‘The Empire Strikes Back!’ An Uncanny View of the European Union. Part I – Do We Need a Theory of the European Union?

Government and Opposition

Volumn 44, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 285-320

  Leca, Jean ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77950748178     PISSN: 0017257X     EISSN: 14777053     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1477-7053.2009.01289.x     Document Type: Review

References (221)

1. Stephen Wall, A Stranger in Europe: Britain and the EU from Thatcher to Blair, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008.
2. Even this crystal-clear judgement, derived from the making of the Amsterdam Treaty, needs some qualification when one looks at Mrs Thatcher's stance in 1986 (Single European Act), which represented the first break with national vetoes. In the name of a European interest, she wanted a European level of government ‘supranational’ enough to have the power to strike down national measures that were market-restricting (Leon Brittan, A Diet of Brussels, London, Little, Brown, 2000, pp. 35–39).
3. The point is made by Anand Menon, Europe: The State of the Union, London, Atlantic Books, 2008.
4. G. Falkner, O. Trebb, M. Hartlapp and S. Leiber (eds), Complying with Europe. EU Harmonization and Soft Law in the Member States, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005
5. M. Egenberg (ed.), Multilevel Union Administration: The Transformation of Executive Politics in Europe, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
6. Note that the task of transposition was much more efficiently carried out by Britain - ‘the good guy’ of the story with the Scandinavians - than by France, Greece etc. (Olivier Rozenberg and Yves Surel (eds), ‘Parlements et Union européenne’, special edition of Politique européenne, 9 (2003)
7. Digby Jones, ‘UK Parliamentary Scrutiny and EU Legislation’, London: Foreign Policy Centre, 2005, available at http://fpc.org.uk/fslblob/431.pdf). That emphasizes the difference between political evaluation and policy evaluation: Britain may be ‘the bad guy’ in the first domain (so Stephen Wall has decreed) and the law-abiding citizen (with some nuances pointed out by A. Menon) in the second one - if it has not opted out.
8. Norbert Elias, La société des individus, Paris, Fayard, 1987, pp. 288–289.
9. George Tsebelis and Geoffrey Garrett, ‘The Institutional Foundations of Intergovernmentalism and Supranationalism in the European Union’, International Organization, 55: 2 (2001), pp. 357–390.
10. Curiously, but not without seemingly good reasons, other scholars have deemed the Council ‘at times a supranational organization’ (W. Sandholz and A. S. Sweet, ‘Integration, Supranational Governance and the Institutionalization of the European Polity’, in W. Sandholz and A. S. Sweet (eds), Integration and Supranational Governance, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 1–26).
11. The point has been well made (although in too heavy a sociological jargon inspired by Bourdieu and the ‘social construction tradition’) in an unexpected domain: Europe's international relations (Yves Buchet de Neuilly, L'Europe de la politique étrangère, Paris, Economica, 2005).
12. At first glance that gives some credence to the apparently simple idea that there are different types of integration in different fields, and to the convoluted statement that ‘it is not inevitable that the EU fulfill, must fulfill, or should fulfill its global role like a state’ (Ben Tonra, ‘Conceptualizing the European Union Global Role’, in Michelle Cini and Angela K. Bourne (eds), Palgrave Advances in European Union Studies, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, p. 130).
13. On further reflection, however, we cannot eschew the question raised 25 years ago by Barry Buzan and still with us today: does Europe have a common security project? (Barry Buzan, Peoples, States and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations, Brighton, Harvester-Wheatsheaf, 1983) and is it enough to toy with the ‘difference engine’
14. (Ian Manners, ‘The “Difference Engine”: Constructing and Representing the International Identity of the European Union’, Journal of European Public Policy, 10 (2003), pp. 380–404)? To his credit, Zielonka answers the question squarely, we will see how later.
15. For example, Robert Badinter, Une constitution européenne, Paris, Fayard, 2002
16. Jean Touscoz, La constitution de l'Union européenne, Brussels, Bruyland, 2002.
17. The best study, albeit totally committed to the success of the endeavour, is Olivier Duhamel, Pour l'Europe. Le texte integral de la constitution explique et commente, Paris, Le Seuil, 2003.
18. The French political sociologists (and some others) seem to think that they have done their job in those matters by focusing on the social interests and strategies of the legal professions (Antonin Cohen and Antoine Vaucher (eds), ‘Law, Lawyers and Transnational Politics in the Production of Europe: Symposium’, special issue of Law and Social Inquiry, 32: 1 (2007)).
19. Most of these terms are too well known (‘multilevel governance’ - do we know a process of governance that would not be ‘multilevel’, apart from sheer tyranny? See, however, Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, ‘Unraveling the Central State, but How? Types of Multi-Level Governance’, American Political Science Review, 97: 2 (2003), pp. 233–243) or too modish and ad hoc (‘deliberative intergovernmentalism’, ‘reflexive governance’) to need a reference.
20. On comitology, see the seminal C. Joerges and J. Neyer, ‘Transforming Strategic Interaction into Deliberative Problem Solving: European Comitology in the Foodstuffs Sector’, Journal of European Public Policy, 4 (1997), pp. 609–625
21. C. Joerges and J. Neyer, ‘From Intergovernmental Bargaining to Deliberative Political Process: The Constitutionalization of Comitology’, European Law Journal, 3 (2001), pp. 273–299.
