Abstract
This book is an original effort to think of the trajectory of European integration using a wide-reaching comparative temporal and historical framework that goes beyond implicit or explicit references to nation- or state-building as inevitable for the European Union (EU) (as much of the comparative literature does) or other preconceived notions of what the EU should look like. Instead, leveraging Gary Marks’ view that the EU is an ‘emerging polity’, the authors embark on comparative analyses centered on open-ended macro- and micro-level processes – in line, the editors suggest, with the French socio-histoire du politique school of thought. All this may sound overly abstract or theoretical – and, from this reviewer’s perspective, it could indeed be put into simpler language. But the effort overall has merit because in its simplest rendition the message is to be free to think broadly, and beyond established paradigms, about the European project. The chapters in Part I – by the editors and contributor Rainer Schützeichel – set the conceptual frame for the book fairly clearly and in promising fashion.
The results can be enlightening, as, for example, Gary Marks’ chapter, ‘The European Union in Historical Comparison: Achieving Scale by Accommodating Diversity’, shows. Marks’ claim is that the European effort ‘is shaped by a tension between scale and community’ (p. 49): it encompasses a large geographical space and very different populations. Its challenge, therefore, is to create some sort of unity and exercise of effective authority – neither of which can be achieved through the homogenization of cultures or coercive force. In this regard, the challenges the EU faces are not very different from those faced by empires such as the Roman and Frankish ones long ago, or Napoleon’s not so long ago, although the EU differs from those because of its more tolerant and accommodating approach. Marks concludes that the EU has achieved some successes – a noteworthy feat in historical terms – but that it also continues to face populist resistance that threatens its very existence. The chapter thus helps us see Europe in analytically (scale and community) and comparatively (empires) compelling terms. It represents a welcome departure from mainstream perspectives on the EU.
Marks’ chapter belongs to Part II of the book. Two equally interesting chapters join it. Sabine Frerichs and Teemu Juutilainen analyze European legal integration through private law – the very heart of the EU – by way of comparison with ancient Rome’s civil law. Both are examples of civil codes, and both have presented opportunities and limitations for what can be achieved. Kathleen McNamara’s chapter offers in turn an unprecedented cultural analysis of the EU’s built environment: the architecture of its buildings (hardly imposing) and their location (spread out, unlike what we often see in national capitals). These characteristics are far from random and symbolize instead, among other things, the EU’s need to co-exist with (and thus overlap with, rather than dominate) nation states. These are rather different chapters, but this is not necessarily a problem: it is an example of what sorts of analyses a wide, comparative perspective of the EU can generate.
Part III shifts the direction of analysis. Without giving a compelling explanation for the editors’ choice here, the chapters in this section focus on social policy-making, somewhat broadly writ. While surely important in substantive terms, the reader is left wondering why attention should go exclusively to this area. The editors suggest in the opening chapter this is because social policy is ‘key to a successful integration’ and concerns ‘issues of society formation’ while having to do with problems of ‘scaling and rescaling’ (pp. 15–16). But many other policy areas would surely qualify as such. The first chapter of Part III, by Bénédicte Zimmerman, raises further questions: the discussion is rather abstract, and the empirical spotlight is on Germany’s unemployment policies from 1870 to 1927 as a way of explicating French socio-histoire and ‘public-policy rescaling issues’ (p. 121). Perhaps this chapter would have been better placed earlier in the volume, or simply changed so as to address its relevance for the EU. Things become clearer with Monika Eigmüller and Nikola Tietze’s chapter, where the Europeanization of social policies is instructively scrutinized from the perspective of socio-histoire and its emphasis on processes and uncertainty: the genesis of institutionalized categories, the social actors involved, and the descriptions and solutions of problems.
The comparative angle returns with Stefanie Börner’s chapter on the causal connection between welfare programs (and their redistributive qualities) and the constitution of collective identities. Can the former promote the latter, rather than the reverse (as is typically assumed to have happened in 19th- and 20th-century nation states)? Börner compares the development of mutual benefit funds in 19th-century Germany and the United Kingdom to the EU’s welfare programs and finds that in all three cases programs came first and collective identities (even if not fully formed) followed. Policies, in other words, create spaces and opportunities for new actors, identities, and visions to emerge. Georg Vobruba’s subsequent and short chapter extends the comparative empirical angle: he asks whether the conditions that led to the emergence of social policies in 19th-century nation states exist in the EU today. His answer is that the continued existence of national social policy systems will likely preclude the rise of a European one (and will instead encourage some division of labor between national and EU institutions), although the current Eurocrisis may represent an opportunity for a shift upwards for actors hoping for further integration.
Part IV comprises the last three chapters. In the first chapter of the book, the editors suggest that in Part IV the attention goes to the societal changes resulting from increased Europeanization. In particular, they state, the focus is on the rise of cross-border categories of belonging and related changes in perspectives toward the new and broader European space. The chapters themselves seem a bit less cohesive than the editors promise, although they are certainly interesting. Hans-Jörg Trenz takes what we may call a meta-perspective on the narratives of Europeanization itself: how academics and others understand and describe the term. Two narratives are positive, and two are more negative (think euroscepticism). Although empirically very thin, the chapter does encourage us to think about the various discursive dimensions of the term Europeanization. Arnd Bauerkämper, in turn, identifies several stages (dating back to the late 18th century) in the emergence of a European civil society – a process driven ‘from below’ and particularly by migrants much more than is generally acknowledged. From this perspective, European integration is but the most recent step in a long historical process. The last chapter, by Donatella della Porta and Louisa Parks, examines the ‘perceptions and reactions to political opportunities by social movement groups at the level of the EU before and after the financial crisis’ (p. 256) along with the EU’s own reactions to the demands of those movements. The authors conclude that EU institutions have managed to marginalize social movements, reclaiming their own legitimacy in the post-crisis period by virtue of their market expertise and commitment to integration rather than cooperation with those movements or civil society more generally. In this regard, social movements in the European space have not found an institutionalized space as earlier movements did at the time of nation states’ formation.
Taken individually, the above chapters are often original and thought provoking – even if sometimes a bit too abstract and lacking in empirical support. The volume is definitely worth reading. What may be missing is more thematic cohesiveness. This is highlighted by the absence of a final chapter reflecting on the takeaways of the previous chapters and asserting with clarity where the book leaves us. Even so, this is a collection of stimulating and original pieces that scholars of European integration would do well to read.