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©Copyright: Joseph H.H. Weiler, 1995.
It started with a bang: The signing of the Treaty on European Union at Maastricht in February 1992. It ended in a whimper: Its entry into force in November 1993 -- a low, anti-climatic moment in the history of contemporary European integration not its crowning achievement. A would-be triumph turned sour.
There is a distinct mood among Community Mandarins. Brecht's wicked quip may well describe the bitter, vindictive sentiment:
The People have disappointed: Maastricht, justly hailed as a remarkable diplomatic achievement, was met in many a European street with a sentiment ranging from hostility to indifference. One cannot even derive comfort from those segments of public opinion which have rallied behind "Europe" such as the agricultural lobby in Ireland, the Political Establishment in France, the German Partitocracy. Narrow self-interest, a formidable stake in the status-quo, a growing cleavage with the constituents are the respective hall-marks of this support. Maybe The People should, indeed, be changed.
It is not my intention in this essay to try and explain, with the tools of social science, "what went wrong with Maastricht?" My intuitive impression is that the attitude to Maastricht is, perhaps, an indication of a disillusionment which extends far deeper than an objection to the specific content of the Treaty itself. To be sure, the never ending recession will have had its impact too, creating a general climate of uncertainty and insecurity. But could it be that "Europe" has a captivating pull only when the going is good, a Golden Calf of plenty to be rejected as matters economic turn sour? Dare one say it? The Europe of Maastricht suffers from a crisis of ideals. The Member States of the European Community are being swept by an electorate which is increasingly frustrated, alienated and angry with politics as usual. And "Europe," once avant-garde, has, it seems, become just that -- politics as usual.
A subtle change has occurred in the positioning of the idea of European integration in public discourse. The political scientists of the realists school never tire telling us, that the evolution of European integration was driven by national self-interest and cold calculations of cost and benefit to its participating Member States. But in its formative years, and for a considerable while after that, the very idea of the Community was associated with a set of values which, it seems to me, could captivate the imagination, mobilize broadly based political forces, counteract the powerful even captivating, but often abused, pull of nationalism. Supporting the Community was to "Do the Right Thing." It was a happy state in which one could believe that long term self-interest coincided with higher values. The reception by the public of the Maastricht Treaty is the writing on the wall -- Could it be that the "Europe" of Maastricht is an ideal which has lost its mobilizing force? A force which has lost its mobilizing ideals?
We are forced thus to face squarely the Ends of European Integration, often neglected in what seems to be the more urgent debate of Means -- the instruments and mechanisms, political and economic, for achieving the specific objectives of the Treaties.
This essay is an attempt to (re)introduce a discourse on ideals into the current debate on European Integration. This attempt, it is hoped, will be of some value regardless of its utility or otherwise in explaining the behavior of the various actors in the European polity.
A disquisition focussing explicitly on ideals is not an easy task, and this for two reasons.
First, much of the social science of European integration has been dominated by the realist and neo-realist schools of international relations. Notions of ideals, ethics and the like have a very limited place in their explanatory and normative apparatus of State behaviour and transnational behaviour. In non-international relations theories of integration, such as critical social theory, ideals are often there to be exposed as sham, as a mask to be lifted and debunked. All in all, ideals, like religion and spirituality are almost embarrassing topics, to be reconceptualized as ideology and treated with the reductive methodologies of psychology, sociology and the like.
Second, a 20th century phenomenology of ideals is hard to construct. We should not confuse ideals with ideology or morality. Ideals are usually part of an ideology. Morality is usually part of ideals. But the terms do not conflate. Ideologies, in relation to which theories abound, often include or are premised on some ideals. But they are much more than that. Ideology is part an epistemology -- a way of knowing and understanding reality -- in part a programme for changing that reality to achieve certain goals. Ideals, in and of themselves, constitute neither an epistemology nor a program for realization, and are often the least explained elements of any given ideology. Morality, practical reason, the good life, will inform ideals, but ideals have a social reality which practical reason necessarily does not -- though it can be an ideal to live the good life. It is not surprising that, for example, the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy has no separate entry for ideals.
It is surprising, however, that there appears to be no systematic analysis of the ideals -- as distinct from the Objectives -- of European integration and the European Community. If this, indeed, is the case, one may wonder if there is no good reason for this absence. Could it be that a low "pay off" is the explanation? I think not. I think the pay-off could be high and that the reason for the absence lies rather with the disciplinary "misfit" of ideals as an object for enquiry.
What then would be the interest, the intellectual "pay off," in exploring the ideals of European integration and the European Community?
I propose to answer this question after describing first one of the Community's foundational ideals, which, in turn, will serve as a means for a general phenomenological reflection and as a tool to explain the utility of exploring the ideals of European Integration.
Peace, in the immediate wake of World War II, was the most explicit and evocative of ideal for which the would-be-polity was to be an instrument. Nowhere is this captured better than in the oft repeated phraseology of the Schumann Declaration of May 9, 1950.
World peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of constructive efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it....
The gathering of the nations of Europe requires the elimination of the age-old opposition of France and the Federal Republic of Germany; The first concern in any action undertaken must be these two countries....
[This] solidarity ... will make it plain that any war between France and the Federal Republic of Germany becomes, not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible....
Peace, at all times an attractive desideratum, would have had its appeal in purely utilitarian terms. But it is readily apparent that in the historical context in which the Schumann Plan was put forward the notion of peace as an ideal probes a far deeper stratum than simple Swords into Ploughshares, Sitting under ones' Vines and Fig Trees, Lambs and Wolves -- the classic Biblical metaphor for peace. The dilemma posed was an acute example of the alleged tension between Grace and Justice which has taxed philosophers and theologians through the ages -- from William of Ockham (pre-modern), Friedrich Nietzsche (modernist) and the repugnant but profound Martin Heidegger (post-modern).
These were, after all, the early 50s with the horrors of War still fresh in the mind and, in particular, the memory of the unspeakable savagery of German occupation. It would take many years for the hatred in countries such as The Netherlands, Denmark or France to subside fully. The idea, then, in 1950, of a Community of Equals as providing the structural underpinning for long term peace among yesteryears enemies, represented more than the wise counsel of experienced statesmen.
It was also a call for forgiveness, a challenge to overcome an understandable hatred. In that particular historical context the Schumannian notion of Peace resonates with, is evocative of, the distinct discourse, imagery and values of Christian Love, of Grace -- not, I think, a particularly astonishing evocation given the personal backgrounds of the Founding Fathers -- Adenauer, De Gaspari, Schumann, Monnet himself.
