The study of international integration primarily concerns with the problems of how national states will commit themselves to the processes of building supranational community by peaceful means. International integration is very unique in challenging nation-state system towards the transformation of dynamics through noncoerciveness. Integration studies were born particulary in 1950s among American IR scholars. As is known, it coincided with post-war historical facts in Western Europe in the early 1950s when new efforts toward regional integration were made, though partially in industrial sectors such as coal and steel.
The study of international integration had been relatively well developed through the 1960s. Many important hypotheses were set up, and they were extensively examined. However, since the 1970s integration studies seemed to have lost previous academic concerns and attentions among IR scholars. Integration theories are today strongly criticized. Does it mean the collapse of integration theories? Or does it merely show decline of some integration schools, say, of neo-functionalist school? We must know why and how this has happened. It is quite interesting to note the fact that criticism on integration theories is in parallel with the stalemate of the European Community (EC) in integration efforts.
The purpose of this article is therefore, first, to consider how seriously integration studies have been in the deadlock. More specifically, what part of integration studies are cast into doubt? Secondly, this article analyzes the current stages of European integration, focusing on positive as well as negative sides. The EC looks quite ambivalent in political development. For it succeeds in expanding its potential power externally, and in increasing international influences, while it often fails in establishing common policies among member states. Why is it so? Finally, I will try to argue some prospects of integration studies. The underlying assumption is that the study of integration is not yet dead. It could be revitalized if we would carefully reexamine its research strategy.