International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration Power, Security and Community 0203187806, 0203189035, 9780203187807, 9780415214162, 9780415214179

International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration focuses on the roles of community, power and sec

379 85 2MB

English Pages 320 [321] Year 2000

Report DMCA / Copyright

DOWNLOAD FILE

Polecaj historie

International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration Power, Security and Community
 0203187806, 0203189035, 9780203187807, 9780415214162, 9780415214179

Table of contents :
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of illustrations
Notes on contributors
Preface
Introduction: integration and the politics of community in the New Europe
1 Europe is not where it is supposed to be
2 International theory and European integration
3 European communities in a neo-medieval global polity: the dilemmas of fairyland?
4 The art of war and the construction of peace: toward a virtual theory of international relations
5 Sovereignty, anarchy and law in Europe: when legal norms turn into political facts
6 Gendered communities: the ambiguous attraction of Europe
7 Contested community: migration and the question of the political in the EU
8 When two become one: internal and external securitisations in Europe
9 The European Central Bank and the problem of authority
10 'And never the twain shall meet?' The EU's quest for legitimacy and enlargement
11 The EU as a security actor: reflections from a pessimistic constructivist on post-sovereign security orders
Index

Citation preview

International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration

This book is the result of a unique dialogue between researchers deeply engaged in the development of international relations theory and those involved in more concrete interpretation of the development and enlargement of the European Union. It re¯ects on the relationship between international relations and political theory, linking this to the study of European integration. International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration focuses on the concepts of community, power and security, and their role in the European Union. It features contributions from highly respected international scholars, who consider subjects such as: . . . . . .

sovereignty and European integration the EU and the politics of migration the internationalization of military security the EU as a security actor money, ®nance and power the quest for legitimacy with regard to EU enlargement

This thought-provoking volume argues that the evolution of the European Union forces a reconsideration of many of our basic understandings of the foundations and structure of political life as a whole. It is of particular value to students and scholars of Politics, International Relations and European Studies. Morten Kelstrup is Jean Monnet Professor in International Relations and European Integration at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Michael C. Williams is Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth.

International Relations Theory and the Politics of European Integration Power, security and community Edited by Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams

London and New York

First published 2000 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001. & 2000 Selection and editorial matter, Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams; individual chapters, the contributors All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data International relations theory and the politics of European integration: power, security, and community/edited by Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. European federation. 2. European Union countries±Foreign relations. 3. International relations±Political aspects. I. Kelstrup, Morten II. Williams, Michael C., 1960±. JZ1570.I58 2000 3270 .094±dc21 00-034471 ISBN 0±415±21416±5 (hbk) ISBN 0±415±21417±3 (pbk) ISBN 0-203-18780-6 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-18903-5 (Glassbook Format)

Contents

List of illustrations Notes on contributors Preface Introduction: integration and the politics of community in the New Europe

vii ix xiii

1

MORTEN KELSTRUP AND MICHAEL C. WILLIAMS

1 Europe is not where it is supposed to be

14

R.B.J. WALKER

2 International theory and European integration

33

STEVE SMITH

3 European communities in a neo-medieval global polity: the dilemmas of fairyland?

57

N.J. RENNGER

4 The art of war and the construction of peace: toward a virtual theory of international relations

72

JAMES DER DERIAN

5 Sovereignty, anarchy and law in Europe: when legal norms turn into political facts

106

MARLENE WIND

6 Gendered communities: the ambiguous attraction of Europe LENE HANSEN

131

vi

Contents

7 Contested community: migration and the question of the political in the EU

149

JEF HUYSMANS

8 When two become one: internal and external securitisations in Europe

171

DIDIER BIGO

9 The European Central Bank and the problem of authority

205

RANDALL D. GERMAIN

10 `And never the twain shall meet?' The EU's quest for legitimacy and enlargement

226

LYKKE FRIIS AND ANNA MURPHY

11 The EU as a security actor: re¯ections from a pessimistic constructivist on post-sovereign security orders

250

OLE WáVER

Index

295

Illustrations

Figures 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5

Watson's pendulum The structure of imperially organized systems Fragmentation scenario The integration scenario Three competing Europes

256 256 258 259 270

Tables 9.1 9.2

Conceptualizing international institutional authority Institutional authority and the ECB

210 214

Boxes 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4

Amsterdam Treaty's Amsterdam Treaty's Amsterdam Treaty's Amsterdam Treaty's

`citizen-relevant' face `civic' face `democratic' face `ef®ciency' face

240 241 242 243

Contributors

Didier Bigo is Professor at the Institut d'EÂtudes Politiques, France, and Editor of Cultures et Con¯its. His publications include: `Circuler, refouler, enfermer, eÂloigner: zones d'attent et centres de reÂtention aux frontieÁres des deÂmocraties occidentales', Cultures et Con¯its, 23, Fall 1996, `Guerres, con¯its, transnational et territoire', Cultures et Con¯its, 21/22, 1996, `Grandes deÂbats dans un Petit Monde', Cultures et Con¯its, 19/20, 1995. James Der Derian is Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His publications include On Diplomacy and Antidiplomacy: Spies, Terror, Speed, and War (1992). He is the Editor (with Michael J. Shapiro) of International/Intertextual Relations: Postmodern Readings of World Politics (1989), International Theory: Critical Investigations (1995) and The Virilio Reader (1998). His forthcoming book is entitled Virtual War. Lykke Friis is Senior Research Fellow at the Danish Institute of International Affairs. Her publications include Den Tyske Magt: TysklandspùrgsmaÊlet fra Bismarck til Kohl (The German power: the German issue from Bismarck to Kohl) (1994); When Europe Negotiates. From European Agreements to Eastern Enlargement (1996), `EU and Central and Eastern Europe ± governance and boundaries', JCMS, vol. 32, no. 2, 1999, pp. 211±32 and An Ever Larger Union? EU Enlargement and European Integration: An Anthology (1999). Randall D. Germain is Senior Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and convenor of the International Political Economy working group of the British International Studies Association. His publications include `The Worlds of Finance: A Braudelian Perspective on IPE', European Journal of International Relations, vol. 2, no. 2, 1996; The International Organization of Credit: States and Global Finance in the World Economy (1997); (with Michael Kenny) `Engaging Gramsci: international relations theory and the new Gramscians',

x

Contributors Review of International Studies, vol. 24, no. 1, 1998, pp. 3±21; and he is the Editor of Globalization and its Critics: Perspectives from Political Economy (2000).