I will use Peace as a spring board for a more general reflection of ideals. I would like to develop four principal consideration which inform ideals as a concept and as a social construct: The idyllic, the demonic, the virtuous and the idolatrous. If my understanding of peace as an ideal is valid and typical it would enable me to illustrate all four considerations.
In upholding or subscribing to an ideal, one is in part putting forward a desired state of affairs (material or spiritual) in which one would like to exist. It can be peace, it can be justice, it can be power or grandeur. It is usually, but not necessarily futuristic. It is usually a state of affairs the desirability or appeal of which are self-evident in both an essentialist world view and/or because they correspond to deep seated social constructs.
A simple desirable state of affairs -- an idyllic state: "If I were a rich man" -- does not in and of itself qualify as an ideal. Often it can be almost a counter ideal. What prevents us from making all our fantasies of desired --idyllic -- states IDEALS, is that so often they are selfish, self-serving. We perceive these desiderata, in fact, as an expression of desire, greed, jealousy, of our Hobbesian side. In the words of Genesis: for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth. (Gen: VIII.21).
Ideals then involve not simply putting forward a desired state of affairs -- material or spiritual -- but a recognition of our demonic tendencies. Ideals must represent a challenge to the demonic in us, a call to our better half. Ideals, and this is a central part of their allure, contain an altruistic component.
In my view this challenge accounts for the huge appeal of the great ideals. First, there is the per-se attractiveness and satisfaction of sacrifice: things that demand sacrifice are cherished more than things that come easily. Sacrifice invests things with value. Additionally, the combination of the idyllic and the altruistic in ideals explain their abiding centrality to all human culture: The call to overcome the demonic ennobles our self-interest -- It legitimates our desires.
The desire for peace is frequently not an ideal. Like riches it is a very comfortable state of affairs -- for the sake of peace I will not fight my battles, not stand up for my values, turn my gaze, avert my eyes.
What brings the message of peace in the formation of the Community into the realm of ideals, what connects it to so deep a fountain as Christian Love, is the historical context of justified hatred and fear. The infamous Peace In Our Time approach of the 1930s which saw the sacrifice of Czechoslovakia was a counter ideal: the idyllic, the comfortable, without the altruistic. In the EC of the early 50s and somewhat beyond, their is a context where peace has both the idyllic and the altruistic -- we have to overcome our feelings of revenge, which were given full vent after the World War I, but at the same time the comfort of peace is being offered. It was not then the fear of War (between say, France and Germany) which rendered peace an idealistic desideratum in 1950. It was the psychological and spiritual demand which it made which so rendered it.
The idyllic and the demonic elements have been explained in linguistic and behavioristic terms: They correspond to what we normally mean when we use the word, or think of, ideals; they imply a certain understanding of human psyche and what appeals and motivates us.
They are also value free and a-historical. They do not differentiate between the "ideals" of Adolph Hitler or Mother Theresa. One can, after all, desire evil or mistake it for virtue, and make great sacrifices to achieve it.
I would add therefore a third consideration: The grounding of ideals in ethics. I can justify this consideration in two ways. First, as a reflection of social reality: When ideals have been put forward as a social phenomenon, as part of a programme of action, they have always been presented as being so grounded. But, I would also add this consideration as an unashamedly normative layer to ideals discourse: a refusal on my part to discuss ideals in purely behavioristic terms, even if I am mindful of the fashionability of moral relativism, and the manipulability of ethics. Even peace can pose considerable ethical dilemmas. Few of us, after all, are total pacifists.
I shall explain the fourth and final consideration later in this essay.
Before we turn to examine the other ideals of European Integration in its formative years I shall reflect now more deliberately on the interest in exploring ideals in general and European integration ideals in particular.
I see three distinct interests:
A. A large, the largest, part of EC studies is instrumentalist: Actor-Interest--Result, Structure-Power-Process. Trying to explain why things are the way they are. The disciplines -- political science, economics, law -- will shift the "thing" which is being explained, and will privilege one kind of explanation over another, or, alternatively, try to be interdisciplinary or even challenge the disciplinary divide altogether and adopt an holistic approach.
From this instrumental perspective, the value of looking at ideals is evident: Ideals can be part of the matrix which explains socialization, mobilization and legitimacy. In an analysis as to why certain elites, or masses support, or tolerate or oppose European Integration in general or this or that policy in particular, ideals should clearly have a place. To deny the mobilizing force of ideals is folly.
B. There can be interest in ideals (and the ideals of European Integration) from a perspective which is more indifferent to the specific story of European Integration but acknowledges it, and its rhetoric, as part (important or otherwise) of social intercourse. This perspective has as its focus the individual as such and "society" (national society, regional society, transnational society). The interest here then is in the "social." In particular I have in mind our "modern" understandings of constitution of the self -- individual and collective, the shift from fate to choice in self-understanding and self-positioning.
Ideals are a principal vehicle through which individuals and groups interpret reality, give meaning to their life, and define their identity -- positively and negatively. The idyllic in Ideals refers in this context to social space, the demonic to individual self. In what kind of society do I live, what does our society "stand for" -- can only be given a answer by reference, at last partially, to ideals. Likewise, what kind of person am I, can only be given an answer by reference to ideals. What kind of society should I live in, aspire to; What kind of person should I be is similarly premised on the existence of ideals. Even the rejection of ideals (a pseudo-machiavellian approach to life) is just that: a rejection of ideals. You cannot do without them as a referent for value and meaning.
If we are, then, interested in the European Persona, in an European Polity, we will profit by understanding the world of ideals which is part of the polity. Can there be a psychological understanding of the individual without a reference to ones conflict with ideals? Can there be an appreciation of the political culture of a polity without reference to its values and ideals. In the tension between eros and civilization, our discourse of civilization is in substantial part a discourse of values and ideals.
Where one might have strong disagreements is the importance that European Integration Ideals have had in society. Some would argue that until recently there importance was marginal. Others will disagree.
C. There is a third interest in ideals -- an interest in ideals as a locator in the history of ideas. They are part (and with the passage of time an important part) of cultural history and cultural identity of an epoch. They are, sometimes, the deepest residue -- or at least the most visible -- which history leaves. Even educated women and men will probably be more fluent with the values of antiquity (notably the "declared values" rather than their realization!) or of the age of enlightenment than with their respective political or social histories.
