Forming transnational political interdependence

International political integration is one component of international integration. It involves a group of nations coming together to regularly make and implement binding public decisions by means of collective institutions and/or processes rather than by formally autonomous means. It implies that a number of governments begin to create and to use common resources to be committed in the pursuit of certain common objectives and that they do so by foregoing some of the factual attributes of sovereignty and decision-making autonomy (in contrast to more classical modes of cooperation such as alliances or international organizations). It can therefore be defined as the evolution over time of a collective decision-making system among nations.

Four different types of political integration may be distinguished: institutional integration, policy integration, attitudinal integration, and the concept of a security community (in which there is reliable expectation of nonviolent relations).