Abstract

KAIPL, Esteban. European Union's regional integration process from a system theory perspective: Political reconfiguration in a post-national context. Temas debates (En línea) [online]. 2014, n.28, pp.129-148. ISSN 1853-984X.

Is there any innovative theoretical structure to analyze and describe regional integration processes? We aim to justify an affirmative answer taking into account Niklas Luhmann's modern systems theory but going further in the sense of a post-national perspective in order to describe the European Union's integration process. Luhmannian's concepts of politics were not completely developed in order to show grounds for this affirmation, but they set up a theoretical structure which allows us to introduce new elements and reformulate other notions to justify it. Face to the globalization process, regional integration processes expose a reality where uncertainty and risk are not unusual -we cannot know the whole reality, we cannot know the entire world and we cannot know the future. Keeping ourselves in descriptive terms, not stepping into the normative, we do not expect to give salvation formulas for integration processes nor world-level citizens, but we would expose an innovative way to explain social phenomena and, punctually, post-national political transition with a theory based on societal functional differentiation paradigm. If Nation State seems to be overtaken by new political structures, maybe it is time to expose a new theoretical proposal, a post-national and systemic interpretation of politics.

Keywords : Systems; Politics; Postnationalism; European Union; Regional integration; World-society.

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