It appears to me that, even to a body of social scientists, it is a totally serious, and possibly longer lasting enterprise, to try and define European Integration in terms of its Ideals and not only in terms of its structural, processual and material components. It is an enterprise which will help locate the idea of the Community in the flow of European intellectual history.
We may return now to the history of the Community. In its foundational period, along side peace, I would identify two other principal ideals: Prosperity and supranationalism.
Prosperity is the second value for which the Community was to be instrumental. Max Kohnstamm used to say: The twin dilemmas for Monnet were What do we do with Germany? -- I translated the answer given as the Peace Ideal in the European Construct -- and How to rebuild Europe -- and I translate that as the ideal of Prosperity. This is captured in, among other places, Article 2 of the Treaty of Rome.
The Community shall have as its task ... to promote throughout the Community a harmonious development of economic activities, a continuous and balanced expansion, an increase in stability, an accelerated raising of the standard of living ...
The focus on prosperity should not come as a surprise. After all, the economic reconstruction of the devastated continent was intimately connected with the notion of peace. Each was the means for the other. Indeed in the biblical passage, frequent in the book of Judges, peace and prosperity are linked: the vineyard and the fig tree being a symbol for both.
The idyllic, the desired state of affairs is self-evident. But at first blush it is hard to capture the altruistic, non-hedonistic dimension of the quest for prosperity. Are we not here in the presence of pure self-interest, something to be almost ashamed of -- the very antithesis of altruism, challenge, sacrifice which are essential parts of idealistic narrative? Where is the virtuous and where is the challenge to the demonic which, I argued, where essential components of ideals discourse?
There was an idealistic dimension, nuanced to be sure, to the quest for prosperity which mediated its utilitarian aspects. Its virtue appears when set against a backdrop of destruction and poverty. In these conditions (individual and social) prosperity assumed an altogether different meaning: Dignity -- both personal and collective. In an Enlightenment bound vision of the individual, poverty resonates with the embarrassment of dependence on others, with the humiliation bred by helplessness, with the degradation of lack of autonomy. There is, thus, nothing shameful in aspiring for prosperity when it comes to mean dignity. There, then, is its virtue.
Second, the Community's quest for prosperity in its formative years took place in a period which inextricably linked it with widespread (re)construction, with visible (re)generation, with palpable effort and toil. Bread gained with the sweat of one's brow is a matter for pride rather than embarrassment, shame and degradation.
Last but not least, linking prosperity to a cooperative enterprise inevitably blunted the sharp edges of avidity feelings. The Community in its reconstructive effort was about collective responsibility: It was a regime which attempted to constrain unchecked search for economic prosperity by one Member States at the expense of others. To be sure, there was an economic theory of open markets, level playing field and all the rest which informed the Common Market. But the elements of transnational economic solidarity are an undeniable part of the discourse at the time and of the Treaty itself. This solidarity is the element which appeals to the better self. It is the control of the demonic at the statal economic level.
Put in this way -- we also detect here, as with the Peace ideal, the deeper roots of the Community notion of Prosperity as an ideal: It links up with and is evocative of, a different but no less central strand of European idealism since the mid 19th century: Be it socialism, fabianism, Communism, Welfare Statism all sharing an underlying ethos of collective societal responsibility for the welfare of individuals and the community as a whole.
The third ideal, is that of supranationalism -- for want of a better word. A word of caution would be necessary here. There is no fixed meaning to the term supranationalism. Indeed, from its inception there seems to have been two competing visions of its realization through the Community: A Unity vision -- encapsulated in those who favoured a United States of Europe -- and a more attenuated Community vision. The two strands (which, of course, overlap) have continued to co-exist. But it is my reading of the historical map -- the rejection of the European Defense Community and the European Political Community in the 50s and the articulation of supranationalism in, especially, the Treaty of Rome, that the Community vision prevailed in the formative years of the EC. But clearly, even more than everything else in this essay, the construction of supranationalism and its virtues follows my understanding with no pretence to a commonly 'received knowledge'.
In trying to explain the ways in which the Community is, or has become, supra-national, most discussion over the years has tended, interestingly, to focus on its relation to the "state" rather than the "nation." This conflation of nation/state is not always helpful. Supranationalism relates in specific and discreet ways to nationhood and to statehood. Indeed, in my understanding and construction of supranationalism its value system is actually wrapped up with the value system of European ethno-national liberalism of the 19th century. In that respect Supranationalism will be seen to have the same, Janus like, quality as Peace and Prosperity: Looking to the future whilst affirming the past -- a radical conservatism.
To see the relationship between supranationalism, nationhood and statehood, I propose to focus in turn on nationhood and statehood and try and explore their promise and their dangers. This will be then related to the ends of supranationalism. Naturally, in discussing nation and state, I shall only give a few pointers and headlines of what would otherwise have to be an extremely elaborate analysis.
First, then, nationhood.
It seems to me that, at least in its 19th century liberal conception, two deep human values are said to find expression in nationhood: Belongingness and Originality. (It should immediately be stated that nationhood is not the only social form in which these values may find expression.)
Belongingness is inherent in nationhood, nationhood is a form of belonging. Nationhood is not an instrument to obtain belongingness, it is it. Form and substance here conflate, the way they do, say, in a love sonnet by Shakespeare: The value of the sonnet does not lie in,say, its message of love; we do not think of the sonnet as an instrument for the conveyance of the idea. Take away the form and the message is banal. What gives the sonnet its timeless value is the inextricable way in which the substance and the form were woven together by Shakespeare.
What are the values embedded in belonging, in national belonging, beyond the widely shared view that belonging is pleasant, is good? We can readily understand a certain basic appeal to our human species which is, arguably, inherently social: the appeal that family and tribe have too. Part of the appeal is, simply, the provision of a framework for social interaction. But surely one has to go beyond that: after all, much looser social constructs than nationhood, let alone tribe and family, could provide that framework. Belonging means, of course, more than that. It means a place, a social home.
The belonging of nationhood is both like and unlike the bonds of blood in family and tribe and in both this likeness and unlikeness we may find a clue to some of its underlying values.
It is like the bonds of blood in family and tribe in that those who are of the nation have their place, are accepted, belong, independently of their achievements -- by just being -- and herein lies the powerful appeal (and terrible danger) of belonging of this type -- it is a shield against existential aloneness. In, for example, the tradition of the Jewish nation, a tradition worthy of some consideration given the continuity of Jewish national survival for over three millennia, we find a normative expression to this form of belonging: "Even though he has sinned, he remains Israel" (Talmud Sanhedrin Page 44:2) The power of this belongingness may be understood by the drama and awesomeness of its opposites: isolation, seclusion, excommunication.
