United in Diversity?: European Integration and Political Cultures 9780755620234, 9781845112325

Citation preview

For Alice

How we hope, and how we sigh! And an echo, like the story Of old times, still makes reply. Goethe, Faust Part One, Sc.24, 3885–88 (Oxford, 1987)

Foreword

In June 2005 the heads of state and government of the twenty-five member countries of the European Union, obviously in shock after the French and Dutch rejection by popular vote of the Constitutional Treaty, declared that it was time for reflection, clarification and discussion. They all thought that the Treaty was ‘the right answer to many questions posed by people in Europe’, and therefore its renegotiation could not even be envisaged. But they had to take note of the fact that the European process under their supreme guidance had run into a cul-de-sac from which there was no easy escape. Hence they had to go back and consult their people, having ‘dialogue and debate with the nation’ as the current President of the European Council, Jean-Claude Juncker, said after the first day of the Council meeting. It is probably not going too far to say that this state of affairs also reflects the fact that Europe is characterised by a variation of political cultures that cannot quickly or easily be embraced by one constitution in the traditional sense. With hindsight it may not be surprising that it was just France and the Netherlands, two original core countries which were very conscious of their political culture, that backtracked. Their refusal to vote in favour of the Constitutional Treaty came at the end of a decade during which the European Union had achieved two major breakthroughs: its enlargement into Central and Eastern Europe, and the replacement of twelve national currencies with the common euro. It was perhaps naïve to think that a single European political culture strong enough to absorb that change without revulsion had been established over the past thirty to fifty years. Reflecting Ernest Gellner’s dictum for the nation-state – one polity, one (political) culture and vice versa – one may wonder whether ‘Europe’ yet appears as one political culture that can sustain one polity. I shall not claim that I foresaw this development when in 2001, on behalf of the Eleni Nakou Foundation, I approached the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) with the idea of organising a conference with the theme ‘The Political Culture(s) of Europe’. Since the early 1990s I had been attracted to that elusive concept of political culture. In 1994 I wrote

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for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Chatham House, London, a short book, Europe: a Political Culture? Fundamental Issues for the 1996 Inter-governmental Conference. The idea seven years later was to take up the issue for debate in a wider forum of scholars and intellectuals seriously interested in European politics and culture. I am grateful to Professor Thanos Veremis and Professor Theodore Coloumbis, Director General of ELIAMEP, for having accepted my proposal without hesitation and, in particular, for having convinced Ekavi Athanassopoulou to take over the task of developing the idea and concept, contacting authors and suggesting titles of papers, selecting and inviting other participants and, not least, taking responsibility for editing a book based on the conference’s working theme. She has been an inspiring and hard-working partner, who carried by far the larger part of the workload. I am very grateful for an excellent result that was achieved despite several setbacks. Thanks also to Christianna Karageorgopoulou who was a highly valued coordinator before and during the conference, which took place in Denmark in September 2003, at Schaeffergaarden in Gentofte and at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek. It was no coincidence that I asked ELIAMEP, a highly respected Greek thinktank, to organise the conference. The Eleni Nakou Foundation has its origin in Greece. It is a British charity set up under the terms of the will of the late Eleni Nakou, whose life’s work in quality tourism left a lasting impact in Greece and particularly in Crete. Her love for the Hellenic heritage and her enthusiastic spirit inspired the aims of the Foundation, which are to establish a forum for wider appreciation of the dimensions and depth of European culture. The major means for doing so has been to initiate a biennial symposium or conference on a wide theme related to European culture. The 2003 conference was the sixth such symposium organised by the Eleni Nakou Foundation. The first was held in Crete in 1992, when a group of historians, sociologists, political scientists and journalists was invited to discuss the theme ‘Images of Europe’. In 1994 a second symposium was convened at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art near Copenhagen to debate the question ‘What is European in European Modern Art?’ We held our third symposium in Toledo in 1996 with the theme ‘Europe and Islam, Dynamics and Convergent Trends’. In 1998 the fourth took place at Stirin Castle near Prague, where the participants discussed the question ‘Central Europe: Core of the Continent or Periphery of the West?’ And in 2000 we went back to Greece and met in Delphi to discuss the theme ‘Heritage: Cultures and Politics’. After each symposium a book containing edited versions of selected presentations was published. They are not offered as records of the proceedings but as self-contained publications

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in their own right covering the breadth of the discussions. May this book be a contribution to the dialogue and debate called for in the search for a unifying European political culture. Dr Erik Holm Director of the Eleni Nakou Foundation

PUBLICATIONS OF THE 1992–2000 SYMPOSIA García, Soledad (ed.), European Identity and the Search for Legitimacy (Pinter Publishers, London, 1993). Lord, Christopher (ed.), Central Europe: Core or Periphery (Copenhagen Business School Press, Copenhagen, 2000). Mølstrøm, Søren (ed.), To be or not to be European. A Louisiana Debate on Modern Art and Culture (Gyldendal, Copenhagen, 1995). Muñoz, Gema Martin (ed.), Islam, Modernism and the West. Cultural and Political Relations at the End of the Millennium (I.B.Tauris, London, 1999). Peckham, Robert Shannan (ed.), Rethinking Heritage. Cultures and Politics in Europe (I.B.Tauris, London, 2003).

Preface

Political culture consists of the basic orientations of the society’s members toward their system of government and toward the acquisition, exercise, retention and transfer of political authority. It consists of concepts, views and expectations about two important questions: how government ought to be conducted and what government should attempt to accomplish. Political culture is not static but dynamic and ever-changing; of all the factors that affect a political system, political culture is perhaps the most difficult to analyse, explain and project. Because of its rich history, Europe is a theatre of many great variations in political culture from society to society. It is true that at present liberal democracy is a strong unifying link between the members of the European Union. Nonetheless it is undeniable that there are substantial differences between the political societies of Europe regarding constitutionalism, the rule of law as well as forms and processes of representative democracy. (Hence, the European integration project is as much about unity as it is about conflict.) The cause of these differences lies primarily in divergences in political culture. It was with all that in mind that we chose political culture as the topic of the conference in Denmark and of this collection of essays. Our objective was to initiate a debate that contributes to the understanding of European political cultures, their commonalities, their differences, their evolution, how the European project affects them, but also how it is affected by them. The distinguished scholars who contributed to this volume employ a diversity of approaches to examine some of the broader aspects of political culture and national identity in Europe within both a historical and a contemporary context. The following are some of the questions they focus on: How are myths and constructed memories connected with European political cultures? How can one explain some of the main features of the great diversity of European political traditions? What is the connection between nationformation and the diversity of political cultures in Europe? How did the schism between the Western and Eastern Churches affect Europe’s political traditions?

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Does the nation remain the primary and instinctive political community of reference for most Europeans? Where should the European project be placed in the complex world of political institutions that have marked the history of European modernity? What is the impact of the decline of ideological authority in northwestern Europe on national political cultures? Is European integration a paradox given the existence of a variety of political cultures in Europe? How far can European integration go without a myth–symbol complex and condensed cultural discourses? Is the institutionalisation of a centralised/federal monetary union that shows little respect for the economic cultures of the member states going to give rise to serious conflicts among them? Can we witness the slow birth of a European political culture despite the tenacity of national political cultures? The volume is organised around three interrelated sections. The essays in the first section reflect upon the wider meaning of the variety of political cultures and national identities in Europe and seek to analyse and explain some of the concepts, memories, and historical connections that have been present in the constant evolution of Europe’s political cultures and identities. The essays in the second section focus on the political cultures of several European countries and examine how they have been affected by the European project. The third section addresses the question of the importance of interaction between European institutions and European societies, if the political integration of Europe is to succeed. This is certainly not a book that seeks to offer suggestions as to how the Union should reform itself, or to speculate about the future fortunes of the European project. Rather, it intends to rekindle awareness of Europe’s diverse political experiences and traditions and to point out that national political culture is an important dimension – much broader and complex than institutionalised politics – in the political life of Europe’s nation-states. Ekavi Athanassopoulou Athens

CHAPTER 1 Same Words, Different Language: Political Cultures and European Integration Ekavi Athanassopoulou [Political culture] refers not to what is happening in the world of politics, but what people believe about those happenings. … political culture forms an important link between the events of politics and the behavior of individuals in reaction to those events; for although the behavior of individuals and groups is of course affected by acts of government officials, wars election campaigns, and the like, it is even more affected by the meanings that are assigned to those events by observers. Sidney Verba

European political leaders entered the 21st century in a jubilant mood, confident of the uniqueness of the Union based on democracy, freedom and in its potential to serve as a model for the world.1 They were conscious of a historic mission to steer Europe to its economic and political integration as well as to a leading role in international affairs, and they were geared up for the task ahead. They believed not in the perfection but in the perfectability of the European project. They were united in thinking that the legitimacy of the European institutions was largely accepted. However, already halfway through the first decade of the new century the euphoria was over. The legitimacy of many European institutions had been challenged, the validity of essential assumptions about the European project was disputed, efforts to enshrine it with a constitution were rebuffed. In short, the popular consensus that needed to underpin the Union’s most ambitious projects, monetary union and eastward enlargement, was missing. European citizens, instead of uniting around a shared European cause and mobilising themselves for a great mission in the world, seemed increasingly frustrated about unresolved problems at home – unemployment and job insecurity, immigration, decay and despair in the inner cities, drugs – and focused inwards at their home countries rather than outwards at the Union or the world. Doubts about the choices of the European policy elites as well as deeper discontents, which had been hidden under the surface, coalesced in loud and strong expression around the process for adopting the Constitutional Treaty.

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The lack of confidence among many Europeans in the European Union (EU) and the anxiety with which they looked at their world was not the result of ‘a lack of understanding’ of the European project, as a chorus of frustrated European political leaders, at least publicly, claimed in the wake of the French and Dutch referenda against the Constitutional Treaty. Nor was lack of confidence and enthusiasm in the EU to be found only within marginal radical circles arguing against the prevailing orthodoxy among European political and bureaucratic elites. It was widespread and partly due to frustration over worsening economic conditions that the average European blamed on Brussels. It was also the result of the absence of a European citizenship that could give rise to a sense of EU membership based, if the term is seen from a republican perspective, on the right, through communication and participation, to affect the EU decision-making process. And it was symptomatic of the serious mistrust of EU institutions among the citizens of different European countries, of their scepticism about the responsiveness of Europe to their needs and concerns, alongside the frustration of their different expectations from the EU. In essence, the lack of confidence in the EU reflected that the vision of a politically integrated Europe was constructed on a few illusions. One of them was that the process of integration was not to be hindered by the diversity of political cultures and political mentalités existing in Europe. Clearly attempts to generalise about the ideas and beliefs of the elites, who were spearheading the European project, can only go so far given that there were many opposing currents of thought. Yet, at the risk of oversimplification, it is difficult not to observe the degree to which a majority within Europe’s political and bureaucratic elites accepted the same set of assumptions over the issue of the relationship between national political cultures and European integration. Since the 1990s there were no more delusions that integration was to replace, at least not any time soon, the diverse and multi-layered landscape of national political attitudes and cultures within Europe. But that was thought to hardly matter as integration was perceived, also by many scholars, to be a further layer over and above national political identities with a dynamic of its own that would not be affected by them. It was expected that ‘unity in diversity’ would be both possible and effortless.2

ABOUT POLITICAL CULTURE Political culture has been called the connecting link between micro-politics (the political attitudes and motivations of the individual, whether as an individual, or as a member of a larger group) and macro-politics (the structure and

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function of political systems, institutions and their effects on public policy). It is a concept that cannot be precisely defined. Differences of opinion have developed among researchers as to its definition and to the specification of the content of ‘political culture’, as research on political culture has grown since Almond and Verba published their landmark study The Civic Culture in 1963. Mostly it is the philosopher and the social theorist who have been most interested in political culture. Nonetheless, political scientists and students of political history find the term useful in affirming the importance of cultural variables in the explanation of political phenomena. Thus they use the term to refer to the product of the history and evolution of a political society, which is characterised by a relatively high degree of unity and stability. They also use it to mean the product of the process of political socialisation (an informal learning process by which individuals receive knowledge and attitudes about political actors, processes and systems), to which all of the society’s members are subjected. In short, political culture is understood to be the result of tradition, past/present experience and learning, and is never static. When scholars speak of a society’s political culture, in most cases they speak of basic political values, norms and attitudes that are deep-seated in the society’s general culture and are widely shared by its population, both the masses and the elites. These fundamental political orientations of a society’s members pertain to the following closely related and overlapping matters: what is the proper and legitimate scope of governmental activity? Conversely, what are its proper limits? What is, and what is not, a proper function of government? Which concerns properly belong in the public sphere and which in the private sphere? Where should the legitimate authority of government end and the legitimate rights of the individual members of society begin? How large and important a role should government play in society and in the life of the individual citizen? Fundamental ideas, beliefs and expectations relating to the general nature and operation of the governmental system are also an important part of a society’s political culture and offer answers to questions such as: what are actually the rules of the political game? What is the actual location, or distribution, of political power in the governmental system and/or in the society at large? What is the true relationship between those in society who govern and those who are governed? To what extent does the average citizen actually have the capacity (or not) to participate in politics in a constructive manner? In short, political culture, which is an ever evolving and important aspect of a society’s general culture, concerns itself with the following basic political questions: (a) what serves as a basis of political legitimacy; (b) how government ought to be conducted; (c) what should be the distribution of political power within the society’s governmental system and the society at large; (d) what

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government should attempt to accomplish; and (e) what is the role of the individual in the political system. So political culture determines the nature of the state and the state’s relationship with society. It is important to note that political culture does not imply homogeneity, or uniformity of thinking among a society’s citizens, as individuals differ in terms of abilities and learning opportunities. Nor does it imply that mass public’s and elites’ belief systems do not differ. (Mass public belief systems are generally more narrow and less organised, whereas those of the elites are more complex and systematic.) Political culture has been identified as one reason why different states enact different policies to deal with similar problems. It has been argued that variations in political culture can help understand why some societies are more successful than others in developing and operating constitutional democratic political institutions. In other words, a society’s degree of success in operating a governmental system that is both constitutionalist and democratic in character depends, largely, upon the nature, content and limits of the political culture of that society. On the European continent the various contents of the pluralistic cultures of the different nation-states – products of differences in national histories – are reflected in the fact that European democratic traditions are not unified. That modern constitutional democracy is the prevalent form of government in Europe today, or that the EU interprets the 1993 Copenhagen criteria as the essential democratic conditions upon which the Union is based, should not lead to the conclusion that Europe’s political societies are the same. The fact that in many European countries there is a growing sceptical political culture, characterised by collective disbelief in politicians and political institutions, a result of discontent with the political system, should not lead to such a conclusion either. European peoples differ in how they have worked out their own versions of participatory political culture, in how they balance active with passive political participation, in how they practise politics of accommodation and compromise, in where they set the limits of governmental action, in how they view the functioning of their political system, in their expectations of its output, in dealing with its contradictions, in their belief in the effectiveness of individual or collective action as an instrument of political change, in their responses to the encounters between forces of change and tradition, in what they chose to be their ‘other’, and in how their political culture is influenced by the ‘other’. Differences are essential and are as big between the peoples of eastern and western European countries as they are among the peoples of Europe of the fifteen, not to mention the strong regional and group sub-cultures existing within European nation-state boundaries. Major intra-Europe population movements, which might have caused some substantial blending in political

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cultures across national cultural boundaries, have not occurred. Nor does it seem likely that they may take place in the foreseeable future. Interestingly, the EU, in certain regards, contributed to accentuate some of these differences as various groups within the same European state responded quite differently to the political dynamic unleashed by the Union.3 Certainly the loss of much of the legitimacy of national governments, the retreat of the classic institutions (family, ethnic group, state), the widening of boundaries of existing political communities within the nation-state under the pressures and allure of globalisation, and the emergence of transnational issues and loyalties among the citizens have been transforming many attitudes underlying national policies. Yet, this transformation is driven never by globalisation alone, but in combination with national and local political cultures which are continually transformed and reconstructed. So far, national political communities have not been showing signs of losing their role in shaping political beliefs and expectations. It is important to be aware that whereas the politics of a society may change and change a lot, the normative context of the political culture of a society changes only very slowly. The idea that the emergence of new relations beyond and above the state have made national experiences and values almost irrelevant for the political process tends, firstly, to underestimate the endurance of European political communities formed over many centuries (in some cases, for instance along the European Atlantic coast, the process of their formation even predated the coming of modern nation-states). Secondly, it tends to compartmentalise historical experience, which is a process of combining rather than excluding. Thirdly, paradoxically, it has the tendency to look at forces of change through a onedimensional lens. In fact, often enough, the forces of globalisation and detraditionalisation result in a strengthening of the urge to emphasise national values and identities.

POLITICAL CULTURES AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION It can be argued that the assumption that political integration and the creation of a supra-national European political system can successfully take place, regardless of national political attitudes (with often only marginally overlapping points of reference in terms of principles or meanings), has in practice serious problems. Political processes are not mechanical; like living organisms they absorb information and evolve around it. Basic political values and norms, components of a society’s political culture, function as guides to proper and accepted political behaviour within society but also as guides to the

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government’s behaviour in foreign affairs and international relations, as well as to its conduct regarding internal affairs or domestic public policy. As Ernest Gellner reminds us: ‘modern man is not loyal to a monarch or a land or a faith, whatever he may say, but to a culture’.4 The European political leaders’ decisions, choices and actions cannot but reflect the political orientations of their societies. These orientations have also determined their leaders’ perceptions of Europe and European integration as well as how the European project has acted on them. Jean Monnet’s idea of a Europe based on an apolitical model informed by the ‘common interest’, as defined by technocrats, is Utopian. The definition of the ‘common interest’ could not but depend, to a very large degree, on their political culture. (Indeed, the existence of a keenly pro-European policy elite characterised by a cooperation culture is hardly widespread.) It is important to note that even when cultures overlap there are significant differences, even antagonisms, between them. In the past ten years a scholarly debate on the relevance of the national dimension in EU politics, and the role of nation-states in trying to impose their domestic model on EU politics, has been growing. Today it is difficult to deny that national political cultures (particularly French political culture, initially at least) had a strong impact on the construction of many EU institutions (as European structures in their turn have had on national political cultures). At the same time, conflicts (the result of different national political attitudes independent of ideologies of the right or left) have emerged in many major European debates, for instance in the debate on unanimity versus majority vote, and on the Constitutional Treaty. Inter-governmentalists, who subscribe to the realist school of thinking, may argue that conflicts among the members of the EU have to be understood more in terms of state interests than values. Certainly, conflict of interests should not be underestimated in this context. Nonetheless, I contend that the strong emphasis on the clash of interests has served to distract from the real conflict of political values and beliefs that exist between the Union’s national political communities. The idea that political integration will occur regardless of differences in national political cultures can be argued to be a delusion for another reason. We need to be aware that no initiative at the European level can achieve lasting success unless it has been truly incorporated into the political systems of the member states. However, each national political culture is bound to have its own perceptions as to how to achieve desired outcomes. In fact, for the citizens of Europe their perceptions of the European political order, their demands, expectations and levels of support towards the EU and its policies (support which in turn affects institutional performance at a national level), as well as the way these expectations are expressed, can be seen to differ in that they

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reflect their separate national cultures. Therefore, it cannot be expected that an EU initiative, taken from above, will necessarily be accepted and finally incorporated into a member state’s political system, even though it may have the support of the national government. It is important to remember that basic political values and norms, on the one hand, affect an individual’s demands towards the political system and provide a general guidance for his own political conduct. On the other hand, they are also the criteria by which citizens measure the legitimacy, wisdom and fairness of political behaviour and its objectives. In other words, they are standards by which he may judge (and accept or reject) the political behaviour of others, including the decisions of the government, as well as the manner by which the decisions were made and are being implemented. In essence, political culture provides the boundaries of political legitimacy and the horizons of political possibility. The more integration is pursued, the more the European polity will have to address essential political issues (for instance: redistribution of wealth, management and resolution of political conflicts). Consequently, and in the absence of a strong Europolitical culture, the more intensely its policies will be scrutinised and even challenged by some of the different national political cultures depending on the issue. Furthermore, sharp tensions between EU member states will inevitably emerge (since certain EU policies favoured by some national cultures will be unacceptable to others), for as all students of politics learn, when political questions revolve around essential issues, politics usually become intense. The sharper the tension, the greater the risk for instability within the Union, because when points of dispute become intense, and remain intense for some time, the system may become unstable. The above leads us to the following thoughts. The current tension at the core of the European project may be seen as a consequence, partly, of the reality that modern Europe has never developed a shared political culture. Hence the stability (a necessary condition for integration), even the viability, of the Europolity depends upon at least two interrelated questions. The first is whether visions of European political order (and hence EU institutions and agencies) will be able to reflect, in a dynamic way, the connection (or reconciliation) of the political values and beliefs of European citizens (not merely of the consensus that European elites may reach at a given time) throughout the system in a variety of settings. In other words, is it possible for the EU to successfully build upon political values and beliefs that Europeans share beyond their own national borders (something that so far it has largely failed to do)? This would facilitate the creation of bonds, both horizontal (between EU citizens) and vertical (towards EU institutions), that would then translate into greater social trust (confidence in the fellow European citizens), political trust (confidence in the

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EU system and its institutions), support and participation in the process of European integration. In other words, the more the EU political order resonates with the political values and beliefs of all its members, the easier to keep political tension at a low level thus avoiding destabilising frictions. The second question is to what extent Europe’s national cultures can adapt and relate to each other within the Union so that Europe’s political communities can meet the responsibilities and obligations arising from EU membership (which should never be or perceived to be static, nor the result of predetermined parameters), as long as they judge this membership to be beneficial to their interests. As these lines are written, European political and bureaucratic elites, almost without exception, have finally come to accept that the present structures of the EU are unable to meet the challenge of a political Europe, as this has been defined in a historical and cultural context. As a result, a re-thinking and reformulation of the process of political integration has begun, perhaps belatedly. As yet, a political consensus on the steps to be taken (other than integration should proceed in a very circumspect way) is still to be formed. It remains to be seen whether a new approach not dominated by ‘economism and technicism’5 will emerge strong. Decades of practising this approach have shown that the European integration process requires something more. As Philip Schlesinger summarised it a few years ago: ‘ … although technology-driven consumption is offered as a solution to the problem of cultural identity, it is unable to address the underlying problem of how the collectivity can attain some measure of solidarity. Putting it differently, the question of how to fashion a cultural order and new collective identity for the EU will persistently reappear through the backdoor’.6 EU policy elites should now seriously question whether the European integration project can afford to downplay the dynamics of the subtler cultural components characterising the political systems of the Union’s member states. If they find reason with the argument that the integration process has to be based on conceptions that resonate with Europe’s diverse political cultures, many questions need to be asked. To suggest only a few: How do Europe’s national political cultures influence the European project? In what areas within the context of European integration is there a major clash between national political cultures? A comprehensive survey on European political cultures may have a role to play in answering the two previous questions.7 The objective of such a survey would be to contribute to today’s debate about the current state of the EU with a theoretically informed and empirically based level of discourse about political cultures, and their changes across Europe to better appreciate the challenges posed to European integration.

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What steps could be taken in responding to the challenge posed by the diversity of elements and fundamental contradictions in the political heritage of Europe for Europe’s political union to be strengthened and deepened? How can serious political conflict be prevented over pressures to reconcile practical issues with national values (or one national value with another) at a European level? Do European institutions tend to be overly influenced by a few national political cultures (or at least by some essential characteristics of them), assisting them thus to impose their vision of politics in Europe, and so to antagonise other different European political cultures? And if this is the case, firstly what may be the consequences for the cohesion and success of the Union? Secondly, should one expect this reality to provide an easy target for opposition forces when important political issues are raised within the Union? What is going to be the impact on the embedded European institutional practices of the inclusion of Central and Eastern European countries characterised by a transient political culture between a totalitarian past and the pursuit of democratic values and norms? What might be the impact on Europe’s embedded institutional practices of the inclusion of Turkey, a country characterised by deep fragmentation of political culture, which is associated with general cultural fragmentation? (A strong Kurdish political subculture – a product of the deep division in political attitudes between Turks and Kurds – extremely sharp divisions between the Kemalist republicans and the Islamists, between the country’s modernised western provinces and its traditional eastern provinces.) Could a politicised Europe (where politics move beyond the national arena and become transnational8) gradually contribute to the communication and cooperation between Europe’s national political cultures? Is it realistic to expect Europe to evolve in the long run along the example of the US, which is a political community comprising a host of political cultures, originating with immigration, that became, finally, subcultures within American culture?

FINAL REMARKS The objective of actively thinking about national political culture differences (as well as about their convergence points), both at a European and at a national level, is not to point the finger, cause defensive reactions, or erect barriers between members of the EU. Its importance lies in making the distinctions necessary to keep Europe’s political targets and tactics proportionate to the interests

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but also at least to some of the values of all the citizens, who should be the most realistic measuring stick for the success of the European polity given its democratic aspirations. There is no doubt that meaningful attention to the question of national political traditions can only complicate European policies. In fact, it is no accident that Europe’s elites sought to bypass this hurdle. After all, there can be as many readings, on the one hand, of the various political cultures of the continent, and of how they affect perceptions of Europe, on the other, as there are European national cultures. Analysis is far from easy and may lead to unexpected, or even undesirable, conclusions. But shying away from complexity and relegating such concerns to the realm of idealism, or merely academic discussion, undermines rather than serves the vision for an integrated Union and its long-term political objectives, at least as they have been articulated so far by European policy elites. Clearly no institutional arrangement is without faults. Bearing this in mind, the problem (from a political culture perspective), in relation to the intention to create a ‘European Union’, amounts to how to contruct acceptable rules of the political game for a European political community of 450 million people characterised by various political attitudes so that they serve their needs and remain sensitive to their political cultures, while at the same time it ensures that decision-making is not paralysed. In the final analysis, the question is one of fair judgement, appropriate balance and proportion both at a national and at a European level. As E. E. Schattschneider has written in a somewhat different context (that of American politics), this is a matter of leadership, organisation, alternatives and of how to create systems of responsibility and confidence. The challenge for the European peoples and their leaders is not simply to ask themselves what they want (or do not want) from the EU, but what the EU can realistically offer, and then come to an agreement on how they can best strengthen it to reach its potential. Above all, European decision-makers must believe in the democratic myth: that the average European citizen not only ought to have a say in politics but that he is also influential, and that his political orientations cannot simply be discarded. However, for this myth to be sustained, the peoples of Europe have to emerge from their peculiar mood of passivity and disengagement towards the European project. It is a curious aspect of European political life that the European institutional system, accused for its democratic deficit and lack of touch with Europe’s citizens, is expected to correct itself, while for almost three centuries pluralistic democracy in Europe progressed only when the pressure from below became so great that it could no longer be ignored.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Almond, Gabriel A. & Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1963). Almond, Gabriel A. & Sidney Verba (eds), The Civic Culture Revisited (Newbury Park, CA, Sage Publications, 1989). Almond, Gabriel A., Russell J. Dalton, G. Bingham Powell & Kaare Strom (eds), European Politics Today (New York, NY, Longman, 2005). Beck, Ulrich & Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim, Individualization: Institutionalized Individualism and Its Social and Political Consequences (London, Sage, 2002). Blondel, Jean Richard Sinnott & Pale Svensson, People and Parliament in the European Union: Participation, Democracy and Legitimacy (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998). Cederman, Lars-Erik (ed), Constructing Europe’s Identity (Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner, 2001). Clark, Terry Nichols & Vincent Hoffmann-Martinot (eds), The New Political Culture (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998). Geertz, Clifford, Local Knowledge (New York, Basic Books, 1983). Gellner, Ernest, Nations and Nationalism (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986). George, Stephen, Politics and Policy in the EU (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1996). Habermas, Jürgen, ‘Citizenship and national identity’, in Bart van Steenbergen (ed.), The Condition of Citizenship (London, Sage, 1994). Habermas, Jürgen, ‘The European nation-state – its achievements and its limits on the past and future of sovereignty and citizenship’, in Gopal Balakrishnan (ed.), Mapping the Nation (London, Verso, 1996). Van Ham, Peter, European Integration and the Postmodern Condition: Governance, Democracy, Identity (London, Routledge, 2001). Héritier, Adrienne, Policy Making and Diversity in Europe: Escaping Deadlock (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999). Hirst, Paul & Grahame Thomson, ‘Globalization and the future of the nation-state’, Economy and Society, vol. 24, no. 3, 1995. Hooghe, Liesbet, ‘Supranational activists or intergovernmental agents? Explaining the orientations of senior commission officials toward European integration’, Comparative Political Studies, vol. 32, no. 4, 1999. Moravcsik, Andrew, The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1998). Risse, Thomas, ‘European identity and the heritage of national cultures’, in Robert Shannan Peckham (ed.), Rethinking Heritage: Cultures and Politics in Europe (London, I.B. Tauris, 2003). Schattschneider, Elmer Eric, The Semi-Sovereign People: A Realist’s View of Democracy in America (Hinsdale, IL, Dryden Press, 1975). Strath, Bo (ed.), Myth and Memory in the Construction of Community. Historical Patterns of Europe and Beyond (Brussels, Peter Lang, 2000).

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Schlesinger, Philip R., ‘Europe’s contradictory communicative space’, Daedalus, vol. 123, no. 2, spring 1994, p. 28. Schlesinger, Philip R., ‘From cultural protection to political culture? Media policy and the European Union’, in Lars-Erik Cederman (ed.), Constructing Europe’s Identity (Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner, 2001). Tsoukalis, Loukas, What kind of Europe? (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003). Verba, Sidney, ‘Conclusion: comparative political culture’, in Lucian W. Pye and Sidney Verba (eds), Political Culture and Political Development (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1965). Wallace, Helen, ‘Deep integration or shallow integration?’, in Christopher Lord (ed.), Central Europe: Core or Periphery (Copenhagen, Business School Press, 2000).

NOTES 1

In the words of Romano Prodi, when President of the European Commission: ‘Europe needs to project its model of society into the wider world. We are not simply here to defend our interests: we have a unique historic experience to offer. The experience of liberating people from poverty, war, oppression and intolerance. We have forged a model of development and continental integration based on the principles of democracy, freedom and solidarity and it is a model that works’, Romano Prodi, ‘2000–2005: Shaping the New Europe’, Speech to the European Parliament, 15 February 2000, Strasbourg. 2 Only a few found resonance with the ruling of the German Supreme Court on the 1991 Maastricht’s treaty enlargement proposals, which stressed that cultural homogeneity was a cardinal precondition for political integration (Habermas: 1996, p. 293). 3 For instance, on the clash in Spain between regional and national political culture and the connection with the EU, see James Edward Miller, ‘Political culture, European integration: dilemmas of Southern Europe’, in this volume, pp. 151–152. 4 Gellner, Ernest, Nations and Nationalism (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1986), p. 36. 5 Schlesinger, Philip R., ‘From cultural protection to political culture? Media policy and the European Union’, in Lars-Erik Cederman (ed.), Constructing Europe’s Identity (Boulder, CO, Lynne Rienner, 2001), p. 109. 6 Ibid., p. 108. 7 Of course, there should be no illusions about the limits of surveys that can never provide the final word on any topic. 8 I owe the idea of a ‘politicised Europe’ to Professor Loukas Tsoukalis.

CHAPTER 2 The Impact of Myths and Constructed Memories on European Political Cultures Herman van der Wusten 1. INTRODUCTION Some stories are especially important parts of cultures. They express wider meanings than the mere concrete events on which they ostensibly report; and they embody expectations, norms and values that demonstrate the storyteller’s cultural background or intentions and encourage an audience to look at the world in certain ways. Shared culture facilitates shared experience, thus group formation. Shared experience produces culture, thus stories. Cultures can carry general meanings and contain all-encompassing sets of expectations, norms and values about the world, but they may also be restricted to one sphere of life (for example, politics). However restricted the commonalities, however specialised the field of experience to be shared, however transitory the common experience, people quickly start to develop stories about how and why they came together, about the common path through time, about future projects. In this way they express their commonality, promote understanding and eventually start to develop a common cultural basis. A common culture is brought to life and then maintained to a significant degree by storytelling. Stories do not need to be expressed in language, they may be carried by other symbolic systems. Language may only be part of the symbolic system in use on certain occasions (for example, theatrical plays, media messages). Nonetheless most symbolic systems are less well equipped to convey meaning than language is. Music and pictures are well known examples. The built environment (the architecture of individual buildings, townscapes) may be specifically designed to carry messages. However, whether such messages are actually received is an open question. Stories read into features of natural landscapes (for example, volcanoes, distinct separate trees) are initially attributed by language as the primary medium cannot unambiguously express them.

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Stories may be more or less truthful and may more or less emphatically carry larger messages. Those with the further reaching representations that describe reality, and simultaneously contain references to more abstract notions, are what Barthes (1957) called myths. Consequently, a myth may or may not be truthful, but a myth is definitely ambiguous. It is by no means easy to distinguish between truthful reports without more abstract overtones, untruthful reports of similar quality, and symbolically laden myths based on either truthful or untruthful accounts. Actual stories may mean different things to different persons, truthfulness is an evasive attribute. The whole set has been been called mythistories by the historian William McNeill (1986) addressing a conference of historians, who were not amused with the mixing of genres. Constructed memories (in words, in music, in drawings, in sculpture) belong to the realm of fantasy more than to that of historical truth. The positioning of such products is not necessarily in one’s own past: they may also be situated in the future or elsewhere (for example, ‘pre-determined’ futures, Utopias and dystopias). But as constructed memories they fit the purposes of collective attachment and continuity particularly well. Many stories made up to express larger symbolic content are constructed memories in the form of myths. They are manufactured or they evolve to be the appropriate carriers of cultural content. If myths and constructed memories are important contributors to culture, then their control becomes a matter of interest. Controlling them may also mean manipulating their content. To draw the maximum benefit from these stories, they have to be embedded in group rituals. The string of rituals performed in public ceremonies on a regular basis is the liturgy. When group culture is vital to the existence of the group, liturgy becomes more prominent. Following the philosopher Avishai Margalit (Appiah 2003), a division of mnemonic labour starts and specialists come to the fore. Ritual, liturgy, myths and mnemonic specialists are well known from the religious sphere, but signs of it are everywhere (for example, among the supporting crowd of sport teams, in mass politics and in Japanese company cultures). Stories retelling memories may well circulate among many people without any guidance or central control for extended periods. This has been called the communicative (Assmann 1992), or common (Margalit in Appiah 2003), memory. A communicative memory becomes a cultural memory (Assmann 1992) if the story gets shape and is carried on in memorials and ceremonies that are framed by a liturgy. Assmann thinks that this important transition occurs after roughly forty years and this is the time of cultural conflict over the precise form of cultural memory. Margalit (in Appiah 2003) emphasises the specialists and specialising institutions that may get involved, which distinguish the common memory from a contrasting situation that he calls ‘shared memory’. It is unclear

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if he considers a sequence of common and shared culture to be the only possible one. In this paper, I look briefly at the connection between myths and constructed memories, on the one hand, and European political cultures, on the other. I take it that in the field of politics in Europe national and/or state cultures are at present still pre-eminent, that a modicum of European Union (EU) political culture exists, and that still other political group formation each with its own cultural assets is also in existence. It is important to assess the relative strength of these cultures. In section 2, I develop an argument about the evolution of European political cultures. In section 3, I indicate the mechanics of myths and constructed memories in Europe’s polities. In section 4, I list the possible impact of these myths and constructed memories on the political cultures in which they are embedded. Section 5 concludes the paper.

2. HOW EUROPEAN POLITICAL CULTURES EVOLVED During the past two centuries, the nation and the state have become the major moulds inside which political cultures took shape within Europe. Gradually they have become increasingly coincident. This is because the state apparatus became the most successful nation-builder and because the results of ethnic cleansing and boundary changes mutually adapted the moulds. On the basis of a few macro-conditions (splits in Christianity, density of urban networks, commercialised economy) (Rokkan 1975, Tilly 1992), different types of state formation were distributed across Europe. The process of modernisation (early in some places, later in others) set an important condition for nation-building among larger groups (Deutsch 1953, Gellner 1983). State and nation-formation processes are conditioned by macro-social parameters like those just mentioned, but they are the (often partly unintended) outcomes of conflicting social projects, like efforts to achieve expansion through war, or to realise the imagined national community through mass mobilisation. In the course of time, differently constituted state actors were confronted with various nation-building projects. Depending on circumstances, they either took the lead in shaping the nation, according to their preferences, or they set out to destroy incompatible nation-building efforts on their territory. Nationbuilders in their turn tried to get the upper hand, or at least a degree of autonomy in the state where they were located, or they tried to secede in order to build their own political roof. Outcomes were the joint results of macro-social conditions and the dynamics of power struggles articulated by the myths and constructed memories of alternative nation- and state-building projects.

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In all of Europe the nation gradually became the naturalised basis of political life. Barthes looks at this process as the core of what a myth produces: ‘ … il transforme l’histoire en nature’ (Barthes 1957, p. 237). Depending on the context in which they functioned, national myths were either parts of the macrosocial conditions of nationhood, or instruments of rivalling powerholders. In many countries, citizenship developed on the basis of a generally accepted notion of shared nationhood with a common core of cognitions, affections and assessments vis-à-vis the state (for the first contemporary large scale comparative inventory by survey of five nations, three in Europe: Almond & Verba 1963). Citizens developed different political preferences after subscribing to a shared sense of nationhood. Those preferences related them to the main voices in the political arena. Sometimes it proved difficult to take the nation for granted, to develop generally acceptable citizenship formulas, and to allow a diversity of views and the concomitant plurality of political formations. In some countries parties claimed to be the sole national representative forcing others to either dispute that claim, or to put forward a different interpretation of the national identity (for example, British Conservatives). Anti-parliamentary mass politics temporarily got the upper hand in Germany, Italy and several more Eastern European countries, and seriously threatened the pluralistic foundations of other polities. Once in power, fascist politics decisively turned their claim of embodying the nation into a civil religion, in which politics was reduced to the expression of the national community and was backed up by terror within the iron-mould of the state. The nation was not naturalised but constantly invoked, emphasised and hailed. Despite repeated confusions and accompanying shifts in emphasis about the prime importance of class versus nation, and the relative importance of national versus state allegiance, the Communist regimes did something similar (Kaiser 1994). The public face of politics was limited to the performance of the liturgy of a civil religion expressing the unbreakable unity of the people living under this regime. All this is not past history. It is also a series of mythistories, reflecting the different heritages in the various liberal democratic systems that are now the norm in Europe (though not always the practice, for example the apparently different direction of the Russian polity). These heritages affect current orientations. Consequently, political cultures still differ appreciably. A sequence of nationbuilding efforts over time has produced recognisably different political profiles among the polities of European nation-states, thus differing political cultures. These processes still continue. The highly differentiated inflow of immigrants in European countries during the last generations has provoked renewed discussions on the issue of national identity, that will, whatever the

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intention of the protagonists, result in newly refurbished articulations of that elusive notion. However, European political culture should not be merely perceived as the differentiated set of political cultures of the European nation-states. Before the French Revolution introduced the nation as an active player in practical politics, there was already a sphere of politics in Europe. But it was quite differently ordered from what came next. The state system was for the most part a set of autocracies. The minute state apparatuses, and the monarchs, shared a set of norms and values on how to conduct politics. They were mostly geared to the protection of each participant’s position in the international system and the control of each one’s own territory in order to perpetuate the various reigns (Wight 1977). In addition, there was a quite separate politics in cities, where the orderly daily life, provisions for the poor, the regulation of trade with other cities, were important issues on a political agenda (Prak 1993). Sometimes connected to urban elites, and often connected with powerholders at the state level, was a class of cosmopolitans. These were individuals situated in university towns, gentleman farmers, independent professionals, who felt themselves primarily connected to their equals all across Europe with whom they occasionally met on leisurely travels, about whom they read in an international press and with whom they maintained a lively correspondence (Darnton 2002), among other things, about the design of systems of rule to enhance the chances of the good life; in other words politics. The close connection and dependence between local government and central government is in most cases a fairly late development. Where it happened, citizenship nationalised. The cosmopolitans contributed to the construction of nations (the one they found themselves in, but also others) on the assumption that a set of nations, freely constituted, would assist in spreading peace and economic opportunity. Kant’s famous foresight of eternal peace was just a late example of a genre that was quite popular in the 18th century. The German historian Meinecke analysed the adaptation of bourgeois cosmopolitans to Bismarck’s German unification in the early years of the 20th century and was recurrently reconsidering his initial positive verdict, in light of the terrible aftermath, until his death at the end of World War II (Meinecke 1962, or. 1907). In the 19th century many cosmopolitans participated in an international peace movement aimed at the extension of international law that was important until World War I and beyond. The catastrophe of the Great War brought into being a new focus of attention: the (pan-)European movement started in Vienna on the initiative of Count Coudenhoven-Kalergi during the 1920s. It took the existence of the different European nations for granted, but concentrated on a political form that would enable their peaceful coexistence, because the nationstate formula apparently did not (Heffernan 1998, pp. 125–129).

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This patrician view of politics contributed to the construction and evolution of European cooperation after World War II that eventually resulted in the EU. It was certainly not shared by majority populations, but it had some broader backing. From the very beginning the support for European cooperation has been much stronger among the better educated. Jean Monnet, a pioneer in this field, was a typical representative of this patrician style. His background was in international luxury trade and he had been active in international organisation and transnational cooperation across the world for decades. But there was quite a circle of people with similar inclinations and backgrounds around him. One was the Dutchman Max Kohnstamm. His father was a liberal Jewish professor with interests in science, philosophy and pedagogy. His mother was the daughter of the first director of Royal Dutch/Shell. In the 1930s, he visited the USA to witness the New Deal for himself. During World War II he was taken hostage after speaking out against German occupation in the University. After the war he became private secretary to the queen as she returned home, then went on to the administration of the Marshall Plan and subsequently became secretary to the High Authority of the Coal and Steel Community in Luxemburg (Mak 2004, pp. 833–846). The patrician view did not so much deny the differentiation, on the basis of nations, but it denied its absolute and unmovable character. It also maintained that eventually nations might take a backseat in the order of things political. Ernest Renan, who wrote one of the most influential short pieces on the nation that ever appeared, said almost over a decade after the Franco-German war (that had deeply touched him as someone strongly influenced by German colleagues): ‘Les nations ne sont pas quelque chose d’éternel. Elles ont commencé, elles finiront. La confédération européenne, probablement, les remplacera’ (Renan 1882). Jean Monnet and the members of his circle like Max Kohnstamm moved that process a couple of steps forward. It is an important question how vital patrician politics can still be to European cooperation: can it still function in the current media-saturated environment? Can it still be effective as cooperation levels further intensify and deepen? Political cultures are undoubtedly somehow connected, but not necessarily completely dependent on the more encompassing cultures that predominate in the same territory. In national cultures the cultures of everyday life and of politics are narrowly linked. European political cultures are now largely the preserve of nation-state populations referring to their own nation-state. Political cultures are also, less saliently and with a smaller following, constituted by additional political arenas like: the EU, local and regional government, politically relevant movements within the context of the nation-state (most parties) despite their outgrowths into European families (Grunberg et al. 2000), and transnational

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movements like the anti/other-globalists (Tarrow 1994, Sommier 2003). These other cultures somehow relate to nation-state political cultures: as rivals and competitors for attention as well as for the provision of world views/prescriptions for action; also as alternative naturalised political environments for different, mutually non-conflicting, occasions. Political cultures are obviously not static, but change tends to be gradual. For most people their politics get fixed like many other things during early adulthood. Thereafter, change is the exception. In the end, parental preferences are often continued. Great shocks may shift a pattern, but primarily for those whose preferences are less stable. It takes time to work the novelties into the different age cohorts (about the post-war stability of West European polities: Lane & Ersson 1994, p. 320). Different stories, or new interpretations of old stories, preferably myths and constructed memories, to be told often and over a longer period, can help to achieve and consolidate those changes.

3. THE PRODUCTION AND DISTRIBUTION OF POLITICAL MYTHS AND CONSTRUCTED MEMORIES Of all the various political myths and constructed memories, the national ones have been studied most intensively. The latest round has been kicked off by Nora’s (1984–92) multivolume Lieux de Mémoire, concerned with the republic, the nation and France. The preservation of those spots, the repetition of the accompanying stories, are considered essential for the maintenance of nationhood. This stability function is well served by a liturgy and rituals with myths as a core element as we know from religion (this is terrain extensively covered by classical anthropology from Durkheim to Radcliffe-Brown). But the preceding question is how certain political myths and constructed memories become prominent, and come to overshadow others. Let us take the case of political units of different scales as an example. Local and regional pride, European patriotism and even larger scale identifications should be examined in the same fashion as national pride and patriotism, thus also focusing on myths and constructed memories. Paasi (1986) has indicated the common features of politically relevant ‘regionalisms’ at different geographical scales, including the symbolisms that are our first concern here. Apparently particularly connected to the sphere of leisure and tourism, there are occasional efforts to heighten interest in regional identities that get mixed up with politics (Heinritz 1993). There is also a renewed interest in local urban identities and attachments, in connection with the seemingly increased autonomous role of cities in the globalising economy (Savitch & Kantor 2002, Taylor 2003). There is

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an extensive debate on the independent character of the elections for the European Parliament vis-à-vis national elections, and consequently in the growing independence of the European political arena from the perspective of European voters (for the view that stresses this independence, see Grunberg et al. 2000). In all these alternative cases myths and constructed memories will be important anchors for these different identities. However, it is obvious that presently they can by no means compete with national myths and constructed memories in salience and importance (see also Sträth & Triandafyllidou 2003). The history of the construction and distribution of national identities through myths and constructed memories strongly suggests how much effort will be needed to reduce their current standing. After all, they have been constructed and maintained over the course of a couple of centuries and act now as primary vehicles for identification. But no construct has the eternal life and therefore no alternative project is doomed from the outset, although only a few will make it into serious contenders. An elaborate cottage industry of myth and constructed memories production has accompanied the emergence of nations. In a collection of often amusing and always instructive cases about myths, ceremonies and public buildings, Hobsbawm & Ranger (1983) have set the tone for the elaboration of a perspective that puts stress on the invention of national traditions. This perspective has, in recent decades, on the one hand, staked its claims against those who are overly concerned with the evolution of the contents of the myths as ‘history of ideas’ and consequently pay less attention to the ways in which actual myths find their way in social life (Kedourie 1960). It has, on the other hand, at least complemented functional views of nationalism that explain its emergence from social needs for communication with strangers (Deutsch 1953, Gellner 1983). And it counters views that look at national traditions as somehow primordial (the most sophisticated treatment in Smith (1986)). If nations, in the final analysis, existed in real life as a set of people, not as a reproducible image, they would be social collectivities whose members believed they shared membership of an imagined community called (nation) X (Anderson 1983). The quality of their imagined social bond would be a lot stronger, thicker and more intimate than their actual experience in a routine daily life warranted. To bridge the gap between imagination and reality, myths played a vital role. They referred to the community, its birth and life (it was immortal); they played a role in the larger sign systems that indicated and expressed that community; they played a vital role in the liturgy and its rituals, where for short moments efforts were made to actually perform the imagined community. This has been Mosse’s essential insight in his study of the nationalisation of the German masses from the time of the French Revolution to the

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Third Reich. He sees Hitler’s state as the perverse culmination of a long-term process in which Christian traditions were emptied and redirected to perform anti-parliamentary political rituals to express the national community – das Volk – as a way to deal with modernity (Mosse 1975). Following Hroch (1985), nationalism as the movement that produced and distributed national identity, knew three stages: the content of the message (the shape of the imagined community); institutions concerned with its distribution were installed; a process of diffusion by a mass movement based on these attributes took place (Barthes 1957, pp. 258–259, which had already indicated the interest of studying the history and geography of the spread of myths). Billig (1995) has emphasised that a fourth stage should be added: the state of banal nationalism, where the conscious diffusion of the nationalist message has been completed, but where social life is so saturated with national references that a shared national identity has become the natural habitat in which social life unfolds. (He uses the omnipresence of unobserved national flags as his prime example.) Billig has a strong suspicion that this is the actual stage in the West and in the USA in particular. Thiesse (1999) has filled Hroch’s framework with a rich variety of examples from across Europe that broaden Mosse’s views on the nationalisation of the masses to an all-European phenomenon, while, at the same time, question the intimacy of the links with fascism and national socialism. As this was apparently an all-European process, what exactly is the link to the interwar dictatorships in Italy and Germany? Thiesse does not put the problem in these terms. Her concern is to show the general features of the process. She rehearses the search for national myths, national languages, national culture, national landscape; the new specialisms that studied them; the institutions that stored, showed, massproduced and spread them; the mass organisations that embodied and used them. Again and again she shows and underlines the transnational nature of the whole process. Initially and recurrently, it was predicated on the idea that, in the end, there would be a collection of nations peacefully coexisting, there hopefully was a common basis of all European nations (at one stage it was seemingly discovered in the nearly universal Indo-European origin of the languages), and there were elements of the package of national identity that were imitated from case to case all across Europe. But while the packages were constructed by different combinations of the same elements (she quotes sociologist Lofgren who likens the construction of European national identities to the IKEA system (Thiesse 1999, p. 14)), the outcome has been a hard-shelled set of separate nation-states that have, only after a lot of damaging conflict, apparently decided that a stable frame of cooperation had to be preferred. The European confederation that Renan saw coming has

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perhaps now arrived, but that refers to the state-building part of the equation. It is unclear to what extent the flag-waving of banal nationalism, in most places, at most times, and heated nationalism in some places, sometimes still keep the mindsets in a pattern that contradicts Herder’s pastoral prediction. What are the leading myths that are part of the core elements in the national identity package? In a recent exhibition in Berlin called ‘Mythen der Nationen’, historians connected with seventeen European national museums selected and showed the five leading myths for their respective nations. Dijkink (1999) has analysed these myths from several perspectives. He has notably categorised them as to the time of their setting and their content. Whereas six are set in classical Antiquity, four described events during 400–900, twenty-three during the period 900–1400 and fifty-two during 1400–1900. The myths suggest that certain periods are more attractive for myth-making than others. The dip after Antiquity reflects more general contemporary views of history. In addition, myths tend to be set in the not too distant past more than in older times. This indicates that the heritage reflects a historical record that is apparently richer the more contemporaneous the period. The content of the myths could be classified in four meaningful categories: those that refer to the foundation, the demarcation, the rank and the internal order of the nation in terms of personal autonomy (I slightly rewrote the labels Dijkink used). Demarcation myths are the most frequent; thirty-seven myths are mentioned and they are among the most prominent myths, in all except one of the seventeen countries. Myths about foundation and ranking are mentioned twenty respectively twenty-one times in thirteen countries each. Personal autonomy within the nation is the subject of only seven myths in six countries. It should be stressed that, contrary to Herder’s view of equality in diversity, that informed the Romantic inspiration of the national idea, rank of one’s own nation vis-à-vis others was a major item in myths that anchor the national idea in a story. For these seventeen countries, foundational myths have older settings than demarcation, rank and personal autonomy myths. The median value of the centuries in which they occurred were the 14th, 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. France, Switzerland, Norway and Poland (that is, all kinds of European countries) have the most diverse mythical apparatus: their five myths cover all the four categories. Seven more countries have their myths in three out of four categories. The remaining six are more selective. Spain is the one country with all its five myths in one category (demarcation). It is logical to argue that universally embraced national identities are not the necessary outcome of a pre-determined process: there may be reversals, failures. People may be struck by various nationalist messages and be converted, or may

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be inimical to any nationalist message, or the glow of their national identity may recede. National identities should not necessarily be considered as universally realised ‘angles in marble’ (The Times’ hopeful description of the English working man’s mental state regarding national matters, on the second anniversary of Disraeli’s death in 1883 (McKenzie & Silver 1968)). There are periods in national histories where doubt about national identity abounds, or where the signs that back up the national identity slowly recede from view, or become less prominent. During the past few years, at least in West European countries, the question of the content of national identity has been put forward with renewed urgency in public debate. In the Netherlands, historians obtained a major grant to produce a new series of books of national history. In a famous newspaper piece, public discourse favourable to multiculturalism was seriously taken to task (Scheffer 2000), opening the floodgates for a stream of declarations about the inalienable, constant Dutchness that should be defended and preserved. The following year the same newspaper issued a long series of contributions in which members of the cultural elite were asked to describe the national identity. The result was a highly divergent set of opinions (NRC 2001). Pim Fortuyn, during his brief months in politics, campaigned among other topics on the basis of a sharply articulated notion of Dutchness. Against the background of terror threats from Islamic fundamentalists, first in the Western world and then also domestically, an invigorated Dutch identity has become a rallying cry; proposals to strengthen knowledge of Dutch (myt)history have ardently been supported by politicians. Apparently there are times when the position of mnemonic specialists and the content of national myths is more consciously debated or disputed. The relation between such debates and the strength of national identities in populations at large is unclear. In fact we know very little about the intensity and permanence of national identity, about possible shifts in the importance of elements that make it up, or in the fundamental alteration of these elements. In Germany a renewed debate on these issues has been conducted around Gunther Grass’s novella Crabwalk some years ago. The novella’s story is derived from an episode at the end of World War II when the Soviet navy torpedoed a ship with German refugees in the Baltic. It follows the fate of some survivors and the fate of the episode in the post-war Germanies up to the present. It is about remembering, forgetting and silencing; about the way events of the past enter the domain of shared memories; about how the mnemonic specialists jockey for position and about how new events (the Wende) change not so much the perspective but the playing field for all these items and actors. To take a quite different example, we get a glimpse of the efforts to undo and remake Soviet national identity, and its supporting myths in Russia during

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perestroika, from Remnick’s detailed reports on ‘Lenin’s Tomb’ (1993, particularly chapters 4 and 8). From Lenin’s agitprop campaigns to school history based on Stalin’s Short Course, followed later on by the History of the Communist Party, people were strongly indoctrinated with a view that inextricably connected the fate of Russia and the party. The historical profession was lined up for the production of the appropriate mythistories. The efforts that gathered in the association Memorial during perestroika were aimed at the opening of history primarily with regard to the years of terror in the 1930s. Those, whose memory had been officially suppressed and had in that sense been forgotten, had to be remembered. This was first of all the recapturing of room for communicative, or common memory, where truth could be spoken. Their names and their fates had to be retrieved from the archives and their history then, also officially, had to be remembered (in cultural or shared memory). Memorial had its own foundational myth in Anna Akhmatova’s famous poem Requiem: I should like to call you all by name, But they have lost the lists … … And if ever in this country they should want To build me a monument … Erect it … …where I stood for three hundred hours And where they never, never opened the doors for me. (Remnick 1993, p. 118) In 1988 Gorbachev introduced and supported the idea of a memorial statue for the victims of Stalinism during one of the last party congresses. Over fifteen years later the archives are still not exhaustively analysed but there is a monument at a highly symbolic place close to the KGB headquarters. Major monumental memories to the old regime have been collected in an open space not far from Gorki Park. They form a kind of innocent exhibition of the definitive past. Has the change been completed? Has Russia entered a new phase of banal nationalism? It seems not. The memorial to Stalin’s days has not been naturalised. Some have never accepted it. Others are still deeply affected by it. How could it be otherwise? From time to time the position of the monument is challenged for reasons of proper town planning, historical continuity, etc. It is still contentious. The park with the statues and the emblems can be considered with irony, with awe and, by many, also with a sense of nostalgia. As their ritual setting has collapsed the myths are read very differently indeed. There is a

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multitude of audiences. In a trendy Moscow disco, the Soviet style is skilfully parodied: Stalin looks with lifted arm to a barely clothed voluptuous young lady, while workers with caps amidst their technological wonders of steel peep through a different window. At the same time, president Putin solemnly returns the red star to the army. Lenin’s Mausoleum still functions though visitor numbers have dwindled. A huge statue of him is still on one of the main Moscow squares. Official Moscow has tried to retell the city’s story, not so much by disputing its immediate, communist past, but by stressing the country’s 19th century pre-revolutionary doctrine: orthodoxy, autocracy, spirit of the people (Eckert 2004, p. 177). Apart from these more dramatic examples of instability and discussion concerning the national myths, it would also be fruitful to concentrate on more gradual change. What happened in, for example, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, in terms of the imagery propounded by the mnemonic specialists and the distribution of national identities among the population at large after the onset of federalisation, the disappearance of verzuiling, the shift in economic outlook during recent decades, and the enhanced salience of European cooperation? Such questions inform the chapters of Eatwell (1997). In many of these more gradually changing countries, the steady inflow of foreign migrants and the increased sense of insecurity, as a result of violent Muslim fundamentalism, has now created conditions for further identitary discussions. The question of how these discussions will affect myths on foundation, demarcation, international rank and internal autonomy is still open ended. A last point in relation to myths concerns the possibility of additional themes. I just referred to four classes of myths that help sustain the different European national identities. Could there be others apart from foundational, demarcation, rank and internal order myths, not merely for nations but also for other relevant political units? It seems to me that particularly in relation to the last two categories, which are the more recent additions to the collection of national myths, it is possible to think of different themes that might well be used to help ground the collective nature of these political units, and to provide them with a sense of direction. Like in the USA, the constitution could be used as a rallying myth that further stresses the quality of the internal order. This is what Habermas has proposed for Germany, and this is now very important with respect to the future of the EU. Other themes would be the social quality characteristics (like in the welfare state) of the political unit, the ecological sustainability of its social forms, or its technological performance. These have all to do with the internal order, while at the same time they provide possibilities for international ranking, that were less salient at the time when the national identities took shape. In the case of a central role for the constitution this could

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be translated into an international rank order, in terms of the simultaneous acceptance of obligations under international law.

4. HOW MYTHS AND CONSTRUCTED MEMORIES HELP SHAPE AND MAINTAIN POLITICAL CULTURES Myths have several functions for political cultures. They delineate the domain of political cultures and contribute to the judgment about what is important and unimportant in politics, to the profiling of political roles, to the inculcation and maintenance of political values and norms. The content of myths helps solve the puzzles of life by providing frames of interpretation and guidelines for action. Myths work because they are a certain type of product – concrete representations with more abstract overtones, the precise content does not count here – and as such a form of capital for those who dispose of them. Myths may become the self-evident parts of the daily scene that embody the natural order (standard stories, familiar like flags), or they may act as inducement or as justification for participation while fervour is mobilised (a pedestrian narrative turns into a suggestive rallying cry). Myths (as constructed memories, or otherwise) frame a reading of past, present or future, and thereby help define the cast of characters and demarcate the scene in which the relevant actor has to operate. We have seen how important demarcation and foundational myths have been in European nationbuilding processes. This also applies in other domains. Current collective arousals of belief systems (the new fundamentalisms of Islam, Christianity and the Enlightenment, all thriving on myths) have increasingly sharp foundational narrative and delimitation definitions, sometimes geared to observable, lifestyle traits. Contrary to this, the European level of politics is continuously contested as it lacks a stable, generally accepted core of meaning with its accompanying myth. Demarcations shift wildly from the Ural Mountains to a participation in a Judeo-Christian tradition to a constitutional definition of rights and obligations that leaves room for all those who want to subscribe to it. It is perhaps significant that the Europa myth of Hellenic origin (the young royal daughter Europa is abducted by God Zeus, temporarily transformed into a bull, who brings her across the sea and then sires at least three children by her) has since the Renaissance many times been used as a representation of European cooperation and controversy with various mythic figures in various roles, all repeatedly differently valued (Wintle 2003). Apart from founding, defining and describing a meaningful entity as polity, myths help to pin down a habitus for figures and items referred to in the stories.

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This normative mapping enables another important contribution of myths: the production of a set of dispositions for individuals belonging to the nation related to the norms and values that ground them. The Count of Orange, ‘father of the fatherland’, a pre-eminent figure in the Dutch independence movement of the 16th century, was called William the Silent. In the 19th century national imagery he was portrayed as a somewhat withdrawn, unspectacular figure, dressed in simple gear, a role model for the national ideals of controlled simplicity and absence of pomp. This may also go for parts of the material environment like buildings. Think of the Reichstag in Berlin in its current shape. While moving in the magnificent cupola, visitors look at a highly impressive exhibition of its dramatic history that is quietly propounding a definite preference for constitutional, parliamentary government. Myths are a product. If judged valuable, all those involved in their production and distribution enhance their cultural capital, their habitus and status in life. The Grimm brothers, discoverers, collectors and guardians of the treasure trove of European fairytales, which provided a fertile ground for political mythmaking, became celebrities all across the developed world. After them came the folklore professors, the museum directors, the national playwrights, novelists and opera composers, the designers of national tradition handicrafts and the architects of national styles. All these mnemonic specialists derived their habitus from national identity production of which myth-making was an important part. The public intellectuals are perhaps their most seductive current impersonations, but their aura is gravely contested by public relations specialists and spin doctors, all marketing specialists, who have assisted in the further commodification of myth-making. If the production of political myths always had a certain likeness to IKEA-systems, even when they were largely anticipating the methods of the Swedish lifestyle store, now the crafting of political myths and the appropriate styling of your house are considered to be branches of one discipline where the manipulation of the message is the focus of attention, and is done in any direction as long as you pay. If myths belong to the main ingredients of national identity production, can they not only act as vehicles of mobilisation but also as the unemphatically present references that have been called ‘banal nationalism’? Billig’s flags are his most obvious examples, but he is convinced that there are others and he analyses some of them (for example, some standard figures of speech, Billig 1995, pp. 154–173). Barthes’ main point in his collection of mythologies was the general, but generally unobserved, presence of myths in news reporting on everyday life and special occasions. A nice combination is ‘le bifteck et les frites’, in which a French commander during the colonial war in Indochina is quoted on this subject. Barthes uses it as an example of a mythological way to express essential

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Frenchness (Barthes 1957, pp. 87–89). On the other hand, myths apparently function most effectively in the context of rituals and liturgy where there is a heightened awareness of its content. That is the classic locus where they are supposedly inculcating the world views that guarantee stability. In the case of banal nationalism it may well be that the occasional brush up of the identity apparatus in a collective ritual, including the performance of myths, is necessary to keep the ‘naturalised environment’ alive. It is interesting to look at this from the perspective of the process of secularisation in the sphere of religion, read as a loss of culture. The more latitudinarian versions of christianity tend to also lose more ground probably while their stress on collective ritual and the concomitant performance of myths is less emphatic. Myths in connection with collective rituals were in the not too distant past mainly the preserve of a few major institutions: religion and politics. Their 19th-century competition for hegemony was the Kulturkampf. Prosperity, mass production and the mass media, and their always-available new mnemonic specialists, have opened the gates for ever more producers of myths to try their luck on the consumer market. It is a quite different task to maintain cultural hegemony in the present time than in the past. The myths of political culture are now in a wider competition than among themselves and with religious myths. The sheer magnitude of mythical supply dictates different rules to achieve cultural hegemony for any political myth.

5. CONCLUSION In this paper I explored the importance of stories (which take the form of myths, or express constructed memories told in words or other symbolic systems) for political cultures in Europe. These stories can be the collective property of social collectivities, or they can be controlled by specialists, who can frame them in an appropriate liturgical context and adapt their content to desired effects. The most successful cases combine these two states of affairs. European political cultures have in the past two centuries been exceedingly dominated by the increasingly coincident moulds of states and nations. But they have developed while an older set of political cultures was already in place – partly putting them aside, partly incorporating them. These are the diplomatic cultures responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs in the state system, the urban political cultures, which regulated the order of individual cities, the shared culture of Europe’s cosmopolitans of the 18th century, who widely articulated public opinion from a transnational viewpoint for the first time. The

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patrician sensibilities that characterised most cosmopolitans have accompanied their incorporation in national political cultures. The successive emergence of various efforts to construct European political institutions, and to be part of European political cultures, has often gained attendance and support of those who were the mental successors of the earlier cosmopolitans. Consequently, there have always been various political cultures in which many people may be simultaneously involved. Sometimes they may be compatible with each other and sometimes not. In cases of competition and rivalry the supporting myths and constructed memories are major items that help inculcate and ‘naturalise’ political cultures. Nation-state formation has been a long drawn out process. Its differentiation across Europe has been conditioned by a few macro-social processes plus the results of mobilisation campaigns in which myths and constructed memories were of vital importance. The crafting of these stories was a series of intellectual projects executed by many specialists in a large number of places. These people drew inspiration from each other and used overlapping sources. As a consequence, different nationalist creeds were pretty similar with some modules taken from other packages, whereas others were more original but ready to be used by others again (the IKEA system). Myths and constructed memories generally affect political cultures in distinct ways: as delineators of the cultural domain to which they refer, as vehicles for indicating role models and rules. They do this on the strength of their product, its distinctive combination of a reflection of concrete realities and a simultaneous reference to abstract concepts and arguments. Myths can be made more powerful as the authority over their contents and uses becomes more circumscribed and powerful on other counts. Myths perform as mobilising vehicles, or as reminders of stability depending on the state of the population whose culture is at issue. The future of political myths and constructed memories can be considered from the perspective of the current oversupply of myths in a heavily mediated environment. Political myths might become increasingly undistinguishable from religious myths, but also from myths expressing preferences in the sphere of leisure and lifestyle. Already for quite some time political performances have been likened to acts of civil religion, including the myths brought forward in the formalised expression of commonality. Politicians now also try to put in an appearance in talkshows and mass entertainment programmes, where their message is contextualised by leisure and lifestyle content propounded by celebrities. Political messages and information from other domains get intertwined, resulting in new room for myth-making. For political myths to survive as identifiable and salient markers of political culture they may need such

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powerful backing by mnemonic specialists that the resulting arrangements are incompatible with democratic polities. The permanent invocation of the political community as the highest entity, plus the intertwining of that message with values pursued in different spheres of life, reminds us inexorably of the totalitarian nightmares of the 20th century superbly summarised by Orwell in his 1984 (which fortunately is now behind us as a prediction). The alternative would be a situation where the role and significance of political myths has been strongly limited, and politics is geared to a highly pragmatic interaction and decision procedure among well-specified and articulated groups held together by shared interests. Other myths would thrive at the same time. Nobody knows if such an arrangement is tenable, but it is the basis on which Jean Monnet operated to achieve European cooperation: ‘la solidarité de fait’ that emerges from the law-based pursuit of common interests. Another way to consider the future of political myths and constructed memories is to look for signs of incremental change that can be imagined to result in permanent alterations further down the road. In the Alps I recently perhaps encountered fresh signs of diversity in the political myth market that might indicate such change. Local drivers had started to use license plates acclaiming their adherence to the Savoy; in public spaces the placards reporting Savoy-oriented activity had increased; there was a larger supply of books about the history of the region. This was France, the official region Rhône-Alpes and the official departments Savoie and Haut-Savoie, but this was also the old Savoy part of the kingdom of Piedmont stretching the Alps. After all this has only been France for one and a half centuries. The town hall of Annecy, a centre of the renewed regionalist fervour, is beautifully situated at the edge of the lake next to the old town. It is surrounded by a public park where notorious public figures from the region, who played a role in the recent history of France, have got their statues. The town hall dominates the view from the city into the lake and clearly represented new French authority when it was erected in the late 19th century. Now there are many flag poles stretching along the facade of the building. They carry Savoy, French and EU flags in a neat order that defies the search for a hierarchy. Interestingly, it turned out that all the many town halls in the surrounding area were on a daily basis ornamented with French, Savoy and European flags. On some fronts one was lacking, though never the national one. In sum, in pretty recently acquired territory within the state of France, an exemplary nation-builder in Europe, the townhalls – the state that is – now carry a message of some diversity in the myths that ground political life. Banal transnationalism? Naturalised? Will the tradition in which Renan wrote his expectations finally have it right? Who knows.

