1st Edition
The Political History of European Integration The Hypocrisy of Democracy-Through-Market
The Maastricht Treaty in 1992 was based on neoliberal ideas of a market-driven European economy and democracy, and continues to be seen as a step towards a new stage of unification: towards a more federal Europe based on market integration. The authors demonstrate that European integration as a federal project actually came to an end around 1970. The European Economic Community (EEC) - the precursor of EU - was never thought of as a democracy. The authors locate a shift in thinking about legitimacy and further integration in the 1980s when the idea of a European democracy was connected with a plan for the internal market: the market would pave the way for democracy. Since then, there has been a growing tension between the official line about a democratic EU and the institutional capacity to carry it through. This tension undermined integration. The book suggests that, instead of democracy-through-market, there are signs of increasing social disintegration, political extremism and populism in the wake of economic integration. Providing a more realistic historical understanding of European integration, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, history and European studies.
Part 1: A Historical Outline: Confronting Teleological Understandings of European Integration 1. The Mythical Foundation and the Turbulent Founding Years 2. The Market and the Social 3. The Constitution and the ‘Democratic Deficit’ Part 2: The European Public Sphere in History, Theory and Practice 4. The European Public Sphere in Historical Perspective 5. The European Public Sphere in Theory 6. The European Public Sphere in Practice Part 3: European Values and the European Union 7. European Values and History 8. The Value Production at the Political Centre 9. The Academic Value Production Part 4: The Contours of a Historical Theory of the EU 10. The Historical Analogies 11. Towards a Realistic Historical Perspective on the European Integration 12. The Future
Biography
Hagen Schulz-Forberg is Assistant Professor in International History, University of Aarhus, Denmark. Bo Stråth holds a Chair in Nordic, European and World History at the Renvall Institute, University of Helsinki, Finland. He recently co-edited A European Memory? Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance and European Solidarities: Tensions and Contentions of a Concept.