But nationhood transcends the family and tribe and maybe here lurks an even more tantalizing value: Nationhood not only offers a place to the familyless, to the tribeless, but in transcending family and tribe it calls for loyalty -- the largest coin in the realm of national feeling -- towards others which go beyond the immediate "natural" (blood) or self-interested social unit.
And, indeed, belongingness of this type is a two way street. It is not only a passive value: to be accepted. It is also active: to accept. Loyalty is one of those virtues which, if not abused, benefits both those on the giving and receiving ends.
The other core value of nationhood, in some ways also an instrument for national demarcation, is the claim about originality. On this reading, the Tower of Babel was not a sin against God but a sin against human potentiality; and the dispersal that came in its aftermath, not punishment, but divine blessing. The nation, with its endlessly rich specificities, coexisting alongside other nations, is, in this view, the vehicle for realizing human potentialities in original ways, ways which humanity as a whole would be the poorer for not cultivating. (How one decides the self which qualifies as a nation is a tantalizing issue which is not necessary to explore here).
It is here that one may turn from the nation to the modern State. It is worth remembering at the outset that national existence and even national vibrancy do not in and of themselves require Statehood, though statehood can offer the nation advantages, both intrinsic as well as advantages resulting from the current organization of international life which gives such huge benefits to statehood.
I would argue that in the modern notion of the European ethno-national nation-state, the state is to be seen principally as an instrument, the organizational framework within which the nation is to realize its potentialities. It is within the statal framework that governance, with its most important functions of securing welfare and security, is situated. The well-being and integrity of the state must, thus, be secured so that these functions may be attained. That is not a meager value in itself. But to the extent that the state may claim, say, a loyalty which is more than pragmatic, it is because it is at the service of the nation with its values of belongingness and originality. (This conceptualization underscores, perhaps exaggerates, the difference with the American truly radical alternative liberal project of the non-ethno-national polity, and of a State, the Republic, the organization of which, and the norms of citizenship behavior within, were central to its value system.)
It is evident, however, that in the European project, boundaries become a very central feature of the nation-state.
There are, obviously, boundaries in the legal-geographical sense of separating one nation-state from another. But there are also internal, cognitive boundaries by which society (the nation) and individuals come to think of themselves in the world.
At a societal level, nationhood involves the drawing of boundaries by which the nation will be defined and separated from others. The categories of boundary drawing are myriad: linguistic, ethnic, geographic, religious etc. The drawing of the boundaries is exactly that: A constitutive act, which decides that certain boundaries are meaningful both for the sense of belonging and for the original contribution of the nation. This constitutive element is particularly apparent at the moment of "nation building" when histories are rewritten, languages revived etc. Of course, with time, the boundaries, especially the non-geographical ones, write themselves on collective and individual consciousness with such intensity that they appear as natural -- consider the virtual interchangeability of the word international with universal and global: It is hard not to think, in the social sphere, of the world as a whole without the category of nation (as in international).
Finally, at an individual level, belonging implies a boundary: You belong because others do not.
As evident as the notion of boundaries is to the nation-state enterprise, so is the high potential for abuse of boundaries.
The abuse may take place in relation to the three principal boundaries: The external boundary of the State; the boundary between nation and state and the internal consciousness boundary of those making up the nation.
The most egregious form of abuse of the external boundary of the State would be physical or other forms of aggression towards other states.
There abuse of the boundary between nation and state is most egregious when the state comes to be seen not as instrumental for individuals and society to realize their potentials but as an end in itself. Less egregiously, the State might induce a 'laziness' in the nation - banal statal symbols and instrumentalities becoming a substitute for truly original national expression. This may also have consequences for the sense of belongingness whereby the apparatus of the State becomes a substitute to a meaningful sense of belonging. An allegiance to the State can replace human affinity, empathy, loyalty and sense of shared fate with the people of the State.
There can be, too, an abuse of the internal boundary which defines belongingness. The most typical abuse here is to move from a boundary which defines a sense of belonging to one which induces a sense of superiority and a concomitant sense of condescension or contempt for the other. A sense of collective national identity implies an other. It should not imply an inferior other.
The manifestations of these abuses are a living part of the history of the European nation state which are so well known as to obviate discussion.
A central plank of the project of European integration may be seen, then, as an attempt to control the excesses of the modern Nation-State in Europe, especially, but not only, its propensity to violent conflict and the inability of the international system to constrain that propensity. The European Community was to be an antidote to the negative features of the state and statal intercourse; its establishment in 1951 was seen as the beginning of a process that would bring about the elimination of these excesses.
Historically there have, as mentioned above, always been those two competing visions of European Integration. Whilst no-one has seriously envisioned a Jacobin type centralized Europe, it is clear that one vision, to which I have referred as the Unity vision, the United States of Europe vision, has really posited as its ideal type, as its aspiration, a statal Europe, albeit of a federal kind. Tomorrow's Europe in this form would indeed constitute the final demise of Member State nationalism replacing or placing the hitherto warring Member States within a political union of federal governance.
It is easy to see some of the faults of this vision: It would be more than ironic if a polity set up as a means to counter the excesses of statism ended up coming round full circle and transforming itself into a (super) state. It would be equally ironic if the ethos which rejected the boundary abuse of the nation-state, gave birth to a polity with the same potential for abuse. The problem with this Unity vision is that its very realization entails its negation.
The alternative vision, the one that historically has prevailed, is the supranational vision, the community vision. At one level aspirations here are both modest compared to the Union model and reactionary: Supranationalism, the notion of community rather than unity, is about affirming the values of the liberal nation-state by policing the boundaries against abuse. Another way of saying this would be that Supranationalism aspires to keep the values of the nation-state pure and uncorrupted by the abuses I described above.
At another level the supranational community project is far more ambitious than the Unity one and far more radical. It is more ambitious since, unlike the Unity project which simply wishes to redraw the actual political boundaries of the polity within the existing nation-state conceptual framework, albeit federal, the supranational project seeks to redefine the very notion of boundaries of the State, between the Nation and State, and within the nation itself. It is more radical since, as I shall seek to show, it involves more complex demands and greater constraints on the actors.
How, then, does supranationalism, expressed in the community project of European integration, affect the excesses of the nation state, the abuse of boundaries discussed above?