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In summary, the hyper-mediated current environment induces politics to engage in extreme forms of political power concentration in order to preserve the integrity of political myths, but other conditions for such dynamics seem to be lacking. As a result, political myths may dwindle in importance compared with other types of myth; increasingly pragmatic politics may get the upper hand, but temporary outbreaks to the contrary cannot be excluded. At the same time a cautious, incremental restructuring of actual governance may indeed be underway in Europe encouraging slightly more varied profiles of loyalties. That in its turn would provide a new, solid basis for political myth-making.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I have benefited from incisive comments on a first version of this paper by Peter Bugge (Arhus University) and also from encouraging annotations by the editor of this volume, Ekavi Athanassopoulou.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Almond, G. & S. Verba, The Civic Culture. Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1963). Anderson, B., Imagined Communities (London, Verso, 1983). Appiah, K.A., ‘You must remember this. On “The ethics of memory” by Avishai Margalit’, The New York Review of Books (13 March 2003), pp. 35–37. Assmann, J., Das kulturelle Gedächtnis. Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (Munich, Beck, 1999). Barthes, R., Mythologies (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1957). Billig, M., Banal Nationalism (London, Sage, 1995). Darnton, R., ‘A euro state of mind’, New York Review of Books (28 February 2002), pp. 30–32. Dijkink, G., ‘On the European tradition of nationalism and its national codes’, Geography Research Forum, vol. 19, 1999, pp. 45–59. Deutsch, K., Nationalism and Social Communication (Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1953). Eatwell, R. (ed.), European Political Cultures. Conflict or Convergence? (London, Routledge, 1997). Eckert, D., Le Monde Russe (Paris, Hachette, 2004). Gellner, E., Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, Blackwell, 1983). Grunberg, G., P. Perrineau & C. Ysmal (eds), Le vote des quinze. Les élections européennes du 13 juin 1999 (Paris, Presses de Sciences Politiques, 2000) (in particular contributions of C. Vandermotten & P.M. Lockhart, A.-P. Frognier, Chr. Lord).

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Heffernan, M., The Meaning of Europe. Geography and Geopolitics (London, Arnold, 1998). Heinritz, G., ‘Regional identity in the Hallertau’, in E. Dirven et al. (eds), Stuck in the Region? Changing Scales for Regional Identity, KNAG Amsterdam Netherlands Geographical Series 155, 1993, pp. 47–60. Hobsbawm, E. & T. Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983). Hroch, M., Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe. A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1985). Kaiser, R.J., The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1994). Kedourie, E., Nationalism (London, Hutchinson, 1960). Lane, J.-E. & S.O. Ersson, Politics and Society in Western Europe (London, Sage, 1994). Mak, G., In Europa. Reizen door de twintigste eeuw (Amsterdam/Antwerp, Atlas, 2004). McKenzie, R. & A. Silver, Angles in Marble. Working Class Conservatives in Urban England (London, Heinemann, 1968). McNeill, W.H., Mythistory and Other Essays (Chicago, IL, The University of Chicago Press, 1986). Meinecke, F., Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat (Munich, Oldenbourg, 1962 or. 1907). Mosse, G.L. (1975) The Nationalization of the Masses. Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1975). Nora, P. (ed.), Lieux de mémoire, three volumes (Paris, Gallimard, 1984–1992). NRC Cultureel Supplement: series ‘In het holst van Nederland’ [‘Profoundly Dutch’] (spring 2001). Paasi, A. (1986) ‘The institutionalization of regions: a theoretical framework for understanding the emergence of regions and the constitution of regional identity’, Fennia 164, pp. 105–146. Prak, M., ‘Identité urbaine, identités sociales; les bourgeois de Bois-le-Duc au XVIIIe siècle’, Annales ESC, July–August, 1993, pp. 907–933. Remnick, D., Lenin’s Tomb. The Last Days of the Soviet Empire (London, Viking, 1993). Renan, E., ‘Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?’, Bulletin hebdomadaire de l’Association scientifique de France, 26 March 1882. Rokkan, S., ‘Dimensions of state-formation and nation-building’, in Ch. Tilly (ed.), The Formation of Nation-states in Western Europe (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1975). Savitch, H.V. & P. Kantor, Cities in the International Market Place: The Political Economy of Urban Development in North America and Western Europe (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2002). Scheffer, P., ‘Het multiculturele drama’, NRC (29 January 2000). Smith, A., The Ethnic Origin of Nations (Oxford, Blackwell, 1986). Sommier, I., Le renouveau des mouvements contestataires à l’heure de la mondialisation (Paris, Flammarion, 2003).

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Sträth, B. & A. Triandafyllidou (eds), Representations of Europe and the Nation in Current and Prospective Member-states: Media, Elites and Civil Society. The Collective State of the Art and Historical Reports (Brussels, European Commission, Directorate-General for Research. Citizen and governance in a knowledge-based society, 2003). Tarrow, S., Power in Movement. Social Movements, Collective Action and Politics (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994). Thiesse, A.-M., La création des identités nationales. Europe XVIIIe–XXe siècle (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1999). Tilly, Ch., Coercion, Capital, and European States AD 990–1992 (Oxford, Blackwell, 1992). Wight, M., Systems of States (Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1977). Wintle, M., Europa and the Bull, Europe, and European Studies. Visual Images as Historical Source Material, inaugural lecture (Amsterdam, Vossiuspers UvA, 2003).

CHAPTER 3 The Political Cultures of Europe in Historical Context Miroslav Hroch There is no doubt that Europe is a continent with a strong memory and with deep historical roots. For this reason, all attempts to start a new era with the ‘year Zero’ – 1789, 1917 – failed. Even the most radical innovations included a strong impact of the past. Because Europe is also a continent comprising many different states, regions and lands, the past and the collective memory acquired different faces in different countries. If we try to analyse the political cultures of Europe, these two interconnected European specificities have to be considered. Nevertheless, trying to find historical roots of political cultures, we must be aware that we are constructing a connection that was never verbalised or perceived in the historical situations we are looking at. Europeans who lived, let us say, in the 18th–19th centuries, did not anticipate that the posterity would regard them as makers or predecessors of different political cultures. The relationship is even more complicated. All constructions of the past, all search of historical roots of present structures, has to include two interconnected levels corresponding to two forms of ties between the past and present: 1. The past survives ‘unconsciously’ in the present time, through the family tradition, institutions, novels, the way of expressing meanings and defining key terms (for example, the nation, society, equality, etc.). 2. The past is verbalised in narratives, like the ‘collective memory’, the construct of national history and of its specificities, presented by scientific history, school education, or by constructed traditions. At both levels, we have to search for factors that influenced the formation of political cultures in different countries. In this contribution, I shall be selective and concentrate on some typical elements of political culture:

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attitude to the state and state authorities; quest for participation; responsibility towards the state as representative of the society; readiness to accept consensual decisions and the attitude towards using the power as a component of political struggle;

All these four elements will be considered from the point of view of their historical context, which differed from that we can observe in present societies. The tension between historical context and the present imperative of political correctness helps us, maybe, to understand also the – sometimes hidden, nonverbalised – surviving differentiation of political cultures. The search for factors of historically conditioned differences in political cultures has to distinguish between two basic perspectives: 1. The supranational perspective, which defines differences regarding the different past of European macro-regions. These differences depended on great general changes and patterns of behaviour under conditions of pre-modern society, which also survived into the modern times. 2. The national perspective, which concerns differences in the formation of individual states and nations. Political cultures were also influenced by circumstances under which the modern nation and nation-state was formed.

1. MACRO-REGIONAL PERSPECTIVE Various parts of Europe lived during centuries under conditions that represented some kind of ‘common fate’, influenced their standard of living (and cultural stereotypes of their elites), and offered data for constructed traditions. This differentiation of European macro-regions started with the early Middle Ages after the breakdown of the Ancient Roman Empire and continued, at the cultural level, with the split of Christianity, and, at the economic lever, with the differentiation of the ‘core’ and ‘periphery’. 1.1. Maybe the oldest, but still frequently used, criterion of regional differentiation is connected with the ‘Limes Romanus’, which divided the early medieval Europe into two parts according to the presence, or absence, of the Roman heritage. The ‘noble’ Roman heritage concerned the present ‘Western’ Europe and the western Mediterané. This was important until the end of the Franconian Empire in the 9th century. Nevertheless, during the later following centuries, the

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feudal system – as a new ‘synthesis’ – emerged. It is hardly possible to find any important difference in political systems of feudal kingdoms and their cultural life inside and outside the former Limes in nowadays Central Europe. On the other side, there is only one region where the continuity with the heritage of the Ancient Roman Empire was kept: the European part of the Eastern Roman Empire, later called the Byzantine Empire. The Limes were more important at the level of ‘collective memory’: with the age of humanism and especially during the 19th century; the stereotype of more developed, more civilised people on the territory inside of the Limes, that is, at the territory of the Ancient Roman Empire, as opposed to ‘barbarians’, was supported above all in France, England, Spain and Italy. However, in the eyes of early German nationalists, Ancient Rome was regarded as an incorporation of cultural degeneration and political despotism; that is, as a contradiction of modern political culture. By contrast, the Germanic tribes living outside the Limes were regarded as predecessors, or even pioneers, of democracy and equality. Both interpretations were integrated during the 19th century in some kind of compromise: the idea of a superior Western civilisation was based on, and defined through, the construct of heritage, which incorporated a ‘synthesis’ of Roman civilisation and German principles of equality and freedom: all this as an opposite to the ‘underdeveloped’ East. Let us hope that, being liberated from the shadow of nationalism, the practical importance of this inside–outside Limes division is in our days limited to the number of tourists from the North towards the South. 1.2. The idea of Western superiority was based on another historical difference rooted in the Middle Ages, which was perhaps more relevant for the modern diversity of political cultures, than the discourse about Limes. It was the differences between the Latin and Greek Church, which ended in the break (schisma) between the Western and Eastern Churches in the 11th century, the consequence of which was in the establishment of the Orthodox and Catholic (Latin) civilisations. What does this confessional break mean for the diversity of political cultures? Above all, the Orthodox civilisation, originally represented by the autocratic system of the Byzantine Empire, did not know, and did not acquire, the system of political participation, as this was realised in the system of estates in the Western world. More important was, as M. Weber already observed, that the Eastern civilisation did not accept the system of autonomous urban communities and the principle of free urban burgess. It was in these urban strata that the roots of modern principles of participation and equality were born and where, later on, ideas of civil society found their most important social support.

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A very famous characteristic of the Eastern civilisation is ‘caesaropapism’: the principle that the secular ruler (emperor) is automatically the head of the Church. This prevented the cruel struggles for power between the secular and religious institutions, which we know in Western civilisation, but also annihilated a very important potential corrective of a legitimated opposition against state power. While direct links cannot be made, there exists a majority consensus that regards the dualism in the Latin West, of the secular and spiritual power, as an important component that also influenced, in a transformed configuration, the modern political culture. The fact that the Orthodox Church refused the scholastic theology, which was developed in the Western church and preferred the irrational hesychasm, can maybe explain further differences. This preference limited and hindered the development towards rationality and higher education, and, indirectly, weakened the need for change and innovation, which could be demonstrated in the development of Arts. The different view (criticism) and ability of regeneration was in the Latin Church represented by the Reformation and by the Catholic Counter-Reformation. 1.3. Naturally, we have also to take into account the differentiation inside the Latin Church, so as it happened through the Reformation. The struggle for and against Reformation was not limited to religious matters: it was an important political struggle for power. In other words, the meaning of this division was by far not limited to confession: it concerned also basic changes in the authority and legitimacy of the state and the ruling classes. Reformation offered not only a new definition of the relation between man and God, but also between man and the state, and between man and secular authority. (In this connection, we have to distinguish the Lutheran loyal and disciplined approach to the state and the Calvinist approach, allowing and recommending the opposition against the unjust state and ruler.) An important nucleus of participation was included especially in the Presbyterian system of elected representation. The Reformation discourse, followed by the ideology of religious wars, was mostly discussed in public. Thus, it provided a background for the discussion of political culture issues in a printed form for the first time. Sometimes, the Reformation is regarded as the only factor that set off modernisation, but this is a rather one-sided view. The Catholic answer to the challenge of Reformation, as it was expressed in the so-called Catholic reformation (and Counter-Reformation), also gave birth to several elements of modernity. Nevertheless, it contributed to the relationship between state and participation in a different way: was it only an unimportant accident that the road towards political modernisation proceeded in Catholic countries, like Spain, France, Poland and Italy, with a strong share and influence of violent revolutions? Also,

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the Enlightenment, according to Gellner, differed in catholic France and in protestant Prussia, above all regarding its impact on politics. 1.4. Rather important differences could be observed (and explained), if we perceive the ‘common geographic experience’ of macro-regions like Western, Northern Europe, Mediterranean or South-Eastern and Central Europe. Such a common experience was, for instance, to Western Europe – that is, the Atlantic belt – the overseas and colonial expansion. This expansion had only an indirect impact on Central Europe, to which much importance were religious wars and the defence against the Ottoman expansion (which decided the fate of the Balkans for many centuries and created, consequently, a region with specific historical experience). If we identify Eastern Europe with Russia, we observe a successful expansion towards the East (Siberia), and an originally unsuccessful but later successful expansion towards the West (Baltics) and South (Black Sea). What did this mean for the political cultures? There is no doubt that the state-organised expansions offered opportunity for advancement to a large part of middle and upper classes, something that strengthened the position of state authorities. The defence against the Ottoman aggression demonstrated also the irreplaceable role of the state, but opened the opportunity for advancement to only a few. 1.5. The growing intensity of commercial ties and long-distance trade brought into contact countries at different levels of economic development. During the 16th–17th centuries, some kind of ‘European system’ emerged, in which trade and production in the Central and Eastern parts of Europe was increasingly controlled by Western capital. As a result of this, three zones can be distinguished: European core (England, the Netherlands), semi-periphery (Central Europe, Spain, Italy) and periphery (Eastern, Southeastern and partly Northern Europe). Even though the concrete size of these three zones changed with time (for instance, Western Germany became part of the core during the 19th century), the consequences for political cultures are remarkable and have to be studied more thoroughly.

2. THE DIVERSITY OF NATIONAL POLITICAL CULTURES The second important element in the historical roots of political cultures has to be found in the social, political and cultural circumstances under which the establishment of various national political cultures took place. This connection between nation-formation and differentiation of political cultures seems to me to be underestimated in contemporary reflections on political cultures. Here the

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basic unit of difference is not the macro-region, but the country, the state, the nation. The basic unit of time are not centuries, like in the case of macroregions, but decades, particularly during the 19th century. The political culture is per definitionem connected with the state and civil society. This reality, nevertheless, was not God sent, but is a result of a long evolution, full of conflicts and tensions, both between different social strata and classes, and between the ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ understanding of the state. Almost all European states today are national states, ethno-national in so far that they have only one official state-language. Already this banal statement includes an important difference in terms, namely the way of understanding the term nation. If you speak today in English about the nation, you immediately imagine the state: state interests are naturally synonymous with national interest, etc. If you use the same terms in German, Finnish or Czech, you speak about two entities, which can exist independently from each other. The interest of the German nation was not necessarily identical with the interest of the German-speaking Bavarian state. The interest of the Czech nation was until 1918 by far not the same as that of the AustroHungarian state. This difference in terms indicates the basic difference in the understanding of the state and in the way modern European states were formed. We distinguish two basic roots, two types in the formation of these states: 1. The basis of nation-formation was the modernisation of the pre-existing state which developed from the Early Modern ‘state-nation’ (usually with continuous development since the Middle Ages), with its own national printed language and culture and its ‘national’ elites. This meant that the state, from the beginning, was understood and presented as synonymous with the nation. All, or almost all, citizens of the state were members of a nation identified with ‘their’ state. The people regarded the elites as members of the same social community: the nation. Laws and decrees given by the state-representation were understood as national ones. This connection prepared favourable conditions for a political culture based on a positive acceptance of the state and its institutions by the population: ‘We are the state’. (Examples: France, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland, England.) 2. The basis of the second very different path toward the modern nation was a non-dominant ethnic group or ‘ethnie’ (A. Smith), living at the territory of a multiethnic empire. Nation formation occurred ‘from below’, in opposition to the state of the dominant ethnic group with its system of values and its elites. The new nation-to-be tried to achieve all the attributes of a fully

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fledged nation. Its emerging national elites did not accept the ruling state elites, they started a national movement and demanded cultural and political equality with the ruling ethnic group. As a result of this, members of these new emerging nations did not identify themselves with the ruling state, they inclined to be suspicious (and sometimes even rebellious) toward its institutions and decrees. They were not trained in respectful loyalty toward the values of civil society, because they were represented by the ‘hostile’ state. This attitude survived spontaneously also into the period, when the fully fledged nation eventually achieved its independence, that is the nation-state. (Examples: Czechs, Croatians, Greeks, Serbs, Bulgarians, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Latvians, Finns, Irish, Ukrainians, etc.) In terms of numbers, most of the present nation-states followed the second path, the way of national movements. The stereotypes of a ‘hostile’, or at least ‘suspicious’, state survive very often, without being verbalised, until the present time among its ordinary citizens who, thus, find it hard to identify with the state. So, we distinguish two different features in the European political culture, or two types in the relationship toward the state: 1. ‘We are the state’, ‘the state belongs to us, citizens’, ‘its prosperity is also our prosperity’. 2. There is a difference between the state and the society: ‘we are a civil society and have to be careful towards the state and its demands’. When explaining all these differences, we have to stress one – already marginally mentioned – connection. The modern state that developed from the early modern state-nation was ruled by the same elites established in the pre-modern period, despite revolutions and administrative reforms. In the second case, new emerging nations created their new elites, some of which originated from ‘below’. This difference has established in the minds of the population different attitudes (which exist until today) toward their elites. Because the social structure of the ‘ethnie’ usually did not include higher classes (and also its middle class was not very numerous), its members were – where a liberal constitution was in existence – strongly under-represented among the members of parliament, compared with the rich members of the ruling nation. The very logical reaction to this situation was that the call for democratisation of the electoral system emerged among the leadership of national movement, to allow adequate political participation for its members. This call was sooner or later accompanied by some kind of

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spontaneous ‘plebeian’ egalitarianism, which idealised the ‘people’ and produced an auto-stereotype of being inborn democrats. 3. The third criterion of differentiation is the social one. We have to study the concrete social conditions of the emergence of the modern state and its institutions. These conditions were very different in various cases and cannot be fully explained by reference to regional affiliation, or the type of nation-formation. Generally, we identify four types of social background: (a) The aristocracy is the decisive factor for modernisation and state-nation formation (Hungary, Poland, partly also England, Sweden, Spain). (b) The bourgeoisie (burghers) is the decisive, usually revolutionary factor (France, Norway, the Netherlands). (c) The small bourgeois, the old urban middle class (craftsman, shopkeepers) is the most important social basis for the nation-state formation (Czechs). (d) The peasants and the intellectuals coming from the village are the leaders of the nation-state forming (Finland, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovenia). These differences were reflected on the social background of educated elites. Comparative research of university students in the 19th century demonstrates that the national elites were recruited in England almost exclusively from the families of landlords, senior officers, priests and urban bourgeoisie, whereas in Norway the senior officers and rich merchants were the most important. On the other side, almost fifty per cent of Czech academic elites were originally from urban lower-middle classes (craftsmen, shopkeepers) and peasants, joined by sons from lower strata of clerks and employees. Only later on, the participation of free professions and clerks increased. Almost all Lithuanian and Estonian elites came from peasantry and, eventually, also from village teachers. Even though in various German lands the situation differed, the common feature in all of them during the 19th century is the extremely low percentage of sons from the ranks of ‘alter Mittelstand’ (that is, craftsmen and peasants). What conclusions can we draw from this typology? The presence of aristocracy at the top of the new forming nations and states created favourable conditions for the transmission of older, pre-modern values into the modern political culture. Sometimes, this became a very positive component of the new political culture. The presence of urban entrepreneurial middleclasses strengthened liberal features of an emerging national society. The absence of aristocracy at the top of national society introduced some ‘plebeian’ and provincial features (compared with that of the aristocratic or bourgeois political cultures) into the political culture of the new emerging

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nation. Political behaviour and manners, the knowledge of foreign languages, the sense of state representation: all this seems to be different according to the social background of the leading elites of modern states. 4. Typological differences in nation formation were influenced also by the forms of national struggle through which national goals were achieved. Apart from very peaceful movements, which preferred compromises and negotiations, like the Finnish, Slovak, Croatian, Catalan, there were national movements that used force as a legitimate part of their national struggle. This was not only the case in the Balkans, but also of Ireland and Poland. 5. The last criterion is religion, which had a double role to play: first, as one of the forming factors of political culture; secondly, as an expression (and/or substitute) of national interests. In the first case, it could be asked how far political culture was also influenced by the ‘secularised’ 19th century, which was characterised by confessional differences. As already mentioned, Calvinism developed different principles and ideals of social relations and political behaviour than Lutheranism, and they both differed from Catholic countries. Also in this connection, we could ask, as we already did in the analysis of macro-regional differences, if the correlation between high level of revolutionary potential and Catholicism was only a coincidence, or had something to do with the religion (or reaction against it). In the second case, religion played a national integrating role where the ‘national enemy’ was defined by a religion different to that of the national movement: in the Irish struggle against Britain; in the struggle of the Christian Balkan peoples against the Islamic Ottoman rule; in the struggle of the Catholic Poles against Protestant Prussia, on one side, and Orthodox Russia on the other. Sometimes, the religious argument could strengthen the national movement, if the ruling elites were liberal, as in the case of the clerical majority in the Flemish movement against the liberal francophones in Belgium, or the catholic Slovene agitation against German-speaking liberals. In such cases, religion had, at the same time, a disintegrating effect on national movements, which also included a liberal wing themselves. This effect of the religious split was very strong in the Slovak case, where the Lutheran minority supported the construction of one Czechoslovak nation, whereas the Catholic majority stressed the Slovak distinctiveness. The purpose of all these reflections is to find out (in future research?) how far national cultures were influenced by the strong participation of religious or confessional arguments in national movements. It seems that liberal political culture was faced with difficulties where nation formation was strongly supported by the Catholic Church.

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Having said all that, we have to note that there are not only differences but also important common features in European political cultures. These common features become relevant, if we try to define these cultures in opposition to nonEuropean cultures, like for example the Chinese or the Muslim ones. Only through this perspective can we understand and analyse the importance of the Christian roots of Europe, a topic discussed very much in connection with the project of European constitution. To avoid misunderstandings, it seems to me that the European distinctiveness cannot be explained as an immediate product of Christianity. On the contrary, it has to be understood as a product of the process of secularisation in the broadest sense of the word: that is, as a reaction against the pre-modern, traditional concept of religious legitimacy. Nonetheless, the character of this reaction in the European case was different, for example, to the Kemalist (young Turkish) secularising reaction against the Islamic Ottoman system. However, the analysis of this problem is beyond my competence.

3. CONCLUDING REMARKS It was not my aim to help put together a list of concrete stereotypes and prejudices, which may result from what I have said about the territorial and social historical roots of differences in the political cultures in Europe. I hope that there are more qualified teams who could do this. Also, it was not my intention to enter into discussions led by political scientists and anthropologists about cultural theories, about the importance of grid-group schemes, etc. As a historian, I am only qualified to indicate that arguments used in these discussions are usually weakened by the lack of historical knowledge and historical differentiation. For this reason, the aim of this contribution is very modest and tries to argue two points. First, before we start to denounce ‘wrong’ and ‘bad’ features of political cultures, or to glorify ‘good’ ones, we have to know more about the different historical roots of various national political cultures. Secondly, differences in political cultures cannot be regarded through an exclusively present perspective, because they also possess a historical dimension Naturally, this dimension has to be also put into a cultural context and researched in a more qualified way than was done in this contribution. In other words, most of the generalisations formulated above have to be understood as hypothetical (or provoking) reflections about possibilities for further research. Even if such research discredited many of these conclusions, the provoking mission of my reflections would have been fulfilled.

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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE My contribution’s concluding remarks explain why it would make little sense to provide a list of titles written by important anthropologists, political scientists, etc. that offer only very limited inspiration to a historian. Therefore, I prefer to present some titles on the historical roots of European identity and its differentiation which inspired me, and where the interested reader can find more information presented at a higher theoretical level than that of my contribution. Collier, Mary Jane (ed.), Constitution of Cultural Difference through Discourse (London, Sage, 2000). Conrad, Christoph & Jürgen Kocka (eds) Staatsbuergerschaft in Europa (Hamburg, Koerber Stiftung, 2001). Delanty, Gerard, Inventing Europe. Idea, Identity, Reality (New York, NY, St. Martin’s Press, 1999). Kirt, Romain & Arno Waschkuhn, Kleinstaaten-Kontinent Europa. Probleme und Perspektiven (Baden-Baden, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft, 2001). Larsson, Rikard et al. (eds), Boundaries of Europe? (Stockholm, Forskningsradnamnden, 1998). af Malmborg, Michael & Bo Strath (eds), The Meanings of Europe (Oxford, Berg, 2002). Mitterauer, Michael, Warum Europa? (Munich, Beck Verlag, 2003). Schmale, Wolfgang, Geschichte Europas (Vienna, Boehlau Verlag, 2000). Strath, Bo (ed.), Europe and the Other and Europe as the Other (Brussels, Peter Lang, 2000). Strath, Bo (ed.), Myth and Memory in the Construction of Community. Historical Patterns of Europe and Beyond (Brussels, Peter Lang, 2000). Therborn, Goeran, European Modernity and Beyond. The Trajectory of European Societies (London, Sage, 1995).

CHAPTER 4 Modernity and Political Culture: Ulrich Beck’s Theory of a Cosmopolitan Europe J. Peter Burgess THE MODERNITY OF MODERNITY Nothing is more modern than modernity, yet nothing is so old. This is the fundamental tension that lies at the very heart of the notion of modernity. ‘Do we live in an enlightened age?’, asked Kant in his 1783 Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment. ‘No’, he answers himself, ‘but rather in an age of Enlightenment’ (Kant 1977, p. 59). Modernity for Kant was not a universal condition of Enlightenment in which rationality dominated over irrationality. It was an era where the rational tools for questioning the nature of things, and in particular the nature of power, are available to all. Modernity was the possibility to question. In his stunning We Have Never Been Modern, Bruno Latour makes the troubling claim that the repertoire of modern critical analysis has always been internally inconsistent if not outright contradictory, and, more importantly, that we have always been at home in the non-modern world, living comfortably with hybrid combinations of natural and social objects-subjects (Latour 1993). For Kant, as for Latour, modernity is a certain way of thinking, a perspective on the world that is also a perspective toward oneself. Modernity, according to Latour, is an aspiration toward a concept, which paradoxically excludes itself from realisation. It is the insight into a homogeneous set of principles, which we cannot live up to, an aspiration without any possibility for realisation. Modernity, in this sense, is perpetual unfulfilment. Common for all great diagnosticians of modernity is the insight that modernity is not simply a historical turning point along one great linear path of selfunfolding historical facts. It is a way of thinking, of conceptualising, and of asking questions. To the degree that it is the quest for a kind of unity – of religion, culture and state – it is a methodology, a way of studying humanity, a philosophical anthropology of human life, in which the human subject is

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autonomous and the world fragmentary (Delanty 2000, p. 11). The aim is for the human subject to understand reality through the use of tools and methods of the modern mind. Modernity also possesses a temporal notion dimension, an axis of historical or temporal present-ness, or past-ness of differentiation from the past, of change and transformation, of new-ness, of a relation to present events, living people, recent memories, actions over which we have control, events which effect directly our lives (OED 1971). It thus refers to a process of transformation and change, a space-less notion of transformation. What is modern is new. In this mode, modernity also contains a subtle normative dimension, a temporal hubris, a set of implicit value claims about the past versus the present, the civilisational position of society in a long-term sliding mode. Modernity is also a historicised category referring to a broad constellation of social, cultural, religious, political formations. Modernity in this sense is a certain form of social life, marking the end of a certain historical evolution, growing out of particular concrete historical changes: the secular state and polity, capitalist economy, social formations of the division of labour and relations to secular culture (Hall et al. 1992). Among other things, historical modernity refers to the emergence of a certain kind of institutionalisation of the nation-state from a historical situation in which traditional institutions and structures dominated. In traditional societies the structure of family, village and church determined the shape and self-understanding of the individual subject, providing role, a meaning and a set of collective references. Such a common set of reference is what we commonly call today identity.

MODERNITY, IDENTITY AND POLITICAL CULTURE What, then, is identity? In the Kantian or Latourian perspective identity, be it individual or collective, has a double essence. We are both what we are, and we are capable of reflecting upon what we are. The self, the self-identical, anything that is one thing and not another, are also split into two. We are not what we are without reflecting upon it. This idea of identity as self-reflection can be further differentiated along two axes, vertical and horizontal. On the vertical axis, identity refers to a hierarchy of generality: we speak of personal identity, family identity, national identity, global identity, etc. In this way identity is understood as a set of concentric circles, one identity encircling the other in a rising order of generality. One type of identity is more general than the next. On the horizontal axis, identity also refers to a range of complexity. We speak of sexual identity, moral identity,

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professional identity, political identity, racial identity, etc. In this sense identities overlap, supplement and at times compete with one another, as well as with the vertical axis of identity. Identity is not merely what we think we are; it is also what others think we are. It has, in other words, both subjective and objective. It is subjective in the sense that it is a representation of the way a certain individual or group understands itself. It is objective in the sense that it is a representation of how others see the group. Clearly these two sides are co-determinate. In other words, an individual or group identity is in part formed by how it or its member sees itself, and in part by who others see it. In the case of groups, individual identity is also determined by who the individual members of the group see one another. This co-determination is what might be called political culture. It is a constellation of meanings, values, symbols, ideas, knowledge, language and ideology that constitute political activity recognised as such. Political culture is the available set of concepts and ideas, categories of understanding and means of expression that render political reality understandable, and which ascribe to it the moral, economic and social values which it might seem to have. Political culture is thus intrinsically connected with the notion of identity. Thus where the conventional measures of modernity – processes of economic, social and political development – possess clear, even material, measures, these measures are determined by the political culture of a society. In other words, political culture does not precisely reflect modernity. It is rather constitutive of it. In some sense the very notion of political culture is at odds with the movement of political modernity. It is thus incorrect to simply state that modernity has had an impact on political culture. Political culture produces modernity in the sense that it produces concept, meanings and values which are then co-opted by the social sciences, and deployed in order to legitimate political activity. For the modernisation of politics corresponds more or less to a double evolution of (1) narrowing the reach of the concept to techniques of political action and control, and thereby (2) to an instrumentalisation of politics. This notion of identity self-understanding is central to the notion of European modernity, both in terms of its historical emergence and its continued evolution. Modernity refers to a kind of relationship to oneself, an understanding of one’s present. It is a self-understanding, an understanding of the world projected through an understanding of oneself in the world and in time. In the following, we will recast political modernity as a world order in which the structures and constellations of power undergo an important transformation, one that will have long ranging consequences for the singular form of European construction known as the European Union.

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THE MODERNITY OF EUROPEAN STUDIES The modernity of European corresponds with the modernity of a certain idea of the ‘social’. Traditionally, modern societies are identified with the changes brought on by the emergence of industrialisation in the 19th century. Moreover, the very notion of modernity is inseparable from certain transformations in the nature and methods of scientific investigation. Social science, in particular, and modernity are reciprocally determinate. Firstly, the fundamental intellectual impetus of modernity is arguably the Enlightenment, both the European (as expressed in authors like Kant, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Diderot and Rousseau) and the so-called ‘Scottish’ Enlightenment (exemplified by Hume, Smith, Fergusson and others). Enlightenment is first and foremost a critical movement, a critique of traditional political authority and the central ideas that support it, ideas such as progress, science, reason and nature. The social sciences are canonised, as we know, around the turn of the 20th century, by the founders of modern sociology: Durkheim, Weber, Simmel and Tönnies. Their impulse continues the critique of traditional conception inaugurated by Enlightenment philosophes. Secondly, modernity is substantively, as well as temporally and spatially, heterogeneous. Modernity can be related to a composite set of movements and developments, operating in different domains, at different velocities and in different places. According to this analysis, there is no single, causal view of modernisation. Economic modernity is understood as a certain phase in the development of economic relations, characterised by the spread of commerce and trade, markets, a new division of labour, new forms of consumption. The evolution of social modernity involves the shift from agrarian to industrial forms of production. These are accompanied by shifting conceptions of the private and public spheres, the family, gender and class differentiation. The characterisation of political modernity arises from the study of the emergence of the modern state. The present is hereby conceived as the outcome of a movement of the classical European empires, the feudal states, the estate system and absolutism to the form of the modern nation-state: encompassing conceptions of political authority, secular power, legitimacy and sovereignty. Lastly, cultural modernity is associated with awareness of the importance of moral, social and political values, meaning and symbolic structures in the modern self-understanding. Thus studies like Weber’s protestant ethic, Freud’s civilisational critique, or Lévi-Strauss’s structural analysis of social life all testify to a need for differentiation of the cultural dimensions involved in internal integration and differentiation of societies and their relation to other societies.

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SOCIAL SCIENCE METHODOLOGY AND SOCIAL IDENTITY The methodological problem that attaches itself to social scientific research on identity is straightforward. If one attempts to collect objective knowledge on a social scientific object, then all objects offer problems. For the social scientist is always necessarily implicated in the object of research by the very act of carrying out the research. This is a fundamental insight of social science methodology today. To work in a scientific way implies making choices, applying rules and criteria, making use of models which are subjectively determined, models which do not belong to the object, but which are formulated or constructed before the object. The historian must always choose archive material based on incomplete background knowledge, that is, knowledge which is only possible or conceivable after the research is complete. Sociologists take their material from human subjects, which can never avoid investing such objects with their own subjective points of view. Political scientists study political action, which is based on subjective attitudes about power, meaning and politics. The list goes on. Scientific objectivity reveals itself everywhere as problematic in terms of its own lack of scientific foundation. Unfortunately the problem becomes even more complex when one considers the theoretical consequences of studying social constructions and social identities in the social sciences. What is the objective expression of identity? What or who speaks for what we are? Or to express the problem in still another way, who speaks when ‘the European’ speaks? Who speaks when the Italian, the Norwegian or the Maldivian speaks? Who speaks when ‘I’ speak? Who is objectively in a position to give an adequately objective expression of who or what I am? Already in the 18th century, well before the formulation of what we today call the social sciences, Kant gave a convincing answer to this ensemble questions. He does so by introducing a fundamental distinction between facts – let us define them as ‘naturally occurring phenomena’ – and our rationality – or conscious understanding of such facts. This distinction builds in turn upon the distinction between two concepts: phenomena and noumena. Kant defines phenomena as objects that we perceive as objects. In other words, he articulates the distinction between things as they actually are (von ihrer Beschaffenheit an sich selbst) and the way in which we understand them (Kant 1988, pp. 275–284). There is a kind of double-ness in these phenomena: we have the object in our view, but it is inseparable from knowledge of the fact that we have the object in view. Noumena, on the other hand, are objects that are merely thought, but which do not have their origin in an empirical reality. A noumena is not an object of our sense but a thing-in-itself (Ding an sich). A thing-in-itself is the

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object before perception, before understanding, conceptualisation or rationalisation. It is an object before it becomes an object for our consciousness. The thing such as it truly is in and for itself, not merely inaccessible for human consciousness, it is non-understandable, non-conceptualisable, it doesn’t even belong to the category ‘object’. The object is not itself without the subject, which makes it understandable or ‘objectifiable’. The other side of Kant’s reasoning is that all objects of thinking are objects of thinking by virtue of being organised and structured by the categories of understanding given beforehand in the human intellect, or ‘rationality’, as Kant would say. Understanding is necessarily a process of de-limitation, a process of differentiation, which creates the object in conformity with the categories which make the world what we would call ‘understandable’. The interest of Kant’s theoretical results for the social sciences is that we now understand that empirical research does not simply deliver things (facts) such as they are – as facts – but such as they appear to us and become understandable. Facts that have become objects for understanding are already no longer facts, but rather a mirroring of how understanding is structured. We can only understand facts after they have been filtered through understanding. Moreover, the difference between an object of understanding and the object as such cannot be the object of understanding. The difference between them is neither fact nor understanding. It exists in a kind of no-man’s land between and beyond the tow. Knowledge of the world which is gathered from empirical perception is not pure knowledge. It is knowledge based on a certain kind of perception. This difference forms borders for a knowledge-based object, itself becoming an object of knowledge. The central question that we ask in what follows is: where should Europe construction and the European Union be situated in the complex world of political institutions that have marked the history of European modernity? To answer this question we take up the basic principles of one theory of modernity that has had particular influence and longevity in the last decade, namely that of the sociologist Ulrich Beck. This theory is in particular characterised by its concept of a ‘second modernity’.

BECK’S THEORY OF RISK SOCIETY According to Ulrich Beck, modernity has not always been a self-reflexive disposition. His view of modernity grows out of an analysis of the nature of change not only from traditional to industrial societies, but from industrial societies to post-industrial societies. His theory is empirically based on concrete changes in

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the organisation of social life. Just as the modernisation processes of the 19th century displaced that class-based agrarian society of the previous period, modernisation today displaces the ‘traditional!’ industrial society. However, in opposition to the replacement of one social structure by another, the modernisation process we experience today has no ‘other’ to which to relate. The new (‘second’) modernisation process is the development of a relation with modernity itself. This is what Beck describes as the difference between ‘simple’ and ‘reflexive’ modernisation, modernisation of tradition and modernisation of industrial society (Beck 1986, p. 14). European societies have suffered from the ‘myth’ that the industrial society, with its categories of self-understanding through work and life, production and consumption, economic growth and technical and scientific rationality, was the last phase of modernity and could not be surpassed. This is what Beck calls the ‘legend of the industrial society’. This legend, invented in the 19th century and dominant in all forms of social life. Social classes and casts, nuclear families, the normalisation and linearisation of careers. These are the basic principles of individuality in the modern social setting. And it is these principles which are put into question by the advance of a new kind of modernity, the second modernity. Their traditional anchoring is disturbed, up-rooted and demystified. The reflexive modernisation of the industrial society has two primary dimensions in Beck’s theory, in terms of a process of risk production and in terms of a process of individualisation. The first primary characteristic of this new social disposition is the institutionalisation of risk. By this Beck does not mean simply the appearance or presence of risk in everyday life, but rather the production of risk as an unpredictable by-product of industrial production. Whereas in simple (first) modernity such risks were calculated into the logic of production and work, in the second modernity such risks are unpredictable by-products, incalculable risks. The other side of advance modernity in Beck’s account is more common. It involves a variety of processes which lead to individualisation, the breakdown of traditional collective structures, and the rise of individual rights, obligations and privileges. This process takes place within three sectors in European society: the bourgeois public sphere, the family and employment and education. Yet in contrast to what Beck identifies as the postmodern vision of modernity, which postulates the failure, the exhaustion or even the impossibility of the modern project, Beck interprets modernity as a success story, as a social evolution that, based on its implicit criteria and ideology, more than met its ideals: ‘Reflexive modernity opens the possibility of a creative (self)-destruction

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for an entire epoch, the industrial epoch. The “subject” of this creative destruction is not crisis, but rather the victory of western modernisation’ (Beck 1993, p. 57). It is, in effect, the success of modernity, not its failure, which causes the conundrum of our time. The theory of modernity is an attempt to seize both the movement of emancipation and rationalisation and the side effects it implies. As industrial modernity becomes obsolete, its belief in rationality, its technical magic becomes demystified, secularised, and a second modernity emerges, its contours still un-sharp because of the dilemmas and ambivalences it contains and even advances.

THE EUROPEAN CUL-DE-SAC The theory of reflexive modernisation is a critique of the relationship between a certain self-understanding in time and the institutions of that pretend to concretise it. In this sense, modernity is a process of historical realisation of a kind of social and cultural identity. At the same time, and inversely, the nation-state institutions that carry out the functions of modernisation seek their legitimacy in these social and cultural identities. It is therefore not by chance that the public institutions of the nation-state are founded and developed in relation to society’s sense of self. It is the idea of a collective entity which gives force the concrete construction of it. In other words, one notion or other of social, cultural, even historical fabric is fundamental for legitimating the public works performed in their name. Ideas ultimately give rise to actions. The relation between ideas and actions is domain of politics. It is here that political systems unfold and the symbolic and real play of power takes place. It is also the domain of science, most importantly human and social science. As we noted above, the rise of the human and social sciences is inseparable from the rise of the modern nation-state. By this we meant that science provided the tools, the methodologies and, from a certain point of view, the content of the nation-state. Yet the relation between the nation-state and the social and human sciences that support it cuts both ways. The nation-state, with institutional setup, its political powers and ideologies also contributes decisively to forming the premises for the very social sciences that support it. The human and social sciences are determined by the nation-state, not only in their function, but also in their method. This determinate nature of social scientific methodology is what Beck calls ‘methodological nationalism’. The term ‘methodological nationalism’ is derived from Anthony Smith’s usage in the theory of nationalism, and refers to the analytical assumption that

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the society and territorial state are reciprocally adequate and indeed exhaustive (Smith 1971). The concept of methodological nationalism implies that the essential methodological categories necessary for the analysis of society are already determined by the categories, concepts, and assumptions and presuppositions implicit in the social understanding of the nation-state. In other words, the nation-state is not only a political form, it is, firstly, an epistemology. It is not only a certain set of principles about political organisation, about the relation between political organisations, the structuring of authority, power and legitimacy, within a state. It is a structuring agency for knowledge about society, culture, politics, etc. in the nation-state. It provides the means to understanding political forms, the means to organising knowledge, in general, and knowledge about the political, about the nation-state, in particular. It structures and organises categories and concepts that determine our understanding of society: cultural identity, religion, class relations, labour, ethnic belonging, demographic delimitations, economic categories, value determinations, etc. It is, indeed, most commonly the nation-state and its agencies which concretely organise and finance social scientific research through nationally coordinated and systematised institutions, funds, research councils, etc. These institutions not only organise the distribution of financing, but also the structuring of research categories and projects of ‘national interest’, knowledge distribution and valuation, research teams and institutes, as well as networks of research and higher education. Secondly, methodological nationalism contains a normative dimension. The link between the nation-state and the institutions of research and development that it supports and promotes are determined in part by relations of power, of value, of national or other political priorities. The ideas of interest to the social and human sciences to the organisation, a financing and manning of research is riddled with political, ethical, deontological and other value-based choices and prioritisations. In this sense, the methodological nationalism that first establishes the nation-state institutions of research simultaneously systemises and aligns them in terms of values that are external to them. Science is laden with issues of value; yet these values are not ‘originally’ or ‘naturally’ a part of science. They are ascribed to science by the political systems that surround it, provided through institutional mechanisms that make scientific research possible in the first place. Moreover, claims of state power and control not only provide the institutional value-framework for research, but also justify and provide the legitimacy to establish and maintain the very object that the sciences are mandated to research: ‘society’. In essence, the instruments and concepts directly involved in maintaining a researchable notion of ‘society’ are explicitly and implicitly provided by the state. The state orients and legitimates fundamental rights,

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education systems’ social policy, party politics, official language, literature, police forces, etc. (Beck 1999, p. 115). All of these contribute to determining avant la lettre the objects of social science research. Thirdly, methodological nationalism implies a set of ontological claims, a set of assumptions about being in the world of the social, of the particular kind of existence society has, its necessity and its contingence. In the optic of the nation-state, society is presented in a particular form, a form that is taken as ‘natural’, as ‘given’. The relationship between society and nation-state, between the particularities of the social and the historical and geo-political particularities of the nation-state are difficult, if not impossible, to put into question within the paradigms provided by the nation-state. Taken together, these dimensions of methodological nationalism make up what Beck calls an ‘architecture of thought, action and living’, which structures the way ‘national’ social sciences are capable of researching and understanding nation-state society. This is the ‘container’ theory of society, in which the territorial state, its normative, epistemological and ontological foundations, are also the basis of society, such as is understood by social scientists and, through them, provided to politicians and bureaucrats as the basis for political decision making and action (Beck 1999).

GLOBALISATION Beck’s most recent work is based on a critique of methodological nationalism and a critique of the blindspots inherent in methodological nationalism, and an attempt to explore alternative platforms on which to base social scientific research. Beck begins his critique through a re-interpretation of the concept of globalisation. The working theory of the critique is that, since it is the nationstate-based limitations of the social sciences which are the implicit presuppositions of society’s understanding of itself, these presuppositions need to be unpacked and deconstructed. The most direct and important critique of the nation-state is globalisation. Globalisation is, according to Beck’s definition, ‘the processes through which national states and their sovereignty are criss-crossed and undermined by transnational actors with varying prospects of power, orientations, identities and networks’ (Beck 1999, p. 19). It is perhaps uncontroversial to note that globalisation does not supplant the nation-state. Globalisation takes the nationstate as its starting point and prerequisite. In this sense, the trace of the nationstate is necessarily present in any post-national constellation. Globalisation does not, however, leave the nation-state untouched. Rather, it brings about a

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fundamental mutation in the nation-state through processes of geographical expansion, international trade, global networking of finance markets, the growing power of transnational corporations, evolution of information and communications technology, the universal demands for human rights, global culture industries, the emergence of a post-national, polycentric world politics, in which transnational actors grow in power and number alongside governments, the emergence of the question of world poverty, the issue of global environmental destruction, trans-cultural conflicts in one and the same place (Beck 1999, pp. 29–30). Methodologically this observation boils down to what Beck calls the ‘container-theory of society’ which builds upon three fundamental assumptions: (1) sovereignty and security; (2) cultural homogeneity; and (3) the priority of the state with respect to society, in short, the unity of territory, sovereignty and state (Beck 1998, p. 14). The essential consequence of this understanding of the relationship between state and society is methodological. It is only natural that social sciences, which emerged at the end of the 19th century, should be structured by this fundamental relationship. Or, as Beck puts it, the social sciences interiorised the territorial organisational framework of the nation-state. Not only the field of sociology, as Beck suggests, but arguably the human sciences as well, are born in the latter third of the 19th century parallel with the bureaucratic, legal, institutional scientific refinements of the modern state. The social and human sciences are founded upon institutional arrangements, university structures and financial provisions bound to the rationalisation of the modern nation-state. In short, the rise of the social sciences in general are coterminus with the rise of the modern bureaucratic nation-state. Indeed, classical social science (Weber, Simmel, Tönnies) is in many regards closely intertwined with the analysis of and legitimisation of the nation-state and its institutional arrangements (Lepenies 1981). Thus not only is the state the nation-state primary referent of the original social sciences, but the reason-to-be of the state in terms of its legitimising potential. It will come as no surprise to many that the sensible way out of the cul-desac of methodological nationalism will lie on the European plan. The answer to the blindspots and dead-ends of the nation-state based social and human scientific research must be research based on a European paradigm, a European optic. The way out of the cul-de-sac of the national perspective is a shift to the European level, and to a perspective that embraces Europe’s process of reflexive modernisation.

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THE TWO DUAL-LOGICS OF EUROPEANISATION Beck’s earlier account of risk society was, as we have seen, based on the postulate of a two-phase modernity. Simple or first modernity, by virtue of its own success, its own overproduction of rationality and ‘calculability’, is overridden by a second, complex modernity. The second modernity, in contrast to the first, is unable to rationalise its successes, unable to calculate the quality and quantity of its by-products. The ‘logic of singularity’ of the first modernity is surpassed by a logic of plurality. Or, to use Beck’s metaphor, the ‘Newtonian logic’ is surpassed by a ‘Heisenbergian logic’ (Beck & Grande 2004, p. 50). The common conception (and self-conception) of the first modernity was as an eternally self-present process producing what predictably, rationally could be expected to produce. The notion that it could do otherwise, that it might be cracked or fissured, is unthinkable within the concept of (first) modernity. The thought that it might produce its own excess, its own risk, was excluded. Or, as Beck puts it: ‘the idea that the foundation of modern society, in the same way as its victor, was porous, dissolved or its meaning transformed is totally foreign to the classical thought of the social sciences’ (Beck 2004, p. 51). The social scientific assumption upon which the study of Europe and European construction is based, observes Beck, is dualistic. It is fundamentally a logic of us and them, national and international, domestic and foreign. It is, in other words, a logic of ‘either-or’. This is the logic of singularity proper to the first modernity. This logic is being replaced by the logic of plurality. The logic of ‘either-or’ is replaced by that of ‘both-and’.

THE COSMOPOLITAN PERSPECTIVE The methodological alternative to the blinding limitations of methodological nationalism is thus to open a new methodology with a European lens. Yet the consequence is not merely a methodology appropriate for observing issues that arise in Europe, for confronting the factual challenges of observing more objects with a wider scope. Rather it is to Europeanise the national perspective, to Europeanise the way in which we conceptualise and analyse any social scientific object, not just those that fall under the rubric ‘European’. This cosmopolitan perspective thus puts into question the fundamental principle of the national perspective, namely the conviction that ‘modern society’ and ‘modern politics’ are organised exclusively according to the logic of the nation-state (Beck 2004). The cosmopolitan perspective problematises the fundamental presumptions and assumptions of the conventional social sciences. In

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The Cosmopolitan Perspective, Beck outlines six ‘principles and errors’ of methodological nationalism. It corrects the categorical conception that society is subordinated to the state. In classical political thought, society is subordinated to the state (Beck 2004, p. 44). This is not only because of some tradition of conceptualisation of society and state, but rather as a necessity of the acceleration of the first modernity. The state creates institutions of containment and security that on the one hand allows the national society to live and flourish in peace and prosperity of the kind set out in the promise of modernity. However, on the other hand, it also hinders the emergence of alternative or non-national forms of society or social order. Potential alternative social forms face an environment without institutional support and security, centres of knowledge, finance, etc. In Beck’s terms, this is the epitome of the ‘container model’ of social science selfunderstanding. Only a territorially based system of categories, politics and social categories is viable. A territorially based notion of the social is thus the only possible alternative. The cosmopolitan perspective proposed by Beck opposes the notion that the worldview of the social sciences is determined through the opposition between the national and the international. The notion of one singular national society whose frontier is somehow identical with the nation-state borders makes little sense. The cosmopolitan view sees society as plural – as societies – overlapping, intertwined and in ‘marble cake’ formation. It is both multi-cultural, multiethnic, multilingual, etc. It is European, sub-European, trans-European, subnational, regional, local, etc. The notion of national society, from this point of view, is thus more or less senseless. It corresponds with little else than itself. Any social science methodology equipped to capture ‘national society’ would only be self-referential. And in fact, this is essentially the trap which the national social sciences fall prey to. Their methodology is dominated by the universal false deduction from particular national society to universal society according to which one’s own society is unavoidably construed as society itself. This is the error of much of classical sociology (Marx, Weber, Durkheim) and is to some extent corrected by techniques of comparison, both national and international. But these correctives do little to correct or adjust the methodological (i.e. conceptual) problems inherent in the concept of national society (Beck 2004, pp. 46–47). This socially based false deduction has a cultural counterpart. Methodological nationalism, in its tendency to identify society with nationstate, produces certain presumptions about the nature of culture and cultural plurality within the nation-state. Two alternative errors are common. Either one tends toward universal equalisation of cultures (‘McDonaldisation’) or one

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tends toward a position of incommensurability, of universal non-comparability of cultures. The first alternative corresponds to what is often criticised as a certain ‘postmodernism’, ‘anything goes’, or, in Beck’s words, as ‘flat cultural cosmopolitanism’. This version of cultural plurality is conceived of as montage without criteria, as a universal compatibility of all cultural artefacts proper to a nation-state territory. All objects can be associated with each other without producing meaning, without intelligibility arising from the connection itself. This conception does not stand up to a dialectic understanding of the relationship between concept and object. Such a perspective would claim that if two or more objects can be associated, then they can be (and are in fact) conceptualisable together, and thus produce coherent meaning as an ensemble. The second alternative supposes the incompatibility of transnational cultural objects. It promotes the primacy or necessity of the national as the nexus of culture, history, memory and language. National cultural objects belong together with other national cultural objects, and cannot be abstracted. This point of view disregards otherness in a way analogous to how the first model disregards sameness. The radical otherness with which one would be required to dismiss all other cultural objects than one’s own would put into question the very substance of one’s own culture. The degree of isolation required to defend the conviction that culture is strictly autonomous would eliminate one’s own sense of self as an alternative to other selves. These conundrums lead to the conclusion that the perspective of methodological nationalism is largely essentialist. It can only separate or distinguish what is already culturally and politically woven together. The historical sub-text of any nation-state reveals its origins in an other, be it historically, culturally or socially constructed through war, migration, globalisation, etc. Something nonnation-state oriented is inevitably at the origin, or at the very least related to the origin, of the nation-state (Beck 2004, pp. 49–50). In summary, the relation between the two methodological perspectives is essentially asymmetrical. The national perspective excludes the cosmopolitan perspective, while the cosmopolitan includes the national (Beck 2004, p. 51). These structural errors of methodological nationalism are all associated with a failure to draw the consequences of what Beck calls a shift from a logic of ‘either-or’ to a logic of ‘both-and’. The exclusionary logic of ‘either-or’ inhabits and organises methodological nationalism, while the inclusive differentiation of ‘both-and’ organises the grammar of methodological cosmopolitanism (Beck 2004, p. 12).

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EUROPE AS A RESEARCH OBJECT Research on Europe in the social sciences has remained imprisoned between two alternatives: the federalist approach which negates or disregards national politics and international political identities, and intergovernmental approaches which essentially reduce European questions to matters of interstate politics. Methodological nationalism thus leads political theory to a negative definition of Europe. It is based on a nation-state-based institutional understanding of a national sphere of action. It thus takes the form of a kind of zero-sum game: what strengthens Europe weakens the nation state. Methodological cosmopolitanism evokes a positive definition of Europe. The zero-sum game logic of ‘either-or’ is replaced by a positive-sum game of ‘bothand’ in which benefits to power, influence and development on the European level do not correspond with diminished power on the national level (Beck & Grande 2004, pp. 34–35). A fundamental insight, and warning, of Beck’s theory of modernisation on the European level is that the methodological cosmopolitanism of the ‘bothand’ does indeed supplant the ‘either-or’ of methodological nationalism. It is not a question of either-or between the either-or and the both-and. They are compatible with each other and, indeed, must exist alongside each other. But just how? The logic of ‘both-and’ does not adequately describe, from a certain point of view, the dynamic relationship between the different levels of identity and institutionalisation in the European reality. Consequently, it cannot be the basis of a coherent and comprehensive methodology. The nature of selfunderstanding, the kind of self-understanding that is presupposed by Beck’s theory of European social fabric as a relationship to itself, is necessarily more complex. The phenomenology of the cosmopolitan perspective requires a far more dialectical theory of the self and other, of methodological subject and methodological object. When we put into use the logic of ‘both-and’, then any given subject can possess multiple positions on the subjective landscape, can hold multiple identities, which are both meaningfully related to each other and at the same time not entirely reducible to each other. One can indeed be Norwegian and Scandinavian, both European and non-EU member, both immigrant and citizen, etc. Here we are not just speaking of empirical facts that we now understand can be compatible with each other, even though we once thought they were incompatible with each other. We are speaking of a system of adjacent realities and identities, a way of being many things and not threatening one’s own identity. Or, to put the phenomenon in even more philosophical terms, following Kant’s epistemology, we might say that such facts about ourselves are already no

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longer facts, but rather a mirroring of how our understanding of the world is structured in our own rationality. They are a mirroring of a kind of human methodology at a deeper level. The subject of sociology is not simply a broadminded collector of facts, a bucket of knowledge which is merely filled up, transported and emptied. Rather, it is a container that is transformed by each and every fact. For this reason the very experience of the apparent incompatibility of identities must also be an object of our questioning. How does the European subject change, dialectically, as a relation between subject and object? The cosmopolitan gaze is not only the ‘both-and’ collection of incompatible facts, but one of a particular experience of incompatibility which is projected on all facts as universal.

CONCLUSION The concept of Europe first arises with the question of the institutionalisation of European identity. In other words, the concept corresponds to the need for a concept, and to the need to concretise the concept and to confirm it by institutionalising it. The contentious dynamic of this institutionalisation constitutes the very political culture of Europe. The concept of Europe functions like a collective attempt to convince ourselves that such a thing actually exists. It is a structural concept, a structural logic, which repeats itself through European history. The great ‘Europe builders’, from Alexander to Genghis Khan, to Charlemagne, to Caesar, to Hitler, fight for an expanding geopolitical Europe and contentious concept of Europe. If one is to focus upon the modern narratives of Europe, one sees clearly that it is the feelings of crisis that connects them all together with a sober institutional architecture. During the inter-war period there emerged no less than three important attempts at institutionalising a certain understanding of Europe: the ‘PanEuropean’ project created by Coudenhove-Kalergi in 1923, the project for the ‘United States of Europe’ in 1929, and Aristide Briand’s ‘Society of Nations’ in 1929. After World War II the project was again taken up, this time by Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman and a group of European technocrats, who saw in the project of European construction an answer to the darker moments of modern European history. Their work led to the signing of the Treaty of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951. These are the institutional measures that mark our time, the signs of an everevolving political culture. What is the conceptual logic on which they repose? Just like any nation-state, Europe as a concept has its own set of borders which form the framework for the content of European institutions. Europe, which

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perhaps constitutes the broadest category of any of the individual nation-states that constitute it, is itself structured by other forces as something external to itself. Europe is always European conceptual and social scientific politics, precisely because it is not created through real-political forces alone. The European is created in the crossfire between the European self – which in principle does not yet exist – and the European other, which it does not yet know.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Beck, Ulrich, Risikogesellschaft. Auf dem Weg in eine andere Moderne (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1986). Beck, Ulrich, Die Erfindung des Politischen. Zu einer Theorie reflexiver Moderniseierung. (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1993). Beck, Ulrich, ‘Wie wird Demokratie im Zeitalter der Globalisierung möglich? Eine Einleitung’, Politik der Globalisierung (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1998). Beck, Ulrich, Was ist Globalisierung? Irrtümer des Globalismus—Antworten auf Globalisierung (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1999). Beck, Ulrich, Der kosmopolitische Blick oder: Krieg ist Frieden (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 2004). Beck, Ulrich & Edgar Grande, Das kosmopolitische Europa (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 2004). Delanty, Gerard, Modernity and Postmodernity (London, Sage, 2000). Hall, Stuart, David Held & Gregor McLennan, ‘Introduction’ in Modernity and its futures (London, Polity Press, 1992). Kant, Immanuel, ‘Beantwortung der Frage: Was is Aufklärung’, Schriften zur Anthropologie, Geschichtsphilosophie, Politik aund Pädagogik I (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1977). Kant, Immanuel, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Frankfurt am Main, Suhrkamp, 1988). Latour, Bruno, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1993). Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1971). Ricoeur, Paul, Soi-même comme un autre (Paris, Seuil, 1990). Smith, Anthony D., Theories of Nationalism (London, Duckworth, 1971).

CHAPTER 5 The Political Cultures of Europe in a Historical Context: Northwestern Europe Richard Vincent Comerford From a broad historical perspective, the countries of northwestern Europe at the beginning of the 21st century can be seen as having enjoyed half a century of unprecedented democratic stability. This stability is related to the hegemony of the idea of democracy as the only legitimate form of government, the nearly general acceptance of established national boundaries, and the certainty that neighbouring countries will not wage mutual war. This relatively happy state of affairs is epitomised and underpinned by the success of the European Union (EU). But students of history know that all things are in flux. There is no end of history. The stable political culture of northwestern Europe is not an unchanging one, and the connotations of democracy have evolved in the period since World War II, not least in response to the new emphasis on individual freedoms that made such an impact in the 1960s. Other factors that have shaped the state of things over the past fifty to sixty years include: the reality of American military, political and cultural power and its concomitant influence; the Soviet threat that persisted for more than four decades after World War II; the abandonment of their colonial empires by the European powers; and the immigration of millions of people from other parts of the globe. It follows that looking at current political culture in historical context involves registering both longerterm developments and the ways in which a system apparently stable has been changing before our eyes. With respect both to the longer and the shorter terms, it is the case that the main currents of change always coexist with counter currents and cross currents. In a short article like this, it is not possible to do full justice to the complexity of the flowing tide.

THE STATES The history of the state in the political culture(s) of northwestern Europe illustrates the great diversity in the context within which current developments

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must be viewed. From the 17th century France and England have represented opposite poles in this respect. Already with Louis XIV, France was the epitome of centralised state power, signified most potently by the palace of Versailles. The revolution of 1789 ultimately provided the centralising French state with popular legitimacy, and through Napoleon and the Code Napoleon endowed it with massive ideological and structural supports and rendered it unitary in a way that it had not been even under the Bourbons. England was not, of course, without the mechanisms of the state, but the glorious revolution of 1688–89 was, among other things, a conscious rejection of the French-style absolutism of which the deposed James II was accused. There would be no English Versailles, and the state would be servant and not master. The acquisition of empire, and the gradual democratisation of the English polity, involved changes in the scope of the state, but little by way of formal adulation. The advent of universal welfarism post-1945 – in the wake of two all-out wars – brought the state to a new level of centrality in the life of the country, but scarcely changed fundamental attitudes. The low-key concept of the English state made possible the survival of subordinate polities on the periphery, in Scotland and Ireland. The formal union with Scotland in 1707, and with Ireland in 1801, did not bring an end to these differences: the United Kingdom has never been a unitary state. The opposition to the existing order that found expression in support for the Jacobite rising of 1745 dissipated in subsequent decades, and Scotland participated largely in an attitude to the state that resembled that of England. Things were somewhat different in Ireland. There the state became a weapon in the contest between Protestant and Catholic interests, and when a Catholic democratic movement emerged in the early 19th century it tended to see the state as an arm of the enemy. In the event the state in 19th-century Ireland was to become interventionist – and expensive – in a way that would not have been acceptable in England. The benefits that resulted to the citizens at large had but limited impact on attitudes to the state, and even after independence in 1922 popular sentiment in southern Ireland was slow to identify with the state. In Northern Ireland, endowed with its own devolved government from 1921, many of the Catholic minority saw in the local regime the instrument of Protestant domination, whereas Protestants saw in it little more than an agency for their collective security. Neither side could be said to have adopted a very expansive view of the state. Belgium inherited the statist culture of the Habsburg overlords of the former Austrian Netherlands and of the French revolutionary regime. Indeed, independent Belgium endeavoured in many respects to model itself on France. The nemesis of the Belgian state was the community of Flemish speakers not provided for by the Francophone system installed after 1830. Their relative

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numerical and cultural power meant that, unlike linguistic minorities within France, the Flemish would not succumb. More than a century of conflict and accommodation between the linguistic groupings would transform the Belgian state into a particularly fragmented polity. The United Provinces of the Netherlands that flourished for two centuries before the incursion of the French in 1795 was like Switzerland in that it represented the survival of medieval particularism in defiance of the early modern state. The position of the House of Orange was not one of sovereignty until, in 1814, William I was installed as monarchical ruler of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands by the allies. In the meantime the localism of the old republic had been challenged for nearly two decades by a satellite French regime. After the secession of Belgium in 1830, the Dutch state commanded the allegiance of its citizens, but not necessarily their adulation. Whether or not this was a reflection of older particularism, the formal segmentation of Dutch society along confessional lines, especially in the generations after 1875, reflected a polity in which the state was both secure in itself and at the same time did not pretend to meet all the needs of the citizen.

DEMOCRACY Although there have been epochs of relative peace in Western Europe in the ages of dynastic rule, the current peace is characterised by its basis in a common democratic culture. And whereas ancient Athens provides the term itself, and a starting point for theoretical discourse on the concept, the framework within which modern democracy would develop was that provided by the assemblies representative of privileged elite interests (parliaments, estates, diets, etc.) that from the high middle ages onwards served to mediate between rulers (usually dynasts) and subjects over much of Europe. Almost everywhere that democracy has found an enduring foothold, it is embodied in modern versions of the earlier assemblies, so that representative institutions have come to be synonymous with democracy. As around the world, so in Western Europe, the assemblies now in existence are mainly relatively recent versions of the older models, but in the cases of the Westminster Parliament and the States General in The Hague we see instances of evolution from medieval times. In any case, the centrality of representative bodies is well illustrated by the fact that the rise of democracy is typically discussed in terms of the extension of the voter franchise for the election of members of national parliaments or assemblies. The role of direct popular involvement in successful democracies varies. While none of the five countries under consideration here utilises direct

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democracy to the same extent as Switzerland, it does co-exist alongside the representative variety. In both France and Ireland the head of state is elected by direct popular vote, and even in the United Kingdom the plebiscite has been utilised in respect of matters affecting the (unwritten) constitution, such as confirming membership of the then European Community in 1974 and subsequent decisions about devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The scholarship of recent decades has illustrated amply how the changing conditions of material life, and especially in the area of communications, provided the basis for the emergence and triumph of modern nationalism and its expression in a democratic political culture. By the same token, developments in the economy and the explosion in information technology in recent decades have begun to affect democracy in ways that are only beginning to become apparent. Whatever the explanation, the practical function and public status of the representative assemblies – as distinct from their formal constitutional positions – are apparently in decline. There is a widespread perception that lower chambers exist mainly to provide governments with a mandate and that their functions in relation to legislation have been reduced largely to that of rubberstamping. Of course, in countries with a history throughout the 20th century of problem solving through elite consensus – as is the case of the Netherlands and Belgium – parliamentary debate may frequently have been less than fullranging. But what is in question now is something new. The need to spin every day’s news for the evening’s television programmes means that political leaders cannot afford the luxury of referring high-profile matters for discussion. The generation of sound bites and video clips for the media is now vital to communication with the masses, and that must have consequences for the character of democracy. Without the printing press, pamphlets and newspapers, the emergence of modern democratic government would have been unthinkable. The advent of television together with the ‘electronicisation’ of the media that has been achieved in very recent years is undoubtedly changing democracy in ways that can scarcely be fully comprehended at this stage. Modern democracy in the sense of the formal involvement, as of right, of the individual adult citizen as an equal in the affairs of the state had a flickering start at the end of the 18th century, and following a fitful progress over the following century went on to achieve a general triumph in Europe during and immediately after World War I. Since then it has gone on to become the dominant principle in all considerations of the basis of legitimate political power almost everywhere on Earth, so that even those with the least intention of respecting it feel obliged to invoke it. However, the democracy that triumphed in Europe in 1914 brought not peace but a sword. In all too many cases it elevated the will of majorities over the rights and sensibilities of minorities, and

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offered to political leaders a premium on belligerence, whether in internal or external politics. The democracy that has flourished in northwestern Europe in the past half century has been invigilated by the European Convention of Human Rights and informed by some awareness of its own vulnerability. The latter sensitivity may have developed more slowly in the two countries whose democratic institutions had remained in place for the period 1939–45, namely the United Kingdom and Ireland. But at least since 1973, the countries of the northwestern islands have joined the other three in being amenable to the requirements of the loi communitaire. For many British people, accustomed to the paradox of a liberal legal system in which there was no appeal from the decisions of parliament, the arrival of an over-riding European law was not easy to accept. In the case of Ireland it was the requirements of EU membership that led to the modernisation of national law in areas such as women’s rights and homosexuality formerly subject to traditionalist rigidity.

