The practical upshot of these differences is that EU governments have been able to reform the structural funds more readily, and with less incidence of path-dependence, than we find in the CAP, which has indeed resisted all but the most incremental change (see Chapters 7 and 9).
In sum, for both rational-choice and historical institutionalists, EU institutions ‘matter’, shaping both the policy process and policy outcomes in predictable ways, and indeed shaping the long-term process of European integration. In both cases, however, the effects of EU institutions are assumed to influence only the incentives confronting the various public and private actors-the actors themselves are assumed to remain unchanged in their fundamental preferences and identities. Indeed, despite their differences on substantive issues, liberal intergovernmentalism, rational-choice institutionalism, and most historical institutionalism arguably constitute a shared rationalist research agenda-a community of scholars operating from similar basic assumptions and seeking to test hypotheses about the most important determinants of European integration.
Constructivism, and reshaping European identities and preferences
Constructivist theory did not begin with the study of the EU-indeed, as Thomas Risse (2004) points out in an excellent survey, constructivism came to EU studies relatively late, with the publication of a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy on the ‘Social Construction of Europe’ in 1999. Yet since then constructivist theorists have been quick to apply their theoretical tools to the EU, promising to shed light on its potentially profound effects on the peoples and governments of Europe. Constructivism is a notoriously difficult theory to describe succinctly. Indeed, like rational choice, constructivism is not a substantive theory of European integration at all, but a broader ‘meta-theoretical’ orientation with implications for the study of the EU. As Risse (2004: 161) explains: