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

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2013

Jean Leca
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Government and Opposition , Volume 44 , Issue 3 , 2009 , pp. 285 - 320
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Copyright © The Author(s) 2009.

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References

1 Wall, Stephen, A Stranger in Europe: Britain and the EU from Thatcher to Blair, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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 ( Brittan, Leon, A Diet of Brussels, London, Little, Brown, 2000, pp. 35–9).Google Scholar

3 The point is made by Menon, Anand, Europe: The State of the Union, London, Atlantic Books, 2008.Google Scholar

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; M. Egenberg (ed.), Multilevel Union Administration: The Transformation of Executive Politics in Europe, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. 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); 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.Google Scholar

5 That raises some awkward problems to be examined in the second part ot this article.Google Scholar

6 Norbert Elias, La société des individus, Paris, Fayard, 1987, pp. 288–9.Google Scholar

7 Tsebelis, George and Garrett, Geoffrey, ‘The Institutional Foundations of Intergovernmentalism and Supranationalism in the European Union’, International Organization, 55: 2 (2001), pp. 357–90.CrossRefGoogle ScholarCuriously, 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).

8 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). 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). 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’ ( Manners, Ian, ‘The “Difference Engine”: Constructing and Representing the International Identity of the European Union’, Journal of European Public Policy, 10 (2003), pp. 380–404)?CrossRefGoogle Scholar To his credit, Zielonka answers the question squarely, we will see how later.

9 For example, Robert Badinter, Une constitution européenne, Paris, Fayard, 2002; Jean Touscoz, La constitution de l'Union européenne, Brussels, Bruyland, 2002. 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. 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 ( Cohen, Antonin and Vaucher, Antoine (eds), ‘Law, Lawyers and Transnational Politics in the Production of Europe: Symposium’, special issue ofLaw and Social Inquiry, 32: 1 (2007)).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 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, Hooghe, Liesbet and Marks, Gary, ‘Unraveling the Central State, but How? Types of Multi-Level Governance’, American Political Science Review, 97: 2 (2003), pp. 233–43)Google Scholar or too modish and ad hoc ('deliberative intergovernmentalism’, ‘reflexive governance’) to need a reference. On comitology, see the seminal and On agencies and networks, On ‘shared governance’, Mark Thatcher, Internationalisation and Economic Institutions. Comparing European Experiences, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007; for a case of failed shared governance, stressing the growth of the steering capabilities of the Commission and the need to increase the governments' abilities to implement European measures. For an idiosyncratic use of supranationalism, see also 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). On ‘directly deliberative polyarchy’, 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; a model of well-crafted research weaving the pluralist and deliberative strands on a functional basis. Nobody to this day has ventured ‘deliberative oligarchies’. For a theoretical overview, see

11 Hay, Colin and Rosamond, Ben, ‘Globalisation, European Integration and the Discursive Construction of Economic Imperatives’, Journal of European Public Policy, 9: 2 (2002), pp. 147–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 For example, Elie Cohen, L'ordre économique mondial. Essai sur les autorités de régulation, Paris, Fayard, 2001, pp. 211–12; Boyer, Robert and Dehove, Mario, ‘Du “gouvernement économique” au gouvernement tout court, vers un fédéralisme à l'européenne’, Critique internationale, 11 (2001), pp. 179–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarOn 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. 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).

13 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). 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.Google Scholar

14 See Kauppi, Niilo, ‘Bourdieu's Political Sociology and the Politics of European Integration’, Theory and Society, 32 (2003), pp. 775–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 Christoph Schönberger, ‘European Citizenship as Federal Citizenship. Some Citizenship Lessons of Contemporary Federalism’, European Review of Public Law (Athens), 2007; Olivier Beaud, Théorie de la Fédération, Paris, PUF, 2007. The issue will be treated in the second part of this article.Google Scholar