EUROPEAN UNION The requirements for membership of the EU have provided a template for the development of democratic systems throughout Europe. It is paradoxical, therefore, that the Union itself is becoming the object of frequent criticism in respect of a perceived ‘democratic deficit’. The core of the problem is that the democratic validation of power is something that carries conviction for many citizens only within the framework of a national community. The legitimacy that is attached to the national will – meaning that the individual feels obliged to give assent to a majority decision of the national community that he/she may have disagreed with – does not for many extend to the multi-national institutions of the EU. There is an instinctive suspicion of a system in which one’s nation may be outvoted. Shared sovereignty is an eminently sensible and reasonable concept. It is utterly democratic, but for many it does not feel democratic. It will be suggested below that the rigidities associated with old-style nationalism have been greatly moderated in recent times. However, the nation remains the primary and instinctive community of reference for most Europeans. The politicians reflect this, generally leaving to economists and other commentators the estimation of the impact of the Union on the life of the nation, and saying next to nothing in their rhetoric about what most of them know to be the single most important current influence on their countries. For instance, in 2002 the official retrospectives of the reign of Queen Elizabeth II to mark the golden jubilee of her accession to the British throne, while making very limited reference to the dissolution of empire, had nothing at all to say about membership of

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the EU. In the same year President Chirac did not highlight the European dimension in his contest with the extreme right. Indeed, both leaders celebrated in 2004 the centenary of the entente cordiale with a show of enthusiasm entirely lacking in respect of the much greater project in which the countries are now actually involved. Even in Ireland, a country that is generally accepted to have benefited beyond measure from membership of the Union, not only in economic terms but in terms of its strategic place in the world, politicians no longer find invocation of Europe to be a paying proposition in electoral terms. There is clearly a serious disjunction in much of northwestern Europe, as elsewhere, between the communitaire realities of life and the rhetorical expressions of popular democratic culture. At the wider European level this is not an entirely new problem. Before its collapse in World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire provided cohesion and commonality across many lands, but it was doomed because of its inherent inability to meet the demands of the democratising nationalisms within its boundaries. But the independence of the small nations after 1918 left the way open to the horrors of the Nazi experiment of a new Europe based on racial supremacy. History and every other consideration point to the necessity of a democratic union of European nations, but the amazingly successful solution provided by the EU still has to find a way of securing the support of its citizens at an emotional level. If the EU still has to secure democratic acceptance of the kind generally enjoyed by nations, it is also true that in several of the nations under review the stability of the democratic system has recently begun to face disturbing challenges. ‘Taking the gun out of politics’ has been a trope of commentary on Irish affairs for many generations, and it remains a live issue there. But what would have been incredible even a few years ago is that the same should come to be true of the Netherlands. Yet, in recent years two political assassinations have rocked the Dutch political system that had not seen such an intervention for centuries. Some members of parliament have had to leave home and live under police protection in secure locations. The roots of this upset to the Dutch system lie in tensions arising from resentment against immigration. The same tensions are generating considerable electoral support for right-wing parties in Belgium and France. In Britain the existence of similar intolerant movements in popular feeling is to a great extent obscured by the archaic ‘first past the post’ electoral system. In the case of Ireland, the threat to the fundamentals of democracy until very recently existed in a different form: Sinn Féin, a political party allied to a paramilitary force – the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) – that had displaced the authority of a state police force in areas of Northern Ireland has very large electoral support in that jurisdiction, and some support in the Irish Republic. There are deprived urban areas in every western

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European country where gang rule has superseded the established forces of law. What is different in the Irish case is the link (which seven years after the Belfast agreement has yet to be broken) between a political party that is granted legitimacy at home and abroad and a paramilitary body with both politically subversive and criminal functions. A vital boon provided by the EU is a guarantee against the irredentism that has been the source of so much mischief in modern European history. But this is not a guarantee of immobility. Of the five states with which this paper is concerned, all have been subject in the past fifty years to major territorial redefinitions. Belgium has gone from being a unitary state to advanced federal status, or some would say confederal status. The United Kingdom has seen devolved assemblies and administrations emerging in Scotland and Wales. Although Northern Ireland has gone in the opposite direction, from devolved parliament and government to almost permanent direct rule, it validates the case for major constitutional redefinition not only in respect of the United Kingdom, but also with respect to the Irish republic. The Belfast Agreement of 1998 required the abandonment of the 1937 Irish constitution’s irredentist claim on Northern Ireland, but it provided for a series of ‘cross-border’ bodies to be charged with the management on an all-Ireland basis of a range of issues from the soporific (inland waterways) to the potentially explosive (language policy). In the cases of France and the Netherlands, while their internal makeup may have been affected by nothing more than some devolution to preexisting constituent parts, the territorial scope of their constitutions has been dramatically changed since 1945 by the loss of overseas empires. Thus, until 1962, Algeria was deemed part of the French national territory.

IDEOLOGY Attempting a long-term perspective, perhaps the most striking feature of political culture in northwestern Europe over recent decades has been the decline of ideological authority. Partly linked to the decline of authority, but also deriving from other sources, is a decline in the prominence of the state in the perception of citizens. For centuries, churches served the purpose of inculcating in the populace both obedience to political authority and support for the existing order. With the French revolution we see the state beginning to assume the task of providing and propagating an ideology for the people to secure the new political culture of citizenship. In due course other nation-states followed this example. The ultimate instrument in the hands of makers of nation-states was universal primary

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schooling, by means of which citizens were given the basic skills to participate in national life, but which also had the task of indoctrination. The assumption by the state of control over education is one of the larger socio-political stories of the 19th and 20th centuries in western Europe. This development gave rise in France and in Belgium to highly fraught direct conflicts between church and state that continued into the 20th century and left deep wounds. In Britain the change occurred in a much less confrontational way. In the Netherlands and Ireland the outcome was compromise that left the churches generally contented. But however the outcomes varied, the expectation was that schools everywhere were forming citizens by teaching them to read, write and count, and by inculcating a dogmatic understanding of the bases for the claims of the state (apotheosised as the nation) on the obedience of the populace. In the 19th and 20th centuries numerous political interests competed for the public support that would give them power in their respective lands: republicans, Bonapartists and monarchists, liberals and conservatives, socialists, communists and anarchists, confessional parties and many varieties of nationalists. Whether they had control of the state and its propaganda machine or were on the outside endeavouring to gain control, all of those justified their claims to support on grounds of principle or ideology. Each group proposed its own set of ideals, doctrines and duties for observance by the population. Marxists were possibly the most insistent of all on such dogma. However much they might differ in the content of their teachings, all – with the exception of some anarchist elements – accepted the assumption that the political order was founded on principles that had to be inculcated in the populace. None of this is to suggest that ideology was ever a sufficient explanation of political dynamics, but it was seen by all as a necessary justification. A major change began in the 1960s. The nature of the change may be illustrated from the sphere of religion. In 1870 Pope Pius IX sought to secure his authority by having the Vatican Council declare him to be infallible in doctrinal matters. This is a very striking instance of the importance that his age attached to the notion of authority deriving from doctrine. At the end of the 20th century Pope John Paul II imposed his authority on the Roman Catholic Church (and made a considerable impact elsewhere) through the cult of celebrity (his own and that of others, such as Mother Theresa of Calcutta) made possible by the globalising media. He promoted doctrine not far removed from that of Pius IX in content, but with significant differences in context. First, its impact owed nothing to arguments about a basis in a scheme of dogmatic truth (even if the Pope has theologians who still provide such arguments); secondly, most Catholics receiving the message feel free to choose, a la carte, which parts of it to apply in their own lives. In the age of Pius IX, and for several subsequent generations, Roman Catholicism

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appeared to be primarily a community that defined itself by allegiance to a rigid body of doctrine; that is clearly no longer the case. All of this is paralleled in the political sphere at national level. The change is well illustrated by the attitude to authority figures from the past. The invocation of exemplary historical personages or their foundational texts was once a standard feature of the political rhetoric of elites from every point on the spectrum. This is now a rarity. It is a mark of the change in popular political culture that in reaching out to the public most parties no longer invoke the authority of leaders or sages of the past. Each of the five countries under review here currently has a right wing or extreme nationalist party or grouping, but not even these derive much support from, or place much store on, the invocation of the authority of the past. In Ireland, Sinn Fein bonds its faithful through invocation of the hunger strikers of the 1980s, rather than through reading of the diaries of Wolfe Tone, the founder of Irish republicanism. In the French case, the occasional invocation of Jeanne d’Arc for political purposes probably evokes more derision than respect.

CHANGE AND ITS LIMITS The cult of great figures from the past was embodied in the public statuary that ornaments streets, squares and boulevards. For centuries, rulers or ruling elites imposed statues of iconic figures on public spaces. More recently, the appetite of the state, both at national and local level, for the creation of didactic public monuments has visibly waned. The beginnings of this change can probably be traced to the 1960s when statues of public personages began to resemble contemporary art in general by departing from a clear representational function. Gradually, public statuary has given way to street furniture, something to please the eye, but generally without political reference. The change is well illustrated by the case of the pillar in honour of Admiral Nelson erected in Dublin shortly after the battle of Trafalgar (1805) by the then loyalist controlling interests in the city, and blown up by extreme nationalists in 1966. For decades before the destruction and for some years afterwards, there was intense discussion about which of many possible nationalist icons should replace the British admiral at the centre of the capital’s most important thoroughfare. What eventually came to pass in early 2003 was the construction of a large steel spire totally devoid of political signification. However, as is always the case with political history, change has not been uniform. Public statues are still erected and streets are named or renamed for the famous dead, even if not with the same gusto as previously. Bastille Day in

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France and Remembrance Sunday in Britain are grander affairs than ever, even if many of the certainties on which they were originally founded have dissolved. France is no exception to the general trends discussed here, but the French state does display an enduring attachment to the ideology of the republic. Thus, the 2004 ban on the wearing of religiously significant apparel in French state schools is a quite explicit reaffirmation of the principle of laicité, such as none of the other four states would currently attempt. It remains to be seen how effective such an approach will be in the longer term as an antidote to the politics of ethnic identity. Without making any assumptions about cause and effect, it can be said that the existentialist philosophy of the post-war era presaged the decline of ideology. In the nature of things the progress of a mentalité is difficult to trace in detail, but the year 1989 surely provides a landmark. There had been much anticipation that the bicentenary of the French revolution would be the occasion of a great contest for ownership of the revolutionary tradition. No such conflict came to pass and, in the event, the thrust of the bicentennial historiography tended to avoid any suggestion of contemporary implications. In the same year the collapse of the Berlin wall anticipated the end of the Soviet bloc. That event involved a large-scale abandonment of deference to ideology, not only in the countries affected but also elsewhere in Europe. To take a striking example, in Britain the Labour Party in 1995 formally abandoned the policy of state ownership of the means of production, the famous section 4 of the party’s 1918 constitution. This policy had not been taken seriously by many for decades previously, but it had retained significance as an expression of the dogmatic basis of the party. Its abandonment was an acknowledgement that the public no longer wished for dogma. Indeed, it might be said that Tony Blair made the Labour Party electable once again by proving that it had abandoned ideology. It might be disputed whether this change was required by public opinion or by commercial interests with influence over public opinion. Even in Britain the trend is not uniform. Thus, there is an enduring attachment to the National Health Service (reputedly the largest employer in Europe, though not necessarily the most efficient), against which not even Margaret Thatcher ventured to launch a direct assault. One might argue that as ideology geared to the masses was abandoned, it was being replaced by the neo-liberal ideology of the economists. Already in the 1980s a reversal of the previously expanding role of the state in economic life was under way in many countries. This policy thrust is usually associated with the names of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, but it certainly had deeper roots than the will of two individual leaders. We have now witnessed more than two decades of the rolling back of the state with the large-scale

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disposal of public assets, privatisation of communications systems formerly owned and operated by the state, public-private partnerships, out-sourcing etc. These developments did not get underway without some hesitation on the part of governments of socialist or social democratic stamp, but having once got under way it has been largely unaffected by changes of government. Some of the examples have been spectacular, such as the privatisation of the railways in Britain or the large-scale sale of state properties in France. There is little reason to believe that privatisation, and the rolling back of the state, reflecting the interests of an economic elite, has been taken to heart by populations at large. Rather, it is accepted as a formula that appears to work, whereas collectivist alternatives have been seen not to work. From the point of view of political culture, the privatisation of the public economy is of interest principally because it weakens the citizen’s sense of dependence on the state. Western Europe is now saturated with telephones: a few decades ago in most countries a phone was in the gift of a state monopoly that might be influenced in its attention to applicants by the overtures of a public representative. In several countries, services that have not been privatised are frequently allocated to a quango or to a commission, or depend heavily on EU directives. If politicians no longer have responsibility for phones or trains or other features of everyday life, people feel less reason to be interested in them or to vote for them. This reduced interest in politicians may not have a causal connection with the decline of political ideology, but the two have combined to change political culture in significant ways. There is less incentive for clientilism and that fact at one level should benefit democracy by reducing the pressures towards individual corruption. But, whether there is face-to-face contact or not, democratic politics always requires those elected to look after the perceived needs of the electorate. In the absence of a strong counterbalancing ideal of the common good there is an increased temptation for politicians to offer more than the common good can afford. The decline of the ideology that propped up the nation-state does not imply the decline of nationalism as a motivating force in public life: far from it. The group dynamics of national/ethnic being do not depend on ideology. National/ethnic division has in recent decades been as bitter as ever in Northern Ireland and in Belgium, and in all five jurisdictions under consideration here the inward movement of workers and asylum seekers has produced and is currently producing some racist reaction. If the politicians and the traditional political and learned elites are no longer the dominant arbiters of public opinion, their place has been taken to a significant extent by the commercial interests that can dominate the media, even where some are still in public ownership. In particular, it would be futile to try

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to understand what has changed in political culture in recent decades without taking account of the impact of television. Television by its nature makes a spectacle of everything it touches, including politics. And politics as a spectacle has little place for ideas as distinct from images. Politicians have long since learned to adapt to television and obviously they do so in terms of image rather than ideology. Politics, once the respected source of authority, is thus placed in the position of competing with other spectacles and cannot retain its former status. Politics is particularly challenged by sport and, especially, over much of the world by football: the role of sport geared to the mass audiences of television cannot but recall Juvenal’s satirical remark about the use of ‘bread and circuses’ to pacify the populace of ancient Rome. Government investment in national sporting success is now viewed as being as normal as expenditure on hospitals or schools. There have been several instances of countries experiencing through sport a national mobilisation such as would not now be achievable by any other means. England’s World Cup victory in 1966 provides an early example. From the late 1980s the (relative) successes of the Republic of Ireland football team drew forth expressions of patriotic enthusiasm particularly from people who had been largely untouched by old-style dogmatic nationalism. The same is true of the Netherlands. In the case of France the impact of the national team’s 1998 World Cup victory on the spirit of the nation is much discussed. The manoeuvrings of politicians at the highest level to associate themselves with national football teams, particularly at moments of success, speak for themselves. If television has shaken the ground under the feet of politicians, it has also set almost at nought the expectation of what schools can do to influence the attitudes of the rising generation. Scarcely anyone now imagines that the educational system can be used to indoctrinate students with a comprehensive civic culture. The most that realistic nationalists hope for from the schools is that the curriculum will make children aware of the national classics, such as Shakespeare or Moliere. Recent (2005) reports of a French policy decision to ensure that every schoolchild learns the words of the ‘Marseillaise’ is evidence of enduring commitment in Paris to a vision, but it also suggests very much reduced ambitions for the educational aspects of la grande nation. It is something of a cliché at this stage to talk of the ‘democratic deficit’, but there is no denying that – despite the de-fusing of nationalist ideology from which it has benefited, and to which it has contributed – the EU still has to win for itself an adequate place in the popular political cultures of the countries of western Europe. The case appears to be that national ideologies are in decline not because they are national but because they are ideologies. But nationalism is alive and well, albeit without the benefit of the older ideology.

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One could be tempted to ascribe the lack of success to date of the EU in winning the hearts of the people to the difficulty of reconciling divergent national political cultures. But the problem would appear to reside in the fact that these political cultures are national, and so separate from one another, rather than in the actual substantial differences between them. The distinctiveness of the various national political cultures bequeathed by history is being diluted by waves of change that transcend countries and continents. But, at least in the case of northwestern Europe, these national cultures retain sufficient weight to remain the primary focus of political allegiance.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aughney, Arthur, Nationalism, Devolution and the Challenge to the United Kingdom State (London, Pluto Press, 2001). Gellner, Ernest, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, Blackwell Publishing Press, 1983). Hobsbawm, Eric, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990). Holm, Erik, The European Anarchy: Europe’s Hard Road into High Politics (Copenhagen, Copenhagen Business School Press, 2001). Milward, Alan S., The European Rescue of the Nation State (London, Routledge, 1992). Reynebeau, Marc, Een Geschiedenis van Belgie (Tielt, Uitgeverij Lanno, 2003). Robbins, Keith, Great Britain: Identities, Institutions and the Idea of Britishness (London, Longman, 1998).

CHAPTER 6 Comparing Political Cultures in Germany and the Netherlands Ton Nijhuis INTRODUCTION: EUROPEAN INTEGRATION AND THE CONTINUATION OF NATIONAL POLITICAL CULTURES Politicians and political scientists in Germany and the Netherlands long assumed that European integration would cause national social orders to converge and nation-states to become ‘extinct’. European integration was considered feasible, because countries in Western Europe had progressed along identical courses of modernisation and consequently had essential features in common. They had become liberal, parliamentary democracies, had free market economies, etc. Integration would in turn lead to more extensive convergence. Obviously Europe has always been acknowledged as a model of diversity, comprising a motley array of languages and cultures. Such cultural diversity, however, was not considered an obstacle to political unification and convergence of the national social orders of the participating countries. Increasing inter-dependencies, common legislation and policy coordination were intended to culminate in a federal Europe. But this final objective, even the greatest integration optimists have gradually been forced to admit, will not be achieved in the near future. Even disregarding political will, differences between national political cultures, social orders, legal systems and economic traditions are greater and more persistent than previously imagined. In addition to subjecting the integration to boundary conditions, these differences lead the same European measures, directives and legislation to have entirely different impacts in the respective member states. European structures and measures do not carry the same weight in domestic political, economic, legal and cultural orders in all countries. As a consequence, the ‘reconciliation value’ of European policy varies depending on the country. Common European legislation therefore causes divergence as well as convergence. More specifically, Europeanising the EU member states consistently

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involves national ‘Europeanisation’. There are as many ‘Europeanisation processes’ as there are member states. The diversity also surfaces in the responses of nation-states in Europe to comparable challenges, such as the need to restructure the social security and insurance systems, the reduction of government services, problems with refugee absorption and integrating residents of foreign extraction, and achieving the measure of social cohesion considered indispensable for maintaining the necessary common good. While every country faces these issues, the ways the different nation-states identify, define and deal with them vary considerably. This in turn affects the resolution strategies pursued and the subsequent problems that arise. Every response opens a virtual window of opportunities, while excluding others. The path taken deeply influences the subsequent course. Each country maps its own route, despite all the internationalisation. Differences between member states are largely attributable to the national political cultures that have emerged over the course of history. Political culture is very broadly defined here and encompasses more than the civic culture of Almond and Verba, or popular standards and values regarding the political system. Here, political culture concerns the relationships between historically established political structures associated with specific interactive styles between the different groups and actors, and the historical experience that has gelled in world views, expectations and standards and values. It is this interplay between institutions, structures, and modus operandi, on the one hand, and gelled historical experiences and expectations, on the other, that determines the specific national political cultures. This broad perspective on political culture makes comparing Germany and the Netherlands particularly interesting. While the two countries resemble one another in many respects, they also differ in several areas. Where do these similarities and differences lie? And do these differences appear to be persistent, or is a measure of convergence materialising? If this is the case, how are the two countries growing toward one another? And is some European convergence perhaps emerging, despite the tenacity of national political cultures that are the outcome of the historical course of events?

GERMANY AND THE NETHERLANDS: ALIKE BUT DEFINITELY DIFFERENT Many comparative statistics and studies published periodically present Germany and the Netherlands as two countries that are very similar in many respects. In addition to having comparable political value systems, the two

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countries have welfare state arrangements that closely resemble one another. Careful analysis reveals that these areas of common ground are very recent and have emerged over the past few decades. Going back further in time, the differences prevail between the ‘national cultures’ and the political–social orders of both countries. Germany and the Netherlands are not only entirely different in terms of their size and geo-political location: their respective histories could hardly be more different either. In Dutch history, modernisation has been the epitome of continuity and stability. No major battles or civil wars have occurred in the Netherlands, nor have any caesura taken place over the past two centuries, except for ones imposed from outside. German history, on the other hand, resembles a continuum of discontinuities, a history of conflicts, rifts and missed opportunities that have deeply scarred national awareness. The Netherlands was among the first countries to become independent but evolved as a state only much later. Although the civil republic emerged in the 16th and 17th centuries, the state became centralised only in the late 18th and 19th centuries. The German areas were a patchwork of small and large independent states until the unifications in 1866 and 1871. Germany was thus a latecomer to the European system of nationstates. The Netherlands reached its political, economic and cultural peak in 1648, whereas the year was a nadir in German history, with the country in ruins as a result of the Thirty Years’ War. Dutch culture was defined by reformation and humanism, as well as by the inability of the counter-reformist movement to prevail. The result was a large measure of pluralism. German culture is more the product of the 18th and 19th centuries and is imbued with romanticist influences. The very late German nation-statehood coincided with the similarly late, but extremely rapid, industrialisation, while in the Netherlands the state and the nation were established before the industrialisation. Moreover, the borders of the Netherlands have been fairly stable and undisputed, whereas Germany’s borders have always been highly controversial. In fact, the border issues were settled once and for all only with the German unification of 1990 and the ‘4 plus 2’ treaty. In Germany, the revolution of 1848 culminated in failure, whereas a liberal constitution was enacted in the Netherlands that same year and remains the foundation of the current one. In Germany, the landed aristocracy continued to influence the state government, whereas in the Netherlands the nobility basically lost its role as a caste around the time of the independence. Nor should the influence of the many colonies of the Netherlands be underestimated. From the Napoleonic era until World War II, the Netherlands had virtually no involvement in international conflicts and maintained its neutrality. Compared with the Weimar Republic during the

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Interbellum, the Netherlands was a paragon of tranquillity. After World War II, both countries experienced a period of restoration, but the conditions were highly dissimilar. Only toward the late 1960s did the two national social orders become more similar. Examples abound of this nearly stereotypical contrast. Here, however, the only question of interest is whether – and if so how – the course of history and historical experiences affected the development of political cultures in the two countries: first with respect to the institutions, and second with respect to the core values that characterise their respective political cultures.

INSTITUTIONS State and Society in German and Dutch History Many of the differences between the German and Dutch political cultures are attributed to differences in their respective ideas about the nature and function of the state, and the manner in which state and society have imbued one another. People’s views of the state, and of what they can expect from it, vary enormously between the two countries. In Germany, expectations are far higher than in the Netherlands about the state’s ability to deal with social issues. Within the Federal Republic, in turn, expectations and consequently demands of the state are higher in the neue Länder than in the West. These differences in the relationship between the people and the state, and the state’s role in society, have a decisive impact on the differences in political culture between the two countries, as well as between East and West within Germany. The word for ‘state’ is the same in Dutch and German: staat/Staat. And while the concept would at first appear to denote the same political institutions, it has entirely different meanings and connotations in the two countries and embodies a different significance. In addition to deriving from conceptual-historical factors, the semantic differences between the two concepts of state are the outcome of major differences in the nature of the state and the relationship between state and society. Views about the state are very different in Dutch and German political cultures. In the Netherlands the state is not a highly respected institution. It is indispensable as a system for regulating various affairs, but lacks a special status. The Dutch prefer the term overheid [authorities], which is a neutral designation of the administrative–bureaucratic system as a practical arrangement. In Germany, on the other hand, der Staat has acquired an almost metaphysical ring over time and is both adored and despised. Obrigkeit, the German term for authorities, also has an entirely different connotation than the word overheid in

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Dutch. The convergence of the state and the authorities in the Obrigkeitsstaat considerably strengthens the associations that the two concepts invoke and even has a ring of authoritarianism. A concept such as Staatstreue [loyalty to the state] carries very little expressive force in the Netherlands. Nor does the opposite, contempt for the state, or viewing the state as the ultimate evil that is to be fought with might and main (as the Rote Armee Fraktion did), occur in the Netherlands. The Dutch evolution of the state – which has been very different from the process in Germany – and ideas about the state and the relationship between the civilian population and the state derive from a tradition that dates back to the 16th century. Unlike Germany, the Netherlands was an independent republic very early on. It was not a strong united state but a loose association of seven provinces, with highly autonomous districts and cities. The strong independence of the provinces has restricted the state as an administrative apparatus. State power did not begin to be centralised until the end of the 18th century. Only then, during the Batavian Republic and under the French occupation, were the foundations established for the unified state that emerged during the 19th century. This new state, despite being a monarchy, also lacked any public display of power, or grandeur. The state apparatus remained modest and devoid of excessive prestige. Such a state obviously exuded no appeal for those in pursuit of social prestige. Members of the educated middle class therefore had little interest in careers as civil servants, or state officials as a vehicle toward social prestige. In Germany, however, such careers promised very appealing prospects for the Bildungsbürgertum. Thus there was a far stronger bond between the middle class and the state apparatus. The state control over most liberal professions further strengthened these ties. In the Netherlands the state and the military did not serve as career distribution centres. Nor did the state confer coveted titles which might tempt sections of the upper middle class to serve the state, as it was the case in France. While education has always been held in great esteem in the Netherlands, it is associated mainly with furthering careers in trade and commerce. If we describe the German middle class as being state-oriented, the Dutch middle class has been more averse to the state. In the Netherlands the primacy has always rested with Dutch society, where in Germany this held true for the state for a long time. Unlike in the Netherlands, in Germany unification largely coincided with the formation of the state. And unlike in the Netherlands, the state was formed during a period of unprecedented economic, technical and scientific progress. The state was an active, driving force in Germany’s success in catching up. As a consequence, once again unlike in the Netherlands, the state was regarded as an important, vigorous apparatus that provided guidance to the people. In this

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sense the remarkably strong identification of German people today with the state is primarily the outcome of the Wilhelmine Empire. In the Netherlands the state was far from setting standards for the society to emulate. State philosophies and obsession with power are virtually absent in the history of Dutch politics. In Germany the Protestant churches, the middle class and civil society were heavily focused on the state and took the leadership of the state for granted in their society. By contrast, in the Netherlands, on the other hand, the church, the middle class and social organisations were vehemently anti-statist. Not the state but the church embodied moral standards and values. Consequently, the state had little involvement in education, healthcare, welfare, culture and sports, and had to settle for being a minimally regulatory body which granted the different denominations freedom to thrive. Despite all the differences between the four political milieus that emerged at the end of the 19th century, most liberals, Protestants, Catholics and socialists agreed that the role of the state should be as little as possible. ‘Sovereignty among one’s own’ and subsidiarity were the maxims that barred state involvement in the population’s spiritual and moral welfare and limited state input regarding social structures, which the different population groups arranged at their discretion. The cuis regio eius religio adage was reversed in the Netherlands, in a manner of speaking. The different confessional groups tried to shape the country and its institutions to reflect their respective religious principles. State and society thus imbued one another in very specific ways in the Netherlands. Compartmentalisation meant that the state penetrated society far less than in Germany, whereas Dutch society’s influence on the state was far greater. Social organisations have therefore always had major input in the political decision-making process. To this day, this difference in the relationship between state and society is a major factor behind the differences in political culture in Germany and the Netherlands. The Germans are more inclined than the Dutch to expect the state to provide solutions to social problems and to take charge. This understanding that the state will take the initiative and should provide for the citizens is still more pronounced in the neue Länder than in the old Federal Republic. The newspaper headline reading ‘Wo bleibt der Bundeskanzler?’ [What happened to the federal chancellor?], when the chancellor showed up late at a crisis site, would be inconceivable in the Netherlands. A headline reading ‘What happened to Her Majesty?’ would be more likely. In the Netherlands the press and the public are far less likely to expect responses to social problems and crises to be forthcoming from the national

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government in The Hague. In Germany, on the other hand, problems become politicised far sooner than they do in the Netherlands. While people in the Netherlands tend to regard problems as technical matters calling for technical solutions, social issues are immediately interpreted as political problems according to German tradition and subsequently turned into the subject of a duel between government and opposition.

Consensus Democracy and Political Strife Herein lies another important difference between the political cultures in Germany and the Netherlands. Both countries have a consensus democracy, in which all parties concerned are consulted and heard at length. The ideal is for decisions to have the broadest possible support. There is also policy consensus, which reflects a large measure of agreement between the political parties and the political elites about the general policy to be pursued, as well as a consensus about the most important institutional characteristics of the political system and about the rules of the political game, and how political conflicts should be resolved. In the Netherlands the consensus democracy is based on straightforward politics, pragmatic tolerance, summit talks involving concerned groups, nondisclosure of consultations to avert fighting out disagreements in public, and depoliticisation of differences of opinion. Problems are interpreted as technical matters whenever possible and answers as technical solutions rather than as political options. Grants and offices are distributed equitably. This political system is supported, on the one hand, by a series of institutions where consultation between social partners is steered by institutional forces, and on the other hand, by a political culture in which consultation and compromise are hallowed as core values. Even the word ‘overleg’ [consultation] is difficult to translate into other languages, because its meaning lies somewhere between negotiating and deliberating, with the tacit understanding that parties will resolve their differences: one agrees to agree. Compromises are valued in the Netherlands, whereas they are often labelled as faul [dubious] in Germany. To devise a common stand, all parties are expected to be amenable to reason. Rigidity is not considered a political asset in the Netherlands. Many terms characteristic of Dutch political culture have been suggested to describe the process in which parties gradually achieve a meeting of the minds: settling, adapting, moulding, massaging, smoothing, evening out. The objective of political debate is to find a happy medium with opportunities for compromise, not the extremes that political purists embrace. Rather than harping on the points where people differ, the Dutch focus on the areas of common ground.

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Differences generally do not derive from conflicting theories, or principles, but reflect different views on how an issue should be handled in practice. Lacking major confrontations and consisting merely of differences of opinion over technical details, Dutch political debates tend to be boring. German political culture, on the other hand, despite its consensus democracy, is more aptly described as a Streitkultur [culture of strife]. Political debates are not a perpetual effort to reach a grimy middle ground, but revolve around firm positions and pure rationales. The differences rather than the areas of common ground dominate. Precisely because of the strong measure of consensus – like in the Netherlands – about the question of what society should entail, even the most minor differences are often inflated into vast, insurmountable disputes over matters of principle. While Dutch political culture is inclined to depoliticise, the German one tends to politicise. All questions are approached as political issues from the outset. Whereas in Germany the interaction between the public, the media and politicians makes for a spiral of politicisation, in the Netherlands these forces are akin to depoliticisation. German citizens and the German press watch more closely than their counterparts in the Netherlands for the responses of the government, and the opposition, to issues and crises that arise. This leads German politicians to interpret such issues (for example, an outbreak of mad-cow disease in January 2001) along political lines and consequently to label them as political matters. The media and the public then expect political reaction, for example the resignation of government ministers (Andrea Fischer, Bündnis 90/Die Grünen and Karl-Heinz Funke, Social Democratic Party (SPD)), and then respond in political terms in a way that the matter turns into an explosive political issue overnight. In the Netherlands the public and the press are less likely to expect an immediate answer from central government, and politicians do not automatically feel challenged. As a result, issues become less politically explosive and may in some cases be dealt with as non-political, technical problems. One of the consequences is that the German government and opposition perceive (more than their Dutch counterparts) political issues as opportunities to highlight the areas where they differ. This continuous politicisation gives rise to a political culture based on continuous political struggle and fierce political debates. This contrasts sharply with Dutch political culture, which is more lethargic and focused on compromise. Even the shock wave that resulted from the rapid rise and the murder of Pim Fortuyn did not permanently undermine this essential feature of Dutch political culture. Anti-principled moderation prevails in Dutch public debate as well. The tendency to overanalyse issues and discuss them in highly theoretical terms is

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utterly non-existent in the Netherlands. Not so in the German public arena, with its manichaeistic tendencies. German public debate sometimes even seems to rush from one conflict to the next. New scandals, or new issues, keep surfacing and are debated at length in the media. The talk shows that are so abundant on German television consistently feature discussions about all the problems of the week in highly controversial terms. In the Netherlands, contributions usually open with the rather sad observation that no discussion is forthcoming about the subject concerned.

Coalitions and Parties Neither Germany nor the Netherlands has a majority democracy. This means that each government will consist of a coalition, and that no single party can ever carry through its own programme based on a parliamentary majority. Compromises will always need to be reached with the coalition partner, or partners. This need to compromise tends to subdue the political culture. After all, matters cannot be driven to such emotional extremes that agreement becomes impossible. In the Netherlands, however, this sobering effect is stronger than in Germany, because in the Netherlands all major political parties may together serve in the government. A political fault line thus virtually never occurs. Today’s opposition parties may be tomorrow’s fellow coalition members. In matters of principle, it is therefore unwise to push through a parliamentary majority against the explicit wishes of the larger opposition parties. In the Netherlands, this state of affairs has given rise to a longstanding tradition of refraining from excessive politicisation on issues of principle (for example, ethics) and of pursuing a broad compromise. For as long as such compromise is not forthcoming, no new legislation will be passed. The limits of socially accepted standards and values are determined by courts of law, as long held true for abortion and euthanasia, as well as the right to go on strike. In other words, the legal system serves to depoliticise difficult political problems over which compromise was unattainable at the time. The legal system provides a temporary solution through case law and subsequently further leads the way toward political compromise. In Germany, the judicial process, usually at the constitutional court in Karlsruhe, is often the final stage in the political battle. If the opposition is forced to back down in both the Bundestag and the Bundesrat, the Bundesverfassungsgericht [Federal Constitutional Court] is a final point of recourse. No such constitutional court exists in the Netherlands. And even though in Germany all governments are coalitions like in the Netherlands, it would be unusual for the SPD and the Christian Democratic Party (CDU)/Christian Social Union (CSU) to form a large coalition together.

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This enables parties to highlight their contrasts and to zero in on differences of opinion, offering voters a choice between a social-democratic or a Christiandemocratic cabinet. Because the opposition often holds a majority in the Senate, or Bundesrat, compromises with the opposition often prove necessary after all. Like the Netherlands, Germany is and will remain a consensus democracy. One of the major differences between Germany and the Netherlands is that the Bundesrepublik is a true party democracy. German political parties are exceptionally strong and powerful. This is not because many people join political parties: in Germany and the Netherlands alike, slightly less than four per cent of the population eligible to vote belongs to a political party. The major difference is that in Germany the parties and the affiliated research desks, such as the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung of the SPD and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung of the CDU, have very generous budgets and can afford a vast infrastructure. Whereas the research desks of Dutch political parties have very limited manpower, the ones in Germany employ hundreds. These differences in the infrastructural resources of the political parties in Germany and the Netherlands deeply affect political culture in both countries. Parties dominate political debates in Germany. They commission experts on all topics conceivable in order to offer their analyses and contemplations to the media, on their behalf. The situation in the Netherlands is entirely different. Parties there are weak and lack the funding, infrastructure and staff to participate as actively in public debate as they do in Germany. As a result, intellectuals without a specific party affiliation figure far more prominently in public debate in the Netherlands than in Germany, and debates are therefore far less likely to reflect party politics. Political parties cannot influence debate. This is another reason why public debates about social issues are relatively free of party politics.

POLITICAL CORE VALUES Dutch Political Culture as a Culture of Tolerance and Permissiveness The Dutch have always regarded their society as open and tolerant. The image or, if you will, the myth of the tolerant, peace-loving Republic of the 17th century is of great importance to their social self-description. No party ever had an absolute majority, while minorities always received consideration. Since the 17th century the country has been known as a haven for immigrants. The different population groups are granted considerable freedom to live according to their beliefs (pillars). Public property has been defined not by the state but within the pillars. This sovereignty among one’s own meant that people did not

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need to interfere with the other pillars. They were free to observe their own way of life, even if it met with disapproval. This made for rigid social control and corrective measures against deviant conduct within the pillars, while deviant conduct on the part of those belonging to other pillars was ignored. According to this tradition of ‘civic inattention’, fellow citizens are noticed, although their actions are disregarded: leaving each other in peace, paying others no heed. The Dutch take little notice of deviant conduct. The Dutch tradition of not automatically imposing the will of the majority is conducive to compromise. If compromise proves to be impossible because people’s views are too far apart, the situation is often tolerated. What is in fact legally prohibited, as used to be true of abortion, euthanasia and drugs, is basically tolerated. ‘Tolerating’ in the Netherlands is a last resort to avert – political – confrontations. This gives rise to a grey area, in which people no longer remember what is permitted and what is prohibited, or who is accountable. This opens the door for social experimentation, without requiring principle (that is, ethical) decisions. The Dutch pragmatic legal culture, which values the opportune, is another facilitating factor. This means that Dutch public agencies, such as the police, do not need to intervene in the event of a violation, if such action would be inopportune on practical or social grounds. Such actions are tolerated. In the Netherlands, toleration is the ultimate lubricant for averting true confrontation and creates a twilight zone, where nobody knows exactly what is, or is not allowed, or who is or is not accountable. This openness, tolerance and absence of a majority in a position to impose its will is conducive to the considerable trust that citizens (or institutions) have in one another. This combination of trust and willingness to consult openly is highly conducive toward finding new solutions and toward social experiments (for instance, regarding the social security system), of which the consequences are impossible to predict. Since Fortuyn, however, tolerant behaviour has been increasingly challenged, especially because it proved to be the wrong strategy for solving problems related to multicultural co-existence. In some respects, tolerance was seen even as an obstacle to true integration of foreigners. Tolerance primarily means to look the other way and avoid confrontations. It does not encourage debate and mutual understanding. It leads us to put up with others, whose conduct we disapprove of, rather than to accept them. The rise of the multicultural society manifested the limits of tolerant dispositions. Tolerating other lifestyles was not conducive to integration, or acceptance. No effort was made to integrate groups of foreigners into society, or to accept immigrant group cultures as emancipated. Tolerance is in fact an obstacle to integration, as it nips all social conversation between the cultures in the bud. Nor does it lead to

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genuine acceptance, let alone appreciation of the Other. On the contrary, it leads to disinvolvement. Averting confrontations relieves us of our obligation to develop an understanding of the constructions and social surroundings of others. Tolerance makes us lazy and indifferent and leads to complacency. When problems revolving around the immigrant groups grew too serious to ignore, public debate in the Netherlands shifted. It refused to tolerate any longer and demanded their complete integration. The myth of the Dutch ‘centuriesold’ tradition of tolerance and openness has been cruelly disrupted overnight. In a sense this will lead Dutch political culture to normalise, that is to deviate less from that of the other member states of the European Union (EU).

German ‘angst’ and the Longing for Security Every political culture is largely the outcome of historical experiences. This is particularly true for German political culture and especially for the period 1933–45. Claiming that post-war German political culture, certainly in West Germany, was overshadowed by the Third Reich is by no means an exaggeration. This does not mean that the Federal Republic became a democratic political culture overnight. On the contrary, German political culture bore the scars of the National Socialist catastrophe until well into the 1950s. Passiveness and political ties lacking in emotional foundations marked the political culture. During the 1960s, as a new generation came of age, the mood was transformed. Within a few years, the political culture of the Federal Republic changed from a rather authoritarian one into one of the most democratic in Europe. The population soon came to define the Federal Republic as a country that was in every respect the antithesis of the regime of criminals it had been under National Socialism. In international politics, Germany replaced its former selfdefinition as a police state and military regime with a self-definition as a Zivilstaat. Germans abandoned unilateralism and embraced multilateralism. In German political culture, multilateralism is not just a means but an objective in its own right. Everything achieved unilaterally is in fact wrong by definition, while multilateral associations and initiatives are necessarily good. In German political culture, multilateralism is almost a moral category. This idea puts it at odds with the USA, and partly explains the lack of understanding between the two states. In addition to its consequences for foreign policy, embracing multilateralism as a core component of German political culture carries over into domestic politics and even into economic and social relationships. Joint decisions are always preferable to unilateral ones. In this respect, multilateralism has penetrated the skin of German political culture.

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The third important feature of the post-war political culture is the rejection of National Socialism, which has been discredited. Nationalism (especially German nationalism) was regarded as the root of evil and was blamed for the wars that tormented Europe in the previous century. That was why it became a taboo. Europe would be their fatherland instead of the nation-state. Germany was expected to define itself as a post-national state. The Federal Republic went into great pain to do away with everything that reeked of nationalism. As a result the people started to feel ashamed of being German. The most extreme version gave rise to a very special national identity: pride in being ashamed of one’s German identity. This political culture always embodied the fear that Germany might derail again. Extreme caution was therefore essential. The German Öffentlichkeit [authorities] devised a system of alerts that would be activated the moment remarks were made that could be interpreted as condoning Nazi atrocities. Because nearly every political theme is attributable to Hitler in one way or another, public debate is filled with taboos and is deeply burdened with its past. Only in recent years has German political culture managed to somewhat rid itself of this historical burden and does it appear to be less constrained by the effort to come to terms with the past and its sense of guilt. The Federal Republic has quickly evolved into a stable, affluent and democratic state. Still, it was long feared that this success story might somehow be disrupted. ‘Angst’ [fear] and ‘Sicherheit’ [security] are therefore key concepts in German political culture. The post-war German political culture was one of stability and avoidance of chaos as during the Weimar period. ‘Keine Experimente’ [no experiments] was Adenauer’s election campaign slogan in 1957. The fear of going astray persisted although the country rapidly recovered it was transformed into an economic superpower and earned the deepest political respect. There were to be no experiments, and political parties emphasised the promise to achieve security: ‘Sicherheit für alle’ [security for all] read the SPD election posters in 1957. Security remained a popular concept in the 1990s. In 1994, Scharping campaigned with the slogan ‘Sicherheit statt Angst’ [security instead of fear], and Helmut Kohl responded with ‘Sicherheit statt Risiko’ [security instead of risk] in 1998. German political culture is not particularly well suited to major reforms, as the tedious restructuring of the welfare state makes clear; it is hardly Experimentierfreudig [receptive to experiments].

Civic Culture in the West and East of Germany and The Netherlands As a result of the Vergangenheitsbewältigung [overcoming the past], the postwar Federal Republic developed a very specific political culture. After the unification, there were in fact two different political cultures: one was West German

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and the other East German. During the 1990s their differences seemed rather permanent. The political culture of the west of Germany appeared to be similar to those of the West European countries; the political culture of the east of Germany to those of Eastern European countries. Now, fifteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, East German political culture has become more similar to West German political culture in most respects. At the same time, West German political culture’s deviations from the averages of the other states of Western Europe are dwindling. Regarding political participation, the distinction between East and West Germany was not very great shortly after the Wende and has diminished since then. The institutional transfer has enabled the surprisingly rapid adjustment of East Germans to West Germans’ norms. Party membership in the neue Länder, however, remains considerably lower than in the old Federal Republic: two per cent versus four per cent. The latter membership rate is the same as in the Netherlands. Social participation remains lower in the neue Länder than in the Federal Republic, but this is no surprise. After all, an elaborate civil society hardly existed in the GDR due to the omnipresent party. Here, too, social participation is gradually approaching West German levels. In the Netherlands, social participation is higher than anywhere else in Europe, including the west of Germany. Levels of political interest vary considerably among citizens in Europe. Interest and involvement in politics are huge in both the west and the east of Germany. The same holds true for the Netherlands. Like the Dutch, the Germans have an above-average desire for information about political issues. The Germans and the Dutch are therefore among the more informed citizens in Europe. Again, the former GDR has caught up surprisingly rapidly. As for social confidence in Germany, however, citizens in the neue Länder are clearly less trusting of those around them than their compatriots in the west. The same holds true for political trust, which signifies the confidence of the citizens in the political system and the political institutions. Here, too, levels of trust are considerably lower in the east of Germany than they are in the west. Even in the west, however, trust has been eroded in recent years. The inability of the German political elites to resolve the major economic problems that have afflicted the country for over a decade is unlikely to have increased political trust in West and East Germany. In the Netherlands, social and political trust is far greater than in Germany. The Netherlands, like the Scandinavian countries, is known as a high trust society. The Dutch place exceptional trust in political and social institutions, such as law and order forces, churches, trade unions, large companies, media parties, the parliament, the government, charitable institutions and the like, compared with Germany. In 2002, thirty-eight per cent of the Dutch population

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reported trusting political parties, compared with nineteen per cent in Germany. Moreover, sixty-four per cent of the Dutch population trusts the government, compared with forty-two per cent of Germans, and sixty-one per cent of Dutch people trust the parliament, compared with forty-six per cent of Germans. Views of social partners reflect the same differences. In the Netherlands, fifty-six per cent of the population trusts the trade unions, compared with thirty-seven per cent of Germans, while forty-five per cent trusts large companies, compared with thirty-seven per cent of Germans. Germans, on the other hand, are more trusting of the police and the military than the Dutch. Citizens of both countries are very satisfied with their respective democratic systems (approximately seventy per cent). Political trust obviously depends on whether persons or institutions do what is expected of them. Dashed expectations diminish trust. In Germany the expectations that the citizens have of the state as a steering body capable of resolving social problems are far higher than in the Netherlands and are higher still in East Germany than they are in the West. Herein lies the explanation for what may at first appear to be a rather curious observation: on the one hand, citizens in Germany and especially in the neue Länder have very high expectations of the state, whereas, on the other hand, they place little trust in this very system. In the Netherlands the reverse is true. Citizens expect little from the state but have a fairly deep sense of trust in the political system. The greater satisfaction among the Dutch with their government and their democratic system, compared with the German population as a whole, and especially compared with those in the new states, is understandable. Even in the Netherlands, however, trust in political and public institutions has declined in recent years. In the Netherlands the inability to deal effectively with ongoing problems, and to restructure the welfare state in a socially acceptable manner, has affected the traditional hightrust figures. A measure of convergence looms on the horizon here as well. The lack of political participation in the sense that very few become active in party politics does not signify reduced commitment to worthy causes. In both Germany and the Netherlands, people willingly march in demonstrations, sign petitions, join single-issue action groups and become involved in other activities. Labelled as ‘unconventional’ during the 1970s, these action groups now resort to the standard repertoire of political action in both countries. Both in the Netherlands and in Germany, the political systems have opened up, and willingness to act has grown. Nor do citizens feel more than ever that insufficient notice is taken of them. Over time, their sense of lacking political influence has diminished, while their trust in their own political capacities has grown. In this respect, ‘civic culture’ has been reinforced in both countries, as Almond and Verba have described it.

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CONCLUSION In the introduction, we noted that European integration has yet to lead the social orders and political cultures of the member states into convergence. The Europeanisation process differs in each country. Historical experience and institutions, patterns and operating styles that have emerged over the course of history have a special impact on contemporary political culture. Although Germany and the Netherlands resemble one another in many respects, the two countries have developed very different political cultures. In the Federal Republic two separate political cultures have in fact emerged since the unification. If we take a broad view of political culture and focus mainly on the relationship between historically evolved political structures, which are associated with specific interactive styles between the different groups and actors and the historical experience (which has gelled in world views, expectations, standards and values), it is possible to reveal why national political cultures are so tenacious. Some operating styles are more compatible than others with specific, historically grown institutions and structures. Likewise, experiences and expectations are mutually conditioning. As long as nationally specific social and political orders and a national historical awareness exist, political cultures will have a national character. This explains why the political culture in the neue Länder is assimilating with the one in the old Federal Republic far more quickly than most people would have imagined in the mid1990s. After all, the political and social structures have been adopted from the West, eliminating any possibility of historical path dependency. While historical experience continues to comprise two distinct post-war courses of history, these are becoming less pronounced in the spectrum of continuities between the present and the German past. In addition, first-hand experience is rapidly disappearing with the arrival of new generations. Just as the passing of time led to a reversal in political culture in West Germany in the early 1960s, it will in the neue Länder as well. Despite the persistence of national political cultures, a measure of convergence between the countries is discernible in some fields. The exceptional German post-war political culture associated with coming to terms with the past is becoming less unusual. The imprint of the past on political culture is less than it used to be, and political culture is gradually starting to normalise. Germany is beginning to resemble other European countries more. The same holds true for the Netherlands in some respects. The Netherlands is losing its special position in Europe as a country of tolerance and openness. Nor is the country immune to rightist extremism and xenophobia. The intrinsic value of tolerance and permissiveness is increasingly subject to challenges. The long-

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standing libertarian image of the Netherlands is slowly but surely fading as well. It is becoming less distinct from other countries in Europe. Finally, how will these changes in political culture affect attitudes on the part of both countries toward the European integration process? Both the Federal Republic and the Netherlands have always been known as important advocates of a federal Europe. Europe was never politically controversial in either country. As the political elites have always had a general consensus that ongoing integration is desirable, Europe never became a heated issue in the elections in either country. In Germany, Europe was long regarded as an Ersatznation, as a substitute for the nation-state discredited by Nazism. Europe was also the perfect opportunity for the Federal Republic to re-enter the European community of states after World War II. Accordingly, all German governments were willing to invest more than average in the European integration process. Some political commentators have deplored Germany’s self-sacrificing disposition toward Europe as neglect of national interests. Overall, however, European integration has always been in Germany’s interest. After World War II, Germany advanced remarkably quickly from a devastated, mistrusted and despised country to a stable, affluent and respected nation. Had Germany defended its narrow national interests instead of tempering them with European considerations, mistrust would have lingered far longer among its neighbours. Fifteen years since the reunification and with twenty-five member states in the EU, the pillars that always shored up German policy on Europe have become shaky. First, the economic slump and the exceptionally dismal state finances make it virtually impossible to convince the population why Germany should pay so much to Europe. German political culture is clearly starting to believe that the country has done enough to pay its historical debt by now and no longer needs to shy away from formulating its own national interests. Moreover, the nature of the European project is fundamentally different. The German post-national ideal of a federal Europe is no longer realistic. An alternative conception of Europe has yet to crystallise. In addition, the search is on for a viable alternative to, or an elaboration of, the French–German axis. Basically, the core elements of Germany’s Europe policy, which have permeated the heart of German political culture, can no longer be taken for granted. The result is an awkward insecurity about Europe in German public circles. While Federal Republican political culture is not about to revert to Euro-scepticism, the country will become far less determined to carry and fund European integration than in the past and will do so far less automatically. The Netherlands, always among the Euro-maximalists because of its open trade economy, will proceed more cautiously as well. The Dutch have switched

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from taking Europe for granted to expressing reservations. In the past they had regarded Europe as a small family of like-minded countries that worked well thanks to a strong measure of social and political trust. The institution has now evolved into a large, anonymous bulwark, in which the Dutch public finds it increasingly difficult to identify with all other European fellow citizens. Trust is being replaced by suspicion. Dutch public debate about Europe has become more calculating than it once was. Do the costs still justify the benefits? Can all countries in Europe be trusted to contribute a fair share, or are they all more concerned about their own budgets? Rather than a community of like-minded states, the EU is increasingly regarded as an arena where countries fight hardest for their national interests. And, if this is the case, the prevailing public opinion is that the Dutch should not settle for less. The public in the Netherlands and Germany regard the EU less and less as a guarantee for safety, stability and affluence and more as an institution that imposes globalisation, along with all concurrent disadvantages, on the member states, and consequently as a threat to the standard of living attained by the nation. In both German and Dutch political culture, doubts are rising about the European ideal and the consequences of globalisation processes, which constantly confront the countries with new economic and security threats or challenges. The natural reaction in both countries is to revert to their own nation-state, which is perceived as a safer haven than the EU. In both countries, this concern has yet to carry over into anti-Europeanism (even in the Netherlands, despite the rejection of the constitution), although public support for re-nationalisation appears to be growing. Both countries will undoubtedly adopt a more cautious approach to European integration and will take some time to reconsider. The relationship between the EU and the member states will need to be redrafted. This holds true both for the borders of the EU and for the distribution of duties and competences within Europe.

BIBLIOGRAPHY van Deth, Jan W. (ed.), Deutschland in Europa. Ergebnisse des European Social Survey 2002–2003 (Wiesbaden, VS Verlag, 2004). von der Dunk, Hermann W. & Horst Lademacher, Deutsch-Niederländische Nachbarschaft: vier Beiträge zur politischen Kultur (München, Waxmann, 1999). Green, Simon & William E. Paterson, Governance in Contemporary Germany. The Semisoevereign State Ricisited (Cambridge University Press, 2005). Greiffenhagen, Martin and Silvia Greiffenhagen & Rainer Prätorius (eds), Handwörterbuch zur politischen Kultur der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Ein Lehrund Nachschlagewerk (Wiesbaden, VS Verlag, 2002).

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van der Horst, Han, The Low Sky: Understanding the Dutch. The Book that Makes the Netherlands Familiar (Schiedam, Scriptum, 2006). Knodt, Michèle & Beate Kohler-Koch (eds), Deutschland zwischen Europäisierung und Selbstbehauptung , (Frankfurtam Main, Campus Verlag, 2000). Lademacher, Horst, Die Niederlande: Politische Kultur zwischen Individualität und Anpassung, (Berlin, Propyläen, 2002). Niedermayer, Oskar & Klaus von Beyme, Politische Kultur in Ost- und Westdeutschland, (Wiesbaden, VS Verlag, 2000). Padgett, Stephen, William E. Paterson & Gordon Smith (eds), Developments in German Politics , 3, (Basingstoke, Palgrave, 2003). Sontheimer, Kurt, So war Deutschland nie :Anmerkungen zur politischen Kultur der Bundesrepublik (München, Beck Verlag, 1999).

CHAPTER 7 Cooperation Among Equals: Political Culture in the Nordic Countries1 Uffe Østergård The Nordic countries are normally seen as small, peaceful, egalitarian democracies, internationally oriented and strong supporters of law and order among the nations of the world. There is some truth in this conventional wisdom, but it does not present us with the whole picture. Or rather, there is a geopolitical background that has to be taken into account when evaluating the positive sides of the political culture in this northern part of Europe (cf. Østergård 2003d, 2004e). The aim of this contribution is to analyse some of the particularities of these homogeneous nation-states in order to map the various national routes they have taken to their apparent success of today, the reasons that account for their political culture as well as the different choices they have made about European cooperation. Furthermore, the nature and history of the cooperation between the Nordic states is analysed in some detail. Such an analysis may be of interest to students of Europe and European integration because in many ways successful cooperation among the Nordic states in the 20th century attests to every nation’s right to independence, regardless of its size. Many have doubted the ability of Iceland to establish a successful state in an island with little more than 250,000 inhabitants. Yet, Iceland of today is a thriving and wealthy society with an interesting combination of traditional agriculture, fisheries, hypermodern industries and information technology. The same can be said of the Faroe Islands with a little more than 50,000 inhabitants. In early modern times, from 1523 to 1814, the Nordic countries were divided between two multinational, conglomerate states or empires: Sweden under the Vasa dynasty, and Denmark under the House of Oldenburg. After its defeat in the Napoleonic wars, Denmark was forced to cede Norway to victorious Sweden under the newly elected king, Carl XIV Johan, formerly a French general known as Jean Baptiste Bernadotte. Finland had become a separate state entity in 1809, when Russia took away the Finnish half of Sweden and established an archduchy in personal union with the Russian empire, gaining full independence in 1917. Sweden got Norway as compensation for the loss of

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Finland in a shaky personal union which lasted until 1905, when the union was peacefully dissolved. Iceland broke away from Denmark in two phases, 1918 and 1944 respectively, while connections were suspended because of the world wars, effectively preventing Denmark from intervening. The Faroe Islands gained their autonomous status in 1948, Greenland got home rule in 1979 and the Sami in northern Norway and Sweden will probably follow suit some day. The Aaland Islands were accorded status as a separate, non-militarised part of Finland in 1921, as compensation for not being allowed to join Sweden. Together, the Nordic countries are the same size as the German state (Bundesland) Nordrhein-Westfalen, with around twenty-five million inhabitants. From this point of view, they are hugely over-represented in international organisations such as the UN, which rely on the principle of independent nation-states. The Nordic countries also collaborate, primarily through the Nordic Council, which is an interesting blend of cooperation among parliaments, civil society and states. This cooperation has been hugely popular among average people, although linguistically the Nordic peoples today seem to lose the ability to understand each other’s languages. English is the preferred language of communication among the younger generations, also at university level. This tendency is deplored by traditional upholders of the so-called ‘Nordic unity’, but nothing much is done about it. (A common television channel never got off the ground in the 1960s and 1970s when it might have made a difference.) Partly because of this lack of understanding and partly because of the importance attached to the European Union (EU), since Sweden and Finland joined in 1995, political and administrative elites have stopped investing much energy in Nordic cooperation, although they still pay lip service to ‘Nordic values’ at festive occasions. This tendency seems most dominant in Denmark, but can be detected in different versions in all the countries. Nevertheless, Nordic unity and Nordic values still score highly in surveys, and Scandinavians still seem to prefer each other’s societies and values over those of the rest of Europe.

‘NORDEN’, SCANDINAVIA OR NORTHERN EUROPE ‘Norden’ (literally ‘the North’) and ‘Scandinavia’ are by no means synonymous denominations, although they are often used as if they were interchangeable. The ‘Northern countries’ to which Tacitus referred in his treatise ‘Germania’ were not Scandinavia but the whole of Northern Europe (Lund 1993, pp. 82 and 116). The word ‘Scandinavia’ first occurred in Pliny’s Naturalis Historia as a misspelling of Scandia, the name given to the province Skaane, which Pliny believed to be an island. Only in the 18th century was the name Scandinavia adopted as a

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convenient general term for the wider region in Northern Europe Skaane belonged to. Today, ‘Scandinavia’ is often used by geographers in a limited sense for the peninsula shared between Norway and Sweden. This terminology makes geological sense, but has very little historical meaning. Until 1658 a large part of what is now southern Sweden belonged to the Danish Kingdom, while Norway from 1380 to 1814 was ruled by the Danish king, which until recently shared language and literary culture with Denmark. It is because of these facts as well as similarities in the languages of Denmark, Norway and Sweden that the term ‘Scandinavia’ is most often used with reference to these three ‘old’ Nordic countries. ‘Norden’, on the other hand, also incorporates Finland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, the Aaland Islands, Greenland and the emerging Sami nation in northern Norway and Sweden. ‘Norden’, thus, is a politico-historical category rather than a geographical category, which often is taken to denominate a common set of social values: that is, low power distance, informality, equality, lack of corruption, trust in authorities and efficiency. In short, the Nordic model is one of the universal welfare state and a certain neutralist distance to the ‘selfish’ power politics of the world’s great powers. Even with all these positive connotations of ‘Norden’ taken into account, the concept has an ambiguous history in most European languages. In the 18th century the ‘Northern tours’ undertaken by gentlemen of leisure usually embraced Poland and Russia, as well as Scandinavia proper. Journals with the adjective ‘Nordische’ appeared from Hamburg to St. Petersburg, the ‘Palmyra of the North’. The German historian Leopold von Ranke elevated both Karl XII of Sweden and Peter the Great of Russia to a Pantheon of ‘Northern heroes’ (Kirby 1995, p. 2). However, with the rise of an independent notion of a ‘Slavic Eastern Europe’, Northern Europe and Eastern Europe were gradually separated (Wolff 1994). Yet, until the reorganisation of the British Foreign Office during World War II, Russia as well as Poland were included in its Northern Department. Whether that was the reason for the disastrous British misjudgements of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939 is another thing. The fact remains, in the traditional European perception, that Russia was perceived rather as a Northern country, on an equal footing with its Swedish foe and Danish ally, rather than an Eastern country until well into the 19th century (Wolf 1994, Kirby 1990, 1995). Today, while Finland unequivocally is included in the Nordic family, except for the language, the denomination Norden must be preferred to Scandinavia. The Finlanders2 still remember the time from 1809 to 1917 when they were a part of the Russian Empire and largely ignored by their fellow ‘Scandinavians’. Likewise, neither the Icelanders nor the Faroese feel included in the designation Scandinavia, not to mention the Greenlanders. It thus makes sense to maintain

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the well-established term ‘Norden’, even if it does present major problems in English and strikes the wrong chords in German. ‘Nordisch’ was the term used by the pan-Germanic dreamers of the last century in reference to the ‘true’, unspoiled Germanic peoples of ‘Norden’ (Henningsen 2000). This use of ‘Nordisch’, synonymous with ‘Germanentum’, was ominous, and with the rise of Nazism the whole German tradition of so-called ‘Nordic thought’ was utterly discredited. As a result, German scholars of the Nordic languages and literatures today refer to their subject as ‘Skandinavistik’, despite the fact that the discipline also incorporates the study of Finnish and Icelandic languages, literatures and societies. The question of where to place Greenland and the Greenlandic language, not to mention Lappland and the Sami, remains undecided at the major universities outside ‘Norden’. Only in Canada has the study of Greenland been accorded independent status as the hitherto only example of the people of a socalled ‘fourth world’ country having established a nation-state with its own language, flag and other symbols. As a result of the home rule within the Danish commonwealth acquired in 1979, Greenland today has gained co-responsibility for her foreign and security policy. A testimony of this newly won sovereignty was the reception of the then American Secretary of State, Colin Powell, by the head of the Greenlandic foreign office, Józef Motzfeldt, in his tiny home town Igaliku in southern Greenland on 6 August 2004. The reason for Powell’s visit was the signing of an accord between Denmark, Greenland and the USA about the upgrading of the American radar in Thule. Denmark is officially responsible for Greenland’s foreign and security policy, and the Danish minister of foreign affairs, Per Stig Møller, was also present at the signing ceremony. Yet, Greenland was for the first time also present at such a meeting at international level as a demonstration of her growing independence. If this tendency towards sovereignty in international affairs continues, Greenland might gradually drift away from the Nordic political culture into the orbit of North America, where the huge island belongs geographically. If the designations are ambiguous, the historical sense of community between the countries is no less ambivalent. In reality, the major part of Nordic history is characterised by conflicts and attempts by one country to dominate the others, just as has been the case in the rest of Europe. For a brief period in the 19th century, the idea of a Scandinavian union of Sweden, Norway and Denmark as a potential great power able to challenge Russia and Germany thrived under the name of ‘Scandinavianism’. A testimony to this vision is materialised in a somewhat perverted form in a museum in central Stockholm, bearing the auspicious name ‘Nordiska museet’ (‘Nordic Museum’). In reality, it is little more than a Swedish local-heritage museum with a smattering of Swedish

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royalism and anti-Danish sentiment thrown in. In the entrance hall the visitor is confronted by an enormous and intimidating granite statue of Gustav Vasa,3 the call to ‘Be Swedish!’ (‘Warer Swenska!’) carved into its base. The intention of the museum was to strengthen the union between Sweden and Norway, but nothing less than ‘Nordiska’ would do, when it came to demonstrating Sweden’s hold over Norway. The same would probably have happened to Denmark had the Scandinavianists in the 1850s succeeded in their plans to place the Swedish king on the Danish throne. As it turned out, nothing came of the plan, the Danes eventually preferring a king of German descent. The structural weakness of Scandinavianism was that Denmark wanted Scandinavian help against what she perceived as a threat from a uniting German state to the south, whereas Sweden wanted help against expansionist Russia in the east. These two interests were impossible to reconcile. In fact, Germany has always been perceived as a friend and ally by Sweden, while Denmark has been in alliance with, or been protected by, Russia in most of the 400 years of relations between the two states. It is thus no big surprise that the fellow Scandinavians failed to bail Denmark out of the impasse she had manoeuvred herself into in 1864. Thus a process of building independent nation-states began, something that we today regard as inevitable and ‘natural’. As mentioned, the union between Sweden and Norway was dissolved relatively peacefully in 1905 and positive relations developed over time as witnessed in the centenary festivities in 2005, which were marked by massive scholarly publications among other things (Stråth 2005, Sejersted 2005). Yet, precisely this recent scholarship has brought to light that the peaceful dissolution of the union was a much closer run thing than we assume today. War between dissident Norway and Sweden was a distinct possibility and was only prevented by good sense and negotiations (Østergård 2005d). As a result of these more or less conscious choices, the ethnically homogeneous nation-state has become the exclusively dominating principle in Norden, even more so than in the rest of Europe. Furthermore, the breaking up of the former multinational, or conglomerate states, and the subsequent nation building has been so peaceful that it has persuaded Scandinavians (and many outsiders) that these countries are peaceful, egalitarian and uncorrupt havens in an otherwise inclined world. This peaceful image has been backed by a good record of international solidarity and help to the underdeveloped parts of the world. So persuasive has this interpretation been, that Scandinavians have tended to neglect many of the less peaceful and aggressive features of history that they share with the rest of Europe. Thus the Nordic peoples tend to over-emphasise what seems to set the Nordic countries apart from the rest of Europe, although they tend to leave out a few factors that make them really distinct, primarily the

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dominance of the Lutheran evangelical religion through state churches, which until recently led to a virtually mono-religious situation.

