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That the Lisbon Treaty lays the foundation for a supranational asylum and immigration policy is surprising, even more so for Liberal Intergovernmentalism (LI), whose founder Andrew Moravcsik predicts that no such development will take place. While the article uses LI as its point of departure, it shows that it runs into problems with regards to the policy area of asylum and immigration. The article therefore turns to the (neo-)functionalist concept of spillover. While working with the concept, it was deemed necessary to create a more coherent typology of different spillovers. The article suggests that the concept of spillover may be both descriptive and explanatory. With regards to descriptive spillover, it seems valuable to differentiate between widening and deepening spillovers, but concerning explanatory spillovers, more options became visible: there are unintended or intended functional spillovers, as well as unintended political, cultivated and social spillovers. The argument is illustrated through a detailed study of Sweden – a 'reluctant European' that within the area of asylum and immigration made a fundamental U-turn with regards to a supranationalism, a change that can be described as a social spillover.

Despite a general acknowledgement that knowledge about identities is essential for understanding international relations, surprisingly little has been written about what actually activates one of a state's many identities and not another. More generally, the article suggests that situational relevance and commitment are of importance. More specifically, it is suggested that a policy area's legitimisation is a factor that may affect the commitment to a collective identity. The argument is illustrated by the case of 'Norden', as the inhabitants of Denmark, Iceland, Norway and Sweden call their territory. The end of the Cold War and Sweden and Finland joining Denmark in the European Union (EU) put Nordic identity under severe stress in the beginning of the 1990s. As shown, this collective identity was intensely active in the case of the Nordic Passport Union, but less so in the case of environmental negotiations.

In Sweden, there is a consensus that Swedish membership of substantial parts of the European Union (EU) entails cooperation that at least in parts implies supranationalism. Due to this consensus one may assume that there is also some sort of common understanding of the concept of supranationalism. However, while many researchers includes majority voting in their definition of supranationalism, this is rejected outright by others. As shown, both sides have a point and this article, therefore, suggests that three dimensions are noteworthy when it comes to supranationalism: (1) when states have transferred the right to exercise public power to an organization the states cannot make decisions alone, (2) the institution is autonomous and makes binding decisions, (3) the decisions taken by the institution have effective precedence over national ones. Adapted from the source document.