Reading the ongoing changes: European identity

Political Quarterly

Volumn 76, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 497-504

  Preston, Peter W ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 30344460690     PISSN: 00323179     EISSN: 1467923X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-923X.2005.00712.x     Document Type: Review

References (33)

1. The EU has grown in an accumulative fashion. Conventionally its growth is recorded in terms of the development of the institutional machinery by treatiesthus ECSC 1954, Treaty of Rome 1957, Single European Act 1985, Maastricht 1992, Amsterdam 1997, Nice 2000 and the further aspirations of the presently stymied 'constitution' - its precise character today is difficult to specify - best read as an accumulation of institutional competencies together ordering a nascent polity.
2. The former marks the end of the Cold War and the latter the American invasion of Iraq.
3. Charles de Gaulle's political doubts in the 1960s; Margaret Thatcher's similar doubts in the 1980s; a series of transient economic doubts (financing farming, industry, regions etcetera); occasional political squalls (issues of nuclear weapons, or surges in support for fringe nationalist parties).
4. An aspect of the 'standard' explanation of how the EU works - neo-functionalists urge attention to the mundane technical issues of integration, arguing that 'spill-over' will bring along the wider political/ cultural spheres; see B. Rosamund, Theories of European Integration, London, Palgrave, 2000.
5. See, for example, M. Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century, New York, Alfred Knopf, 1998;
6. A. Mayer, The Persistence of the Old Regime, New York, Croom Helm, 1981.
7. See Laura Cram, 'Integration theory and the study of European policy processes: towards a synthesis of approaches', in J. Richardson, ed., European Union: Power and Policy Making, London, Routledge, 2001.
8. One could allocate elites to categories (crudely): the original six, the prospective eastern European members, Scandinavians, and the British. Membership of the EU has carried different meanings for those who join and on this see M. Marcussen et al., 'Constructing Europe? The evolution of nation state identities', in T. Christiansen et al., eds, The Social Construction of Europe, London, Sage, 2001.
9. E. Gellner, Thought and Change, London, Weidenfeld, 1964, argues that grasping enfolding change is awkward as the end points are unclear and the criteria of judgement are also unclear, so it is unsettling.
10. See also P. Winch, The Idea of a Social Science and Its Relation to Philosophy, London, Routledge, 1958, 2nd edn 1990. A really new idea means we inhabit a new reality. Substantively, macro-structural patterns find expression in institutional apparatus and in turn we order our ordinary lives with reference to them. Macro/ micro interpenetrate: any abrupt change in enfolding circumstances will require a response; part necessary (the recognition/ understanding of changing circumstances) and part chosen (how to plot a route to the future).
11. See, for example, G. Delanty, Inventing Europe: Ideas, Identity and Reality, London, Macmillan, 1995.
12. Social scientists inhabit the systems they seek to understand; reflexivity is a necessary condition of scholarship. Ordinarily this would take the form individual reflection within the frame of scholarly exchanges; sets of assumptions would be critically investigated, the rational base of scholarship reinforced. With the idea of Europe the situation is rather different as change has been abrupt; the questions posed both novel and awkward. This paper offers an English subaltern perspective: the elites/masses of the United Kingdom have come to Europe late and the enthusiasts are still playing catch-up whilst others resist. My own view has been set down in P. W. Preston, Relocating England: Englishness in the New Europe, Manchester University Press, 2004.
13. Early efforts: see N. Davies, Europe: A History, London, Pimlico, 1997;
14. Delanty, Inventing Europe.
15. Thus seven out of ten German war-dead are buried in Eastern Europe.
16. Thus E. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century 1914-91, London, Michael Joseph, 1994, where the Soviet experiment is topped/tailed and allocated firmly to the past.
17. Thus recently expressed unease at American meddling in Ukraine and Central Asia.
18. See S. Croft et al., The Enlargement of Europe, Manchester University Press, 1990: various western European institutional machineries were extended to encompass the former eastern bloc but these US aspirations are unsustainable as the key organisation, NATO, is senescent.
19. T. Judt, The past is another country: myth and memory in post-war Europe', in J. W. Muller, ed., Memory and Power in Post War Europe, Cambridge University Press, 2002.
20. Davies, Europe: A History.
21. See J. le Carré, A Small Town in Germany, London, Pan, 1960.
22. On Blair's judgements see D. Marquand, New Statesman, March 2003;
23. see also R. Braithwaite, Prospect, March/April 2003.
24. P. Mayle, A Year in Provence, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 2000.
25. See J. G. Ballard, Cocaine Nights, London, Flamingo, 1996.
26. Reports in The Economist.
27. M. Billig, Banal Nationalism, London, Sage, 1995.
28. B. Laffan, R. O'Donnell and M. Smith, Europe's Experimental Union: Rethinking Integration, London, Routledge, 2000.
29. The Economist, early 2005.
30. Recently, ID cards (required by EU treaty, perhaps to be brought in under cover of 'global terrorism'); arms contracts (a French company is designing new aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy); and the British are participating in the European GPS system (with some funding from the PRC) (reports in The Economist).
31. Again, maybe shifting ground; for example, Polish farmers, distinctly anti-EU in the past, are now receiving CAP funding and their views are changing (report in The Economist).
32. One familiar spread of criticisms of sluggishness can be dealt with: in economic terms the EU is more than a match for the USA in size and performance (which is not to deny problems); and in political/social terms the EU has organised Maastricht 1992, Amsterdam 1997, Nice 2000; the euro is in circulation, new members taken in, others queuing, trade with China burgeons, Russia does the bulk of its trade with Europe (again, this is not to deny problems); thus one might ask critics who speak of the sluggish nature of the EU - how fast do you want to go?
33. Martin Jacques, 'No monopoly on modernity', Guardian, London, 5 February 2005.