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Abstract:
The relaunch of European integration since the 1980s has led to a revival of the debate around the integration theory. This article confronts the dominant approaches
(Neofunctionalism and Neorealism) with the results of recent empirical integration research, focusing on the three most important integration mechanisms, i.e.
intergovernmental conferences and the effects of supranational and transnational actors. It concludes that “optimistic” Neofunctionalism was only seemingly right. The empirical cases of successful political integration do not or correspond only partly to its basic
assumptions.