‘NORDEN’:A HISTORICAL REGION,4 A MENTAL CONSTRUCT OR A MODEL? Seen from a geographical and geopolitical point of view, the eastern majority of the Nordic countries undeniably belong to the Baltic area. Nevertheless, over the past 150 years, Denmark and Sweden in particular have tended to downplay the Baltic and the European components of their national identifications. Many Scandinavians, both social democrats and liberals, have perceived the ‘Nordic’ political culture, social structure and mentality as fundamentally different from that of the rest of Europe. An indication of this attitude is the use of the concept of ‘Norden’ instead of ‘Northern Europe’ when talking about these countries. ‘Norden’ is perceived as something not European, not Catholic, anti-Rome, anti-imperialist, non-colonial, non-exploitative, peaceful, small and socially democratic. In short, the Nordic peoples have perceived themselves as having no responsibility for Europe’s exploitation of the rest of the world. Moreover, they have spent a lot of energy on the international scene in an effort to make up for the wrongdoings of their fellow Europeans towards the Third and Fourth Worlds. Hence the activist role which has been played by these five states in the United Nations in collaboration with the Netherlands, Canada, the Republic of Ireland and a few others. Still today, for many Scandinavians, the secret to economic and political success in this remote and sparsely populated part of Europe lies in keeping their distance from all the neighbouring powers – Germany and Russia in particular. There is some truth in this lesson from history, if we look at the periods of great power confrontations, but the mentality also testifies to naïveté as to the real background of the amazing success story of the Nordic nation-states in the 20th century. It is often claimed that Nordic states share a collective mentality and political culture different from that of the rest of Europe. This claim ignores much of the history of warfare that the Nordic countries share with the rest of Europe, in particular their involvement in the bloody religious wars of the 16th and 17th centuries. It is true that Sweden withdrew from European power politics following the disastrous defeat in 1709 at Poltava (today in Ukraine), and gradually replaced its imperial ambitions with those of a smaller nationstate. Yet, the Swedish state still harboured revanchist ambitions against the rising Russia, which led to war in 1788–89. However, the resulting stalemate eventually led to total defeat in 1809 and loss of half of the Swedish state to

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Russia. Under Russian patronage this province, together with eastern Karelia, was re-organised as Finland. Equally true, the multinational Danish state – more correctly the House of Oldenburg, or ‘Kron zu Dennemarck’, as the composite state was called in Low German (plattdeutsch) until 1864 – was reduced to a medium sized power in 1814 with the loss of Norway. Yet, the multinational state of Denmark–SchleswigHolstein and Lauenburg was still a player in European power politics until 1863, albeit often in a rather amateurish way. This naïve amateurism eventually led to the catastrophe in 1864 and the reduction of Denmark to the very epitome of a small state (Nielsen 1987, Østergård 2005g). Even today, although Denmark undeniably is the ultimate small state, the state has still not completely relieved itself of the burdens of the former empire: that is, the Faroe Islands and Greenland. Denmark as a nation-state is at the same time Denmark the Commonwealth, representing three separate nations in the world community. The fortunate geopolitical situation of the Nordic countries in the 19th and 20th centuries was no achievement of their own. They simply had the good luck of being left more or less alone when, after the Napoleonic wars, the major conflicts between the great powers moved to other parts of Europe. Finland, though, experienced violence on a par with the rest of Europe through a bloody civil war (1917–18) and when it lost two wars against the Soviet Union (1939–40 and 1941–44). Yet, Finland succeeded in keeping her great neighbour at bay. After the period of a Soviet-leaning neutrality in the 1940s (a situation that gave rise to the very concept ‘finlandisation’), it was allowed to enter the Nordic family in 1955. In World War II, Norway and Denmark were occupied by Germany; Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands by Britain and the USA. This experience persuaded Denmark, Norway and Iceland to give up their neutrality and join the western alliance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in 1949. Nonetheless, the predictable character of world politics to a large degree explains also popular enthusiasm in Denmark for the neutral Nordic alternative to NATO in the years between 1945 and 1989. Sweden officially stayed neutral during the Cold War, but in reality her military was incorporated into NATO’s planning. Yet, the Swedish voters did not know it. Thus, they developed an emotional attachment to neutrality, which they still today perceive as the reason behind the success of the Swedish welfare state and the high international standing of their country in the period between the end of World War II and the late 1970s. To what degree membership of the western alliance affected the basic neutrality of the political culture is still very much debated. This debate is particular lively in Denmark, where a series of competing official and unofficial investigations of Danish attitudes during the Cold War have been published in

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recent years.5 A final verdict is still premature, but it seems fair to conclude that the basic attitudes in neutral Sweden and NATO–Denmark have been surprisingly similar until the end of the Cold War, when the two countries parted ways, primarily with Denmark’s military involvement in the international interventions in the Gulf War (1991), in Kosovo (1999), in Afghanistan (2002) and in Iraq (2003 onwards) (Østergård 2005c). Not even the Soviet hegemony in the eastern Baltic from 1945 brought back the Nordic countries to the centre of international political confrontations. Because of their fortunate geographical position, the overwhelming majority of Scandinavians were able to live through the Cold War without really noticing that they were involved in a major conflict. Consequently, they have not yet realised that they were on the winning side. If noticed at all, the new confusing state of affairs since 1989 is often deplored. Many almost long for the bad, but predictable, old days of Cold War confrontations (cf. Østergård 1995). Finland of course, having been affected by the major European conflicts almost to the same degree as the small Baltic countries south of the Finnish Gulf, reacted differently and decided to go all the way towards Europe as soon as possible. She joined the EU in 1995 with Sweden; but unlike Sweden, Finland adopted the euro in 2000 and thus became a core member of the EU. Finland, thus, has adopted a different attitude to that of Denmark and Sweden, which have been reluctant to hand over sovereignty, and to that of Norway and Iceland which stayed out of the EU. These apparently exclusively political choices have also been influenced by geopolitical reasons. Norway and Iceland have decided to opt out of European cooperation because of their orientation towards the North Atlantic Ocean, as have the Faroe Islands and Greenland. These latter states share foreign policy with Denmark as members of the Danish Commonwealth (in Danish, Rigsfællesskab), but have used their home rule status to stay outside the EU; Greenland, actually having become a part of Denmark in 1973, decided to leave in 1982 after a referendum. The peripheral position of these North Atlantic Nordic communities allowed them to develop their own separate identities within the Danish realm. Today, they operate as virtual nation-states almost on a par with the successful sovereign states of Norway and Iceland, owing to the relative lack of interest by the great powers in the North Atlantic area. Because of their insular mentality when it comes to the understanding of their belonging to Northern Europe, most Swedes and Danes, contrary to the Finlanders, have tended to ignore the Baltic character and determinants of their common history. This blindness has also characterised most historians with a few notable exceptions. ‘Norden’ still has to find its Fernand Braudel: that is, a historian who is able to depict the longue durée of this European region. Maybe

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it will turn out an impossible task because of the geographical differences among the Nordic countries and the languages needed to investigate the many states involved. Furthermore, the Nordic states as part of the break up of the conglomerate states have divided between themselves the archives kept in the capitals of Copenhagen and Stockholm. Denmark already in the 1920s divided her archival holdings with the then recently independent Norway. Later on the same was done with Iceland. In the 1960s and later on the world-famous medieval manuscripts were returned to Reykjavik. These well-intended gestures among equal nations have made it virtually impossible to study the politics of the multinational states from the point of view of the decision makers of the day, as at least some historians today would like to do (Østergård 1992b, 2002c, Jensen & Bregnsbo 2004). To a degree, the dispersal of the archives explains the lack of truly historical analyses from a non-nationalist point of view, which tends to characterise Nordic historical writing (Engman 1991, Østergård 1992b). Unfortunately, this even holds true for the recently published prestigious first volume of the Cambridge History of Scandinavia, edited by the Norwegian historian Knut Helle (Helle 2003). Yet, in fact, the Baltic area can be seen as a functional equivalent to the Mediterranean (Østergård 2005e). The Baltic area may be only a part of Scandinavia or Norden, but it is a very substantial part. A truly comparative history of the region should, for example, analyse the common characteristics of the two border areas, Schleswig and Karelia (as it has now been done by various authors in Imsen (2005)). The two regions share a similar historical experience in the sense that both provinces for long periods have been attached to neighbouring states. The British historian David Kirby has attempted to write what no Nordic historian has ever been able to do: an integrated political and social history of Northern Europe organised around the question of dominance over the Baltic Sea (in Latin Dominium Maris Baltici) from 1500 until the present day (Kirby 1990, 1995). Because of his Baltic perspective, the Atlantic half of ‘Norden’, Norway, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Greenland has been omitted. This choice runs counter to the popular ideology of a common Nordic identity but makes a lot of geopolitical sense. On the other hand, Kirby does analyse the interplay of Sweden, Finland and Denmark with Poland, Russia, Prussia and the Baltic states from 1500 until the end of the Cold War. Modestly, Kirby in the preface claims that he is no Braudel and primarily has written a general introduction to the history and controversies of the Baltic region. In fact, he has given us much more. At times he comes close to a Braudel, only with more interest than the French master in international politics and dynastic politics, all consequently set against a background of solid social and economic history. There may not be a lot of ‘longue durée’ in Kirby’s analysis, but he offers an

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extremely interesting description of the interplay of the many different national histories of which he masters the languages (Finnish, Swedish, Danish, German, Russian and Polish).

ONE NORDIC POLITICAL CULTURE OR SEVERAL NATIONAL POLITICAL CULTURES? ‘Norden’ as a region today consists of independent nation-states with their own quite different histories and separate political traditions. Yet, they also share a long range of cultural traits from the Lutheran version of Christianity to economic flexibility, absence of corruption and a high degree of social equality. Entries in Scandinavian encyclopaedias consistently represent Nordic identity with the following national stereotypes: Norway ‘as Norwegian and only Norwegian’, Denmark as ‘Danish in Europe’, Iceland as the ‘island of the learned’, Sweden as ‘Nordic in Europe, with a capacity for self-criticism and tolerance towards immigrants’, and Finland as ‘hard-working advocate of human rights, equality, international understanding and peace’ (Tønneson 1993, p. 367). The Faroe Islands and Greenland, too, have gradually won the right to be recognised as independent national variations of Nordic political culture. Only the Sami identity is represented as ethnic, though this will in all likelihood hold only until the Sami are recognised as an independent nationality with their own seat in the Nordic Council. The nation-states of today are the configurations through which the common Nordic identity manifests itself. As these nations have achieved the recognition of the surrounding world, so too have they come to appear as ‘natural’ entities, even though Danes and Swedes may have had difficulties in appreciating this because of their age old struggle for supremacy in Northern Europe. Both Denmark and Sweden have a long, unbroken history, though strictly speaking not as homogeneous nation-states, but rather as composite states, or small empires, which have exercised various kinds of hegemony over their neighbours inside and outside Norden. Denmark and Sweden thus belong to the traditions of territorial state-nations basically on a par with France, Britain, Spain, Poland, Hungary and Portugal. Although, of course, they are smaller, Norway and Iceland belong to the family of integral national movements, which in the 19th century resurrected their medieval nations to independent status as did the catholic Irish and the Czechs. And Finland, as we have already seen, did not even have a medieval past to refer back to (Østergård 2002c, 2004b). Viewed from a long historical perspective, the Nordic countries differ much less from the European countries, contrary to what Nordic ideology and the

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discourse of a Scandinavian model would have us believe. There is, however, one major difference: the Nordic countries are Lutheran.6 They did not become so immediately after the Reformation in the 1530s. The pietist revivalist movements, later to become political and economic in nature, began to gain ground among the ordinary peasants and fishermen in all the Nordic countries at some time in the 18th century (Wåhlin 1987). It is reasonable to assume that the mental and organisational background to the Nordic welfare state is to be found in the traditions and institutions of the national churches in these overwhelmingly homogenous Lutheran states. In other polities such as Germany and the USA, Lutheran communities form a constituent part. In other cases, Lutherans have been subjects to rulers of a different religion as was the case in Estonia, Latvia and Siebenbürgen in Transsylvania. The links between Lutheran religious traditions, and institutions and in particular with the rise of the universal welfare state and the political culture in general, have not yet been systematically studied. However, from a perspective of the history of mentalities the importance of these links seems a plausible hypothesis (Østergård 2003a). Should the hypothesis be correct, the consequence would be that the political culture in Nordic societies is the product of secularised Lutheranism rather than democratised socialism. As already mentioned, the dominating tradition in comparative welfare state studies is to describe the welfare state in the Nordic countries as a result of particular Nordic features, the so-called ‘Nordic’ or ‘Social Democratic’ model. Until the breakdown of the Communist block, the model of the ‘Nordic’ welfare state was perceived to represent a third way between the two dominant superpowers and their attendant ideologies (cf. Stråth (1992, 1993) for a critical account of the notions of the Swedish ‘folkhem’ and of a distinct Nordic model). Interest in the ‘Nordic model’ is no longer strong among comparative political scientists and historical sociologists, who now concentrate on describing the specific national varieties of capitalism (cf. the forthcoming publication on the specific institutional features of the Danish version of capitalism by Campbell et al. 2006). Indeed, one may doubt whether a ‘Nordic model’ in the proper sense has ever existed. Scandinavians have never seen themselves as representatives of one consistent and distinctive social model (Christofferson & Hastrup 1983, p. 3); national differences always have been considered more important. The notion of ‘Norden’ as a conscious Social Democratic alternative to the continental European class struggles between bourgeoisie, workers and peasants first emerged outside Scandinavia with the publication of the American journalist Marquis Childs’ classic work in 1936, bearing the telling title Sweden: The Middle Way. The trend culminated in the 1980s with Gösta Esping-Andersen’s analyses of the Nordic welfare states as different variations of a parallel Social

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Democratic strategy (1985). He distinguished between three versions of ‘welfare capitalism’: the social democratic, the liberal and the conservative (EspingAndersen 1990). The social democratic character of the Nordic welfare state has come under criticism from an American comparative historian of the younger school (Baldwin 1990), whereas others, as already mentioned, attempt to trace the origins of the Nordic universal welfare state back to the Lutheran version of Protestantism which was introduced by revolutions from above in Denmark and Sweden in the 1530s (Østergård 2003a, Knudsen 2003). Despite the dubious character of the notion of a specifically Nordic model, it is an indisputable fact that the Nordic countries have experienced a more harmonious process of modernisation in the 20th century than most other countries in Europe. Thanks to the compromises of the 1930s, Norway, Sweden and Denmark proved largely immune to the temptations of the totalitarian ideologies of Nazism, fascism and communism (Lindström 1985). In many ways the Nordic countries still provide shining examples of democracy and social order: exemplary not only for the insiders but also for surprising numbers elsewhere in the world, and with good reason. The Nordic countries, irrespective of the existence of a Nordic model, function more smoothly than most societies. The problem, however, is that a majority in the Nordic countries has embraced the notion to such an extent that they believe in the mythical notion of Nordic unity as a contrast to the rest of Europe. Nordic history and culture, however, represent but one variation of common European patterns and themes, a variation that, owing to geopolitical conditions, has resulted in small, nationally homogenous, socially democratic, Lutheran states. But this is a variation, nevertheless, on common European themes.7

THE FAILURE OF NORDIC UNITY: FROM SCANDINAVIANISM TO NORDIC COUNCIL The political idea of a common Nordic ‘Scandinavia’ first emerged in quixotic student and literary circles in the 1830s, providing occasion for the emptying of a by no means modest number of punch-bowls and the singing of innumerable songs, some of which are even remembered to this day. It was at one such gathering in 1842 that the poet–politician Carl Ploug (1813–94) dashed off the words of the unofficial national anthem of Scandinavia, ‘Længe var Nordens herlige stamme’ (‘Long was Norden’s magnificent stem’), containing such memorable turns of phrase as the following: ‘Long was Norden’s magnificent stem divided in three languishing shoots; the might once able to master the world did pork from foreigners’ tables chew. Once more the divided now

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intertwines, in time to come to be as one. Then shall the free and mighty North lead to victory its peoples’ cause!’ (Holmberg 1984, p. 178). The manifestos indicate that the Pan-Scandinavian movement was a counterpart to the contemporaneous Italian and German national movements, the only difference being that Scandinavianism did not succeed in aligning itself with a militarily strong state as was the case in Italy and Germany (with Piedmont and Prussia respectively). There were no interests ‘from above’, or national unity ‘from below’. Patriotic Danish elements hoped, of course, that Sweden could and would play the role of Piedmont, in their attempt to separate Schleswig from Holstein, with whom Sweden for centuries had made common cause both economically, politically and, to a certain extent, culturally (Østergård (2005b) on the so-called Gottorp state in Schleswig and Holstein). The fact that Sweden had its hands full in Norway and that it saw Russia as its primary foe was overlooked. The unions that took place in Germany and Italy were not to be repeated in Northern Europe for geopolitical reasons, despite a short-lived interest in the idea on the part of Bernadotte’s successor on the Swedish throne, Oscar I, who ruled from 1844 to 1859 (Holmberg 1946). Swayed by the liberal ideas and calls for revenge over Russia by Scandinavianist student circles, Oscar I was to abandon his father Karl XIV Johan’s conciliatory approach towards the great powers. In 1845, at a student’s gathering in Lund, he recited his poem ‘Finland!’ with calls for the recapture of the country that had been lost. When, in the spring of 1848, German-oriented Schleswig-Holsteinian nationalists rebelled against the National Liberals’ declaration of the complete union of the two duchies with Denmark, Oscar obtained the support of the Swedish Riksdag to send 15,000 troops to the aid of the sister country; 4,000 reached the Danish island of Fyn, the rest were to remain in Skaane. However, when hostilities recommenced in 1849, Oscar was less inclined to become actively involved, although a Swedish army consisting of 4,000 men did occupy North Schleswig, during the peace negotiations, as keepers of the ceasefire. Oscar’s dream was to succeed the weak Frederik VII as king in Denmark and proposed a defensive alliance with Denmark in spring 1857. Frederik VII, however, declined the offer, sensing perhaps what was afoot. When Denmark later the same year suggested resuming negotiations, it was too late. Oscar had died and his successor, Karl XV (1826–72) pursued a more cautious foreign policy than that of his father (see Linton 1994, pp. 83–84). Denmark was thus forced to stand alone against Prussia and Austria when foolhardy politicians, reneging on international agreements, annexed Schleswig in 1863. The resultant debacle was to mark the end of political Pan-Scandinavianism, a fact that was

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clearly recognised by the Danish historian Carl Ferdinand Allen (1811–71), when in 1864 he published the first volume of his work De tre nordiske Rigers Historie 1497–1536 (‘History of the three Northern kingdoms 1497–1536’). In the introduction he wrote, somewhat disillusioned: The reasons for a unified treatment of the history of Norden are, as stated, to be found in the very nature of the said history and the natural bonds that exist between the countries and their peoples. The effects thereof, and their influence upon the individual, may be supported by what are called Scandinavian sympathies. Such support is unnecessary; the historical interest alone will suffice. Indeed, it is fortunate that this is so, for after the bitter experience of our time it would seem that, as the evil spirit of discord in days of old, so in the present the frigid egoism and the narrow-hearted, myopic and heinous spirit of calculation shall prove the curse of the ‘Scandinavian idea’ and quell her with its might when she means to rise. Allen 1864, II–III

But why had the unification of the Nordic countries not occurred already in the Middle Ages, or in the early modern period, as was the case in Spain, Britain and France? Actually, this is a question that for long has puzzled Danish historians, even if they until recently were too well-bred in pacifism even to raise the issue. As the poet Hans Christian Andersen wrote in 1850, Denmark, after all, was ‘once master of all of Norden and ruled over England’. One can only retort that the spirit, certainly, was more than willing. Yet, because of a narrow perspective, very few scholars have analysed why the Kalmar Union of 1397 failed when similar unions between Poland and Lithuania in 1386, between Castilia and Aragon in 1492 and a little later in the British Isles, succeeded. The United Kingdom began as a personal union between England (including Wales and Scotland in 1604) and later developed into parliamentary union in 1707, which also included Ireland in 1800. It would thus seem relevant to compare developments in the Nordic countries with Spanish, British, Polish and French history (Kearney 1991). The Danish monarchy tried for long to achieve mastery of the entire Baltic region: ‘Dominium maris Baltici’, as the slogan ran. To win a position for themselves in Europe and compensate for their small populations, the relatively poor states of Denmark, Norway and Sweden in the early modern period established, each in its own way, state apparatuses ‘heavier’ and more expensive than was the European norm (Anderson 1974, pp. 173–191). The degree of centralisation and the extent of taxation is still evident in the magnificence of the monumental buildings in the two capitals, Copenhagen and Stockholm. This taxation was later depicted as ‘national oppression’ by self-professed ‘anti-colonialist’ Norwegian, Finnish, Icelandic and Faroese historians. This,

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however, was not the case. In reality, if there was a difference, Danish and Swedish peasants of the core lands were taxed heavier than Norwegians, Icelanders, Faroese and Greenlanders. This was not the result of benevolence but of the weakness of the central state, which could not exercise full influence in the remoter parts of the vast end thinly populated empire. Denmark was long the most populous of the three monarchies, and its efforts to achieve sole supremacy only failed because the Danish nobility before its defeat in 1660 refused to accept a strong monarchy. On the other hand, the transnational nobility with landed estates in all the countries failed in its attempts to establish an aristocratic republic under elected kings, as happened at the same time in Poland–Lithuania. As a result of the power struggle between aristocracy and monarchy in Denmark, Sweden took the lead and established a hegemony over most of Northern Europe between 1645 and 1709. The main reason Denmark survived as a state between 1658 and 1660 was the intervention of the great power of the day. The Dutch came to the aid of Denmark in 1659, just as Britain and Russia later were to support Denmark for fear of facing a single power at the entrance to the Baltic through Øresund.

FROM SCANDINAVIANISM TO THE NORDIC COUNCIL The Pan-Scandinavian movement underwent a complete transformation in the 1860s. Sweden and Norway kept a low profile towards both the united Germany and the recently consolidated Russian Empire after the humiliations of the Crimean War of 1854–56. The high-political vision of political PanScandinavianism was superseded by cultural collaboration at the level of civil society. Interestingly, this activity was largely borne by the same Scandinavianist students, who now as graduates were able to collaborate by virtue of the positions they held as public servants, teachers and artists. Scientists, lawyers, engineers, educationalists, painters and writers were all able to maintain connections at Nordic meetings and through Scandinavian journals. These networks functioned more efficiently and were far more effective than the former Romantic political visions, precisely because of the limited, realistic goals they now set. On the whole, Scandinavian collaboration was able to thrive without the help of public subsidy or encouragement. This was true of the artists’ colony at Skagen, as well as of the modern literary breakthrough led by the brothers Georg and Edvard Brandes, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, etc. Despite the innumerable toasts in celebration of the ‘true’ Nordic folk, whose instincts these artists naïvely claimed to understand, there

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was a big gap between the sophisticated, urbane avant-garde and the hard working ‘primitive’ fishing communities the artists portrayed. The motifs chosen by the so-called ‘Skagen painters’ of the late 19th century bear witness to that. What really happened was a cultural and economic ‘colonisation’ of Jutland in order to compensate for the loss of Schleswig-Holstein in 1864, a process that at the time was presented under the more positive slogan ‘Outward losses must be made up for by inward gains’ (‘Hvad udad tabtes skal indad vindes’ (see Frandsen 1996)). Cultural modernism merged with political thought and became, under the name of ‘cultural radicalism’, an independent Nordic ideological phenomenon that was to pave the way for a quite particular development at a social level in the 20th century (Löfgren 1991, Nilsson 1994). The many artistic bonds paved the way for a flourishing cultural journalism in a rapidly expanding press and led to the establishment of a Nordic literary market. Alongside these purely cultural Nordic circles flourished more unassuming, popular movements. The Danish folk high school movement, established by Grundtvig, quickly spread to the other Nordic countries through high school gatherings in Norway and Sweden. Similarly, regular educational conferences were held by teachers at the Nordic level from the mid-1870s (Backholm 1994). Interesting, too, in this connection, are the efforts, fruitless though they proved, of Nordic philologists to establish a common written language as early as in the 1860s. Outside of this cultural core area an active policy of cooperation at the economic level, which lead to the adoption of a common monetary union on 18 December 1872, can also be registered. Parallel to this collaboration were the Nordic conferences of the legal profession, which among other things resulted in the elaboration of joint stock company legislation which helped establish a larger home market for the emerging Scandinavian industries. The most spectacular result of the cooperation, however, was the series of Nordic industrial, agricultural and art exhibitions that were held, first in Copenhagen in 1872 and 1888, and later in Stockholm in 1893 and Malmö in 1914 (Hvidt 1994). During and after World War I, cooperation was extended to include a variety of areas, gradually taking on the character of a popular movement. The series of meetings between the three Nordic kings before 1914 received much popular attention at the time. Although these were not to have any long-term effects, the opposite was true of the personal connections that were established as a consequence of the collaboration between parliamentarians within the union of Nordic parliamentarians. Operating from 1907 until 1955, the union prepared the way for the Nordic Council, which was set up in 1952 and crowned by the admission of Finland in 1955 (Larsen 1984). At the same time, close political ties were established between the labour movements and Social Democratic

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parties in the Nordic countries. Cooperation among the socialist movements was helped much by the fact that they all were deeply influenced by the socialists in Germany. Many of the influential Nordic Social Democrats received their fundamental training at workers’ high schools in Germany, and German was their first and usually only foreign language. An Association for Nordic Unity (‘Foreningerne Norden’) was set up in 1919, and soon grew in membership to become the largest cross-national popular organisation in the Nordic countries in the 1930s because of the totalitarian regimes in Germany and the Soviet Union. It is important to understand that Nordic cooperation is a consequence of the nation-states rather than an alternative to them. The Association for Nordic Unity was established in 1919: that is, after Norway had gained its independence in 1905, Finland her independence in 1917 and Iceland hers in 1918. Thus, respect for the inviolable national sovereignty was the basis for cooperation across the national boundaries at popular level as well as at state level. Hence the particular character of Nordic cooperation. It is successful at grassroots level precisely because it abstains from interfering in the high politics of economics, security matters and external affairs, but concentrates on matters of civil society. This even holds true for the Nordic Council which, as the former Norwegian Minister for Nordic Cooperation, Bjarne Mörk Eidem, rather pointedly once put it, is almost to be understood as an ‘executive organ’ of the Association for Nordic Unity. This characterisation, however, also provides us with a definition of what the Nordic Council is not. It is not a government, but a supplement to the national parliaments, providing advice and posing critical – and thereby often annoying – questions across national boundaries to the governments and bureaucracies. The fact that parliamentarians of one country here are able to pose questions to the ministers of another is quite unique in international affairs. At the same time, the cross-national nature of the activity explains why Nordic unity can never become supranational, or be legally formalised in the way we know it in the EU. Sadly, this unique character of Nordic cooperation has gradually been eroded, following the creation of the Nordic Council of Ministers in 1971. The Council of Ministers is a far more traditional form of state cooperation between governments and bureaucracies. Two cooperative organisations have now fused into one, in deference to an ‘effectivisation’ that is better achieved within the stronger European community, anyway. Thus, many of the unique features of Nordic cooperation, which have been rooted in the particular combination of grass-root cooperation based on respect for the sovereignty of the nation-states, have disappeared over recent decades.

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CONCLUSION The nation-states of today, then, are the configurations through which the common Nordic identity manifests itself. As these nations have achieved the recognition of the surrounding world, they are seen as ‘natural’ entities. This has not always been the case, although Danes and Swedes have difficulty appreciating this reality (see Stein Tønnesen’s impressions from a Nordic conference on national identity held on the Faroe Islands (Tønnesen 1989)). These two nationalities today administer the legacy of two multinational empires, which for centuries contended for supremacy in Northern Europe. Or rather, the two states do not administer this legacy, but act, on the strength of their long, unbroken history, as though they nevertheless possess a natural right to their independent existence. This is to a much lesser extent true of the other Nordic countries, which for periods have been subject to Swedish and Danish rule respectively. This explains the insecurity that until recently made Norwegians, Finlanders and Icelanders assertively emphasise their national character, to the mild astonishment of the Danes and Swedes who thought that they were confronted with something resembling aggressive nationalism. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, it is so long ago that one nation ruled another, that most Scandinavians freely converse on an equal footing – possibly with the exception of the Faroese and the Greenlanders in their dealings with the Danes. If anything, though, this makes it even more important to remember the difficult, and far from inevitable, genesis of the Nordic states. The active entities are states and nations, not a diffuse Nordic identity. Regardless of the widespread opposition to the supranational cooperation in the EU, the political cultures of these states ought to be compatible with an EU where national identity in reality has been strengthened as a result of exercising sovereignty in common (Østergård 2004d, 2005f). The Nordic countries of today all share a Lutheran monarchical heritage, even if Finland and Iceland formally are republics. This common heritage is demonstrated by the Christian cross in eight of the nine national flags of the Nordic countries. The peripheral position of the countries with regard to Europe made it possible to build on democratic potentials, something that less fortunate smaller nations such as the Czechs could not do (Hroch 1996). But this fortunate history owes much less to homespun ‘Nordic’ merits than normally assumed. The primary reason lies in the optimal geographical situation of the Nordic countries with regard to foreign policy as well as in relation to both economy and communications. The Nordic countries were in various ways useful as suppliers of raw materials to the industrial centres. Moreover, they have been able to profit owing to a favourable relationship between low

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transportation costs and high manufacturing costs in the world economy. It was this stroke of cyclical good fortune that rendered the welfare states possible, despite unfavourable climatic conditions. The Nordic countries, then, happened to be in the right place at the right time. To the extent that this is no longer the case, it will become increasingly difficult to live on the Nordic myths and copious outpourings of yesteryear. Much would seem to indicate that the Baltic is about to regain its former position as the economic and civilising pivot of Northern Europe as a region in a united Europe. To the extent that this occurs, it will prove difficult to bridge the gap between the Atlantic, sea-facing Norden on the one hand and the land-based, Baltic Norden on the other. The Norwegian ethnologist Brit Berggren once stressed this important constant in the mental geography of the Nordic peoples in a contribution to a collection of essays on Nordic identity (Berggren 1992). The historical lesson is that there are no objective laws binding the people of Norden. No common, manifest destiny. But there is a historical and cultural raw material of traditions and discourses on which such an identity may be built. Providing, of course, that this is what the Nordic peoples want. No grand economic or geopolitical laws are at work, which opens the room for active political and cultural choices. In a cooperating Europe, it is important to maintain the strengths embodied in the civil society of the Nordic societies. Such respect for national differences and sovereignty is the basis of Nordic political culture, though it does not amount to much more then an ideal and a discourse. Respect for these specific traditions might even help bridge the gap between elites and voters in the rest of the EU, running the risk to dilute the ‘Nordic’ principles to what they have probably been all along, namely variations of general European principles.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Allen, C.F., De tre nordiske Rigers Historie 1497–1536, I–V, Kbh. (1864–72). Anderson, Perry, Lineages of the Absolutist State (London, NLB, 1974). Backholm, Johan (1994), ‘När lärerna blev nordister – om skandinavism och nordism på de första nordiska skolmöterna’, Nordisk Tidskrift, vol. 1, 17–27. Bagge, Sverre & Knut Mykland (1987), Norge i dansketiden (Copenhagen, Politikens Forlag, 1987). Baldwin, Peter, The Politics of Social Solidarity. Class Bases of the European Welfare State 1875–1975 (Cambridge University Press, 1990). Berggren, Brit, ‘Det baltiske og det atlantiske Norden’, in Hastrup (ed.), Den nordiske verden, vol. 2, pp. 11–18, 1992.

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Campbell, John, John Hall & Ove K. Pedersen (eds), The State of Denmark (Quebec, McGill University Press, 2006). Childs, Marquis, Sweden: The Middle Way (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1936). Christoffersen, H. & B. Hastrup, ‘Grundtræk i den skandinaviske model’, Økonomi og politik, vol. 57, 3–23, 1983. Engman, Max, ‘Historikerna och nationalstaten’, Historien og historikerne i Norden efter 1965, Studier i historisk metode 21, Århus Universitetsforlag, 1991. Engman, Max, ‘Finns and Swedes in Finland’, in Tägil, pp. 179–216, 1995a. Engman, Max, ‘Karelians between East and West’, in Tägil, pp. 217–237, 1995b. Engman, Max, Petersburgska Väger (Helsingfors, Schildts, 1995c). Esping-Andersen, Gösta, Politics against Market. The Social Democratic Road to Power (Princeton University Press, 1985). Esping-Andersen, Gösta, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Princeton University Press, 1990). Fabricius, Knud, Skaanes Overgang fra Danmark til Sverige I–IV (Copenhagen, 1906–58). Frandsen, Steen Bo, ‘Jylland og Danmark – kolonisering, opdagelse eller ligeberettiget sameksistens?’, in U. Østergård (ed.), Dansk identitet?, pp. 103–129 (Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 1992). Frandsen, Steen Bo, Opdagelsen af Jylland. Den regionale dimension i danmarkshistorien 1814–64 (Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 1996). Helle, Knut (ed.), The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, vol. I (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Henningsen, Bernd u. a. (ed.), Wahlverwandschaf t. Skandinavien und Deutschland 1800–1914 (Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum, 2000). Holmberg, Åke, Skandinavismen i Sverige vid 1800-talets mitt (1843–1863) (Göteborg, 1946). Holmberg, Åke (1984), ‘On the practicability of Scandinavianism: mid-nineteenth-century debate and aspirations’, Scandinavian Journal of History, vol. 9. no, 3, pp. 171–182. Horne, Donald, The Great Museum. The Re-presentation of History (London, Pluto Press, 1984). Hroch, Miroslav, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe. A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among Smaller European Nations (Cambridge University Press, 1985). Hroch, Miroslav, ‘Specific features of the nation-forming process in the circumstances of the “Small Nation” ’, in Sørensen, pp. 7–28, 1996. Hvidt, Kristian, ‘Skandinavisk samarbejde’, Nordisk Tidskrift, 1994. Imsen, Steinar, ‘Grenseland i vest – mellom Skotland og Norge’, in Imsen 2005a, pp. 142–162. Imsen, Steinar (ed.), Grenser og grannelag I Nordens historie (Oslo, Cappelen, 2005a). Jensen, Kurt Villads & Michael Bregnsbo, Det Danske Imperium – storhed og fald (Copenhagen: Aschehougs forlag 2004, 2005).

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Jutikkala, Eino & Kauko Pirinen, Finlands historia (Stockholm, Natur och Kultur, 1968). Kearney, Hugh, ‘Nation building – British style’, Culture & History, 9–10, 43–54, 1991. Kirby, David, Northern Europe in the Early Modern Period. The Baltic World 1492–1772 (London, Longman, 1990). Kirby, David, Northern Europe 1772–1993. Europe’s Northern Periphery in an Age of Change (London, Longman, 1995). Klinge, Matti, Runebergs två fosterland (Borgå, 1983). Klinge, Matti, Let Us Be Finns (Helsinki, Otava Publ., 1991). Klinge, Matti, The Finnish Tradition (Helsinki, Otava Publ., 1993). Klinge, Matti, The Baltic World (Helsinki, Otava Publ., 1994). Knudsen, Tim, ‘De nordiske statskirker og velfærdsstaten’, Klaus Petersen (ed.), 13 historier om den danske velfærdsstat (Odense, Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2003), pp. 37–46. Larsen, Knud, ‘Scandinavian grass roots: from peace movement to Nordic Council’, Scandinavian Journal of History, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 183–200, 1984. Lind, John, Mellem ‘venska’ og ‘vinska’. Finsk fra almuesprog til statsbærende kultursprog (Copenhagen, Finsk afdeling Copenhagen Universitet, 1989). Lindström, Ulf, Fascism in Scandinavia 1920–1940 (Stockholm, Almquist & Wicksell, 1985). Linton, Michael, Sveriges historie (Århus Universitetsforlag, 1994). Löfgren, Orvar, ‘Kring nationalkänslans kulturella organisation’, Nordnytt, vol. 25, pp. 73–85, 1985. Löfgren, Orvar, ‘Att Nationalisera moderniteten’, in A. Linde-Laursen & J. O. Nilsson (eds), Nationellla identiteter i Norden – ett fullbördat projekt? (Stockholm, Nordiska Rådet, 1991). Lund, Allan A., De etnografisk kilder til Nordens tidlige historie (Aarhus, Aarhus University Press, 1993). Nielsen, Johannes, 1864 – Da Europa gik af lave (Odense, Odense Universitetsforlag, 1987). Nilsson, Jan Olof, Alva Myrdal – en virvel i den moderna strömmen (Stockholm, Symposion, 1994). Østergård, Uffe (ed.), ‘Britain: Nation, State, and Decline’, Culture & History, 9–10, (Copenhagen: Academic Press, 1991). Østergård, Uffe, ‘Peasants and Danes’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, vol. 5–31, 1992a. Østergård, Uffe, ‘Danmarkshistorie mellem statshistorie og nationshistorie’, Historie, pp. 265–289, 1992b. Østergård, Uffe (ed.), Dansk identitet? (Århus Universitetsforlag, 1992c). Østergård, Uffe, Europas ansigter. Nationale stater og politiske kulturer i en ny, gammel verden (Copenhagen, Rosinante 1992/2001, 1992d). Østergård, Uffe, ‘Norden – europæisk eller nordisk?’ De nordiske fællesskaber. Myte og realitet i det nordiske samarbejde, Den Jyske Historiker 69–70, 7–38, 1994a.

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Østergård, Uffe, ‘Nation-Building Danish Style’, in Øystein Sørensen (ed.), Nordic Paths to National Identity in the Nineteenth Century, serie Nasjonal identitet no. 1/94 Oslo: The Research Council of Norway, pp. 37–54, 1994b. Østergard, Uffe, ‘Norden, det tyska och det moderna’, in A. Björnsson & P. Luthersson (eds), Vändpunkter. Europa och dess omvärld efter 1989, pp. 179–211 (Stockholm, Svenska Dagbladet, 1995). Østergård, Uffe, ‘The Nordic countries in the Baltic Region’, in P. Joenniemi (ed.), NeoNationalism or Regionality. The Restructuring of Political Space around the Baltic Rim, pp. 26–54 (Stockholm, Nord Refo, 5, 1997a). Østergård, Uffe, ‘The geopolitics of “Norden” – states, nations and regions’, in Stråth & Sørensen, pp. 25–71, 1997b. Østergård, Uffe, Europa. Identitet og identitetspolitik (Copenhagen: Rosinante 1998/2000, 1998). Østergård, Uffe, ‘European identity and the politics of identity’, in Peter Burgess and Ola Tunander (eds), European Security Identities. Contested Understandings of EU and NATO, pp. 7–28 (Oslo, PRIO Report 2, 2000a). Østergård, Uffe, ‘Danish national identity: between multi-national heritage and small state nationalism’, in H. Branner and M. Kelstrup (eds), Denmark’s Policy Towards Europe After 1945, pp. 139–184 (Odense, University Press of Southern Denmark, 2000b). Østergård, Uffe, ‘Skandinavien und Deutschland – Vergleiche und Unterschiede’, in Bernd Henningsen u. a. (ed.), Wahlverwandschaf t. Skandinavien und Deutschland 1800–1914 (Berlin, Deutsches Historisches Museum, 2000c). Østergård, Uffe, ‘Nordic identity between “Norden” and Europe’, in Luis Beltrán, Javier Maestro & Liisa Salo-Lee (eds), European Peripheries in Interaction. The Nordic Countries and the Iberian Peninsula, pp. 151–202 (papers from an International Seminar 23–25 November 2000, University of Alcalá) (Universidad de Alcalá, Servicio de Publicaciones, 2002a). Østergård, Uffe, ‘Stato e società civile in Danimarca: il paradosso danese’, in Carlotta Sorba (ed.), Cittadinanza. Individui, diritti sociali, collettività nella storia contemporanea, pp. 70–115, atti del convegno annuale SISSCO, Padova, 2–3 December 1999 (Rome, Pubblicazioni degli Archivi di Stato, vol. 101, 2002b). Østergård, Uffe, ‘The state of Denmark – territory and nation’, Comparare European History Review, vol. 2, pp. 200–220, 2002c. Østergård, Uffe, ‘Lutheranismen, danskheden og velfærdsstaten’, Klaus Petersen (ed.), 13 historier om den danske velfærdsstat, Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, pp. 27–36, 2003a. Østergård, Uffe, ‘For konge og fædreland. Universiteterne i den multinationale dansk–norsk–slesvigsk–holstenske Helstat’, Rubicon, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 17–41, 2003b. Østergård, Uffe, ‘Myter om den danske stat’, Kvan, vol. 67, pp. 42–61, 2003c. Østergård, Uffe, ‘Nationellt självbestämmande?’, in H. Arvidson & H.-Å. Persson (eds), Europeiska brytpunkt, pp. 23–68 (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2003d).

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Østergård, Uffe, ‘Europa i Norden’, Nytt Norsk Tidsskrift, vol. 21, no. 3–4, pp. 382–98, 2004a. Østergård, Uffe, ‘The Danish path to modernity’, Thesis Eleven 77, May, pp. 25–43, 2004b. Østergård, Uffe, ‘La Danimarca e l’Europa. Una relazione difficile’, Nord ed Europa. Identità Scandinava e Rapporti Culturali con il Continente nel Corso dei Secoli, Atti del convegno internazional di Studi, Genova, 15–17 September 2003, Quaderni del Dipartimento di Lingue e Letterature Straniere Moderne, 13, a cura di Gianna Chiesa Isnardi e Paolo Morelli, Genova: Casa Editrice Tilgher-Genova, pp. 281–312, 2004c. Østergård, Uffe, ‘Europe’s saints: the official construction of a history of the European Union’, in J. Peter Burgess (ed.), Museum Europa. The European Cultural Heritage between Economics and Politics, pp. 31–66 (Kristiansand, Høyskoleforlaget, 2004d). Østergård, Uffe, ‘Georg Brandes og Europa i dag’, in Olaf Harsløf (ed.), Georg Brandes og Europa, pp. 31–46 (Copenhagen, Museum Tusculanum og det Kgl. Bibliotek 2004; Italian version, ‘Georg Brandes e l’Europa di oggi’, Studi Nordici IX, Pisa, pp. 35–41, 2004e. Østergård, Uffe, ‘The College for the Instruction of Asiatic and Other Youth in Eastern Literature and European Science in Serampore’, in Hans R. Iversen et al. (eds), Denmark in India, 2005a. Østergård, Uffe, ‘Gottorp, Slesvig og Sønderjylland mellem “dansk” og “tysk” – og “vensk”’, in Imsen 2005a, pp. 51–71, 2005b. Østergård, Uffe, ‘Denmark and the new international politics of morality and remembrance’, Danish Foreign Policy Yearbook, pp. 65–101, 2005c. Østergård, Uffe, ‘Da vi undgik krig – opløsningen af unionen mellem Norge og Sverige i 1905’, Weekendavisen, 10 June, 8, 2005d. Østergård, Uffe, ‘Entre deux mers – the Mediterranean and the Baltic Sea Region compared’, in Bernd Heningsen et al. (eds), Go North (Berlin, 2005e). Østergård, Uffe, ‘Nationalstaten vandt’, Weekendavisen, 10 July, 2005, 6, 2005f. Østergård, Uffe, ‘Vi tabte i 1864 – heldigvis for os’, Politiken Debat, 16 July, pp. 1–6, 2005g. Østerud, Øyvind, Det moderne statssystem og andre politisk-historiske studier (Oslo, Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1987). Paasivirta, Juhani, Finland and Europe. The Early Years of Independence 1917–1939 (Helsinki, SHS, 1988). Roberts, Michael, Gustavus Adolphus (Longman, London, 1973). Roberts, Michael, The Swedish Imperial Experience 1560–1718 (Cambridge University Press, 1979). Rokkan, Stein, Stat, nasjon, klasse. Essays i politisk sosiologi (ed. Bernt Hagtvet) (Oslo, Universitetsforlaget, 1987). Seip, J.A., ‘Nasjonalisme som vikarierende motiv’, in J.A. Seip (ed.), Fra embedsmannsstat til ettpartistat, Universitetsforlaget (Bergen, 1963). Seip, J.A., Utsikt over Norges historie I (Oslo: Universitetsforlaget, 1974).

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Sejersted, Francis, Socialdemokratins tidsålder. Sverige och Norge under 1900–talet (Nora, Nya Doxa, 2005). Sørensen, Øystein, ‘The development of Norwegian national identity during the nineteenth century’, in Sørensen, pp. 17–36, 1994. Sørensen, Øystein (ed.), Nordic Paths to National Identity, Kult no. 22 (Oslo, The Research Council of Norway, 1994a). Sørensen, Øystein (ed.), Nationalism in Small European Nations, Kult no. 47 (Oslo, The Research Council of Norway, 1996). Stråth, Bo, Folkhemmet mot Europa (Stockholm, Tidens Förlag, 1992). Stråth, Bo, ‘Den nordiska modellen’, Nordisk Tidskrift, 1993. Stråth, Bo, Union och demokrati. De Förenade rikena Sverige–Norge 1814–1905 (Nora, Nya Doxa, 2005). Tønneson, Stein, ‘Nordlys. Sammenligning af nordiske nasjonalismer’, Den Jyske Historiker, vol. 49, pp. 146–159, 1989. Tønneson, Stein, ‘Is Norway a European country?’, in K. Bohnen, H. Müssener & F. Schmöre (eds), Europa. Eine kulturelle Herausforderung für die nordischen Länder, (Kopenhagen 1992, Text und Kontext Sonderreihe 31; München, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, pp. 43–59, 1992). Tønneson, Stein, ‘Norden speiler seg: Identitetsdebatten 1986–93’, (Norsk) Historisk Tidsskrift, vol. 72, pp. 360–397, 1993. Wåhlin, Vagn & Uffe Østergård, Klasse, demokrati og organisation. Politiserings- og moderniseringsprocssen i Danmark 1830–48, I–VI (Århus, Århus Universitet, Historisk Institut, 1975). Wåhlin, Vagn, ‘Popular revivalism in Denmark’, Scandinavian Journal of History, vol. 12, pp. 363–387, 1987. Wendt, Frantz, Nordisk Råd 1952–1979 (Stockholm, Almquist och Wicksell, 1979). Wolff, Larry, The Invention of Eastern Europe (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1994).

NOTES 1 The article builds on and elaborates some of

my previous publications in this area, in particular Østergård 1994b, 1997c, 2002a, 2004a. 2 A Finlander is a citizen of Finland. This state officially comprises Finnish speakers as well as Swedish speakers. The latter are a small minority of six per cent, but the nation is bilingual and bi-national. A Finn is a Finnish-speaking citizen of Finland, whereas a Swedish-speaking Finlander is normally referred to as a Swedish-speaking Finlander or simply a Swedish Finn (cf. Engman 1995, Kirby 1995). 3 Gustav Vasa was the first king of independent Sweden after the break up of the Danish-dominated Union of Kalmar comprising all the Nordic countries, which lasted from 1397 to 1523. He organised a centrally organised state of Sweden with Finland and introduced the Lutheran reformation from above in 1537–39, almost at

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the same time as Lutheranism was introduced in Denmark after a bloody civil war in 1536. 4 ‘Historical region’ has two meanings: either a traditional landscape or province from the period before the modern nation-states and their subdivisions, or a transnational region with a common history of a group of nations and states. I use the term in the latter meaning. 5 Among others, the massive publication Danmark under den kolde krig I–IV, published June 2005 by the Danish Institute for International Studies containing 2,300 pages of original research. 6 In this context it is important to distinguish between Calvinism and Lutheranism. Normally the two are lumped together as Protestantism: see, for example, the influential work of Max Weber on the relationship between Capitalism and Protestantism from 1905. Both versions of Protestantism broke with the supranational Catholic Church in the 16th century and share some points of doctrine. But the differences are enormous, in theology as well as in the perception of the relationship between church and state. National churches are a result of Lutheranism, and of the eastern Orthodox version of Christianity beginning with the establishment of a national church in Greece in 1834. 7 These similarities are the recurrent themes in two books of comparative studies of European history that I have published in Danish (Østergård 1992d, 1998).

CHAPTER 8 Political Culture, European Integration: Dilemmas of Southern Europe James Edward Miller One of the most consistent and measurable common denominators among the states of Southern Europe (Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece) has been the level of their support for the process of European integration. Euro-enthusiasm, so largely on the wane in the north, and somewhat feeble in the East, has its home in Europe’s Mediterranean. Much of the support for integration is grounded in the benefits, particularly developmental funding for infrastructure, that are on view throughout the region. It is equally rooted in a realisation that Europe is a source of strength for states that are individually weak. However, neither individual prosperity nor state power alone explains the positive view of ‘Europe’ that permeates its southern flank. Southern European Union (EU) populations also share a high level of enthusiasm for the broader goals of union: more political and economic integration, together with the expansion of security, democracy and the rule of law. The European ideal is a shorthand for efficiency and transparency in government that have so long been lacking in the South. Membership in the European project validates the successful conclusion of a nearly threecentury-long effort to catch up with the advanced states of the northwest. Still, a note of caution is useful. The political cultures of the four states surveyed vary greatly, despite the common historical thread created by elite-driven modernisation. Three of these four states (Italy, Greece and, to a lesser degree, Portugal) have a long history of balancing Euro-enthusiasm by ignoring or evading European rules and exploiting European assistance to reinforce their national goals even when this contravenes the rules governing that aid. Spain, something of a poster boy for the benefits of European integration, faces a major challenge conciliating its restless nationalities, a central element in its political culture. A Spain with a weakened central political authority might be a considerably less active or effective European partner. All four states will certainly remain within the European project. What they will contribute to it is another matter. Historically, the approach of the southern states has been characterised by enthusiasm for the broader goals of integration combined with a

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tendency to follow rather than initiate. Italy, for example, has the largest economy of the four (and one of the largest in the EU), but is a constant underpuncher in European affairs. Its political culture is steeped in ‘fantapoltica’: the promotion of large, unworkable ‘feel good’ projects, largely for domestic consumption, that have repeatedly misdirected public energies and income.1

PARADOXES OF MODERNISATION The bonds that link the political cultures of these four states are ancient and durable. All are successor states of the first ‘European union’, created by Rome after the 2nd century before common era (BCE). Throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Spaniards, Portuguese and Italians shared important economic ties and political experiences, which in turn created many common elements of political culture. During the same period the Byzantine Empire was a cultural beacon and major trading partner for the three western states. When a culturally vigorous but politically weak Byzantine Empire fell to the Ottomans in the 15th century, Greece passed under foreign domination and was cut off from important European scientific and cultural development for three centuries. This isolation was reinforced by the Orthodox Church’s hostility to the West. By the 16th century the economies of all four societies were stagnating. Travelling through Spain and Italy in the 1780s, the British agronomist Arthur Young remarked on the extraordinary levels of misery government policies had created in fertile areas with industrious populations. Twenty years later, Chateaubriand found Greece under Ottoman rule a ‘desert’.2 During the 18th and 19th centuries, their ruling elites pursued economic modernisation policies that paradoxically undermined public confidence in national institutions.3 Sincere and highly motivated reformers experimented with the use of state power to forward meaningful change. Carlos III, who reigned for a quarter of a century in southern Italy (1734–59) and another twenty-eight years in Spain (1759–88), was the model ‘Enlightened’ monarch who sought to create state power and promote the public good by modernising economy and society. Other like-minded southern European reformers approached modernisation with policies (land reforms, revision of church-state relations, promotion of manufactures, urban planning) that were nearly identical in concept and objectives. The overall effect of 18th-century reform was to set the Catholic societies of Europe’s south on a path towards a fundamental restructuring based on the models created by the continent’s most advanced societies. The actual effects of many reforms were limited: quite a few experiments foundered and well meaning ‘scientific’ reformism destroyed the social compact in the Catholic part of

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southern Europe. Another common element is that all four states have struggled with an intellectual heritage of political radicalism on both left and right that took root during the Enlightenment and French Revolution.4 The effects of this radicalism, either that calling for a return to a (non-existent) past golden age or that positing a future one, have disrupted the orderly development of national economies, plunged Spain, Portugal and Greece into civil wars, delayed the establishment of representative institutions, and promoted a ‘zero sum game’ mentality in politics that, more often than not, has made effective compromise difficult. Even today, with major parties operating out of the political centre, the rhetorical excesses of southern European politicians continue to hinder useful domestic deal making and at times leave northern Europeans wondering about the effects Mediterranean expansion of the EU has on its long-term viability.5 During the 19th century, Italy and Greece won national independence, and joined Spain and Portugal in grappling with the creation of modern industrial societies through state direction of the national economy and introducing legal codes and administrative bureaucracies modelled on those of the West. The idea of modernisation through the use of state power remained central to the political cultures of the Catholic West and penetrated into modern Greece as a result of activities of its first ‘president’ [Κυβερνη′ της],6 Capodistrias, and successive monarchical governments. All four states became bywords for political corruption, slow growth and internal political unrest. Parliamentary systems faltered and were largely kept afloat by behind the scenes manoeuvres and election rigging. Public trust in representative institutions crumbled. The introduction of universal (male) suffrage failed to deal effectively with the ills created by a rampant government-directed system of patronage-based favouritism.7 The mass parties that promised to correct the problems of political corruption and to build a solid base for democracy either participated in the spoils system or adopted extremist positions that polarised their societies. In the case of Italy, both unfavourable outcomes occurred simultaneously. In 1901, one of the most astute of Spain’s political bosses (caciques), the Count of Romanones, publicly admitted that the state had failed to deliver the reforms necessary to compete in an already highly globalised world economy.8 Public mistrust of representative institutions (but not of big government) accelerated in the 20th century. Southern European ruling elites refused to respond to demands for a more equitable division of national wealth, arguing in essence that this pie was too small to be divided with lower classes. Limited growth, low wages, internal migration off the land, concentrations of workers in hastily expanded urban areas, large-scale unemployment and harsh working conditions, when combined with the emergence labour unions and Marxist political parties, spelled trouble for traditional elites. World War I with its mass

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mobilisation, economic dislocation and heavy loss of life wreaked havoc on the established social hierarchy and economic organisation in Portugal, Italy, Greece and even neutral Spain. Fearing the triumph of Marxists, mass political movements and profiting from wartime experience in armed mobilisation, the possessing classes abandoned representative institutions for repressive ones. Armed, mobilised minorities with control of the state imposed their will on the mass of their fellow citizens.9 The 1920s and 1930s introduced a new set of parameters that affected the political cultures of the region. Authoritarian regimes used state power to force the pace of economic modernisation. They attempted to ameliorate social tensions by channelling popular frustration away from political action by means of regimented mass movements that substituted group activities for participation in representative institutions. Plebiscites, mass rallies, after-hours workers clubs, group tourism, youth organisations, and male and female physical training were hallmarks of the regimes of the era. These ideas proved equally attractive to left and right. While the right practised them in varying degrees in Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece, the left drank in the example of the Soviet Union where precisely the same means of mass control produced exactly the same results. Spain (Miguel Primo de Rivera) and Italy (Mussolini) embraced ‘developmental’ dictatorship that failed to deliver. Primo fell, but the supple Duce was able to substitute imperialism for domestic growth and ride out the depression of the 1930s largely through colonial expansion and war. Primo’s ultimate successor, General Francesco Franco, the Portuguese ‘strongman’ Antonio Salazar, and the Greek dictator Ioannis Metaxas, all adopted techniques of mass mobilisation and control. Mass mobilisation to affect public policy, a key component of Mediterranean Europe’s political culture, is a legacy of this era.10 Authoritarian rule left other legacies on national political cultures. In all four societies, the role of government in economic management grew, most notably in Italy and Spain, where the dictatorships gained control of large portfolios of banks and industries and attempted to direct their activities in pursuit of ‘national’ goals. Overall, state-driven modernisation efforts from the 18th to the mid-20th century left southern Europeans in a paradoxical situation. Economic progress while real was erratic and certainly did not put these societies on a plane with the advanced states of Northern Europe. Moreover, economic progress had largely been purchased at the expense of political freedoms. Spain and Portugal were in the iron grasp of dictatorships until the 1970s. As a result, only Italy was in a position to participate in the creation of European institutions after World War II after its liberation from fascism by Anglo-American arms. (Greece, too economically backward and too prostrate from war and civil war, did not play a role).11

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Authoritarian rule affected political parties. Fascism made the single party the primary font of patronage, a role that Christian Democracy assumed under Italy’s democracy. Watching authoritarian regimes succeed in disciplining the masses from (normally Parisian) exile, leaders of anti-regime parties in Italy, Spain and Portugal modified their party structures to stress discipline and mobilisation. While liberated Greece initially reverted to its pre-dictatorial political organisations, one young Diaspora Greek took the lessons of the 1930s to heart. After the 1974 fall of the Colonels’ regime, Andreas Papandreou married the disciplined mass party to Greek traditions of charismatic leadership and dominated his nation’s politics for nearly two decades. The combination of disciplined parties and extensive state control of national economies played a major role in both the economic take off in Italy and Spain, and in misguided investment and development policies in Portugal and Greece and, subsequently, Italy.12

THE PARADOXES OF DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION Between 1944 and 1975, Italy, Portugal, Greece and Spain moved from dictatorship to representative democracy. Each transition was unique, reflecting the political and cultural legacies of the individual states. At the same time, a common experience in reform and of right wing dictatorship helped to shape new institutions that shared much in common. In one critical example, the individual experience of authoritarian repression drove most left parties into collaboration with moderate middle-class reformers. Fostering representative institutions was the essential for their security and for more thoroughgoing change. Growing segments of the middle classes, reflecting on the same experiences and fearful of the effects of social polarisation, were attracted to the idea of a democracy in which social compromise replaced confrontation. Neither left nor right abandoned the rhetoric of social conflict so useful for mass mobilisation, but beneath the surface compromise ruled with widespread public support. The idea of participation in European institutions won growing public favour, further dampening nationalisms badly discredited by two wars but also permitting the national state to prosper as the ultimate arbiter of the shape of integration. The resulting ‘Europe a la carte’ married economic growth with the retention of national cultural characteristics and enjoyed strong public support. European integration gradually won over the left when its leaders belatedly recognised that it fostered economic growth and encouraged state commitment to the rule of law. Italy, the first to undergo this transition, reclaimed international respectability and parity through its involvement in the

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creation of European institutions. The European Community (EC), or its member states, played a major role in facilitating the stabilisation of democratic regimes in Greece, Portugal and Spain. During the transition, each state followed a different path to political stability and reshaped its political culture. Italy took the lead.13

The Nanny State Italy was the first Southern European state to embrace social compromise based on the expansion of a minimalist welfare state. The 1948 constitution, a mixture of ideas drawn largely from Marxist and Christian Democratic political theory, was the fruit of the collaboration between the left and centre. Its long list of citizens’ rights and state responsibilities for individual and group well-being is a summation of Italy’s post-war political culture. The 1948 constitution committed Italy to the construction of a welfare state offering universal health care, education and full employment, and provided a wide set of political freedoms, including labour organisation, public assembly and a free press. Paradoxically, the introduction of straight proportional representation (arguably the most democratic of all electoral systems) assured that coalition formation would require powerful, patronage-based parties operating largely outside of the constitutional process.14 Over the next fifty years, the Christian Democratic Party and a shifting coalition of smaller partners controlled the Italian state and large segments of its economy. The Communists (PCI), Italy’s second party, were excluded from national power but free to build their own state within a state concentrated around organised labour, local governments and the extensive supporting organisations such as coops, export companies and social clubs. ‘Partitocrazia’ (party rule) was an elaborate system for the rational division of patronage and for decision making and compromise between the contending factions. While the public political battle was intensely polemical, the private realm of Italian politics was increasingly conciliatory. Harsh rhetoric and mass demonstrations displayed political muscle, particularly on the left. Public policy was a web of compromises that ensured the parties’ continued control and met the basic needs of their warring constituencies through a judicious division of limited resources.15 The system endured until the fall of the Berlin Wall sparked a wide-scale revolt among the Italian public against its excesses of control and corruption. By the 1970s, however, Partitocrazia was in decline. Most Italians possessed sufficient wealth and security to question the need for party dominance over their lives. As the group solidarity of the immediate post-war years gave way to

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greater individualism, Italian elections became less predictable, new parties appeared, youth revolted against the old left, sometimes violently, and the Catholic Church began to cut its ties to Christian Democracy. Success in building a largely middle-class Italy rendered both the DC and PCI increasingly an expensive and unwanted hangover of the reconstruction era. In the early 1990s, the party-dominated Italian nanny state collapsed and with it much of the covert consensual behaviour that was a hallmark of post-war Italian political culture. Italians, however, continued to believe that society as a whole took precedence over the individual and that the protection of rights such as employment remained the highest objective of government. Given the opportunity to substantially change their political culture in the turbulent 1990s, Italians instead voted for largely symbolic changes and modified, but did not eliminate the proportional representation system that provides the best protection for their welfare state.16 Fifteen years after the fall of Partitocrazia, a different if not always edifying political culture has emerged. The centre left, a kaleidoscope of coalitions and small parties, whose major force is the reformed communist party (now merging into a Democratic Party (DP) with the centrists), is strongly divided over critical issues of public policy from welfare state reform to international alignments. Its constituent parts represent diverse domestic constituencies who agree on little except retaining the status quo. Accordingly, the centre-left’s parties spend much time infighting and the ‘coalition’ functions only during the short pre-election period. The centre-left has two souls: a black–red majority of Catholics and Marxists dedicated to social engineering and a middle-class reformist wing (the ‘Margherita’), which is more open to reforms needed to meet the implications of globalisation. The centre-left’s always tenuous unity comes mostly from a desire for power and a loathing of centre-right leader Silvio Berlusconi.17 The central value of its political subculture is its orientation towards dialogue. It is strongly pro-EU in rhetoric, but significant elements of the Catholic–Marxist wings of the coalition are determined to protect the rigidities of the labour market that many in Brussels would like to ease. The Italian centre-right is much less inclined to dialogue. It has drawn considerable benefit from polarising politics. Its organiser and leader for the past decade, Berlusconi, a multi-millionaire media mogul, controls private television (and sometimes the public channels) during election campaigns. He used this whip to enforce discipline and marshal a common front. By simplifying voters’ choices, the media-shrewd Berlusconi twice successfully moulded public opinion in support of his basic agenda. His performance in government has been the Achilles heel of the centre-right. Berlusconi has used his office to protect his private interests. Promised reforms unconnected with the prime minister’s

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personal agenda were slow in arriving. Key components of his collation, Umberto Bossi’s Lega Nord and the nationalist, old right, National Alliance (AN), are deadlocked over issues such as regionalism and privatisation, while the Catholic component of the coalition has chaffed at its limited influence on public policy. European integration divides the coalition. Most centre-right leaders appear somewhat ‘euro-sceptic,’ seeing Europe largely as an economic project with limited foreign and defence policy functions. Bossi’s anti-Europe positions have been fairly consistent. Successful European integration will undercut his issues and his base of support. Berlusconi’s commitment to further European integration is unclear.18 For now, the centre-right’s approach to European integration is out of step with the views of most Italians who favour the European Commission’s focus on issues such as effective regulation, the development of a European international peacekeeping role and environmental regulation, and who believe that the European experiment is compatible with the ideals enshrined in the Italian constitution. EU positions on international affairs play to a very widely shared national conception of Italy as a state that seeks international cooperation, rejects war and uses its military forces solely for peacekeeping initiatives. Nevertheless, Italian political culture with its emphasis on preserving the social compromises of the post-war era may not be receptive to a major expansion of Europe’s role. The effort to build and expand a welfare state has put real strains on Italian state and society. Moreover, services under welfare Italian-style are frequently less than promised. Building this system promoted massive corruption. Italy, having enjoyed a long season of prosperity because of the success of its heavily subsidised state and private large industry and the innovative efforts of its small (family) companies, faces serious problems. Big corporations, Olivetti, Pirelli and others, have largely failed to adapt to the increased competition of European and world markets. The cosy relationship between Italian banking and business has been shattered by European-mandated reforms. Italian banks have consistently underperformed and most face sale to more aggressive and better capitalised ‘foreign’ (European) investors. Small family companies have also faced a squeeze created by aggressive overseas competition. Many are offshoring their operations to survive. Italian success at establishing a strong position in post-industrial markets has been underwhelming. EU control over fiscal policy has placed a straightjacket around Italian politicians, while the conversion from lira to euro was accompanied by widespread price gouging. Once, Italian politicians could preach the benefits of Europe while avoiding its regulation. That option appears foreclosed. EU-backed structural reforms that would allow wide-open competition are not popular. Pressure to regain flexibility within the Euro system and thus protect employment is limited, but

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could signal a return to the ‘go-it-alone’ traditions of Italia fara da se and sacro egoismo in Italy’s approach to Europe, which would place greater stress on freedom to pursue national interest. The Italian centre-left is no more immune to these temptations than the centre-right. Increasingly, the EU is threatening rather than strengthening a political culture based on a rational division of the spoils that has always been the centre of the Italian way of life.19 Moreover, in modified form, these same issues and concerns resonate among voters in Greece, Spain and Portugal.

Dictablanda The Italian path to domestic well being and to a role in Europe was scarcely smooth. Still, Italy became one of the world’s major economies and provided a model for at least one other Southern Europe state as it emerged from political repression. During the last two decades (the dictablanda or ‘softer’ dictatorship, ca. 1957–75) of the Franco era, Spanish leaders intensely analysed the Italian model. Successful economic expansion would have a profound effect on Spanish political culture. Growth of both individual wealth and of the middle classes allowed democratic Spain to continue economic expansions and deal (on the whole) peacefully with the major issue that each previous regime had failed to successfully address – regionalism. An evolving settlement of the conflict between centralised nationalism and local nationalisms is the basis of Spanish democracy. By the mid-1950s Franco realised that his autarchic economic policies had failed to stimulate growth and threatened his continued hold on power. He transferred responsibility for the national economy to a group of Catholic administrators, linked to the Opus Dei movement, who advocated opening the Spanish economy to foreign investment and modernising on the basis of infrastructural investment and tourism. While eschewing political projects, the men of Opus Dei clearly had an eye on a post-Franco transition. By raising the living standards of all Spaniards, their economic programmes aimed to avoid a repetition of the 1936–39 national bloodbath. The technocrat-reformers had an arduous task before them. In 1953, the French Embassy in Spain commented that after nearly two decades of Franco’s rule, Spain was so isolated, poor, repressed and disoriented that ‘[It] is not presently … European’. Welcomed American intervention designed to rebuild Spain’s links to Europe faced massive obstacles, the French concluded, none greater than the few Spaniards and Spanish institutions committed to ‘modernisation’.20 One clear lesson of Italian development was the benefits of membership in the European Economic Community (EEC). Spain’s second five-year plan for

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economic development (1964–68) focused on constructing a cooperative economic relationship with Europe. Tourism became a critical tool in building ties with the democracies of the north. Although Franco was an insuperable barrier to Spanish membership in the EEC, Development Minister Adolfo Lopez Bravo correctly believed that the sun, beaches and monuments of Spain would open doors to formal and informal cooperation with other European states in developing Spain’s infrastructure, expanding its exports, and attracting foreign technology and investment.21 At the same time, this growth of the tourist sector played a major role in modifying Spain’s political culture, taking a closed, suspicious and highly nationalist society and re-infusing a sense of belonging to a wider social and economic community, Europe, as it simultaneously propelled a revision of Spanish mores. Spanish economic development policy played a critical role in determining its foreign policy and eventually led Franco to name Lopez Bravo Minister of Foreign Affairs. Economic development simultaneously began to undo a central pillar of the dictatorship. In its first economic development plan, the Spanish government recognised the existence of separate regional economies and committed its investments to them. National development strategy was, de facto, the promotion of those regional identities that Franco had set out to destroy in 1936.22 The recognition of regional interests by the technocrat-reformers had profound effects on the Spanish political culture and on Spain’s long-term relations with Europe. Post-Franco Spain would found its democracy on recognition of regions as the basis of the new state and on European integration as the best means of smoothing over conflicts between the central state and its restless nationalities. Franco’s longevity, which impeded Spain’s participation in European integration for decades, had the positive effect of permitting the economic restructuring of 1959–68 to carry forward with minimum internal opposition. Fortunately, the Opus Dei bureaucrats made wise choices in strategy and allocation of resources. Even more fortuitously, the economic investments of the last two decades of Franco’s rule were not overwhelmed by the corruption that plagued his regime. When the dictator finally died (November 1975), economic prosperity had expanded widely enough to discourage the sort of extremism that plunged 1930s Spain into civil war. An unspoken national agreement, rooted in the horrors of the 1930s, to avoid the use of force during a postFranco transition was a critical part of the new political culture of Spain. The political culture of democratic Spain featured a commitment to civility in public discourse as part of the effort to avoid the polarisation of interest groups and nationalities that sparked civil war. Church–state relations under the Socialist governments have been marked by careful adherence to democratic

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rules even though the two sides are badly divided over social issues. This preference for dialogue is not universal. Politics in the Basque region combine violence (assassinations, bombings and intimidation by street gangs) and ethnic racism with delusional territorial demands by the extremists of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA). Copying the British–Irish formula, both the Partido Popular (PP) and Partido Socialista Obrero Espan˜ol (PSOE) have refused to negotiate with ETA until it disarms. The power of ETA appears to be waning, but its success in moulding the political climate of the Basque region towards confrontation means that the region operates outside the national political consensus. While Catalan nationalists accept some form of Spanish state in the context of wide regional autonomy, the Basque’s largest party, the Nationalists (PNV), in pursuit of votes and from ideological conviction, have overlooked ETA violence and intimidation, and adopted part of its platform. The PNV supports unconditional dialogue with the armed terrorist minority. Spain’s three major political cultures (Castilian–national, Catalan and Basque) remain at loggerheads over basic questions such as the role of a central state and the legitimacy of violence.23 With the exception of the Basque extremists, Spain’s citizens look to an integrated Europe to help bridge the gaps between them. Support for the European constitutional referendum (2005) was overwhelming throughout Spain.