16 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). For a somewhat more idealist stance, see S. Lucarelli and I. Manners, Values and Principles in European Foreign Policy, London, Routledge, 2006; Manners, I., ‘The Normative Ethics of the European Union’, International Affairs, 81: 1 (2008), pp. 45–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 E.g. Pierson, Paul, ‘The Path to European Integration: A Historical Institutionalist Analysis’, Comparative Political Studies, 29: 2 (1996), pp. 123–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18 Paul Pierson, Politics in Time, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2004. 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). Also, Lindner, J., ‘Institutional Stability and Change. Two Sides of the Same Coin’, Journal of European Public Policy, 10: 6 (2003), pp. 912–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Puchala, D., ‘Of Blind Men, Elephants and International Integration’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 10: 3 (1972), pp. 267–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20 Simon Hix has long been well aware of this ‘challenge’ ( Hix, S., ‘The Study of the European Community: The Challenge to Comparative Politics’, West European Politics, 17 (1994), pp. 1–30; alsoCrossRefGoogle ScholarA 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). 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). 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, reprinted in Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, Multi-Level Government and European Integration, Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 2001), 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).

21 Palier, Bruno, ‘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.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Lascoumes, Pierre and Le Galès, Patrick, ‘Introduction: Understanding Public Policy through its Instruments’, Governance, 20: 1 (2007), pp. 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 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.Google Scholar

24 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. 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’ ( Scharpf, Fritz, ‘The European Social Model. Coping with Diversity’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 40 (2002), pp. 645–70).CrossRefGoogle Scholar See Anthony Giddens, Patrick Diamond and Roger Liddle (eds), Global Europe, Social Europe, Cambridge, Polity, 2006 (sometimes deemed ‘the internationalization of Blairism’).

25 ‘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. Laffan, B., ‘The European Union Polity: A Union of Regulative, Normative and Cognitive Pillars’, Journal of European Public Policy, 8: 5 (2001), pp. 721–2).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Moravcsik, Andrew, ‘In Defence of the Democratic Deficit: Reassessing the Legitimacy of the European Union’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 40 (2002), pp. 603–24;CrossRefGoogle Scholar In the second part of this article we will return to the general framework of Moravcsik's argument (

27 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.Google Scholar

28 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 Carolingiens’) and De Gaulle's diatribes against ‘the Inspirer’, Jean Monnet, whom he had disliked since 1940.Google Scholar

29 J. Hayward (ed.), Leaderless Europe, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008.Google Scholar

30 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?’. See Klaus Dingwerth, The New Transnationalism. Transnational Governance and Democratic Legitimacy, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007; Hartmut Wessler, Bernhard Peters, Michael Brugmans, Katharina Kleinen-Von Kôninglow and Stefanie Sifft, The Transnationalization of Public Spheres, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.Google Scholar

31 I owe this pun to my inimitable friend Jack Hayward.Google Scholar

32 See Duffield, J., ‘What are International Institutions?’, International Studies Review, 9 (2007), pp. 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

33 ECJ, Case 294/83, ‘Les verts v. European Parliament’ (Jo Shaw, Law and the European Union, Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2000). Let's not forget, however, that in the 1930s the great English lawyer Hersch Lauterpacht (later a member of the 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.Google Scholar

34 Streek, Wolfgang, ‘Neo-Voluntarism: A New European Social Policy Regime’, in Marks, G., Scharpf, F., Schmitter, P. and Streek, W. (eds), Governance in the Emerging Euro-Polity, London, Sage, 1996, pp. 65–94.Google Scholar

35 For Germany an additional motive of this ‘new’ Euro-scepticism would be the conviction that they, the ‘law-abiding’ European citizens, should not foot the bill for the ‘free riders’ and the non-compliant members.Google Scholar

36 Ernst Haas, The Uniting of Europe, London, Stevens, 1958; Beyond the Nation-State, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1964; Amitai Etzioni, Political Unification. The Epigenesis of Political Communities at the International Level, New York, Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1965; and an interesting follow-up: A. Etzioni, Political Unification Revisited: On Building Supranational Communities, New York, Lexington Books, 2001; also A. Etzioni, From Empire to Community: A New Approach to International Relations, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.Google Scholar

37 Stanley Hoffmann, The European Sisyphus: Essays on Europe, 1964–1994, Boulder, CO, Westview, 1995; Andrew Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1998; Moravcsik, A. and Nicolaïdis, K., ‘Explaining the Treaty of Amsterdam. Interests, Influence, Institutions’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 37: 1 (1999).CrossRefGoogle Scholar 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; the authoritative historical studies of D. Dinan, Europe Recast: A History of the European Union, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1994; P. Gerbet, La construction de l'Europe, Paris, A. Colin, 2007; B. Olivi and A. Giacone, L'Europe difficile, Paris, Gallimard, 2007; and the wonderfully concise and accurate account of Menon, Europe, the State of the Union, pp. 31–69.