22. On agencies and networks, T. Börzel, ‘Organizing Babylon: On the Different Conceptions of Policy Networks’, Public Administration, 76: 2 (1998), pp. 253–273
23. Martin Shapiro, ‘The Problems of Independent Agencies in the United States and the European Union’, Journal of European Public Policy, 4: 2 (1997), pp. 276–291
24. G. D. Majone, ‘The New European Agencies: Regulation by Information’, Journal of European Public Policy, 4: 2 (1997), pp. 262–275
25. R. Dehousse, ‘Regulation by Networks in the European Community. The Role of European Agencies’, Journal of European Public Policy, 4: 2 (1997), pp. 246–261
26. E. Chiti, ‘Decentralisation and Integration in the Community Administrations: A New Perspective on European Agencies’, European Law Journal, 10 (2004), pp. 402–438.
27. On ‘shared governance’, Mark Thatcher, Internationalisation and Economic Institutions. Comparing European Experiences, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007
28. for a case of failed shared governance, Kevin Feather-stone and Dimitris Papadimitriou, ‘Manipulating Rules, Contesting Solutions: Europeanization and the Politics of Restructuring Olympic Airways’, Government and Opposition, 42: 1 (2007), pp. 46–72, stressing the growth of the steering capabilities of the Commission and the need to increase the governments' abilities to implement European measures.
29. For an idiosyncratic use of supranationalism, see Sabrina Regent, ‘The Open Method of Coordination: A New Supranational Form of Governance’, European Law Journal, 9 (2003), pp. 190–214
30. Erik Oddvar Eriksen, ‘Deliberative Supranationalism in the EU’, in E. O. Eriksen and J. E. Fossum (eds), Democracy in the European Union: Integration through Deliberation?, London, Routledge, 2000 (I suspect that the authors of the Preamble of the EDC treaty would be flabbergasted today; half a century makes all the difference).
31. On ‘directly deliberative polyarchy’, J. Cohen and C. Sabel, ‘Directly-Deliberative Polyarchy’, European Law Journal; 3 (1997), pp. 313–342
32. O. Gerstenberg and C. Sabel, ‘Directly-Deliberative Polyarchy: A Institutional Ideal for Europe?’, in C. Joerges and R. Dehousse (eds), Good Governance in Europe's Integrated Market, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002
33. C. Sabel and J. Zeitlin, ‘Learning from Difference: The New Architecture of Experimentalist Governance in the European Union’, European Law Journal, 14: 3 (2008), pp. 271–327, a model of well-crafted research weaving the pluralist and deliberative strands on a functional basis.
34. Nobody to this day has ventured ‘deliberative oligarchies’. For a theoretical overview, see B. Eberlein and D. Kerwer, ‘New Governance in the European Union: A Theoretical Perspective’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 42: 1 (2004), pp. 121–142.
35. Colin Hay and Ben Rosamond, ‘Globalisation, European Integration and the Discursive Construction of Economic Imperatives’, Journal of European Public Policy, 9: 2 (2002), pp. 147–167.
36. For example, Elie Cohen, L'ordre économique mondial. Essai sur les autorités de régulation, Paris, Fayard, 2001, pp. 211–212
37. Robert Boyer and Mario Dehove, ‘Du “gouvernement économique” au gouvernement tout court, vers un fédéralisme à l'européenne’, Critique internationale, 11 (2001), pp. 179–195.
38. On the crucial problem, should the economic policies of Europe be a matter of choice (that is, in Hayekian terms, of ‘legislation’), see Loukas Tsoukalis, What Kind of Europe?, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003.
39. I guess it is still Jacques Delors's deep-seated conviction that they should, within reason: J. Delors, Le nouveau concert européen, Paris, Odile Jacob, 1992 (for more on Delors, see Charles Grant, Delors architecte de l'Europe, Geneva, Georg, 1995 George Ross, Jacques Delors and European Integration, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005).
40. The angry leftist (and great global historian) Perry Anderson, who calls the EU ‘the last historical success of the bourgeoisie’, may be an exception, and yet I doubt it (Perry Anderson, ‘The Europe to Come’, London Review of Books, 25 January 1996, and ‘European Hypocrisies’, London Review of Books, 20 September 2007).
41. On the other side of the ideological spectrum the maverick V. Klaus stands out, but regardless of his uncertain constitutional status in the European system, the Czech president actually has another conception of what the EU should be: an EU where the small nation-states would not be squeezed between the big ones (through the increasing role of the Council and the new rules governing the composition of the Commission) and an indefinite and hyperactive ‘European citizenry’ (through the increasing role of the Parliament). This is also the concern of Jan Zielonka and Josep Colomer in the books reviewed here. It is obvious that they share Klaus's commitment to the highest degree of economic liberalism (V. Klaus, Renaissance: The Rebirth of Liberty at the Heart of Europe, Washington, DC, Cato Institute, 1997) but they draw different conclusions.
42. See Niilo Kauppi, ‘Bourdieu's Political Sociology and the Politics of European Integration’, Theory and Society, 32 (2003), pp. 775–789.
43. Christoph Schönberger, ‘European Citizenship as Federal Citizenship. Some Citizenship Lessons of Contemporary Federalism’, European Review of Public Law (Athens), 2007
44. Olivier Beaud, Théorie de la Fédération, Paris, PUF, 2007. The issue will be treated in the second part of this article.
