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Thinking Like a Member-State

In the second of two pieces on the meanings of Brexit, Bickerton examines the outcomes of the UK’s 2016–20 upheaval through the concept of the ‘member-state’, its elites tied to transnational regimes, while a void gapes between politicians and voters. Even after quitting the EU, does Britain remain a ‘member’ in this sense?

Rebel Regions

A comparative engagement with Tom Hazeldine’s The Northern Question, setting the trajectory of England’s former industrial powerhouse against that of Belgium’s Wallonia. Rustbelt regions, embedded in national contexts beset by persistent geographical polarizations, yet stubbornly consequential for their political outcomes.

Paradigm Shifts

Do Biden’s American recovery plans and the EU’s New Generation package signal the shift to a post-neoliberal era? A comparison of the two, unpacking policies, ideologies and capitalist economies, indicates diverging tracks.

Dollarization of the Eurozone?

Is an erosion of the monetary and financial autonomy of the EU underway? John Grahl tracks indices of informal dollarization through the credit markets that may be undermining the coherence of the Eurozone.

Eutopia

‘Brussels’ is the ubiquitous synecdoche for EU rule, but the spatial reality of the Belgian capital’s European Quarter is less discussed. What does its architecture say about the EU project, and how might we imagine its alternatives?

The Persistence Of Europe

Christopher Bickerton on Ivan Krastev, After Europe and Jan Zielonka, Counter-Revolution: Liberal Europe in Retreat. Contrasting solutions to the dilemmas bedevilling the EU.

Reflections of the Rhine

Jacob Collins on Peter Schöttler, Du Rhin à la Manche. Historio­graphical treatments of the Rhine as reflective of Franco-German nationalist imaginaries.

Homo Europus

As Jean-Claude Juncker steps down from the European Commission, reflections on his career as synecdoche for the political culture of the EU—and the passage of his homeland, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, from steel producer to financial lair.

Progressive Regression

A periodization of European social policy, from attempts to manage the militant labour upsurge of the late 1960s to a supra-national lever for neoliberal restructuring, by way of Maastricht’s Social Protocol. The upshot: a deleterious relocation of social-policy battles from the terrain of welfare-state building to the fields of fiscal policy and immigration.

Salvini Ascendant

Portrait of the bare-knuckle Milanese politician currently leading the advance of the far right in Europe—and explanation for his rise, amid the ruins of Italy’s party system and its euro-racked economy.

Imagined Transmigrations

Alexandra Reza on Stephen Smith, La ruée vers Europe. Projected convergence of African demographic growth and economic stagnation as conditions for a migratory ‘scramble for Europe’.

Metaphysicking the West

Dylan Riley on Heinrich August Winkler, The Age of Catastrophe. ‘The West’ as normative construct—and narrative telos—in a moralizing account from Berlin of the 20th century’s wars and revolutions.

Border Making

From boundary stone and river bank to school-room map and airport security zone: a typology of the border that relates material markers to the institutions which transmit—and enforce—their meanings.

Borderland

Against panegyrics to a frictionless, post-national EU polity, evidence from Europe’s multiple borders. Greece as gauge of an emerging order, in which interior and exterior tangle in overlapping jurisdictions and enforcement zones, ultimately dependent on Libyan warlords, Turkish prisons and the mass graves of the Mediterranean.

Fancies and Fears of a Latin Europe

Thomas Meaney on Wolf Lepenies, Die Macht am Mittelmeer: Französische Träume von einem anderen Europa. Sardonic retrospect of persistent French delusions of a Latin Europe.

Counterstrike West

Conceptions of a revolution from the right in the era of European fascism, and an activist overcoming of conservative dejection at the fate of the West. Political and philosophical imaginings of an alternate capitalist modernity, capable of settling accounts with decadence and Bolshevism.

The Soul of the Eurozone

The character, career and intellectual output of Europe’s most consequential politician, Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble—longest-standing member of parliament in his country’s history, superintendent of national reunification and drill-master of continental austerity, obliged to serve in the shadow of a muddle-through mediocrity.

They, The People

Marco D’Eramo on Jan-Werner Müller, What Is Populism? German contribution to a burgeoning genre on opponents of the liberal order.

Casting Off?

How to assess the latest set-back for the European Union: the vote to leave by its second-largest state? Complex determinants of the Brexit protest—party-political contingencies played out against topographies of class and sub-national disaffection—met by single-minded condemnation of it by the global elite.

Europe’s Other Periphery

The fate of the East European economies in the transition from COMECON to EU. From post-communist slump to the politics of austerity, by way of industrial decline, wage collapses, external debt and buy-outs. The emergence of new dependencies, financial and industrial.

Syriza’s Rise and Fall

Why did the Tsipras government sign up to a third Memorandum, within days of the massive popular rejection of austerity in the July 2015 referendum? Stathis Kouvelakis tracks Syriza’s repositioning since 2012 and its self-imprisonment inside the single-currency regime.

Capitalisms After Communism

A leading Hungarian sociologist revises Weber’s notion of prebendal and patrimonial regimes to classify the new capitalist orders of the former Second World. Are governments from Budapest to Beijing now converging on the same models of politicized economy?

Why the Euro Divides Europe

A landmark critique of Smithian notions of money as neutral medium of exchange, naturalized in social theory from Parsons to Habermas. Arguing instead for Weber’s concept of money as weapon in the market struggle, Wolfgang Streeck reveals how the single currency has transformed Europe’s qualitative horizontal diversity into quantitative vertical inequality.

The Political State of the Union

Debt, deflation and stagnation have now become the familiar economic stigmata of the EU. But what of its political distortions? A survey of the three principal—and steadily worsening—imbalances in the outcome of European integration: the oligarchic cast of its governors, the lop-sided rise of Germany, and the declining autonomy of the Union as a whole in the North Atlantic universe.

