The Headless Union: Conditional Federalism and the Outsourced Container

Abstract

The European Union can constrain its members, but none of the ranking authorities proposed for it between 1950 and 1966 was built, and the ranking of defence against other ends has been held outside it. Whether it lacks the capacity to rank ends altogether, to subordinate one public purpose to another and carry the cost of doing so, is a comparative question. This paper asks where the idea of such a configuration came from, why it was selected, and on what conditions it rests. It works with a concept, the hub: a locus that ranks ends with public authority, distinguished from coordination networks and rule regimes. Recovering the work of Franz Oppenheimer, including two memoranda first printed in 1996, the paper shows that a headless European order was designed on purpose, but conditionally. Its elements were a self-governing society, free trade and harmonised law, and an apex reduced to experts. It rested on a container that kept defence, law and command language: first conceived as a Franco-German defence and customs union (1937/38), then as an armed league under the American president (1941/42). The line runs through Oppenheimer's students Alexander Rüstow and Ludwig Erhard and converges with Wilhelm Röpke; the paper claims ideational affinity, not policy authorship. The paper then explains the Union's form as the residue of mutual vetoes among the choosers of the 1950s and 1960s. French actors wanted a ranking authority but disagreed about its level; West German actors wanted none at European level; an American guarantor supplied the container. On this reading the functional "Monnet method" is part of the residue, not its cause. Post-war history ran through Oppenheimer's two container designs in sequence, and the provisional container became permanent. This historical argument rests on documented designs, choices and vetoes. Whether the configuration it explains is structurally distinctive is a further, comparative question: whether the Union lacks ranking capacity across domains and periods, whether the cases that motivate the concept actually meet it, and under what conditions such capacity forms and dissolves. The paper states these questions, offers an open diagnostic, and sets out the design of a comparative test.