45. Zaki Laïdi has made it clear that a ‘normative Power’ is a ‘Power’ that has definite strategies to implement through a set of incentives and rewards the rule of law for the well-being of humankind, which in my opinion raises a credibility problem (Z. Laïdi, La norme sans la force. L'énigme de la puissance européenne, 2nd edn, Paris, Presses de Sciences-po, 2008).
46. For a somewhat more idealist stance, see S. Lucarelli and I. Manners, Values and Principles in European Foreign Policy, London, Routledge, 2006
47. I. Manners, ‘The Normative Ethics of the European Union’, International Affairs, 81: 1 (2008), pp. 45–60.
48. E.g. Paul Pierson, ‘The Path to European Integration: A Historical Institutionalist Analysis’, Comparative Political Studies, 29: 2 (1996), pp. 123–163.
49. Paul Pierson, Politics in Time, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2004.
50. A way out of the conundrum can be found in Wolfgang Streek and Kathleen Thelen (eds), Beyond Continuity, New York, Oxford University Press, 2005 (or how successive layers of incremental changes may favour the supervening of fault lines and lead to ruptures. I wonder why I find this theory vaguely familiar).
51. Also, J. Lindner, ‘Institutional Stability and Change. Two Sides of the Same Coin’, Journal of European Public Policy, 10: 6 (2003), pp. 912–935.
52. D. Puchala, ‘Of Blind Men, Elephants and International Integration’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 10: 3 (1972), pp. 267–268.
53. Simon Hix has long been well aware of this ‘challenge’ (S. Hix, ‘The Study of the European Community: The Challenge to Comparative Politics’, West European Politics, 17 (1994), pp. 1–30
54. also A. Hurrell and A. Menon, ‘Politics Like Any Other? CP, IR and the Study of the EU’, West European Politics, 19: 2 (1996), pp. 386–340).
55. A shining exception is Stefano Bartolini, Restructuring Europe. Center Formation, System Building and Political Structuring: Between the Nation State and the European Union, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005 (already reviewed in Government and Opposition).
56. Bartolini is mercifully spared the infamous qualification of ‘methodological nationalism’ fulminated by Ulrich Beck. I am not certain Vivien Schmidt's excellent book would eschew the predicament, given her sympathy for a federal process in the making and her attempt to depict the EU as a ‘region-state’ to escape from the vagueness of her idea of ‘compound polity’ (Vivien Schmidt, Democracy in Europe. The EU and National Polities, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006. There may be some wishful thinking here).
57. Other interesting attempts have been made by Gary Marks with an attempt at delineating a ‘post-national state’ (‘A Third Lens: Comparing European Integration and State Building’, in Jytte Klausen and Louise Tilly (eds), European Integration in Historical Perspective, 1850 to Present, Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 1997
58. reprinted in Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, Multi-Level Government and European Integration, Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2001)
59. the political theorist Larry Siedentop (Democracy in Europe, London, Allen Lane, 2000, advocating a step-by-step federalism) and the political economist Gian Domenico Majone cited below. Notwithstanding, most of the Europeanists neglect, the political scientists of the 1950s-1980s (particularly the monumental and unfinished S. Finer, The History of Government, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997, A. Menon being the exception).
60. Bruno Palier, ‘Tracking the Evolution of a Single Instrument Can Reveal Profound Changes: The Case of Funded Pensions in France’, Governance, 20: 1 (2007), pp. 85–107.
61. Pierre Lascoumes and Patrick Le Galès, ‘Introduction: Understanding Public Policy through its Instruments’, Governance, 20: 1 (2007), pp. 1–21.
62. Such is the conclusion reached by the editors of one of the most influential books on this issue, H. Wallace, W. Wallace and M. Pollack (eds), Policy-making in the European Union, 5th edn, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 82, 487.
63. Claus Offe, ‘The Democratic Welfare State in an Integrating Europe’, in M. Greven and I. Pauly (eds), Democracy Beyond the State: The European Dilemma and the Emerging Global Order, Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, pp. 77–83.
64. The problem is, regardless of this project's paucity of symbols, that there are several European social models and different conceptions of a ‘social Europe’ (Fritz Scharpf, ‘The European Social Model. Coping with Diversity’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 40 (2002), pp. 645–670).
65. See Anthony Giddens, Patrick Diamond and Roger Liddle (eds), Global Europe, Social Europe, Cambridge, Polity, 2006 (sometimes deemed ‘the internationalization of Blairism’).
66. ‘Pillar’ has at least the advantage of relying on the governments' diplomatic language, yet it loses it when transferred to another realm of meaning (e.g. B. Laffan, ‘The European Union Polity: A Union of Regulative, Normative and Cognitive Pillars’, Journal of European Public Policy, 8: 5 (2001), pp. 721–722).
67. Andrew Moravcsik, ‘In Defence of the Democratic Deficit: Reassessing the Legitimacy of the European Union’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 40 (2002), pp. 603–624
68. Yves Mény, ‘De la democratie en Europe; Old Concepts and New Challenges’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 41 (2003), pp. 1–13.
69. In the second part of this article we will return to the general framework of Moravcsik's argument (A. Moravcsik, ‘Is There a Democratic Deficit in World Politics? A Framework for Analysis’, Government and Opposition, 39: 2 (2004)).
70. P. Favre, ‘Qui gouverne quand personne ne gouverne?’, in P. Favre, Y. Schemeil and J. Hayward (eds), Etre gouverné, Paris, Presses de Sciences-po, 2003.