Lene Hansen is a Project Researcher at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute and External Lecturer in International Relations at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Copenhagen. Her publications include `R.B.J. Walker and international relations: deconstructing a discipline', in Iver B. Neumann and Ole Wñver (eds) The Future of International Relations: Masters in the Making? (1997); Security as Practice: Theory, Politics and the Bosnian War (forthcoming); and Co-Editor (with Ole Wñver) of Between Nations and Europe: Regionalism, Nationalism and the Politics of Europe (forthcoming). Jef Huysmans is Lecturer at the London Centre of International Relations at the University of Kent at Canterbury. His publications include `Migrants as a security problem: dangers of ``securitizing'' social issues', in R. Miles and D. ThraÈnhardt (eds) Migration and European Integration: The Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion (1995), pp. 53±72; Making/ Unmaking European Disorder: Meta-Theoretical, Theoretical and Empirical Questions of Military Stability after the Cold War (1996), `Security! What do you mean? From concept to thick signi®er', European Journal of International Relations, vol. 4, no. 2, 1998, pp. 226±55; `The question of the limit: desecuritisation and the aesthetics of horror in political realism', Millennium: Journal of International Studies, vol. 27, no. 3, 1999, pp. 569±89. Morten Kelstrup is Jean Monnet Professor at the Institute of Political Science, University of Copenhagen and a Senior Research Fellow at the Copenhagen Peace Research Institute. His publications include `Integration Theories: History, Competing Approaches and New Perspectives', in Anders Wivel (ed.), Explaining European Integration (1998). He is the Editor of European Integration and Denmark's Participation (1992); and Co-Editor (with Uffe Jakobsen) of Demokrati og demokratisering: Begreber og teorier (Democracy and Democratisation: Concepts and Theories) (1999); and (with Hans Branner) Denmark's Policy towards Europe after 1945: History, Theories and Options (2000). Anna Murphy is Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute, Florence, Italy. Her publications include, with L. Friis, EU Governance and Central and Eastern Europe ± Where are the Boundaries?, HCM Occasional Paper (1997); with L. Friis, `EU and Central and Eastern Europe ± governance and boundaries', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 32, no. 2, 1999; and `Turn and face the change ± Ireland,

Contributors

xi

the enlargement of the European Union', Irish Studies in International Affairs vol. 10, 1999. N.J. Rennger is Professor in the Department of Politics at the University of St Andrews. His publications include Political Theory, Modernity and Postmodernity: Beyond Enlightenment and Critique (1995); Retreat from the Modern (1996), and Political Theory, International Relations and the Problem of Order (2000). He is the co-author of Texts in International Political Thought (1998). Steve Smith is Professor in the Department of International Politics, the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. His publications include European Foreign Policy: The European Community and Changing Perspectives in Europe (1994), International Relations Theory Today (1995), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (1996), co-editor (with John Baylis) of The Globalization of World Politics (1997), and `Social constructivisms and European studies: a re¯ectivist critique', Journal of European Public Policy vol. 6, no. 4, 1999, pp. 682±91. Ole Wñver is Professor of International Relations at the Institute of Political Science, the University of Copenhagen and a Senior Research Fellow at COPRI. His latest publications include `The sociology of a not so international discipline: American and European developments in international relations', in Peter J. Katzenstein, Robert O. Keohane and Stephen D. Krasner (eds) Exploration and Contestation in the Study of World Politics (1999) and `InseÂcuriteÂ, identiteÂ: une dialectique sans ®n', in Anne-Marie Le Gloannec (ed.) Entre Union et Nations: L'EÂtat en Europe (1998). R.B.J. Walker is Professor in the Department of Politics, Keele University. His publications include Inside/Outside: International Relations As Political Theory (1993); One World, Many Worlds: Struggles for a Just World Peace (1998); and After the Globe/Before the World: Politics in the Wake of Sovereign Subjectivities (forthcoming). Michael C. Williams is Lecturer in the Department of International Politics, the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. His publications include (with Lene Hansen) `The myths of Europe: legitimacy, community and the ``crisis'' of the EU', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 37, no. 2, 1999; `The postmodern politics of the new world order', in Birthe Hansen and Bertel Heurlin (eds) Theories of the New World Order (2000); and (with Iver B. Neumann) `From alliance to security community: NATO, Russia, and the power of identity', Millennium: Journal of International Studies (2000).

xii

Contributors

Marlene Wind is Assistant Professor at the Institute of Political Science, the University of Copenhagen. Her publications include `Legal globalisation and the new human rights regime: human rights in a post-sovereign world', in S.F. Krishna-Hensek (ed.) The New Millennium: Challenges and Strategies for a Globalizing World (2000); Europe towards a PostHobbesian Order? A Constructivist Account of European Integration (2000). She is the Co-Editor (with Joseph Weiler) of Rethinking Constitutionalism in the European Union (2000).

Preface

This book is a contribution to debates on how the study of international relations is to develop, a re¯ection on the relationship between international relations and political theory, and a contribution to the discussion of European integration. It appears as part of the Copenhagen Research Project on European Integration (CORE). The main purpose of the subproject behind the book has been to establish a dialogue between researchers deeply engaged in thinking about the development of international relations theory and researchers engaged in more concrete interpretation of the European development. We would like to thank the authors for their willingness to engage in this dialogue. Special thanks goes to Pernille Vejby Nielsen, Lasse Dahlberg and Nicolaj Egerod for their engaged and patient assistance in different phases of the project. Morten Kelstrup and Mike Williams December 1999

Introduction Integration and the politics of community in the New Europe Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams

This book brings together re¯ections on the development of the European Union and the evolution of international political theory. It seeks to contribute to debates on how the study of international relations is to develop, to re¯ect on the relationship between international relations and political theory, and to link these issues to the study of European integration. The political theorist, David Held, has in his sweeping attempt to come to terms with the perils and possibilities of contemporary political life argued that: The pursuit of political knowledge on old disciplinary grounds is not adequate to this task. For too long the concerns of political theory, political economy, international relations and international law have been kept separate, with persistently disappointing outcomes. Signi®cant beginnings have been made in recent times to reintegrate elements of these disciplines, but a great deal of ground remains to be covered. (Held 1995: ix) One of the purposes of this book is to further this process of conceptual renovation and cross-disciplinary inquiry that Held, in our view rightly, sees as indispensable in coming to terms with contemporary political dynamics and the choices ± and the possibilities for choices ± that can be made concerning their direction. We need to link the study of European integration not only to debates on international relations (IR), but to the contemporary study of politics in general. Yet, what is perhaps most interesting, challenging, and dif®cult, the evolution of the European Union forces a reconsideration ± if not necessarily a re-evaluation ± of many of our most basic understandings of the foundations and structure of political life as a whole.

