The richness of the liberal tradition in international relations: Karl Deutsch on political community and the European integration

Political community – beyond the nation-state

The concept of political community allows Deutsch to avoid the exclusivity of the nation-state analogy – ‘a cognitive trap’, as he calls it – which makes people imagine any kind of polity only as a nation-state writ large (e.g. empires) or a nation-state writ small (e.g. city-states). He concedes that the nation-state is ‘the most powerful human instrument ever developed in the course of history for getting things done’. ⁴ But Deutsch considers the nation-state a failure because of the nationalistic violence which becomes extremely dangerous especially with the advent of nuclear weapons. Thus, the state has become ‘a cognitive trap in times of peace and a death trap in the event of war’. ⁵ Not only have nuclear weapons deprived the state of its key role in providing the guarantee of survival to its citizens but the economy has become increasingly dependent on ‘industrialisation and complex markets’, making the citizens vulnerable ‘to the fluctuations of the business cycle’ and to decades of massive unemployment. ⁶ Nation-states are in control of domestic events but they have lost control over the international events on which their survival depends. ⁷

Throughout his long academic career he kept asking about the scale and the shape of political communities:

When and why do people wish to change the scale of their political community? When they live in large states or empires, why do some people long for secession and the forming of a smaller state ‘of their own’, and, why, when they live in small sovereign states, do so many people dream of integration into a larger political union? ⁸

To answer these questions, Deutsch does not start with the state, but he does not take the state for granted either. Political communities can but do not have to take the form of a state. His conceptualisation of the political community draws on the definitions of two central terms – people and nation – as well as the distinction between them. While a people is ‘a group of persons with complementary communication habits’, a nation is a people in control of ‘institutions of social coercion’. ⁹ While the people is defined by the ease of communication, the nation is defined by political institutions. The idea of the nation-state merges these two concepts into one. But Deutsch keeps them separate, which allows him to escape the cognitive trap of the nation-state.

His distinction between people and nation betrays Deutsch’s Central European personal and intellectual roots. It reflects Central Europe with its rich experience of peoples which, by this definition, are not nations. This was the case of Czechs, Slovaks, Croats and Slovenians in the Austrian empire. This distinction is also reflected in the political terminology of some Central European languages. For example, the Czech equivalent for the English term ‘nation’ (národ) corresponds to Deutsch’s concept of people, ¹⁰ and Deutsch’s concept of nation would be described as a ‘political nation’ in Czech (politický národ). This is also the logic of Deutsch’s distinction between the concepts of people and nation. The difference dwells in the control of the coercive institutions and corresponds to what Deutsch understands as the political. For him ‘all politics involves the possibility of enforcement of decisions’. ¹¹ In this respect, a nation is a political people. In a more abstract language, the distinction between a people and a nation is expressed as that between a community, which is based on intensive social transactions such as communication, and a political community, which is a community ‘supplemented by both enforcement and compliance’. ¹²

A people and a community are defined by the ease of communication as their members are expected to interact with one another more effectively than with outsiders across a wide range of issues. Therefore, a common language as a tool of communication seems to pre-determine peoples and communities. However, there are two factors which make Deutsch’s theory much less language-deterministic than it may seem.

First, according to Deutsch a common language is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the existence of a people. Deutsch’s Central European experience is telling in this respect. On the one hand, there were several German-speaking peoples in Central Europe. Apart from Austrians, Bavarians and Prussians, there were also Bohemians like Deutsch in Central Europe. On the other hand, Central European communities were multi-lingual before World War II (WWII) as it was common that in this area, people of different languages lived in the same political community as it is still the case in Switzerland nowadays. Deutsch himself lived through the end of this period, being a primarily German-speaking Czechoslovak before his emigration to the United States.

