Society Abr oad Abroad

TOWARD A EUROPEAN POLITICAL COMMUNITY

Jrgen Habermas

here is a peculiar contrast between the expectations and demands of those very first Europeans who dedicated themselves immediately after the Second World War to drafting the project which would further the goals of political unity in Europe and those whose task now consists of fostering the original aims of that same project.What strikes onlookers is the downward spiralling rhetoric register allied to the stark contrast regarding objectives.Although forerunner generations talked freely about the United States of Europe and made frequent comparisons with the USA, cur rent discussions make no reference to such role models. Even the word federalism is unpalatable. Our current European situation cannot be compared to the one experienced by the fe deralists or the Assem blie nationale members. After 200 years of practical constitutional experience we no longer simply follow well-trodden paths and the constitutional issue cannot solve the problems at hand. Indeed, the challenge involved is not so much to invent something new but rather to preserve the achievements of the European nation state beyond its national boundaries in some other form; the only novel aspect is the new entity that will arise from this. The most powerful driving force behind integration right up to Helmut Kohls generation was the desire to put an end to the history of bloody wars in Europe. Another reason was to bind Germany firmly to Europe in order to mitigate the great historic distrust towards the politically insecure nation at the heart of Europe which was soon restored to economic health. From the outset, of course, there was a third consideration; qui te simply, an interest in the economic unification of Europe. Since the onset of the Coal and Steel Community (1951), more and more countries have been brought together
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through the mutual exchange of manpower and goods, capital and services; a process which culminated in the creation of the Common Market and the introduction of a common currency. However, economic expectations do not suffice when it comes to mobilizing popular political support for a high-risk project like the establishment of a union worthy of its name. For that you need a mutually compatible set of values. The transition societies in Central Eastern Europe that wish to join the European Union (EU) have to cope with the hard challenges posed by the break-up of a system; yet in response they chose to return to the nation state. Such countries cannot muster any enthusiasm for the transferral of their newly reinstated sovereign rights to European authorities. The lack of motivation o n b ot h si d es only se r ves to reveal m o re strongly the shortcomings at the purely economic level. These should be joined together with quite different types of ideas in order to convince the majority of member states of the need for a change in the political status quo; for example, through the idea of preserving specific cultures and ways of life whose existence is now threatened. The great majority of European citizens are united by their desire to protect a way of life which they were able to develop during three post-war decades last century while being fortunate enough to live on the right side of the Iron Curtain. Of course, rapid economic growth provided the basis for the social welfare state which allowed for a regeneration process in post-war societies. Yet only one result really counts in this regeneration processthe emergence of wealth and national diversity in distinctive, separate ways of life based on an appealingly renewed culture going back hundreds of years and bolstered by prosperity and security.

A Social Model, Mor ket More e than a Mar Mark In the argument over further EU expansion the economic advantages of European unification are viable only insofar as they have cultural appeal, a context which stretches far beyond economic considerations. The threat to this way of life and the desire to preserve it arouses visions of a future Europe which is rising to the current challenges with one last innovative burst of strength. In his brilliant speech of May 28, 2001 the French prime minister Lionel Jospin referred to this European way of life as the core of the political project:Until very recently, the efforts of the (European) Union focused on the creation of monetary and economic union. Today, we need a wider perspective going beyond this, otherwise Europe will become simply just another market which will disintegrate under the effects of globalization. After all, Europe is much more than a market. It symbolizes a social model whose growth has historical dimensions. However, are our small- or medium-sized nation states capable of acting independently when left to their own devices in order to resist being drawn into becoming assimilated to a social model which todays dominant world economic force is proffering to them? Just as the Europeans want to balance out the undesirable social consequences of increasing inequality in distribution as well as exerting influence on a certain re-regulation of the world economy, they should also be interested in the negotiating power which an EU politically capable of action would have as one of the worlds global players. By setting an accession date for East European states, the EU has put itself under pressure to reform since expanding the Union by twelve economically and socially relatively heterogeneous countries increases the complexity of regulation and voting requirements which cannot be overcome without further integration or absorption.And the conference in Nice did nothing to ease the backlog of reforms either. Attempts to use the current problems involving expansion as a means of tackling more deepseated structural problems have been unsuccessful. The crux is the disparity between the closeknit economic cooperation versus the relatively loose-knit political one in addition to the democratic shortcomings of the decision-making processes. The discrepancy between the advanced economic integration and the lagging pace of political integration could be overcome by means of a