Pink Carnations Portugal’s less stable political and economic development is in great part a result of its post-Salazar transition. The 19th-century Portuguese diplomat and author Eca de Queiros acidly observed that ‘Everything is imported in this country: laws, ideas, philosophies, themes, aesthetics, sciences, style, industries, fashions, manners, jokes. Everything reaches us in packing cases by the mail boats. Civilisation costs us very dear … And then its second hand. It is not made for us so it doesn’t fit’.24 In this spirit of innovative and ill-fitting borrowing, one powerful group of Portuguese military officers adopted the Marxist revolutionary outlook of their African colonial enemies, with its rejection of private property together with plans for a nationalised economy and a one-party state, before staging a successful 1974 coup against the post-Salazar dictatorship. In the wake of the coup, this vanguard military group tried to impose this foreign political culture on Portugal. To destroy Portugal’s discredited Salazarist political culture, the officers insisted on supervising the newly installed civilian government, on immediate decolonisation, and on nationalisation of most aspects of the Portuguese economy. During the two tumultuous years that followed the Revolution of the Carnations, leftist officers in cooperation with the

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Portuguese Communist Party managed politics and the economy to build a Portuguese road to socialism. Late in 1975, a showdown within the military undermined the left. The Socialist and Social Democratic parties whittled away the military’s political oversight during the following decade, and denationalised much of the economy. As the democratic transition ended, Portuguese political elites, eager to find a rallying point to replace the discredited ideas of empire or a Portuguese road to socialism, stressed a vaguely defined concept of Portugal’s ‘European identity’. While European funding has played a large role in modernising Portugal’s society and economy, ‘European identity’ has proved a much weaker basis for building a post-dictatorial political culture. Repeated episodes of mismanagement of the national economy compounded the problem of defining democratic Portugal’s political culture.25 Three decades after the Revolution of the Carnations, the redefinition of Portugal’s political culture remains a work in progress. Before 1974, when the link between nationalism and colonialism was virtually seamless, Portugal’s empire gave its elites a sense of world ‘mission’. Salazarism, in its uncompromising efforts to retain the empire, was the most extreme version of this mission, but it had its roots in earlier Portuguese politics, stretching back to the glory era of 15th- and 16th-century Portuguese expansion. The Republican opposition of the 19th century strongly promoted the idea of Portugal as a trans-continental state with a universal cultural mission. A sense that the monarchy and its supporting institutions failed to carry out this national vision laid the groundwork for the 1908–10 ousting of the royal family. When the Republicans, in turn, were unable to deliver its vision of a Lusophone world centred on the banks of the Tagus River, the idea was taken up with passion by the dictatorship (1926–74). Salazar and his successor Marcello Caetano in turn fell victim to their inability to hold the empire. African revolts and Indian military force displayed Portugal’s weakness. The military finally stepped in to end the dictatorship and extract itself and the nation from a classic case of ‘imperial overstretch’. Once the colonies were gone, Portugal’s efforts to create a new political culture faced difficulties. Three factors that also played out in other Southern European societies – a weak economy, aging population and a redefinition of the role of the military in society – affected Portugal’s emerging political culture. During the 1950s, Salazar had begun to reverse course on his nationalist economic priorities and to gradually open the Portuguese economy to outside investment, primarily from Europe. During the 1960s, Portugal joined the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). However, the opening was always conditioned by the dictator’s profound suspicion of foreign involvement in Portugal and concerns about regime stability. As a result,

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Portugal did not enjoy the growth or rapid expansion of the middle class that occurred in Spain, or the development of a moderate opposition ready to assume power from a weakening dictatorial regime. Nevertheless, a grudging political accommodation with Europe, a massive flow of Portuguese migratory workers towards the North and increased European trade and investment had the effect of increasing identification with (Western) Europe as an area of political freedom, economic well-being and a set of common cultural values. Too late to participate in a real industrial revolution and with too weak an infrastructure to take a leading role in post-industrial development, Portugal lagged in economic development throughout the 1970–2005 period. Its major achievement was overtaking Greece in economic growth. Like Greece, it remains firmly anchored in the middle of the economic Europe of twenty-five. In common with other Southern European societies, the Portuguese population has declined and aged. Polls indicate that most Portuguese now have little enthusiasm for major national undertakings, preferring to look after their individual and family interests. These views, of course, dovetail with other Southern European societies and with the general predisposition of most citizens inside the EU. Thus, demographic change has reinforced interest in and association with the ‘European poll’, and facilitated a gradual change in identification of Portugal’s future with the European project. A third factor in this change in national political culture has been the decline in the role of the Portuguese military in the nation’s affairs. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the military largely arrogated to itself the role of guardian of the nation and its ideals. For all his ability to dominate the nation, Salazar was ultimately the army’s man. He carefully cultivated the military, placing a general or admiral in the presidency of the republic as a visible sign of his recognition of the role of the army as the ultimate arbiter of Portugal’s future. The ousting of Salazar by the Movimento das Forças Armadas (MFA) proved to be the final act in military domination of Portuguese society. Although Portuguese democrats had to rely on the enigmatic general Ramalho Eanes to secure its dominance over the officers’ movement (1975) and rewarded the general with two terms as president (1976–84), they soon began to whittle away at his powers. Eanes’ decision to replace Mario Soares as prime minister (1978) led Portuguese parties to coalesce to limit Eanes’ authority (1980) and ultimately to replace the ‘Bonapartist’ president with Soares (1984). The election of a civilian president was the last stage in a gradual weeding out of the military’s role in politics. As in the parallel cases of Greece and Spain, this has been accompanied by the assertion of civilian control over the armed forces, and an emphasis on professionalisation. Public images of the military have changed. Once the guardian of national values, the armed forces, in the new

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political culture of Portugal, are largely valued for the real or potential ability to assist civil society in times of crisis (natural disasters, forest fire control, emergency public works construction). If the military engages in traditional use of force, the Portuguese (like Italians and Spaniards) prefer to see the armed forces employed in internationally sanctioned peacekeeping and nation-building roles. Whereas Portuguese public opinion continues to take pride in its national past and in the achievements of its empire, its relationship to former overseas territories is more one of watchful concern, as, for example, in the case of the 1990s revolt against Indonesian dominance in East Timor. Little nostalgia for empire exists among a pragmatic, inward-looking and older population. In this context the growing identification with the norms and interests of ‘Europe’ is natural, but Portuguese political culture retains a cautious approach to major political projects. It has strong ties of culture and trade to the Americas, both to Brazil and to the nation that ultimately provides its security and is the home to a large (largely Azorian) Portuguese population, the USA. Strong Portuguese ties to the great ‘Eurosceptic’, the United Kingdom, act as another restraint. The ‘Atlanticism’ of Portuguese political elites, most recently on display in the Iraq war crisis, serves to break its European identification.26

Μεταπολι´τευση: Greece’s Big Change Post-war Greece had many of the characteristics of an ‘illiberal democracy’. Elections were managed, left-wing political opinion repressed, the police were infested with right-wing extremists, and both custom and the constitution allowed the military and crown to operate outside the control of civilian authority. When he returned from an eleven-year exile in Paris to guide the post-junta reform (Μεταπολι´τευση), conservative leader Konstantine Karamanlis founded a new party (New Democracy, ND), directed the writing of a constitution that provided for a careful balance of power among civilian institutions and placed the military under their control. He supervised a plebiscite that abolished the monarchy. Greece adopted a weighted proportional electoral system that provided for multi-party representation, but insured stability through a two-party alternation in power. Like the other states of Europe’s Mediterranean, Greece has embraced a set of political values (an independent judiciary, guarantees of unhindered exercise of individual rights of political and economic organisation, a free press, a major set of state undertakings regarding the social and economic status of its citizens) that largely bring it into line with the political cultures of northwest Europe. Of course, political practice and ideals are at times at odds in Greece as in other democratic states. The average

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Greek’s desire for greater political transparency is balanced by a culture that relies on backroom dealing. Greece’s increasingly powerful unions have used strikes to inconvenience their fellow citizens with little apparent concern for group rights. Favouritism still runs rampant and the judiciary has great problems enforcing the rule of law in the face of various sorts of political protection enjoyed by law breakers. The status of the Greek Orthodox Church is at odds with the ideal of free churches operating within a lay state. It remains a privileged group operating under the wing of the Greek state.27 Greece’s participation in the European family has been troubled in part because, with their Byzantine and Ottoman heritages, Greeks have alternate poles of self-identification. A public tug of war over the future of the country between 1833 and 1974 was a dramatic if not always realistic statement of two political cultural heritages. In breaking from Ottoman control in a dramatic fashion, Greek elites turned decisively towards the West. In the name of Western-style nationalism (and to exact revenge on their former oppressors), Greeks expelled Moslems living in their territory, subjected other Christian ethnic groups to ‘Hellenisation’, borrowed copiously from Western banks, made the classical past a pillar of the education system, and accepted (grudgingly) a status as a protectorate of the great powers that imposed a German (and later Danish) royal family on the country. Nevertheless, a strong current of resistance to ‘Westernisation’ existed in modern Greece’s political culture. Greek nationalists, encouraged by the Orthodox Church, stressed Greece’s uniqueness as an antidote to the individualism, secularism and class consciousness emerging in the West. Marxism, subsequently, mounted a strong criticism of Western economic and social organisation. The 1967 military coup and seven-year military dictatorship that followed provided further reasons for Greek hesitations about participating in the European project. Although large segments of European public opinion mobilised against the junta, most European governments adopted a business-as-usual approach to the Athens dictatorship.28 Karamanlis believed that Greece’s national interests, above all strengthening a political culture based on democratic institutions and achieving security against a more powerful and threatening Turkey, were best achieved by membership of the EC. Another area of Karamanlis’ (and public) concern, the subordination of a still restless military to civilian control, could be forwarded by closer integration of Greece with Western Europe. Overriding European Commission concerns about Greece’s economic backwardness, Karamanlis and France’s president, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, were able to convince the European Community to offer it membership in order to stabilise a newly created democracy. Over the long run, Greek admission into the EC settled the remaining issues of its Western orientation. In the short run, however, it created large headaches

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for both Greece and Europe. In the late 1970s the political career of opposition leader Andreas Papandreou was a monument to the feeling that Greece must possess a distinct political culture and identity. Papandreou was able to marry popular enthusiasm for Greece’s new democratic political course and a desire for more sweeping changes, frustration with corruption and continued conservative rule, a deep public resentment over the West’s role in support of the junta, traditional Greek xenophobia, and the vision of a unique national version of socialism into a potent brew that swept him and his party (PASOK) to power ten months after Greece joined the EC (October 1981). Papandreou never suggested that his ‘revolution’ would require profound changes in Greece’s democratic course. However, his platform melded two conflicting views of Greece’s future, one European, and another that emphasised Greece as a ‘peripheral’ and semi-colonial part of the world economy. The contradictions in this potent vote getting ideology were never reconciled. Exploiting widely held resentments about its abandonment to the Junta and public enthusiasm for social and political change, PASOK twice forged strong electoral majorities in the 1980s. Indeed, Papandreou’s carefully modulated anti-Western activities, such as denunciations of Western exploitation of Greece, threats to withdraw from the EC and disrupt heads of government meetings, calls for a Balkan denuclearised zone, together with disruptive actions during NATO meetings, were a smokescreen behind which Papandreou’s Greece deepened its involvement in Europe while maintaining its defence ties with the USA. EC\EU money built Greek prosperity, rooting Greece in Europe even while the Greek prime minister’s political theatre won the plaudits of his electorate. After promising to get Greece out of NATO, Papandreou settled for some base closings and in 1994 travelled to Washington to be lionised as a major US ally. Throughout the 1980s, Andreas Papandreou’s political alchemy held together two increasingly diverging views of Greece’s future. The longer it held power, the more PASOK was divided over the country’s future direction. Its ‘Old Guard’, fiercely loyal to Papandreou, offered a Greece-centric view of the world that included xenophobia, close ties to Orthodoxy, opposition to economic globalisation, nationalist education policies and reliance on traditional (and highly corrupt) patronage systems to rally political support. The internal opposition, led by largely European-trained technocrats, believed that Greece’s economic and social progress had to be fully rooted in the European economy and European institutions. They stressed the need to replace patronage politics with a more open and efficient state. Tensions between these two wings developed in the 1980s. When an ageing Papandreou returned to power in 1993, full-scale warfare over his succession broke out within PASOK. The modernising wing won, largely on its ability to present a candidate to replace Papandreou who had

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public support. Between 1996 and 2004, Greece, under the pragmatic if dull leadership of Costas Simitis, played a fuller and more cooperative role inside the EU while continuing to reap the strategic rewards of membership. The Simitis government’s careful use of EU aid for infrastructural development, together with a more flexible policy towards Greece’s primary antagonist (and EU candidate), Turkey, fostered better relations with other EU states. Greek political culture changed profoundly in the post-junta period as both major parties converged on the political centre and extremist parties’ vote totals declined. Greek voters have decided that economic well-being and a more efficient state are preferable goals to the pursuit of the millennium offered by ideologically driven politics. Still, a strong although weakening resistance to the political practice associated with the West continues among some Greeks, particularly inside PASOK. PASOK’s ‘Old Guard’, although increasingly marginalised, still promote the concept of a Greek identity steeped in its nationalOrthodox traditions. Anti-Western diatribes in press and among intellectuals continue, although the target is normally that all-purpose punching bag, the USA. As one controversial Greek journalist observed, the 1999 NATO Kosovo operation featured some of the worst moments of public discourse in Greece as press, extremist parties and the Church unleashed a ‘collective outpouring of emotions [that] gave rise to an anti-Western and anti-American rhetoric of hate unthinkable [before George W. Bush] in a modern European country’.29 At the same time, Greek officials who were mostly closely associated with Greece’s modernisation damaged their own credibility. They provided misleading economic data in bidding for Euro membership. This was part of a pattern in which reformers used the older and publicly discredited practices such as patronage and behind the scenes deal making associated with previous governments to advance modernising projects designed to tie Greece more closely to Europe. The Athens Olympics, a mega expression of Greek national pride, were plagued with major cost overruns and resulting budgetary shortfalls that pushed Greece well beyond the convergence criteria of the Euro. The whole process was bathed in corruption. These dismaying events revealed that in matters of transparency and patronage, Greek political culture remained defiantly Mediterranean.30 Nonetheless, on the economic and cultural fronts, Greece’s European identity has been steadily reinforced. Foreign investment (slowly) and Western cultural tastes (rapidly) continued their inexorable and largely welcome penetration of Greek society. The gradual and grudging retreat of the Greek Orthodox Church, the foremost defender of non-Western traditions, from extreme positions is the most evident sign of these trends.31

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EXPLORING THE PARADOXES The heritage of three centuries of political modernisation in Portugal, Spain, Italy and Greece left Southern Europe with a unique set of formal and informal arrangements that are still critical to their contemporary political cultures, and create barriers to full integration within the European project.

Patronage As the lubricating mechanism that permits compromise between group interests in any functioning polity, patronage has flourished in every form of political organisation from the Roman Republic to the American version. The excesses of a patronage political system are hard to purge: corruption, the use of informal rather than legal mechanisms to achieve objectives, exaggerated social deference that freezes individuals and groups in their roles and prevents innovation, and the recruitment of promising talent into state bureaucracies at the expense of more productive parts of the economy. The problems created by a patronage-centred system have endured in the face of earnest reform efforts, provoked frequent changes of governing systems and continue to constitute a major weight on the legitimacy of democratic societies. A proliferation of fixers at every level of society, widespread skirting of the law, organised crime and bureaucracies that regulate broad aspects of the citizen’s life while systematically failing to provide quality services weigh heavily on most of Southern Europe. The urge to break away from these constraints and a contradictory faith in the ability of bureaucratic states to be both protective and efficient gives the EU the role of an escape hatch from the inefficiencies of national government and fuels support for the European idea. At the same time, most Greeks, Italians, Portuguese and even Spaniards are quite comfortable with and skilled at the patronage ‘game’. In one of the region’s many paradoxes, discontent with the problems created by rampant patronage systems that their highly centralised states produce is mixed with a fear of dealing with the impersonal, ‘transparent’ and law-driven state. Prizing efficiency, as symbolised by the EU, many Southern Europeans are reluctant to pay the price of abolishing insider arrangements: new types of political parties, the end of state ‘jobs for life’, pension reform, labour market elasticity, merit-based selection and a host of other changes, large and small, in traditional ways of living. The ongoing sagas of Southern Europe’s state airlines, TAP, Iberia, Olympic and Alitalia, are among hundreds of examples of continuing resistance to abandoning patronage-based relationships among well paid and well organised middle-class interest groups.32

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Regionalism Regional identity is rooted in geographical isolation, historical experiences of self-rule, linguistic differentiation and differing levels of economic development. At various times, all of the national governments of Southern Europe have waged active campaigns against regionalism. The duration and intensity of previous efforts to repress regional expression stands at the roots of the problems the democratic government in Madrid has in dealing with renascent and aggressive micro-nationalisms in Catalonia and the Basque region. By challenging the myth of a single Italian or Spanish nation, micronationalism aims at undercutting the basis of a national political culture. At a time when the dominant political culture is promoting integration into a larger entity as a means of preserving Italian, Greek, Portuguese or Spanish national identity, aggressive regionalism offers a return to 19th-century ideas of ‘racial’ nationalism, directly putting into question the idea of a limited surrender of sovereignty to a European ‘super-power’. While the attraction of this form of micro-nationalism remains limited, it poses a challenge not only to the national integrity of member states but to the model of a European integration through the cooperation of national states that emerged in the late 1950s, Charles de Gaulle’s ‘Europe des patries’.33 Ironically, the nation that would seem an ideal candidate for strong, politically rooted micro-nationalism, Greece, has very little. Although divided between mainland and islands, Greece is a quite successful unitary state. Island populations, such as those of Crete, comfortably blend strong local pride with Greek nationalism. The belief that Greece has been (and continues to be) threatened by aggressive neighbours (above all Turkey), a nationalist media, Greek government educational policies, active promotion of national ideas by the Orthodox Church of Greece all worked to strengthen nationalism. Anthropological studies of Macedonia demonstrate how intense local pressure reinforced official efforts to Hellenise formerly multi-ethnic communities.34 Portugal has largely avoided a debate over regional identity, although historic and economic gaps do exist between north and south, and the Azores possess an autonomous regional government. Spain’s repeated efforts to acquire the Portuguese kingdom (succeeding between 1580 and 1642) gave a strong boost to Portuguese national identity, as did the remarkable expansion of its empire into the Atlantic and Indian Ocean regions. From the 14th to 20th centuries, Portugal’s ‘imperial mission’, discussed above, provided a sense of national identification and purpose.35 Italian regionalism is a more serious issue. The men who created the Italian state in the 19th century attacked regional identity and throttled local

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patriotism (campanilismo) by introducing and expanding centralised administration. Fascism replaced elected local governments with appointed representatives of the central state. Post-war Italian political leaders have gradually and reluctantly allowed a return to limited local and regional autonomy. Between 1945 and 1948 they set up six ‘special statute regions’ to deal with pressing local demands for autonomy. The experiment succeeded in dampening secessionist sentiments, but at the high price of allowing Sicilian organised crime to gain a large measure of political control over the island. Following the Sicilian example, criminal bands in three other regions used regional political power to coverup illegal economic activities. Since the late 1970s the Italian state has regained some of that control in a slow, bloody battle with these ‘mafias’. Probably no aspect of Italian political culture has proved a greater drain on its relationship with European institutions than the strength of regionally-based organised crime.36 In 1970, after dragging their collective heels for nearly a quarter of a century, Italy’s political parties finally implemented transitory articles 7–11 of the 1948 constitution establishing regional governments for the rest of the peninsula (articles 115–133). The state granted limited tax-gathering powers together with other responsibilities to these new governments and has made further transfers of responsibility over the past three decades. The experiment appears to have improved governmental efficiency, especially in the North, with its stronger traditions of self-government and regional identity. Regional identity also encouraged a development that Italian nationalists feared: the emergence of separatist movements in Piedmont, Lombardy and the Veneto. These three movements might have withered away but for the talents of Umberto Bossi, a formidable demagogue whose skills include a talent for symbolic acts that resonate with a disgruntled minority. Bossi’s Lega Nord, a unified party of Lombards, Venetians, Piedmontese and other ‘northern’ malcontents, has established itself as a small but influential player in Italian politics and may outlast its physically declining founder.37 The Lega’s contributions to Italian political culture include a racist and xenophobic approach to politics most Italians thought were buried with Mussolini. Its rhetoric and actions have inflamed always-sensitive relations between Italy’s north and south as well as with some of its neighbours. On the critical issue of Europe, the Lega has rejected the idea of the EU as a vehicle for escaping the clutches of a southern-dominated ‘Roma ladrona’ (thieving Rome). Instead, it has blamed European institutions for many of the problems facing the north, above all the influx of foreign workers, and for the price hikes and economic dislocation associated with the euro and the European Central Bank’s monetary policies. Although these are minority views, the Lega’s

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frequent presence in government gives Italy an anti-European voice that can impede effective implementation of the EU agenda. Spain faces more serious micro-national ambitions. Both the Basque autonomists and their Catalan counterparts have argued at various times that European unification could provide an escape hatch at the end of a long process of dissolving bonds with Madrid and that Europe’s future could be one of national regions instead of national states. The Lega phenomenon, largely the improvisation of a skilled publicist, lacks historic roots or a connection to the majority of northern Italians. Both Catalans and the Basques are authentic nationalities with long histories, separate languages, unique cultural traditions, strong regional economies, and, in the case of the Basques, a distinct ethnicity. Basque nationalism is tinged with a racism that would seem to preclude cooperation in the European project. Catalan nationalism is assimilationist but offers the counter model of a Europe reconfigured on cultural–linguistic lines, that has to be profoundly disconcerting to political leaders in other EU states with restless minority groups such as Belgium.38 The founders of democratic Spain devised the ‘state of autonomies’, a constitutional pact that recognised historic regionalisms and permits them wide administrative autonomy but holds the country together. The arrangement has maintained national unity but is subject to continuing strains, especially when a coalition government exists in Madrid. Tensions between the central government and the regions were exacerbated under the Popular Party (PP) governments of Jose Maria Aznar (1996–2004). The PP, heir to the centralising nationalism of the right, was unresponsive to demands for expanded powers coming from Basque and Catalan parties, and rejected any negotiations with the Basque Separatist terrorists of ETA. When a coalition government led by the Spanish socialists replaced the PP in March 2004, it faced demands for revision of the existing constitution from the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), which heads the regional government, and from PSOE’s national coalition partner, the United Left (IU). Catalans, including the regional socialist party (PSC), are demanding a restructuring of the state organisation which would move Spain closer to a federalism based on an accord of regions rather than its existing centralist model. The PP has dug in its heels to defeat what it views as a radical reorganisation of the Spanish state, and some discontent appeared in the normally apolitical military.39 Overall, the political culture produced by regionalism offers a challenge to the process of further European integration. In rejecting many of the proclaimed values of ‘Europe’, especially in areas such as centralisation, migration and taxation policy and by insisting on dismembering a member nation and replacing it with constituent micro-nationalities, Basques, Catalans and

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‘Padanians’ constitute a potential roadblock to the smooth cooperation between the EU and its two largest Mediterranean member states.

Church and State Secularisation is further advanced in Europe than any other society, but faces fierce resistance from the Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. Although the conflict of church and state has its roots in the late Roman Empire, 18thcentury reformers gave it a new definition. They combined traditional claims of state sovereignty in the political sphere with the concept that government had the right and duty to reform religious practice, including the confiscation of church properties, to promote economic efficiency and social harmony. The campaign against the abuses of the clergy undercut the legitimacy of both church and state in the Catholic Mediterranean. The Greek national government erected its own state church hierarchy to limit the influence of the Patriarchate of Constantinople, a part of the Ottoman state bureaucracy, and in doing so, reinforced the clergy’s role in defining Greek nationalism. During the 19th century, Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece expropriated large tracts of church land for redistribution, asserted their legal authority over the action of clergy members, dissolved monastic orders, and imposed various types of control over the secular clergy. At the century’s end, one Portuguese writer observed: ‘Formerly the Church was the nation, today it is just a small minority tolerated and protected by the state’.40 The Catholic and Orthodox Churches continue to enjoy a special status in their respective states, but their power over most social policy decisions and their active membership have declined precipitously. Nevertheless, the churches play a significant role in the public policy debate as a quick glance at newspapers in any of the four states demonstrates. Their ties to the national past, their near monopoly of religious identification among the native born and, above all, their ability to articulate standards give them a weight far out of proportion to the numbers of their regular communicants. Individuals frequently find abandoning religiously sanctioned values far more difficult psychologically than breaking from regular church going. This residual influence affects public policy in several areas, especially matters of social behaviour. Differences between Orthodox East and Catholic West remain strong on several theological levels (church structure and authority, nature of the Trinity, divorce, the relation of church to the nation), but on issues of human sexuality and the EU they have fairly common views. The division of the things of Caesar and those of God, as interpreted by European governments and courts, has fairly consistently restricted the role of religion to the individual sphere. Spain has gone the

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furthest in this process by legalising gay marriage (2005), citing the need to be in the forefront of a changing Europe. Italy, after dodging issues about the role of religion in private life, legalised birth control, abortion and divorce during the 1960s and 1970s, has avoided dealing with complicated bio-ethical issues in part because of Church pressure. In 2005, the Vatican harshly attacked the Catholic political leader (and former EU Commission President) Romano Prodi for suggesting civil unions for gays. The Greek Church has repeatedly drawn lines in the sand against further secularisation of Greek life. In the 1980s, Greece’s charismatic Prime Minister, Andreas Papandreou, quickly abandoned efforts to curb the Church’s social and economic power. Papandreou’s prosaic successor, Costas Simitis, successfully linked reform to the requirements of European integration. The Church tried and failed to retain confessional identity on Greek identity cards. It vigorously opposed EU court rulings on a woman’s right to abortion. Only in Portugal, where popular devotion remains strong, do the Church’s social positions consistently command enough support to inhibit social reform minded governments.41 In these battles over social issues, the Catholic and Orthodox churches have shown their ability to resist the process of European integration. The churches’ ability to sway public opinion, while limited, is another of the potential sources of resistance to the European project that sets the political culture of the south off from that of many of its northern partners. Both churches give broad if conditioned support to the overarching concept of European integration. The devil is in the detail for the men of God. The late Pope John Paul II, his successor, Benedict XVI, Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople, and Christodolous, the Archbishop of Athens and All Greece, supported the (2005) effort to pass a European constitutional treaty. At the same time the Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches lobbied intensely for recognition of the Christian roots of Europe in the treaty. ‘Europe’, the Greek historian and former Prime Minister Panyigiotis Kanellopoulos wrote in 1973, ‘is not a geographic location but a set of ideas, rooted in Christianity that has expanded throughout the world becoming the basis of a global civilisation’.42 This position continues to enjoy support among Mediterranean intellectuals and politicians.

The French Connection In June 1796, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Bologna to ‘liberate’ the people of Emilia from centuries of papal ‘oppression’. The youthful conqueror met with the city Senate and informed it that Bologna would regain its ‘ancient liberties’ and the senators, once they swore loyalty to the French Republic, could legislate freely for its peoples, subject only to his ‘final’ approval. He redrew the

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map of central Italy to win their support.43 The French political project for Europe, unity under Paris, has been consistent in one form or another from Napoleon to Chirac. Southern European elites, like many others in Northern and now Eastern Europe, have largely resisted French national objectives even as they copied French models in economics, politics and administration. Until recently, they have accepted the notion that France and Germany were the engines of European growth, even as, to various degrees, they bridled at the way in which Berlin and Paris set about leading that change. Expansion has diluted the ability of the Franco-German ‘engine’ to promote positive change. However, the four states of the European south historically have offered little in the way of alternative solutions to issues of integration, treading warily between the ‘federalist’ visions of Germany and France and the loose confederation ideas associated with Britain.44 Beyond these issues of European power politics, the French connection has been important in the long-term reorientation of four essentially closed and backward societies towards identification with Europe. French literature, art, customs and manners had a profound effect on elites (and ultimately on the larger mass of citizens) in all four states from the 17th century onwards. European identification developed through the prism of French culture as national culinary, literary, theatrical and musical traditions attest.

State and Citizen French influence on southern political culture is best seen in the internal organisation of the state. All four societies (Greece by way of its post-independence Bavarian rulers) possess a common heritage: political, judicial and administrative systems largely based on the French model. All have struggled mightily since the Napoleonic era to make their systems function with the efficiency of the French administration. The belief that states can operate with great efficiency over a broad range of social and economic areas constitutes an enduring, debilitating political heritage in all four states. The difficulties inherent in French-style administration produce a sort of collective schizophrenia in Mediterranean European societies. On critical questions such as the role of the state in society, the citizens of Southern Europe frequently seem to operate on both sides of the issue. All have recent historic reasons to reject a strong state and yet their respective constitutions delegate large areas of responsibility to the central government and proclaim its key role in ameliorating social conflict. All four, and in a special way Greece and Italy, have cultures that vaunt individualism, but have created a system of institutions, law and custom designed to reign in private initiatives, especially in

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economics, in the name of group rights. Centralisation of political and administrative power at the national level has been a hallmark of all four cultures for centuries. Only Spain has embarked on a meaningful decentralisation of that authority. Italian ‘federalism’ operates within strictly defined limits. Local government remains largely an administrative function, although Italy, Spain and Greece have political cultures rooted in the city-state or historic region. Ironically, no area of political culture places Southern Europe closer to the European project. The idea of effective central management, which has been one of the reputed strengths of the EU, is highly attractive to people in the region.45

The Future of the Nation All four states are the products of the intense spirit of nationalism that emerged even before the French revolution but also bears a heavy imprint of French thought and practice. In Spain and Portugal the rooting of nationalism among the mass of citizens, ironically, was connected with resistance to French dominance. Italy gained its nationhood with French support. Greece’s successful struggle owed something to French philhellenism and to the ideals of 1789. In the 19th and early 20th centuries fierce nationalism marked all four states and contributed to national disasters abroad and at home. Since the end of their respective dictatorships, all four have seen serious rethinking on the limits and dangers of national assertion and ethnic exclusivity. This de-emphasis of nationalism has gone the furthest in Italy. Greece, in part because of its continued problems with Turkey, and in part because of a long experience with foreign dominance or intervention in its affairs, retains a strong nationalism that led one prominent and pro-European intellectual to complain about a ‘paranoid character … that sees everywhere conspiracies against the Chosen people, who are always right and are constantly abused by the mighty of the world’.46 However, even in Greece the surrender of state sovereignty to European institutions proceeds with little public complaint. The EU somewhat tarnished reputation for effective central management still gives integration a boost among Southern Europeans. Ironically, given the opposition to many forms of birth control by the Catholic and Orthodox churches, the four states have been in the forefront of Europe’s demographic revolution, with their citizens opting for zero or negative population growth as a tool to preserve and exploit the benefits of a welfare state. Reducing the size of native-born families has opened the states of Europe’s South to the onrush of mass migration from areas outside Europe. Thirty years ago Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece exported their ‘surplus’ population to

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northern Europe and to other ‘Western’ states. These migrants, even those who simply moved internally in Italy and Spain, faced discrimination, low-wage jobs, and limited social prospects, but contributed to building other societies even as their remittances (monetary and cultural) enriched their lands of origin. Now the states in Europe’s south face the question of redefining their national cultures, as they, in turn, are called on to find a means of accommodating and assimilating millions of people of different race, religion and ethnicity. The issue is European-wide, but has a particular salience in states that were accustomed to export populations and, unlike France, had little experience in accommodating them. Despite decades of legislation, and public and private efforts to assist new migrants, the states of Southern Europe, like their northern partners, appear unable to forge a workable programme that will achieve the immediate goal of integrating a new workforce into society and simultaneously imprint national values on them. Most citizens in all four states shy away from the sort of racism associated with large extreme right-wing movements in France and Austria but the migration question, if not properly managed, does carry potential for disrupting the democratic political system. Even traditionally tolerant societies like Spain and Italy have begun to show signs of strain that has been aggravated by Islamic terrorism. Meanwhile, the states of the EU south, both traditionally more lax in migration law enforcement and more sympathetic to the plight of migrants, are under constant pressure from their partners to improve border controls and staunch the flow of ‘illegal’ migration northwards.

FINDING A NICHE Navigating in 21st century Europe is likely to be hard sledding for the states of Southern Europe. Widening membership will dilute their already limited voice. The project of a Mediterranean combined front, repeatedly forwarded by Italy and repeatedly co-opted by France over the past twenty years, appears to have little chance of success. The termination of infrastructural development subsidies and continued whittling away at CAP funds is a middle-term reality. Increasingly, enlargement implies more contributions from former beneficiaries. The states of Europe’s south will have to be content with an even less effective voice in policy making, although Spain is likely to continue to try to punch above its weight in European councils. A lessening of the benefits Europe offers is, in turn, likely to dampen group identification with the EU if not with the ideal of a European common house. Citizens of all four states will have to show more realism about the limitations and its obligations (as opposed to its

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benefits) of Europe. The political cultures of all four states will have to alter to take the maximum gain from a Europe of thirty or more states. Realism, however, is one of the defining features of the political cultures of all four states. In the first, and most obvious, place none of these states can go it alone. The real issue for all four is finding a proper niche from which it can protect its own unique identity. Italy’s situation is the most intriguing. Ten years after a thorough purge of an extremely corrupt patronage system, Italians have discovered that the system continues to flourish and that neither the political left nor right has abandoned the old habits of behind-the-scenes manipulation. The scandal involving ‘foreign’ (European) efforts to acquire two of Italy’s banks has exposed the continuing dominance of nationalism over economic good sense and European regulation. The weakness of Italy’s market economy opens it to the manipulation by a small coterie of politicians and economic operators. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who came to power in 2001 promising a more flexible, market-oriented economy, failed to deliver, largely because, intertwined in conflict of interest issues, he is the prime exhibit of the old system.47 Finding a place in the emerging Europe of twenty-seven (or thirty) will be challenging for all four states involving adopting their political cultures. Traditional patronage-based preferences will need to be modified to compete successfully, a process already painfully underway. Administrative systems inherited from the 18th and 19th centuries also require thorough reform. Whereas the Catholic Church seems to have successfully repositioned itself as a current of opinion within democratic Europe, the Orthodox Church of Greece has a difficult path towards re-defining itself and its role in society. Guarantees of greater responsiveness by the state to the citizen, written into all four state’s constitutions, need to be more completely implemented. Spain’s political culture appears to have the best combination of skilled political leadership, sense of objectives, and firmly grounded economy to succeed. Italy in many ways looks the most disoriented and prey to all the weakness of its political–economic system. However, the Italians have frequently been in this position and prospered. For Greece and Portugal, successfully establishing a lower-middle rung in an increasingly complex Europe would be a signal of success.

NOTES 1

See, for example, Gian Enrico Rusconi, ‘Italia-Germania gioco di specchi’, Corriere della Sera, 21 September 2005; Ernesto Galli della Loggia, ‘Bipolariso con due centri’, ibid., 22 August 2005. During the Cold War, frustrated US officials commented

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frequently on the effects of fantapolitica; see, for example, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–60, vol. 7, pp. 593–597, 600–609 (hereafter cited as FRUS with year, volume and pagination). 2 Arthur Young, Travels during the years 1787, 1788 and 1789, two vols (London, W. Richardson, 1794), 2: pp. 151–164, 316–320; Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand, Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem (Paris, 1968), pp. 75, 128, 170–171, 174–176. 3 One of the difficulties in generalising about this era is the issue of national unification and political independence. In the case of Spain, French Bourbons took over the throne in 1700 and quickly established themselves as a ‘national’ dynasty promoting serious reform. Italy, which had no previous history of national unity, became a national state only in 1860. Greece attained political independence in 1829–33 but was a rump state. Most Greeks still lived under foreign domination. Recouping these areas consumed Greek energies for nearly 150 years. The Greek state’s territorial expansion ended in 1947. Portugal was a unitary state throughout the period. 4 The nature of Spanish (Bourbon) and Italian (Habsburg) reformism can be sampled in the papers of Count Aranda, Leg. 3000\1 nos. 9–12, Estado, Archivo Historico Nacional, Madrid. For example, Aranda memoir to King Carlos III, undated, ibid. On Italian reforms under the Austrian Habsburgs, see Memoranda of Conte Alberti, undated, inserts 6, 9, 13, Consiglio de Reggenza, fascicolo 236, Archivio de Stato di Firenze, Florence. For an overview of this reformism, Peter Gay, The Enlightenment, two vols (New York, 1967–68), vol. 2: pp. 42–50, 488–493, 499–500. Franco Venturi, Settecento riformatori, five vols (Torino, 1969–90), vol. 1: pp. 11–12, 18-19312, 44142608-10, 615–616. Colette Vallat, Brigitte Marin and Gennaro Biondi Naples (Paris, 1998), pp. 84–86, 130. On the ideology of reform, cf. the views of Young, Travels, 2: pp. 290–291 with those of Carlo Cattaneo in Giovanni Galassi (ed.), Carlo Cattaneo, Antologia di Scritti Politici (Bolgona, 1962), pp. 51–66. On the mixed results of reformism, Stanley and Barbara Stein, The Apogee of Empire (Baltimore, MD, 2003). 5 Pierre Rouseeelin, ‘L’Espagne a l’epruve, trente ans après Franco’, Le Figaro, 18 November 2005, discusses these characteristics in regard to modern Spain, arguing that the culture of civility that characterised Spanish democracy appears to be breaking down. Although I think this is an exaggeration, the tone of debate in Spain has been notably harsher since the Socialist Party victory of March 2005. Italian public debate, too, has developed a harsher edge during the years of Silvio Berluconi’s premiership, probably most notably during an exchange in July 2003 in the European parliament as Berluconi assumed the presidency of the EU. On the effects of immoderate rhetoric, Paul Preston, The Coming of the Spanish Civil War (London, 1978), is a suitably cautionary tale. 6 Literally, the term means governor (or helmsman), but president is widely used in Western scholarly work on the era. 7 Greece was the first to introduce male universal suffrage after its 1843 revolution. Italy was the last to adopt universal suffrage between 1913 and 1919. Women got the right to vote after 1945. 8 Speech at the University of Madrid by the Minister of Education, Romanones, undated but 1901, Leg 27 (3), Carte Romanones 9/8260, Real Academia da la Historia,

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Madrid (RAH). Also comments on Italy in Vallatt et al., Naples, pp. 147–150, 157–158; Stendahl, Rome, Naples et Florence (Paris, 1987), pp. 204–207, and the comments of the US Ambassador (Marsh) in FRUS 1880, pp. 645–647. Also, John Davis, Conflict and Control (London, 1988). These issues are treated in Gerasimos Augustinos, Consciousness and History: Nationalist Critics of Greek Society, 1897–1914 (Boulder, CO, 1977); Stathis Gourgouris, Dream Nation (Stanford, 1996); Thanos Veremis, The Military in Greek Politics (London, 1997); Sandie Holguín, Creating Spaniards (Madison, WI, 2002), Jordi Nidal, El fracaso de la Revolución industrial en España (Barcelona, 1999); Jose Ortega y Gasset, La rebellion de las masas (1930–37) (Madrid, 2003). See also Albert Schram, Railways and the Formation of the Italian State in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1997). 9 Compare Jose Alvarez Junco, The Emergence of Mass Politics in Spain (Brighton, 2002), George Mavrogordatos, Stillborn Republic (Berkeley, 1983) for Greece; Adrian Lyttelton, The Seizure of Power (London, 1973) for Italy, and High Kay, Salazar and Modern Portugal (New York, 1970). The last is admittedly favourable to the regime but usefully underlines the ideology and choices of the dictatorship. 10 Dominique Pouchin, Mario Soares. Entretein (Paris, 2000), pp. 36–38. A. James Gregor, Italian Fascism and Developmental Dictatorship (Princeton, 1979), contributed the title but otherwise offers nothing to make the case. Gentile, Emilio, La Religion Fasciste (Paris, 2003 [Italian edition, 1993], pp. 118–119, 137–141, 145–146, 170, 253–254, 316). Compare comments on Mussolini’s arrival in power in minutes of 22 December 1922 meeting of the Bolgona Chamber of Commerce, Atti del archivio della camera di commercio, serie V: adunanze, ASB. On modernisation issues, see also letter from Chamber of Commerce to Ministry of Corporations, 3 August 1938, Atti, serie IX: Aeroporto, RUNA/Contributo, ibid. On Primo’s dictatorship in Spain, Shlomo Ben-Ami, Fascism from Above (Oxford, 1983), and on the Greek version, Panagiotis Vatikiotis, Popular Autocracy in Greece (London, 1998). 11 On the drive for modernisation in 19th century Southern Europe, see the comments of US representatives in Madrid and Athens, Foreign Relations of the United States 1872, vol. 1, pp. 229–230, and 1873, vol. 2, pp. 973–982. American officials overseas took a deep interest in these issues throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Also, see the observations of Frank Smothers,William and Elisabeth MacNeill, Report on the Greeks (New York, 1948). Documentation on Spanish modernisation drives is in 51\122 Junta de Movilisaciones de industrias civiles, assuntos generales, presidencia del gobierno, Archivo General de la Aministracion (AGA), Alcala Henares (Madrid). 12 Interviews with Alvaro Cunhal and Santiago Carrillo in Oriana Fallaci, Intervista con la storia (Milan, 1977), pp. 526–567. Michalis Spourdalakis, The Rise of the Greek Socialist Party (London, 1988) on PASOK and its organisation. Karamanlis to Papagos, 1 December 1954, Konstantinos Karamanlis, Κωνσταντι´νος Καραµανλη′ς: Αρχει´ο [Karamanlis: Archive] 12 vols (Athens, 1992–96), vol. 1, pp. 213–214. 13 For a comparative overview of these processes, see Guilio Spinelli, Southern Europe since 1945 (London, 1995). Among the many books on the democratic transitions in individual states, Kenneth Maxwell, The Making of Portuguese Democracy (Cambridge,

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1995), Raymond Carr and Juan Pablo Fusi, Spain Dictatorship to Democracy (London, 1981), and Robert Ventresca, From Fascism to Democracy (Toronto, 2004). 14 The text of the Italian constitution is on www.Vesco.com/constitution/italyconstitution. Before the dramatic events of 1990–93, most political scientists tried to stress the gap between the constitution’s rather careful delineation of powers and the practice of Italy’s governing class in books with suggestive titles such as ‘Republic without Government’ or ‘Democracy, Italian Style’, Giovanni DeLuna, Storia del Partito d’azione (Milan, 1982) and Paolo Spraino, Comunisti Europei e Stalin (Torino, 1983) on the accommodation process. 15 A cranky, conservative and critically acute survey of the process of creating a party state is Giuseppe Maranini, Storia del potere in Italia (Bari, 1967). On the PCI’s tormented bout with modernisation, Stephen Gundle, Between Hollywood and Moscow (Durham, NC, 2000). 16 The debate over the effects of Italy’s cautious post-1993 changes has remained ongoing, reigniting at every political crisis. For the centre right, see the editorial comments of Giovanni Sartori, Corriere della Sera, 3 and 15 October 2005, Angelo Panebianco, ibid., 23 August 2005, from the left Lucia Annunzuata, La Stampa, 3 October 2005, and from the optic of a former diplomat, Boris Baincheri, ibid., 13 September 2005. 17 Further complicating the centre-left’s situation is the presence of small but important ‘purists’ who support parties such as ‘Communist Refoundation’. While these small parties can never rule on their own, they divert enough votes to make cooperation both in political campaigning and in subsequent formation essential for the centre-left. Since Refoundation has nothing to gain from serious compromise, it has both the power and the inclination to bring down governments of the centre-left, as it did to Romano Prodi’s government in 1998. 18 Washington Post, 24 October 2005, for a summary of Berlusconi’s rule by Daniel Willaims. Also Pierluigi Battista, ‘Dietrologie su bankitalia’, Corriere della Sera, 9 September 2005. In November 2005, with elections in the offing and his coalition badly divided, Berlusconi rallied them to push through a ‘federalist’ reform designed to meet some of Bossi’s demands while maintaining a strong central government. See ‘Quindici anni sprecati?’ Corriere della Sera, 17 November 2005, for an analysis. 19 For example, editorial comment by Gallai della Loggia, Corriere della Sera, 19 October 2005, by Panebianco, ibid., 23 October 2005, and Sergio Romano, ibid., 5 October 2005. Also Annunziata, La Stampa, 24 October 2005. 20 Embassy in Spain to Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 28 April 1953 and 6 October 1953, Espagna, vol. 119, Europe, Records of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Paris. On the US analysis of the Spanish situation, see FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 6, pp. 1980–85. For the linking of tourism to development, see the documentation in Primo assemblea nacional del turismo, 51\4857, Ministero de Planificacion, Presidencia del gobierno, AGA. 21 Presdiencia del gobierno, Objectivos para el Cuatreinio 1968–71, 51\4248 II Plan de Desarrollo, Ministero de Planificacion, Presidenza del gobierno, AGA. Draft: ‘Criterios, Objectivos y Tecnicas de la Politica de Desarrollo Regional’, no date, but ca. 1964, 51\4857, ibid.

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Objectivos y tecnicas …’ [op. cit.]. Undated memorandum ‘Desarrollo Regional’, II Plan de Desarrollo, 51\4842, Ministero de Planificacion, Presidenza del gobierno, AGA. 23 Basque extremists’ demands include both Navarre and the French Basque provinces. On the development of their ideology from a perspective favourable to independence, see Robert Clark, The Basque Insurgents (Madison, WI, 1984). Basque terror provoked an equally unacceptable reaction from part of the Spanish state; see Paddy Wordsworth, Dirty War, Clean Hands (Cork, Repubic of Ireland, 2001). 24 The Maias. Trans. P.M. Pinheiro and A. Stevens. (Baltimore, 1988), p. 99. See also the US Embassy comments on the Atlantic ‘Memory’ of the Portuguese ruling class and its deleterious effects in FRUS 1952–54, vol. 6, pp. 1735–1737. 25 ‘Lessons of Spain and Portugal’, International Herald Tribune, 19 July 2005. Soares, Entretein, pp. 111–113, 120. The fear and effects of the military’s ‘socialisation’ are vividly described in Antonio Lobo Antunes, Act of the Damned (New York, 1993). Euroscepticism is at the centre of Jose Saramago, The Stone Raft (New York, 1995). 26 For a discussion of the creation of a post-Salazar national identity and democratic political culture, see the essays in Antonio Costa Pinto (ed.), Modern Portugal (Palo Alto, CA, 1998). Also Maxwell, The Making of Portuguese Democracy [op. cit.]. 27 Konstantinos Karamanlis, television address, 15 August 1974, Karamanlis, Ο Καραµανλη´ς της Μεταπολι´τευσης (Athens, 1993), pp. 18–20, Karamanlis to Kissinger, 16 August 1974, Karamanlis, Αρχει´ο, vol. 8, pp. 96–97. Notes on 2 September 1974 meeting with Karamanlis, Ted A. Couloumbis, 1971–74. Σηµειω´ σεις Ενο´ς Πανεπιστηµιακου´ [1971–74: Notebooks of a Professor] (Athens, 2002), pp. 377–378. Karamanlis plans for constitutional reform and his later implementation of such a reform are the subject of C.M. Woodhouse, Karamanlis (Oxford, 1982). The sense of pervading inequalities in Greek society is a sub-theme of the ‘Inspector Charitos’ novels of Petros Makaras, ´Αµυνα Ζω´νης [Zone Defence] and Ο Τσε Αυτοκτο´νησε [Che Committed Suicide]. 28 British thought on Greece did not vary greatly from US views. See, for example, reports by Ambassador Stewart to the Foreign Office, 7 May and 10 October 1967, FCO 9/120 and 9/121, Records of the Foreign and Colonial Office (FCO), Public Record Office (PRO), Kew, Richmond, Surrey, UK. On the alternate tugs of the past and the future in Greek politics, a good starting point is John Petropoulos, Politics and Statecraft in the Kingdom of Greece (New Haven, CT, 1968), pp. 30–42. Another keen observer of Greece, Patrick Leigh Fermor, tackled the subject in Roumeli (London, 1966), pp. 106–115. On Marxism and its disillusions from a Greek perspective, see the semi-autobiographical Alki Zei, Achilles’ Fiancé [Η Αρραβωνιαστικια´ του Αχιλλε´α] (Athens, 1991). 29 Takis Michas, Unholy Alliance (College Station, TX, 2002), p. 79. 30 Greek resentment is not unnatural given the prolonged pummelling it received in the Western press as the 2004 Olympics approached. Much of this writing was encouraged by the International Olympic Committee. The net result will probably be to discourage the foreign investment the Athens Olympics were designed to attract.

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One of the best sources for understanding what Papandreou told the Greeks are his speeches, collected in Panagiotes Kretikos (ed.), Η Ρη´ξη [The Radical/Roots] Athens, 1998 and Andreas Papandreou, Απο´ το Π.Α.Κ. στο ΠΑ.ΣΟ.Κ [From PAK to PASOK] (Athens, 1976). See also Andreas Panatazopoulos, ‘Για το Λαο´ και το ´Εθνος [For the People and the Nation] (Athens, 2001) and Giannis Voultepses, Η Πολιτικη´ ∆ιαθη´κη του Γεωργι´ου Παπανδρε´ου και η Αντι´σταση του Ανδρε´α [The Political Testament of George Papandreou and the Resistance of Andreas] (Athens, 1985). A classic description of Papandreou’s methods is Robert Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts (New York, 1993), pp. 260–281. The contrast between PASOK’s 1980s (Papandreou) party line and its Simitis version can be sampled in Ministry of Press and Mass Media, Greece: Your Strategic Partner in the New Millennium (Athens, 1999), a publication distributed to American policymakers and think tanks. 32 On Spain’s exaggerated social class system, Miguel Cervantes Don Quixote and Exemplary Tales provide a good introduction, as do Picaresque novels such as Lazarello de Tormas and The Swindler. On the problem of decline, see J.H. Elliott, The Count-Duke of Olivares (New Haven, CT, 1986). The persistence of social divisions in Spain was fodder for the pen of the great 19th-century novelist Beinto Perez Galdos, as in Fortuna y Jacinta (English translation, London, 1987). Guido Quazza, La decadenza italiana nella storia europea (Turin, 1971). Marla Susan Stone, The Patron State (Princeton, NJ, 1988). On the perpetuation of patronage in modern Italy, Judith Chubb, Patronage, Power, and Poverty in Southern Italy (Cambridge, 1982). Brain Church, Learn Greek in 25 Years (Athens, 1999) offers a tongue-in-cheek analysis of Greek patronage. On a more serious note, William MacNeill, The Metamorphosis of Greece since World War II (Chicago, 1978). On the Spanish patronage system, Emilia Pardo Barzon, The House of Ulloa (English translation, London, 1990), and Javier Moreno Luzon, Romanones, caciquismo y politica liberal (Madird, 1998). For an overview Ernest Gellner and John Waterbury, Patrons and Clients in Mediterranean Society (London, 1977). 33 Daniel Conversi, The Basques, the Catalans and Spain (London, 1997) on the complexities of the relationships. On the effects of de Gaulle’s actions on the European idea, see the comments of Italian foreign minister Giuseppe Pella and Portuguese dictator Antonio Salazar to US officials in FRUS 1958–60, vol. 17, pp. 532–537, 638–640. 34 Thanos Veremis et al. Εθνικη ´ Ταυτο ´τητα και Εθνικισµο´ς στη Νεω´τερη Ελλα′δα [National Identity and Nationalism in Modern Greece] (Athens, 1997), Anastasia Karakasidou, Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood (Chicago, 1997) on local pressures for Hellenification. On education, see the papers in the issue ‘Youth and History’, Journal of Modern Greek Studies, vol. 18, no. 2, 2000, especially pp. 229–260. Dimitri Pentzopoulos, The Balkan Exchange of Populations and its Impact on Greece (London, 2002), pp. 61–63, 67, 126–127. Douglas Dakin, The Greek Struggle for Macedonia, 1897–1913 (Thessaloniki, 1966). Peter Mackridge and Eleni Yannakakis (eds), Ourselves and Others (New York, 1997). 35 The classic definition of Portuguese national mission and identity is the epic poem, the Lusiades. For historical interpretation of the idea, see Peter Henry, Prince Henry the Navigator (New Haven, CT, 2001), Sanjay Subrahmanyan, The Career and

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Legend of Vasco da Gama (Cambridge, 1997), and Richard Herr and John Polt (eds), Iberian Identity (Berkeley, CA, 1989). Portugal’s ‘mission’ was roundly mocked by Eca de Quieros in The Illustrious House of Ramirez (English edition, 1964). 36 While scholarly studies abound, probably the best way to approach the mafia phenomenon is through the work of southern Italian novelists such as Leonardo Sciascia, Andrea Camilleri and Lampedusa. See also Nicola Tranfaglia (ed.), Mafia, politica e affari, 1943–91 (Bari, 1992). On the administrative background to regionalism, Robert Fried, The Italian Prefects (New Haven, CT, 1963), and Philip Morgan, ‘I primi podesta fascisti’, Storia contemporanea 9 (June 1978), pp. 407–423. A recent take on the issues involved is James Miller, Politics in a Museum (Westport, CN, 2002). 37 Robert Putnam, Making Democracy Work (Princeton, 1993), on the issues of political culture dividing north and south. 38 On the nature of nationalisms in Spain, a particularly incisive set of comments from the beginning of the 20th century is ‘El Silence de Catalunya’, Leg 14 (20), Carte Romanones, RAH. For a couple of contemporary discussions of the issue linking past and present, Juan-Jose Lopez Burniol, ‘El nacionalismo español’, El Pais, 9 September 2005 and Angel de la Fuente, ‘reflexiones sobre el pryecto de Estatuto catalán’, ibid., 10 October 2005. From the Catalan perspective, see the volume in the history of Catalonia, Borga de Requer and Joan B. Culla, El Franquisme i la transicion democratica (Barcelona, 2000). On the broader questions of national identity, among many titles, Bartolome Bennassar, The Spanish Character (Berkeley, 1979), and Jaime Vicens Vives, Approaches to the History of Spain (Berkeley, 1967). On the impact on other regions, ‘Not far from Galaica’, El Pais (English edition), 18 June 2005. 39 Juan Trias Vejarano, ‘Se puede soslayar la identidad nacional?’, El Pais, 15 August 2005, for a summary of the legal and constitutional questions involved. While issues relating to nationalism and national identity dominate the editorial pages of most of Spain’s major newspapers, the debate in the left of centre El Pais is particularly interesting because it strongly supports Spain’s Socialist government; see editorial comments and stories on 22 August, 10, 20, 21, 30 September and 24 October 2005, for the flavour of the debate. In November 2005, Spain’s parliament passed a bill recognising greater Catalan autonomy, subject to rationalising this programme with existing constitutional law (see news vote, www.bbc.co.uk). 40 Memorandum on the Alienation of Ecclesiastical Property, no date but postMarch 1773, Memoria e altri fogli del conte Alberti, fasc. 236, Consilgio di Reggenza, ASF, and report by the Austrian Ambassador in Parma (Count de Bombellez) to Metternich, 14 February 1832, karton 19, Parma 1832, Staatenabteilungen, HHSA for an analysis of church–state problems. Eca de Quieros, The Sins of Father Amaro (New York, 1964), p. 329 for quote. 41 See statement by Archbishop Christodoulos, 7 July 2004, www.ecclesia.gr. Vasilios Markides, ‘Science and the Orthodox Church in 18th and early 19th century Greece: sociological considerations’, Balkan Studies, vol. 29, pp. 265–285, 1988. On the difficulties of Portuguese reformers, ‘Portuguese Abortion Vote Denied’, BBC News, 29 October 2005, news.bbc.co.uk with attached reference links to other recent stories. Prodi’s

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problems are summarised in ‘European Press Review’, 13 September 2005, ibid. On the positive role the church played in forming a new democratic political culture in Spain, see Victor Perez Diaz, The Return of Civil Society (Harvard, 1993). On the more traditional role of the Church, see William Callahan, Church, Politics, and Society in Spain, 1750–1874 (Cambridge, MA, 1984). 42 Kanellopoulos, ∆οκι´µια και α´λλα Κει´µενα Σαρα ´ντα Πε´ντα Ετω ´ν [Forty-Five Years of Articles and Other Papers] (Thessaloniki, 1980), pp. 248–251. 43 Minutes of a meeting between Bonaparte and the Senate, 20 June 1796, Archivio Napoliteonico, Senato Provvisorio, 1796–97, busta 1/1, Archivio Storico de Bologna. See also the proclamation of the Senate, 21 June 1796, and Atti of the Senate, 8 August 1796, ibid. 44 Graham Bowley, ‘Globalisation drives a wedge into EU’, International Herald Tribune, 23 October 2005, on European problems with France. ‘Abajo los Pirineos’, El Pais, 18 October 2005, and ‘Huelga muy francesa’, ibid., 5 October 2005, on the French ‘exception’, ‘Arcitaliana’, La Stampa, 13 September 2005, on ties with the USA. Interview with Felipe Gonzales, El Pais (English edition), 12 June 2005. 45 From a plethora of books and articles about this issue, see Noberto Bobbio, Ideological Profile of Twentieth Century Italy (Princeton, NJ, 1995); Victor Perez Diaz, Spain at the Crossroads (Harvard, 1999); Veremis et al. (eds), Εθνικη´ Ταυτο´τητα. On law breaking and its relationship with faith, John Allen, ‘At the Vatican exceptions make the rule’, New York Times, 27 September 2005. On the largely unexplored aspect of this paper, the role of the military in creating political culture in Southern Europe, see the manifestos of the Juntas of Defence (1917), 9/8243, Leg 14 (19-13) Carte Romanones, and of the Arm of Artillery (1926) 9/8232 Leg 2 (33) ibid., both RAH. Also comments of Thanos Veremis, Greek Military, pp. 6–7, and Alvarez Junco, Mass Politics, pp. 43–46. 46 Nikos Mouzelis quoted in Michas, Unholy Alliance, p. 87. 47 Panebianco, ‘Lobby, politica e magistrate’, Corriere della Sera, 14 August 2005. See also, for the left, Lucia Annunziata, ‘Ritratto della classe dirigente’, La Stampa, 13 August 2005, and from the perspective of a ‘Europeanist’, Mario Monti, ‘L’italianita offesa’, Corriere della Sera, 12 August 2005. For a summary of Italy’s woes, see ‘Addio, Dolce Vita: A Survey of Italy’, The Economist, 25 November 2005.

CHAPTER 9 The Balkan Political Culture in Historical Perspective Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and Andrei Pippidi

RELATIVISM NUMBER ONE:THREE MEANINGS OF POLITICAL CULTURE Making sense of the political post-Communist transition has proved a difficult task. At least the economic transition had a clear start (the command economy) and a clear target (the free market). In terms of political culture even the word ‘transition’ has little meaning, and the early warning that East European studies are still far away from forging a theory of change of political culture has not yet been rendered obsolete. Firstly, do we actually know where East European political culture comes from? From before the Communist past, a time that adepts of cultural legacy theories depict as doomed by ‘etatism’ and ‘collectivism’ (Schopflin 1978), or corrupt to such an extent that it perverted even Communism (Jowitt 1993)? From the less remote Communist times, assuming that the communist regimes were successful in imposing their culture to both the elites and the community? And how did the community political culture look during Communism? As all analysts point out, comparative research in Eastern Europe suffers from a ‘tabula rasa’ problem, as the first partly reliable comparable data were collected only as late as 1990 (Plasser & Pribersky 1996, p. 5). Surveys before this date are suspect of pro-regime bias and therefore useless. Secondly, where are these societies heading for? Towards a liberal, or Western, democratic political culture? But does such an entity even exist, or rather we deal with a broad panel of different liberal cultures, from the individualistic Anglo-Saxons to the more collectivistic Germans, from the ‘feminine’ Scandinavians to the ‘masculine’ Americans? Differences in institutional culture among West Europeans are a common complaint within the European Union (EU), where a ‘Northern’ culture and a ‘Mediterranean’ one are allegedly in tense cohabitation. And even assuming we know the two ends of this continuum, what lies in between? What is ‘transition’? Is it a mixture of competing

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residual beliefs with newly acquired ones? When does the moment to decide which ones have managed to get the upper hand for good come? Three distinct meanings of ‘political culture’ have been used in connection with post-Communist Europe so far. According to the first one, ‘political culture’ is a configuration arising out of salient patterns of public opinion with regard to politics, following the traditional approach of Almond and Verba. By aggregating individual psychological data this view creates the ‘national’ on the basis of individual representations of politics which are shared by most of the population. Two distinct problems arise here: first, that majorities of public opinion shift constantly on a considerable number of issues; secondly, that many crucial political issues fall short of meeting the approval of clear and salient majorities. The former problem has an outstanding example in Eastern Europe. There the number of people who say in surveys that single party systems are better has been gradually getting smaller, year after year, since 1991 when a Times Mirror poll first asked this question. The latter problem often emerges in the headlines whenever polls report that public opinion is divided. On many political issues, from war to abortion, pollsters report that we face two ‘countries’. We have two Americas, one in favour of gun control, the other in favour of unlimited freedom; and two East Europes, one constantly voting in favour of former Communist parties, the other voting in favour of former antiCommunist parties. Majorities shift across time periods and across issues, making ‘national’ political cultures hard to grasp. If we are to believe Inglehart’s (1997) analysis, the whole post-Communist world is only one ‘culture’, where Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox and Confucianists alike share the same earthly ideals of survival above any more refined ones. The second meaning of political culture refers to what the French call ‘mentalités’. Mentalities are more than attitudes towards politics: they are actual behaviours rooted in widespread norms regarding politics. Those go far beyond current issues of politics, and are infrequently polled. Putting one’s dentist on the payroll of the European Commission as a consultant is more acceptable in some cultures than in others. Relying on majorities rather than building a broad consensus over an issue is, again, a common pattern in some countries, but not in others. Mentalities are better understood as ‘informal institutions’, such as described by Douglas North, widespread societal norms and procedures. It was also North (1990) who remarked that informal institutions emerge out of habit. So in times of political and economic change they often reflect the formal institutions of the previous, rather than of the current regime. This observation may be of crucial importance in observing post-Communist societies. This approach to ‘political culture’ is common especially in policy literature. Studies on the legal or business culture of post-Communist Europe

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have often adopted this ‘institutionalist’ perspective. It was even argued that any other approach than deciphering the logic of informal institutions out of their specific historical context cannot but fail to explain post-Communism. Finally, there is a more ‘metaphysical’ vision of political culture, shared by cultural theory, area studies and comparative politics. This follows in the steps of 19th-century German thought (represented, for instance, by Wilhelm von Humboldt and Leopold Ranke), according to which history is an expression of national ‘character’, or culture. In the 20th century it met the endorsement of many famous thinkers, from George F. Kennan to Samuel Huntington, or Aaron Wildafsky. Insidiously, but persistently, it is this particular vision of political culture, which, more often than not, colours the media stories on a specific country. Similarly, Carl Schmitt’s distinction between politics and the concept of the political was rediscovered in recent decades by scholars seeking a more anthropological approach in order to highlight the ‘political’ texture embedded within the general cultural tissue. As Geertz once put it, ‘Culture ... is not cults and customs, but the structure of meaning through which men give shape to their experience, and politics is not coups and constitutions, but one of the principal arenas in which such structures publicly unfold’ (Geertz 1973, pp. 311–312). Needless to say, the more difficult a political transition is, and the less relevant public opinion data are in explaining actual regime performance, the more one turns to the third variant of political culture to explain things. Such an approach works for politicians, because it lays the blame on history and the people, diminishing elite agency. It is convenient for constituencies, because it justifies poor electoral choices, subsuming that the political culture of elites, regardless of their ideology, is to be blamed, so one need not pay attention to politics. Finally, it is convenient for the international community because it provides an excuse to overlook certain countries, seen as doomed because of bad history, not neglect. The Balkans are almost as a general rule viewed within the context of the last meaning of political culture, with grand cultural explanations provided to explain poor performance (Wildafsky 1987, Jowitt 1993). Formal institutions – such as lengthy rule by Slobodan Milosevic, or Ion Iliescu – prove difficult to separate from informal institutions – people’s habit to vote for politicians, who identify more with the state – and pure attitudes, such as residual Communism, collectivism and so forth. This suggests that any meaningful discussion of political culture must go far beyond the examination of cross-sectional surveys on public opinion, even beyond models created on the basis of such surveys. In other words, if political culture is treated as an independent variable, the evidence is there to show political culture matters little, or not at all. Outside factors (the present decision of the EU to enlarge also to the Balkans) and

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structural constraints (Communist heritage, symmetrical federalism of Communist Yugoslavia) have such an overwhelming importance in explaining the trajectories of Balkan countries that little room is left for other explanations. If political culture is treated, however, as a dependent variable, and our concern is more to explain what triggers changes in political culture and how does political culture relate to political change in general, the story is worth following. Comparative surveys1 show little to no difference in the degree people in the Balkans do not observe the law, for instance. It seems that they are no more willing than other East Europeans to cheat on tax, travel without paying a fare on public transportation, and infringe other laws. Objective data, as monitored by the World Bank or the European Commission, point, however, to the fact that legal indicators of Balkan countries reflect a performance of law and order agencies inferior to Central Europe. We have to look at the relationship between formal institutions, informal institutions and public opinion to understand the complexity of political culture in times of dramatic political and social change. In other words, we have to follow the horizontal causal links to capture the complexity of political change, placing public opinion in a broader context.

