Functionalism proposes that international cooperation through non-political, technical organizations in areas like health, transportation, and economic issues can help reduce conflicts between states and lead to greater international integration and potentially an international government. It argues that addressing common problems through functional cooperation will increase interdependence and spill over into greater and deeper integration. While functionalism aims to build authority based on needs rather than politics, neo-functionalism focuses on regional integration and the momentum of integration spreading across issues over time through spill-over effects.

1. 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.