2

Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams

Changes in Europe and changes in the study of international relations The empirical background for this book is that the political map of Europe has undergone profound changes. In many respects we are experiencing a politically `new' Europe. Political constellations in Europe have changed, and are still changing rapidly. Some of these changes are related to the disappearance of the antagonisms of the Cold War, the uni®cation of the two German states and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, developments which in many ways have strengthened the states in Europe. Other changes are related to continuing processes of European integration. New phases of transnationalisation and supranationalisation of politics in Europe have been transforming relations between states, and between states and societies, thus changing political patterns throughout Europe. The institutional development of the European Communities led to the agreement in Maastricht in 1991 on a new Treaty of the European Union, then in 1997 to agreement in Amsterdam on a revision of the treaty, and is to continue with a new intergovernmental conference in 2000 aimed at important institutional reforms, most likely followed by new intergovernmental conferences and reforms. Citizens in the Member States of the European Union are already living in multilayered political systems in which two or more decision centres have the formal authority to decide on their social life by passing decisions and rules to regulate their behaviour. European states are still very important actors in this new, partly integrated Europe, and national identities and national cultures still seem to dominate social and cultural life. But the political, cultural and economic changes related to a new phase of transnationalisation and supranationalisation are making their impact. At the turn of the millennium, European economic and monetary union (EMU) has come into being, uniting most of the EU Member States within a common monetary system, and seems the project most likely to give new impetus to institutional integration. `Agenda 2000' has set the framework for the enlargement of the EU, and negotiations with the applicant states are underway, leading, eventually, to an enlarged European Union rather different from the present one. The internal balances between the supranational institutions of the EU have been shaken, leading most spectacularly to the self-dismissal of Jacques Santer's Commission. The recent con¯ict in Kosovo has challenged the EU as a security actor and given new emphasis to security issues in European integration. Thus, the European Union is facing new institutional problems ranging from what some call its `legitimacy crisis', to pressure for new areas of regulation, to a need for new internal balances, to a need to solve the complicated institutional and political challenges raised by the prospect of enlargement. Traditional politics in Europe is at all levels challenged by these changes. The theoretical background for this book lies in the recognition that the study of international relations and international politics has also been

Introduction

3

undergoing substantial change. The debate between neorealists and neoliberal institutionalists, which has dominated the study of international politics for the last decades, is being challenged or supplemented by different `re¯ective' approaches with many diverse orientations and labels: different kinds of constructivists, post-structuralists, post-modernists increasingly populate the intellectual landscape. Previously dominant rationalist views in the study of international politics are now challenged by different conceptualisations which view reality as socially constructed, which study norms, cognition, and identity politics. These new interpretations differ in their meta-understanding and basic orientations, but they share the criticism of the narrow rationalism which has so often dominated the study of international politics, and they are opening new agendas and research questions. The study of European integration has always been somewhat at odds with much of international political theory. In spite of many years' effort, related to the so-called `integration theories', scholars from international relations and political theory have had dif®culty coming to terms with the phenomena of European integration. Some approaches have been too state-centric and too rationalistic, unable to capture the processes of institutionalisation in European politics, the complexities of decision-making and the incremental changes in identities and attitudes. Other approaches have focused narrowly on decision-making in the EU or on case studies within speci®c sectors. Confronted with the complexities of the political, legal and administrative developments in the EU, we still have a pressing need for concepts and theoretical efforts in understanding the past and present development of European integration. In particular, we need studies which include the dimension of political community and which transcend the traditional divide between the inside and the outside of the nation±state. Accordingly, recent developments in international relations theory which reintroduce fundamental questions concerning the links between community and identity, the shifting nature of social and political authority, the shifting meaning and politics of security, and the dynamic and multifaceted nature of power can contribute to the study of aspects of European integration which otherwise have been relatively neglected. From this point of view it seems fruitful to pursue the discussion between debates over new developments in the study of international relations and the political, cultural and economic developments in Europe.

The foundations and dynamics of political community A time of political transformation inevitably calls into question the available concepts and categories through which that transformation can be understood. What is more, these concepts function not only as descriptions of political life, but as implicit and explicit categories of normative evaluation. As such, they form integral elements of the ongoing debates, con¯icts and

4

Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams

transformations within societies. The ways in which key political concepts have traditionally been understood involves far more than just a set of claims about how the world operates. On the contrary, these understandings are intimately related to particular visions of ± and moral judgements concerning ± the legitimate nature of political order. Thus, if a transformation in explanatory concepts is necessary in order to grasp the present, an enquiry into the ethical entailments of such a transformation is equally called for. Nor is this by any means an `academic' question far removed from the practical politics of the day. Indeed, as even the most cursory examination of contemporary political debate quickly reveals, terms such as community, power and authority are at the heart of contestations regarding contemporary transformations and their relationship to legitimate structures of political life. A central goal of this volume is to attempt to unpack some of the central issues in the present transformation of politics in Europe, and to assess their analytic and political signi®cance in the emerging process of the expansion of the EU. When approached from this direction, questions concerning the politics and political institutionalisation of the EU inescapably raise questions concerning the foundations and dynamics of political community. The concept of community remains at once a foundation for much of our thinking about political life, and one of our most problematic concepts (Linklater 1998). At one level, the causes of the confusion related to understanding communities are clear enough. The development of social and political dynamics and structures cutting across the state boundaries through which political life has long been conceived are rendering our understanding of politics ever more problematic. At the same time, these processes ± which we might conceive of in terms of `globalisation' or transnationalisation ± continue to be intertwined with paradoxical trends of fragmentation and regionalisation. And while there is broad agreement that the processes of globalisation and fragmentation are clearly linked, there is equally little agreement on precisely how. Thus, we seemingly experience simultaneous processes of deconstruction and reconstruction of political communities. And we see the development of the `politics of political community': more or less conscious attempts to in¯uence the construction or deconstruction of political communities. Perhaps nowhere are these dynamics as clearly illustrated as in the development of the EU. European integration has developed from early attempts to create a single economic space in the form of a common market, to formation of sectoral policies and common political institutions, to the Single European Act, steps towards formation of a `social Europe', and the formation of the European Union. The development has, as brie¯y described above, led to the Amsterdam revision of the Treaty on the European Union, and is continuing in the establishment of economic and monetary union, the plans for the enlargement of the community, and

Introduction

5

renewed projects for an institutionally revised European Union. The efforts of community-building at the European level are accompanied by the (re-)emergence of regional structures and simultaneous processes of national political devolution and re-emerging articulation of national resistance towards European integration. From this point of view it is understandable that debates on the nature and foundations of `community' have come to occupy a central place in evaluations of the process, progress and possibilities of European integration. Indeed, it is probably not going too far to suggest that to many today the question of community represents the theoretical key to understanding the dynamics and dilemmas of the Union at what is seen as a crucial point in its history. The origins of this concern are not hard to grasp. They can be dated ± somewhat ironically but certainly signi®cantly ± to the processes through which the European `Community' became the `Union'. For despite its titular subordination in this process, in the eyes of many analysts the shifts agreed at Maastricht put the question of community clearly at centre stage. As Helen Wallace (1993: 100±1) has argued, the shift from `policy' to `polity' that can be discerned as the goal of the EU meant that the Union had now to confront classic questions of political community ± issues of political identity and the foundations of basic values ± in a new and unavoidably direct fashion. If, for example, the changes are such that the European Community is transformed into a union, might this be a polity which ®nds its legitimacy primarily not in the legitimacy of the participating states and their agreement, but in the legitimacy and legitimation by the peoples in Europe? The enlargement process can be seen as contributing to the sharpness of this perspective. If the question of the EU is increasingly a question of `community', then clearly the impact of expansion on community formation will be central to the future of the Union, and its effects in relation to community formation will be decisive for the ways in which the European Union can and might be constructed in a newly expanded form.