RELATIVISM NUMBER TWO: IS THIS A REGION? Regions are conventional constructs, made to fit scholars’ or diplomats’ needs. According to different criteria, one can build different ‘regions’, and the exercise is legitimate only as long as borders from one set of criteria do not spill over onto the other. The post-Communist world, European, or non-European, is roughly one region, if we judge the clusters of public opinion of Ronald Inglehart.2 But post-Communist Europe can be divided into three groups, according to its treatment by the European Union or North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), although these maps overlap to some extent. The first group is made up of the eight countries which were supposed to join the EU by the end of 2004; the second group is made of Russia and most of the successor states of the Soviet Union, whose future is clearly distinct from that of Europe; and the third group comprises countries that for various reasons missed the first group but cannot, because of their geographical location, belong to the second group, the grey zone known as ‘the Balkans’. The Balkans is the focus of our research. At the same time, we are aware that some of the negative phenomena, which gave it its sad fame, may be merely attributions, or features held in common with the whole Eastern Europe, as some of the most reputed histories of the region tend to show.3 Seventy years ago, Southeastern Europe included only five countries: Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania and Greece (sometimes Turkey was

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added). Nowadays there are eight of them (the supplementary ones being Croatia, Bosnia and Macedonia, while Yugoslavia is reduced to the association of Serbia and Montenegro, with Kosovo having the provisional status of an international protectorate). The former Soviet republic of Moldova and the Romanian province of Transylvania are sometimes in, sometimes out. Thus the frontiers of Southeastern Europe seem movable according to the international situation, but also to the social development of a community at a certain date. This is an argument for crossing national borders and discussing general problems. Distinctions between ‘the West’ and Southeastern Europe have always been recognised by mediaevalists. The author who did most for introducing the concept of Southeastern Europe in historiography, the Romanian N. Iorga, treated the subject from Antiquity up to the early 20th century including the Balkan wars, but this achievement was not imitated by later historians. Georg Stadtmuller’s Geschichte Sudosteuropas (Munich 1950) concentrates mostly on the Byzantine period to the neglect of the Ottoman and post-Ottoman times. In studies of 19th- and 20th-century nationalism and nation-building, the Balkans are discussed precisely because the region is associated with ethnic diversity, mass violence and intricate wars. At least two recent books have questioned the legitimacy of such definitions, showing that they reflected less geographical or socio-economic realities and more the still prevailing cultural stereotypes: Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe (Stanford, 1994), and Maria Todorova, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford, 1997). Historians have been more successful in perpetuating the traditional prejudice that ‘the other Europe’ was, since the 10th century, alien to the factors that shaped the Western model. What remains doubtful is the likelihood to prove that, East from Trieste and South from the Dniestr, there was (and still is) a community of some coherence. What we seem to have is, in the words of Stevan K. Pavlowitch, author of a recent History of the Balkans, 1804–1945 (London and New York, 1999), ‘a unity imposed by history’. For our part, we acknowledge that more things are common to South-East Europe than just its non-readiness to join the EU in 2004–07,4 a negative element. This part of post-Communist Europe has a common Ottoman and Byzantine legacy; and a common culture, being mostly Christian Orthodox, used to the religious autonomy allowed by the Ottomans and to the existence of numerous denominations; and a shared experience of ethnic difference, in every country of the region the dominant ethnic group have to share both the pre-modern and the modern state with other groups. These countries are also considerably poorer than Central European countries. The national income per capita in 1938 was US$81 in Romania, US$80 in Yugoslavia, and US$71 in Bulgaria, compared with US$120 in Hungary, US$170 in Czechoslovakia and US$440 in Britain. Between Romania’s 81 and Poland’s 100 the difference was

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not that great, which makes the boundaries of this kind of cluster always doubtful. The percentage of the population depending on agriculture was historically another common element, Yugoslavia’s seventy-four per cent matching well with Romania’s and Bulgaria’s seventy-one per cent (1930), with Hungary at fifty-one per cent and Greece at fifty per cent. The World Bank classifies them presently as ‘lower-middle-income economies’, together with Maghreb countries, Central America, China, Russia, Turkey, but no Central European ones. That means a 2001 GNI per capita5 at US$1,710 for Romania and US$1,560 for Bulgaria, compared with Slovakia’s US$3,700, the Russian Federation’s US$1,760, and Yugoslavia’s – what was left of it – US$940. In short, countries of the region belong to the same cluster of rural underdeveloped societies. Politically, they were all monarchies, more or less constitutional, endowed with Western dynasties, yet again another sign of Western interventionism (otherwise they would not have even been granted independent statehood at the Berlin Congress in 1878). We mentioned above the Byzantine and Ottoman legacies together because of their specific intricacies. The Ottoman Empire not only granted religious autonomy to the Balkan peoples, but it also adopted many of the Byzantine political practices, making them its own. This meant that Balkan societies were left behind on two accounts. On one hand, they followed passively the Ottomans in their stagnation and decline, as Balkan societies were both politically and economically subordinated. On the other hand, institutions such as the Church did not evolve, but remained suspended within the time-framework of the late Byzantine Empire. Instead of the traditional symbiosis of church and state, the Orthodox ecclesiastical society found itself prisoner of the Moslem emperor on whose protection it relied. Its conservatism was the result of limitation of Church activity to the spiritual domain and to the administration of terrestrial possessions. The main tasks of Orthodox theologians were to combat any attempt of conversion, either to Islam or to Catholicism. When the challenges of the modern world became more insistent, at the end of the 18th century, the reaction was the monastic effort at recovery of the contemplative tradition on Mount Athos and in Moldavia. The lasting impact of these two legacies on the Balkans’ present political institutions and culture can therefore be summarised as follows.

Social Mostly because of the Ottoman sharing land holding system, which was at the heart of the Ottoman Empire, as well as the inheritance traditions preserved in many places, the Balkans emerged from pre-modern times with small peasant

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holdings as the main form of property in rural areas. Furthermore, there were no autonomous cities. The Ottoman city, like the Byzantine city before, was state-centred and state-managed. Unlike Bulgaria and Serbia, the Romanian principalities enjoyed limited autonomy, so they used to have large estates, but they adopted the small-holding property model at the end of World War I, under the pressure of populism and in imitation of the model existing in neighbouring countries. The scarcity of political and professional elites is the third central element of the Ottoman model. Even in the so-called autonomous principalities the Ottomans appointed the rulers, the tenure being usually a short one. The rulers for their part treated accordingly positions within their government, positions that came with estates. This created an aristocracy indirectly dependent on the Ottoman Empire. This aristocracy displayed outrageous features of ‘consumerism’, in spending their estates’ revenues and never investing them in their development, a sensible choice given the uncertainty of their property status. In the rest of the Balkans, there was no aristocracy at all, meaning that the power of the central state was all but unbalanced, being supported only by its own forces of repression. The concept of monarchy and its exterior appearance, in its grandeur and ambition, was what rulers from the Balkan Peninsula to Muscovy followed from the Byzantine model, as historians showed.6 However, the Byzantine era left behind some legacies salient enough to matter within the context of the premodern and modern political culture of the Balkans. Those were, in brief, the following. The first is the historical inferiority of the Church to the ruler, missing the historical tension among the two that created the first source of power polarity in Western Europe. Not only did the ruler pick the candidate of his liking from pretenders to the highest Church position, but the prelates could be deposed at the ruler’s will. In the Ottoman provinces, the heads of the Orthodox Church were confined to an administrative and judicial role. In the autonomous Danubian principalities, they were formally custodians of the ruler’s legitimacy, but their rare attempts to venture into political affairs were immediately obstructed. The second legacy was the autocracy of Byzantine despots which grew roots in the Balkans. The Romanian princes knew of no separation of powers, even when they did not deliberately lay claim to the political heritage of Byzantium. Western constitutionalism found little support in the history of Romania as late as the first half of the 19th century. In his book on the common character of Balkan institutions, Iorga lost patience, seeing the reference to separation of powers within the state invoked so often, while the traditional Byzantine way continued through the 19th century, which meant that all powers were concentrated in the hands of the monarch. Finally, the third Byzantine legacy is the absence of the Germanic, later continental, model of one son

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inheriting all. Even under the modern legislation, inspired from Western models, the rural society continued to exist according to the old rules and conceptions.

Political: Ottoman Tradition The absence of autonomous cities meant the absence of civil society and of some counterbalance to the power of local governors. The absence of a domestic aristocracy throughout the Balkans meant the absence of an equilibrium between the central government power and the periphery. Since the 17th century and as a result of the decline of the Ottoman empire, appointments and dismissals of administrators in the periphery were arbitrary, often only regulated by clientelism, and bad governance became a regular occurrence. Elites and people suffering alike by bad governance developed informal devices to keep themselves and their families afloat. The overwhelming presence of a hyper-regulatory state in the life of these provinces led therefore to a generalised behaviour of rules avoidance. The need to act evasively, if not dishonestly, became a necessity, when the well-organised and governed Ottoman state was transformed into a chaotic and corrupt polity. For something like 200 years, economic and even physical survival depended on the ability of the people and especially of their leaders to outwit the superior authorities. ‘ ... While in the West central, universally valid law replaced personal law, the Ottoman Empire remained a collection of individuals whose positions, rights and duties depended entirely on their religion and profession’.7

Demographic: Ottoman Legacy Historians agree that the most resilient Ottoman legacy, and the one causing most problems currently, is demography. The most important change that the Ottoman rule brought to Southeastern Europe was the large-scale demographic transformation of the area, the consequences of which still determine human relations in the Balkans. Forced settlements by the Ottomans from the 15th century onwards, and after 1699 by the Habsburgs in the region they acquired as a result of the Peace of Karlowitz, added to the demographic changes brought about by population movements. These migrations, as already pointed out, were the results of Ottoman policy and must, therefore, be considered part of Ottoman legacy.8 In other words, the Ottoman rule induced intentionally, on one hand, and prevented unknowingly, on the other hand, that natural process of ethnic homogenisation, which took place in most of Western Europe, leaving,

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as Ernest Gellner keenly observed, the burdensome task of ethnic cleansing for the modern times to carry out. The Balkans are not so different from the broader Eastern Europe in this respect. Imperial competition led to a poor match between borders and ethnic composition in the whole area. This feeds many nationalisms, not just those of the Balkans. Survey data point to high territorial nationalism in the whole region, the least in Bulgaria and the highest in Kosovo. Serbia is behind Romania and Hungary in this respect, with only half of the population considering it has territories within other states. Table 1. Nationalism as a broad regional phenomenon Agreement with the following statements:

Romania Kosovo Slovakia (%) Bulgaria (%) Serbia (%) Hungary (%) (%) (%)

Part of other countries belong to us (territorial nationalism) Who cannot speak the state’s language should not have the right to vote (cultural nationalism) Foreigners should not be able to tell us how to run our own country (for Hungary, danger to become a colony of the West) Minorities a threat to sovereignty and borders

67

45

81

50

na

60

50

26

na

45

58

61

64

72

72

74

76

40

44

43

78

75

72

na

Serbia 2002, Bulgaria 2000, Slovakia 2000 (SAR-Freedom House data); Romania 2001, Kosovo 2002 (UNDP data); Hungary 1993 (MODUS data).

Therefore, in brutal and subtle ways, history matters for the current political attitudes, and it is strongly dependent on geography. Geography is a proxy for many things, from historical foreign domination to present facilitation of trade and inflows of foreign investment. The risk then is that explaining countries’ performance is reduced to the bon mot of French (Romanian-born) essayist Emil Cioran when hearing news of a big earthquake in Romania: ‘Nous sommes mal placés!’.

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THE SPLIT BETWEEN THE REPRESENTATIVES AND THE REPRESENTED The invitation of Romania and Bulgaria in 1999 to join the EU by 2007 and the negotiation and conclusion of a range of Stability and Association pacts (SAP) with countries of the Western Balkans seem, however, to indicate that the geographical doom was left behind. These countries have now to struggle more with their legacies of development than with a distinct political culture. The Copenhagen criteria outline the required features of a substantive democracy, including, among others, fair treatment of minorities and civilian control over the army. To obtain the invitation to join NATO, Bulgaria and Romania undertook even more obligations, rushing through in 2001 and 2002 their Parliaments’ bills such as Freedom of Information, or ‘Sunshine’ Acts, which exist only in few Western European democracies. While formal criteria seem satisfactory, corruption continued to be singled out as the main setback for these democracies in progress reports of the European Commission in 2001 and 2002, and is the main source of worry to NATO. But is corruption indeed the problem here, or does it get singled out only for lack of a better word to explain why, although formal criteria were over-fulfilled, informal realities trail further behind? ‘Corruption’ cannot be the right word to cover politicisation of administration, its functioning only when ‘greased’, the partisanship of the media as a general rule, the blurred border between politics and business, the apathy and inertia of law and order agencies, the positions held in the army and secret services by people who served the Warsaw Pact, or the cronyism plaguing the whole of society, not just politics. ‘Corruption’ does not capture the failure of the politicians in these societies to achieve the construction of a public interest space, leaving crude partisan interests to reign over every aspect of life, from privatisation to regulation of public broadcasting. The widespread practice of bribing in dealings with the public administration should also be understood as part of a more complex reality. Rural postCommunist societies have never achieved the stage of fully modernised societies, and administrations there have never reached the impartiality, impersonality and fairness supposed to characterise modern bureaucracies. Therefore, corruption manifests itself often not just by use of a public position to seek personal gain, but more broadly as widespread infringement of the norm of impersonality and fairness that should characterise modern public service. Providing discriminative public service generally may not be prompted by financial gain only, but it is a norm of societies dominated by groups of uneven power status. A favour may be granted to show acknowledgement of superior status, or manifest one’s own, without money even being involved. The

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model of ‘predatory elites’ also does not explain everything, even if there is undeniable proof of important segments of political elites behaving in quite a predatory fashion. Assuming it fits the reality, it opens a crucial unanswered question: why would citizens in countries with free and fair elections, free media and flourishing civil society continue to vote for predatory elites? Table 2. Perceptions of poor governance Romania Bulgaria (%) (%) Corruption widespread in the public service No fair treatment without having to bribe someone1 Mistreated at least once by a civil servant after Communism Had to bribe to get something

Serbia (%)

69.5 68

62.9 45

62.8 48

59.2 67

34.4 31

55.4 31

Most institutions of accountability do not seem to perform in Southeast Europe. The police and the judiciary may be ineffective and to some extent corrupt, but citizens participate in elections in numbers higher than in Western Europe, show interest in politics, are discontent with quality of public life and are eager to find alternative ways to enhance its quality. Still every election produces, regardless of the winners, the same pattern of politics; in other words, reproduces the accountability deficit. This is shown in high rates of discontent with politicians, rated as worse than those in Communist times in many aspects, the low trust in political parties and high trust in ‘experts’; in other words, nonpolitical administrators. Southeast Europeans endorse democracy, but they do not like their national democracies better than anyone else does, and they strongly dislike their parliaments and parties. They long for referenda and single-unit constituencies to be rid of parties and parties’ lists. Neither army rule nor strong leaders are the solutions preferred, but some kind of direct democracy, something to fill the accountability gap. This should be filled by political parties or interest groups, but those seem to operate like small clans, or packs of cronies, interested primarily in state capture. Besides state capture it seems there is little incentive for permanent collective political action. The students’ anti-Communist rallies in the region, which started with Romania’s University Square rally in 1990, and was afterwards reproduced in Bulgaria and Serbia, did not produce permanent and stable political organisations. Quite to the contrary, civil society leaders of these movements feature often among the most outspoken critics of the ‘political class’. The feeling everywhere is that

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politics in this stage attracts only the worst people (but this often expresses the frustration of Balkan intellectuals). Still, this leaves the citizens without channels of political representation they can use. It leaves them as passive watchers of endless political talk-shows (in Balkan countries, these tend to last hours, be scheduled on prime time and have a strong tabloid touch; in other words, politics is frustrating but entertaining). Citizens resent that. The political systems of these countries are also closer to parliamentarism than to presidential rule, despite their being formally halfway between. Voters resent directly electing presidents, the only field where they feel they have real choice, only to see them later reduced to a decorative role. Milosevic was the exception, of course, but Serbian voters could not get over him until an alternative leader, not a group of leaders, was offered to them. Table 3. Dissatisfied democrats Agreement with the following statements:

Romania Bulgaria (%) (%)

Democracy best despite shortcomings 74 The most important government decisions should also 68.3 seek popular approval via a referendum We should have another electoral system in order to 92.8 vote representatives directly and not party lists The President should be the one really to govern this 43.0 1 country We should have experts running the country instead of 81.2 political governments Even between elections the government should read polls 86.1 and take only measures that are popular with the majority of people Country better off run by the military 15.6

Serbia (%)

61 69.5

76 63.2

75.3

86.3

53.1

55.4

56.8

89.7

80.4

86.0

10.9

15.4

1

By the time of polling: Romania, E. Constantinescu; Bulgaria, P. Stoyanov; Serbia, V. Kostunica.

There are two possible explanations for the accountability gap. One is to look at the supply side: leaders from every party, post-Communist, or antiCommunist, seem to be perceived as equally corrupt and seeking to fulfil only their self interest. Spoils of privatisation have tempted both the right and the left. Everybody seems to agree that the major stake of the transition is to transfer property from state to cronies. Former communists have been considerably

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stronger at this game, making money not only of privatisation, but also of the embargo against Yugoslavia and war. This does not mean, however, that every politician, or every party, is equally corrupt. Nor does it mean that the public knows how corrupt politicians are. The public judges by exterior symbols of wealth and prestige. Ostensible displays of those have alienated the citizens from their elected representatives. Many of those who believe politicians are corrupt beyond redemption are simply paranoid-minded people; we can find an association between the perception that all politicians are corrupt and that of minorities as a threat. However, the perception that most politicians are corrupt is also widespread, and we can find a relation between low trust in government and administration and actual bad experience with a civil servant. The bill for poor governance is paid not by non-elected civil servants, although it is they who directly mistreat the public (still perceived as in Communist times as a dependent claimant, and not as a taxpayer or consumer), but by politicians. They are justly perceived as those who could do something to change this situation and who do nothing. Ivan Krastev once quoted some grafitti on a Sofia wall saying that elections are not meant to change things, or they would have been banished long ago. This tells precisely the frustration of the population with the supply from politicians: the expression ‘political class’, largely used in East Europe and little used in the West stresses the point that the whole lot is unpopular. Most of these politicians are not popular with Westerners as well: Western donors only know how much effort – and money – was needed to bring together the anti-Communists from Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia, to pack them into coalitions able to win elections, and eventually govern, and to what extent this is still work in progress. The Romanian 1996–2000 coalition, praised initially as the first clear-cut democratic victor in a century, sank because of its own ineptitude, selfishness and permanent bickering among members. The Union of Right Wing Forces of Romania (UFD) was plagued by corruption scandals in 2000, whereas the rift between Zoran Djindjic and V. Kostunica has evolved into a major political crisis. As to the post-Communist parties, they have openly, or discreetly, sympathised with Milosevic. On the demand side, things are equally complex. At first glance we have established that demand exists. But what kind of demand is this? People want to elect representatives directly, not party lists, but whom do they pick when offered the choice? Why are good politicians, even by Western standards, such as Peter Stoyanov, or Ivan Kostov of Bulgaria, equally sanctioned alongside the corrupt and ineffective? Why do technocrats like Romania’s Teodor Stolojan, or Mugur Isarescu, fare so badly with voters when confronted by radical populists like Vadim Tudor? How could Ion Iliescu in Romania, associated with both the Communist past and with many corrupt politicians, win three presidential

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mandates out of four disputed so far in Romania? Why do people say they want experts and then vote for kings, or demagogues? Why are they so concerned with corruption but vote for corrupt politicians? While praising high participation we should also pay some attention to the quality of this participation as well. This means we need to look at the voters themselves. Table 4. Participation, but what kind? Romania Bulgaria (%) (%) Party membership Equality better than freedom Ideology irrelevant

7.1 43.4 63

7.0 54.8 54

Serbia (%) 10.2 18.9 57

Firstly, are these voters democrats? At first sight, they certainly are: we have a majority endorsing democracy as the best system of government. On second glance, they are rather peculiar democrats: high numbers believe communism was a good idea, many feel even Communist politics was better than current ones, nationalism and political distrust run high. If we remove inconsistent democrats, those who endorse democracy at the same time with non-democratic attitudes, we see that consistent, or solid, democrats constitute no more than a third in every country, and these tend to be the young, the educated and the better-off. Where we have enough data we can see that being a democrat does not only depend on personal fortune, but also on the development of the region he or she inhabits as well.9 The considerable differences between urban and rural attitudes disappear once we take account of differences in wealth, age and education, as rural areas differ greatly from the urban ones not just in terms of cultural environment, but also of basic social ones. Southeast European peasants are aged, poor, uneducated; although the new electronic media have broken into some areas, the habit of reading newspapers is confined to urban areas only. The attitudes opposed to democracy are solidly grounded in the recent Communist past.10 The majorities who regret communism tend to be past their middle age, less educated, work in the state sector and inhabit rural areas rather than urban ones.11 The same goes for other residual communist attitudes, such as the belief that the state is responsible for one’s fortune, or that people’s incomes should be equal, or close. Distrust in the main political institutions and the West, as well as territorial nationalism (borders are not right), together with the widespread feeling that the transition went wrong, or in any event, one is among the losers, complete this gloomy picture. In every East European country we meet, to some

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extent, this syndrome formed by low political trust, frustration with transition and residual Communist attitudes. The poorer a country and the more painful its transition, however, the likelier it is that such a syndrome will be dominant in its public opinion. In fact, its most important determinant is the perception of one’s current living standards compared with Communist times. Communist residual attitudes include, besides rating one’s household performance as better during Communist times, the belief that Communist times were the best for the country during the 20th century, that the Communist economy was superior, and attribution of its failure to poor application. The more an individual perceives these to be true, the likelier it is that he or she will have low political trust, characterised by great frustration and social envy.12 Table 5. The good old Communist times Romania Bulgaria (%) (%) Same people enjoy privileges regardless of regime Communism was a good idea badly put into practice Household worse off now compared to Communist times Communist best time last century

Serbia (%)

72 70 67

76 69 63

90 59 72

57

47

79

Romania 2001, 2000; Bulgaria 2000; Serbia 2002.

It is clear that objective performance alone is not the sole factor influencing the outcome of the comparison between transition and Communism. People judge regime performance by comparison, which is affected strongly by mood, at the moment of measurement. Hungarians are, for instance, the most nostalgic of their Communist past from the whole Eastern bloc: this does not mean they are not democrats, and it is enough to compare their objective standards of living to see they exaggerate out of depression. When one’s Communist past is not goulash communism, but the eternal Jivkov, or the terrible Ceausescu, one must realise economic transition has to be particularly stressful to make Communism look better by comparison. Objective data confirm, indeed, that citizens of Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia, in terms of their purchasing power, fare indeed worse now than in 1989, the last Communist year. Few can fully grasp the advantages of no longer living in a shortage economy when their purchase power is half, or less, what it used to be while there is little sign of recovery. Retrospectively, Communism is reconstructed better than it actually was, by the collective memory.

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There is a need for special concern when this residual Communism, grounded in painful economic transitions, is found together with other symptoms, less mood-dependent, such as disinterest, or plain refusal of politics as we know it, that is, of the left–right dichotomy. The relative majorities in the three countries deny openly any importance of traditional politics, stating other reasons for their electoral choice (quality of governance mostly). Less than a third of the number of voters, who have some basic understanding what politics is about, are fully aware of parties’ programmes, or of the difference between left and right. But not all of these are democrats: many of the far-left or right are pretty aware of these distinctions as well.13 Furthermore, we find an association between voters, who deny the importance of ideology and nationalist and populist attitudes, often closely related.14 Nationalism emerges as the ideology of non-ideologues, and those are many even in Romania and Bulgaria. To be certain, post-Communist constituencies have learned fast that more parties than one make a good system, and they even enjoy directly electing Presidents. But this competition misses the essential point and becomes grounded in a form of primitive, populist collectivism, which proves stronger than any distinctions.15

CONCLUSION Political transitions managed for their great part by the Communist party, or its successor parties, as in many Southeastern European polities, create a pattern of democratisation without decommunisation. Communism is denounced in mild terms; part of its legacy is actually seen as good and preserved as long as possible. Communist-time elites continue to have an important say in business, politics and every public affair. They change the discourse, however, gradually becoming pro-Brussels and pro-market. Privatisation will be managed to eventually benefit this elite and its cronies, but International Monetary Fund (IMF)and Brussels-recommended steps will be followed in the end. Informal practices trail far behind the new adopted formal procedures, and the main alibi of the poor respect for the laws is precisely the general perception of a predatory elite above the law running the country. This pattern exists in its purest form in Albania and Romania. In Serbia, Macedonia and Bulgaria it was shaken off to some extent by various radical challenges, but these have not yet gone far enough to change essential features of the polity. The alternative path, a more radical replacement of the Communist elite, does also exist in the region. The best illustrative case is Croatia. This example also shows the limitations to the alternative path, as the only lever against Communist elites that seemed to have

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worked was nationalism, in a more radical form than the one practised by Communists. The structure (monolithic or plural) and quality of the Communist party itself matters enormously for the re-configuration of the political space in the phases of transition and consolidation. Overall, the institutions of Communism play the greatest role in shaping present relations between the state, political parties and citizens. Culture is therefore shaped by institutions. Certain institutions are reproduced from one period to another, creating the false feeling of continuity. Prewar bureaucracies in Romania and Bulgaria were completely destroyed by the Communist regime, yet the regime in the late 1970s already showed the same bureaucratic and patrimonial character as the pre-war bureaucracy. This induced observers to believe that ‘cultural’ characteristics have prevailed over the change of regime, while in fact similar circumstances (big governments with low accountability, or with none) would reproduce the same features regardless of culture. The same goes for many post-Communist phenomena, giving the false impression that Balkan transitions have somehow originated in preCommunist problems. What happened is that, sometimes out of carelessness, sometimes out of shrewdness, decision-makers generated similar patterns of behaviour, by reproducing similar conditions.16 The foreign environment, all powerful in the Balkans past, proved all powerful again: from Gorbatchev’s decision that East Europe, too, must liberalise, to NATO’s bombing Milosevic out of Serbia, or Europe’s commitment to enlarge to Romania and Bulgaria as well, foreign influence remains the irresistible factor behind democratic transformation of the Balkans. This requires again a flexible behaviour from Balkan elites, which have to adjust to new requirements and game rules. The gap between the transformismo of the elites and the desire of the public to have accountable governments shows many peculiarities of the political transition in the Balkans, above all a pattern of pluralism without political institutionalisation, or anarchic pluralism. Because of the absence of a clear defeat of Communism and takeover by the West, East-German style, much of its ideology is still promoted as legitimate, making pluralism anomic as well as anarchic: there is not one clear system of norms and values enjoying social consensus. But the desire to join Europe, motivated both in achievement and symbolic terms, is overriding everything else. People do get re-socialised in these countries, and the influence of Communism is fading away, but the change of generations takes time; meanwhile, elites have to evolve faster than voters to keep their countries on track towards European integration.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Clifford, Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York, Basic Book, 1973). Inglehart, Ronald, Modernization and Post-Modernization: Cultural, Economic and Political Change in 43 Societies (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1997). Jowitt, Kenneth, Social Change in Romania: 1860–1940 (Berkeley, CA, University of California Institute for International Studies, 1993). North, Douglas C., Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990). Plasser, Fritz and Andreas Pribersky (eds) Political Culture in East Central Europe (Brookfield, VT, Avebury, 1996). Schopflin, George, ‘The Political Tradition of Eastern Europe,’ in Graubard, Steven R. (ed.), Eastern Europe … Central Europe … Europe (Boulder, CO, Westview, 1978). Wildavsky, Aaron, ‘Choosing Preferences by Constructing Institutions: A Cultural Theory of Preference Formation’, The American Political Science Review, 81, 1, 1987.

NOTES 1

Such as World Values Survey, WVS. Inglehart, Ronald, Modernization and Post-Modernization: Cultural, Economic and Political Change in 43 Societies (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1997). 3 Rothschild, Joseph, East Central Europe Between the Two World Wars (Seattle, Washington University Press, 1974); Seton-Watson, Hugh, Eastern Europe Between the Wars, 1918–1941 (Hamden, CT, 1962); Todorova, Maria, Imagining the Balkans (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1997); Tismaneanu, Vladimir, Fantasies of Salvation: Democracy, Nationalism, and Myth in Post-Communist Europe (Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 1998). 4 When the first wave of post-Communist countries are expected to join. 5 Atlas method. GNI per capita is the new term for GNP per capita. 6 See Pippidi, Andrei, Tradit ˛ia politicaˇ bizantinaˇ, sec. XVI–XVIII (Bucharest, Corint, 2001), pp. 23–77, 151–164. 7 Sugar, Peter, South-East Europe under Ottoman Rule 1354–1804 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977), pp. 193–194. 8 Ibid., pp. 287–288, 283. 9 Based on the Romanian index of regional development created for the European Commission by Dumitru Sandu and his team. See Sandu, D., Spatiul social al tranzitiei (Iasi, Polirom, 1999), for more details on this index. 10 See Mungiu-Pippidi, A. & D. Mandruta. ‘Was Huntington right?’, International Politics, Kluwer (June 2002). 11 The last feature is very persistent in Romanian models, and less so in Bulgarian and Serbian, even if the assertion is true for simpler, social-status models for all three countries. 2

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12 Multiple regression models using ‘Communism good idea badly put into practice’

as dependent variable. 13 These figures are based on a panel survey on political learning measured by the Romanian Academic Society in 2000 and sponsored by German Marshall Fund of the USA. The full report was published by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi and Denisa Mandruta, as ‘Enlightened participation? Lessons from the Romanian 2000 electoral campaign’, Romanian Journal of Political Science, vol. 1, no. 1 (2001). World Development Indicators, World Bank. 14 Models with a ‘nationalism factor’, created by territorial nationalism (borders wrong), cultural nationalism, attitudes towards the West and minorities as dependent variable. 15 Even the claim that voters put governance first is not serious: both Milosevic and Iliescu were voted by rural inhabitants in years when proof of misconduct was publicised widely. 16 One example is the small land holdings in Romania, making the peasants dependent on state support and therefore on local oligarchic elites. This historical problem of modern Romania was reproduced in post-Communist Romania because of a poor policy of land restitution, creating the same result: political dependency of the rural areas. Surveys quoted in this paper were executed by the Center for the Study of Democracy (CSD), Bulgaria, 2000, Center for Regional and Urban Sociology (CURS), Romania, 2000, 2001, Center for Policy Studies (CPS), Belgrade, 2002, and Riinvest, Kosovo, 2002 and sponsored by Freedom House and UNDP.

CHAPTER 10 State, Linguistic and Cultural Diversity in Europe1 John Loughlin

INTRODUCTION Europe is characterised by the great diversity of its languages, cultures, national and state traditions, even if we limit ourselves to the national level of the formally constituted fifteen member states of the old European Union (EU). Within the EU15, however, there was an even greater diversity if we think of their many regions and stateless nations: Catalans, Scots, Welsh, Bretons, Sicilians, etc. The arrival of ten new member states in 2004 has made this diversity even greater, with the addition of new languages, new regions and new cultures. The EU exists primarily as an economic and political project of unification, but it must also take account of these cultural and linguistic dimensions. The question is whether the EU is capable of respecting the diversity while, at the same time, creating a sense of purpose and identity which will unite all the peoples of Europe. The Constitutional Treaty on European Union which resulted from the Convention on the Future of Europe, chaired by Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, was meant to be a document providing such a unifying vision for the new Europe of twenty-five and more states. The failures of the 2005 referendums in France and the Netherlands to ratify the Constitution, and the negative reactions in countries such as the UK and even Luxembourg, suggest that persuading the European peoples of the necessity of such an overarching vision will be more difficult than the European elites realised. This chapter will first examine the main features of this great diversity of European state, national, linguistic and cultural traditions. It will outline some of the transformations that have affected these traditions since 1945. Finally, it will pose the question (without fully answering it) whether the EU can develop its own overarching vision, while respecting diversity. It is necessary to begin with an archetypical European invention: the nation-state and its link to culture and language.

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THE NATION-STATE: DIFFERENT TRADITIONS The ‘French’ Tradition There is a close link between the nation-state and a unified culture and language if we think of it as existing from the time of the French Revolution, which began in 1789. The nation-state emerging from the Revolution invented a new principle, which was to shape the nature of political organisation throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. This principle was that nations ought to have states and that states ought to be co-terminous with nations. Furthermore, citizenship, that is, the right to participate in public affairs, the res publica, was henceforth associated with membership of the nation. Citizenship brought both rights, summed up in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizens, as well as duties, and was initially confined to men of property or standing. It was only gradually, over a period of 150 years, that it widened to include all adults of sound mind and good standing (that is, not criminals) of whatever sex. In the early years of the Revolution, citizenship was not meant to be contingent on characteristics such as language or religion, but rather on the voluntary adherence by citizens to their nation. For example, Thomas Paine, an Englishman, was accepted as a French citizen and therefore a member of the French nation, despite his English ‘ethnic’ background. The key condition was that he voluntarily accepted the principles of the Revolution. This voluntarist concept of the nation, the nation as demos, was famously expressed by Renan, in a speech to the Alsatian people, who spoke a dialect of German, to persuade them to remain French, when he described the French nation as a ‘plebiscite quotidien du peuple français’. In other words, they could be French by a free choice whatever their cultural or linguistic background. This concept of nationhood and citizenship is sometimes called the ‘right to options’ and finds expression in the legal principle of ‘ius solis’; one has the right to citizenship by virtue of being born on French soil. At the time of the Revolution, however, although language was not meant to define citizenship, this really referred to languages other than French, as is clear from the hostility manifested by the Jacobin faction towards languages such as Breton, Occitan and Flemish, which were then widely spoken on French soil. This was perhaps understandable from a revolutionary point of view in that it was mostly in the regions where these languages were spoken where the clerical and aristocratic forces opposed to the Revolution had their greatest support. The French language and culture were also identified with progress and civilisation, while the minority languages were associated with reaction and barbarism. Within regions such as Corsica and Brittany, many within the middle classes shared this idea of the superiority of the French language and culture. The first

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item of the Corsicans’ cahiers de doléances presented to the French National Assembly in 1789 was that they become completely French (à part entière), while the Club Jacobin was originally the Club Breton. Right up to the present time, most Corsicans consider themselves first French and second Corsican. This was especially so when they compared themselves with the more primitive and backward island regions of Italy, such as Sardinia and Sicily, with whom they shared many similar cultural and social traits. Much better to belong to France, a great power, than to a backward Italy. At the same time, Corsicans, Bretons and other minorities retained many aspects of their traditional cultures, thus developing quite complex dual identities. But the important point is that the French nation-state, the paragon of all nation-states, developed the idea of a national language, as a marker of French citizenship and identity. By the time of the Third Republic (1871–1939), the state educational system, especially those parts which were thoroughly removed from the control of the Catholic Church, became the means by which not just French citizens, but French-speaking citizens, would be formed. The French developed a very distinctive concept of the state, which, in reality, was already present during the period of the centralising monarchy before the Revolution. The Revolution and then Napoleon simply brought it to completion. This state was characterised by centralisation, top-down political control, uniformity and standardisation right across French territory whatever its specific geographical or climatic features. Corsica, with its Mediterranean climate, culture and customs, had the same political and administrative institutions as existed in Nord-Pas de Calais or in Brittany. Deviation was not permitted. This is not to say that this concept of the French nation-state was accepted by everyone in France. Among the revolutionaries themselves, the Girondin faction, although in favour of the Revolution, had a more pluralistic and decentralising vision of France, but they were eventually ousted by the Jacobin faction. There were also those who opposed the Revolution itself: the aristocracy, the Catholic Church2 and their supporters, especially in the French regions. In the second half of the 19th century, some of these opponents developed regionalism as an ideology that wished to return to the autonomy of the old prerevolutionary provinces and was generally situated on the right of the political spectrum. Regionalism opposed what it saw as the levelling and egalitarian tendencies of the modern nation-state and its system of liberal representative democracy. Instead, it advocated decentralisation, federalism and corporatist arrangements in society, as well as the preservation of the regional languages. Another anti-centralist tradition found within France was that associated with anarchists who opposed the state as such, and some of whom, such as

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Jean-Pierre Proudhon, were forerunners of European federalism.3 There were some socialist or left-wing tendencies within the regional minorities, but these were marginal. In the 1960s, many regionalists swung to the political Left while many on the Left, traditionally Jacobin, began to adopt regionalist positions. These two tendencies came together in the new Socialist Party which François Mitterrand created in 1971. When Mitterrand and the Socialist Party were elected to power in 1981, they announced a vast programme of decentralisation as the ‘grande affaire du septennat’ of Mitterrand. In other words, the old Girondin tendency had never quite disappeared in France and had now returned in force.

The ‘Germanic’ Tradition The French Revolution deeply affected the rest of Europe, in part because many intellectuals and artists of the Romantic movement, such as Beethoven, Mozart, Coleridge and Wordsworth, saw the Revolution as a great breakthrough for the human spirit and freedom. In Germany, it was Kant and Hegel who introduced the ideas behind the Revolution into German political philosophy: the former through his critique of metaphysics, the latter through his theory of the modern state. The problem for Germany, or, rather, the German-speaking lands, was that it was not unified politically but was fragmented into a great number of political entities, ranging from powerful states such as Prussia to small citystates such as Bremen. What united all these entities in the eyes of the Romantics and German philosophers was language and culture. Thinkers such as Herder, a disciple of Kant, who influenced later thinkers such as Goethe, explicitly linked the nation with culture, including language, in the concept of Kulturnation, or nation as ethnos. To some extent this appeal to a common culture, language and roots (‘blood’ as in the legal concept of ius sanguinis, which is still the basis of granting of German citizenship), even if there was no standardised form of Hochdeutsch in the 18th and early 19th centuries but an array of dialectal forms. German nationalism in the 19th century also adopted the concept of the nation-state as a means of unifying this diversity but was divided between a larger (grossdeutsch) and more restricted (kleindeutsch) version of the extent of this nation-state. Bismarck settled for the kleindeutsch option whereas Hitler opted for the grossdeutsch, with disastrous consequences. German cultural nationalism underwent a process that mirrored that of France and the ethnic nation eventually became the civic nation in the form of the Federal Republic. Although both Germany and France adopted the nation-state model of the state, their understanding of the ‘state’ was as different as their understanding of the ‘nation’ as outlined above.4 Following a Hegelian tradition, state and society

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were seen as different moments of a dialectic in which both would retain distinctive features but would also form a synthesis different from what had gone before. In the French tradition, although the state was also an emanation of the nation, there remained a distance between them so that the state stood ‘above’ the nation. In the German concept, they interpenetrated each other, leading to a more corporatist set of relationships and, eventually, to federalism. In France, at least in the Jacobin understanding of the state, federalism has always been a taboo subject, even if there has been at times a French federalist tradition, for example, among the Girondins at the Revolution or among regionalists and Europeanists during the 20th century. German federalism has deep roots which go back to the 19th century and even further, while the centralised states of the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich might be regarded as aberrations of German political history. This Germanic state tradition influenced other European countries such as the Netherlands, which, although its formal structures are French and derive from the period of Napoleonic occupation, gave these structures a ‘Germanic’ soul in the 1848 Constitution written by the Dutch statesman Johan Rudolf Thorbeke. Thus, the relations between the state, the provinces and the communes more resembles those of a federation than of the hierarchical domination of the French state. In the Nordic countries, too, although they may possess a distinct state tradition (Loughlin & Peters 1997), there are similarities with the Germanic corporatist, or at least what we may call ‘organicist’, tradition. Finland, like the Netherlands, also adopted the French state form when it became independent in 1918, but the ‘matter’ underlying the ‘form’ resembles the other Nordic countries.

The ‘Anglo-Saxon’ Tradition The third major concept of the nation in Western Europe is that found in the United Kingdom, where the concept of the nation-state sits rather uneasily for two reasons. First, the UK is a union of distinct nations, the dominant one of which is England but which includes Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the last mentioned being a fragment of the nation of Ireland.5 Second, as will be outlined below, the UK has a very weak sense of statehood, and its political and administrative system has been characterised by a high level of diversity. Despite this, the UK was also influenced by the nation-state idea, but where ‘Britain’ is the ‘nation’ and English the national language. There has also been a tendency to conflate ‘Britishness’ and ‘Englishness’, despite protests by the minority nations of Scotland, Wales and Ireland. According to Liah Greenfeld (1992), England (rather than the UK as a whole) was the first ‘modern’ nation in which religion, language and military prowess all played a part. But Scotland, too, was an

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independent nation before the Act of Union with England in 1707, with its own established (Calvinist) Church, and its own legal and educational systems. Wales and Ireland, too, were linked to England by Acts of Union, but these, in their turn, were different from the Act of Union between Scotland and England. All of this had made the United Kingdom into a hybrid form of state, sometimes referred to as a ‘union state’, rather than a unitary or federal state. Although there has been an overarching sense of ‘Britishness’, at least in England, Scotland and Wales and among Northern Irish Protestants, this has not melded into a single British nationality in the same way as occurred in France or Germany. Today, with devolution granting political recognition to the different nations of the UK, this sense of Britishness is weakening and we are even seeing the reemergence of English nationalism. Just as the sense of British nationality is very weak, so there is a very weak sense of an overarching state in Britain. Rather than speak of ‘the State’ (with a capital ‘S’) as in other parts of Europe, British academics, public lawyers and politicians refer more to ‘government’. The English language, or at least that version of English spoken in the southeast of England, has succeeded in imposing itself as the standard language of the entire polity. The Celtic languages of Welsh, Irish and Scots Gaelic were systematically discriminated against throughout the 19th century, while the various Anglo dialects and languages, for example Scots, the version of English spoken in the Scottish lowlands from the 14th century, more or less succumbed to ‘standard’ English throughout the 20th. But British linguistic repression was sporadic and never reached the levels of repression in France, where it became an obsession of public administrators and public school teachers to root out the ‘patois’, spoken by the peasant classes. Although in Britain there were notorious examples of such repression, there was also a benign neglect so that the Welsh language, for example, survived as a living language spoken by most Welsh people right up to the end of the 19th century, and is still spoken by about twenty per cent of the population. Today, it is probably the minority language in France, the UK or Ireland that has most successfully survived. Despite the differences outlined above, nation-states in all these traditions share several common features, and may be linked to phenomena such as representative democracy, rational Weberian types of public administration, industrial forms of capitalism and the creation of national markets, etc. On the other hand, it is clear that the nation-state itself is ambiguous both in its conceptualisation and in its application, with several different varieties possible. Even the forms of the state can vary from federalism (Germany), unitary (France) and ‘union’ (the United Kingdom). Both nation and state are also open to different interpretations, for example the differences between the ‘demos’ (French) and ‘ethnos’ (German) concepts of nationhood. But it might also be said that all

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concepts of nationhood have both ‘demos’ and ‘ethnos’ dimensions. The French finally adopted a concept of nation that was as much ethnos as demos in the sense that to be fully a French citizen, it is not enough to simply choose to be so but also to share in the French language, culture and system of values. To be German, it is not enough to be simply German-speaking but also to make the choice of German citizenship and accept the values of German society. Furthermore, state forms have been pulled in directions away from their original concept. Thus, federal states such as Germany and Austria have sometimes been centralising, while unitary states such as France, Italy and Spain have been regionalising and decentralising. Our next section will examine the place of language in these diverse traditions.

STATE TRADITIONS, NATIONAL LANGUAGES AND LANGUAGE POLICIES The French Tradition We have already hinted that, within each of these national state traditions, the place of language and language policies is conceptualised in distinct ways. The French concept of the state is summed up in the phrase the ‘one and indivisible Republic’, which refers to both the nation and the state. In practice, this has meant uniformity and standardisation in political and administrative structures but also in culture and language. The problem, however, is that France, as Fernard Braudel (1986) has illustrated, comprises a great variety of landscapes, cultures and languages. The anthropologist Emmanuel Todd (1983) has also demonstrated that there exist within France very different social arrangements based on different family forms, which also underlies the great cultural diversity. The function of the state has been, therefore, to bring about the unity and indivisibility required to create the nation, understood now in a more ethnic than civic sense. A key element of this process of the ‘nationalisation’ of society has been to make French the spoken language of the people. Although this sounds strange to say today, the difficulties of this task are shown by the fact that, more than 200 years after the Revolution, there are still millions of French people who speak languages other than French: Corsican, Breton, Flemish, Alsatian/ German, Catalan, Basque and the various Occitan dialects, as well as other French dialects such as ‘Gallo’, which is spoken in parts of Brittany and ‘Picard’ in the north of France. From the Third Republic onwards, the republican and anticlerical Left and radicals mobilised the resources of the state, especially the educational system, to eradicate this diversity, which they identified with

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the enemies of the Republic and fomenters of reaction. The French concept of citizenship in which the citizen is devoid of any ethnic, racial, gender, religious characteristics, and speaks only French, was formulated at least partly in opposition to the French regions where there was greatest opposition to the principles of the Revolution, to Republicanism and even to democracy itself. This all might seem rather quaint and belonging to another age until we realise that the French are still very much debating these issues. Today’s French Jacobins such as the ‘mouvements laiques’ and the Mouvement des Citoyens of Jean-Pierre Chevènement insisted on the insertion into the Constitution in 1992 that French is the language of the Republic (Article 2). This was originally inserted because of the threat from English as a world language, but was subsequently used against France’s minority languages. This has led to difficulties with signing the European Charter of Regional and Minority Languages. The Constitution was also amended to say explicitly that there is in France only one ‘people’ against the recognition of the existence of the ‘Corsican people’ in the 1991 revision of that island’s statute by the then Minister of the Interior, Pierre Joxe. The teaching of minority languages in French state schools has also run into difficulties because of the Jacobin concept of the unity and indivisibility of the Republic. Today, we can see the resurrection of the old cleavage between Jacobins and Girondins in French politics: Jacobin souverainistes versus the Girondon pluralistes. This new cleavage has split almost every party in France and probably underlies, at least in part, the recent French rejection of the European constitution. The souverainistes, in general, oppose both the move towards greater European integration (as well as ‘globalisation’) and the move towards greater plurality within France, seeing French sovereignty, unity and indivisibility as threatened by this double movement. These remarks have been made to illustrate the continuing salience of this concept of statehood within France itself. However, the French model has also been important in several other European states. Its propagation occurred as a result of two different kinds of process. Either it was imposed mainly as the result of conquest during the Napoleonic Wars, which was the case in the Iberian Peninsula, or it was adopted by newly formed nation-states such as Greece, Italy and Finland during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Italy is a good example. It achieved statehood between 1860 and 1870, and there was a debate among the unifiers as to whether the new state should be federal or unitary. In the end, Cavour, although himself sympathetic to federalism, and his fellow founders adopted the French model as the most appropriate for overcoming the great diversity not just between the north and south of Italy but also among its regions and cities which had for long been independent states

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themselves. In the end, this choice never led to the complete reconciliation of the different parts of Italy and the ‘problema del mezziogiorno’ still dominates Italian politics. Today there are proposals for federalisation and even for the break-up of the Italian state into three separate parts, which has been proposed by Bossi and the Northern League. At the time of unification, most Italians did not speak standard Italian but various dialects. Furthermore, some parts of the country, such as Sardinia, Val d’Aosta and areas around Veneto spoke distinct languages. After World War I, the German-speaking South Tyrol was taken over by the Italian state and this added to the complexity. During the period of Fascist dictatorship, Mussolini attempted to ‘Italianise’ the entire country, including these linguistically distinct areas, in the name of a single Italian nation. This forced and violent uniformisation had, however, the opposite effect, by discrediting the notions of nationalism and centralisation. The result was that, after World War II, the 1948 Italian Constitution recognised ordinary and ‘special’ regions, the latter being those regions such as Val d’Aosta, the South Tyrol and Sicily, which had specific linguistic or geographical features, thus creating the regionalised unitary state. At the same time, the Jacobin tradition remained strong in Italy and it was only in 1970 that the seventeen ‘ordinary’ regions were allowed to come into existence by the central government. The Italian model influenced, in turn, the Spanish Constitution of 1978, which, after Franco’s death, established the ‘autonomic’ state (El Estado de las Autonomias). The new Constitution, like the Italian, was ambiguous on the question of the nature of the Spanish nation-state. On the one hand, it affirmed that the Spanish nation is ‘one and indivisible’. On the other, it recognises the ‘nationalities and regions’ of Spain. The ‘nationalities’, although not specified in the Constitution, are usually taken to refer to Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia, of which the first two are the most important. What is significant here is that both Italy and Spain have considerably modified the French Jacobin model by recognising both regional and linguistic diversity, but that there remains a tension between both aspects, just as there is in France. Among the other states that adopted the French model of the state, there are two main groups. First, there are the small, largely homogeneous states of Greece, Ireland and Portugal, which have emphasised the unitary character of the state. It is true that Portugal granted a high degree of autonomy to the Azores. On the mainland, however, although there are regional differences, mainly economic, between the north and south, the country is linguistically homogeneous and all attempts at regionalisation have been rejected by the population.6 In Greece, too, although much of the country consists of islands and there are some linguistic minorities on the mainland, the emphasis has been on centralisation. Ireland has successfully resisted all attempts to create

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strong regions within and has itself been viewed as a large (Objective One) region by the European Commission for European Regional Development Fund purposes. The other group of states that adopted the French model consists of Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Finland, but these have all abandoned the Jacobin model. Although they retained the outward form of the Jacobin territorial organisation (state-département/province-commune), they gave these forms a different internal way of functioning. Belgium, literally divided in two by the linguistic conflict between Flemish and Walloons, has transformed itself from a Jacobin unitary state dominated by French-speakers (both Walloons and Flemish elites who switched to French as in cities like Ghent and Antwerp) to a federal state, with a complicated decentralised system of economic regions and linguistic communities (including the small Germanspeaking minority and officially bilingual Brussels). The Netherlands inherited the Napoleonic system of the unitary state but its 1848 Constitution, written by the statesman Thorbecke, while retaining the external features of this system, was imbued with the spirit of German administrative theory, that is, had a much more corporatist and quasi-federalist political and administrative culture. Central–local relations between the state and the municipality (gemeente) are more corporatist than hierarchical and characterised by a bargaining and negotiating approach similar to that of German federalism. This Germanic influence, combined with the famous system of ‘pillarisation’ (verzuiling) meant that religious and ideological groups co-existed peacefully in toleration of each other. This meant that, although the Netherlands was a fairly homogeneous society, linguistically and ethnically, it has been capable of a great deal of generosity towards its linguistic minority, mainly the Friesians in the north of the country. The Dutch tradition of tolerance and accommodation of minorities has been under some strain in recent years because of problems of the adaptation of Muslim immigrants to Dutch society. The Dutch, like the French, also rejected the European Constitution in the 2005 referendum, perhaps a sign that the period of toleration and openness is over. Finally, Finland, which adopted the French model of independence in 1917, has shown a very ‘un-Jacobin’ attitude towards its linguistic minorities, mainly Swedish-speakers, who number only about six per cent of the population but whose language is one of the two official languages of the country, although any minority language can have this status. Furthermore, the Finns recognise bilingual communes, with all the services in both languages, if eight per cent of the population speak the minority language. Finally, on the Finnish Åland Islands, where ninety-eight per cent speak Swedish, there is a system of ‘regional citizenship’ designed to protect both culture, language and property of the islanders, which is based, in part, on

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the ability to speak Swedish, and where Finnish is an optional language. Nothing could be further from the Jacobin spirit!

The Germanic State Tradition We have already seen that the starting point of German nationalism was the notion of a common cultural and linguistic heritage summed up in the term Kulturnation, despite the great political and administrative diversity largely inherited from the German Holy Roman Empire. In effect, this political and administrative situation left a legacy of both federalism and corporatism in Germanic concepts of the state, and this federal tradition is much older than the federal system foisted on the Federal Republic by the Allies after World War II. Given the overriding importance of language in this national and state tradition, it was inevitable that there should be a linguistic homogenisation with the formation of Hochdeutsch, which became the standard form of German. At the same time, this homogeneous high German has co-existed relatively easily with the various dialects of German such as Bayerisch or limburgisch and, indeed, with other languages such as Danish, Schwabian or Frisian. The arrangements for accommodation of Danish-speakers on the German side of the border with Denmark in Schleswig-Holstein and the reciprocal arrangements on the Danish side are exemplary in this regard. In effect, these arrangements display a very generous attitude on the part of the state.

The Anglo-Saxon State Tradition This state tradition displays, as we have seen, a curious mixture of both centralisation and administrative and cultural diversity. At the same time, the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty has had the effect of bringing about a strong centralisation with political and economic power being concentrated in London and its hinterland in the southeast of England, while at the same time tolerating the continued existence of nations and distinct administrative set-ups in its constituent parts. During the 19th century, English succeeded in imposing itself as the dominant language in those nations where a Celtic language had previously been dominant: Ireland, the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and Wales. Without going into great detail, this story can be summed up by saying that in Ireland and Scotland, Irish and Gaelic were reduced to proportions where the language became almost extinct, while in Wales, Welsh survived for much longer with about eighty per cent of the population speaking it at the end of the 19th century; by the middle of the 20th century, this was reduced to about twenty per

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cent. The English authorities disapproved of these minority languages and attempts were made to prohibit their use, with the arrival of state education hastening this process. However, it was also the case that English was the language of the ruling elites and, in Scotland and Ireland, the middle and upper classes switched to that language early on. Furthermore, both the Church of Scotland and the Irish Catholic Church adopted English as their vehicular language, thus hastening its adoption by their followers. Welsh, on the other hand, survived longer partly because the Bible was translated into Welsh by Bishop William Morgan in the 16th century and the Welsh Non-conformity and the Welsh language became closely identified. Nevertheless, Wales’s participation in the Industrial Revolution, particularly in South Wales, also hastened the Anglicisation of the country. Thus, in the peculiar Anglo-Saxon tradition of tolerance mixed with repression, tolerance was probably more important than state repression, but at the same time the vast forces of social and economic change, closely identified with the English language, engulfed Great Britain and Ireland and the key elites switched to that language. On the other hand, the relatively tolerant attitude of the British authorities permitted at least a partial revival of these languages, especially Welsh, from the 1960s onwards.

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE STATE SINCE 1945 The processes of nation-state building reached their climax with the construction of the Welfare States after World War II. There were several different models of the Welfare State. Esping-Anderson (1990) identifies ‘three worlds of welfare capitalism’ by which he means: the social-democratic approach typical of the Scandinavian countries; the ‘Catholic’ approach of countries from the religiously mixed countries such as the Netherlands and Germany to southern Europe; and the liberal approaches typical of the Anglo-Saxon countries. The dominant element of welfare policy is different in each of these approaches: the state in the social-democratic approach; the family in the ‘Catholic’; and the individual in the Anglo-Saxon. Whatever we think about these categorisations, and they are debatable, they are useful in drawing our attention to the existence not just of individual countries but of groups of states or, to use the term used by Castles, ‘families of nations’ (1993). Despite these differences, all Welfare States have several features in common. They were built up in the context of an expanding economy with the implementation of the Marshall Plan after World War II. They were also predicated on the principles of equality and equity both for individuals and for territories. These principles came out of what Colin Crouch (1999) calls the

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‘mid-century consensus’ between the Right and Left, between Social Democrats, Christian Democrats and Conservatives, to ensure that there would be no return to the conditions that had led to World War II and Nazism. They were also an attempt to prevent further advances by Soviet communism after World War II, particularly in southern Europe where the Communist Parties in Greece, Italy and France had become very strong. The Welfare State was a means of reconciling the working class with capitalism and with distributing at least some of the benefits of capitalism more widely in society. The kind of state that was necessary to do this was centralised and bureaucratic, with expanding numbers of public administrators to implement ever-expanding policy programmes. The emphasis was also on symmetry, uniformity and homogenisation so that territorial politics and policy were concerned with bringing all parts of the territory to the same level of social welfare. Regional and local governments were enlisted in this perspective to become the ‘agents’ of the central state, and this increased the level of centralisation. These basic ideas were implemented according to the distinctive state traditions outlined above, thus leading to the distinctive ‘families’ mentioned above. The basic thrust of public policy was towards reconstructing ‘national’ states after the catastrophe of World War II. This explains the lack of progress towards building a federal Europe in the early years of European integration. The EEC, as it then was, came to ‘the rescue of the nation-state’ as stated in the book of that title by Alan Milward (2000). In effect, the project of building the nation-state, begun 150 years previously at the French Revolution, reached its climax then. Even the concept of citizenship began to change with social rights being added to political rights. But the Welfare State was not without its critics even during this period. On the Left, groups such as those of the Frankfurt School, including Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse and their young colleague Habermas, criticised what they saw as the stifling of the free and creative individual by the oppressive bureaucracy of the State. On the Right, there was a similar critique from economists such as Milton Friedman and Von Hayek and, later, political scientists such as William Niskanen, who constructed what became a very influential theory of bureaucracy based on the simple idea that bureaucrats are always maximisers, that is, will build up their bureaucracies at the expense of efficiency and effectiveness. The ideas of the Left, along with those of marxisant philosophers such as Sartre, fed into the student revolts of the 1960s, especially the ‘events’ of May 1968 in Paris. These ‘events’ profoundly changed the culture and values of western societies but had less impact politically and institutionally. Their most important impact was probably on institutions such as the traditional family and the notion of a male breadwinner whose wife stays at home to bring up the children, and sexual relations in gen-

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eral. The arrival of methods of contraception such as the pill in the early 1960s meant that sexual activity was increasingly disassociated from reproduction; this was also a factor in the rise of movements of homosexuals, which further undermined traditional notions of sexuality. Finally, the cultural movements of the 1960s were associated with individualism in ethics and positivism and utilitarianism in public policy, all of which would work themselves through in society and law over a period of more than forty years. The ideas of the Right, however, found an outlet in the 1970s and 1980s with the rise of politicians such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan who tried to embody them in practical policy approaches. In effect, this movement was to prove perhaps even more influential than the new Left in that it changed considerably the way in which the Welfare State functioned, without completely abolishing it (Loughlin 2004). By the early 1970s, the Welfare State, and the economic system of Fordist production on which it was built, had run into difficulties. Already in the late 1960s, there were fiscal problems of paying for the vast array of welfare services that had developed. The oil crisis of 1973 exacerbated these problems, and by the late 1970s most advanced industrial states were having problems in solving the economic problems of stagnation, inflation and unemployment. Capitalism did successfully leave the crisis behind by abandoning the old Fordist methods and adopting new deregulated approaches. This was mainly true of Japan and the USA, while European countries continued to stagnate. The re-emergence of Japan and the USA as powerful economic blocs was the first sign of a new phase of globalisation. European industrial, administrative and political elites responded to this by the relaunch of European integration in the early 1980s and the adoption of the single market project by Jacques Delors, head of the European Commission from 1985. Meanwhile, within the Member States, serious reform programmes, based on what later became known as ‘neo-liberalism’, were being applied, first by Mrs Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the USA, but also by other countries such as Denmark. Later, most developed industrial states adopted versions of the neo-liberal agenda but according to the distinctive state traditions; and the outcomes varied from state to state (for example, privatisation in France was not exactly the same as privatisation in Britain). The ‘neo-liberal agenda’ is, in effect, the application of the ideas of the new Right thinkers mentioned above by a new breed of politicians such as Margaret Thatcher, who were convinced that the midcentury consensus and welfare state paradigm had not worked and who abandoned the consensus.

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SIGNIFICANT TRANSFORMATIONS OF THE STATE, ECONOMY AND SOCIETY In other work I have attempted to analyse these changes in terms of what I have described as a succession of significant transformations of the economy, the state and society in advanced capitalist societies.7 Basically, I argue that there have been at least two and perhaps three such transformations: (i) the building of the Welfare State model after World War II; (ii) the challenge from the neoliberal paradigm in the late 1970s and 1980s; and, perhaps, (iii) the emergence of a ‘Third Way’ model which attempts to synthesise elements of (i) and (ii) by politicians such as Bill Clinton and Tony Blair and intellectuals such as Anthony Giddens (1998). Within each of these models, nation, state and policy are conceptualised in a particular manner and public policy has a particular content and meaning. Furthermore, the changes have meant, to some extent, the end of the old nation-state model that had reached its climax with the Welfare State of the 1950s and 1960s.

(i) The ‘Expansive’ Welfare State Model The Economy After World War II, almost all Western states went through a period of economic boom. This was characterised by ‘Fordist’ methods of economic production and assembly-line techniques, and reliance of heavy industries such as coal and steel: the ‘smoke-stack’ industries. In this model of economic production, geographical factors of production – nearness to coal mines, railways, ports, etc. – and infrastructure dimensions such as road and rail networks were important. It was thought that the state had to play an interventionist role in the economy and this was expressed through the nationalisation of key industries – capturing the ‘commanding heights of the economy’ in the socialist jargon of the time. Full employment, or something very close to it, was the goal of economic policy that was heavily influenced by Keynesian theories of macromanagement of the economy. For several years the economic goals of the Welfare State in Western Europe were achieved on the basis of strong economic growth helped by post-war economic reconstruction and the US Marshall Fund. This led to a real rise in incomes and standards of living for the majority of the populations of European countries. During this time, and related to these developments but not completely identical with them, were the first steps towards European integration among the Six.

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The State The Welfare State was characterised by several features: •

•

• • •

•

a positive and almost optimistic view of the state: governments ought to intervene in the economy and in the provision of a wide variety of services in the belief that they really can effect social and economic change; that these services would be paid for by a system of progressive income tax as in Britain or by compulsory insurance schemes as in some other European countries; an expanding definition of needs and rights and the notion that citizens had a right to these services; equality of opportunity achieved through the centralisation of state services; redistribution through centralisation: overall policy would be decided at the centre, but regional and local governments had a role and a certain amount of discretion in the administration of these services. the principles of equality and state aid were also applied at the territorial level through regional policy designed at the centre and applied through the manipulation of economic factors such as ‘bringing jobs to the workers’.

Society There were enormous changes in society during this period. There was probably as much change (if we can measure this!) between 1955 and 1965 as there had been between 1925 and 1955. The most striking change that occurred was the exaltation of the individual. This is somewhat paradoxical given the increasing role and bureaucratisation of the state. Indeed, some of the major philosophical texts written during this period (such as those of Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, R.D. Laing, and of existentialists such as Sartre) critically explored this paradox. However, there is no real contradiction because, to a large extent, the ‘emancipation’ of the individual was made possible by the economic security provided by the Welfare State even if some individuals rebelled against its excessive bureaucratisation. Some of the key changes were: • • • • •

rapid urbanisation; changes in family structure; secularisation and decline in church-going related to a concept of individual autonomy and choice in moral and spiritual issues; the sexual revolution – the ‘Pill’ – ‘sexual intercourse began in 1963’ (as Philip Larkin said in a famous poem!); greater individual freedom and the redefining of morality in an increasingly

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• •

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‘liberal’ direction: sexual liberalisation; homosexuality decriminalised if not always widely accepted in society; abortion; but also pathological behaviours such as widespread drug-taking, increasing alcohol consumption; the advent of mass media, especially television which has the effect of changing attitudes and values; revolution in mass travel and tourism which exposes people to other societies and cultures, and therefore has the effect of relativising their own society some of whose features might have seemed absolute and unchangeable; the student revolutions of the 1960s; but also a great generosity on the part of young people many of whom get involved in the great ‘causes’ and movements of the 1960s and 1970s (the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND); civil rights; anti-Vietnam, etc.).

Culture/Values These changes are accompanied by several value and cultural changes: • • • •

the emergence of new values based on freedom and choice; new lifestyles (clothing, living patterns); paradoxically, the new-found freedom also sees the emergence of a uniform and cosmopolitan culture–cultural globalisation (now termed ‘McDonaldisation’); but during this period the threat of cultural extinction from homogenising forces often led to regionalist reactions to protect and validate these cultures.

Culture and Language We have described above the Welfare State as the apotheosis of nation-state democracy, completing the 19th-century notions of political and civic citizenship with that of social citizenship. The emphasis on centralisation, egalitarianism and redistribution also tended to have a homogenising effect, particularly on minority languages and cultures. Within this paradigm, these are conceptualised in a distinct manner: •

•

regional cultures, with distinctive languages and values, were deemed to be ‘unmodern’ and unprogressive, and were usually regarded by central elites, but sometimes also by regional elites, as an obstacle to regional development and were therefore devalued and reduced to ‘folklore’ for consumption by tourists; although language activism did exist, this tended to be carried on by rather small elites (with notable exceptions such as in Flanders and Catalonia); the attitude among the general population of the country as a whole was one of

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indifference and, among the generality of the linguistic minority, this was the generation, during the 1950s to the 1960s, when parents switched to the majority language when speaking to their children; this was mainly for the reason that the minority language was an obstacle to social and economic success; the classical Left – Socialist, Labour and Communist Parties – tended to be hostile to these minority languages and cultures, as was the nationalist Right; it was only during the end of the period of Welfare State hegemony that the Left, or rather sections of the extreme Left, began to take up the issue of regional and national minorities and their languages as part of a wider critique of both the Welfare State and the capitalist system.

(ii) The New Right/Neo-Liberal Model The Economy The Welfare State model entered into crisis at the end of the 1960s and early 1970s. Despite these problems or, perhaps, because of them, capitalism successfully reinvented itself during this period, and developed a new economic approach sometimes called ‘post-Fordism’. This is related to new technologies of production based on developments in informatics and new systems of communication. There now developed a predominance of ‘service industries’ – insurance, banking, education, tourism, etc. – over the old ‘smoke-stack’ heavy industries such as steel and coal. Work practices became increasingly dominated by ‘flexible specialisation’ (which often means nothing more than low-paid and insecure employment for vulnerable groups in society such as working-class women and immigrants). However, in countries such as the Netherlands, there has developed a genuine approach to flexible working practices by all sectors of the workforce from senior managers to those in more humble positions. This seems to have led to real increases in productivity as it is closely connected to a more committed and contented workforce. This shift away from heavy industries in the West has also meant a change in the significance of geographical factors. Previously, proximity to natural features such as coal mines, ports or rivers was a primary factor in economic success. In the new paradigm, with the development of new communications systems and new technology and the effective quasi-elimination of distance, this is no longer so important.8 Nevertheless, economic globalisation, whatever the difficulties in defining this term, has, paradoxically, both liberated economic activity from its dependence on spatial factors and reaffirmed the importance of territory in a new sense. The latter has happened in two ways. First, in a rather

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banal way, footloose capital roving the globe to seek investment sites will sometimes (although not exclusively) take into account the attractiveness of a location. It does so from the point of view of its existing infrastructure (road networks but also the quality of its communications system and the skills of its workforce in new technology) as well as the quality of its environment. Secondly, globalisation is increasingly related to the local and the regional, expressed through the ugly neologism ‘glocalisation’, in the sense that it is increasingly based on new regional and local foci of economic production. These may not necessarily coincide with the old foci of economic production characteristics of the Fordist period. This change has led to a new understanding of regional economic development, which is today based on ‘bottom-up’ approaches and conceived as ‘endogenous’ development. Scholars have begun to speak of the ‘intelligent’ or ‘learning’ region. These emphasise non-hierarchical models of organisation and the importance of ‘learning’, ‘innovation’ and flexibility in production methods. This approach uses a ‘network’ model based on the principles of partnership, teamwork and subsidiarity rather than top-down directives. It is claimed that the model of ‘endogenous regional development’ underlies successful regions such as those in the ‘Third’ Italy, such as EmiliaRomagna and Baden-Württemberg. However, it may also be that this approach simply masks the withdrawal of the central state from providing economic aid to regions in need. It is no accident that, in the neo-liberal period, the European Community/ Union became an important factor from an economic point of view. First, the ‘relaunch’ of the Community in the 1980s by the European Council and the European Commission headed by Jacques Delors was a direct response to the economic crisis of the 1970s. The deep recession, massive unemployment, decline in productivity, lack of technological inventiveness, stagflation and social unrest of this period were perceived by European industrial and political elites (such as the Round Table of Industrialists and several political leaders such as Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand) as putting European countries in a disadvantaged position in the new global markets increasingly dominated by Japan and the USA. These elites recognised that individual countries, even large countries such as Germany, could not meet this challenge alone. Instead, they had to do so together. It was Jacques Delors, as the new President of the European Commission in 1985, who saw that the completion of the Single Market by 1992 could be the effective means of galvanising the different European countries together, and thus relaunching the process of European integration after many years of ‘sclerosis’. The different protagonists had different motivations for agreeing to the Single Market: the Thatcherites in Britain saw it as an extension of their neo-liberal project; the Germans saw it as a means of driving forward European integration; for

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the French it was a way out of economic difficulties and strengthening the bonds with Germany; for federalists such as Delors it was a building block towards a federal Europe. However different the motives, there was a ‘convergence of national preferences’ (Moravcsik 1993). The Single Market led to the Maastricht Treaty and Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) with the creation of a single currency, the euro. Maastricht also created a European Central Bank responsible for the fiscal policies of those member states participating in the single currency (but not for their economic policies, which remains the responsibility of national governments). What all of this means is a strengthening of the trends towards much greater autonomy of the financial and economic sectors and much less intervention by political institutions. The State This approach to the state was developed by several philosophers and economists such as Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek, James Buchanan and Michael Nozick, and some British disciples such as Professor Alan Walters, as a response to the economic crisis of the 1970s. Such authors promoted the idea of the ‘minimalist’ or ‘watchman’ state intervening in society and the economy only when necessary. Strictly speaking, these authors are anarchists for they wish to see states disappear completely. They also believe that the ‘market’, understood as the arena of free exchange between individuals, can provide the range of services provided by the state in a more efficient and effective manner. In direct contradiction to the value system underlying the Welfare State, they believe that the state ought not intervene in the economy or society and they wish to rewrite what is deemed as ‘necessary’. Once dismissed as a hodgepodge of ‘crack-pot’ ideas, the model touched several popular chords and became a serious political approach with the arrival to power of Ronald Reagan as President of the United States and Margaret Thatcher as British Prime Minister at the end of the 1970s. Reagan had already initiated this approach as Governor of California. But the United Kingdom, under Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major, became a laboratory of governmental reform and social engineering on an immense scale for a period of almost twenty years. Most other European countries followed suit although not always to the same extent and in the same way (Wright 1994). The neo-liberal approach also enjoyed a period of great popularity in the former Soviet bloc countries after the collapse of the Soviet Union after 1989, as well as in countries of Latin America after the transition to democracy in those countries in the 1980s. The principles underlying the neo-liberal model of the state amount to an almost exact reversal of the principles of the Welfare State model:

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•

•

•

• •

•

• •

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the key unit is not the common good of society but the individual (remember Mrs Thatcher’s notorious statement: ‘there is no such thing as society – only families and individuals’); the notion of the citizen, participating in government through the institutions of representative democracy, is replaced by the notion of a consumerist democracy: consumers get what they can pay for, which is very different from the traditional notion of liberal democracy in which each citizen regardless of social or economic status is entitled to participate in the life of society (this might seem rather strong but remember, once again, Mrs Thatcher who made clear that her ideal was a ‘car-owning democracy’, where the car may be taken as the ultimate symbol of the consumer society); the acceptance, and even the promotion, of inequality and competition whether of individuals or of territories (as opposed to strong social and regional policies based on a process of equalisation); government intervention (as advocated by Keynes and his followers) is ‘a bad thing’ especially in the economy; indeed, one of the key ideas of neoliberalism is that government as such is bad as it is always inefficient and wasteful – the corollary of this is that the private sector will almost always provide better and cheaper services; services are better paid for by private (non-compulsory) insurance schemes and general taxation should be reduced; in Britain there was a general attack on local government, which was perceived by Mrs Thatcher and her advisors as representing some of the worst aspects of the bureaucratic state as it was wasteful, inefficient and ineffective: more and more services were removed from local government control and centralised in government departments or in government-appointed quangos and the discretion of local authorities is severely reduced – Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) was introduced which meant, in effect, tendering out of services to the lowest bidders with only weak controls over the quality of the service rendered – this feature was perhaps less common in other European countries; ‘New Public Management’ approaches – usually borrowed from the private sector – were implemented and radically reformed the structure and operating procedures of the Civil Service; despite these reforms, public spending continued to rise although the quality of services especially education and health seriously declined; the neo-liberal approach to Europe was ambivalent: on the one hand, there was an acceptance of the ‘Single Market’ Europe (after all, it was Mrs Thatcher who signed the Single European Act which seemed to be about liberating market forces in Europe); on the other, there is a distrust

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of the ‘federalist’ tendencies of European integration and of the more ‘social’ dimensions of Europe such as the Social Chapter – the neo-liberals saw this as introducing ‘socialism’ by the back door even though the measures involved are very modest and have, for the most part, not been fully implemented; in most countries, with the exception of the UK, there were programmes of regionalisation and decentralisation; but, paradoxically, Thatcher’s attack on the state and bureaucracy led to one of the most centralised periods in British history, and the creation of a multitude of bureaucracies sitting over the health and educational services and unaccountable quangos.