Second, his perspective on language is a dynamic one. Deutsch noticed the proliferation of European languages in the past centuries as well as the political construction of the difference between language and dialect, which opens the possibility of further linguistic proliferation in the future. The proliferation is often the result of economic mobilisation. However, he also noticed the opposite tendency towards language unification by the economic and political centre. ¹³ Therefore, unlike most thinkers, he does not consider international integration, nationalism and disintegration as separate areas of study because they all refer to the very same process of political community building. They differ only with respect to the previous conditions from which new communities arose.

What shapes can political communities take? Deutsch uses a variety of analogies to point to political communities other than the state such as city-states, ancient empires, the European mediaeval order, international organisations and municipalities. ¹⁴ But he also develops new concepts of political community on the basis of abstract models, speaking, for example, about the initiative-learning state. Historical analogies and abstract modelling represent two manners of elaboration on the concept of the political community, which Deutsch uses throughout the whole of his academic career. He raises the question about the shape of the political community in one of his earliest articles, which was published during WWII, only to come back to the same problem 40 years later in one of his last articles. ¹⁵

These articles are not similar at all. While the former develops a model of political community which is radically different from the nation-state, the latter talks about the immanent transformations within the state. The political circumstances setting the research agenda in the two articles can also hardly be compared. The former article and Deutsch’s early work focus on the national divides reflecting the WWII experience of extreme chauvinism and of the totalitarian states. The latter article emphasises social and economic divides corresponding to the crisis of the welfare state and to neoliberal attacks against it. Deutsch’s critique of Reaganomics ¹⁶ and his defence of the public sector against the neoliberal accusations of its alleged parasitism on the private sector are developed in a critical dialogue with Marxism. ¹⁷ Nevertheless, different though the two articles may seem, both build on historical analogies and abstract models as well as on Deutsch’s faith in human progress and the human ability to learn. These traits are crucial as the articles propose alternatives to the existing world politics based on an order composed of nation-states.

The first article examines the political order of mediaeval Europe. ¹⁸ There are at least three reasons for reading it today. First, Deutsch analyses mediaeval Europe as a specific type of universalist, supranational integration. He argues that the mediaeval community corresponded to a ‘layer-cake’ model of society ¹⁹ in which the top layer was highly integrated by a common culture and a social communication, the intermediate layer less so and there was no integration among the mass at the bottom. The different levels of integration were manifested in the mobility of those with specific, scarce skills, who were able to mutually communicate with one another. Very mobile networks formed among traders, scholars and administrators. Some mobility also existed among aristocrats who developed military skills. However, the rest of the society possessed no mobility and lacked any horizontal communication. A limited spatial and social mobility together with the economic stagnation were the main material conditions of the mediaeval order. They were expressed in a long-distance trade involving a few selected luxurious commodities for the elite and the absence of massive markets in which the bulk of the society would be involved.

Second, apart from the material conditions, Deutsch points to the significance of an ideational framework, ‘an idea, a myth or a religion’, ²⁰ which provided these societies with a glue. Deutsch calls this civilisation. He emphasises the diversity of the civilisational roots of Europe, arguing that three full-fledged civilisations were present in the early Middle Ages: Greek Orthodoxy, Latin Christianity and Islam. Each of these represented a complete socio-economic and ideological whole. Two other civilisations, Jewish and Viking, did not present full-fledged alternatives to the others but fulfilled important functions as intermediaries and promoters of trade and military skills. This analysis is remarkable not only for its acknowledgement of the role of ideas but also for its understanding of Europe and the West, which is richer and more heterogeneous than its usual identification with the Western Christianity.