71. C. Booker and R. North, The Great Deception: The Secret History of the EU, London, Continuum, 2003. The pamphlet reminds me of the French communist and leftist attacks on the ‘conspiracy’ for a Christian democrat Europe (‘le retour des Carolin-giens’) and De Gaulle's diatribes against ‘the Inspirer’, Jean Monnet, whom he had disliked since 1940.
72. J. Hayward (ed.), Leaderless Europe, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008.
73. S. Krasner (ed.), International Regimes, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1983. I doubt the extensive recourse by the German political scientists to the growing role of transnational groups and NGOs will suffice to overcome the objection: ‘how is it possible to make international regimes democratic?’.
74. See Klaus Dingwerth, The New Transnationalism. Transnational Governance and Democratic Legitimacy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007
75. Hartmut Wessler, Bernhard Peters, Michael Brugmans, Katharina Kleinen-Von Kôninglow and Stefanie Sifft, The Transnationalization of Public Spheres, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
76. See J. Duffield, ‘What are International Institutions?’, International Studies Review, 9 (2007), pp. 1–22.
77. ECJ, Case 294/83, ‘Les verts v. European Parliament’ (Jo Shaw, Law and the European Union, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2000).
78. Let's not forget, however, thatin the 1930s the great English lawyer Hersch Lauterpacht (later amemberofthe International Court of Justice) spoke of the ‘Covenant’ of the League of Nations as a ‘higher law’. The rationale is illustrated in Karen Alter, Establishing the Supremacy of European Law: The Making of an International Rule of Law in Europe, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001.
79. Wolfgang Streek, ‘Neo-Voluntarism: A New European Social Policy Regime’, in G. Marks, F. Scharpf, P. Schmitter and W. Streek (eds), Governance in the Emerging Euro-Polity, London, Sage, 1996, pp. 65–94.
80. Ernst Haas, The Uniting of Europe, London, Stevens, 1958
81. Beyond the Nation-State, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1964
82. Amitai Etzioni, Political Unification. The Epigenesis of Political Communities at the International Level, New York, Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1965
83. an interesting follow-up: A. Etzioni, Political Unification Revisited: On Building Supranational Communities, New York, Lexington Books, 2001
84. also A. Etzioni, From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.
85. Stanley Hoffmann, The European Sisyphus: Essays on Europe, 1964–1994, Boulder, CO, Westview, 1995
86. Andrew Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1998
87. A. Moravcsik and K. Nicolaïdis, ‘Explaining the Treaty of Amsterdam. Interests, Influence, Institutions’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 37: 1 (1999).
88. The language of strategic international interaction does not rule out the emergence of supranational institutions as Moravcsik has made clear, but it explains it by the interplay of the preferences of rulers faced with challenges they cannot eschew (after all, the Schuman Plan was an answer to Dean Acheson's question to Bevin and Schuman: ‘what should we do with Germany?’). See also the classic Alan Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation-State, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1992
89. the authoritative historical studies of D. Dinan, Europe Recast: A History of the European Union, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1994
90. P. Gerbet, La construction de l'Europe, Paris, A. Colin, 2007
91. B. Olivi and A. Giacone, L'Europe difficile, Paris, Gallimard, 2007
92. the wonderfully concise and accurate account of Menon, Europe, the State of the Union, pp. 31–69.
93. Small wonder that Language 1 is used to deal with defence policy and the symbols and resources of sovereignty and Language 2 with the process of ‘democratization’. Omar Issing, The Birth of the Euro, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2008
94. David Marsh, The Euro: The Politics of the New Global Currency, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2008
95. Martial Foucault, ‘Europe de la défense: quel processus d'allocation?’, Revue économique, 57: 3 (2006), pp. 108–117
96. M. Foucault and S. Cochinard, ‘Economics of Enhanced Cooperation: A European Defence Perspective’, Revue d'économie politique, special issue, 2 (2007)
97. Hans-Jorg Trenz and Klaus Eder, ‘The Democratizing Dynamics of a European Public Sphere: Towards a Theory of Democratic Functionalism’, European Journal of Social Theory, 7: 1 (2004), pp. 5–25.
98. See, however, on defence, Jolyon Howorth, Security and Defence Policy in the European Union, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007
99. Frédéric Mérand, European Defence Policy: Beyond the Nation State, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008.
100. On neofunctionalism, see A. Menon, ‘Review: Reformulating Neofunctionalism’, European Political Science, 6 (2007), pp. 361–366.
101. Zielonka quotes Hallstein after David Mitrany to expose a paradigm he finds somewhat inadequate today: David Mitrany, The Functional Theory of Politics, London, Martin Robertson, 1975, p. 249
102. also D. Mitrany, ‘The Prospect of European Integration: Federal or Functional?’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 4: 2 (1965), pp. 119–149.
103. On Hallstein's so-called ‘bicycle theory’ (‘keep moving or fall’), see W. Hallstein, United Europe. Challenge and Opportunity, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1962
104. ‘The European Economic Community’, Political Science Quarterly, 78: 2 (1963)
105. Michael Emerson, ‘1992 and After. The Bicycle Theory Rides Again’, Political Quarterly, 5: 3 (1998), pp. 289–299.
106. See, on the importance of ideas, Craig Parsons, A Certain Idea of Europe, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2003.
107. Ernst Haas, The Obsolescence of Regional Integration Theory, Berkeley, Institute of International Studies Working Papers, 1975.
108. F. Scharpf, Governing in Europe. Effective and Democratic?, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999.