Society Once again, there have been several significant shifts in society: •

•

•

•

• •

the absolutisation of the individual understood as the bearer of a bundle of rights but with little sense of obligations and duties: I can do what I like provided it does not interfere with anyone else’s rights (the American Civil Liberties Union represents one of the more extreme expressions of this principle); ‘morality’ is individualised and becomes a question of individual ‘choice’: I choose my ‘lifestyle’ without interference from any authority outside myself whether of government, church, or other kind of association; the glorification of the idea of financial success whatever the consequences for others: in the immediate post-war period and, until the 1980s, private wealth was possessed rather discreetly and was not to be flaunted, but this attitude changed in the 1980s; the decline of the sense of society and community and the difficulties of recruitment and membership facing traditional forms of association such as political parties, churches, and even choirs; the fragmentation of old-established communities and their moral collapse; in the UK, there was a widening of class and geographical divisions: rich versus poor; the southeast versus the rest; the Celtic nations versus England.

Culture and Values • The neo-liberal project meant the propagation of new values or what were claimed to be resurrected older values (such as those from the Victorian period); • the rich were less willing to pay for welfare services through general taxation and, in the USA and some European countries, this led to ‘tax revolts’;

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however, there were reactions to this: the elections of Blair in Britain and Jospin in France might be interpreted as signs that many people in these countries felt that the neo-liberal project had gone far enough and that other approaches which recognised the social dimension had to be recovered.

Culture and Language It was during the period of neo-liberal hegemony that a fundamental shift occurred in the conceptualisation of culture and language both with regard to the state and with regard to models of economic development. With regard to the state, most countries, and even France, began to accept the necessity of a certain pluralism in language policies. To some extent, this was a result of the growth of English as a new lingua franca in the areas of diplomacy, academia and scientific research, as well as in the popular media and the new developments in high technology such as the Internet. However, it was also due to the growing importance of the EU as a multilingual system of governance, where competence in more than one language was deemed necessary to participate fully in this new system. All of this relativised the notion of a national language, although there were some rear-guard actions such as the insertion into the French Constitution, as noted above, that there is only one language in France, the French language. Nevertheless, even in France there is now among the political class, with the exception of the souverainistes and the mouvements laiques, a much greater willingness to accept that minority languages may also be part of a nation’s cultural heritage. These changes, related to the broader changes in the transformation of the state, outlined above, may be summarised as follows: •

•

• •

a rethinking of the notion of national culture and language in the context of a multilingual and culturally diverse Europe, officially recognised in the Treaty of Maastricht; a growing appreciation of ‘culture’ as a variable in economic development, probably connected to the realisation of the importance of knowledge and learning in a new paradigm of economic development; related to this a new appreciation of the opportunities for regional cultures: the Catalans promoted this with great success; a new way of conceiving Europe as a mosaic of different cultures was developed, particularly by the Flemish government with the concept of cultural diversity and a Europe of the Cultures 2002.

Of course, much of the above remains at the level of discourse and it is difficult to demonstrate empirically that there is a positive relationship between the

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existence of a distinct culture and economic development. Nevertheless, this discourse has had the effect of finding expression in concrete public policy approaches.

(iii) The ‘Third Way’:The ‘Communitarian/Social’ Model and the ‘Enabling’ State This section is mostly based on what is happening in Britain. However, the British experience is, to a large extent, influenced by the USA and it, in turn, is exciting great interest in other European countries. After twenty years of Thatcherite restructuring of Britain, the British people decided, on 1 May 1997, that they had had enough and elected a New Labour government. This began an era of reform with a government led by Tony Blair, whose ideas and ideology mark a significant departure from the Thatcherite period but also from the Welfare State epoch. During the election many critics of New Labour from both the Right and Left claimed that there was little to choose between what Tony Blair proposed and what the Tories had already given. Although there are similarities and continuities in some of the policies of New Labour and the Tories, there are also significant differences of which the most important is probably the recovery of the sense of community, which had been lost under Thatcher and Major. Blair and his followers also have their intellectual gurus who have promoted this notion. Of particular importance here, apparently, are the ideas of communitarianism developed by Amitai Etzioni, Charles Taylor and John McMurry, as well as Christian Socialism. It remains to be seen whether the Blairite model will be propagated throughout Europe in the same way that the Thatcherite project was and as Mr Blair himself would like.9 The type of approach advocated by Blair and his associates has certain similarities with continental European traditions such as certain strands of Christian and Social Democracy. This might explain why the New Labour government has managed to relate much more easily with the other Member States than Mrs Thatcher or John Major were ever able to do. There is also a great deal of interest in the Blair style, which was adopted by such left-wing politicians as diverse as the formerly died-in-the-wool Socialist Lionel Jospin, and the SPD’s Gerhard Schröder. Nevertheless, it is probably true that ‘Blairism’ owes more to thinkers and experiments happening in the USA associated with Bill Clinton and the ‘reinvention of government’ movement. What follows are some tentative suggestions for a possible new model that is being developed that preserves some features of the neo-liberal model, but which seeks to strengthen the communitarian dimension without a return to the Welfare State of the past.

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The Economy It is in the approach to economic issues that New Labour most resembles the old Tories. However, there are some nuances of difference: New Labour accepts the notion of ‘institutionalist economics’ as opposed to the New Right idea that there can be something like a pure market situation. But it is also true that New Labour accepts in theory as well as in practice the capitalist system and the market, and they no longer seek to capture the ‘commanding heights of the economy’ through the nationalisation of key industries, which was a key element in the programme of old Labour. This also implies an acceptance of the class system, thus signalling an end to the class struggle. As with the Tories, ‘innovative entrepreneurship’ is a key component of New Labour’s economic thinking. However, unlike the Tories, Labour accepts that there is a social dimension to the economy both in terms of a degree of social protection and provision of social services such as education and health, but also in terms of bringing back into productivity entire sections of the community (the under-class). There is also the acceptance of a new role for the trade unions and local authorities in bringing about economic development: they are now seen as partners rather than enemies, although they will remain under the direction of the government and not vice versa. Economic regionalism also seems to be a key component of the new government’s strategy. Although there are key ideas that differ from the approach of the previous government, the new government agrees with the Tories that there should be no increase in personal taxation. To some extent, New Labour thinking on the economy, while relying on thinkers from the United States, particularly Bill Clinton’s advisers, have come close to the social market model of countries like Germany and the Netherlands and perhaps especially to the latter approach. The State Again, in this area there are continuities and changes. New Labour claims it is pursuing equality of opportunity and social justice, but asserts that these will be best served through competition and the pursuit of excellence rather than through levelling down: there is no going back to the old Welfare state. With regard to state–economy relations, however, there is now talk of a new public–private partnership: the private sector is not necessarily better (this was one of the dogmas of neo-liberalism) but the public sector can also provide useful and important models for policies in certain areas. New Labour, for the moment at least, adopts the neo-liberal attitude to taxation and wishes to dispose of the image of the ‘tax and spend party’. It accepted the Tory spending limits for a period of two years (was this a tactic to win the General Election or

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is it a principle of New Labour?). Gordon Brown, while he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, seems to have used a certain amount of ingenuity in both sticking to the financial orthodoxy (partly determined by the Maastricht convergence criteria) and in finding funds for several new schemes. Nevertheless, in some areas, such as hospital waiting lists, the new government has been unable to keep its pre-election promises and there is little indication that Brown will relax his stringent approach to the country’s finances. At the centre of the new government’s reforms is a programme of radically reforming the Constitution through devolution for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, as well as for London and the English regions. The new government wishes to see relations between the centre, the region and the locality based henceforth on partnership and collaboration rather than conflict and antagonism; this is also true of relations with social partners such as trade unions and the Churches. The House of Lords will also be reformed and this may be tied to the wider territorial reforms that are taking place by allowing a measure of territorial representation in an elected upper chamber. By these reforms, New Labour wishes to restore a sense of citizenship rather than consumerism, but their ideal might be seen as communitarian democracy: the decentralisation proposals are a reflection of this goal. New Labour is proEuropean and many of its themes fit easily into the European traditions of Social and Christian Democracy, federalism and regionalism, although clearly the new government will still oppose a fully fledged European federation and will still defend what it perceives to be Britain’s interests. Society In many respects, society itself has not changed significantly compared with the previous period: there are the same trends mentioned above towards individualism and fragmentation. The publics in Britain, France and increasingly Germany seem to be yearning for a more moral approach and the restoration of some kind of community life. The success of Tony Blair and New Labour is at least in part a result of their having read correctly and capitalised on this new mood, just as Mrs Thatcher did in the early years of her regime. According to opinion polls, there is a greater willingness on the part of ordinary citizens to pay for social welfare measures through slightly higher taxation and a great concern over issues such as the environment, famine and injustice. What is new in this period is the explosion of new technologies connected with the Internet and other forms of communications: the costs of communication are tumbling and the younger generations are becoming more and more adept in using the new technologies. On the other hand, the events of 9/11, the July 2005 London bombings and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism have hardened attitudes in

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countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, the UK and even Ireland, and created a climate of mistrust and fear vis-à-vis foreigners. Culture and Values These are really related to the previous section. There is a continuing acceptance of individualistic trends and toleration of a variety of life-styles (for example, the gay community seems to have found a new acceptance), but this is tempered by a new emphasis on ‘community’. At least there is a sense that certain valuable forms of community have been lost and that there is a worrying disintegration of society. There is also a concern that decisions are taken at too great a distance from the ordinary citizen. Nevertheless, these concerns do not seem to be translating themselves into political or social action at the local level. The picture here is one of apathy and ignorance on the part of the public. The idea that the Internet may prove to be a means of improving local democracy is something of a pipedream given that very few citizens are as yet connected up, and also because the Internet seems to be a powerful means of reinforcing the individualism and fragmentation mentioned above. Culture and Language The emerging governance paradigm outlined here presents both challenges and opportunities for minority languages. Among the opportunities may be listed: •

•

•

•

the EU provides a new context within which minority languages can operate which may provide opportunities, including the gaining of financial resources to support their languages and cultures; the weakening of the nation-state also means the weakening of the hegemony of national languages, thereby giving minority languages a new legitimacy; the emphasis on community, subsidiarity and regional and local democracy provides a set of opportunities to develop distinctive political and institutional forms to give expression to their identities (the current devolution reforms in the UK are a good example of the possibilities); the possession of a minority language and culture may (although not necessarily) be an important asset in new models of regional economic development and economic development in general – the qualifier ‘may’ refers to the fact that several other conditions are necessary for this to happen and that it is not an automatic process; on the other hand, it is positive that minority languages and cultures are now not dismissed as obstacles to such development.

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Among the challenges there are: •

•

•

the weakening of the nation-state is not an unmixed blessing as the nationstate is, in important respects, a bulwark against trends, such as cultural globalisation, that are even more harmful to minority languages and cultures; it is difficult for local and regional communities to possess all the resources necessary to transform their distinctive features from obstacles to social and economic development to being assets in this development: if governance means less government, it also means less allocation of public policy resources to such communities; ‘communitarianism’, like ‘multiculturalism’, may be inward-looking, reactionary and stultifying, and the mobilisation necessary to turn minority cultures into outward, looking, progressive and dynamic is difficult to achieve.

It is interesting to relate these shifts with the evolution of the European Community as a system of governance, as shown in Table 1. When the nationstate was weakened as a result of World War II, European integration went into a proto-federalist phase. When the nation-state recovered and was at its height during the heyday of the Welfare State in the 1950s and 1960s, the EC was more residual and characterised by inter-governmentalism. When the nation-state went into crisis and entered a new phase of reform, in the 1980s and 1990s, it entered a new phase of federalism, but one quite different from the early period and characterised by ‘network governance’, partnership and subsidiarity. The relationships between the two processes are illustrated in Table 2. It is important to distinguish between the processes of nation-state building and the different expressions this took in the main state and national traditions, as outlined in the first part of this chapter, and the processes of European integration. Nation-state building, although it might tolerate or incorporate internal diversity, is basically an attempt to create an overarching sense of national identity through the instruments of the state such as education, and inculcation of the symbols of the nation- and statehood such as flags, national anthems, military service, etc. It must be remarked that this has largely succeeded over a period of 200 years since the French Revolution in almost all West European states. Thus, even in states with a strong linguistic diversity such as Switzerland, or a strong administrative diversity such as the United Kingdom, there is an overwhelming sense of national identity as Swiss or British held by the great majority of the citizens of these countries. This is true a fortiori of the classical unitary states such as France, Greece, Portugal or the Scandinavian countries. The emphasis of at least the early phases of nation-state building was

Dominant Actors

The ‘Founding Fathers’ (Monnet, Schuman, De Gasperi, Adenauer).

De Gaulle, Helmut Schmidt.

Giscard d’Estaing, Helmut Schmidt, Margaret Thatcher, Jacques Delors, Helmut Kohl, Tony Blair (from 1997).

Phase

Proto-federalist (1950–57/8)

Intergovermentalist (1957/8–82)

Neo-federalist (1982–present)

Single European Act, Treaty on Political and Economic Union, Treaty of Amsterdam, Constitutional Treaty.

Treaties of Rome creating EEC and Euratom.

Paris Declaration creating ECSC, Treaty of Paris, Plans for EPC and EDC collapse.

Treaty Basis Proto-federal

Systemic Features

European Council, Quasi-federal Councils of Ministers Commission, Court of Justice, European Parliament, European Central Bank.

European Council ‘Strong’ (from 1974), international Council of Ministers regime Commission (former High Authority), Court of Justice, Common Assembly (European Parliament from 1979).

Council of Ministers, High Authority, Court of Justice, Common Assembly.

Important Institutions

Table 1. The phases of evolution of the European Community/Union

Both neo-functionalist and intergovernmentalist

Intergovernmentalist

Neo-functionalist

Operational Mode

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States weakened by war Discrediting of nationalism and ‘breakthrough’ for European integration. But also ‘European rescue’ of the nation-state.

Subordinate paradigm at national level. Economic dimension important at EC level.

Implicit in the political aspects of the EC design.

Welfare state

Neo-liberal state

Communitarian/social state

Proto-federal phase

Exists in some countries of social- and Christiandemocratic tradition, e.g. Germany and the Netherlands.

Subordinate paradigm at national level. Economic dimension important at EC level.

Reaches its fulfilment. Epitomised during Gaullist period. EC policies residually given strength of Member States.

Intergovernmental phase

Table 2. The phases of European integration and State Paradigm shift

Finds new lease of life as an attempt to integrate neo-liberal approach with social democratic values.

Implemented but reaches limits dictated by citizen protest.

Neo-liberal reforms change significantly Welfare States. ‘Migration’ of several policy competences to the European level.

Neo-federal phase

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on the homogeneity of the national identity which had a superior value to the linguistic and cultural heterogeneity, even where this was tolerated. It is equally true that these processes of nation-building are not complete and the recent transformations outlined in the second part of this chapter have allowed the emergence of less clear-cut identities such as Scottish–British or Welsh–British (but not English). The process of European integration has been built on quite a different premise from that of nation-state building. The European idea as formulated in the 19th century and early 20th centuries was predicated in opposition to that of the unified and homogeneous nation-state, and built instead on the notion of diversity and the accommodation of heterogeneity. Furthermore, Europeanists held the nation-state idea responsible for the catastrophes of what they saw as three European civil wars in which France and Germany were the principal protagonists: the Franco-Prussian war of 1870; and World Wars I and II. The political expression of the European idea was European federalism rather than a European nation-state (Brugmans 1970). The more radical federalists, such as Denis de Rougement or Alexandre Marc, advocated a fédéralisme intégral which entailed the disappearance of the existing European nation-states in favour of a federation of regions, communes or ethnic communities (see Loughlin 1988, Héraud 1974). Moderate European federalists such as the founding fathers of Europe, like Robert Schumann and Jean Monnet, however, accepted the nationstate as the basic unit of the European federation, but sought to relativise the absoluteness of its sovereign control over political processes. However, moderate and radical federalists both rejected the notion of a European super-state modelled on the traditional nation-state but emphasised decentralisation, heterogeneity and cultural diversity. The vision of a federal Europe present in the minds of the founding fathers was quickly diluted by the return of nationalism, especially in France and, according to Milward (2000), the European Community of the 1950s and 1960s, in fact, ‘rescued’ the nation-state (see Table 1). The outcome was a hybrid institution in some respects resembling an international regime in which the national governments are predominant but also with tendencies towards supranational federalism. The institutions that were established reflect this complexity. In effect, they are a hybrid between French models of public administration, Germanic traditions of corporatism, and Dutch and, later, British pragmatism. In a sense, this had led to a new ‘European’ state tradition: the tradition of ‘network governance’, which combines some elements of the traditional nation-state and some of a classical federation, but which does not completely correspond to either of these forms of political organisation. The challenge has been to apply political concepts and practices – representative democracy, accountability,

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political legitimacy and transparency – that were developed in the context of the traditional nation-state to a set of institutions that is not a nation-state nor a classical federation. In this respect, there have been some creative attempts to rethink the idea of democracy appropriate to a system of governance that is not the nation-state with notions such as ‘cosmopolitan democracy’ (Held et al. 1998) and ‘constitutional democracy’ (Habermas 1991). Scharpf (1999) distinguishes between ‘input-oriented democracy’ and ‘output-oriented democracy’. The former is typical of the nation-state and refers to the sense of belonging as citizens to a national polity who become involved in democratic practice as a consequence of their deep identification with the nation-state. ‘Output-oriented democracy’ refers to citizens’ involvement that derives from the benefits that the nation-state provides for them: security, welfare, order, etc. In the nation-state, both forms of democracy are present, but the EU relies mainly on the second and is very under-developed in the first. There is little sign that this is changing at least with regard to the general public although ‘input-oriented democracy’ is becoming more intense among well-educated, cosmopolitan European elites. These remarks are simply meant to illustrate the difficulties of applying concepts of political theory and the forms of association associated with liberal representative democracy, that developed in the context of the European nation-state, to what are essentially new forms of political organisation and governance. Have the transformations discussed in the second part of the chapter altered this situation? To some extent they have. Although the nation-state has not disappeared and still performs essential functions, it now operates in a very different context and new actors such as the supranational institutions and regional and local authorities, as well as bodies such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, constrain its freedom of manoeuvre. There is now an internationalisation of policy models that has led to a certain convergence across nation-states. One has only to think of the fads of privatisation, deregulation and ‘slimming down the state’ which were part of the neo-liberal agenda in the 1980s. At the same time, individual nation-states adopted these policy models in line with their state and cultural traditions so that privatisation was not exactly the same thing in France as it was in the United Kingdom. What seems to be occurring today nevertheless is a certain convergence between policy and even administrative models developed at the EU level – the ‘network governance’ outlined above – and what is adopted at the national and regional levels. At the same time, policy development and experimentation within nation-states are adopted by the European Commission and propagated across Europe. In this regard, the LEADER programmes of rural development were developed in Ireland and applied elsewhere albeit not always very successfully (as in

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Portugal). What is important here is that the new hybrid form of governance that has emerged at the EU level is affecting national and local systems of governance, and is encouraging a new, more complex and hybrid collection of policy models that governments at different levels may adopt. Thus, there are new and complex patterns of diversity, convergence and divergence in both policy and administrative organisation at different levels of government, from the European to the local, that are quite different from the fairly clear-cut and homogeneous patterns of previous periods.

CONCLUSIONS The paradigm shifts outlined above have several important consequences for the nation-state system of government. First, national governments are no longer capable of delivering the wide range of services and of directing the economy and public policy as they had done before. Today, their function is much more one of inciting other actors to deliver these services and of stimulating them to come together to do so. This is what lies behind the programmes of decentralisation and regionalisation that most developed states have been implementing since the 1980s. Secondly, the idea that there must be standardisation, uniformity and equality across the entire national territory has been toned down. In Sweden, for example, one of the foremost models of the old approach, there is now a greater tolerance of diversity, while the old Social Democratic ideal is not completely abandoned (Loughlin et al. 2005). Thirdly, national governments, at least in the European, have delegated many sovereign functions to the EU and, in fact, EU legislation now enjoys precedence over national legislation. This means there are many areas previously within the control of nation-states that now escape this. Fourthly, national governments no longer exercise absolute sovereignty over clearly defined pieces of territory. Thus, the notion of territory and borders are now conceptualised differently. Fifthly, the old national identities that seemed so solid are giving way to other more complex identities. This is less true of the development of a European identity, but sub-national and regional identities have become stronger as national identity has declined in importance. This is the case at least in those countries that possess significant national minorities such as the Catalans in Spain, the Scots in the UK and the Bretons in France. European integration has given these minorities a new framework within which to express their demands and their identities. At the same time, these vast changes, while affecting all countries, have been recast in the terms of the state tradition dominant within that country. It would

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take us too far outside the scope of this paper to describe and analyse these changes; we can say that today we can observe a dual phenomenon. On the one hand, countries are subject to the same influences and are adopting similar styles in public policy and even administration. There are common trends towards decentralisation, regionalisation, deregulation, privatisation, etc., and the boundaries between public and private are shifting and becoming more blurred. The nation-state couple is becoming increasingly ‘decoupled’ and there is today a less strong link between the two as concepts of both nation and state change. The ‘nation’ is now seen as a much more complex reality which might include other ‘nations’ or ‘nationalities’ or ethnic groups, while the ‘state’ has significantly changed in its nature and functions. Cultural and economic globalisation and the spread of the Internet also mean that there is a much greater social homogenisation occurring across states. On the other hand, these same processes are leading to much greater openness and lack of uniformity, and a great tolerance of diversity in policy style and approach even within the same state. This is as true of traditional uniform unitary states such as France or Sweden as it is of federalised states such as Belgium, Germany and Switzerland. Governments can do little about many of these changes even if they wanted to, as they are often driven by vast economic and commercial forces. Cosmopolitan elites, such as those working in international institutions, even welcome them and can cope with them. But they are not completely welcome on the part of ordinary citizens who often find themselves in disarray and lacking in points de repère: that is, anchors for their cultural and political identities. Across Europe there are movements in countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark, previously noted for their liberalism and tolerance, that seek to reaffirm the national identity against what they perceive as the invasion by unwelcome immigrants, particularly those of the Muslim faith. These negative and defensive reactions also to a great extent underlie the failure to ratify the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands and the reluctance to even hold a referendum in the UK.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Braudel, Fernand, L’identitè de la France (Paris, Arthaud/Flammarion, 1986). Brugmans, Henri, L’idée européenne, 1920–1970, 3rd edition (Bruges, De Tempel, 1970). Castles, Frank G. (ed.), Families of Nations: Patterns of Public Policy in Western Democracies (Aldershot, Hants, England, Dartmouth, 1993). Crouch, Colin, Social Change in Western Europe (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999).

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Dyson, Kenneth, The State Tradition in Western Europe (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980). Esping-Andersen, Gø´sta, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Cambridge, Polity, 1990). Giddens, Anthony, The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (Oxford, Polity, 1998). Habermas, Jürgen, ‘Constitutional democracy: a paradoxical union of contradictory principles’, Political Theory, vol. 29, no. 6, 1991, pp. 766–781. Greenfeld, Liah, Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 1992). Held, David, Martin Köhler & Daniele Archibugi, Re-imagining Political Community: Studies in Cosmopolitan Democracy (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1998). Héraud, Guy, L’Europe des ethnies, pref. d’Alexandre Marc, 2nd edition (Paris, Presses d’Europe, 1974). Loughlin, John, ‘Personalism and federalism in inter-war France’, in P. Stirk (ed.), The Context of European Unity: the Inter-war Period (London, Francis Pinter, 1988), pp. 188–200. Loughlin, John & B. Guy Peters, ‘State traditions, administrative reform and regionalization’, in Michael Keating & John Loughlin (eds), The Political Economy of Regionalism (London, Frank Cass, 1997). Loughlin, John, ‘Regional autonomy and state paradigm shifts’, Regional and Federal Studies: an International Journal. vol. 10, no. 2, 2000, pp. 10–34. Loughlin, John, ‘The “transformation” of governance: new directions in policy and politics’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 50, no. 1, 2004, pp. 8–22. Loughlin, John, Anders Lidstrom & Christine Hudson, ‘The politics of local taxation in Sweden: reform and continuity’, Local Government Studies, vol. 31, no. 3, 2005, pp. 334–368. Milward, Alan, The European Rescue of the Nation-state, 2nd edition (London, Routledge, 2000) (with the assistance of George Brennan and Federico Romero). Scharpf, Fritz W., Governing in Europe: Effective and Democratic? (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999). Todd, Emmanuel, La troisième planète: structures familiales et systèmes idéologiques (Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1983).

NOTES 1

This chapter develops previous work that has been published in ‘Les Changements de Paradigme de l’Etat et les Politiques Publiques envers les Minorités linguistiques et culturelles’, in Jean-Pierre Wallot (ed.), La gouvernance linguistique: le Canada en perspective (Ottawa, Presses de l’Université d’Ottawa, 2005). 2 The Protestant Churches were largely favourable to the Revolution as they stood to gain from the weakening of the Catholic Church.

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J. Loughlin, ‘Personalism and Federalism in Inter-war France’, in P. Stirk (ed.), The Context of European Unity: The Inter-war Period (London, Francis Pinter, 1988), pp. 188–200. 4 Dyson, Kenneth, The State Tradition in Western Europe (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1980); John Loughlin & B. Guy Peters, B. Guy Peters, ‘State traditions, administrative reform and regionalization’, in Michael Keating & John Loughlin (eds),The Political Economy of Regionalism (London, Frank Cass, 1997), pp. 41–62. 5 Sometimes Northern Ireland has been regarded as a ‘nation’ in its own right, particularly by some elements of the Unionist tradition and some of their supporters such as Conor Cruise O’Brien; but such a concept is absurd as Northern Ireland bears none of the characteristics of a ‘nation’. 6 A referendum held in 1997 to decide on whether political regions should be established was decisively rejected by the population. 7 This section draws heavily on Loughlin (2000). 8 Although there is still a continuity in the sense that centres of decision-making, whether political, economic or financial, tend to cluster around traditional capitals. In Europe, this still means the ‘golden triangle’ of the EU. 9 Blair would have liked to have seen a new alliance of centre-left parties in Europe to promote this ‘Third Way’ between neo-liberalism and old-fashioned socialism, and was successful to some extent in this goal.

CHAPTER 11 Political Culture(s) and European Integration: The Role of Institutions and Society George Schöpflin The problem with attempting to conceptualise the interaction of institutions and society and integrating what emerges into a working definition of European integration is simply the absence of clarity about all three concepts. Thus institutions are an essential, indeed ineluctable, part of collective human existence. And once a particular group of human beings has reached a certain – historically varied – level of collective self-awareness, it can be termed ‘society’, but the content of institution is enormously varied in place and time. Mostly, this does not matter very much, but in the European context it does, because it makes any attempt to define a European-level society either impractical or vague or ideological, or quite likely all three in different measure. So with this warning, we should try to set out some, though not all, of the underlying processes, as well as the surface phenomena, of the ‘role of institutions and society’ in Europe. The central aspect of institutions, one that the social science literature only occasionally deconstructs, is that all institutions, whether formal or informal, simultaneously include and exclude (Douglas 1986). By their nature, institutions establish a particular world, a particular set of localised discourses, with their accompanying norms and criteria for evaluating the world. In this sense, institutions provide predictability, security, meaning and clarity about the world. At this level, any collective social phenomenon counts as an institution, like the state or a language or an enterprise or political parties and parliaments or, say, a trade union or university, but so do informal institutions and practices. What is central to this argument is that once established, institutions rapidly acquire qualities that are no longer directly about their ostensible purposiveness – their formal goals – but are targeted at tacit, implicit, occluded aims (North 1990). This is the world of common sense, of collective forms of knowledge, of propositions that can be taken for granted and need not be renegotiated at every transaction. Paramount here is the proposition that the primary goal of any institution is its own survival. Thus members of institutions, in other words all

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human beings, are continuously engaged in activities of which they are not necessarily conscious, which they screen out if their attention is drawn to them or, indeed, which they may dismiss as ‘irrational’ when observing analogous behaviour in institutions other than their own. The evidence for this proposition is manifold, but the discussion of the autonomy of the state is one good illustration. Or, why is it so difficult to eliminate an institution once its formal purpose is served? Or, when threatened with liquidation, why will the members of institutions respond by a life-and-death struggle to ensure its survival? Broader arguments, from the irrationality of a misallocation of resources for example, carry no weight here. The central analytical point here is that of occlusion, of the implicit quality of a range of collective meanings. Formal rationality pays no attention to this area of collective human existence, because it is deeply threatening to narratives of individual rationality. And individual rationality, with the paramountcy of the sovereign individual at its centre, is one of the foundation narratives of modernity in European society, especially so since the Enlightenment. Indeed, the counter-arguments focusing on the strength of collective forms of knowledge that determine our freedom of thinking along the lines presented here are rapidly screened out, even if one’s interlocutors accept them pro forma. It should be re-emphasised at this point that all institutions function along these lines, formal and informal, large and small, and that includes society. It follows from the foregoing that if Europe is to exist and operate as an intensive institution with corresponding intensity of identification, it should begin to resemble other, lower-level institutions. If we look at the way in which society is understood in the current period, which here means since 1989, then in very crude form and ideal-typically, society should mirror the sovereign individual, that it should be agglomeration of instrumentally rational individuals without any other qualities. This was the core meaning of Mrs Thatcher’s denial of there being any such thing as society. However, we need not take the former British Prime Minister very seriously as a sociologist and can agree that, as a social reality, something like ‘society’ can be identified and its character can be determined with greater or lesser claim to accuracy. The significance of this is, actually, that society is rather more than an agglomeration of instrumentally rational individuals, and further that society, in common with all other human institutions, does impose constraints on the individual. Hence the central problem to be identified is what these constraints are and how they function. In sum, all human collectivities operate by establishing a set of informal as well as formal rules, and sacralise these to prevent them from being deconstructed. An order that is too easily deconstructed runs the serious

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danger of disintegrating, because it cannot provide its members with the existential security that human collectivities generate as a source of meanings and regulation. In effect, institutions establish a plausibility structure – sometimes narrowly, sometimes broadly – within which individuals can function as human beings, by gaining access to the shared norms that make collective existence possible (Berger 1967). From the perspective of the institution and those who control them, the reality-defining agency, the key task is to secure the inviolability of the institution and the most effective way of doing so is to condense meanings, to make the world explicable by the particular meanings that the institutions in question creates (Bauman 1987).

DEMOS AND ETHNOS What is particular about Europe is that since the coming of modernity, the exercise of political power is recognised as best achieved by gaining the consent of those governed. This was one of the messages of the French revolution and is a necessarily condition of democracy. Notionally, democracy could have several underpinnings, but the one that is very deeply encoded in the European consciousness is that democracy should rest on the rational consent of the individual. The agglomeration of rationally consenting individuals constitutes the demos, the entity in the name of which political power is exercised by those elected to do so. This brief outline should, however, be understood as one of the legitimating narratives of democracy. The actual sociological reality is more complex, but that complexity is routinely screened out because it would threaten the civic quality with which demos is endowed. A moment’s thought will show that individuals are endowed with many more qualities than rational calculation, like emotions, and if these are added to the formula, rational calculation must be thoroughly recontextualised. A key aspect of that new context is the entire web of meanings and informal regulation that characterises all human collectivities: culture, in a word. What we are dealing with in real terms is that consent is far more culturally coded than appears at first sight. After all, without a condensed set of cultural norms, the democratic polity could never cope with the problem of dissent. Suppose that in a particular polity, a minority group of (rationally calculating) individuals decided that their interests would be better served by setting up a polity of their own. Under the ideal-typical rules of consent, the majority should then say, yes, of course, please do leave, go with our blessing. As we know, polities profoundly dislike secession and will do everything to prevent it. Why?

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The conventional answer, that secession is disorderly and the new polity would not be viable, has been disproved repeatedly. Think of the new states that have come into being in Europe since 1989: each one was told that it was much better off economically where it was. That, of course, cut no ice at all. Prima facie, once a demos was in being, and this was usually the outcome of some accident of history or the exercise of superior power by another state, it had to live with the configuration that ‘history’ gave it (cf. Austria, which would certainly have joined Germany in 1918 had it been allowed to). Hence we have to look for an answer to this conundrum elsewhere. In brief, the answer should be sought in the activity of the state, which as a primary reality-defining agency has a major role to play in the condensing of meanings and hence of cultural norms. And at this point we have arrived at the point that most supporters of the calculating rational individual as the sole foundation of democracy will reject, namely that democracy and democratic consent are at least in part culturally coded, that this cultural coding has the function of making dissent unthinkable, by establishing a ‘normal and natural’ field of thought and thereby ensuring the cultural reproduction of the polity. In fact, what are we dealing with here is ethnicity, the embedded and naturalised cultural norms by which every human collectivity lives. But for a variety of contingent reasons, ethnicity is the concept that cannot be acknowledged in any consideration of democracy. Briefly, the post-World War II period in Europe was one in which the nation was supposedly integrated into a much broader European project, because above all nationalism was seen as the prime cause of the war, and doing away with the nation would inherently ensure a better, more universal world. This simplified version of the post-war West European world-view retains a considerable hold on reality-defining agencies and public opinion to this day. It boils down to a horror of ethnicity and the attribution of ethnicity to Europe’s ‘uncivilised’ others, whether in Central Europe or Southeastern Europe or beyond Europe. The reality (in the sociological sense) that ethnicity is alive and well in Western Europe just as much as it is elsewhere is routinely screened out or denied. Even the briefest of thought will demonstrate that French or Dutch or Danish civic cultures owe a very great deal to French and Dutch and Danish ethno-cultural norms. A part of the anti-ethnic denial of one’s collective quality is derived from the experience of the USA, which is then projected onto the European political stage. The USA, however, is very different from Europe in one absolutely vital dimension. It has no pre-modernity in the European sense, it has had no aristocracy and peasantry that had to be transformed from pre-modern into modern citizenship, and it has, consequently, not had to cope with the carry-over from pre-modern ethnic cultural and historical discourses. The USA emerged

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on the political stage with a modernity that appeared and continues to appear as only civic and in no way ethnic. The off-stage model function that this US identity has played has been mediated in the freezing of the European state. Whereas historically European states and state boundaries have been fluid, a fluidity that was evident even in 1945 (boundaries changed, states disappeared), thereafter this process stopped and was stopped. The role of the USA in the process is worth investigating, but given American dislike of changing states and their boundaries, the post-1945 period turned out to be one of unprecedented stability in state configuration. This has had an unexpected result. It has upgraded the status, prestige and knowledge of existing states and gave them a vested interest in keeping the state order as unchanged as possible: witness the deep reluctance to accept the disintegration of Yugoslavia. But if we now put together these two propositions, that of the ethnic quality of the modern European state and the growth of the prestige of the state, we have an odd state of affairs: the stability of Europe has significantly enhanced the ethnic quality of the state and European integration, through the European Union (EU), has proved to be much more fitful than the founding fathers of the late 1940s imagined. The consequence has been that despite deepening (for example, economic and monetary union (EMU)) as a political project, Europe has been on a plateau, and has barely moved forward since the end of the Cold War. The overall result has been that the project of encouraging the emergence of a European demos has largely stalled with the freezing of the state. In effect, what seems to have happened is that the unintended consequence of state stability has been to make the reconfiguring of the state by merging more of its functions into the EU increasingly unthinkable. As long as the EU as a process could be presented as a technocratic, bureaucratic and economic project, with the political goals remaining largely abstract and controlled by elites, the kind of popular identification with ‘Europe’ that political deepening would require if it is to be accepted as legitimate could not have taken place. Nor equally, does the democratic deficit have to be addressed other than rhetorically. Arguably, by removing an important source of pressure – the external threat of communism – the end of the Cold War has added to this stasis. Every state-wide referendum has demonstrated the reluctance of nation-state demos to transfer their trust from the state to the EU. The state is king. But there are further obstacles in the way of promoting a European demos. A demos is an institution like any other, so that it must include and exclude, it must generate its own particular discourses and provide foci of identification, generate its own narratives, be articulated in symbolic and mythic terms and have its own shared rituals, if the aim is political. A politically self-aware demos,

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and it is hard to conceptualise a demos in any other way, must have a set of shared norms with political purposiveness if it is to be sufficiently cohesive to operate as the basis of a Europe-wide democracy. Without these, the practice of politics remains, at best, thin and secondary; the primary foci are those constructed around the state. In this realm, Europe has a very long way to go. The European parliamentary elections have some of the necessary qualities, but nothing like enough. The Europe-wide opposition to the war in Iraq did provide a brief moment of shared discursivity, but this died away very soon, not least because the power elites were themselves divided and were certainly not willing to allow the construction of a European demos with an anti-American focus. Arguably the Euro functions as a shared text, as a common narrative, but again it is not very dense, not at this time. And the outcome of the Swedish referendum, as well as the contingent problems of the French and German economies, are contingently factors of weakness.

A SENTIMENTAL DEMOS? But if the European demos in the political realm is still waiting to emerge, it can be seriously argued that there exists a sentimental demos at the level of popular culture. The Hungarian sociologist Elemer Hankiss has put forward a very cogent argument that we are currently living in an anti-Weberian reenchantment of the world and he cited a whole range of cultural practices as evidence (Hankiss 2002). He included the star cults, the world of advertising, fashion and the like. To these may be added cultural processes like women’s magazines, the Eurovision Song Contest, sporting events, shopping and consumption practices, diets, New Age belief systems, the style of hypermarkets and the like, all of which promote a certain set of shared norms throughout Europe. What is lacking, however, is any consciousness that these values and practices are in any way shared and have become part of the European way of life, from Dublin to Warsaw, from Lisbon to Tallinn. In any case, this homogenisation of cultural practices is as much a matter of globalisation as a deliberate European development. And it is hard to see how this sentimental demos could be transformed into a politically conscious community, at this time certainly.

A EUROPEAN ETHNOS? The very idea of creating and promoting anything remotely resembling a Europe-wide ethnos attracts the greatest possible disapprobation. The

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somewhat anaemic attempts to construct a single narrative of a European history have been marginalised. A European high culture, drawing on music, literature and architecture, say, is recognised, but is dismissed as hopelessly elitist. Again, any such attempts would run into major opposition from those who privilege universalism and argue that Europe should not be exclusive, and a European ethnic consciousness would, by definition, exclude whatever is regarded as nonEurope. The argument over whether Islam is a part of Europe or not falls firmly into this area. Then, it is argued, condensed ethnic-type narratives in Europe would act as discrimination against immigrants from outside Europe. It is not only the universalists who are opposed, but rather less loudly, so are the nation-state nationalists, who quietly but firmly reject any idea of further deepening of the European integration project by constructing an ethnic identity for Europe. In this connection, we have something interesting that is seldom recognised for what it is. In brief, the universalism of the cultural Great Powers of Europe – France, Germany, Britain – is gradually being converted into something significantly more ethnic than hitherto. Under the impact of globalisation, the European civic state is finding that its sources of coherence and coherence-creation are weakening and it is substituting noticeably more ethnicised discourses than previously. France is the locus classicus, but the position of the British Conservative Party is not that different and in the smaller nation-states, like say the Netherlands, the process is just as clear. And it is hard to resist the conclusion that at least a part of the ‘No’ vote in the Swedish euro referendum was driven by an ethnic nationalism. So, overall, European integration in its present form may very well have come up against an insurmountable barrier, but how far can European integration proceed without a myth-symbol complex and condensed cultural discourses? Can Europe integrate solely on the basis of elite discourses and cooperation, instrumental rationality, restricted civic norms that are in the hands of the member states which are simultaneously nation-states? The elitedriven quality of European integration makes it dependent on success for its legitimacy and if that element of success, which must also be perceived as success, should falter, then it may well be the existing institutional framework of Europe will not change in the foreseeable future. The institutions and society that Europe has today are likely to remain in their existing form.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bauman, Zygmunt, Legislators and Interpreters (Cambridge, Polity, 1987). Berger, Peter L., The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York, Doubleday, 1967).

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Douglas, Mary, How Institutions Think (Syracuse, NY, Syracuse University Press, 1986). Hankiss, Elemér, ‘Legenda profana, avagy a világ újravarázsolása’, in Ágnes Kapitány & Gábor Kapitány (eds), Jelbeszéd az életünk (Budapest, Osiris, 2002), pp. 96–123. North, Douglas C., Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990).

CHAPTER 12 Political Cultures, Markets, Money, and EMU Loukas Tsoukalis HISTORICAL BACKGROUND In the good old days of the European founding treaties, the overall approach to economic integration consisted mainly of the elimination of physical crossborder controls, which hindered the free circulation of goods, services, persons and capital: the so-called four fundamental freedoms. Given the nature of national mixed economies, this meant in practice that, during the first three decades or more of European integration, the main, albeit limited, effect had been on the free circulation of goods. The elimination of national barriers, mostly at the border, was coupled with some harmonisation, when the mixed economy raised its ugly head (or pretty head: it is only a matter of taste), and as long as national governments could agree on common European rules as the necessary price to pay for the common market. Trade liberalisation, much faster at the regional level but also quite significant at the international level with GATT as its main vehicle, coincided with the emergence of mixed economies and welfare states. During that time, the role of the state became increasingly pronounced at both micro and macro levels. ‘Keynes at home and Smith abroad’, as someone very ingeniously put it, with Keynes representing the interventionist arm of government and Smith free markets. While Western European countries were eliminating their border controls, mostly affecting trade in goods, they were busily developing domestic instruments for macroeconomic stabilisation, re-distribution, insurance against risk, and the provision of public goods. And the nature of those instruments, as well as the extent of their use, varied significantly from one country to another. Thus, the national margin of manoeuvre remained relatively wide, allowing enough room for different national capitalist models and different political cultures to flourish. The big turning point came with the internal market programme in the 1980s: the European Community (EC) thus entered the world of mixed

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economies in a big way, and market regulation became a major issue on the European agenda. It was supposed to be based on a radically new approach to the elimination of all remaining barriers to the free circulation of goods, services, persons and capital, arising from a myriad of national rules and regulations. These, precisely because of their differences, created obstacles or distortions inside the common market. The new approach was both simple and radical, and it was meant to serve like the sword used by Alexander the Great to cut the famous Gordian knot. Instead of trying to harmonise everything, a process which had proved to be extremely long and arduous, it was agreed that the Community would rely as much as possible on the principle of mutual recognition, fully consistent with subsidiarity, coupled with common legislation limited only to essential objectives and requirements. The adoption of the internal market programme marked a major turning point in regional economic integration. It was, first of all, an admission that the common market was largely incomplete almost thirty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome. It was also a recognition of the limits of liberalising trade by eliminating border controls in the context of mixed economies. But this meant that the national mixed economy was no longer untouchable: a new formula would have to be found for John Maynard Keynes to be able to coexist with Adam Smith. Intruding into the mixed economies of individual member states implied that national economic sovereignty would become a more relative concept. True, there was a new economic orthodoxy lurking in the background, with a heavy emphasis on supply-side measures and deregulation; in other words, less government and more market. Yet, in the process of translating economic ideas into policy, this new economic orthodoxy had to be adjusted to the political realities and diversity of European mixed economies, much to the regret of neoliberals. There has been liberalisation, but the European Union (EU) has also gradually developed into a regulatory state, itself confronted with the standard questions associated with market regulation: how much regulation, and of what kind; centralised or not, public or private? There have been differentiated timetables and also numerous exceptions catering for diverse national systems and particularistic interests. And there has been much resistance – and long delays – to the elimination of remaining national barriers, most notably in the services sector.

EMU AND HIGH POLITICS And then came economic and monetary union (EMU). The unthinkable has indeed happened. Thirteen European countries have replaced their national

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currencies with a new single currency, the euro. In doing so they have also transferred a big chunk of their sovereignty, and the symbols that go with it, to the EU. Money is at the heart of national sovereignty: the currency has always been seen as a key symbol of nationhood, while monetary policy and the exchange rate constitute major instruments of economic policy. Economic and monetary union is therefore the most important thing that has happened in Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall; and there is surely nothing in its fifty-year history of integration comparable to EMU in terms of political and economic significance. Few people would have dared to predict such a development when bilateral exchange rates in the European Monetary System (EMS) came under massive attack in 1992–93, while European societies greeted the Maastricht Treaty with remarkably little enthusiasm. EMU has, in fact, a long and turbulent history of ups and downs. Many people repeatedly dismissed it as both unreal and not serious, although few as graphically as John Major, the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, who said that support for it had ‘all the quaintness of a rain dance and about the same potency’. EMU was born at the same time as European political cooperation, the predecessor of the common foreign and security policy (CFSP); and both were meant as bold attempts to venture beyond low politics. Their trajectories have been very different so far: while EMU has already reached the final (irreversible?) stage, the CFSP still has a long road to travel. So important a project deserves an explanation. How is it, after all, that a slow and conservative system – an apt description of the European political system – operating under extremely complicated rules and requiring very large majorities has produced such a revolutionary decision followed by remarkable political commitment (which survived, at least, during the transitional period leading to the replacement of national currencies by the euro). It all started from zero. The Treaty of Rome contained very little in terms of binding constraints in the field of macroeconomic policy. Interest in monetary integration, however, grew in subsequent years, leading to the creation of the snake in the early 1970s, the EMS in 1979, and finally EMU. Three main driving forces can be identified in this long process of integration. The first has been the search for stability: of intra-European exchange rate stability seen as a precondition for the proper functioning of the European market, to which the objective of price stability was later added. Thus, European monetary integration came to be seen as a way of imposing external discipline on those unruly members with a poor record of monetary stability, with their governments willingly tying themselves to the European mast in order to be protected from the Sirenes (and macroeconomic mismanagement). Thus, once again, a major project of

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economic integration became directly linked to a particular set of ideas no longer favourable to government control of monetary policy as an integral part of demand management policies, with the EU acting as a facilitator of the new orthodoxy. The second driving force has been the search for symmetry: inside the Union, thus going beyond the Deutschmark (DM) standard, which had characterised the early phases of regional monetary integration, but also vis-à-vis the rest of the world: a diplomatic way of referring to the US dollar. The third has been the search for further integration: money has been repeatedly used as an instrument for achieving deeper economic integration in Europe, and most importantly, political integration; hence it is a means to an end rather than just an end in itself. As EMU entered the European political agenda in the end of the 1980s, it was perceived by advocates as the final and irrevocable confirmation of the reality of the single European market and of a unified European economy. A common currency was seen as the means of welding national economies together, but also, very importantly, the means of accelerating the movement towards political union. This was familiar stuff to the integrationist lobby; but, arguably, nothing much would have come of it had it not been for the fall of the Berlin Wall and German unification, which provided the unexpected catalyst. The pressure came again from the French, with valuable support from the Commission. Initially, the Germans showed very little enthusiasm: the government and the central bank were happy with the status quo of the EMS, as it had developed until then, and any move towards monetary union was perceived, quite rightly, as leading to the erosion of Germany’s independence in the monetary field. In purely economic terms, monetary union offered the Germans precious little, on the assumption, of course, that some kind of regional currency arrangement, which helped to contain the overvaluation of the DM, could be taken for granted. There is no doubt that an EMS, in which Germany set the monetary standard, was infinitely better for the Germans than a monetary union in which they would have to share with others the power to run monetary policy. What finally tipped the balance was the perceived need to reaffirm the country’s commitment to European integration in the wake of German unification. This is how the matter was presented in Paris. Chancellor Kohl spoke of economic and monetary union as a matter ‘of war and peace in the twenty-first century’. The economic weight of the country, its strong reputation for monetary stability and its preference for the status quo enormously strengthened the negotiating power of Germany, thus enabling it in most cases to impose its own terms for the transition and the contents of the final stage of EMU. The

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Germans set a high price for signing the contract. Once a Franco-German agreement had been reached, the process appeared almost unstoppable, thus repeating earlier patterns of European decisionmaking. Italy was supportive, and it also provided much of the intellectual input. The Dutch shared much of the economic scepticism of the Germans, but their margin of manoeuvre was extremely limited. Belgium and Luxembourg were fervent supporters, although Belgium was at the same time extremely concerned in case a strict application of the admission criteria to the final stage of EMU kept it outside the privileged group, because of its very high level of public debt. Denmark felt almost like a natural member of the European currency area, but its politicians were not at all sure (and rightly so) that they would be able to carry the population with them into a monetary union; hence the ‘opt-out’ protocol. The main concern of the other southern countries was to link EMU to more substantial budgetary transfers and to avoid an institutionalisation of two or more tiers in the Community. As for Ireland, it benefited from the transfers and felt more confident than its southern brethren that it would be among the first to obtain an entry ticket into the final stage. It would, however, have preferred the island separating it from the continent to join also, because so much of its trade is still with Britain. Britain remained the only country whose government, itself internally divided, expressed grave doubts about the desirability and feasibility of EMU on both economic and political grounds. The situation had apparently changed little since the establishment of the EMS. Realising its isolation, the Conservative government made a conscious effort to remain at the negotiating table, and sacrificed Margaret Thatcher in the process. It made alternative proposals as a diversionary tactic, which failed to make much of an impression on the other partners. In the end, it reconciled itself to an ‘opt-out’ provision in the Treaty. To the great disappointment of European political leaders, the Maastricht Treaty met with little applause from European societies and international markets alike. What proved to be an agonising process of ratification of the Treaty by the twelve members at the time coincided with turmoil in the exchange markets, and the two became mutually reinforcing. This vicious circle was finally broken, followed by a period of stability and convergence, leading in 1999 to the final stage of EMU. During this period, most member governments, acting separately or through European institutions, showed remarkable commitment to the goal of EMU. And they finally succeeded in gaining market support and public acquiescence for the project. The story of EMU in the 1990s is indeed an interesting case study of governments leading and markets and societies following, with some exceptions, of course.

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POLITICAL FEASIBILITY AND ECONOMIC ORTHODOXY The constitution of EMU is incomplete, but it is very much the product of its time in terms of political feasibility and economic ideas. The negotiations leading to the Maastricht Treaty, and subsequent negotiations which added important pieces to the EMU construction, were, of course, conducted by human beings: not entirely rational, at least in the economic sense of the term; each carrying his or her ideological baggage, the contents of which change with economic and political fashion; and taking decisions on the basis of imperfect information, although knowing full well that EMU was part and parcel of a much wider ongoing negotiation on the future of Europe. In the intergovernmental conference, which gave birth to the Treaty of Maastricht, all countries, as usual, were theoretically equal and all had the right of veto. But some surely were more equal than others. The EMU construction reflects essentially the strong interest of France in EMU, Germany’s ability to set the terms of reference, the prevalence of monetarist ideas, and the lack of sufficient support for tackling the political deficit of the Community, now metamorphosed as Union. The economics of EMU has been much debated by economists. There is certainly no consensus that the economic advantages of a single European currency outweigh the disadvantages resulting from the loss of important policy instruments at a national level. Of course, the balance sheet for Belgium would be substantially different from that for the United Kingdom. It has to do with the openness of the national economy, among other things. The EU is not an optimum currency area, far from it, though such an optimum currency area could be created ex post. The European economy is not yet sufficiently homogeneous, which means that different countries and regions can be subject to asymmetric shocks. And there are no adequate adjustment mechanisms, such as flexible labour markets, high labour mobility, or large budgetary transfers, to act as effective substitutes for the exchange rate. But how effective is the exchange rate as a policy instrument in a world characterised by highly mobile international capital and inherently unstable financial markets? Financial globalisation clashes with the persisting diversity of national economic systems, institutions and cultures. Can there be a true European market with constantly fluctuating exchange rates linking its national components? The economics profession gave no decisive answer. With EMU, the broad answer was given at the highest political level and mostly on the basis of political arguments; then it was left to the experts to negotiate the technical arrangements. It had been different with the internal market programme, which enjoyed wide support among the economics profession.

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The strong emphasis on price stability as the primary, if not single, objective of the European Central Bank (ECB) in the conduct of monetary policy, coupled with the provisions for the political independence of the bank, reflected mainly the preoccupations of the Germans and their desire to export their successful (until then) national model as well as the prevalence of monetarist thinking, not to mention the influence of the ‘brotherhood of central bankers’ who did most of the drafting of the statutes of the ECB. Monetary policy was not supposed to have an impact on real economic variables in the long term, but only in the short term and at a high price in terms of inflation. Furthermore, the independence of central banks was meant to protect monetary policy from political interference, thus becoming a victim of the electoral cycle; and since the ECB has no history behind it, legal provisions were meant to be even stronger in order to ensure its credibility in the markets. Given the shortage of adjustment mechanisms in EMU, it could have made sense to strengthen the flexibility of national fiscal policies as a way of dealing with asymmetric shocks, or simply with the insufficient synchronisation of economic cycles. But there was also the perceived risk of free-riding by national, or even regional, governments operating under the shield of the Union, on the assumption, of course, that markets cannot be relied upon to provide an effective restraint on government overspending (and under-taxing). In the end, fear of this risk prevailed over the attractions of fiscal flexibility, because of German doubts about the fiscal rectitude of some of their partners, while budgetary consolidation constituted an integral part of economic correctness at the time; hence the straightjacket imposed by the Stability and Growth Pact. Rigid rules were meant to act as a substitute for the lack of institutional history in EMU. Keynesianism was also supposed to be dead and buried. A similar combination of factors applied to fiscal federalism in the context of EMU. The MacDougall report back in 1977 had argued in favour of a substantial increase in the Community budget with an important stabilisation function as a precondition for the proper functioning of EMU. No longer in the early 1990s: the Germans were not prepared to pay and the very idea of stabilisation was unfashionable. So the architects of EMU rejected intra-EU budgetary transfers as an automatic adjustment mechanism, while imposing heavy constraints on national fiscal policy. In so doing, they implicitly assumed one of two things: either that economic convergence would be fast, including convergence in wage bargaining in different European countries, thus reducing the need for adjustment instruments; or that labour markets would become much more flexible and thus be able to absorb asymmetric shocks.

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Prevailing economic orthodoxy clearly put the emphasis on labour market flexibility; and for some years, there has been indeed considerable pressure from international organisations and the great majority of the economics profession to move in this direction. But would the Germans, for example, be ready to replace their corporatist model of industrial relations with the model of flexible labour markets, following the American example? Whatever success the Bundesbank had in the past in securing low inflation cannot be understood in isolation from the way in which the German political system functioned in the post-war period, including relations between government, business and organised labour. And this may be precisely one of the main problems with the ECB: the rest of that successful package is not there. The convergence criteria were something totally new in European integration. It was the first time that preconditions were set for a country to be able to participate in a common policy. They have been criticised on many grounds. They are mechanistic, some of them are arbitrary and superfluous, they ignore real convergence, and they are also arguably deflationary. They can be viewed at best as a rough (and also ephemeral) indicator of the stability orientation of countries before they enter EMU, although this could admittedly strengthen the credibility of EMU and the ECB. In purely economic terms, it would have made sense to go for a much shorter transition period with easier conditions for entry and better (and perhaps stricter) rules for the final stage of EMU; but this was not politically possible. The convergence criteria were also meant to restrict, at least for some time, the number of countries allowed into the final stage, although that is a dangerous political precedent. Who could have guessed that as many as eleven countries would slip through the net on the basis of 1997 data; two years earlier, only Luxembourg would have qualified. This is what it means to live in a world of limited information and even more limited predictability. Presumably, many economists inhabit a special world of their own. EMU is compatible with the strong tradition of elitism and depoliticisation in European integration. The key decisions were taken at the very top behind closed doors, the texts were drafted by central bankers and diplomats making of the ECB a fortress for the cognoscenti, big business was allowed a say in later stages, while the wider public was simply expected to acquiesce. After all, the management of money had traditionally been a matter reserved for experts. And as for the wider implications of EMU: they were meant to be subsumed under the general goal of European integration, which of course could work in the case of Italy or Greece, but not necessarily so in Denmark or the United Kingdom. There was very little public debate on the pros and cons of EMU and its wider implications, or on alternative ways of managing the new single currency,

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before the signing of the Treaty; the exceptions were those countries which had a large number of sceptics from the beginning. The unenthusiastic response accorded to the Treaty came as a nasty surprise to European political elites; there were nastier surprises to follow more than ten years later. If other countries, especially Germany, had followed the example of the Danes, the Irish and the French in holding referendums on EMU at the time, the project might have sunk for good. Apart from the usual Eurosceptic suspects in Scandinavia and the United Kingdom, even the Germans showed precious little enthusiasm for EMU in the beginning. In their case, however, political leadership paid off: public support for EMU grew steadily during the transitional period.

A CONSERVATIVE CENTRAL BANK? We have created a European single currency with a weak and unbalanced institutional structure, and rigid rules to compensate for those faults. This is what was politically feasible at the time, and the architects of EMU went for it, postponing several difficult decisions: only half-consciously perhaps, because their design closely reflected current economic fashion. Furthermore, market integration has always proved easier than political and institutional integration, where the parameters become intertwined with the political culture. The early years of EMU coincided with a very poor economic performance; it was, in fact, much worse than in the 1990s. Growth rates fell further, although there was some improvement in terms of unemployment. The macroeconomic performance of the eurozone continued to compare unfavourably with that of the USA. There was considerable divergence among individual members during this period: Ireland and Greece were ahead in terms of annual real growth rates, while Germany, Italy and the Netherlands remained dangerously close to zero or one per cent at best. This divergence made the one-size-fits-all monetary policy of the eurozone more difficult and painful; Ireland and Greece, for example, needed higher interest rates, Germany and the Netherlands lower. Decision-makers may have prayed that the first recession after the introduction of the euro arrives as late as possible, thus allowing the ECB and other European institutions time to learn and establish their credibility and legitimacy with markets and societies alike. If they did so, their prayers were evidently not heard at higher levels. Still, popular support for EMU remained quite strong in the countries of the eurozone a few years after the introduction of the single currency, and the same applied to the new member states that joined in May 2004. Presumably, many Europeans appreciated the advantages of having a single currency, including perhaps the political and symbolic

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connotations of it. But would popular support continue for long if EMU were not seen as delivering the goods? The stabilisation function of EMU should involve a continuous dialogue between the central bank and a European political institution responsible for economic policy at the Union level and accountable to the European Parliament. This should also, albeit slowly, encourage Europe-wide debates on the direction and key policy priorities for European economic policy, as the constraints on national choices become tighter (and are perceived as such) as a result of treaty obligations and market integration. The europhobes are, indeed, right about the political conclusion they draw from EMU: it is bound to have a centralising effect on economic policies, although this is likely to take a long time. To compensate for the lack of history, the authors of the Maastricht Treaty tried to strengthen the credibility of the ECB through strict rules guaranteeing its political independence and its attachment to the goal of price stability. They seemed to be less concerned about its popular acceptance, presumably assuming that the new institution would gain legitimacy as it was seen to deliver the goods. In other words, credibility in the markets was given precedence over credibility in European societies in general. The existing arrangements are based on certain assumptions about the role of monetary policy and its divorce from majoritarian democracy. For some, EMU forms part of the ‘Golden Straitjacket’ made famous by the US journalist Thomas Friedman (the ‘Golden Straitjacket’ is meant to transform the democratic game and the political culture in advanced societies into a competition among more and less efficient managers of the capitalist system). It will not necessarily survive the test of time, at least in Europe. The ECB will therefore need a political counterpart for EMU to function properly and also for the Bank itself to strengthen its own credibility and legitimacy. An independent central bank, without a credible political interlocutor to which it is answerable and which in turn enjoys democratic legitimacy, is essentially a weak central bank. The ECB was designed as a conservative bank in conformity with German preferences and the prevailing economic orthodoxy. It behaved accordingly during its first four years of operation, putting the emphasis virtually exclusively on price stability, defined by the ECB as an average eurozone annual inflation rate within the range zero to two per cent, at the expense of other considerations such as growth, employment or financial stability. This inflation target has been too restrictive, especially at a time when deflation ceased to be a matter of concern exclusively for historians; hence, European interest rates were sometimes kept at too high a level. And the ECB has shown little inclination to pursue a proactive monetary policy, the comparison with the US Federal Reserve under

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Mr Greenspan being more than indicative. The straitjacket imposed on the European economy seems to have been made of copper, not gold, thus adding insult to injury; but this is more true of Germany than, say, Italy. Greater self-confidence, which can be acquired only through experience, and a stronger political interlocutor in the form of a European institution for economic policy should (one hopes) lead the ECB to become less conservative, and also more accountable to the democratically elected representatives of European citizens; the sooner the better for all concerned. Independence does not mean lack of accountability, and accountability needs to be strengthened in the case of the ECB. Testing the boundaries between orthodoxy and heresy (as others have already done), one could in fact go even further and argue that there is nothing in the holy books of central banking which requires that setting the inflation target should be the prerogative of an independent central bank. Independence can be defined in terms of the policy instruments used to meet the target set by political authorities. With time, we are likely to witness further centralisation in the implementation of monetary policy and a reduced role for the governors of national central banks in decision-making. The latter will become almost inevitable with the addition of new members to EMU. In the future, the ECB should also be expected to acquire more powers of banking supervision and regulation, ending up probably as the lender of last resort for the Union as a whole. But this may prove to be a long process that encounters much resistance from national banking and financial regulators. With rapid financial integration, and with EMU acting as an important catalyst in this respect, it will be increasingly difficult to continue with the practice of the twelve or more national subsidiaries of the ECB acting independently as banking supervisors, thus pretending that national markets are much less interdependent than they actually are.

SOME STABILITY AND LITTLE GROWTH The Stability and Growth Pact lost much of its credibility as it manifestly failed in the main task assigned to it, namely to impose effective limits on fiscal laxity in the context of EMU. Some members massaged the figures in order to escape from common discipline, while others, politically more powerful, simply chose to ignore the rules and the stern warnings issued by the European Commission. The Pact was reformed in the end, allowing for greater flexibility and more time in bringing national budget deficits down to the limits imposed by Maastricht. It was largely making virtue out of necessity. Whether the revised pact succeeds in having much of an impact on national fiscal policies remains to be tested.

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But we should go further. The ‘E’ in EMU will need to be more precisely defined and also given the appropriate institutional structure, while the persistent reality of nation-states (including the fact that the bulk of public money will continue to be spent by national governments) should of course be recognised. A monetary union needs a more effective coordination of fiscal policies, going beyond the restrictions imposed on national budget deficits and the broad economic policy guidelines, which are usually too broad to have a real effect on national policies. Perhaps, more accurately, they have been mainly an exercise in national wishful thinking. Monetary union needs a more effective coordination and also a more symmetrical approach to fiscal policies, thus not only responding to the need for fiscal consolidation in several countries but also being able to deal more effectively with recession. The same observation about the need for symmetry of course applies to monetary policy. Otherwise, we risk continuing the battles of the past. The Union ideally should have a policy institution that takes a global view of the European economy as a whole and can collectively agree on the main macroeconomic policy priorities, thus allowing for a more proactive policy for the Union. At present, the policy mix emerges mostly by default and not as a result of explicit coordination; and it is also biased in one direction. Such a development would, of course, be very much enhanced by the existence of a stabilisation fund at EU level and the operation of automatic stabilisers in an expanded EU budget. Alas, the political conditions are not yet ripe for such a development. Political integration is a slow process. EMU needs a more effective coordination of economic policies in the wider sense, thus introducing a minimum of coherence to the multitude of coordination procedures introduced in the Union in an almost absent-minded fashion, ranging from employment guidelines to structural reform. In a monetary union with weak internal adjustment mechanisms, the emphasis has been laid on greater flexibility of labour markets as a means of absorbing asymmetric shocks. The Lisbon process was meant to provide the external catalyst and ideological justification for painful domestic reforms. Yet it was not sufficiently realised that such reforms create losers, and hence strong resistance from those who have an interest in defending the status quo; they are the majority, and also the best organised. Earlier experience with European integration suggests that internal adjustments were made possible in a dynamic macroeconomic environment and with the aid of redistributive instruments. As long as we fail to create similar conditions today, economists’ calls for structural reform will fall on the usually deaf ears of politicians and their electorates. Macroeconomic policy can play a positive role in this respect, creating conditions more conducive to growth, although many in Europe have tended to play down this role for years.