Third, Deutsch associates the decay of the mediaeval universalism with the rise of the mediaeval nationalism. The turning point came during the thirteenth century when Latin Christianity became dominant, assimilating, expelling or marginalising other civilisations. That century was also notable for the growth of towns and the ensuing economic rise of Europe. Deutsch argues that the economic rise, the spread of markets and the social mobilisation produced an increasing competition among the new social groups which led to mediaeval nationalism, ²¹ marginalising the previous universalism. A ‘latent national diversity’ turned into an ‘effective national diversity’. ²²

Thus, Deutsch manages to show that nationalism, integration and disintegration are processes which are not unique to modernity. In this respect, he differs from Ernest Gellner, for example, who linked nationalism with the Industrial Revolution. ²³ Deutsch later specifies that nationalism is ‘the preference for the competitive interest of the nation and its members over those of all outsiders’, ²⁴ demonstrating its transhistoric features while acknowledging that the modern nationalism is connected to the mobilisation and competition needs generated by the market economy. ²⁵

On this basis, Deutsch claims that a return to the mediaeval model of supranational integration would mean the abandonment of economic progress, the invention of a new super-civilisation and the division of society into a narrow, mobile elite and the backward masses. He does not share this vision. Instead, he argues for an integration embracing economic progress and social mobilisation even if they produce a temporary growth of national diversity. He argues that all the local communities need to first modernise, something they can best achieve in their own language and within their own political setting. However, once they enter modernity they will be exposed to its assimilative power, which could eventually produce a true global community. ²⁶

Deutsch never believed that the transformative processes leading to new models of the political community would be fast. Instead, he took the perspective of the longue durée, warning against any ‘superficial short-cuts’ on the path towards the universal state. ²⁷ His article from the mid-1980s argues that the state is to remain the dominant form of political organisation for the next 200 years even though its functions are likely to change profoundly. ²⁸

Deutsch ascribes to the state three basic functions: social pattern maintenance (basically the maintenance of privileges and inequalities), the pursuit of power and the pursuit of wealth. Their relative priority changed throughout history. Whereas the pattern maintenance was typical for feudal states, the pursuit of power characterised the absolutist state, and the pursuit of wealth tends to be the priority of modern states. Modern states differ according to how they distribute the wealth domestically (e.g. laissez faire, central planning, welfare). This does not mean, however, that they would abandon the pattern maintenance – the existence of inequalities (both domestic and international) is still one of the main reasons for the continuing existence of the state and its coercive apparatus.

The state of the future will be able to transcend these historical categories. Deutsch proposes two new types of states to account for this change: an adaptive-learning state and an initiative-learning state. ²⁹ While the adaptive-learning state reacts and transforms itself in response to major challenges (e.g. demography, climate, energy), the initiative-learning state acts even before such challenges force the choice upon the state. The initiative-learning state also uses all the available knowledge and scientific evidence to inform its actions. Deutsch believes that the initiative-learning state will be the last stage of the state development, turning the state into a pure service provider without coercive functions, which will no longer be needed as the material inequalities will be overcome.

However, Deutsch’s question about the shape of the political community is not only about specific models of political communities. He also suggests typologies which should account for those features of political communities which he considers vital. Thus, he specifies the concept of the political community by defining a security community as a special kind of political community. Its distinguishing feature is that its members solve their conflicts only peacefully, ruling out the option of war. ³⁰ Even though Deutsch points out that not every political community is also a security community, the two types of communities are actually very close, as a war within a political community (such as a civil war) signifies its breakdown. The distinction between the two types of communities remains important, especially with respect to the growth of intrastate violence since the last decade of the twentieth century. The recent revival of the concept of the security community focused on its application to interstate relations; ³¹ however, there are a number of states in the Middle East and Sub-Saharan Africa which are political communities without being security communities. ³²

He also distinguishes between decentralised and centralised political communities. ³³ Whereas the former rely on ‘mutual responsiveness, communication and cooperation’ (e.g. the Commonwealth, or the Scandinavian cooperation), the latter depend on central institutions, the most centralised example being the institutions of a federal state. When talking about security communities, Deutsch makes a similar distinction between pluralistic security communities with no or only a few central institutions, and an amalgamated security community with strong central institutions.

