis can uncover two distinct periods: the first period was comprised of a reactive econocentric approach which tested the EU's legitimacy beyond measure; the second, a citizencentric period with equally concrete measures to regain a sense of trust, solidarity and legitimacy in the EU. The first can be characterized as a response to Europe's economic dimension; the second to its social dimension, particularly with Brexit and populism as its main antagonists 621 .
Reading chapter FOUR, it becomes apparent how complex the EU truly is, with, for example, issues of perceived numbers of immigrationfrom countries with little or no actual migration concernsplaying such a disproportional part in the disintegration of Europe. In its citizencentric response the EC has also engaged a powerful communication strategy to give birth to a new idea of Europe, a more powerful version of political messianism, one that is also tethered to a utilitarian promise 622 . But the fate Weiler has recently called for a new transformation to take place within European governance, due to the untenable relationship between law and politics that preempts a European "constitutional architecture" (Maduro and Wind 2017, 99) but the greatest transformation the EU requires is epistemological, not ontological. It is our failure to understand the EU that is limiting its unique systemic architecture.
Guided by the principle that frameworks matter, I started my dissertation project by revisiting the main narratives of European integration, the paradigms under which they operated, and the normative claims that they espoused. I then contrasted these claims against the actual developments and the many paradoxes in European integration, and I concluded that the current European crisis has a dual nature: it is both epistemological and ontological. It results from the lack of adequate governing principles and mechanisms of European integration, as most scholars have recognized, but it also results from our failure to fully understand and study the integration process as a complex adaptive system.
My research process therefore led me to conclude that behind the European crisis lies a scholarly crisis in European integration theoryas was apparent by the fact that most scholars, while not being able to agree on what the European polity now is, vehemently argue that what it needs is more "loyalty" so that it can become, once again, the normative construct they had initially uncovered. I chose instead to adopt a new methodological approach to study the European Union, one that borrows from systems theory and that takes into account all inputs of European integration, so that we can develop adequate governing principles to manage all areas of political, social, economic and legal integration.
The salient feature of this process is that it does not operate in reverse, it does not aim to frame a given issue in the backdrop of a pre-existing construct. It presents the legal construct as is, and only then comments on what it should be. Its purpose is to solve the tension between de lege lata and de lege feranda, through intellectually honest discourse, by realizing that the corollary to Llewellyn's claim that law must fit society is not that society must fit law, but the nuanced understanding that society must be informed by law.

EPILOGUE.
Research limitations and shortcomings (the proof is in the pudding) This project hoped to make a case for the importance of a systems theory approach to European integration, and to law in general. In order to do so I had to venture into areas and subject matters of which I am not an expert, nor do I purport to be. This project would have gained immensely from contributions by other scholars in different fields.
In this regard, this project's shortcomings prove one of its main premises, that the issues of European Integrationand of law in generalare complex, they require inputs and expertise from a myriad of areas, they require collaborative, discursive and contextual dialogue. A systems theory approach to law might signify that, with regards to complex systems, legal research can no longer be undertaken alone.

Opportunities and next steps
With regards to substantive integration theory.
This project's shortcomings, with regards to inputs and expertise from other areas, present an incredible opportunity for collaborative works. My aim is to pursue such collaborations, and to create a computational model of the integration process.
With regards to legal theory.
I plan to continue to develop a unique systems theory approach to international law.
This approach stems in part from the critical legal studies movement, and from the law-in-context approach (Shaw), as well as from more recent approaches regarding legal polycentricity (Petersen), but it relies on systems theory concepts and modelling tools to understand how law operates in a complex system (such as the EU) and in complicated systems (such as the WTO).
My objective is then -laterally -to develop this systems theory approach to the concept of law in general and pick up where both the Hart-Fuller debate (substance of law), and the critical legal studies approach (context of law) left off.