policy aimed at promoting a higher level of political freedom of action in order to keep up with the deregulated markets. The coordination of other areas of politics would undoubtedly lead to a concentration of authority, further exacerbating yet another dilemma. The dense layers of European decision-making, the lack of transparency as to how such decisions come about and the absence of opportunity for European citizens to get involved in the decision-making processes cause mistrust among the people. Euro-sceptics reject a transfer of a basis of authority from international agreements to a European constitution on the grounds that there is no European people, as the former constitutional judge, Ernst-Wolfgang Bckenfrde, wrote. What is lacking, apparently, is the subject necessary to all constitutionallybased processes; the collective singular known as people which could then set itself up as a nation with its own citizens.This no-Demos-thesis has been criticized on abstract as well as empirical grounds. A nation of citizens should not be confused with a community bound together by a common fate unconnected with politics and characterized by shared origins, language and history. For this would deny the voluntary character of a nation state whose collective identity did not exist prior to the democratic process which, although not vital to such states, nevertheless gave birth to them. The national democratic states greatest achievement is ref lected in the contrast between a nation state and a peoples nation through the status conferred by national citizenship which created a completely new and indeed abstract sense of legal solidarity. Even though a common language and way of life have facilitated this process of conscious awareness it cannot be assumed that the people take priority over the republic simply because democracy and the nation state have developed at the same pace. On the contrary: this process is part of an ongoing cycle in which national awareness and a democratic sense of citizenship have provided a mutually stabilizing basis. These two elements combined to produce the completely new phenomenon known as civic solidarity which has bound national societies together ever since. The lessons to be learned from the history of the emergence of Europes nation states are that the new forms of national identity have an artificial character which was only able to take shape under specific historical circumstances in the course of a lengthy process which lasted throughTOWARD A EUROPEAN POLITICAL COMMUNITY 59