At the pure statal level Supranationalism replaces the "liberal" premise of international society with a community one. The classical model of international law is a replication at the international level of a liberal theory of the state. The state is implicitly treated as the analogue, on the international level, to the individual within a domestic situation. In this conception, international legal notions such as self-determination, sovereignty,independence, and consent have their obvious analogy in theories of the individual within the state. In the supranational vision, the community as a transnational regime will not simply be a neutral arena in which states will seek to maximize their benefits but will create a tension between the State and the Community of States. Crucially, the community idea is not meant to eliminate the national state but to create a regime which seeks to tame the national interest with a new discipline. The idyllic is a state of affairs which eliminates the excesses of narrow statal "national interest". The challenge is to control at societal level the uncontrolled reflexes of national interest in the international sphere.
Turning to the boundary between nation and state supranationalism is meant to prevent abuses here too. The supranational project recognizes that at an inter-group level nationalism is an expression of cultural (political and/or other) specificity underscoring differentiation, the uniqueness of a group as positioned vis-a-vis other groups, calling for respect and justifying the maintenance of inter-group boundaries.
At an intra-group level nationalism is an expression of cultural (political and/or other) specificity underscoring commonality, the "sharedness" of the group vis-a-vis itself, calling for loyalty and justifying elimination of intra-group boundaries.
But, crucially, nationality is not the thing itself -- it is its expression, an artifact. It is a highly stylized artefact, with an entire apparatus of norms and habits; above all it is not a spontaneous expression of that which it signifies but a code of what it is meant to give expression to, frequently even translated into legal constructs. Nationality is inextricably linked to citizenship, citizenship not simply as the code for group identity, but also as a package of legal rights and duties, and of social attitudes.
Supranationalism does not seek to negate as such the interplay of differentiation and commonality, of inclusion and exclusion and their potential value. It is a challenge to the codified expressions in nationality. Since, in the supranational construct with its free movement provisions which do not allow exclusion through statal means of other national cultural influences and with its strict prohibition on nationality/citizenship based discrimination, national differentiation can not rest so easily on the artificial boundaries provided by the State. At intergroup level then it pushes for cultural differences to express themselves in their authentic, spontaneous form, rather than the codified statal legal forms. At the intra-group level it attempts to strip the false consciousness which nationalism may create instead of belongingness derived from a non-formal sense of sharedness.
Supranationalism at the societal and individual, rather than the statal level, embodies, then, an ideal which diminishes the importance of the statal aspects of nationality -- probably the most powerful contemporary expression of groupness -- as the principal referent for transnational human intercourse. That is the value side of non-discrimination on grounds of nationality, of free movement provisions and the like. It is precisely the absence, in the pre-Maastricht conceptualization of the Community, of a European citizenship, which is symbolically important: Essential relationships are to be defined despite citizenship. In its intra-Community manifestation the ideal is the relative irrelevance of the formal category of citizenship.
It is not difficult to identify the idyllic and the demonic and the deep idealistic well spring with which this ideal resonates.
Hermann Cohen, the great neo-Kantian, in his Religion der Vernunft aus den Quellen des Judentums, tries to explain the meaning of the Mosaic law which call for non-oppression of the stranger. In his vision, the alien is to be protected, not because he was a member of one's family, clan religious community or people, but because he was a human being. In the alien, therefore, man discovered the idea of humanity.
We see through this exquisite exegesis that in the curtailment of the totalistic claim of the Nation State and the reduction of nationality as the principle referent for human intercourse, the Community ideal of Supranationalism is evocative of, and resonates with, Enlightenment ideas, with the privileging of the individual, with a different aspect of liberalism which has as its progeny today in liberal notions of human rights. In this respect the Community ideal is heir to Enlightenment liberalism.
The ideals of Peace, Prosperity, Supranationalism which animate the Community in its foundational period are, on my reading, a new expression to the three principal strands of European idealism which the 20th century inherits. They tap into core values of Christianity, Social Responsibility and the Enlightenment.
At this point a critical proviso would be in order. My claim is not, decidedly not, that the Community in its foundational period actually lived these ideals, realized their virtues (whatever these may be) or vindicated their promise. I am agnostic on this issue. To explain the ideals of the French Revolution, of the American Revolution or of the October Revolution is not to claim that Post-Monarchist France, Republican America or the Soviet Union lived up to the aspirations which animated these social revolutions. We are all familiar with analyses which tell a very different story of the ensuing reality of the Community.
But the reality of the ideals themselves works, nonetheless, at all three levels I explained before:
1. First, mobilization, socialization and legitimacy. European integration, it has often been claimed, was elite driven. Ideals discourse may be part of the explanation of the mobilization of these elites. It was a construct which was safe, appealing to values inculcated deeply in a generation which grew up in this century.
The idea of Europe and the ideals of Europe may also be a part explanation for mobilization at mass level, through national party structures. All principal political forces and parties in post World War II Continental Europe regarded themselves as the true inheritors of European idealism as explained above. The socialists and social-democrats, the lay parties, decidedly do not turn their back to the Church. Christian Democrats embrace the Welfare State.
The vision of European Integration as explicated above, may explain, in part, how it was that the Community only rarely becomes the focus of party politics in continental Europe. All parties can embrace it, because, if you want, the appeal, or the blandness, (take your pick) of its idealistic superstructure. The Community, like other political forces in Post War Europe embrace both liberalism and social-democracy so as to avoid -- at the level of rhetoric -- the actual choices which exist between these programmes. Historically, one cannot speak of mass mobilization for Europe. But as years of Eurobarometer surveys show, it was an acceptable idea always easy to support.
2. At a second level we may turn to ideals as a vehicle for constitution of the self -- individual and social. Consider first the generation of the so called Founding Fathers who saw their world fall apart in the horrors of World War II -- a negation of the very values of Christian love, of solidarity, of the Enlightenment project. European Integration presents itself on my analysis as very alluring: It is not only a new political and economic architecture for post War Europe which radically supplants the old Versailles model of Post World War I. It is a vision which whilst being innovative and radical, is also deeply conservative, since it re-affirms their old Weltanschauung, indeed, it gives a new lease of life to ideals for which there are no available (meaning acceptable) substitutes at the time.
It was a par-excellence way of affirming one's identity on well known terrain and avoiding the deep dislocations which the breakdown of civility in the War may have created.
