PLANNING FOR A SUSTAINABLE EUROPE? - TU Berlin

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beliefs, notions of validity and policy practices that the Directorate General for
Environment, and both of them are in turn different from the Enlargement Directorate. 19
In the end, the concept of epistemic communities remains inchoate and lacks
rigorous empirical testing, most likely due to the methodological challenge of
operationalizing it, i.e. of identifying, and gaining access to those suspected to be
members of an epistemic community (Dunlop 2000). Also, the concept itself was
developed in the context of a strand of political science (neo-functionalism) that tends to
be overly idealistic about the possibilities of swaying European policy-makers away from
short-term interest calculation by means of developing benign “knowledge” and
“ideas.” 20 Haas’ conceptualization has further been accused of being overly positivistic,
particularly in his portrayal of epistemic communities as being superior stakeholders to
social movements due to their shared belief systems and knowledge bases (Toke 1999).
The most debated, ultimately unresolved, question in the literature remains the relation of
epistemic communities to other policy actors.
Together, this explains why my subsequent analysis of EU decision-making does
not make any further reference to the (rapidly growing) literature on epistemic
19 In response, defendants of the “epistemic communities” approach could still argue that it is then possible
to identify several different communities housed under the common roof of the Commission of the
European Communities. This is a possible but increasingly far-fetched argument, especially since even the
pertaining literature typically sees epistemic communities as acting mostly from outside the Commission
(for a contrasting account, see Drake and Nicolaidis 1992; e.g. Peterson and Bomberg 1999; Radaelli
1999). It is interesting to note that based on such an interpretation of multiple epistemic communities
influencing EU policy-making, Zito (2001) shows how an epistemic community gathered around the (ecomodernist)
principle of “critical loads” influenced EU policy on acid rain. Zito also introduces a simpler
definition of an epistemic community as “a network of professionals sharing a common worldview” (p.
588).
20 Neofunctionalism is the most influential of the “classical” theories of European integration. Developed
initially by Ernst Haas and others in the 1950s and 1960s, early account particularly focused on the selfreinforcing
tendencies of integration, often emphasizing the importance of a technocratic consensus (see
e.g. Haas 1958; Haas 1968; Pentland 1973 esp Ch 4). For a recent textbook article see Cram (1996), for a
critique see Moravcsik (1998, especially 13ff).