38 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; David Marsh, The Euro: The Politics of the New Global Currency, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2008; Foucault, Martial, ‘Europe de la défense: quel processus d'allocation?’, Revue économique, 57: 3 (2006), pp. 108–17; andCrossRefGoogle ScholarSee, however, on defence, Jolyon Howorth, Security and Defence Policy in the European Union, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007; Frédéric Mérand, European Defence Policy: Beyond the Nation State, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008. On neofunctionalism, see

39 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; also Mitrany, D., ‘The Prospect of European Integration: Federal or Functional?’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 4: 2 (1965), pp. 119–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar 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, and ‘The European Economic Community’, Political Science Quarterly, 78: 2 (1963); Michael Emerson, ‘1992 and After. The Bicycle Theory Rides Again’, Political Quarterly, 5: 3 (1998), pp. 289–99.

40 See, on the importance of ideas, Parsons, Craig, A Certain Idea of Europe, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 2003.Google Scholar

41 Haas, Ernst, The Obsolescence of Regional Integration Theory, Berkeley, Institute of International Studies Working Papers, 1975.Google Scholar

42 Scharpf, F., Governing in Europe. Effective and Democratic?, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

43 The dissenters are usually non-Europeanists concerned with foreign policy issues, Guéhenno, J.-M., ‘A Foreign Policy in Search of a Polity’, in Zielonka, J. (ed.), Paradoxes of European Foreign Policy, The Hague, Kluwer, 1998.Google Scholar

44 Very early, Johan Galtung, The European Community: A Superpower in the Making, London, Allen and Unwin, 1973, and more recently, Stephen Haseler, Super-State: The New Europe and its Challenge to America, London, I.B. Tauris, 2004; N. MacCormick, The European Superpower, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 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; Mark Shapiro, Exposing the Toxic of Everyday Products and What is at Stake for American Power, London, Chelsea Green, 2007). 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’.Google Scholar

45 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 Nicolaïdis, K., ‘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.Google Scholar

46 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.Google Scholar

47 Hurrell, A., ‘One World? Many Worlds? The Place of Regions in the Study of International Society’, International Affairs, 83: 1 (2007), pp. 127–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 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. 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). 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).Google Scholar

49 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.Google Scholar

50 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 constructivists’ are doing just that. On the constructivism's shortcomings, see Moravcsik, A., ‘Is Something Rotten in the State of Denmark? Constructivism and European Integration’, Journal of European Public Policy, 6: 4 (1999), pp. 669–81.CrossRefGoogle ScholarWe 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.

51 Mérand, F., ‘Les institutionnalistes (américains) devraient-ils lire les sociologues (français)?’, Politique Européenne, 25 (2008), p. 32. See alsoCrossRefGoogle ScholarN. Fligstein, Euroclash: The EU, European Identity and the Future of Europe, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008.

52 Sjursen, Helene, ‘Why Expand? The Question of Legitimacy and Enlargement Policy’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 40: 3 (2002), pp. 491–513.CrossRefGoogle ScholarIncidentally, this type of argument, cited by Zielonka, cannot support his ‘imperial’ claim to future enlargements.

53 It is still well worth reading the first chapter of Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1968. I feel tempted to reverse the title of the otherwise excellent article by F. Mérand, ‘Les institutionnalistes (américains)…’, cited above. Besides, the new sociologists should read the old French institutionalists such as the lawyer Maurice Hauriou, and they would be well advised to revisit the great lawyers from the recent past: Ivor Jennings, Georges Scelle and Paul Reuter without reducing their ideas to a mere product of their ideological origins, positions in a ‘champ’ and professional strategies.Google Scholar

54 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.Google Scholar

55 On these points, related to the dual notion of charisma (‘extraordinary’, ‘routinized’), Shils, Edward, ‘Charisma, Order and Status’, American Journal of Sociology, 32 (1965), pp. 191–213;Google Scholar M. N. Eberz, W. Gehbart and A. Zingerle, Charisma, Theorie, Religion, Politik, Berlin, De Gruyter, 1993; Gunther Roth, ‘Charismatic Community, Charisma of Reason and the Counter Culture’, American Sociological Review (1973), pp. 148–57; S. N. Eisenstadt, Max Weber on Charisma and Institution Building, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1968.