It provided, for individuals and societies, a comfortable way of dealing with the recent past: This Past need not call into question fundamental values and ideals: Only the political structure and technology for their realization. Europe could re(define) itself as Christian, socially responsible, worthy successor of the Enlightenment.
It is interesting here to consider the perception and self-perception of bureaucracies. Already in the early 50s the renewed Frankfurt School, back from exile, develops its profound insight of the State as Administration, governance as management. The personification of the New Frankfurt school's conceptualization is, I would think, the state functionary -- in Germany, in France, in Italy. (Each with a specificity of pathology which is altogether original in the different states...). To become a Beamte, is desirable, since it gives power, security, and it is also the par-excellance expression of blind state loyalty internally, of a vindication of the national interest externally. But service in the public administration is hardly conceived in the language of ideals for these very same reasons, neither by its practitioners nor by the public. The pursuit of power and security are understandable to all, but hardly put on a pedestal.
Service in the Community administration, in its earlier period, was instead conceived as living the Community ideals -- it too provided security and some power (increasing) but its "supranational" dimension, formally defying loyalty to the State and countering the national interest in favour of the community (and Community) interest, redefined it in idealistic terms. The meeting of a Community official and a Member State official of the same nationality was at some level a meeting of a "superior" supranational idealist with an "inferior" State realist. The Community official may have been earning a lot more than his or her national counterpart and enjoying working conditions and a social package which was the envy of all national administrations, but he or she was also occupying the high moral ground: a true public servant.
What I am talking about, of course, is perception, not reality. In reality they may not have been any difference between the two public servants. But if there is any truth in my claim of differing perceptions, this truth will have been rooted in an image of the Commission and a self-image of its officials, as seen through the mirror of the Community ideals.
3. As for the history of ideas -- we can evaluate European Integration in that epoch as being at the cusp, the very end brink of modernism. The Community idea on this reading is quintessentially European, embracing the core of European classical idealism. It was not simply a reflection of these ideals, but, as explained above, it became a vehicle for their rejuvenation, lending them a new, temporary perhaps, credibility and outlet, a mask, in some eyes, to their vacuity, a rearguard action before their final collapse. Be that as it may, importantly, indeed crucially, as pretender to the inheritance inheritor of classical idealism, Europe of the Community was placed not as an end in itself, but as a means for the realization of higher ennobling values.
There is a final element to my discussion of the formative ideals which tries to pull all three ideals together.
Let us first consider another set of ideals. It is, for example, certainly a great ideal for an individual to seek, say, to live a life of internal and external truth and integrity. Likewise, to give another example, we consider noble, and rightly so, those academics who pursue the life of scholarship for its own sake, unswayed by consideration of prestige, or advancement or career. But one feels, surely, an intuitive difference of kind between these ideals and those of the European Community.
Whence the difference? What is special about the type of ideals which the European Community encapsulated is in fact their community nature -- they are the type of ideals which depend for their realization on being shared by a group of persons; definitionally they are beyond the reach of a lone individual. Further, it is not only that they cannot be achieved by any one individual, that they require a community for their practice, in fact they are constitutive of a Community -- they create the Community on whose existence they depend.
That this is so in relation to peace is self-evident: It takes, as the saying goes, two to Tango. It is only slightly less self-evident in relation to the supranationalism cluster. The invitation to pierce the veil of nationality is at one level to celebrate the individual as an autonomous being, a universe unto himself or herself, an end not a mere instrumentality. But it is also, at the same time, with all the richness of paradox, evocative of the two-sidedness of Enlightenment Liberalism, a cry for community which transcends the artificial barriers of nationality and emphasizes the commonality of shared humanity.
It is least evident in relation to Market, the Community vehicle for prosperity. There is a powerful strand in the political theory of markets which idealizes them as a neutral arena in which by giving freedom to individuals to pursue vigorously individual economic self-betterment aggregate prosperity will be enhanced. The caricature of this view is the "invisible hand"; its modern hallmarks are passivity of government, unshackling the individual from pervasive regulation and vigorous individual competition. Arguably, it was a variant of this idea which informed and explained government mobilization behind the Single European Act. There is much power to this idea and it is certainly dominant in current discussions. It is also, just as certainly, at odds with the community notion I have been discussing. But there is a complementary view of the market place, with no less an impressive pedigree -- Thomas Paine in his Rights of Man would be a good place to start -- which emphasizes the social dimension of the market. Under this view, when government sets out actively to create or expand a market, against the backdrop of, say, historical agrarian autarchy and feudalism or, closer to us, national protectionism, it is not only economic goals which can be achieved. The market on this view is a forum for personal intercourse, for social interaction, for widening of horizons, for learning about and learning to respect others and their habits. It is community too and, I believe, this view was as strong in the formation of the Community as the purely economic one.
In this light we may, indeed, return briefly to the 1992 programme and the Single European Act. As mentioned above, like Maastricht, here too there was a discrepancy between the reaction of government, Community and Member States, and of the population at large: Coolness by the former, enthusiasm by the latter. Could it be, perhaps, that whereas Government conceived the Single Market in pure economic terms, in the street that same Single Market was perceived not simply, or even primarily as a vehicle for economic betterment but as a metaphor for the creation of a European society encapsulated in the slogan of a Europe without Frontiers?
What has become of ideals discourse in the Europe of Maastricht? What values, as opposed to interests, can be associated with European Union 1993?
It is decidedly not my intention to join in that favourite game of Euro-bashing. But this does not mean that we cannot engage in a sober assessment of the ideal structure. The narrative here is short: Maastricht, emblematic of the current stage of European Integration, can no longer serve as a vehicle for the foundational ideals; and not much has been offered in replacement.
To say that the European Union can no longer serve as a vehicle for the foundational ideals is not necessarily condemnation: In some measure, as I shall try to show, this is so because of the very success of the Community.
Peace, reconciliation between France and Germany "and all that" has been achieved, thanks perhaps to the Community. To continue to posit intra-Community peace as a Maastricht ideal does not have much conviction. That this is so is, paradoxically then, a sign of a remarkable success of the Community. It is also, perhaps, part of the very phenomenology of peace itself: It is an ideal during, and in the immediate after math, of war: For then it demands the triumph of Grace. After a long period of peace, it becomes a comfort, an excuse for inaction even in the face of moral imperatives. It can, thus, be an extremely potent mobilizing force. The electorate may well prefer a platform which guarantees peace at any cost. But it is often far from an ideal.