109. The dissenters are usually non-Europeanists concerned with foreign policy issues, J.-M. Guéhenno, ‘A Foreign Policy in Search of a Polity’, in J. Zielonka (ed.), Paradoxes of European Foreign Policy, The Hague, Kluwer, 1998.
110. Very early, Johan Galtung, The European Community: A Superpower in the Making, London, Allen and Unwin, 1973, and more recently
111. Stephen Haseler, Super-State: The New Europe and its Challenge to America, London, I.B. Tauris, 2004
112. N. MacCormick, The European Superpower, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
113. Niall Ferguson in the book reviewed here makes mincemeat of this type of argument. However, that does not mean that in certain domains such as commercial negotiations or the application of the principle of precaution the EU is not a Power (Sophie Meunier, Trading Voices: The European Union in International Commercial Negotiations, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2005
114. Mark Shapiro, Exposing the Toxic of Everyday Products and What is at Stake for American Power, London, Chelsea Green, 2007).
115. For an elegant and provocative argument, see Göran Therborn, ‘Europe - Super Power or a Scandinavia of the World?’, in Mario Telo (ed.), European Union and New Regionalism: Regional Actors and Global Governance in a Post-hegemonic Era, Aldershot, Ashgate, 2001. In the second part of this article we will deal at greater length with the idea of ‘great civilian Power’.
116. Zielonka and Colomer are not keen on a European demos. On the concept of demoicracy, designed to bypass the now familiar statement that the EU is a kratos without a demos, see K. Nicolaïdis, ‘The Constitution as European Demoi-cracy?’, Federal Trust European Online Papers, 38: 3 (2003), p. 6, available at http:// www.fedtrust.co.uk/uploads/constitution/38_03.pdf. With all due respect I do not see how the concept improves on the old and precise concept of a ‘democratic federation’, save for the obvious fact that the so-called ‘European constitution’ is not federal.
117. Philippe Schmitter, ‘Some Alternative Futures for the European Polity and their Implications for European Public Policy’, in Yves Mény et al. (eds), Adjusting to Europe: The Impact of the European Union on National Institutions and Policies, London, Routledge, 1996, p. 26.
118. A. Hurrell, ‘One World? Many Worlds? The Place of Regions in the Study of International Society’, International Affairs, 83: 1 (2007), pp. 127–146.
119. Once again, the point is made forcefully by the political economists who denounce ‘anarchical institutional developments that cannot last in the long run’, G. Roland, ‘The New Governance of Europe: Parliamentary or Presidential?’, in Jordi Gual (ed.), Building a Dynamic Europe. The Key Policy Debates, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004, pp. 16–19.
120. The author makes a strong plea in favour of ‘a supranational organization’, even though I am not certain he gives it the sense it had in the preamble to the EDC treaty. In any case, he is with Simon Hix a resolute advocate of the powerful Parliament that Zielonka dislikes (Simon Hix, Abdul Noury and Gerard Roland, Democratic Politics in the European Parliament, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007).
121. Neither does Zielonka look convinced by Neil Walker's remark that accountability is a serious problem in a ‘crowded institutional context where popular affinity is contested or diluted and lines of responsibility are blurred’ (N. Walker, ‘Flexibility within a Metaconstitutional Frame’, in N. Walker, Constitutional Change in the EU: From Uniformity to Flexibility?, Oxford, Hart, 2000).
122. J. March and J. P. Olsen, Rediscovering Institutions. The Organizational Basis of Politics, New York, Free Press, 1989. On institutions as identity builders, Hugh Heclo, On Thinking Institutionally, London, Paradigm, 2008.
123. I would follow Adrian Favell's excessively scornful judgement (‘reminiscent of the “bad old days” of Parsonian political science’, A. Favell, ‘The Sociology of EU Politics’, in K. Jorgensen, M. Pollack and B. Rosamond (eds), Handbook of European Union Politics, London, Sage, 2006) only to the extent that it applies to the ideological debate masquerading as social science, while recalling that too many ‘social construc-tivists’ are doing just that.
124. On the constructivism's shortcomings, see A. Moravcsik, ‘Is Something Rotten in the State of Denmark? Constructivism and European Integration’, Journal of European Public Policy, 6: 4 (1999), pp. 669–681. We will return in the second part of this article to European identity, which is not a false problem to be ignored by hard-nosed sociologists.
125. F. Mérand, ‘Les institutionnalistes (américains) devraient-ils lire les sociologues (français)?’, Politique Européenne, 25 (2008), p. 32.
126. See also N. Fligstein and A. S. Sweet, ‘Constructing Markets and Politics: An Institutionalist Account of European Integration’, American Journal of Sociology, 107 (2002), pp. 1206–1243
127. N. Fligstein, Euroclash: The EU, European Identity and the Future of Europe, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008.
128. Helene Sjursen, ‘Why Expand? The Question of Legitimacy and Enlargement Policy’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 40: 3 (2002), pp. 491–513. Incidentally, this type of argument, cited by Zielonka, cannot support his ‘imperial’ claim to future enlargements.
129. It is still well worth reading the first chapter of Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1968.
130. Richard Broxton Onians, The Origins of the European Thought on the Body, The Mind, the Soul, the World, Time and Fate, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1951.