56 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 XVIème siècle, (1936), 3rd edn, Paris, Vrin, 1969, pp. 483 and passim.Google Scholar

57 C. Geertz, ‘Réflexions sur les symboliques du pouvoir’, in C. Geertz, Savoir local, savoir global. Les lieux du savoir, Paris, PUF, 1986, p. 183.Google Scholar

58 Schmitter, P., How to Democratize the European Union…and Why Bother? Lanham, MD, Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.Google Scholar

59 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.Google Scholar

60 Cf. Jon Pierre's classic definition: governance is about ‘sustaining co-ordination 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). 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.Google Scholar

61 See the severe diagnosis on the risk that governance ‘generates feelings of alienation’, Papadopoulos, Y., ‘Cooperative Forms of Governance: Problems of Democratic Accountability in Complex Environments’, European Journal of Political Research, 42: 4 (2003), pp. 473–501.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

62 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; Alexander, Jeffrey, ‘The Paradoxes of Civil Society’, International Sociology, 12 (1997), pp. 115–33;CrossRefGoogle Scholar 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. For a careful survey of the interest groups in 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. 223–47; 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; and

63 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).Google Scholar

64 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); Andy Smith, Le gouvernement de l'Europe. Une sociologie politique, Paris, Presses de Sciences-po, 2004.Google Scholar

65 Klausen and Tilly, European Integration. Google Scholar

66 Marks, ‘A Third Lens’, p. 39; Bartolini, Restructuring Europe, p. 388. 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. 138–42. 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.Google Scholar

67 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).Google Scholar

68 Olsen, J. P., ‘What is a Legitimate Role for Euro-citizens?’, Comparative European Politics, 1: 1 (2003), pp. 91–108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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70 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 Hix, S. and Follesdal, A., ‘Why There is a Democratic Deficit in the EU: A Response to Moravcsik and Majone’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 43 (2005), pp. 533–62.Google Scholar

71 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; and Haas, The Obsolescence of Regional Integration Theory). For a useful compendium, see A. Wiener and T. Diez (eds), European Integration Theory, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004.Google Scholar

72 Michel Foucher, Fronts et frontières. Un tour du monde géo-politique, Paris, Fayard, 1988; and Michel Foucher, L'obsession des frontières, Paris, Perrin, 2007; Smith, Adrian, ‘Imagining Geographies of the “New Europe”: Geo-Economic Power and the New European Architecture of Integration’, Political Geography, 21: 5 (2002), pp. 647–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

73 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.Google Scholar

74 Reuter, Paul, ‘La conception du pouvoir politique dans le plan Schuman’, Revue française de science politique, 1: 1 (1950).Google Scholar

75 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. 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. 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.Google Scholar

76 Streek, ‘Neo-Voluntarism’.Google Scholar

77 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; E. Marlier, B. Atkinson, B. Cantillon and B. Nolan, The EU and Social Inclusion: Facing the Challenges, Bristol, Policy Press, 2007. 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); 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; M. Ferrera, The Boundaries of Welfare: European Integration and the New Spatial Politics of Social Protection, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005; 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; H. Obinger, S. Leibfried and F. Castles, Federalism and the Welfare State: New World and European Experiences, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005; 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; 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.Google Scholar

78 Among the excellent contributions, see Olsen, J. P., ‘The Many Faces of Europeanization’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 40: 5 (2002), pp. 921–52;CrossRefGoogle Scholar J. P. Olsen, Exploring the Political Order of the EU, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007; K. Featherstone and C. Radaelli (eds), The Politics of Europeanisation, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003; P. Graziano and M. Vink (eds), Europeanization. New Research Agenda, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006; B. Palier, Y. Surel et al., L'Europe en action: l'européanisation dans une perspective comparée, Paris, l'Harmattan, 2008. For a broader view including Central and Eastern Europe, see a useful review article,

79 C. Radaelli, ‘Europeanisation: Solution or Problem?’, in Cini and Bourne, Palgrave Advances in European Union Studies, p. 75.Google Scholar