The structure of this book There thus seems ample reason to focus on the question of political community as a means of coming to terms with the challenges of the EU, and a number of the contributors to this volume take up this question directly. As R.B.J. Walker argues in Chapter 1, traditional understandings of international relations often begin from a set of metatheoretical commitments which are both profoundly challenged by contemporary developments in Europe, and yet which constrain attempts to grasp those developments. At the heart of these understandings are hierarchical images of political space ± of ascending and descending structures of authority ± and their corollaries in conceptions of sovereignty. Understanding the challenges of contemporary European politics, in Walker's view, demands also a

6

Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams

reinterrogation of this European tradition of political thinking, and an engagement with the dif®cult and complex questions of political practice which that entails. In an analysis which also takes historical categories as its starting point, Nicholas Rengger in Chapter 3 takes up the challenge of linking the question of the shifting nature of community to the question of moral inclusion and exclusion through an examination of one of the most oft-heard characterisations of the emerging European order: the claim that what is coming into being is a `neo-medieval' order. For Rennger, the signi®cance of this vision lies not just in its attempt to describe a political order increasingly marked by lateral and horizontal ¯ows and overlapping structures of authority. It also lies in the ways in which such developments force (and allow) us to reconsider the ethical foundations of modern conceptions of politics and generate understandings of the ethical foundations of political community which move beyond the enclosures of modern framings. While the question of community raises fundamental questions concerning our understandings of political order, it is equally important to bear in mind that these are by no means abstract, theoretical questions divorced from European politics. Precisely such issues lie at the heart of debates over contemporary European politics, whether in the form of questions concerning who is (and can be) a `European' and a member of the Union, and on what basis one decides this; in disputes over the rights and obligations entailed by such a status; and in contestations regarding the location of authority within the overlapping and multiple jurisdictions that now constitute the EU. These issues also provide the starting point for a number of diverse contributions to this volume. Lene Hansen's contribution in Chapter 6 adopts a gendered perspective to examine the links between gender, constructions of subjectivity and community, and different attitudes toward the EU. The kind of polity the EU is conceived to be, she notes, depends fundamentally on the conceptions of political life and possibilities underlying the evaluation. These conceptions themselves re¯ect a series of gendered assumptions which act powerfully to condition attitudes toward the Union and its development. Debates over whether the EU is, or can be, a progressive political community, are greatly illuminated by adopting a gendered perspective. But at the same time, Hansen argues, coming to terms with the evolution of the EU also reveals crucial questions which a gendered political analysis must confront. In Chapter 7 Jef Huysmans examines the ways in which the EU challenges both conceptual and institutional elements of contemporary political life by turning to one of the most contentious contemporary issues: the question of citizenship and the status of migrants in Europe. For Huysmans, the traditional structures of inclusion and exclusion which are central to prevailing conceptions of citizenship are most clearly illustrated and rendered problematic by the liminal status of the migrant ± a person

Introduction

7

who is neither inside nor outside, but whose physical presence and moral claims render visible, and intensely politicise, some of the most fundamental tensions within the European `community'. The centrality of issues of community and its links to legitimacy are, as Lykke Friis and Anna Murphy illustrate in Chapter 10, also a central concern of the formal institutions and key decision-makers within the EU. Indeed, the question of the EU's status as a community has become a preoccupation of the Commission, and a central aspect of its political strategy. The development of the Union is confronted with many practical questions related to strategies of community formation (formation of a `citizens' Europe', regulation of migration, new institutionalisation within speci®c ®elds, etc.). These new challenges are particularly relevant with regard to the enlargement process and to the dif®cult questions which the EU confronts in being accepted as a legitimate presence in areas in which it has so far been an external political construction. Looking in particular at the Amsterdam Treaty and Agenda 2000, their analysis examines the place of `community' as an aspect of this strategy, and the possibilities for, and obstacles to, its success.

Power, sovereignty and authority To pose the question of the transformation of political community is also necessarily to pose the question of the nature of political power. Placing the study of power at the centre of analysis has, of course, long been one of the de®ning features of the study of international relations (IR), particularly in its realist variants. Yet, the concept is notoriously illusive within the ®eld, as debates over whether the power of the state is waning, continuing, or transforming clearly illustrate. However, if one steps back from debates in IR and adopts a somewhat broader perspective, it is possible to see how understandings of power are built into the very concepts of sovereignty which we are trying to understand, and whose continuing power so frequently forms the core of current debates over authority and obligation. As Barry Hindess has shown, a speci®c vision of power is intimately related to an extremely powerful understanding of the nature and limits of political life and community (Hindess 1996). In this tradition, power is viewed as an attribute or possession of pre-formed and given individuals. The key question of politics, in this (contractual) account, becomes the conditions under which this individual power comes to be transferred to, or vested within, collective institutions. The conception of power as a capacity possessed by, but external to, individuals, is thus an intrinsic element of (many) contractual theories of sovereignty. It is the link between this speci®c conception of power and a vision of politics which accounts for the understanding of governments as the central holders of power. This view is widespread despite the fact that it is clear that governments are not the singular, uni®ed, controlling entities

8

Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams

that some theories of sovereignty (especially in traditional IR) would have us believe. But, as Hindess notes: `the image of government as a controlling centre whose most important form of activity consists in the issuing of decisions to its independently formed subjects continues to dominate contemporary discussions of political power' (1996: 44). This view of power as a quantity possessed by individuals or collective actors, and thus as moving beyond individuals only through its aggregation at a central point, is a central element in the liberal vision of sovereignty. The focus of analysis thus naturally becomes the realm of the institutions of government ± whether intergovernmental or in terms of supranational authority. This re¯ects neither a choice of intellectual interest or even a political priority, but emerges as a consequence of the onto-de®nitional structure of the analysis. Even when such an approach wants to consider processes beyond the state, these are always conceived of in terms of their effect on the state, a predisposition deriving from the ontological privileging of the realm of state power that is implicit in this conception of power itself. The issues bequeathed by this view of power and its links to sovereignty are all too familiar to those who study European integration. Historically, debates over the processes of European integration have revolved partly around competing visions of the ultimate end of the integration process, but have also partly concentrated on the fundamental character of the integration process as such. At the heart of these debates, of course, has been the con¯ict between those who saw the formation of the European communities as a means towards the formation of a federal Europe and those who in essentially intergovernmentalist terms understood the European communities as a cooperative organisation of nation±states which ± for pragmatic reasons ± decided to `pool' parts of their sovereignty in the new common authorities of the communities. As different as these visions are, however, they often represent variations on essentially the same vision of the nature of the state and political community. In each, state sovereignty remains the model of political legitimacy and provides the framing assumptions of authority. In consequence, the key questions both for the federal and the intergovernmental approach to European integration became whether ± and how, and if ± political structures could be extended to more inclusive, independent super-national authorities, or whether they would remain constrained to operate at the level of intergovernmental cooperation. In both scholarly and public debate these discussions continue unabated. They are echoed in discussions of whether the governments of the European states are `gaining' or `losing' power to the EU, or whether the Union is declining in power vis-aÁ-vis its constituent members or other international actors. Similarly, such an understanding of power can be discerned in speci®c visions of sovereignty ± where sovereignty is de®ned as the exercise of