131. On these points, related to the dual notion of charisma (‘extraordinary’, ‘routinized’), Edward Shils, ‘Charisma, Order and Status’, American Journal of Sociology, 32 (1965), pp. 191–213
132. M. N. Eberz, W. Gehbart and A. Zingerle, Charisma, Theorie, Religion, Politik, Berlin, De Gruyter, 1993
133. Gunther Roth, ‘Charismatic Community, Charisma of Reason and the Counter Culture’, American Sociological Review (1973), pp. 148–157
134. Edward Tyriakian, ‘Collective Effervescence, Social Change and Charisma: Durkheim, Weber and 1989’, International Sociology, 10: 3 (1995), pp. 269–281
135. S. N. Eisenstadt, Max Weber on Charisma and Institution Building, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1968.
136. On the affinity of the Roman legal concept of majestas with the concept of sovereignty in Althusius and Bodin, see Pierre Mesnard, L'essor de la philosophie politique au XVI ème siècle, (1936), 3rd edn, Paris, Vrin, 1969, pp. 483 and passim.
137. C. Geertz, ‘Réflexions sur les symboliques du pouvoir’, in C. Geertz, Savoir local, savoir global. Les lieux du savoir, Paris, PUF, 1986, p. 183.
138. P. Schmitter, How to Democratize the European Union … and Why Bother? Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.
139. Sven Andersen and Tom Burns, ‘The European Union and the Erosion of Parliamentary Democracy: A Study of Post-parliamentary Governance’, in S. Andersen and K. Eliassen (eds), The European Union: How Democratic is It?, London, Sage, 1996, p. 230. We will look into the argument in the second part of this article to see if it still holds true - and if it matters.
140. Cf. Jon Pierre's classic definition: governance is about ‘sustaining coordination and coherence among a wide variety of actors with different purposes and objectives such as political actors and institutions, corporate interests, civil society, and transnational governments’ (J. Pierre, ’Understanding Governance’, in J. Pierre (ed.), Debating Governance: Authority, Steering and Democracy, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 3–4).
141. I do not see how such a definition can accommodate Jan Kooiman's three types of governance: ‘self-governance, co-governance, hierarchical governance’ (Jan Kooiman, Governing as Governance, London, Sage, 2003, pp. 77–132). Needless to say, there are different types and many other definitions of governance; we will return to that in the second part of the article.
142. See the severe diagnosis on the risk that governance ‘generates feelings of alienation’, Y. Papadopoulos, ‘Cooperative Forms of Governance: Problems of Democratic Accountability in Complex Environments’, European Journal of Political Research, 42: 4 (2003), pp. 473–501.
143. On the concept of ‘civil society’ I would commend, besides the social and political theorists' excellent contributions (Jean Cohen and Andrew Arato, Civil Society and Political Theory, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1992
144. Jeffrey Alexander, ‘The Paradoxes of Civil Society’, International Sociology, 12 (1997), pp. 115–133
145. Nancy Rosenblum and Robert Post (eds), Civil Society and Government, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2002), the precious collection of S. Kaviraj and S. Khilnani (eds), Civil Society; History and Possibilities, Cambridge, Polity, 2002.
146. For a careful survey ofthe interest groupsin the EU, see S. Saurugger and C. Woll, ‘Les groupes d'intérêt’, in C. Belot, P. Magnette and S. Saurugger (eds), Science politique de l'Union Européene, Paris, Economica, 2008, pp. 223–247
147. also S. Saurugger, ‘The Professionalisation of Interest Representation: A Problem for the Participation of Civil Society in EU Governance?’, in S. Stijn (ed.), European Governance and Civil Society, Cheltenham, Edward Elgar, 2006
148. S. Saurugger, ‘Democratic “Misfit”? Conceptions of Civil Society Participation in France and the EU’, Political Studies, 55: 2 (2007), pp. 384–404.
149. P. Schmitter, ‘Imagining the Future of the Euro-polity with the Help of New Concepts’, in Marks, Scharpf, Schmitter and Streek, Governance in the Emerging Euro-Polity, pp. 132–6).
150. On these and other related issues, see Paul Magnette, Le régime politique de l'Union Européenne, Paris, Presses de Sciences-po, 2006; (What is the European Union? Nature and Prospects, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)
151. Andy Smith, Le gouvernement de l'Europe. Une sociologie politique, Paris, Presses de Sciences-po, 2004.
152. Klausen and Tilly, European Integration.
153. Marks, ‘A Third Lens’, p. 39
154. Bartolini, Restructuring Europe, p. 388.
155. Yves Deloye has reproduced the two tables and suggested some interesting addenda to Marks's: Y. Deloye, ‘Socio-histoire’, in Belot, Magnette and Saurugger, Science politique, pp. 138–142.
156. This lack of coherence is sometimes recognized with an elegant euphemism, see Erik Oddvar Eriksen, Christian Joerges and Florian Rödl, Law, Democracy and Solidarity in a Post-National Union: The Unsettled Political Order of Europe, London, Routledge, 2008.
157. The very good (Eurosceptic?) book by J. Gillingham brings ample evidence of the impossibility of disentangling the two kinds of issues as long as no judgement has been passed on the desirability and nature of an European polity (J. Gillingham, European Integration 1950–2003: Superstate or New Market Economy?, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003).
158. J. P. Olsen, ‘What is a Legitimate Role for Euro-citizens?’, Comparative European Politics, 1: 1 (2003), pp. 91–108.
159. Peter Mair, ‘Political Opposition and the European Union’, Government and Opposition, 42: 1 (2007), p. 12.
160. No wonder that his intervention in the ‘democratic debate’ was one of the most relevant since, like his opponents (Moravcsik and Majone) he had a definite idea of the political identity of the EU; see S. Hix and A. Follesdal, ‘Why There is a Democratic Deficit in the EU: A Response to Moravcsik and Majone’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 43 (2005), pp. 533–562.
161. See for a good example, Ben Rosamond, Theories of European Integration, London, Macmillan, 2000, who asks the right question: what are we trying to explain? In front of this challenge, one of the pioneers of the theories of European integration became gradually disenchanted (Ernst Haas, ‘The Study of Regional Integration: Reflections on the Joy and Anguish of Pretheorizing’, in L. Lindberg and S. Scheingold (eds), European Integration: Theory and Research, Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1971 Haas, The Obsolescence of Regional Integration Theory).
162. For a useful compendium, see A. Wiener and T. Diez (eds), European Integration Theory, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004.
163. Michel Foucher, Fronts et frontières. Un tour du monde géo-politique, Paris, Fayard, 1988
164. Michel Foucher, L'obsession des frontières, Paris, Perrin, 2007
165. Adrian Smith, ‘Imagining Geographies of the “New Europe”: Geo-Economic Power and the New European Architecture of Integration’, Political Geography, 21: 5 (2002), pp. 647–670.
166. Fritz Scharpf, ‘Negative and Positive Integration in the Political Economy of the European Welfare State’, in Marks, Scharpf, Schmitter and Streek, Governance in the Emerging Euro-Polity.
167. Paul Reuter, ‘La conception du pouvoir politique dans le plan Schuman’, Revue française de science politique, 1: 1 (1950).
168. Although the distinction of the two liberties is due to Isaiah Berlin, it is worth recalling that Hayek, twenty years earlier, gave it its full extension in a book most remote from Berlin's pluralist frame. F. Hayek, The Economic Conditions of Interstate Federalism (1938), in F. Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order, London, Routledge, 1948.
169. Only Perry Anderson (who knows his enemies) and Glyn Morgan seem to have paid close attention to this book (Majone is more influenced by Wicksell). See Glyn Morgan, The Idea of a European Superstate. Public Justification and European Integration, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2005, pp. 72–85.
170. Note that many liberal economists of this persuasion are not ‘pro-European’ (J. Buchanan, P. Salin, J.-J. Rosa) or are cautious in their support (V. Curzon-Price or A. Alesina and F. Giavazzi, who dub the Lisbon agenda ‘close to Stalinism’, A. Alesina and F. Giavazzi, The Future of Europe: Reform or Decline, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2006). Instead, Zielonka, who seemingly shares their overall views, praises the Lisbon agenda.
171. Streek, ‘Neo-Voluntarism’.
172. For some valiant efforts to surmount the formidable obstacle of the intimate connection of the welfare state with the nation-state (stressed by T. H. Marshall in his famous text of 1948, Citizenhip and Social Class), see in the field of unemployment and social inclusion, where the EU has more basis for intervention, J. Zeitlin, P. Pochet and L. Magnusson (eds), The Open Method of Coordination in Action: The European Employment and Social Inclusion Strategies, Brussels, Peter Lang, 2005
173. E. Marlier, B. Atkinson, B. Cantillon and B. Nolan, The EU and Social Inclusion: Facing the Challenges, Bristol, Policy Press, 2007.
174. On social policies, besides the Esping-Andersen report to the Commission, see B. Palier, ‘Does Europe Matter? Européanisation et réforme des politiques sociales des pays de l'Union Européenne’, Politique européenne, 2 (2000)
175. L. Mandin and B. Palier, ‘L'Europe et les politiques sociales: vers une harmonisation cognitive des réponses nationales’, in C. Lequesne and Y. Surel (eds), L'intégration européenne, entre émergence institutionnelle et recomposition de l'Etat, Paris, Presses de Sciences-po, 2004
176. M. Ferrera, The Boundaries of Welfare: European Integration and the New Spatial Politics of Social Protection, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005
177. J. Zeitlin, ‘Social Europe and Experimental Governance: Toward a New Constitutional Compromise?’, in Grainne de Burca (ed.), EU Law and the Welfare State: In Search of Solidarity, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005
178. H. Obinger, S. Leibfried and F. Castles, Federalism and the Welfare State: New World and European Experiences, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005
179. M. Heidenreich and J. Zeitlin (eds), Changing European Employment and Welfare Regimes. The Influence of the Open Method of Coordination on National Reforms, London, Routledge, 2009
180. B. Palier, ‘L'europeanisation des reformes de la protection sociale’, Sociologie du travail, 2009 on the issue, we will see that Zielonka and Colomer have an elegant middle-of-the-road position between Hayek and the federalist-welfarists.
181. Among the excellent contributions, see J. P. Olsen, ‘The Many Faces of Europeanization’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 40: 5 (2002), pp. 921–952
182. J. P. Olsen, Exploring the Political Order of the EU, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007
183. K. Feath-erstone and C. Radaelli (eds), The Politics of Europeanisation, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003
184. P. Graziano and M. Vink (eds), Europeanization. New Research Agenda, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006
185. B. Palier, Y. Surel et al., L'Europe en action: l'européanisation dans une perspective comparée, Paris, l'Harmattan, 2008.
186. For a broader view including Central and Eastern Europe, see a useful review article, François Bafoil, ‘L'européanisation: héritages, résistances, mobilisations collectives et cohésion’, Critique internationale, 41 (2008), pp. 159–169.