The shape of the political community also depends on what drives the integration – the process of the community building. In this respect, Deutsch focuses on transactions such as communication, trade, travel, migration or media reporting, which themselves stem from technological and social progress. Therefore, the level of the community building can be measured by a ratio of the number of international transactions to the total number of transactions. ³⁴ This makes Deutsch’s concept of integration somewhat similar to economists’ perspectives on integration, with their focus on economic flows. ³⁵ However, his concept of transaction is much broader as it also encompasses non-material communication. This is important as each kind of transaction has different dynamics, and Deutsch observes that the propensity to international transactions tends to be significantly higher in trade than in other areas. ³⁶ This may lead the economic perspectives to overestimate the strength of integration. Moreover, transactions not only bring material benefits, but they also act as agents of social mobilisation in which old social, economic and psychological commitments are broken and new patterns of socialisation emerge. ³⁷ The political community arises from social mobilisation, and its scale depends on the existing languages and institutions as well as on its ability to manage the problems which it faces. ³⁸

The focus on transactions also leads Deutsch to an understanding of the political which is broader than his association of politics with enforcement would suggest. He criticises conventional political scientists as follows:

while they carefully recount thirty-one thousand ‘events data’, where people rioted or somebody got shot, because that is politics, they have misgivings about asking how many letters people write to each other, because that supposedly is not politics. ³⁹

Transactions contain the seeds of the political. Studying politics by investigating seemingly non-political activities provided important insights for political science, opening new paths of research. Thus, politics is not only a matter of vertical relations between individuals and authorities, be they top–down or bottom–up, but it also relies on horizontal relations among individuals, such as letter writing.

The primary indicator of the health of the political community refers to the transactions while the formal institutions are only of secondary significance. Common institutions exist to manage transactions and the frictions that accompany them. ⁴⁰ However, important institutions are not only those at the centre of the community but also the institutions at local and regional levels. Deutsch warns against overestimating the role of central institutions and vertical ties, which may not be durable. ⁴¹ He outlines four ‘fundamental processes’ of integration encompassing horizontal ties. First, psychological role-taking presupposes the acceptance of the roles within the community and is therefore based on the ‘we’-feeling, or the sense of community. Second, assimilation enables people to culturally learn common patterns of behaviour and unlearn what makes them different. Third, mutual interdependence brings about the division of labour. Fourth, mutual responsiveness allows every unit to take into account the vital needs of others.

Apart from these integrative processes, Deutsch also investigates the factors leading to disintegration of political communities. He lists the usual elements such as excessive military commitments, economic stagnation, the closed nature of the political elite or the failure of the formerly dominant strata to adjust to the loss of their dominance. However, he also dedicates special attention to one decisive factor which may look counter-intuitive to students of integration but which is familiar to students of nationalism, namely, the rise in political participation. Deutsch believes that the growth of political and economic democratic involvement increases the mutual differentiation of various societal groups, as was the case, for example, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Such differentiation imperils large centralised communities, which are unable to react to a fast expanding variety of needs. ⁴² Interestingly, democratisation also challenges the survival of small political communities, which may be too small to address the growing expectations in an efficient manner. Deutsch expects democracy to put into motion large-scale processes of social learning which would gradually produce political communities sufficiently large and responsive enough to cope with the needs of their socially mobilised citizens.

European integration – vertical and horizontal

Deutsch’s investigation of political communities can help us better understand the current state of Europe, which faces a crisis of political community at two levels. First, the European states are undergoing a crisis of identity. After the end of WWII, these political communities were defined as sovereign welfare nation-states. Currently, they are increasingly unable to fulfil the legitimate expectations stemming from this definition as they often turn out to be too small to efficiently regulate the economy. Second, there is a crisis of the European Union (EU) institutions. These were set up to remedy the failings of the European nation-states. However, the member states granted them the corresponding competencies only to a limited extent, and even this partial transfer has brought about a backlash against Brussels in the European public opinion, which tends to consider the EU institutions as too remote. Thus, today’s Europeans seem to hesitate between two models of a political community – a nation-state which turns out to be too small, and the EU, which is seen by many as too large.

In other words, Europe currently faces conditions that Deutsch associated with a rise in political participation. A more active participation can bring about disintegration, especially if the supranational community is structured like the layer-cake model, as was the case in mediaeval Europe. To some extent, the current EU is a layer-cake in which the Europeanised elite at the top is isolated from the national societies that are not much integrated among themselves. The recent elections to the European parliament are a case in point. The results showed either extremely low turnouts (especially in Central and Eastern Europe) which may hint at layers separated by indifference or the rise of disintegrationist parties in France or in the United Kingdom as a result of the political participation. While relatively strong and developed vertical ties exist in the EU, between European institutions, nation-states and regions, the horizontal ties between the units at the same level have been neglected. The lack of balance between the relatively strong vertical ties and the weak horizontal ties leads to numerous structural problems. In this respect, Deutsch’s perspective offers important insights when addressing these problems, precisely because his concept of integration includes both horizontal and vertical elements and puts special emphasis on the contribution of the horizontal ties.

Deutsch’s view of the European integration was quite unique among other political scientists, who were led by the neofunctionalist paradigm and focused on the elites, on the institutional processes at the European level and on market interaction. Deutsch acknowledges these forces, but his focus is elsewhere. His insights are best presented against the background of his own typology of ‘four aspects of integration’: ⁴³ two horizontal aspects of the market and people, and two vertical aspects of redistribution and institutions (Table 1).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Table 1.

Four aspects of European integration.

	Overestimated	Underestimated
Vertical	European institutions	European redistribution
Horizontal	European market	European people

The market and institutions have been part of the European construction since its origins. They have been widely acknowledged and perhaps even overestimated by students of the European integration. The other two aspects, people and redistribution, have, in contrast, been underestimated if not ignored. Deutsch notes that the integration of income redistribution needs to counterbalance the market’s wealth transfer ‘from the very poor to the rich’. ⁴⁴ But his focus is clearly on the process that would lead to various European peoples assimilating into a single European people with a shared culture rather than on a mere economic redistribution.

Evaluating the progress towards the European people he bleakly assesses the course of the European integration in the 1960s. He claims the European integration halted after 1956 and demonstrates this with reference to the statistical evidence of only a moderate growth in European transactions (trade, mail, travel and student exchange) since then. The increase was particularly sluggish in comparison with a period of high growth from 1947 to 1956. He ascribes the moderate growth in transactions after 1956 to the economic growth, which was bound to be accompanied by growing transactions, rather than to the effects of integration alone. ⁴⁵ He also presents complementary evidence in the shape of a content analysis of several major newspapers, some elite interviews and a survey of public opinion. On these grounds, he observes a gap between the spectacular growth in the formal integration by treaties and institutions after 1956 and the real integration that barely moved. ⁴⁶

He also argues that the main concerns of the post-war Europe, for example, economic recovery, modernisation, and the twin threat of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and communism, were only marginally addressed by the European institutions. The main contribution towards tackling them came from national governments and the United States. ⁴⁷ His conclusion is straightforward: the European integration is unlikely to regain a strong momentum before 1975 as ‘national political issues will predominate over supranational ones’. ⁴⁸

We now know that despite the relative bleakness of his outlook, Deutsch actually overestimated the integration prospects. The new momentum came only as late as the 1980s. However, at the time of his analysis, he was criticised for underestimating these prospects. ⁴⁹ The critique emanated especially from neofunctionalists, who considered institutions and elites more important than Deutsch did ⁵⁰ (and who also relied on a different timescale of short cycles as opposed to Deutsch’s long cycles). ⁵¹ Thus, from a neofunctionalist perspective, it could be claimed that Deutsch used assimilation as the most important cause of political integration without properly theorising the causal link between the two and that he left out such important integration advancing factors as the performance of supranational institutions and a permissive consensus which allows for integration even if people are not interested in it. ⁵²

