Shortly after elections to the European Parliament, and in the midst of political jostling over the name of the next President of the Commision, is a timing that makes a post on European politics and the idea of Europe timely, though the issues are constantly with us and I suspect that problems in the European Union will keep it constantly in the news. What looks like serious legitimacy problems for the European Union also has the consequence of creating a European public opinion of a kind, in that Europe is in the news across the nations of the continent.
One theoretical approach to Europe seems to me very much questioned though advocates presumably will not think so. That is the approach of Habermas, who has become the uncrowned philosophical prince of the European Union. The radical egalitarian who makes some claims to some continuity with Marxism is invited to speak events with the highest EU dignitaries present and so appears to be de facto accepted by the European centre right as well as the more left inclined, as the philosophical voice of the European project. His version of Neo-Marxism, Post-Marxism, Liberal-Marxist fusionism, or however else his thought is best described, is an interesting case of apparent radical critique becoming part of the self-understanding of an elite. His emphasis on the rationality and ethics of political discourse evidently has some appeal to those who make a living from the European Union, and researchers close to that world. The thinking of such people (and I have been personally acquainted with some) is very much along the lines that the EU institutions represent reason and informed decisions making, while strong criticism reflects 'populist' ignorance, stereotyping, and scapegoating.
The problem for the European Union is that this attitude pervades its political class as well as the administrative class, who might be expected to lean towards an experts like us know best view of the world. A political class that can only react to criticism as populism in the most negative sense of the word has a problem. Issues of 'populism' versus 'liberal' elites are not unique to the European Union, and pervade the politics of various member states. However, the European parliamentary elections tend to reinforce, and interact with, national level populism by making it easier to vote for a 'marginal' party, because European elections 'don't matter' and because the EU tends to stand for an intensified form of everything that 'populists' don't like, though some populist politicians make a very comfortable living as Members of the European Parliament.
If the European Idea is going to continue and if the European Union is going to be a structure at least tolerably popular with the people of Europe, such that more than forty one per cent take the trouble to exercise voting rights, it needs to get beyond this liking for Habermas style idealisation of rational consensus. Habermas advocates will presumably respond that it s a guiding ideal not a manual for politics as it happens in practice. It seems to be me different to separate the two, and that at the very least the Habermas inclined need to think more about the deeply subjective, passionate, cynical, and conflictual aspects of politics as it has always existed and its always likely to exist in practice. The danger with the Habermas style is that it treats Europe as a polity as a triumph over subjectivity, passion, cynicism and conflict, which is alright with regard to the most violent and extreme tensions, but not as a total project.
The idea of Europe is historically embedded not in Reason, but in various forms of fear and triumphalism, chauvinism and resentment. The most obvious origin of Europe as a political idea is Medieval Christendom, so the defense and triumph of Christianity in relation to paganism (in the earlier Middle Ages), heresy, and Islam. Later versions were conditioned by economic mercantilism, colonialism, and racism (and other foms of identity chauvinism). I don't mention these unpleasant phenomena to undermine the idea of Europe, or a continent wide polity, but to point out that democratic politics means a struggle to find less excluding and dominating ways of dealing with economic uncertainty and identity anxieties.
The idea of an 'ever closer union' and for European 'federalists' to see the rational solution as always more centralisation is only exacerbating uncertainty and anxieties in forms that lead to chauvinism, exclusion, and intensified state control at the national level. The European polity needs to let go of areas of power, while consolidating power in a few areas, accept asymmetry and inconsistency across such a large territory, and engage in a form of politics which enables anxieties and uncertainties to be accommodated, without dismissive accusations of populism and without making the worst forms of populism more likely.
On the whole it seems to me that this calls for a political thought in a less rationalist consensual 'ideal theory' than that engaged in by Pettit, and Rawls, for example, as well as Habermas, and devoted more to the multiple historical and lived tensions of politics. The constant side in voting participation at least stopped in this EP election. A lot of that is probably people wanting to make their populist protest vote in increased numbers after the Euro crisis and associated problems. It might also just be a sign that disappointment will lead to engagement, leading to new opportunities for reforming European institutions, if the chance is taken.
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