187. C. Radaelli, ‘Europeanisation: Solution or Problem?’, in Cini and Bourne, Palgrave Advances in European Union Studies, p. 75.
188. B. Ackerman, The Future of the Liberal Revolution, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1992
189. D. Beetham and C. Lord, Legitimacy in the European Union, London, Longman, 1998
190. A. Weale and M. Nentwich (eds), Political Theory and the European Union: Legitimacy, Constitutional Choice, and Citizenship, London, Routledge, 1998
191. N. MacCormick, Questioning Sovereignty: Law, State, and the Nation in the European Commonwealth, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999
192. J.-M. Ferry, La question de l'Etat européen, Paris, Gallimard, 2000
193. L. Siedentop, Democracy in Europe, London, Allen Lane, 2000
194. H. Friese and P. Wagner, ‘Survey Article: The Nascent Political Philosophy of the European Polity’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 10 (2002), pp. 342–364
195. R. Bellamy and D. Castiglione, ‘Legitimising Euro-“Polity” and its “Regime”: The Normative Turn in EU Studies’, European Journal of Political Theory, 2 (2003), pp. 7–34
196. Neil Walker, ‘Constitutionalizing Enlargement, Enlarging Constitutionalism’, European Law Journal, 9 (2003), pp. 365–385
197. G. Morgan, The Idea of a European Superstate
198. A. Follesdal, ‘EU Legitimacy and Normative Political Theory’, in Cini and Bourne, Palgrave Advances in European Union Studies, pp. 150–173, among many others, including J. Habermas as the pole star.
199. P. Manent, La raison des nations. Réflexions sur la démocratie en Europe, Paris, Gallimard, 2006, is one of the very rare Eurosceptics in the subfield (with Noel Malcolm less isolated in Great Britain, N. Malcolm, ‘Sense on Sovereignty’, in M. Holmes (ed.), The Eurosceptic Reader, London, Macmillan, 1986.
200. In order to understand the background of this Hobbesian specialist's Euroscepticism, see N. Malcolm, Reason of State. Propaganda and the Thirty Years' War. An Unknown Translation by Thomas Hobbes, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007).
201. For example the carefully balanced arguments of David Miller, ‘The Nation-State: A Modest Defence’, in Chris Brown (ed.), Political Restructuring in Europe: Ethical Perspectives, London, Routledge, 1994
202. David Miller, On Nationality, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995.
203. Julien Freund, La fin de la Renaissance, Paris, PUF, 1984, p. 119.
204. (Menon, Europe: The State of the Union, pp. 9–30
205. referring to Edward Morse, Modernization and the Transformation of International Relations, New York, Free Press, 1976). The point is very well taken. Yet I wonder if this rational sentimentality stems only from the urge for self-promotion in democratic politics or if this political calculation is itself driven by the sheer impossibility of playing politics without some reference to ‘transcendent’ symbols.
206. Denis de Rougemont, Ecrits sur l'Europe, Neufchâtel, Editions de la Différence, 1994
207. Dusan Sidjanski (ed.), Dialogue des cultures à l'aube du XXI éme siècle. Hommage à Denis de Rougemont, Brussels, Bruyland, 2007 (with a contribution from Juan Manuel Barroso).
208. Peter Sloterdjick, Si l'Europe s'éveille, Paris, Mille et une nuits, 2003.
209. Morgan, The Idea of a European Superstate, p. 203.
210. See on this project, backed-up by Habermas's ‘Kantian republicanism’, J. Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1998.
211. the EU (made of states, if I am not mistaken) could accomplish the same object, see J. Habermas, ‘Toward a Cosmopolitan Europe’, Journal of Democracy, 14: 4 (2003), pp. 86–100.
212. I wonder what Peter Sloterdjick would think of that attempt to build a ‘cosmopolitan European’ Pantheon. On ‘constitutional patriotism’, initially invented in a German context, see J. Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1987
213. Jan-Werner Müller, Another Country: German Intellectuals, Unification and National Identity, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2000, pp. 90–119.
214. On the adequacy of such a ‘thin’ concept, see Charles Larmore, The Morals of Modernity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 205–221
215. Miller, On Nationality, pp. 163–165.
216. On the utility of the concept in a European context, Justine Lacroix and Paul Magnette, ‘Does Europe Need Constitutional Patriotism?’, European Political Science, 4: 2 (2005), pp. 209–218.
217. For an overview, J.-W. Muller, On Constitutional Patriotism, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2005. On a European civic identity, see B. Laffan, Constitution-Building in the European Union, Dublin, Institute for European Affairs, 1996.
218. On the ‘civic nation’, Bernard Yack, ‘The Myth of the Civic Nation’, and Kai Nielsen, ‘Cultural Nationalism. Neither Ethnic nor Civic’, both in R. Beiner (ed.), Theorizing Nationalism, Albany, NY, SUNY Press, 1999.
219. Jack Goody, The Theft of History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007.
220. As it is by Niilo Kauppi and Michael Rask Madsen in the conclusion of an otherwise very promising article (N. Kauppi and M. R. Madsen, ‘Institutions et acteurs: rationalité, réflexivité et analyse de l'UE’, Politique européenne, 25 (2008), p. 110).
221. I am indeed aware that highly respected sociologists are suspicious of ‘grand theories’, especially in historical sociology (John Goldthorpe, On Sociology, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, see pp. 28–64: ‘The Uses of History in Sociology: Reflections on Some Recent Tendencies’ and ‘Current Issues in Comparative Macrosociology’).