Introduction

9

political power over a given territorial space; and where a typical question becomes whether states are `losing' their sovereignty. A broad spectrum of recent analyses have, however, begun to argue that these assumptions are increasingly unhelpful as a means of understanding recent developments surrounding the EU. Viewing the question of contemporary EU politics from a perspective centred on a unitary vision of the sovereign state and as a quantitative issue of where it resides has come under considerable assault recently in EU studies (Kohler-Koch 1996; Marks et al. 1996; Kelstrup 1998; Wñver 1996), and has formed part of a broader challenge to traditional statist and liberal intergovernmentalist understandings. A fundamental aspect of the multi-level governance approach is that states have been weakened, perhaps in general because of broader trends towards globalisation and Europeanisation and perhaps more speci®cally because of the development of the European Union. Within the multilevel governance approach, the states are not understood as unitary either/or sovereign actors. In this approach three characteristics are emphasised in the understanding of the EU: (1) the competencies for decision-making are shared between different levels and are no longer a monopoly for the governments; (2) the common decisions of the governments in the EU have the effect that individual governments lose control; and (3) the political arenas are `interconnected'. This implies that subnational and supranational actors might operate in combination. This, further, implies that we experience `by-pass', i.e. direct relations between the supra-state and the sub-state level which might deprive the government further of its control (Sandholtz 1996: 412). A consequence is that the distinction between national and international politics is disappearing. A vision of power as a quantitative entity legitimately aggregated in a single locus of authority is severely limited in its capacity to grasp such structural transformations. Much of the most interesting work in recent IR theory can be seen as developing these themes, and as attempting to develop understandings of power which move beyond the atomistic, materialist and aggregative visions of power which often lie beneath traditional perspectives. Approaches which stress the importance of norms and institutions in the structures of `governance' represent a movement along this path, as do attempts to apply the concept of `multi-level' governance to the EU. Further, a new literature on legitimacy and democracy in the EU is evolving, also focusing on the problems of legitimacy of power in multilayered, international networks (Jachtenfuchs 1995, 1997 and 1998; Weale and Nentwich 1998). Still others have, often inspired by the work of Michel Foucault and the `post-structural' movement in general, sought to uncover the ways in which power acts not (or even primarily) as a negative or constraining force in the operation of political structures, but how it must be seen as an intrinsic element in the very structuring of subjectivity and agency that makes speci®c forms of social discipline and political order possible.

10

Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams

Each of these perspectives seeks to incorporate a revised vision of power in understandings of political life. There are, of course, serious and important differences between them on this issue. In general, however, they share a concern in asking not just how much power is possessed by speci®c actors, but in asking prior questions about the structure and operation of forms of power that underlie and make possible these more overt institutions and expressions of power. In this sense, power can be seen as acting within speci®c social ®elds, ®elds in which it is also a constitutive force. As Steve Smith argues in Chapter 2, these developments in understandings of European integration have important implications for IR theory as a whole. For Smith, only those theories which take seriously the constitutive role of ideas, and the forms of power they entail, can adequately address the dynamics of the integration process. While the study of the EU has often ®tted uncomfortably within IR theory, seen from this perspective it can be viewed as a challenge and source of inspiration for thinking about broader global transformations. In this view, contemporary IR theory and EU studies can play important reciprocal roles as sources of insight in understanding the emerging structures and dynamics of both European and world politics. Among the most pronounced developments in EU politics has been the evolution of transnational legal structures. Marlene Wind's examination of the EU as a `community of law' in Chapter 5 also argues forcefully that traditional conceptions of state sovereignty and theories of IR based on the instrumental pursuit of state-interest cannot grasp the ways in which the EU has developed a legal structure which both transcends and embeds the authority of its Member States. To understand this profound shift, she argues, it is necessary to understand the legitimacy of the community of law as a politically powerful dynamic in its own right, a dynamic that has been central to the progress of the EU and which promises to continue to be a powerful integrative force. Economic issues have, of course, long been central to the progress of the EU. From early attempts at trade harmonisation, through the development of the single market, the economic and political aspects of the Union have been inextricably linked. With the launch of the single currency, these processes have entered a dramatic new phase. Working from a Gramscian perspective, analysts of the international political economy have in recent years examined the construction of `hegemonic' political orders and have focused attention on the ways in which material and ideational structures of power cohere in the constitution of speci®c historic structures, and how they are subject to change due to evolution in each of these realms. Drawing upon many of these themes, Randall Germain in Chapter 9 turns to examine the creation and future prospects of EMU. Functioning monetary orders, he argues, require strong sources of social legitimation. A crucial question concerning EMU is thus the potential sources of this legitimation, both within and across Member States. For Germain, this is not a question

Introduction

11

which can be addressed without attending to the links between the recognition of legitimate authority and the functioning of a ®nancial system. Concentrating on these links and their institutional embeddedness, he assesses the challenges faced in the attempt to make EMU the latest stage of European economic integration.

Security and community Security, power and community have traditionally been paradoxically united in the study of international relations. On the one hand, the existence of community de®ned as the state has been seen as the precondition of security. On the other, the attempt to secure the community has been portrayed as leading (perhaps inevitably) to insecurity as the attempts of one community to ensure its security leads to the insecurity of the other, and vice versa. The EU has always had an ambiguous relationship to security in this sense. On the one hand, it was designed explicitly as an attempt to overcome the legacy of such a vision of security. But this has also always come with an ambivalence concerning the role of the EU itself in security relations. These dilemmas have been heightened by the deepening of the Union, the end of the Cold War, and the `expanded' agenda of security that has followed in their wake. James Der Derian's chapter does not address Europe directly, but his analysis touches upon the questions of power and authority that are at the heart of European politics and integration. Der Derian's immediate focus is on war and its shifting dynamics. As the media have constantly reminded us, with war having come to Europe again at the end of the century ± via the con¯icts throughout the Balkans ± the shifting nature of military power and its application by the Atlantic alliance are clearly far from irrelevant to the future of Europe. More broadly, however, Der Derian seeks to alert us to the role of virtuality and the power of new media and technologies in the construction (and destruction) of political communities. If community is at some level always imagined, then an issue of central concern becomes grasping the conditions of imagining community in an epoch when `reality' itself is becoming an increasingly imaginary aspect of a world increasingly characterised by simulation and hyperreality. The presuppositions of conventional theories of international relations, he argues, render these dynamics largely invisible to scholars working within those traditions, a situation which he analogically compares to the `inter-war' period, when the nature of the emerging political±military situation in Europe eluded most observers. The chapters by Ole Wñver (Chapter 11) and Didier Bigo (Chapter 8) seek to examine the emerging relationship between security and the European community in the context of the new relationship between community, power and state in Europe. Wñver examines the role of the EU as a `security actor'. Challenging much of conventional wisdom (particularly

