Revision summary
The EU is the deepest regional integration: single market, supranational law, euro for many, Schengen and enlargement conditionality. Success is clearest against ASEAN, SAARC, Mercosur and NAFTA/USMCA in legal depth and peace among former enemies. Challenges: Brexit, Hungarian and Polish rule-of-law conflicts, migration splits, Russia’s war and energy shock, and incomplete fiscal union. NATO still holds the hard-security core. Verdict: most successful experiment so far, under a live stress test of political consent.
Model answer
Introduction
- Regional integration is a crowded field: ASEAN, African Union, Mercosur, USMCA, SAARC. The claim that the European Union has so far been the most successful experiment is justified if success means depth of law, market and peace among former enemies. The same answer must account for recent challenges, or it becomes a brochure.
Body
Successes
The EU turned a coal-and-steel bargain among states that had destroyed each other twice in a century into a single market, a dense body of directly effective law, a Court of Justice, and, for many members, a single currency. Schengen made internal movement ordinary. Repeated enlargement spread democratic conditionality to Southern and then Eastern Europe. No other regional body has pooled so much regulatory sovereignty or produced so much intra-regional trade as a share of members’ lives. In the language of question 2(b), it is the home of the post-modern state. Compared with ASEAN’s informal consensus or SAARC’s freeze, the EU is a legal community, not only a meeting calendar.
Peace among France and Germany is the foundational success. The euro, for all its faults, is a political fact that NAFTA never attempted. Global standard-setting — data protection, chemicals, digital markets — gives the EU power beyond its military weight.
Recent challenges
Brexit was the first major secession. It showed that pooling is reversible and that identity politics can defeat market logic. Rule-of-law fights with Hungary and Poland exposed a gap: the Union has tools against backsliding, and it uses them slowly. Migration after 2015 split front-line and interior states and revived internal borders. Russia’s war on Ukraine ended the cheap-energy model and forced a security debate that NATO still dominates, which is the limit of EU strategic autonomy. Debt and inflation after the euro crisis and COVID strained North–South solidarity; joint borrowing was a step, not a finished federal treasury. Enlargement toward Ukraine and the Western Balkans will test absorption again.
These challenges are serious. They have not dissolved the single market or the Court. Success is therefore comparative and incomplete.
Verdict
- Yes: the EU remains the most successful regional integration experiment in depth and in transforming interstate war into domestic-style law. No: it is not a finished federation, and the 2010s–2020s have been a stress test of consent. Other regions should copy institutions and law, not a fantasy of frictionless identity.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD EU[European Union] --> S[Peace market law euro] EU --> CH[Brexit rule of law migration] CH --> W[Ukraine energy debt] S --> V[Most successful comparatively] W -.stresses.-> V
Conclusion
The EU’s successes are peace among historic enemies, a single market, supranational law and a currency union for many members. Recent challenges — Brexit, rule of law, migration, war and fiscal strain — show the limits of consent. As a regional experiment it is still first in class. It is not beyond examination.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
"India must strive to become a semi-permanent member of the UNSC, rather than a permanent member without the right to veto." Comment.
Next question in the 2024 paper (Q5). View answer →
-
Is ASEAN a fair comparison?
Yes as regionalism, no as legal depth. ASEAN succeeded as a diplomatic community with less pooling. The EU’s claim is about integration, not about every regional goal.
-
Did the EU fail in Ukraine?
It failed as a substitute for NATO hard power. It succeeded as a sanctions, finance and candidate-status actor. That split is the challenge.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2024 · Q1(c) · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
The expansionist tendencies of the current Russian regime indicate its intentions for the realization of a Greater Russia on the lines of the Soviet era. Comment. -
2024 · Q2(a) · PSIR GS 2 · 20 marks
"Deglobalisation is displacing globalisation." Comment. -
2024 · Q2(c) · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
What were the limitations of NAFTA? How did its replacement by the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement counter them? Explain. -
2024 · Q4(b) · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
The return of trade barriers and economic sanctions has diminished the spirit of GATT. In this context, discuss the factors contributing to the decline of WTO in recent times. -
2024 · Q5(d) · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
Discuss the rationale behind replacing the "Asia-Pacific" strategy with the new term "Indo-Pacific" strategy. -
2024 · Q7(c) · PSIR GS 2 · 15 marks
"India and USA have become such strong strategic partners that they need not become formal allies." Comment. -
2023 · Q1(a) · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
What are the crucial functions of empirical political theory in Comparative Politics? -
2023 · Q1(b) · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
What are the difficulties faced by a political theorist in comparing the States?
More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2024 · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
Discuss the interpretive approach to the study of comparative politics.
Approaches to the Study of International Relations
The interpretive approach studies political action as meaning in context, following Weber’s verstehen and later cultural and linguistic turns. It replies to behaviouralism’s search for covering laws by asking how votes, nations and authority are understood locally. Thick description, ethnography and discourse analysis are typical tools. It explains legitimacy, nationalism and everyday state practice that a constitution or a class map alone cannot supply. Limits are relativism, weak generalisation, and neglect of material and institutional constraint if used alone.
Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2024 · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
Explain the central tenets of the World-Systems Theory.
Approaches to the Study of International Relations
Wallerstein’s unit is the capitalist world-economy since the long sixteenth century, not the isolated nation-state. Core, semi-periphery and periphery form a durable three-tier division of labour. Unequal exchange and strong/weak states move surplus toward the core. The theory rejects modernisation’s national ladder and differs from Waltz’s interstate anarchy as first cause. Limits include economic determinism and underplaying state autonomy and culture; mobility exists but hierarchy persists.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2024 · PSIR GS 2 · 10 marks
The expansionist tendencies of the current Russian regime indicate its intentions for the realization of a Greater Russia on the lines of the Soviet era. Comment.
Comparative Politics
Russia’s wars in Georgia and Ukraine, plus pressure on Belarus and nuclear signalling, show expansionist intent in the post-Soviet space. The Greater Russia story denies full independence of neighbours, especially Ukraine. The Soviet analogy fits geography of control more than ideology: today’s regime is nationalist and oligarchic, not a communist world-system. Morgenthau and Waltz explain power and structure; they do not make the war merely defensive. Comment: accept expansionism; reject a simple USSR restoration.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.