However, this criticism could be partially addressed by Deutsch’s previous insights into the institutional specifics of the European integration. These were based on the distinction between functionally specific institutions with a limited range of functions (corresponding to a pluralistic community), and functionally diffuse institutions with many functions (corresponding to an amalgamated community or a nation-state). ⁵³ Deutsch observed that the European integration was driven by the functionally specific institutions, such as the European Coal and Steel Community, and that the functionally diffuse institutions, such as the Council of Europe, were given no real power or were nipped in the bud like the European Defence Community.

The functionally specific institutions have their own peculiarities for the dynamics of integration. To point out their two important features, Deutsch uses an analogy with municipal authorities, such as water provision or waste disposal, which are also functionally specific. ⁵⁴ First, such institutions are run by professionals and as long as everything works, the public does not interfere. Second, it is difficult to draw popular attention to them. Therefore, functionally specific institutions at the European level can count on a general apathy, or a permissive consensus, as long as they work to the general satisfaction and in so far as they stay functionally specific.

Thus, Deutsch points out that a transition from functionally specific to functionally diffuse institutions changes the game. Previously invisible institutions become politically visible and can no longer rely on the permissive consensus. Moreover, their competences may be perceived as a threat by some elites and the general public, which may provoke a backlash. The permissive consensus dissolves. In this respect, the critique of Deutsch by neofunctionalists was based on their static image of integration, which did not take into account the game-changing impact on the permissive consensus of the transition from functionally specific to functionally diffuse institutions. It was only a few years after Deutsch’s criticism that the founder of neofunctionalism acknowledged some of these fundamental problems in the European integration. ⁵⁵

However, Deutsch’s typologies and insights about the European integration are not only of historical interest; they can help us better understand current problems of the European integration in at least three respects. First, the tensions within and around the current institutional set-up can be explained by the distinction between functionally specific and functionally diffuse institutions. The ongoing economic crisis has raised doubts about the ability of the central institutions to competently perform tasks within their areas of responsibility. Their position is undermined for two reasons. The central institutions, originally established as functionally specific, have experienced an expansion in their powers and therefore can no longer count on the original permissive consensus. They are no longer sufficiently specific to benefit from a silent approval of their existence. Nevertheless, these institutions have not reached the diffuse stage yet as their activity still relies on a narrow mandate. They do not have any residual power authorising them to do ‘whatever job the population urgently wants and which is not being done by any other unit’. ⁵⁶ In short, they are no longer specific enough to rely on the permissive consensus and not yet diffuse enough to mobilise sufficient societal resources. The European Commission is a case in point. It has significant and highly visible competences in single market regulation, competition policy and international trade negotiations, however, it cannot do much in most of the other areas. This lack of competences does not save it from being blamed for inaction.

The second insight relevant for the contemporary European debates comes from Deutsch’s analysis of the effects of democratisation and political mobilisation on a large political community. Many leaders and students of European integration have been calling for democratisation and politicisation of Europe, silently expecting that this could strengthen the legitimacy of the European institutions after they can no longer count on the permissive consensus. ⁵⁷ These observers, however, do not take into account Deutsch’s argument that such processes could actually lead to a greater differentiation rather than Europeanisation in the short and medium run. Such differentiation was visible in the EU Convention tasked with producing the stillborn Constitutional Treaty. Its mode of operation was more democratic and more transparent than the previous changes in the founding treaties, yet ultimately it failed.

Finally, Deutsch is most inspiring for the present situation when he examines the horizontal aspects of integration such as the mutual responsiveness of national institutions and the integration of peoples. He argues that mutual responsiveness is one of the fundamental integration processes. ⁵⁸ It signals the decision-making capacity of state institutions to take into account the interests of other states and other actors. Mutual responsiveness is therefore different from the usual focus on compliance, which refers to the implementation of the will of the European authorities by state institutions. Mutual responsiveness is essential in the conditions of a decentralised community where there are only a few insufficiently strong central institutions.