12

Morten Kelstrup and Michael C. Williams

in IR), he holds that the EU is perhaps the most signi®cant security actor in contemporary Europe. This status emerges not from its military power, but from the EU's position at the centre of a concentric restructuring of political power in Europe. For Wñver, understanding the security role of the EU requires grasping the power which it is able to yield as an identity structure and a `community', and the signi®cant impact which this has on both its existing and aspiring members. Adopting a discursive form of analysis, Wñver seeks to show how this political and security structure is at once both extremely powerful and potentially quite fragile. If, as argued above, power and authority, legitimacy and community are in a process of realignment in contemporary Europe, one would expect this to be expressed in the institutional dynamics of the EU in the security realm as well. Didier Bigo undertakes the dif®cult task of disentangling these developments by examining the increasingly confused relationship between the domestic and international aspects of European security. For a long time the distinction between internal and external security has functioned as one of the clear delineations of political community. While the state claimed a monopoly of violence, its right to exercise this monopoly and the structures through which it did so were in theory clearly delineated and subject to different rules. The internal security of the state ± the realm of the police, primarily ± was in principle (and to varying degrees in practice) to be kept strictly separate from the external realm of military violence and war. As Bigo argues, this clear division is becoming increasingly muddied as the classi®cation of threats expands, the bounds of community shift, and the distinctions between internal and external become more dif®cult to de®ne. The institutional transformations and transnationalisation of European security forces are indicative of the profound shifts at work in and between European societies. Linking new agendas in the study of IR to speci®c questions in the EU, the studies in this volume seek to contribute to our understanding of these issues in both their general and particular signi®cance. Each attempts to demonstrate how contemporary developments in Europe require the generation and application of new forms of political analysis and evaluation. Each also suggests that coming to terms with the politics of the EU has implications for understanding broader global transformations. This is most assuredly not to say that Europe ± much less the institutional structure of the EU ± represents the `future' in a deterministic historical trajectory. But it may be to say that if the study of the EU has in fact in the past ®t somewhat uncomfortably within the ®eld of International Relations, it might now be reasonable to conjecture that the dynamics of contemporary Europe pose questions which need to be at the heart of any cogent theory of world politics.

Introduction

13

References Held, D. (1995) Democracy and the Global Order, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Hindess, B. (1996) Discourses of Power: From Hobbes to Foucault, Oxford: Blackwell. Jachtenfuchs, M. (1995) `Theoretical Perspectives on European Governance', European Law Journal vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 115±33. ÐÐ (1997) `Conceptualizing European Governance', in K. E. Jùrgesen (ed.) Re¯ective Approaches to European Governance, London: Macmillan. ÐÐ (1998) `Democracy and Governance in the European Union', in A. Fùllesdal and P. Koslowski (eds) Democracy and the European Union, Berlin-Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 37±64. Jùrgesen, K. E. (ed.) (1997) Re¯ective Approaches to European Governance, London: Macmillan. Kelstrup, M. (1998): `Integration Theories: History, Competing Approaches and New Perspectives', in A. Wivel (ed.) Explaining European Integration, Copenhagen: Copenhagen Political Studies Press, pp. 15±55. Kohler-Koch, B. (1996) `Catching up with Change: The Transformation of Governance in the European Union', Journal of European Public Policy vol. 3, pp. 359± 80. Linklater, A. (1998) The Transformation of Political Community, Cambridge: Polity Press. Marks, G., Hooghe, L. and Blank, K. (1996) `European Integration from the 1980s: State-Centric v. Multi-level Governance', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 34, no. 3, September, pp. 343±79. Sandholtz, W. (1996) `Membership Matters: Limits of the Functional Approach to European Institutions', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 3, pp. 403±30. Wñver, O. (1996) `European Security Identities', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 34, no. 1, (March), pp. 103±32. Wallace, H. (1993) `Deepening and Widening: Problems of Legitimacy for the EC', in S. Garcia (ed.) European Identity and the Search for Legitimacy, London: Pinter, pp. 95±105. Weale, A. and Nentwich, M. (eds) (1998) Political Theory and the European Union: Legitimacy, Constitutional Choice and Citizenship, London: Routledge.

1

Europe is not where it is supposed to be R.B.J. Walker

Europe as known quantity/quality Europe, as so many analysts insist, is changing, growing, developing. Frequent references are now made to the New Europe: to somewhere ± a geographical place ± or something ± a cultural, political, economic or military presence, or achievement, or possibility ± that is bold and dynamic, its revered traditions now tinged with auras of millennial or globalizing innovation. The precise character of such change, growth or development is strenuously contested. It is framed in many ways in voluminous literatures, not least because the terms `change', `growth' and `development' connote quite diverse possibilities of temporal movement. In the form that is perhaps most familiar to theorists of international relations, these literatures express well-rehearsed debates between those who ®xate on changing patterns of intergovernmental relations and those entranced by utilitarian accounts of economic, and consequently political `integration'. The term integration is especially interesting in this context in that it manages to combine images of growth in scale or size with progressivist (modern, liberal) accounts of development, and thus carries more than its fair share of metaphorical baggage.1 More broadly and often more provocatively, though often in sprawling narratives and loose characterizations, some of these literatures tell bold stories about a globalizing economy or an emerging condition of postmodernity. Clearly, something is going on `in Europe', as one says. Its novelties demand explanations and responses: especially, I want to emphasize here, explanations and responses that do not rely on unchallenged assumptions about where and therefore what Europe already is.2 Despite the many variations on the theme of change in Europe that might be identi®ed, the prevailing narratives striving to make sense of the various patterns of transition that scholars have examined in contemporary Europe tend to be expressed in highly constrained metaphors of scale and teleologies of emergence. These narratives simultaneously tell us where Europe is, what it is, and what it is becoming in terms set by speci®cally modern discourses of spatiality and temporality. Not only does knowing where Europe