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Monetary union requires a European economic government, with clearly defined powers and a still-decentralised structure. In that context, a clearer role would also have to be mapped out for the European Commission, including the provision of technical back-up and the monitoring of policy agreements. The Commission seems to have done a good job with the narrow mandate accorded to it by the Maastricht Treaty. The term ‘economic government’ was first introduced by the French Socialists, but it was never properly defined, perhaps wisely so because the Union may not yet be politically ready for such a step. But support for it is likely to grow out of frustration with EMU’s weak institutional structure, which in turn causes economic weakness. Yet the closer coordination of national economic policies is much easier said than implemented. It is bound to be a gradual learning process. The trouble is that macroeconomic policy needs more discretion than fixed rules, and the Union is ill-equipped, historically and politically, to act in a discretionary manner. Important issues of sovereignty are at stake which were conveniently swept under the carpet during the negotiations leading to the Maastricht Treaty, but which are unlikely to remain there for long. Then we shall discover that many of those who have been instrumental in setting up EMU may not be ready to accept the institutional and political consequences. The existing mechanisms of soft coordination could be strengthened and thus become more effective. But in some cases this would imply further constraints on national sovereignty, more specifically on national governments and parliaments, in terms of economic policy. For example, an agreement on the general European macroeconomic policy stance would have to set limits within which national budgetary policies could be determined, while national ministers sitting in a European economic policy council, yet to be created, would have to act increasingly as intermediaries or transmission belts between the European and the national levels, in the process gaining in power vis-à-vis their national cabinet colleagues. It does not look at all easy. How much room can European economic policy coordination allow for national idiosyncrasies? Can binding rules and majority voting replace benchmarking and peer pressure? The transition may indeed be slow and often painful. Yet it would be ridiculous to pretend that national budgetary policies or decisions on structural reform can continue as if EMU did not exist. The effects of EMU will surely not be limited to macroeconomic policy. The single currency is expected to act as a major unifying factor mainly through greater price transparency and the elimination of exchange-rate uncertainty, thus leading to more intensified competition across borders. This is by far the most important step for the creation of a truly internal market, leading to even greater economic interdependence between national economies and further

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restructuring with more cross-border mergers and acquisitions. Most economists expect a substantial further increase in trade and FDI flows within the eurozone. Deeper market integration will in turn exert pressure for further Europeanisation of a wide range of policy issues, thus raising new questions about the division of powers between European and national institutions as well as the distribution of gains and losses among countries or economic and social groups. EMU will place an even greater premium on mobility and size. Thus, EMU will not be politically neutral; only the most naïve of technocrats would believe so. The regulation of financial markets is one of those issues which have already acquired prominence on the European policy agenda. Deeper market integration and more restructuring across borders will have important effects on competition policy. Questions of tax harmonisation, more precisely the prevention of harmful tax competition, have been a hot issue for some time. The political temperature is unlikely to fall in the future; if anything, it should be expected to rise further. How does one reconcile national fiscal autonomy with increasingly European and global markets and a single European currency? On the other hand, while other adjustment mechanisms remain weak, the emphasis will continue to be placed almost exclusively on labour market flexibility as a shock absorber inside EMU.

ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE AND THE EURO GROUP Effective governance of the eurozone implies the upgrading of the Euro Group consisting of the economics and finance ministers of the member countries. The institutionalisation of the Euro Group would in turn have major political implications for the Union as a whole, with EMU acting as the basis for further differentiation between categories of members, the so-called ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ of EMU. As long as the latter remains the most important manifestation of European integration, it seems inevitable that membership of it will crucially affect the value of membership of the Union more generally. In this sense, EMU would act as a divisive factor. On the other hand, a successful EMU should attract more members. There is now a ‘Mr Euro’ who presides the Euro Group and represents the eurozone in international forums. The President of the Euro Group, elected for a period of two and a half years, is also expected to act as the political counterpart to the President of the ECB. The relationship between the two may prove delicate. Mr Euro will have a task in his hands in trying to create harmony out of the cacophony of uncoordinated voices, which has often characterised the

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eurozone, with obvious negative consequences for negotiating power and the credibility of the single currency in financial markets. Do Europeans have common views and interests to defend with respect to the role of international financial institutions and the rules governing the financial system? Experience again suggests that, as long as European views and interests on such issues are represented separately, they will continue to have only a small impact on global economic governance, not commensurate with the relative weight of the Union. Such considerations have historically provided one of the main driving forces behind EMU in an international system still characterised by US hegemony. It remains to be seen whether the Europeans will be able collectively to rise to the challenge of the euro growing into a major international currency, and thus assume the responsibilities that go with it. The list of questions in search of answers is still very long. The general message is, however, straightforward: EMU is indeed a high-risk strategy. There is a serious economic risk in the irrevocable fixing of exchange rates and ‘one-sizefits-all’ monetary policy, while other adjustment mechanisms are still very weak and economic divergence persists. The ‘misfits’ are likely to pay a heavy price. If managed badly, EMU could have a negative effect in terms of output and employment for the Union as a whole, with more losers than winners. There is also a political risk linked to the legitimacy deficit of the Union and the weakness of the institutional structure, which is not adequately equipped to cope with crises. And there is no easy exit option, if things go wrong. This is very important. Arguably, the instability of currency markets, combined with the wide openness of individual EU economies, left European policy-makers with little choice. But this a debatable proposition; after all, the three countries of EU-15 that chose to stay out were not doing that badly in the first years after the introduction of the euro. It may be, however, very different for the new members with weaker currencies exposed to the volatility of financial markets. On the other hand, for EMU to work it will need a stronger and more integrated eurozone in both political and economic terms. It will also require some painful structural reforms. Will the eurozone end up as the core group of regional integration? This may be the optimistic scenario. But it could turn out very differently, with EMU proving to be a step too far for at least some European governments and societies. Of course, between open crisis and deeper integration there are variations of the muddling-through option, often popular at EU level. In the case of the euro, muddling through is likely to entail a high cost if it were to continue for long.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY De Grauwe, Paul, Economics of Monetary Union, 5th edition (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003). Dyson, Kenneth, Elusive Union: The Process of Economic and Monetary Union in Europe (London, Longman, 1994). Dyson, Kenneth & Kevin Featherstone, The Road to Maastricht: Negotiating Economic and Monetary Union (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999). McNamara, Kathleen, The Currency of Ideas: Monetary Politics in Europe (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1998). Tsoukalis, Loukas, What Kind of Europe?, updated and expanded edition (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005).

CHAPTER 13 Economic Cultures, States, Money, and EMU Erik Holm Christmas 2004 brought a Japanese word into the Western vocabulary: tsunami, the seismic ocean wave. Its immediate effect for countries around the Indian Ocean was catastrophic, but when the many thousand victims have been buried and the devastated areas cleared, its consequences for the world may not be noticeable. The political tsunami that hit Europe fifteen years earlier in the weeks around Christmas 1989, and which caused the Berlin Wall to fall and the socialist systems of Eastern Europe to collapse, transformed the political landscape of Europe fundamentally. Its consequences for European and Western politics changed the course of history. Very few had sensed, not to say predicted, the coming of this ground swell, and the politicians were not at all prepared for the shock. The slender and frail political construction of the European Union, derived from its economic structure, was unfit to cope with the new challenges as the tragic events in the western Balkans gave evidence to. It was not until June 1993 that the European Council decided that the European Union (EU) could open its doors to the countries in Central and Eastern Europe to become members on the condition that they were able to meet the EU’s political and economic criteria. These conditions were specified as ‘stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities, the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union’. The European heads of state and government made the concepts of ‘liberal democracy and market economy’ the icons of the Union’s political and economic identity, apparently without realising that they were a snapshot of the culture of the USA. However, the cultures of Europe are much more heterogeneous despite many similarities, and cannot be fully expressed in these two concepts. The same heads of state and government were at the time waiting a bit impatiently for the last ratification of the Maastricht Treaty, which finally came when the German Constitutional Court five months later reluctantly accepted

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that the plan for monetary union was not in violation of the German constitution. This plan, which was the hard core of the new treaty, required those EU member countries that had stabilised their economies to introduce a common currency and turn their monetary sovereignty over to an independent European Central Bank. This was a full-blown federative element in the construction of the new Europe, which was materialised six years later at the dawn of the new millennium when national currencies in eleven countries were replaced by the euro. Nonetheless, that was also the time when one could witness that the evolutionary trend of the EU was turning away from a federative finalité and pointed towards a ‘federation of nation-states’, to use Joschka Fischer’s self-contradictory term. Today, after the Convention which gave birth to a Constitutional Treaty (a second self-contradictory term derived from the first), most observers accept that the Union will never become a true federal union. It is a political entity based on ‘the principle of sincere cooperation’, and it respects the national identities of the member states, ‘inherent in their fundamental structures, political and constitutional’, as stated in article I-5 of the Constitutional Treaty. Around 1 June 2005, the Union suffered a severe aftershock of the 1989 earthquake when the Treaty was firmly rejected by referenda in France and the Netherlands. This rejection partly reflected fears over the consequences of a wider Europe. It paralysed the politics of the Union, and the heads of state and government decided to give themselves a year of reflection, and to listen to the people. This essay is an inquiry into a potential conflict that may arise from a project that at the political level constitutes ‘a federation of nation-states’ that respects the political cultures of the member states, whereas at the economic level it has already instituted a centralised/federal monetary union that shows little or no respect for the economic cultures of the member states. In other words, it seems that Europe must solve the quadrature of its cultural circle.

ECONOMIC CULTURE AND MODERNITY The gradation on an axis between socialism and capitalism has been the major determinant of the economic culture of modern states. One way of quantifying the placing of an economy on this axis could be the relative size of the public sector, or the tax burden, the total of direct and indirect taxes including social insurance contributions as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP). Most European countries have a tax burden between forty and fifty per cent: highest are Sweden and Denmark with fifty per cent, where it was even higher in the

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past. Whether their economies should be called examples of ‘labourist capitalism’ or ‘market socialism’ is a matter of semantics. The countries in question prefer themselves to be called mixed economies or social–liberal economies. Examples of more pure capitalism are Japan and the USA, with a tax burden between twenty-five and thirty per cent. For decades, political economists and sociologists have argued whether the economic culture of a modern state would tilt to one or the other side of the two ideologies. In the 1940s, Joseph A. Schumpeter argued that capitalism would not survive because it would be killed by its own achievements. More than forty years later, after the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe, Francis Fukuyama confidently stated that capitalism, the system of liberal democracy and free markets, constituted ‘the final form of human government’. However, the concept of economic culture includes many more elements than the economic–ideological dimension of capitalism versus socialism. It encompasses the social, political and cultural matrix within which the economic processes operate and the interventions of economic policy take effect (Berger 1986). Social structures and cultural patterns, common values and traditions including religion and attitude to work, determined by historical experience, set a frame for the economic organism of a country and outline the paths for economic growth which cannot be grasped by the mathematical formulae of econometric model building. The classics of political economy, Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx, were clearly aware of the complexity of social life and drew such elements into their analyses. For them social science was, as Susan Strange said in the foreword to Paths to International Political Economy (1984), a vast, wide-open range like the prairies of the American West. But throughout the 20th century, she maintained, ‘a series of enclosure movements have progressively fenced off the open range in the West, and in social sciences. Both have been subdivided into exclusive territories where trespassers meet with plenty of discouraging words, ominous warnings and keep-out notices’. For economists this enclosure movement resulted in a particularly high degree of specialisation after the introduction of econometrics, the application of statistical and mathematical methods to economics. Huge gains for economic policy may have been obtained through forecasting and model building, but there have definitely been serious losses due to this drift from social science towards natural science. Robert Heilbroner, the author of The Worldly Philosophers, said in a 1999 interview that the classical political economists ‘thought their task was to model all the complexities of an economic system: the political, the sociological, the psychological, the moral, the historical. And modern economists, au contraire, do not want so complex a vision. They favour two-dimensional models that, in trying

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to be scientific, leave out too much and leave modern economists without a true understanding of how the system works’. Such statements did not cause him great respect among mainstream economists. The economic culture of modern states has largely been shaped by the evolution of the nation-state. We therefore briefly need to trespass into history. The nation-state is a modern creation which has its roots back in 17th- and 18th-century Europe, in the scientific revolution and the political philosophy of the Enlightenment. Secularisation, reason and humanism became the driving forces behind the political and economic development in the next two centuries, and still serve as foundation for our belief in material progress and liberal government. Modernity manifested itself in the two trends, industrialisation and democratisation, which interacted and created the European nation-state in the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Industrial Revolution undermined traditional agricultural society, which had been characterised by segregated social classes where culture and language divided more than united the population and where the state, that is the king, had no interest in furthering cultural homogeneity as a basis for political legitimacy. At the same time, since the French Revolution, secularisation in many European countries dissolved the old loyalties to religion and tradition. The nationalist principle came to penetrate the institutional network of society, be it technological infrastructure (from railways to airlines), civil society (from art galleries to labour unions) or the monetary system (national legal tender and central banks). Industrialisation required social mobility and division of labour, extended commercialisation, administration and communication, and therefore a system of general education that furthered a higher degree of equality and cultural homogeneity. An educational national pyramid from primary school to university became crucial for the legitimacy of governmental power, as Ernest Gellner said in Nations and Nationalism (1983). Industrialisation was the economic parameter in the creation of the nation-state – one state, one culture – and vice versa. Democratisation was the political parameter. The demand of the bourgeoisie for civil rights, to be treated as free and equal citizens instead of loyal subjects, was followed by a demand for political rights, for a share in the power of government. Only fearfully and gradually did the ruling class that held the reins of power give in to these demands in the course of the 19th century. Suffrage to a legislative assembly was given first to the propertied classes, men (but not women) of a certain educational standard. At the same time the tender educational system was used to create a sense of nationhood and national unity among the common people and turn them into citizens before they could get a place at the table of power. A more direct threat to the traditional state

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authority arose from the economic system of capitalism that had been forced upon society by industrialisation and which had created an impoverished proletariat. The Marxist revolutionary appeal to the workers was international, but the state sought to defend itself by ‘nationalising’ socialism through an extension of the concept of citizenship to include the idea of social rights, a move that consolidated the nation-state further in the 20th century. In the inter-war period and particularly during the Great Depression, the pressures for increased social rights gained momentum. However, it was not until after World War II that the notion of social rights as part of citizenship was fully developed, and the idea of a social market economy as a complement to liberal democracy became part of the ideological foundation of the political culture of the modern European states. Hence, the ‘welfare state’ became a central element of the economic culture in Europe.

THE STAMP OF SOCIAL RIGHTS ON ECONOMIC CULTURE As with liberal democracy, each of the European countries developed their own national social model. Following the analysis of Esping-Andersen (1990), it is possible to outline two core models for the welfare state in Europe. One has been a state-corporatist model, having strong paternalist elements which render it acceptable to conservative social and political forces. It has been based on the workplace and has, largely, been financed by employers’ contributions. To a large degree it has been shaped by the Catholic Church as a reaction to laissez-faire capitalism, and it has been strongly committed to the preservation of traditional family lifestyle. The principle of ‘subsidiarity’, which at another level has become part of the vocabulary of the EU, serves to emphasise the fact that the state will only interfere when the family’s capacity to service its members is exhausted. In fact, in the state-corporatist system, women have been discouraged from entering the labour market. Its roots can be traced back to Bismarck’s policies, which were designed to consolidate class divisions by linking social rights to the workplace and thus the worker’s dependency on the employer/capitalist, and by strengthening the loyalty of the civil service by promoting a strong bias towards welfare provisions for those people. In its more recent form it was developed mainly in Germany under the name of Soziale Marktwirtschaft. The term originates from the policies of Ludwig Erhard, who was Germany’s economics minister from 1949 to 1963 and the architect of the country’s post-war ‘economic miracle’ of recovery. Its ideological basis was economic liberalism as Erhard was a Christian Democrat, but the concept was coined to express the state’s involvement with the market and thus its

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responsibility for the outcome. In fact, the Sozialstaatsprinzip, the ‘principle of the social state’ or social rights, is enshrined in the German constitution in parallel with civil and political rights. The model is also characteristic of the economic culture of countries like France, Italy and Spain, and also Austria and Greece, all heavily influenced by the Church. A second model for the welfare state has been universalistic and based on the individual as citizen of society and not as worker or member of a social class. It is a flat-rate, tax-financed system which promotes an equality of high standards, but it does require a high degree of social consensus and solidarity. EspingAndersen calls it a social-democratic model, which ‘pre-emptively socialises the costs of family-hood. The ideal is not to maximise dependence on the family, but capacities for individual independence. In this sense the model is a peculiar combination of liberalism and socialism’. It is characteristic of the Scandinavian countries and, to some extent, of Britain where the system based on the Beveridge report and introduced after World War II relied on the same model. It presupposed the existence of a rather weak class system and a strong middle class, which may explain why it has been less successful in Britain. It has been characterised by a fusion of work and welfare in the sense that a right to income can be substituted for a right to work. It has thus been dependent on the maintenance of full employment, one reason why it became overburdened in Scandinavia in the 1980s when that no longer proved possible. Two peripheral models have also had an influence on the economic cultures of Europe, a more capitalist model and a pure socialist model. The first is linked to the market and liberal economics. Its benefits are modest and reserved mainly for low-income families and individuals who should not be encouraged to opt for welfare instead of work. The state is guaranteeing only a minimum, and it encourages the market by subsidising private insurance schemes. This model dominates in the USA, but neither this nor the two core models exist anywhere in a pure form. The capitalist market-based model, however, has become increasingly more influential in Europe as the crisis of the welfare state developed during the 1990s because of the inflexibility inherent in the state-corporatist model and the (tax) burden of bureaucracy in the social-democratic model. Finally, a true socialist model for the European welfare state was an essential part of the communist regimes in Eastern and Central Europe. The countries in this orbit, particularly those in the southeast, were ‘late, late developers’ of industrialisation, largely untouched by the modernisation process of the 19th century and still, after World War II, dominated by a powerful cultural tradition rooted in the collectivist ethos and solidaristic arrangements of agrarian society. To some extent, the communist system thrived on these traditions when the principle of social rights was taken to its extreme, removed from the market and

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based on complete loyalty to the state. However, when the political system collapsed in 1990–91, all socialist welfare systems collapsed too. However, there remains a strong preference for socio-economic and political arrangements according the state a major role in social policies. The task of building a new democratic political culture in these countries, where market forces since 1991 have been directed more by the criminal intent of mafias than by the state’s judicial control, is immense. Only modest progress was made in the first ten years of the ‘democratic experiment’ in most of them. The frustrations and sufferings of the citizens make the new political system weak. A healthy structure of strong democratic parties reflecting a spectre of political opinions has not yet developed, and there is a risk that demagogic movements shall absorb impoverished groupings like ‘the grey revolt’ of elderly citizens in Russia. Future stability will undoubtedly depend on whether social rights can be re-established to supplement the newly gained civil and political rights.

GROWTH, COMPETITIVENESS AND ECONOMIC CULTURE The socio-cultural dimension of the modern nation-state has a direct impact on the efficiency of the national economy and its relative strength, its competitiveness internationally. Recent discussions of the transatlantic gap not only in politics, but also in economics, have touched upon the difference between the work-dominated American culture with about 2,000 working hours annually, huge income gaps and low minimum wages, short or no vacations and relatively low labour productivity, and on the other hand the welfare- or wellbeingdominated European culture(s), with a working week of thirty-five hours, guaranteed high minimum wage and social insurance, four or more weeks vacation annually, and a generally better-skilled labour force with higher productivity. Modern Europeans seem to have a preference for leisure that is stronger than Americans. Remembering Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, the culture of work is a fundamental parameter of the economic culture. There are those who think that the protestant ethic has survived better in the USA, while secularisation and social welfare has destroyed the spirit of capitalism in Europe. Let that be as it may, but it is true that the socialist system in Eastern Europe proved unable, despite its ideology, to mobilise the group solidarity with the State that could sustain a strong work ethic. ‘We pretend to work, they pretend to pay us’ was a cynical saying among the workers of Eastern Europe. The new democracies have since the early 1990s faced a huge problem of reconstructing a work ethic based on individual self-interest.

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The culture of work and therefore also the institutionalisation of the labour market with labour unions and employers’ organisations have a direct bearing on competitiveness and the rate of inflation. Systems for vocational training and relations between labour and management reflect deep-seated traditions going back to the beginnings of industrial society, or earlier. Industrial performance and national competitiveness are linked to culture even in the age of high technology. It is not without significance that the German word Sozialpartner used to be translated into English as the two sides of industry, ‘labour and management’, reflecting the more confrontational nature of British society. In Germany and Denmark, unions and employers tend to see themselves as partners and strike or lockout is a weapon of last resort, while in France and Italy, not to speak of Greece, the two parts are seen as adversaries and the strike is a means of expression primarily used to attract attention in the media. The culture of labour relations is also reflected in parliamentary politics. In Denmark, the labour movement has succeeded in keeping government interference to a minimum, and the tradition of negotiating rules of working hours, pay and vacation time as a matter between unions and employers’ organisations is strictly guarded by both parties and respected by government. This is in contrast with, for example, France, where the regulations of the workplace are laid out in great detail in the Code du Travail. To complement the move towards a single market in the European Community, a Charter of Fundamental Rights of Workers was adopted in 1989 against fierce opposition from the United Kingdom. Later, the Blair government accepted it, but no single European Social Model has ever been agreed, although France has repeatedly called for it. The Constitutional Treaty in its provisions for social policy recognises the national economic cultures. Before outlining the general principles it says that ‘the Union and the Member States shall act taking account of the diverse forms of national practices … and the need to maintain competitiveness of the Union economy’ (Article III-209). However, for most French voters it was not enough to ‘take account’ of their social model. Apparently, they saw ‘the need to maintain competitiveness’ as a threat to their economic culture and partly for that reason they turned the Treaty down in the referendum in May–June 2005. Economic culture and work ethic is also reflected in the high or low hierarchical structures of institutions outside industry and the private sector. It has an impact on the administrative culture, on the organisation of government and the communication patterns within it, the reign and procedures of presidents, cabinets and parliaments, and the division of powers between central and local authorities. Differences in economic culture can be a serious obstacle for the efficiency of international bureaucracies like the European Commission, not

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only in its internal functions (because its civil servants have been educated and trained in different bureaucratic traditions), but also when developing and applying common rules and regulations throughout the Union. The administrative culture is deeply national and extends beyond the public sector and the legal system. The culture of management in private business shows remarkable differences between countries of rather similar cultural appearance like Finland, Sweden and Denmark. No company going international can afford to neglect deep-seated differences in the economic culture between countries and regions. Reacting to the challenges of globalisation and the political fashion cycle that brought ‘the market’ into the forefront of public debate, there has been a renewed attention to the study of comparative capitalism and economic culture in the management of private business. It seems possible to distinguish between two types of political economy: liberal market economies and coordinated market economies (Hall & Soskice 2001). In the first, firms coordinate their activities primarily through competitive market relationships. In the second, firms’ actions depend more heavily on non-market relationships with other actors. Among the European countries, Britain and Ireland (along with the USA, Australia and Canada) are classified as liberal market economies, and Germany, Austria, Benelux and the Nordic countries as coordinated market economies. The data indicate a third type of capitalism in France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece and Turkey, described as Mediterranean, where there tends to be nonmarket coordination in the sphere of corporate finance but more liberal arrangements in the sphere of labour relations. By this approach it should be possible to predict systematic differences across nations. As an example it seems that the firms of Britain, a typical liberal market economy, and those of Germany, a coordinated market economy, respond very differently to an appreciation of the exchange rate. British firms tend to pass the price increase on to the foreign customers in order to maintain their profitability, whereas German firms maintain their prices in foreign currency and accept lower returns in order to preserve market shares. A question that has come under particular scrutiny and political debate is the scope of a government’s engagement in economic activity, which varies widely, not only in what used to be called public works like water and energy supplies, but also in heavy industries, communication systems and, not least, the financial sector. In pursuit of economic efficiency and to harvest the benefits of the price mechanism and the supposedly higher productivity of private business, privatisation has been on most European governments’ agenda since Prime Minister Thatcher started to sell ‘the family silver’ in the 1980s. To some extent this question and its consequences tie in with the link between political and economic culture that is found in the sociological concepts of patronage

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and clientelism. Clientela may be rooted in a Roman tradition of government and therefore particularly pronounced in Italy and France. It is most often referred to in the context of politics, but its economic manifestation is far from unknown in all Europe under terms like the ‘old school tie’ in Britain or les énarques (graduates from École nationale d’administratrion) in France. In connection with EU’s enlargement process, one particular aspect of a country’s economic as much as political culture, corruption, should be mentioned. Of course, corruption is not a phenomenon unknown in Western Europe, but the difference is that in many East European countries now entering the EU it appears to be systemic. In other words, it is an endemic feature of the administration, public and private. Transparency International, a nongovernmental organisation devoted to curbing corruption, publicises annually a Corruption Perceptions Index which ranks countries in terms of the degree to which corruption is perceived to exist among public officials and politicians. Most of the fifteen old-EU countries are relatively incorrupt with scores above 7, though Italy and Greece come out with a score around 4.5. Among the new members most are rated between 6 and 4, but Poland is as low as 3.5 and Turkey at 3.2. It is beyond doubt that a high degree of corruption is a huge burden on an economy because it discourages foreign investments and distorts trade and the price system. It will be a huge challenge to the Commission to weed out this tradition in the economic culture of these countries. This browsing of the dimensions of economic culture is far from exhaustive, but rather accidental. The intention has been merely to show that the system of market economy, economic analysis and economic growth must also be seen in the context of economic culture. The concept is not only useful, but simply necessary for an understanding of the functioning of a modern economy because the actions of economic institutions, firms, consumers and producers depend on how they relate with other components of society. They function in a context of social and political structures, cultural patterns and, indeed, structures of consciousness, values, ideas and belief systems. This context is primarily determined by the national cultures and government policies, and the analysis of international economics must take account of that and not be limited to ‘pure’ economics.

FROM INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY TO TRANSNATIONAL COMMUNITY In economic theory, trade and exchange takes place at one single point; distance does not normally matter. However, when it comes to international trade, that

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premise cannot be maintained; transportation and communication become part of costs of production and international economics must be treated as a separate subject. The core of the argument is that the mobility of the factors of production, labour, land and capital is significantly less between countries than between regions nationally, a matter that gave rise to David Ricardo’s famous law of comparative advantages. These arguments have weakened over the past few decades owing to technological progress in transportation and communication, even to the extent that it has become possible by digital techniques to use labour resources without being impeded by linguistic differences or geographical distance. A non-economic argument for international economics has been the fact that countries use different moneys, and if there is a possibility that the relative value of these moneys can be changed by political fiat, international economics becomes a matter of high politics. However, if exchange rates are permanently fixed as under the old gold standard or done away with by introducing a common currency in full monetary union, international economics tend to become interregional with significant consequences for economic policy generally. The European project, since 1993 named ‘European Union’, has had, since its start in the early 1950s, the ambition of enhancing security and stability, and creating an ever-closer union by a policy of removing politically determined barriers to movement of goods, services, persons and capital. Much bureaucratic energy was spent up to the mid-1980s on harmonisation of economic policies but with only limited results. A major shift took place after 1986 when the Delors Commission launched an ambitious programme for creating a liberal internal market by 1992, liberal in the sense that the concept of mutual recognition of national rules and regulations supplanted the aim of harmonisation (or unionism) of economic and social policies. Most of this programme was realised, and the EU developed into a transnational community after 1992. ‘Transnationalism’ is in fact a process like the European project itself, where integration increasingly takes place at several levels, be it individual or private (persons, institutions, corporations, civil society), official or public (border communities, public procurement, law enforcement, citizenship), limiting national sovereignty but not necessarily touching the core issues of high politics. The process can run between the ‘nations’ horizontally at the same level or vertically between private and public entities. It is often functionally determined and in a way it can be seen as a modernised version of the ‘spill-over’ theory of political integration. However, just as often it is politically determined when it comes to lobbyism, political party links sustained through the European Parliament and non-governmental organisation (NGO) activities.

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There can be no doubt that the process of transnationalism in the EU over time will have an influence on the economic cultures of the member countries and adapt them to each other. However, it is a process that requires time as any cultural process, and one should not be mistaken by an approximation of the surface culture of ‘one market’. Within firmly established federal states with a singular political culture like Germany or the USA there are significant differences in the economic cultures of the different regions, be it Schleswig-Holstein and Bavaria or New England and Texas. Transnationalism has set international economics in the European context in a new perspective. There is a strong tendency to see European trade and exchange as interregional. It is no longer international in the traditional sense of the word because transnational economics is characterised by an everincreasing degree of the mobility of the factors of production between the nations/region. However, that raises the question of European economic governance. If Europe politically shall function as one economy, there must be strong political cohesion and social solidarity between the different nations/regions, a centripetal political force and a political authority that can adjust the different dimensions of economic policy to a coherent and stabilising whole.

ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE: AN ART MORE THAN A SCIENCE The government in the modern nation-state attempts to safeguard the economic stability and prosperity of the nation through economic policy. However, as we all know, governments in a democratic society are not omnipotent, nor do they act alone, in a vacuum. Other actors come into play, and the major task of government in economics is to harmonise the actions of these other actors to achieve general objectives. The playing field is set by the economic resources and culture of the country. Without going deep into the complexities of the dismal science, I shall outline a layman’s guide to economic policy (cf. figure on p. 259). The objectives are four: full employment, price stability, real growth and external payments equilibrium. Reflecting the ‘Tinbergen Rule’ of economic balance, there must be four instruments to attain four targets. These four broad instruments are: supply policy, demand policy, monetary policy and exchange rate policy.1 The actors involved are, apart from the government, the socio-economic organisations (labour unions, employers’ organisations, etc.), the parliament, the central bank and the international economic institutions (EU, International Monetary Fund (IMF), etc.).

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A Model of Economic Policy; objectives, instruments and actors* Full employment

Price stability

Real growth

Payments equilibrium

Social market function (economic culture)

Supply policy

Demand policy

Monetary policy

Exchange rate policy

Central bank

International institutions

Government Socio-economic organisations

Parliament

* The arrows show which instruments of economic policy are influenced by the different actors; the influence on demand policy by socio-economic organisations and the influence on monetary policy by international institutions, respectively, is only limited.

Economic policy is played out in an environment, both national and international, where conditions are in a state of constant flux, where basic trends are determined by the political and economic culture of society, but where a dummy of considerable power, the market, constantly intervenes with leads that no analyst or econometric model is able fully to describe or predict. The task of economic government is to manage the overall economy. Whether that means to govern the market by political directives or to adapt policies to the market forces becomes a matter of political inclination. Orchestrating the overall policy is made no easier by the varying time frames within which the use of the different instruments can be expected to show results. Changes in exchange rate have an immediate effect on relative prices through foreign trade, whereas changes in monetary policy or rates of interest

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take months to work themselves through into the real economy in the shape of adjustment in production, consumption and investment. Significant changes in demand policy or fiscal policy are usually considered only once a year when a new budget is presented, and changes in supply policy, adjusting the economic structure of society, communication and education systems, attitudes and modes of economic agents, education and training schemes, will, in most cases, take years to bear fruit. To add to all this, the actors in economic policy do not have congruent objectives. Each socio-economic organisation pursues the particular interests of its respective members, and parliament is a battleground for the interests of political parties. The central bank has as its objective the preservation of the value of the money that it underwrites, and the international financial institutions supposedly represent the interest of international society in overall international stability. It is only the government that is responsible for pursuing the general interest, the prosperity of the nation and well-being of the citizens. To achieve that aim, it must make every effort to harmonise the actions of the other four actors. That is the essence of economic policy, an art of driving four-in-hand. The three first objectives, full employment, price stability and real growth, are the dimensions of internal balance. They are in principle more or less selfexplanatory. Balance-of-payments equilibrium refers to external balance. If a government is to maintain a freedom of manoeuvre, and thus its national sovereignty, it is important that it does not run into persistent deficit on the balance-of-payments. Financing such a deficit makes the country dependent on the actions of other countries and on short-term interests of private speculators. On the contrary, a lasting surplus strengthens the country internationally, but it is of course reflected in other countries’ deficits. This asymmetry has been and still is a crucial problem in international economics, and the international financial institutions have therefore always argued for national policies that could ensure external balance. In the international system all transactions of one economy with the world around are channelled through the money medium, whether they are current transactions like trade, travel, services and gifts, or capital transactions in real assets or portfolio investments. These transactions are ‘priced’ by the exchange rate, which means that this rate is used for an overall, ‘incarnated’ evaluation of the flows. If, in the medium term, there is a fundamental equilibrium2 between supply and demand, between the outgoing and the incoming flows of money, the exchange rate is ‘right’ and stable. That is what the government must aim for in order to reach overall stability. An overvalued exchange rate will curb exports and encourage imports, thus depressing internal activity and employment, but it has the advantage of restraining inflation. An undervalued rate, on the other

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hand, will tend to increase activity, but will result in ‘imported inflation’. However, politically it is an advantage for a country to have an undervalued exchange rate on the condition that the government is able to control inflation, because it ensures a high degree of economic independence. In a monetary system of politically adjustable exchange rates like the Bretton Woods System (BWS) or the European Monetary System (EMS), the principal tiller of external adjustment is the exchange rate, the relative value of the national money, which in the long term must reflect the relative efficiency of the national economy if balance of payments shall be maintained. When the European governments in 1993 decided to establish a monetary union, they thereby refrained from using exchange rate policy as an instrument of economic policy. The crucial question, however, is whether they thereby also consciously were ready to give up the objective of maintaining equilibrium on the national balance-of-payments, and accept the consequences of a European Union having an interregional economy and significant common regional and structural policies that could assure balance between the regions/nations. The answer to this question seems to be ‘no’. We are therefore left with a system of economic policy with four targets and only three (or two and a half) instruments. Exchange rates have disappeared with the introduction of the euro. Monetary policy is determined by the European Central Bank (ECB) and thus abandoned as an instrument of national economic policy. The Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) adopted in 1997 a commitment to good fiscal housekeeping, was meant to ensure that national demand policies would be restrained with special reference to the objective of keeping inflation at a low level in order to maintain price competitiveness, and thus supposedly ensure a climate for economic growth and maintenance of balance between the member countries. Regarding the objectives of full employment and economic growth, the burden of adjustment was thus fully placed on the fourth instrument, supply policy, if not ‘privatised’ by relying on the effect of free markets. Exchange rate policy and monetary policy are ‘macro-instruments’ in the sense that they operate by general medium, money. Demand policy has a wide spectre of elements, various taxes and tax rates, as well as types of public consumption and investment, although there has been a tendency in the past two decades to let demand policy only be expressed by the balance on the finances of the public sector, reference the requirement of the SGP to keep the budget deficit below three per cent of GDP. The question of economic culture plays no role in discussions of the use of these three instruments. However, when the major burden of economic adjustment rests on supply policy it is necessary for economic governance to be aware of the dimensions of and differences in economic culture.

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SUPPLY POLICY:THE LINK OF ECONOMIC GOVERNANCE TO ECONOMIC CULTURE Supply policy reaches beyond economics and into the economic culture, and therefore it cannot be quantified to the same degree as the other three instruments of economic policy. It can be defined as such policy measures that facilitate, promote and encourage real provisions in the economy; not only the supply of goods and services, including imports, but also the use, allocation and quality of the factors of production. It is aimed at raising the productivity of the economy or, more precisely, the level of effective supply, the counterpart of the Keynesian concept of effective demand. Supply policy is the umbrella for many policy actions and it is convenient to think of it as several policy clusters: industrial policy, research and technology policy, infrastructure policy, education and active labour market policy, and finally taxation and social policy issues that affect the supply of labour, all of them depending on and having a direct bearing on the economic culture. Because of its complex nature, it has not until recently attracted the attention of modern economists who have seen the parameters of supply policy largely as political and sociological, and therefore they were by the mantra ceteris paribus left outside the enclosure of economics. The parameters of supply policy are all in the hands of national authorities (government, parliament and socio-economic organisations), a feature that has been strengthened in the EU by the golden rule of subsidiarity. As mentioned, supply policy aims at adjusting the economic culture and structure to make the economy more efficient, a process that requires not only time but also political skill. It is therefore difficult to imagine that the member countries can maintain a parallel development in their competitiveness. One example of how differences in economic culture can have a direct impact on the balance of payment of a country was in early 2005, when Toyota wanted to make a huge investment in a new plant in North America. Toronto in Canada was preferred to Alabama for two reasons. One reason was that the level of education of the labour force available in Alabama was lower than in Toronto. Another reason was that the social security system in Canada was partly public and therefore advantageous, when seen from the employer’s point of view. Both elements form part of the economic culture. There cannot be any doubt that such and many other differences in economic culture between national economies will result in divergent inflation rates and that unemployment will be unevenly spread. Political leadership and strong institutions must be able to cope with this challenge, if tectonic tensions between the member states are to be avoided over

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time. Martin Feldstein’s warning that EMU could ‘lead to conflicts in Europe and confrontations with the United States’ is farfetched. But monetary union does involve a clash of economic cultures, and it is not enough to brush the problem aside ‘by the academic remark that a country facing competition and lacking access to credit and money from a central bank has no choice but to foster its competitiveness and keep its public finances in order’, as Hans Tietmeyer, Governor of the Bundesbank, dryly remarked in his reflections on the social market economy in 1999. In 2004 and 2005 we saw serious signs of these tensions. Several member countries, faced with high unemployment, were unable to keep the fiscal deficit below the prescribed level by the SGP. The two core countries, France and Germany, were the prime culprits. President Chirac showed only disdain for the Pact, and Chancellor Schröder, in an article in the Financial Times in January 2005, pleaded for a reform that would give leeway for a policy for growth and employment that in the short term resulted in a budget deficit but in the medium term would be positive. He demanded that special circumstances should be taken into account and added that ‘member states … must be given the time they need to gear their economic and fiscal policy to the goals of higher growth and employment and sound public finances. These criteria are qualitative indicators for a country’s fiscal policy … (and) more respect should be given to EU members’ primary competence over economic policy’. Two months later, after a battle between the economics and finance ministers behind closed doors, the Pact was put to rest by the European Council with a ‘simplified arrangement’ of integrated guidelines on the basis of which ‘Member States will draw up, on their own responsibility, “national reform programmes” geared to their own needs and specific situation’. The ECB reacted by expressing serious concerns and said that it would pursue its commitment to low inflation. Flexibility of the labour markets, another supply policy key issue, has become central in the European debate on economic policy. Many have criticised, for good reasons, part of the European welfare systems for the stiffening of the arteries of economic life when high payroll taxes and work guarantees have made hiring and firing of workers very costly. But again, a roll-back of the state and greater reliance on market forces is politically difficult and not necessarily the solution. The economic cultures in the Scandinavian countries have been able to adjust by a system of ‘flexicurity’ where the welfare systems are largely maintained, but flexibility is ensured by a combination of a guarantee of income through unemployment benefits paid through direct taxation and a highly developed system of retraining and lifelong education of the labour force.

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It is obvious that supply policies are nationally determined since they must be designed according to the political culture of the nation. Whether the tensions about economic policies within a monetary union, where a nationally optimal mix of monetary and fiscal policy is hampered by a strong-minded, constitutionally independent central bank and narrow limits are set for national fiscal policies, will lead to ‘a clash of economic cultures’ remains to be seen. However, it is a risk and there will definitely be troubles ahead. Statesmanship will be required. A withdrawal from EMU was already discussed in some countries after the referendum shock in May–June 2005.

MONEY AND LANGUAGE3 For economists and non-economists alike there are lessons to be learned from comparing money, the epitome of economics, with language, the core concept of culture, not least in the context of discussing a united Europe and monetary union. Money can be defined by its three functions: it is a unit of account, a means of exchange and a store of value. Language, too, can be said to have these three functions. We use language to describe and differentiate the world around us, and we use money in the same way as an instrument of account to describe the value of otherwise non-comparable goods and services. We use different languages in other countries as we use different monies there. Language, like money, is also a means of exchange, a means of communication. We exchange thoughts and ideas by the use of language, just as we exchange goods and services by the use of money. It is this particular use of money and language that we are most familiar with. All social exchange revolves around these two instruments. Without language or money we would have no society that we could recognise. Admittedly, not everything can be measured in or bought for money, and not everything can be described or made understood through language. But both instruments can be used to support or to express something beyond the medium itself. Language can be devalued, if it is not treated with care; just like money. That does not mean that it can be controlled by authority. Linguistic care and monetary policy have both serious limitations, but they are not without significance or consequence. Language and money are changing constantly. The language of a 100 years ago cannot always express what we want to say today, and the value of money of those days bears no clear relation to the value of money now. This leads us to the third use of the mediums of language and of money: their value and use as a store of value. The importance of that function may

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not always be recognised, perhaps because it is so self-evident. Language, through the function of thought and memory, is used to store the most basic and essential values in human life and society. It ranges from the simple shopping list to the epic deeds of myth and history. Both have value. We would not be without them, neither the list nor the history. Money may seem to have a more tangible value than language. After all, we can keep it in the purse, in the bank or in bonds. It can increase in value if it is treated with care and well invested. But language, too, has its value. What is the difference in value of the greatest literature, the finest poem compared with debased and slovenly speech? Money and language are instruments attached, in most instances, to the nation-state, to be used and be of value only within its confines. Of course, international money exists, just like international language, primarily as a means of communication, of exchange, across national borders. The American dollar and the American language dominate the world and, without doubt, it is a situation that benefits Americans. If money were used only as a unit of account and as a means of exchange, there would be no problem in a world money, be it the American dollar, the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) of the IMF or the European euro. It would only involve a technical adjustment, like going from Fahrenheit to Celsius, or from miles to metres. It will take some time to get adjusted to it and many will for a while refer back to the old unit. But it is not a serious problem. The citizens of ‘Euroland’ were generally rather quick to accustom themselves to the new unit as a means of exchange, and the nationalist attitudes against it have faded when people saw the practical advantages when going abroad on vacation. They do use it as a unit of account, although many people still make a quick mental calculation of what the price would be expressed in the ‘old money’, mark or franc, lira or drachmer. But the European economy still comprises national economies with a great variation in economic cultures mirrored in a variation in economic efficiency between the national economies. The real value of the euro will therefore tend to diversify between the countries if they are unable to pursue a forceful supply policy that can adjust the economic cultures to a European model. This might happen in the long term, but then we are all dead as Keynes quipped. In the meantime there will be trouble. But when it happens, when a relative homogeneous economic culture has been introduced in the countries of EMU, it might be a rather simplistic economic culture based primarily on market principles and less on social realities, just as it would be a rather simplistic language that would be spoken if English were introduced as the common language of communication in Europe.

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CONCLUDING REMARKS The European project has from the very beginning been a political project aimed at overcoming deep-seated antagonistic feelings between the European peoples and nations, and creating a security community that rendered the use of force for the promotion of national interests unthinkable. In the early 1950s an attempt was made to establish a Defence Community, but it failed and the West Europeans found their security guarantee in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). To complement this means they – or rather six countries – formed the Economic Community, hoping that this initiative in low politics would lead to ‘an ever-closer union’. When the European map was suddenly redrawn in 1990–92, Europe’s leaders did not have sufficient trust in the results achieved, although these were by any historical standard impressive. To deepen the project they therefore agreed to create a monetary union and abandon national currencies, apparently thinking that the issue of money like trade was a matter of low politics and not an integral part of high politics and national identity. It could very well turn out to be a high-risk strategy, where the economic gains that a monetary union entails will not make up for the political troubles and difficulties that will ensue in the longer run with one money in a ‘federation of nation-states’. This is particularly true seen in the perspective of the Union’s enlargement with ten new member countries of the East and an uncertain number still to come. The economic cultures of most of these countries are considerably more divergent from those of Western Europe than is the case between those that are already part of the ‘Euro-twelve’. The enlargement of the Federal Republic of Germany with the Länder of the collapsed Democratic Republic must serve as a warning. No ‘blooming landscapes’ as promised by Chancellor Helmut Kohl have come out in the East. Not least due to the monetary unification by an exchange rate of 1:1 between the two marks, a process of deindustrialisation set in which resulted in extremely high rates of unemployment. There was no difference in language between the two parts, but a considerable difference in economic culture had developed during the preceding four decades, and after fifteen years Germany still appears as one state and two economic cultures. If EMU does not risk cracking under the burden of the economic cultures of the many new member countries, it may be a good idea to revive the sleeping exchange rate mechanism, ERM2, of the discarded European Monetary System. It would be wise for all parties to keep applicants for EMU in that system or mechanism for quite a while, perhaps with the original narrow variation margins for the exchange rate, until their economic cultures have been adapted to

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the requirements of the common currency. Denmark opted for that in 1993, but for purely political reasons. Others will have to do so for economic reasons. The ERM2 could even become a safety net for some of the present member countries if they were squeezed out of EMU. Roma non fu fatta in un giorno: Rome was not created in one day. Cultural change requires time and statesmanship. And cultural change in the European countries is needed, for political union as well as for monetary union. However, neither political union nor monetary union requires complete unification, not even in the long term. The challenge of the European project is to create a coherent political body out of a conglomeration of regional and national identities that demands room to breathe if they shall not revolt. Both politically and economically we must find unity in diversity.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Berger, Peter L., The Capitalist Revolution, Fifty Propositions about Prosperity, Equality and Liberty (New York, Basic Books, 1986). Esping-Andersen, Gøsta, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1990). Feldstein, Martin, ‘The EMU and international conflict’, Foreign Affairs, November–December 1997. Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man (London, Penguin Books, 1992). Gellner, Ernest, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford, Blackwell, 1983). Hall, Peter A. & David Soskie (eds), Varieties of Capitalism, the Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2001). Heilbroner, Robert L., The Worldly Philosophers; the Lives, Times and Ideas of the Great Economic Thinkers (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1953). Olson, Mancur, The Rise and Decline of Nations, Economic Growth, Stagflation and Social Rigidities (Yale University Press, 1982). Schumpeter, Joseph A., Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy, third edition (New York, Harper and Row, 1950). Strange, Susan (ed.), Paths to International Political Economy (London, George Allen and Unwin, 1984). Strange, Susan, The Retreat of the State, the Diffusion of Power in the World Economy (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996). Tietmeyer, Hans, The Social Market Economy and Monetary Stability (London, Economica Ltd, 1999). This paper relies to a great extent on my two books: Holm, Erik, Money and International Politics (Copenhagen, Academic Press, 1991).

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Holm, Erik, The European Anarchy, Europe’s Hard Way into High Politics (Copenhagen, Copenhagen Business School Press, 2001).

NOTES 1

An active exchange-rate policy pre-supposes an international monetary system with adjustable rates like the Bretton Woods System (BWS) or the European Monetary System (EMS), or a non-system with nationally defined managed floating rates. In pure systems of fixed rates or floating rates, deliberate exchange rate policy does not exist by definition. 2 Fundamental equilibrium is normally defined as balance on current and long-term capital transactions. 3 The following comparison of money and language takes inspiration from an essay, The Politics of International Money and World Language, written in 1967 by the grand old man of international economics, Charles P. Kindleberger.

Contributors

Ekavi Athanassopoulou is a historian. She is Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Athens; Senior Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP); Visiting European Scholar of the German Marshal Fund of the US at the Pacific Council on International Policy (2003). She is the author of Turkey: Anglo-American Security Interests, 1945–1952: The First Enlargement of NATO. J. Peter Burgess is a philosopher. He leads the Security Programme at the International Peace Research Institute, Oslo (PRIO), and edits the international journal Security Dialogue, published by SAGE, London. He is the author of Museum Europa: The European Cultural Heritage between Economics and Politics. Richard Vincent Comerford is Professor of Modern History and Head of the History Department at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth (since 1989). He is the author of Ireland in the series ‘Inventing the Nation’. Erik Holm is a political economist. He served as Adviser in European Affairs to the Danish Prime Minister in the 1970s, and as Chief Adviser to the EC Commission in Brussels (DGII) in the 1980s. Since 1989, he has been Director of the Eleni Nakou Foundation, London. He is the author of European Anarchy. Miroslav Hroch is Professor of History at Charles University, Prague. He is the author of Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe. John Loughlin is Professor of European Politics at Cardiff University; Academy Fellow of the Royal Flemish Academy for Arts and Sciences; Senior Visiting Research Scholar in the Centre for Contemporary European History, University of Oxford; Visiting Research Fellow in Merton College, Oxford (2004). He holds Visiting Professorships in several European and Canadian universities. He is the author of Subnational Government: The French Experiment.

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James Edward Miller is a historian. He teaches American foreign policy and contemporary European history at Georgetown University and the US State Department’s Foreign Service Institute. He has twice been a Fulbright scholar in Italy. He served for twenty years as an editor of the series Foreign Relations of the United States. He is author of Politics in a Museum: Governing Postwar Florence. Alina Mungiu-Pippidi is a political scientist and journalist. She chairs the Romanian Academic Society, a Romanian think-tank. She is co-editor with Ivan Krastev of Nationalism after Communism: Lessons Learned. Ton Nijhuis is Director of Germany Institute Amsterdam. He is the author of Een nieuw Duitsland – een oud geluid? [A New Germany – An Old Tune?]. Uffe Østergård is a historian. He is Jean Monnet Professor of European Civilisation and Integration, University of Aarhus, and Head of the Department for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the Danish Institute for International Studies, Copenhagen. He is the author of Europas Ansigter [Faces of Europe]; Europa. Identitet og identitetspolitik [Europe. Identity and Politics of Identity]. Andrei Pippidi is a historian and former dissident. He is Chairman of the Romanian League Against Racism and Anti-Semitism (LICRA), Professor of Medieval History at the University of Bucharest and Visiting Professor at Central European University, Budapest. George Schöpflin is a Member of the European Parliament. Before he joined the European Parliament he was Jean Monnet Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for the Study of Nationalism at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. He is the author of Nations, Identity, Power. Loukas Tsoukalis is Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration at the University of Athens; Visiting Professor, College of Europe, Bruges; President, Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP); Special Adviser to the President of the European Commission. He is the author of What Kind of Europe? Herman van der Wusten is Professor of Political Geography at the University of Amsterdam (1984–2001). He is currently retired and works on a comparative study of European capital cities. He is the editor of The Urban University and Its Identity: Roots, Locations, Roles.

Index

Aaland Islands 106–7, 196 Albania 168 see also Balkans Allen, Carl Ferdinand 118 Almond, Gabriel 5, 86, 166 Association for Nordic Unity 121 Austria 72, 117, 156–8, 193, 226, 252, 255 Austro-Hungarian Empire 44, 72, 76 Balkans demographics 172–3, 177–8 dissatisfaction with democracy 176–9 economics 169–70, 178–9 ethnic diversity 169 and European Union 167–9 history 169, 170–2 nationalism 173 peasant society 170–1, 178–81 residual Communism 178–80 Barthes, Karl 19–20, 25, 31–2 Basque 141, 151, 193, 195 Beck, Ulrich 56–64 Belgium 4, 6, 29, 72–3, 196, 255 Berlusconi, Silvio 137–8, 157 Billig, Michael 25, 31 Bismarck, Otto von 21, 190, 251 Bjørnson, Bjørnstjerne 119 Blair, Tony 80, 201, 209–10, 254 Bonaparte, Napoleon 72, 153 Bosnia 169 see also Balkans Bretton Woods System 261 Brown, Gordon 212 Buchanan, James 206 Bulgaria 45, 168, 173–4 Bush, George W. 147 Byzantine Empire 41, 132, 145, 169, 197 and Ottoman Empire 170–1

Canada 108, 110, 255, 262–3 Catalonia 47, 141, 149, 193, 195, 203, 209 Central Europe 11, 41, 43, 168–70, 226, 252, 247 Chirac, Jacques 76, 154, 263 Christian Democracy 135, 137, 211–12, 251 Christian Socialism 210 Christianity 18, 19, 30 Calvinism 42, 47, 192 Church and state 152–4 Church of Scotland 198 Lutheranism 42, 47, 110, 114–16, 122 myth and 31 Nazism and 25 Protestantism 72 Reformation 42, 47, 115 secularisation 40, 77–8, 152, 166, 202, 250 see also civil religion; Eastern Orthodox Church; Roman Catholic Church civil religion 20, 33 Civil Service 89, 175, 177, 207, 251, 255 Clinton, Bill 201, 210–1 coalitions 93–4, 137, 177 Cold War 71, 80, 111–13, 157, 227 common foreign and security policy 233 ‘common interest’ 8 common memory 18 communicative memory 18 Communism 20, 134, 165–7, 199 post-Communism 166–7, 176 residual Communism 167 transition from 165–8 Compulsory Competitive Tendering 207 Constitutional Treaty on European Union 3, 8, 29–30, 48, 187, 196, 220, 248, 254 see also referenda contraception 153, 155, 200, 202

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coordinated market economies 255 corruption 133, 174, 256 Corsica 188–9, 193–4 Coudenhoven-Kalergi, Graf 21, 66 Croatia 45, 46, 47, 169 see also Balkans Crouch, Colin 198–9 culture see political culture Czech Republic 46, 122 Czechoslovakia 44–6 decentralisation 155, 196, 208, 212, 217, 219–20, 243 Delors, Jacques 200, 205, 206, 257 democracy 5, 6, 11, 12, 71 consumerist 207 disadvantages of 74–5 dominant system of government 74, 249 history 73–5, 250 as myth 12 types of 218 demos 223, 225–9 Denmark 44 anti-European 110 anti-Muslim feeling 220 distinctiveness 109–10 economics 115 folk high schools 120 history 105–10, 111, 113, 114–15, 120 as independent nation 110 insularity 110, 112–13, 116 Kalmar Union 118 language 197 Lutheranism 110, 114–16, 122, 129n monarchy 119, 120, 122 tax burden 248 union with Norway and Sweden 108–9 division of labour 52, 54, 200–5, 250 drugs 3, 203 Durkheim, Émile 54, 63 Eastern Europe 3, 6, 11, 20, 41–3, 165, 256 Eastern Orthodox Church 42, 132, 145, 147, 169 and Roman Catholic Church 152, 157 Eatwell, Roger 29 Economic and Monetary Union 3, 120, 206–7, 227, 248, 257–67 definition needed 242 economic orthodoxy 236–9 feasibility 236–9 governance of 244

‘high’ politics and 232–6, 257 history of 233–5, 239, 241–3 public debate, lack of 238 transfer to 236 economic integration 131, 231–2, 234 economy decline of State control 80, 177, 204, 206–8 economic policy 201, 207, 233, 240–3, 258–64 education 22, 39, 57–60, 207–8 emigration see migration England 191–2 see also UK Enlightenment 30, 42–3, 51, 54, 133, 224, 250 Erhard, Ludwig 251 Esping-Andersen, Gösta 115–6, 198, 251–2 Estonia 46, 115 ethnicity 7, 44, 151, 156, 226 ethnos 222, 228–9 Etzione, Amitai 210 Euro 138, 147, 206, 232–6, 265 Deutschmark, standard for 234, 240 Euro Group, President of 244–5 referenda 4, 147, 220, 228, 248 stability and growth 241–4 see also Economic and Monetary Union Europe of the Cultures 209 Europe, politicised 11 European Central Bank 150, 237–41, 248, 261 European Charter of Regional and Minority Languages 194 European citizenship 4 European Commission 138, 145, 166, 168, 174, 196, 200, 205, 218, 241–3, 254–5 European Community 74, 136 European Constitution see Constitutional Treaty on European Union European Convention of Human Rights 75 European Economic Community 139–40, 159 European Free Trade Association 142 European integration xiii-xiv, 3–4, 7–10, 223–9 national political culture and 85–6 Southern Europe supports 131 European market 233–4, 236 European Monetary System 233, 235, 261, 267 European Union 3 accentuates political difference 7 borders eliminated 231 challenges to 3, 6, 7–10, 12, 24, 75, 83 change 79–83 constitution 48, 141, 153, 194–6, 220, 236 democratic deficit 75–6

Index European confederation 25–6 and European stability 71 ‘Europeanisation’ 62, 85–6, 100, 191 evolution of political culture xiii-xiv, 5–6, 7, 19–23, 53, 236, 256–8 future of 10–12, 85, 217, 248 ideology, decline of 77–9 lack of confidence in 4, 6, 10 and modernity 56–8 myths of 24 and national political culture 7–11, 19–20, 85–6 new members 168–9, 174, 247, 256 requirements for entry 75, 247 research on 65–6 transnational community 256–8 and US 22, 71, 198–201, 226 and World War II 22 see also referenda ‘Europeanisation’ 62, 85–6, 100, 191 family 7, 52–4, 57, 193, 198–9, 202, 252–1 Faroe Islands 105, 112, 114, 122 Finland 44–7, 105–10, 114, 191, 196 flags 25, 26, 30–1, 214 Fortuyn, Pim 27, 92 France 8, 34, 46, 188–90, 214, 217 constitution 194, 209 coordinated market economy 255 democratic system 74 devolution 77 Jacobins and Girondins 188–91, 194 language 192, 193–7 referenda on Constitutional Treaty 4, 196, 220, 248 regionalism 187, 189, 192 student riots 199 see also French Revolution Franco, Francesco 134, 139, 195 French Revolution 21, 24–5, 39, 72, 79–80, 214 and Catholic Church 189, 250 and education 77–8, 189 and French citizenship 188 and French language 188–9, 193–4 Friedman, Milton 199, 206 Fukuyama, Francis 249 Gaulle, Charles de 149 Gellner, Ernest 8, 173 gender 133, 250, 251 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 142, 231

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Germany 20, 46, 211, 217 banks, as model for European Central Bank 240 coalition 93–4 constitution 29, 91–3, 192, 247–8, 252 core values 96–7, 109–1, 196, 217 Deutschmark, as standard for Euro 232 history 86–94 institutions 88–91 language 190, 197 Nazism 25, 66, 76, 96–7, 101, 191 Netherlands and 86–102 political parties 92, 93–4 regionalism 190 reunification 21, 24–5, 87, 98–100, 234, 247, 266 state, primacy of 89, 196 Giscard d’Estaing, Valéry 145, 187 globalisation 7, 23, 60–1, 133, 194, 204 homogenisation of society 63, 203, 220, 228 resistance to 23, 63, 86, 203 resisting strengthens national identity 7, 203, 205, 214 Gorbachev, Mikhal 28 Grass, Gunther 27 Great Britain see UK Greece, 41, 45, 131, 168, 195, 214 civil war 133 corruption 133, 256 economy 132, 134 emigration 156 future 155–7 history 132–9, 144–7 modernisation 133 Orthodox Church 42, 132, 145, 147, 152–3 patronage 148 peripheral status 145–6 political parties 144, 146–7 regionalism 149 xenophobic 146 Greenland 107–8, 112, 114 Habermas, Jürgen 29 Hayek, Friedrich von 199, 206 homosexuality 75, 152–3, 200, 203, 213 Hungary 46, 114, 173 Iceland 105, 112–13 IKEA 25, 31, 33 Iliescu, Ion 167, 177 immigration see migration

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Industrial Revolution 19, 24–5, 56, 143, 198, 250 Inglehart, Robert 166, 168 institutions xiv, 3, 4, 8–9, 11, 66, 134–6, 145–6, 150–1, 155, 235, 239 integration see European integration International Monetary Fund 142, 180, 218, 259, 265 Iorga, Nicolae 169, 171 Ireland see Republic of Ireland Isarescu, Mugur 177 Islam 11, 27, 156, 170, 196, 212, 229 Italy 20, 131 constitution 136, 194 corruption 133 democracy 135–9 economy 132, 134 emigration 156 fascism 134–5, 143, 150, 195 future 155–7 history 132–5, 136–9, 194–5 influences Spanish government 139 language 195 nanny state 136–7 political parties 137–8, 150–1 regionalism 149–51, 194 Roman Catholic Church 136–7, 152–3 welfare state 137 Japan 18, 200, 205, 247, 249 Jospin, Lionel 209 Joxe, Pierre 194 Kanellopoulos, Panyigiotis 153 Kant, Immanuel 21, 51–5, 65–6, 190 Karamanlis, Konstantine 144–5 Kennan, George F. 167 Keynes, John Maynard 201, 207, 231–2, 237, 265 Kohl, Helmut 205, 234, 266 Kohnstamm, Max 22 Kosovo 169, 173 see also Balkans Labour Party, British 80 New Labour 80, 201–1, 210–12, 254 languages 25, 44, 77, 85, 151, 192–8, 209 Belgian 196 culture and 187–8, 213–14 economics 264–6 English 191–2, 209 French 192, 193–7, 209

German 190 Irish 192, 197–8 Italian 195 linguistic minorities 73, 195–6, 204, 213, 214 Scots 192 Scots Gaelic 192, 197–8 Welsh 192, 197–8 Latour, Bruno 51–2 Latvia 45, 115 Lenin, Vladimir 28–9 Lévi-Strauss, Claude 54 Lithuania 45, 46, 118–19 Luxembourg 187, 196, 255 Maastricht Treaty 206, 209, 212, 236, 240–3 Macedonia 149, 169, 181 see also Balkans macro-economics 231–3, 239, 242–3 mafia 150, 253 Major, John 206, 233 Marc, Alexandre 217 Marcuse, Herbert 202 Margalit, Avishai 18 Market regulation 232 Marshall Plan 22 Marx, Karl 63, 249 Marxism 133–4, 141, 145, 251 media 22, 33, 74, 81–2 migration 6–7, 20–1, 71, 81, 143, 196 Milosevic, Slobodan 167, 176, 181 Milward, Alan 199, 217 minimalist state 80, 177, 204, 206–8 Mitterand, François 190, 205 modernity 44, 51–2 cultural modernity 52–8, 248–51 democracy and 225 in Germany 87–8 in Netherlands 87–8 in Nordic countries 120 in Southern Europe 131, 134 unrealisable 51 Moldavia 170 Moldova 169 monetary integration 233–4 Monnet, Jean 8, 22, 34, 66, 217 Montenegro 169 see also Balkans Mosse, George 24–5 multiculturalism 27, 95, 214 Mussolini, Benito 143, 150, 195 myths 17–19, 20–8, 30–3

Index nation states banal nationalism 25–6, 31 concept of 7, 20–1, 25, 33, 187–193 and globalisation 60–1 history of 19–23, 39–47, 71–3 methodological nationalism 58–65 nation, distinct from state 44–5, 88, 188, 190, 220 national identity 20, 25, 31, 43–8 stereotypes 48 transiency of 22 types of 192–3 national anthems 116, 214 national identity 20, 25, 31, 43–8 NATO 111–12, 168, 181, 266 Netherlands, The 46, 196, 204, 211 anti-Muslim feeling 27, 196, 220 assassinations 67, 92 coalition 93–4 constitution 91, 191, 196 coordinated market economy 255 core values 94–6, 217 culture 87, 97–100 devolution 77 European integration, fear of 85 Germany and 86–102 history 73, 87–91, 191 institutions 88–91 multiculturalism 27 national history 27 nationalism 27, 29 neutrality 87 political parties 93–4 referenda on Constitutional Treaty 4, 196, 220, 248 state, antipathy to 89 Nordic Council 106, 114, 116–21 Northern Ireland 72–80, 192, 212 Norway 26, 29, 105, 109–22 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 218 Ottoman Empire 43, 47–8, 132, 145, 152, 169–72 Papandreou, Andreas 135, 146–7, 153 Ploug, Carl 116–17 Poland 26, 46, 107, 114, 118–19, 256 political culture 7–12, 53, 199 apathy 81 defined 3, 4–6, 86, 165–7

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diversity 6, 8, 10, 43–8, 85–6, 165, 187 economic culture 253–6 and European Union 7–12, 19–23, 85–6, 131, 165 history of 7, 19–23, 39–47 modernity and 52–3 myth and 20–8, 30–3 rate of change 7, 23, 79–83 political integration 3–4, 7–8, 10, 234, 242, 257 Portugal 114, 131–44, 148–53, 195, 214, 218 price stability 233, 237, 240, 258–60 privatisation 80–1, 177, 218 see also minimalist state Putin, Vladimir 29 Queiros, Eca de 141 racism 81, 156, 229 Reagan, Ronald 80, 200, 206 referenda 112, 141, 175–6, 227–9 239 rejecting Constitutional Treaty 4, 187, 196, 220, 222n, 248, 264 regionalism 138–9, 148–52, 187, 189, 209 Renan, Ernest 22, 188 Republic of Ireland 47, 72, 195–6 democratic system 74–5 and European Union 76 football 82 IRA 76 language 197–8 LEADER programme 218 liberal market economy 255 Sinn Féin 76, 79–80 Rivera, Miguel Primo de 134 Roman Catholic Church 41–3, 47, 72, 78, 137–9, 251 abortion and contraception 153, 155 and European constitution gay rights 152–3 and Greek Orthodox Church 152–7 Opus Dei 139–40 in Southern Europe 132–3 Roman Empire 40–1, 132, 148 Romania 168, 173–7 Russia 20, 27–9, 43, 47, 134 Cold War 71, 111–13, 157, 227 Crimean War 119 and Denmark 109 ‘grey revolt’ 253 as northern, not eastern 107

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Salazar, Antonio 134, 141 Sartre, Jean-Paul 199, 202 Schröder, Gerhard 210, 263 Schuman, Robert 66, 217 Scotland 54, 72, 191–2, 198 devolution 74, 77, 212, 217 secularisation 40, 77–8, 152, 166, 202, 250 Serbia 45, 169, 173 Simmel, Georg 54, 61 Slovakia 45, 47 Slovenia 46 Smith, Adam 54, 231–2, 249 Smith, Anthony 58–9 Southern Europe 131–9, 144, 153–7 Soviet Union see Russia Spain 46, 113–14, 131–41 constitution 195 coordinated market economy 255 emigration 156 future 155–7 Italian influence 139, 195 myths 5 patronage 148 regionalism 151–2 Roman Catholic Church 152 Stability and Growth Pact 237, 241, 261–3 subsidiarity 90, 205, 213–14, 232, 251, 262 Sweden 44–6, 105–16, 119–22, 228–9, 248 Switzerland 26, 73–4, 214 taxation 118–19, 150–1, 202, 207–12, 248–9, 262–4 technology 10, 74, 81, 209, 212, 220 terrorism 27, 141, 151, 156, 212–13 Thatcher, Margaret 80, 200, 205–8, 224, 235 Thorbeke, Johan Rudolf 191, 196 Tönnies, Ferdinand 54, 61 trade unions 98–9, 211–12, 254, 259 Transylvania 115, 169 Treaty of Maastricht see Maastricht Treaty Treaty of the European Coal and Steel Community 66 Turkey 11, 48, 168, 255–6

UK Conservative party 20, 229, 235 devolution 74, 77, 192, 208, 212 electoral system 74–5, 76 English nation state 72, 191 Economic and Monetary Union 236, 239 Labour Party 80, 210–12, 254 language 191–2, 197–8 liberal market economy 255 membership of European Union 75–6, 187 monarchy 72–3, 75 nation state 191–3 opposes Charter of Fundamental Rights of Workers 254 pragmatic 217 union 72, 118, 191–3 unemployment 3, 133, 200, 239, 263–6 USA 12, 22, 29, 200, 249, 252 banal nationalism 25 and European Union 22, 71, 226–7, 239, 247 Federal Reserve, Euro and 240–1 Vasa, Gustav 105, 109 Verba, Sidney 3, 5, 86, 166 Wales 74, 77, 191–2, 212, 217 Warsaw Pact 174 Weber, Maximilian 54, 61, 63, 192, 253 welfare state 72, 87, 137, 198–200, 204–19, 251 work ethic 253–6 working hours 253 World Bank 168, 170, 218 World War I 21, 74, 134, 171, 217 World War II 21–5, 27, 96–7, 101, 214, 217 democracy and 75 and European Union 198–201, 226 and Welfare State 201, 251 xenophobia 27, 100, 146, 196, 220 Yugoslavia 168–70, 177, 227 see also Balkans