Decline of the West?

Mired in recession at home, pledged to perpetual warfare on the periphery—in what shape is the global sheriff? Régis Debray draws up a balance sheet of its vital symptoms.

Greece’s Austerity Election

Social and demographic analysis of the May and June 2012 polls, as the country reels under EU structural adjustment. Narrow basis of Samaras’s ‘national’ government, DIMAR’s defection and emergence of SYRIZA as a new force on the left.

The European Vortex

Global economic turmoil has exposed the structural flaws in the single currency. Amid deepening divergences between industrial north and debt-laden south, Michel Aglietta assesses the Eurozone’s chances of recovery, and the impact of its continued travails on the world economy.

Pathways to Fascism

Robert O Paxton on Dylan Riley, The Civic Foundations of Fascism. Civil society revealed as handmaiden of fascist rule in Italy, Spain and Romania.

Beyond Militant Democracy?

Brussels’s dearth of legitimation has intentional roots, argues Jan-Werner Müller. The role of constitutional fetters in the post-war settlement, and of Christian Democratic distrust of popular sovereignty.

Markets and Peoples

Today’s Euro-turmoil as amplification of the clash between popular and financial interests. Turns of the dialectic of democracy and capitalism, and possible escape routes from the dictatorship of capital markets.

After the Event

Replying to critics, Anderson renews his critique of European narcissism, before turning to the dynamics of the EU debt crisis, and Berlin’s role in producing and exacerbating it.

Under Eastern Eyes

Origins of the EU’s ‘democratic deficit’ in an assault on the remnants of social democracy—gaining new impetus from the East, in a post-Communist synthesis of neoliberal doctrine and authoritarian practice.

Classifying an Anomaly

Opening a symposium on Perry Anderson’s The New Old World, Philippe Schmitter records its divergences from the existing EU literature. How should the Union itself be categorized, and what futures await it?

The Greek Cauldron

Why has Greece proved to be the weakest link in the Eurozone? Stathis Kouvelakis examines the contours of the post-dictatorship model, and the popular mobilizations that have arisen within its ruins.

A Permanent Economic Emergency

As the Eurozone’s sovereign-debt crisis deepens, Slavoj Žižek calls for an internationalist response that would transcend the defence of a failing status quo, to invent new transitional strategies.

Family Resemblances

Michael Mann on Peter Baldwin, The Narcissism of Minor Differences. Beneath the distinctions commonly perceived, do Europe and America fundamentally resemble one another?

Learning from Small Nations

Leading scholar of national questions discusses his personal trajectory and theoretical development, against the backdrop of the Czech experience. Sociological and historical roots of national feeling, and comparative perspectives on their European destinies.

Possible Europes

Interview with leading French jurist on the fate of ‘social Europe’ after Maastricht: subordination of labour to market, and of EU enlargement to the priorities of capital. Might the continent’s bloody past inspire alternative visions?

European?

A former MEP discusses the actual workings of the Europarliament, and the realities of ‘European construction’ in the realm of culture. What have been the outcomes of efforts to build a continental political identity?

A Lockean Europe?

Liberalization and its discontents seen in the longue durée—the struggle of late-coming statist contenders against an Anglophone heartland, now subsuming Europe in its Lockean embrace. Kees van der Pijl tracks the removal of macro-economic questions from democratic decision-making as central precondition for the EU’s neoliberal turn.

From Buddenbrooks to Babbitt?

Donald Sassoon on Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through 20th-Century Europe. How the US reshaped European ideals of consumption and culture, from the stately world of Thomas Mann to that of McDonald’s and José Bové. All the way from the club to the kitchen, learning from Duluth and San Bernardino.

Pax Europæa

Peter Gowan on Mark Leonard, Why Europe will Run the 21st Century. Panglossian manifesto for a Blairite Europeanism as model for the new Atlanticist world order.

Capital and Social Europe

What positive programme can the Left propose for a ‘social Europe’, against the Anglo-Saxon model? Robin Blackburn outlines first steps towards a new financial regime aimed at boosting resources for sustainable health and retirement provision, with a share levy on corporations, redistributed across the continent.

Continental Tremors

Europe’s political landscape, revealed by the protest votes in France and the Netherlands. Mutation and dilation of the EU in the age of liberal hegemony, and lessons to be drawn from the unprecedented irruptions of discontent against it.

ATTAC Against the Treaty

Report from one of the unofficial headquarters of the campaign from below against the EU ‘constitution’, and dissection of its text as free-market manifesto for the 25-state Union. How long before Europeans are next allowed a vote?

Holy Europe

Meditation on the meaning of the No in the 2005 Euro-referendum as anti-consensual response to the authorities’ directive, ‘Say yes to yes’. The reversal of representative institutions to function from the top down, and capture of the hostage-citizenry by the state.

Delors Agonistes

Alan Milward on Jacques Delors, Mémoires. How the birth of a social Europe was thwarted by French Socialists and English Thatcherites alike, as the riptide of marketization headed east.

What’s Wrong with Europe?

As the dollar falls, pressures on torpid European economies are tightening. Behind official comparisons, how far have EU living standards truly diverged from American? Record and outlook in the world’s largest trading zone, while deflation looms.

Letter from America

Why does a malcontent Europe not simply sue for union with the global hegemon, discarding its wisps of independence to exchange proud membership of the American Empire for today’s sullen servility? A jeu d’esprit from the 18th century in the caustic spirit of S*** and V***.

Symptoms of Euro-Denial

Robin Blackburn on Will Hutton, The World We’re In. Does a critique of the Anglo-American version of capitalism have to appeal to a stumbling European variant, as sentimental antithesis?