Europe is not where it is supposed to be

15

is, ®xing it in a cartography inscribed by, say, the Atlantic Ocean to the West, the North Sea/Scandinavia/the Baltics to the North, the Mediterranean/Africa to the South, and the Urals/Balkans/Serbs/Albanians/Turks to the East, enable us to know what is contained in that (not quite so) obvious territorial space, but knowing what Europe is because we know where it is also shapes our capacity to know what Europe must become, and is becoming. Whether in the popular imagination or the categories of scholarly analysis, and whether as a somewhere or a something, Europe is often portrayed as somehow becoming bigger. More states seek to join the European Community. NATO incorporates eastwards. It thus seems natural enough to claim that Europe is expanding, enlarging, becoming grander both in territorial reach and in institutional capability. Accounts of change are thus subject to narratives of growth framed through metaphors of size, although any strutting that might be warranted as a consequence is sharply circumscribed by the acknowledged hegemony of American military force and economic competition on a global scale. Claims about increasing size permit and even encourage assumptions that Europe is somehow growing up, attaining some kind of maturity, though perhaps not quite the kind of autonomous subjectivity that Kant once envisaged as the ultimate ground of freedom and moral conduct. Europe is understood as becoming somehow more European. For many observers, there is a clear and increasingly pervasive sense of an emerging European identity, even of the development of some kind of European citizenship, one that is being established at the expense of already entrenched national identities and citizenships.3 This emerging sense of a more European Europe accompanies hopes for new institutions of governance, policymaking and law which have become inscribed across the familiar landscapes of national communities and jurisdictions, as well as by some sense that Europe is something that requires its own currency and even its own security policy. Here the narrative is less about scale as a matter of mere size than about a pattern of integration that is both creating new levels of transnational solidarity and governance that are somehow above existing states and, as a consequence, eroding the powers and authorities of those supposedly lower jurisdictions. Europe, it seems, is not only growing up in the sense of maturing, leaving its supposedly more primitive nationalist past behind, but ± and this is the apparently obvious but quite strange possibility that provokes my remarks here ± is being constructed upwards, vertically, erected on some lower realms of state, nation, region or locale. Whether read quantitatively or qualitatively, as growth or development/ maturation, Europe is easily envisaged in metaphors of higher and lower, of levels of authority and subordination. We know where and what it is, and must be, in geographical or territorial space; after all, what could be more natural? But we also know where and what it is within vertical spaces that are being erected above that territorial space, and we are easily

16

R.B.J. Walker

persuaded that this is natural as well (for a recent synoptic discussion that should dispel such assumptions, see Casey 1997). All we then need to ask, perhaps, is how high Europe can go: a question that already hints at a degree of absurdity, more than a dash of metaphysics, and a large repertoire of political practices, hidden in modern discourses of higher and lower. These narratives of size and emergence are dif®cult to resist. They constitute a powerful common sense. Indeed, it is quite dif®cult to think about whatever it is that is going on in Europe without them. Europe is bigger than France. Europe is more mature than the UK. Europe is above Italy, above Barcelona, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. Consequently, as the seemingly perennial argument goes, Europe may, or perhaps may not, become integrated at a higher level than all its constituent parts, its recalcitrant nationalities, its parochial regions, its merely local villages, towns and cities. These narratives may provoke certain well-known forms of resistance. Bigger may usually be understood to be better, but the growth of new bureaucratic regimes in Brussels encourages familiar complaints about instrumental rationalities and local sensitivities. Moreover, so many forms of `power' now seem to be characterized more by exquisite miniaturizations and deft mobilizations than by large and immovable force. But what could Europe possibly be if not something emergent, a new hierarchy of levels above the parochial and increasingly constrained states below? Europe promises greater cosmopolitanism, greater ef®ciency, greater power, and perhaps above all, greater legitimacy.4 Away with the petty parochialisms, put local identities in their proper ± local ± place, elevate more universal principles to facilitate both more ef®cient modes of social and economic organization and more inclusive forms of cultural and political community. Resistance may not be entirely futile, but, in the dominant codes, it is certainly reactionary, chauvinistic, nationalistic and outmoded, the preserve of Gaullists, Thatcherites and political realists obsessed with the inevitability of state power and interstate con¯ict. As with much common sense about modern political life, however, it is wise to be cautious about what it presumes to tell us about contemporary structural and political transformations, whether in Europe or elsewhere. Indeed, one might argue that the very obviousness of the equation of scale with maturity and verticality ought to raise many warning bells. Neither Brussels nor Strasbourg are as high as the Alps or the Pyrenees, and Kantian Reason is not quite as high as the moon. More crucially, metaphors of scale, especially, and the teleologies of emergence they enable, are closely associated with the practices of modern sovereignty, which among many other things enact an account of authority inscribed simultaneously on vertical and horizontal axes, on a vertical (legal, ethical) scale of higher and lower authority and a horizontal (territorial) scale of inclusion and exclusion. Indeed, one of the important characteristics of the contemporary literatures on the New Europe is that they so often reproduce the practices of sovereignty even as they argue that the sovereignty of European states is

Europe is not where it is supposed to be

17

being eroded, undermined, dissolved, superseded, transcended, or any of the many other terms that are so ®rmly implicated in sovereigntist discourse and which now converge in claims about the integration of Europe at some higher level. In a nutshell, much of the literature on the New Europe, whether in relation to its political economy, cultural identity or security interests, expresses a profound nostalgia for an imminent return of the Great Chain of Being, for some kind of hierarchical universe reminiscent of medieval Christiandom, as a replacement for the horizontal universe of modern nation±states. Given the ways in which claims about the modern sovereign state were established both against such pre-modern hierarchies and as ways of incorporating such hierarchies into the new territorial spaces of early-modern Europe, contemporary re-enactments of an old debate between territorial and vertical forms of authority should come as no great surprise. But it should also come as no great surprise when Europe, wherever and whatever it is, refuses to be cast in the moulds of either territorial or vertical forms of authority; refuses to be where it is supposed to be. Such, at least, is the possibility I want to canvass here. I especially want to do so by attending to the ways in which we refer to Europe both as a something and a somewhere. If we assume that we can understand what Europe is by examining where it is, and then examine where it is in terms of the kinds of accounts of political space that encourage us to shift automatically from a horizontal grid of territorialities to a vertical grid of supposed levels, we will, like both the nationalist/intergovernmentalist and integrationist schools of analysis that inform so much of our understanding of emerging forms of European politics, miss much of what makes it possible to make claims about a New Europe that exceed the legitimation strategies of existing political elites. In this respect, not much has changed since the heyday of the literature on European integration in the 1960s and 1970s (still helpful commentary may be found in Pentland forthcoming and de Vree 1972). In an interesting and still relevant commentary on this literature, Ernst Haas once noted that for all its theoretical and methodological sophistication, most scholars of European integration were all too easily seduced by an imagery of Europe as an emerging state, a bigger version of the states being incorporated into it, a higher version of the states being incorporated below it (Haas 1970). Then, as now, the central theoretical debates hinged on a debate between those who claimed that European politics would continue to be structured as a system of states or would gradually be reconstructed, become integrated, in ways explainable in utilitarian (functionalist or neo-functionalist) terms, so as to create a Europe that grows both larger and upwards. Contemporary advocates of the states-system view now tend to draw less on a post-Westphalian model of statecraft and diplomacy among sovereigns than on so-called neorealist (that is, utilitarian) and liberal-institutionalist accounts of con¯ict, cooperation and bargaining strategy. Advocates of

18

R.B.J. Walker

supranational institution-building now draw less on images of the sovereign state writ large than on more disaggregated images of state formation, sometimes federal, sometimes multicentric, but almost always rooted as a hierarchy of levels within a spatially de®ned community (see, for example, Marks et al. 1996). Those who in my view quite rightly reject the territorial imagery of intergovernmentalism that is shared by Stanley Hoffmann's traditional institutionalism of three decades ago and, say, Andrew Moravcsik's economistic liberalism more recently, especially tend to look to some kind of return to the metaphysics of continuity from lower to higher, from earthly to heavenly, that everyone thought had been ®nally destroyed by the ¯at spaces and autonomous subjectivities of modernity. It is not dif®cult to read the history of debates about European integration as largely a story of claims about the relative priority of horizontal space and vertical space, of territorial space and a spatially conceived hierarchy of higher and lower. There is some irony in the extent to which these debates reproduce a central struggle in the transition from medieval to modern forms of political authority. Irony turns into a more puzzling contradiction when attempts to understand historical and structural change are automatically translated into categories of spatial containment, whether horizontal or vertical.