If peace has any place in European discourse toady, it is the peace of Munich, of Chamberlain, of peace in our time, which saw 50 years ago the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia and sees today the destruction of Bosnia. Again, it is not that peace within the Community has become a less attractive notion; that it should not be pursued and safeguarded. That it cannot even be an element of mobilization. But for peace to re-emerge as an ideal it has to be a challenge, a demand on the self and on society. The kind of demand that the threats in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union so clearly pose. Instead, the way peace is presented now is the opposite: Passive, the status-quo, preserving the existing comforts, looking after ourselves whilst watching, largely scared and detached, the horrors so close to our borders. How has Europe responded, not for the first time, to the "Ethnic cleansing" of a religious minority so close to its historical centre? With words and palliatives. And the Maastricht provisions on a Common Security and Defense Policy have been shown up for what they are. Peace can mobilize: who in Europe wants war? But one can hardly evoke the current peace discourse as a mobilizing ideal.
In a more serene manner, it is not then that peace itself has lost its relevance. My argument is that if this particular ideal is to remain part of the ethos of the European Union, the way it is construed requires considerable re-tooling.
Prosperity too has lost its idealistic bite, thanks perhaps to the Community: In large measure, as with peace, intra-Community prosperity has been achieved. It was the move from poverty to prosperity which was virtuous. Today, even during a recession, the move is from prosperity to even more prosperity. This too can capture votes and support -- pocket-book politics always has. But there is no pretence even at casting this discourse in the language of ideals.
The obsolescence of the Community as a vehicle for the foundational ideals is personified in the figures of two leading European politicians waging their Maastricht battles.
There is something altogether pathetic in the aging figure of Mr Mitterand preaching Franco-German peace to an incredulous electorate in 1992. And there is something equally pathetic in Mr Major's technocratic "what's in it for us" approach as his justification for Maastricht.
What then of Supranationalism: Is not Maastricht, at least in its aspirations and rhetoric a definite clarion cry for further supranationalism? To believe that is to misunderstand supranationalism. From this perspective Maastricht is a deception. It may or may not advance the structure and processes of European integration. One has learnt to be cautious and non-dismissive of these steps in Community evolution. But its symbolism is very clear. In its rhetoric Maastricht appropriates the deepest symbols of statehood: European citizenship, defense, foreign policy -- the rhetoric of a superstate. We all know that these are the emptiest and weakest provisions of the Treaty, but they undermine the ethics of supranationalism. In its statal aspect supranationalism was a move away from statism to a new uneasy relationship between Community and its Member State. Community was a fine word to capture that value. Now the operational rhetoric is Union, not Community. We have come full circle. The deep irony is that the full circle has come on the ideological level, since in practice, Maastricht probably is an empowerment of the Member States and in at least some significant aspects (such as the legislative gags imposed on the Community in some of its new policies) a weakening of the Community.
In its individual aspect supranationalism was about the diminution of nationality as a referent for transnational intercourse. Under the rhetoric of Maastricht, the Us is no longer Germans or French or Italians and the Them is no longer British, or Dutch or Irish. The Us has become European and the Them, non-European. If Europe embraces so earnestly at the symbolic level European citizenship, on what moral ground can one turn against French National Fronts, German Republicans and their brethren elsewhere who embrace Member State nationalism. On the ground that they chose the wrong nationalism which to embrace? The irony, if it needs spelling out, is that whilst the idealistic moral ground has been shattered, perhaps even lost, in reality, in these areas, Maastricht offers very little by way of tangible prospects. On this reading, Maastricht has thrown out the supranational water without waiting for the baby to get in the bath.
The Europe of Maastricht no longer serves, as its grandparents the Europe of Paris and Rome, as a vehicle for the original foundational values. This, if my analysis is correct, represents too a rupture with an earlier pre-modern and modern historical continuity of ideas.
The explanation for rupture may not however lie simply at the feet of the Community, and at the changed historical conditions which have rendered the Community an obsolescent vehicle for the foundational ideals. It may, too, be a reflection of a rupture in European society as such. On this reading Maastricht becomes the mirror of the society which it is supposed to serve, a reflection of fin-de-siPcle Europe, in which those classical ideals have lost in and of themselves their pull.
Consider afresh the Maastricht Treaty and its double structure: EMU and Political Union. There is a symbolism in this double structure and the relative weight given to each. It is a common place that Economic and Monetary Union constitute the heart of the Treaty; that the Political Union IGC was more rhetorical than substantive, lip service paid to the need to increase accountability and strengthen the powers of the European Parliament. The symbolism is that of the Roman circus: A scale of values which privileges the economic: wealth and prosperity; which de-privileges control, autonomy and responsibility.
The language of symbols is just that -- symbolic. And thus not too much should be read into it. But the notion that the problem of Maastricht is in the drafting, in its prolix style, in its incomprehensibility should perhaps be questioned. Maybe its message is all too apparent. And, to the extent that Maastricht is a reflection, a mirror of its polity, the interesting datum is not in the size of the opposition, but in the impressive support the Treaty has evoked. In this respect Maastricht is simply a creature of its time.
The personification of this symbolism is to be found in the Commission no longer occupying that high moral ground, more likely in search for a plausible justification for privilege. It is almost, but only almost, as if the tables have turned in that meeting between the Community Official and his or her national counterpart. It is no secret that there is a deep crisis of morale in the Commission emblematic of the fortunes of Europe. To be sure, the cool reception of Maastricht is part of the explanation. But the low morale may have an additional explanation in synch with the theme of this essay, namely the loss of the deeper raison d'etre of the enterprise, the disconcerting realization that Europe has become an end in itself -- no longer a means for higher human ends. No measure of information, explanation or structural tinkering can remedy this.
Assuming that there is some merit to my analysis, there could be a tendency to take it as an indication of a bleak future for Europe. That tendency should be resisted. Europe may or may not have a bleak future, but a causal nexus to the theme of this essay is tenuous. Pragmatic and utilitarian politics can be highly successful, in both mobilization and result. Providing welfare and security may be all we wish from public authority in the post modernist age. Indeed, this is the place to mention the fourth and last element -- ideals as idolatry. An unstated premise of this narrative was that ideals give meaning, ennoble existence, refine materialism. But, as Simone Weil in her anorexic state warned already in the 40s, and as our own experience will often indicate, ideals are not only a promise but always, at the same time, a danger. For the move from, the change of, ideals to idolatry -- a blinding enslavement to supposedly higher values in the name of which all manner of barbarism is committed, is almost pre-determined. European history is replete with such examples: The savagery of the Crusaders was committed in the name of Christian love, Collective responsibility was the justification for the ghastliness of the Gulags, and the brutality of European Colonialism was committed under the flag of the Enlightenment. Fin-de-SiPcle Europe may, thus, be not a reflection of emptiness, but the sign of a healthy suspicion of ideals as idolatry.