80 B. Ackerman, The Future of the Liberal Revolution, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1992; D. Beetham and C. Lord, Legitimacy in the European Union, London, Longman, 1998; A. Weale and M. Nentwich (eds), Political Theory and the European Union: Legitimacy, Constitutional Choice, and Citizenship, London, Routledge, 1998; N. MacCormick, Questioning Sovereignty: Law, State, and the Nation in the European Commonwealth, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999; J.-M. Ferry, La question de l'Etat européen, Paris, Gallimard, 2000; L. Siedentop, Democracy in Europe, London, Allen Lane, 2000; Friese, H. and Wagner, P., ‘Survey Article: The Nascent Political Philosophy of the European Polity’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 10 (2002), pp. 342–64;CrossRefGoogle Scholar G. Morgan, The Idea of a European Superstate; A. Follesdal, ‘EU Legitimacy and Normative Political Theory’, in Cini and Bourne, Palgrave Advances in European Union Studies, pp. 150–73, among many others, including J. Habermas as the pole star. 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 Euro-sceptic Reader, London, Macmillan, 1986. 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).

81 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; and David Miller, On Nationality, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995.Google Scholar

82 Julien Freund, La fin de la Renaissance, Paris, PUF, 1984, p. 119. I combine here the thought of this great, and unjustly neglected, social theorist with a reference to Schiller's ‘sentimental’ magnified by Isaiah Berlin. She dreams of an imaginary action while actually doing something else, whereas the ‘naive’, immune from any nostalgia of the perfect image that she dreams of projecting, is present in her action, however finite and imperfect it is. Anand Menon offers a cogent analysis of this ‘paradox of integration’ whereby the more the European states are attracted by institutions that help them to cope with the changing nature of politics (increasingly construed as a way to deliver more and more diversified material goods and services to a more and more expectant population), the more the rulers have a vested interest in dressing those institutions in the language of the higher purpose (‘European identity’, ‘United States of Europe’ etc.) (Menon, Europe: The State of the Union, pp. 9–30, 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.Google Scholar

83 Denis de Rougemont, Ecrits sur l'Europe, Neufchâtel, Editions de la Différence, 1994; Dusan Sidjanski (ed.), Dialogue des cultures à l'aube du XXIéme siècle. Hommage à Denis de Rougemont, Brussels, Bruyland, 2007 (with a contribution from Juan Manuel Barroso).Google Scholar

84 Peter Sloterdjick, Si l'Europe s'éveille, Paris, Mille et une nuits, 2003.Google Scholar

85 Morgan, The Idea of a European Superstate, p. 203.Google Scholar

86 Ibid.Google Scholar

87 See on this project, backed-up by Habermas's ‘Kantian republicanism’, J. Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other, Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1998.Google Scholar

88 On Habermas's curious (to put it mildly) argument that only a constitution makes a people (all right, he has read Kelsen), that the states created their peoples successfully through national historiography and mass communications, and thus that the EU (made of states, if I am not mistaken) could accomplish the same object, see Habermas, J., ‘Toward a Cosmopolitan Europe’, Journal of Democracy, 14: 4 (2003), pp. 86–100.CrossRefGoogle ScholarI 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; and Jan-Werner Muller, Another Country: German Intellectuals, Unification and National Identity, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2000, pp. 90–119. On the adequacy of such a ‘thin’ concept, see Charles Larmore, The Morals of Modernity, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 205–21; Miller, On Nationality, pp. 163–5. On the utility of the concept in a European context, 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. 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.

89 Note that Paul Reboux's pastiche is as relevant as the original, even more so, according to the demographer Alfred Sauvy, since it evokes the image of ‘l'Etat-providence’: ‘Celui qui met un terme à toute la nature/ Sait aussi des oiseaux arrêter les complots/ Aux petits des méchants Il donne la pâture/ Et sa bonté s'étend sur la fureur de flots.’ The ecologists would grind their teeth.Google Scholar

90 Goody, Jack, The Theft of History, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

91 As it is by Niilo Kauppi and Michael Rask Madsen in the conclusion of an otherwise very promising article ( Kauppi, N. and Madsen, M. R., ‘Institutions et acteurs: rationalité, réflexivité et analyse de l'UE’, Politique européenne, 25 (2008), p. 110).CrossRefGoogle Scholar 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’).