Even though Deutsch points out the significance of mutual responsiveness and national institutional capabilities for integration, he does not investigate how the responsiveness could be developed institutionally. The European integration produced several paths for the institutionalisation of the horizontal ties such as soft integration methods (e.g. peer review, exchange of best practice or benchmarking) or twinning between the EU members and EU candidates. But their impact has been only marginal, and it is not clear to what extent they enhance the responsiveness. Following the Deutschian integration logic one might argue that mutual responsiveness would benefit from a more active encouragement of transgovernmental transactions and ties. These would implant the concerns of others into the decision-making processes at the level of specific ministries and government agencies. However, this avenue has not yet been properly followed by the research or the practice of the European integration.

People: beyond positivism

For Deutsch, the integration of people stands out as the most important horizontal aspect and the most important feature of integration as such. It is in this respect that his concept of integration is most original, linking international integration studies with the study of nationalism. But it is also with regard to the integration of people that his positivist epistemology and quantitative methodology show most of their limits.

On the one hand, his positivist and quantitative approach generates an important added value. It allows Deutsch to impartially study nationalism as an objective social force which, per se, is neither good nor bad. The impartiality is particularly admirable ⁵⁹ given the fact that his research was conducted in the 1940s and 1950s, when the most terrible crimes were committed in the name of nationalism. On the other hand, the positivist and quantitative approach provokes a tension within Deutsch’s work between the theoretical richness in its concepts and distinctions, and the crippling parsimony of the empirical research, which frequently leads him to neglect or abandon those facts that could not be quantified such as common narratives or mutual affections. The contradiction between intersubjective concepts and objectivist methods, noted in Kratochwil and Ruggie’s critique of neoliberal and neorealist studies of international regimes, ⁶⁰ is inevitably also present in Deutsch’s research. Even though he tries to avoid the choice between richness and rigour, he eventually needs to decide for one or for the other.

Deutsch is convinced that ideas which are central to his concept of people and people’s integration can eventually be measured in a similar way as material factors. For example, when he lists three ‘ontological’ conditions for integration – correspondence of geography and transport networks, transaction flows and the value compatibility of different peoples ⁶¹ – he concedes that the aggregate data analysis about the value compatibility is still underdeveloped in comparison with the analysis of geography, transport and transactions. Nonetheless, he believes that surveys, content analysis and historical descriptions will eventually produce such data. He does not recognise or admit that the study of values requires completely different modes of inquiry.

But his drive to quantify is neither omnipresent nor always consequential. This then creates a tension between Deutsch’s positivist standards of a neoliberal avant-la-lettre and his conceptual richness of a classical liberal. As a result of this tension, Deutsch’s research sometimes does not seem sufficiently rigorous to his positivist peers. For example, Fisher, in his neofunctionalist critique, claims that Deutsch’s model of integration is only ‘implicitly developed’ and notes the problems of measurement. ⁶²

Deutsch’s internal, and perhaps even unreflected, struggle with positivism is visible in his effort to avoid the emotionally loaded concept of the ‘community of fate’ in the study of peoples’ compatibility. ⁶³ Instead, he introduces the statistical concept of covariance, which is supposed to measure ‘joint rewards and penalties’. ⁶⁴ However, Deutsch emphasises that covariance means two different things. First, there is an objective covariance which can be calculated by scientific methods. Second, there is a covariance at the level of perceptions and expectations, depending on ‘the images of the community’ that people hold. The power of these images, once they have been learnt, is that they can lead to the conduct which corresponds to the image even if it does not correspond to any objective circumstances. ⁶⁵ Thus, even though Deutsch introduces covariance in as objectivist a manner as possible, he ends up distinguishing an objective covariance from an intersubjective covariance.

