Regional Integration and the Evolution of the European Polity: On the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Journal of Common Market Studies

This special issue commemorates the fiftieth anniversary of the Journal of Common Market Studies. Over five decades, the journal has charted the deep transformations wrought by integration in Europe: of markets and economic organization; law and courts; party systems and interest group politics; and of regulation, both public and private. Along the way, scholarship on the EC/EU gradually turned to the pervasive impact of integration and supranational governance on national structures; to how the various levels of decision making interact to produce and implement policy; and to public opinion, cultural identity and the deep normative questions concerning how to assess the political legitimacy of the EU. Once catering to a relatively small community of specialists, there is now virtually no important strain of social scientific, legal or historical research on contemporary Europe that falls outside the journal’s purview. Arguably, JCMS is the most important and successful interdisciplinary forum for the publication of research on any single polity – in this case, the European Union. Although much has changed, major themes developed in this special issue found expression in the early journal. The first twenty issues (1962–1967) contained articles on voting procedures (Sidjanski, 1962), the state of public opinion on the European Community (Gallup, 1963); the concept and practice of ‘supranational’ authority (Rosenstiel, 1963; Deutsch, 1963); and supposed distinctions between the process of ‘functional integration’ and that of federalization (Mitrany 1965). One finds articles examining a ‘constitutional crisis’ (Lambert, 1966) and a ‘crisis of national identity’ (Kitzinger, 1967), an attempt to ‘model’ the EC as a ‘political system’ (Lindberg, 1967) and assessments of the outlook for monetary integration (Triffin, 1965; Gonzalez del Valle, 1966). The lead article published in the first issue of Volume 1 was dedicated to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) (McMahon, 1962), followed by one on the ‘nature and functioning’ of the preliminary reference system (Berrios Martinez, 1966). The journal also devoted substantial space to scholarship on regional integration elsewhere: in Latin America (Griffin and Ffrench-Davis, 1965; Navarrete, 1965), Asia (Stonham, 1967) and the Arab World (Diab, 1966). For this special issue, we commissioned an eclectic mix of articles that would reflect some of the rich diversity (substantive, theoretical, methodological) that today characterizes the study of European integration. We encouraged contributors to develop topics of broad empirical interest, to assess the evolution of the relevant scholarship and to extend analysis, as far as possible, across the life of the EC/EU. Although the articles focus on Europe, we recognize and celebrate the journal’s pioneering role as a promoter of research JCMS 2012 Volume 50. Number S1. pp. 1–17