With "Ifs" and ant could carry an elephant (Christine Porcaro, Week 6, Substantive)

After reading this week’s assignments I feel as if a game of charades could have described regional integration more clearly and efficiently than the actual readings themselves. Page after page left me asking, “Where the hell did these independent and dependant variables come from?” and “Why do all these theories seem to just to present a bunch of “ifs” that in the end if they aren’t perfectly aligned, everything will just lead to failure?” I mean really with “ifs” an ant could carry an elephant. When describing the Communication’s Approach Haas shows how this theory is stated, “If the rate of transactions is such and so, under conditions of balanced loads and capabilities, then elite responsiveness increases. If elite responsiveness increases then a security community will arise…” It just seems to me that this set up is weak. I never got the feeling that these theories can hold any water. There are examples of regional integration being a success (i.e. the European Union) but after reading this assignment I almost lost hope of there being more successes like it. Maybe it was in the way that it was presented. I just felt that every page was just filled with words that left me more confused than I began. After class on Tuesday I was able to see more clearly the distinction between Neo-Functionalism and Functionalism. I would just expect a scholar such as Haas to be able to present the material in a way that left the reader with more understanding of a topic that even he himself says is easily confused with other such topics as regional cooperation, regional organizations, regional systems, regional subsystems and regionalism. It just really sucks reading material and then finishing it and wondering what exactly the point of the readings were.