There is, however, an alternative and more sobering consideration in this regard, whereby European Union may be seen not simply as having suffered a loss of its earlier spiritual values, but as an actual source of social Ressentiment.
Consider, chillingly, the turn to fascism in Italy, France and Germany at the beginning of the century. In a most profound comparative analysis of the cultural-political roots of the phenomenon the common source is identified as a reaction to some of the manifestations of modernism.
At a pragmatic level the principal manifestations of modernism were the increased bureaucratization of life, public and private; the depersonalization of the market (through, eg, mass consumerism, brand names) and commodifaction of values; the "abstractism" of social life, especially through competitive structures of mobility; rapid urbanization and the centralization of power. At an epistemological level modernism was premised on, and experienced in, an attempt to group the world into intelligible concepts making up a totality which had to be understood through reason, science -- abstract and universal categories.
On this reading, fascism was a response to, and an exploitation of, the angst generated by these practical and cognitive challenges.
Eerily, at the end of the century, European Union can be seen as replicating, in reality or in the subjective perception of individuals and societies, some of these very same features: It has come to symbolize, unjustly perhaps, the epitome of bureaucratization and, likewise, the epitome of centralization. One of its most visible policies, the Common Agriculture Policy, has had historically the purpose of "rationalizing" farm holdings which, in effect, meant urbanization. The single market, with its emphasis on competitiveness and transnational movement of goods can be perceived as a latter day thrust at increased commodification of values (consider how the logic of the Community forces a topic such as abortion to be treated as a "service") and depersonalization of, this time, the national market. The very transnationalsim of the Community, which earlier on was celebrated as a reinvention of the Enlightenment idealism is just that: universal, rational, transcendent: wholly modernist.
That the Union has ceased to be a vehicle for its foundational ideals and has thus become a contingent being and experience removed from a normative framework just gives a fashionable "post modernist" twist to modernist anxiety.
I am not suggesting that Europe is about to see a return to fascism, nor most certainly should this analysis, if it has any merit, give joy to fin-de-siPcle chauvinists, whose wares today are as odious as they were at the start of the century. But I am suggesting that the crisis of ends might be worse than simply a rupture with the past. It might be an unwelcome connection to another worrisome past, and, in this light, the possible turn away from community to unity in the Maastricht project is simply sad.
Even with this danger in mind, there may be an unease at a conclusion which left such stark choices with which to think of the future of Europe. This essay need not have a policy oriented tilt at all. But it is inevitable that it will be read by some for its policy implications. For what it is worth, I would like to offer three alternative perspectives and a final conclusory thought as a brief input into the policy debates shaping the post-Maastricht era.
One approach, which would insist on a dichotomy between technology and culture, repositions, indeed reconceptualizes, the Community not as a new polity for European citizens, but as a technological instrument, an agency, for the resolution of post-industrial problems such as environmental protection, transnational trade, transport and the like which transcend national boundaries. According to this vision, one should not look for meaning and value at all in the Community, but regard it as a device which liberates people to develop a myriad of culture communities expressing values at the level of localities and workplace. A huge payoff, according to this vision, is the undermining of national boundaries as the prime delimitation of political culture and the nation state as the prime vehicle for political and social expression.
There is much that is alluring in this reconceptualization. I do not propose to explore it in detail, but one should note its weak points: To regard the Community as a technological instrument is, in the first place, to underestimate the profound political choice and cultural impact which the single market could involve -- a politics of efficiency, a culture of neutral and a-social markets. Historically we know the flattening impact which markets can have on local cultural diversity. Consequently, it underestimates the critical value choices involved in technocratic regulatory regimes.
A second approach, deeply historical, would find a new political message for the Community in its putative responsibility towards the East. We could take Western Europe 1951 and impose it without change to Eastern Europe 1991. Does Eastern Europe, awakened like sleeping beauty into the nationalist ethos of pre-39 Europe, not need, above all, new structures for peace, prosperity and a supranational ethos which would blunt the excesses of nationalism run amok? Could not this be the prime historical mission of the Community? Sure it could, but it will not, if the new mean-spirited arrangements offered by the Community to Eastern Europe are a sign of things to come.
A third and final approach would be one which would explore the communitarian, as opposed to liberal, strand in the European Community ethos. This, of course, is not the place to expound the communitarian, republican, political theory and ethos, which emphasizes at all levels of social organization, not only rights and liberties, but civic responsibility and solidarity. This would not be an artificial graft: It is not difficult to find communitarian strands in much of Community discourse. One place to look would be in the very turn to a European Citizenship. It could, after all, be re-conceived as a bold challenge to the ethno-national state, as a reconceptualization of the Union as a polity belonging to its citizens rather than nationals and from there to an exploration of civic virtues at the core of Community ideals. By espousing this ethos as the guiding principle for its ever expanding socio-economic legislative agenda, the European Community could become a vehicle for this type of politics of meaning. But, even if communitarianism is there it is in strong opposition to the deeply rooted liberal ethic. It is not difficult to find -- but would be hugely difficult to realize.
The Community is not doomed nor even fatally wounded. And its ability to rebound from crisis is part of its history. Crisis, after all, has always been the sign of its vitality, its relevance. Europe would, however, be served if current debate about its future addressed not only means but ends too.
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* An earlier version of this paper, part of an ongoing research on the ideals of European integration, appeared in the Festschrift for Henry Schermers. This draft has been considerably amended especially in the section dealing with the nation state and supranationalism. I am indebted to helpful comments from Jose de Areilza, Lea Brilmayer, Anne Marie Slaughter Burley, Renaud Dehousse, Andrew Moravcsik, Richard Pildes, Eric Stein, Fred Schauer and the legal theory workshops at Yale Law School, Cardozo Law School, NYU Law School and from the faculty of Chicago Kent Law School. The text is far from final but the process of publication and critical feedback has become indispensable for me if progress is to be made. All errors of fact and weaknesses of opinion are my own.
** Manley Hudson Professor of Law and Jean Monnet Chair, Harvard Law School Co-Director of the Harvard European Law Research Center,Co-Director, The Academy of European Law, European University Institute, Florence, Italy