Functionalism 1.pptx

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1. Functionalism Sanghamitra Patnaik, Ph.D. AGP-2115

2. Introduction According to David Mitrany , dealing with functional matters provides the actors in the international community the opportunity to successfully cooperate in a non-political context, which might otherwise be harder to achieve in a political context.

3. Contd.. Development would lead to a process called “autonomous development” towards multiplication, expansion, and deepening of functional international organizations. Ideally, this would ultimately result in an  International Government.

4. Contd..  Functionalists in this manner assume that cooperation in a non-political context would bring  international peace .  Eradication of existent non-political, non-military global problems, which Functionalists consider to be the very origin of conflict within the global community, is what they aim to pursue.

5. Contd.. The idea of international cooperation was elaborated by L. T. Hobhouse, and then by L. Woolf and G. D. H. Cole. The main rationale behind it was that peace is more than the absence of violence. On the other hand, Mitrany argued that a world community was a prerequisite for world government.

6. Contd.. Nationalism and international anarchy were seen as the causes behind the division of the world community into rival units. He believed that the establishment of such a community would solve the problems plaguing the international system.

7. Contd.. Mitrany envisaged a world organized on the basis of functional relations. He advocated a combination between international organization and national freedom, as obviously all protagonists did not share the same interests and, conversely, all common interests were not equal in all countries.

8. Contd.. There are strong assumptions underpinning functionalism: 1) That the process of integration takes place within a framework of human freedom, 2) That knowledge and expertise are currently available to meet the needs for which the functional agencies are built. 3) That states will not sabotage the process.

9. Contd.. Functionalism proposed to build a form of authority based in functions and needs, which linked authority with needs, scientific knowledge, expertise and technology, i.e. it provided a supraterritorial concept of authority.

10. Contd.. The functionalist approach excludes and refutes the idea of state power and political influence (realist approach) in interpreting the cause for such proliferation of international organizations during the inter-war (which was characterized by nation-state conflict) and the subsequent years.

11. Contd.. According to functionalism, international integration  – the collective governance and 'material interdependence' (Mitrany, 1933:101) between states – develops its own internal dynamic as states integrate in limited functional, technical, and/or economic areas. International agencies would meet human needs, aided by knowledge and expertise.

12. Contd.. The benefits rendered by the functional agencies would attract the loyalty of the populations and stimulate their participation and expand the area of integration. Substantive functions of functional international organizations include human rights, international communication, health, the law of the sea, the environment, education and information, international relief programs, refugee support, and economic development.

13. Neo-functionalism Neo-functionalism reintroduced territorialism in the functional theory and downplayed its global dimension. Neo-functionalism is simultaneously a theory and a strategy of regional integration, building on the work of  David Mitrany.

14. Contd.. Neo-functionalists focused their attention solely on the immediate process of integration among states, i.e. regional integration. Initially, states integrate in limited functional or economic areas. Thereafter, partially integrated states experience increasing momentum for further rounds of integration in related areas. This “invisible hand" of integration phenomenon was termed "spill-over." by the neo-functionalist school

15. Contd.. According to neo-functionalists, there are two kinds of spillover: functional and political.  Functional Spillover is the interconnection of various  economic  sectors or issue-areas, and the integration in one policy-area spilling over into others. Political spillover is the creation of supranational governance models, as far-reaching as the  European Union, or as voluntary as the  United Nations. One of its protagonist was Ernest B. Hass, a US political scientist.

16. Contd.. Jean Monnet's approach to European integration, which aimed at integrating individual sectors in hopes of achieving spill-over effects to further the process of integration, is said to have followed the neo-functional school's track.

17. Contd.. Neo-functionalism declared to be non-normative and tried to describe and explain the process of regional integration based on empirical data. Integration was regarded as an inevitable process, rather than a desirable state of affairs that could be introduced by the political or technocratic elites of the involved states' societies.