out the 19th century. This formation of an identity owes itself to a painful process of abstraction which finally elevated local and dynastic loyalties to conscious awareness among democratic citizens of the desire to belong to the same nation. Should this be true, there is no reason to assume that the formation of such a form of civic solidarity should stop at the boundaries of the nation state. The circumstances under which a sense of national identity emerges do however remind us of the empirical requirements which have to be fulfilled in order for such an improbable formation of identity to spread beyond a countrys own national boundaries: first, the necessity of a European civic society; second, the build-up of a politically oriented public throughout Europe and third, the creation of a political culture. Initiall Initially y, a Constitutional Ref Refer erendum er endum These three functional requirements of a democratically organized EU can be regarded as points of reference for complex yet converging developments. Such processes can be guided by a constitution acting in a certain sense as a catalyst in order to accelerate and steer everything to converge at a given point. Europe has to exercise on itself, so to speak, the ref lexive logic of that ongoing cycle which produced both the democratic state and the nation respectively. Initially, there would be a constitutional referendum which would unleash a great debate in the whole of Europe since the constitutionally-based process is, in itself, a singularly effective means of crossborder communication. A European constitution would not only expose the shift in power which has been quietly taking place; it would also encourage new constellations of power. First: Once the EU was able to raise its own taxes and become financially autonomous and once the Commission and a permanent European Council were prepared to share government functions, then the Parliament, as part of a competing legislative system, would theoretically also be capable of communicating its already considerable powers better to the public, thus attracting more attention. The political axis would revolve away from the national capitals closer towards B ru ss el s and S tra sb o ur g . T he p e rce i ved transnational overlap of parallel running interests and similar sets of values would encourage the creation of a European party-political system and cross-border networks.
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Second: Undoubtedly, the sole remedy for the democratic deficit is the simultaneous emergence in Europe of a public firmly rooted in the democratic process. Third:The politically-oriented public throughout Europe is dependent on the one hand on the lively pensions of civic-minded actors; yet it skill needs to be rooted in a mutual political culture. Even although intellectuals up to the 19th century saw no apparent reason to reflect on the idea and essence of Europe, a troubled debate on this subject is now under way. Concern centres around the fact that the achievements of European culture have now spread worldwide.This applies not only to the missionaries of Christianity but also to secular achievements like science and technology, Roman law and the Napoleonic code as well as the nation state, democracy and human rights. Yet two specific experiences within Europe have had a resounding impact on events. Europe, more so than other cultures, has undergone a history of far-reaching structurally rooted conflicts and tension, both on a timescale dimension as well as a social level. This doubtless explains its aggressive disposition regarding expansion as well as its considerable potential for violence. However, Europeans have displayed a productive attitude towards such challenges and have learned two important things: how to live with permanent stabilized conflicts and how to adopt a reflexive attitude towards their own traditions. Within this social dimension modern Europe has devised procedures and institutions for dealing with intellectuals and social and political conflicts. In the course of painful and often fatal entanglements Europe has learned to deal with the rivalry between ecclesiastical and secular powers, the schism between faith and knowledge, the quarrels endemic among religious denominations and even the hostility and rivalry which exists between warmongering nation states. We have achieved this not by resolving such conflicts but by turning them, by means of ritualization, into a permanent situation and a source of innovative ene rg y. In resp o nse to the b rea che s, discontinuities and tension inherent in all modernization processes which it has experienced throughout the course of fume, the Europe of the French Revolution has instituted an ideological rivalry between political parties.The classic partypolitical system ensures the reproduction of a broad spectrum of conservative, liberal and socialist interpretations of capitalist modernization.

In the wake of the heroic intellectual assimilation of an incomparably rich Jewish, Greek, Roman and Christian heritage, Europe has displayed a consistent ability to adopt a sensitive attitude to the Janus-like face of modernism. Certainly, the egalitarian and individualistic universalism which characterizes our overall conception of ourselves to thi s d ay i s no t th e l ea st of E u ro p ea n modernisms achievements. At the heart of European identity lies the nature of the painful learning processes rather than the results there of. The memory of the moral depths into which nationalist extremism led us makes our present political commitment, by con-

trast, look like an achievement. This historical background could smooth the way to post-nationalist democracy, founded as that is on mutual recognition of the differences between proud national cultures. Neither assimilation nor mere co-existence can serve as suitable models for history such as this; history which has taught us how to manufacture increasingly abstract forms of solidarity among strangers. Jrgen Habermas is one of Germanys most influential contemporary philosophers and social scientists. This article is based on a previous version that appeared in Deutschland magazine.

Transaction and its flagship publication, Society, mourn the loss of one of their closest friends and life-long contributors

DAVID RIESMAN
September 22, 1909 May 10, 2002
Author of: Abundance for What? 1993* Thorstein Veblen 1995* On Higher Education 1998* The Academic Revolution 2001* (with Christopher Jencks) * Refers to date of publication of the Transaction edition What makes interpretive, ethnographic exploration so exciting is the opportunity to be surprised, to be curious about a phenomenon and then to discover that it is changing or different from what one had supposed.... If I did not fear for the planet, I could regard domestic crusades with greater detachment. The American Dream of 40 years ago, with all its elements of boosterish optimism, was in several senses of the word a domestic dream. It was overconfident, but not mean-spirited.... Massive social inventions, a rapid growth of tolerance and even of empathy, and beyond these, a sense of civic fairness, would have been requisite to make the dream sufficiently universal to endure. (David Riesman, Innocence of The Lonely Crowd from Society , 1990)

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TOWARD A EUROPEAN POLITICAL COMMUNITY

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