Another point of the tension between conceptual richness and positivist standards emerges in his account of the discursive construction of the political community. Deutsch is convinced about its significance and addresses it in terms of the symbols of political community. By examining historical examples of discursive constructions, Deutsch counters the widespread belief that a successful integration needs an external enemy, ‘an excluded out-group that can be despised or feared’. ⁶⁶ He argues that it can rely on its own positive and inclusive narrative. His recognition of both the intersubjective covariance and discursive constructions shows that despite his positivist leanings, Deutsch respected the researched reality too much to completely give up on the information which did not fit into his methodological framework. Thus, despite his pioneering work on the scientific methods, he remains a classical liberal who would not fit into a neoliberal approach. For him, shared ideas do constitute the social reality; they are not mere focal points ⁶⁷ which need to be taken into account only if some supposedly more important factors do not give a conclusive answer to our inquiries.

However, Deutsch occasionally makes claims going well beyond the liberal tradition, especially its assumption of the central role of the human reason. One of his early works observes that social mobilisation may lead either to nationalist discrimination or to supranationalist integration, but it struggles to answer the question which of the two prevails. ⁶⁸ With reference to the Czechoslovak thinker and statesman Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk he claims the answer lies outside of the reach of science and research. Instead, he believes that the question belongs to those essential political and economic questions which ‘are at bottom moral and spiritual’. ⁶⁹ Similarly, Deutsch complements his definition of people with reference to Saint Augustine, arguing that a people ‘is a community of rational beings united in the object of their love’. ⁷⁰ Following Masaryk he actually presents love as a condition for political community which would guarantee its resistance against great shocks and strains.

Even though love and spirituality are not the focus of Deutsch’s concept of the political community, the fact that Deutsch feels obliged to refer to them testifies to his awareness of their constitutive role. This awareness is also reflected in his definition of a security community as a group that has achieved ‘a sense of community’. ⁷¹ The sense of community, or we-feeling, for example in the form of national consciousness, ⁷² is a non-rational force without which communities cannot exist and which cannot be addressed without touching on love and violence as well as on spiritual and moral questions. Despite his best efforts, Deutsch cannot succeed at his positivist operationalisation of these concepts, and in the margins of his work he seems to recognise this.

Conclusion

Deutsch’s intellectual legacy deserves more attention than it has received so far. His conceptual work is especially important. In the study of the European integration, his concepts address those dimensions of the integration process which have been neglected both by scholars and by practitioners. Deutsch points out that common redistribution is as vital for the integration as a common market. This has been painfully revealed during the financial crisis which pointed to the lack of redistributive mechanisms and to a widespread resistance to the redistribution inside the EU. Also, integration cannot be limited to the development of vertical relations between the centre and different levels of units. It also requires horizontal relations. The horizontal ties need to be developed among the state institutions, and, more importantly, among the people. Some of the dilemmas of the current EU can be ascribed to its disturbing resemblance to the layer-cake model of mediaeval Europe and to the transition from specific institutions to diffuse ones.

Reading Deutsch can be inspiring in other respects, too. One can observe how Deutsch distils his Central European, Czechoslovak experience into abstract questions and concepts which are widely applicable, such as his conceptual distinctions between communities, political communities and security communities and his question about the appropriate scale of the political communities.

Also, more attention should be paid to the tension between his awareness that the study of communities requires an examination of values, love and spirituality, and his positivist, quantitative methods, which do not allow for such an examination. An interesting question for further research would be to what extent Deutsch takes over this unresolved tension from Masaryk, whom he admired and whose work suffered from the same problem. ⁷³ In the discipline of international relations (IR), it is reflected in the tension between neoliberalism and the classical liberal thinking, which has been rather neglected so far. The tension in Deutsch’s oeuvre invites us to a creative re-reading of it. This could revive the currently ailing liberal tradition in IR theory, which lost much of its intellectual fertility after having been put to a procrustean bed of a seemingly scientific debate. ⁷⁴