Europe as a puzzle It may well be that these two images, of a territorial states-system driven less by strategies of con¯ict than by calculi of cooperation and of an emerging hierarchy of levels of community and governance, do indeed offer most of what is needed to explain and understand the change in contemporary Europe. Still, once attention strays away from the explicit debates about integration and intergovernmental cooperation, Europe can easily appear more as a puzzle than as a known quantity/quality. This, as Diez has emphasized, is what makes the recent attempt to analyse the European Union resemble attempts to name an unknown animal (Diez 1999: 598). In very general terms, there are three fairly obvious general reasons for this. One is that Europe seems to be a very complex phenomenon. One might, for example, want to think about Europe in terms of political economies of production or the circulation of capital, or patterns of population movement and immigration, or the place of it largest cities, or the constitution of regions, or its ¯ows of information, or its negotiations of an eastern boundary, or its struggles over speci®c sites of authority over this, that and the other. That is, one might want to begin not with assumptions about what and where Europe is but with some sense of wonder about how it is that all those processes and dynamics that might be identi®ed as relevant to an understanding of Europe can indeed be imagined in terms of a coherent geographical and ontological whole. As with concepts of a state or a nation, it is all too easy to assume that Europe simply exists and thus

Europe is not where it is supposed to be

19

to stop thinking about the conditions under which this assumption comes to be taken for granted or how this assumption is put into practice. In this context, one of the most striking characteristics of the debate between intergovernmentalists and integrationists has long been the wilful simplicity of the primary categories of analysis deployed on both sides. Much descriptive fat hangs on thin conceptual bones. The search for anything like a plausible theory of the state is a long hard slog. Extraordinarily crude distinctions between high and low politics (the very condition of the possibility of functionalist and neo-functionalist theories and the basic ground of intergovernmentalist responses to them) or material practices and immaterial ideas (like the pre-nineteenth-century accounts of language, culture, ideology and discourse favoured by more recent liberal economists),5 serve to undermine almost every attempt to claim some degree of rigour in either conceptualization or method. In this context, the imageries of both a states-system and a hierarchy of levels seem just too simple, as Haas rightly insisted. Another is that if Europe is changing and developing as dramatically as most commentators suggest, it would be unwise to rely on deeply entrenched accounts of what such change and development must be like. Evidence supporting either the continuing presence of states or emerging patterns of integration and proliferating levels of governance ensure that scholarly judgements easily imitate the dyadic logic that politicians use to rouse sentiments for or against Europe, for or against sovereign jurisdiction. These are the great alternatives, after all, that have long been articulated by the most in¯uential European political thinkers. They de®ne the most prominent contours of European achievements and tragedies, its hopes of Enlightenment and universality, its counter-hopes of Romanticism and speci®city, its investments in reason and sentiment, its arrogances, its memories of brutality, its landscapes of inclusion and exclusion that are even now being re-inscribed on its eastern (and all other) horizons. Despite the historical and discursive force of these dyadic alternatives, however, they seem to be at best partial, incomplete guides to more elusive phenomena. Any plausible account of what Europe is arguably demands multiple perspectives and proliferating labels. Its states and its integrations are embedded in ¯ows of capital, technologies and peoples, in resurgent regionalisms, in decentrings of identity and authority, in layered institutions, in overlapping jurisdictions, in global hegemonies, in local sites of global productions, communications and exchanges, in networks of relations between cities and corporations, and so on. Perhaps most instructively, far from resting easily on the classical imagery of a potential shift from fragmentation to integration, from a pluralistic system of state communities to an integrated community, contemporary shifts towards some kind of common identity or structure of governance are accompanied by renewed emphases on diversity, on pluralisms, on differences.6 As a great outpouring of recent pluralistic political theory

20

R.B.J. Walker

suggests, this emphasis on diversity, pluralism and difference increasingly eludes the conventional modern political translations of all claims about difference into af®rmations of sovereign statehood and autonomous individuality (Among many, see Butler and Scott 1992; Connolly 1995; Corlett 1989; McClintock et al. 1997; Tully 1995). Differences have come to seem somehow more diverse, at the same time that the ideal of Europe as a familiar-looking even if rather large state have come to seem increasingly chimerical. The guarantees of pluralism af®rmed by a system of national states have come to seem increasingly problematic not only because of the challenges of integration but also because the sovereign state and the system of sovereign states have always offered a very limited understanding of the possibilities of cultural and political diversity. Once one is forced to take the claims of diversity in Europe seriously, that is, as not identical to a limited array of national and individual subjectivities, the teleologies and metaphors of size and development, indeed the entire discourse counterposing a logic of state systems to a logic of integration loses much of its force. Indeed, it might be argued that perhaps the least useful interpretation of any evidence that European states have limited sovereignty is that states are withering away and that a supranational European authority is emerging. And perhaps the least useful interpretation of any evidence that Europe is a place of cooperations, common institutions of law and governance, and so on, is that states are in the process of withering away. The dyadic logic of national and supranational alternatives is very deeply entrenched in the modern European imagination, but suspicion of its classical accounts of what it is and must be is probably the primary condition under which any more useful scholarly enquiry must proceed. Europe is in many ways a profoundly unknown phenomenon, and not least in terms of questions about subjectivity and agency, about the character of political authority and the subjects who do or should constitute that authority. Third, and crucially, while the prevailing forms of debate about intergovernmentalism and integration proceed on the basis of assumptions about what politics is, the character and location of politics are increasingly the greatest mystery of European life. Symptomatically, even the most cursory examination of recent literatures bears witness to the degree to which the very term politics has been more or less superseded by the twin obsessions with `policy'and `governance', terms that explicitly af®rm either the obviousness or the irrelevance of questions about the conditions under which one might claim to be able to govern or make policy. Integration theory grows out of the kind of nineteenth-century utilitarianism made possible by prior distinctions between the political and the economic, which in turn grew out of prior distinctions between sovereignty and governance effected by the likes of Hobbes and Locke. Paradoxically, sovereignty is simply not an issue in this literature for all that it is articulated as an account of the decreasing relevance of sovereignty. In this

Europe is not where it is supposed to be

21

context, integration theory remains interesting as a site of political analysis mainly because it has been so easy for it to assume what it seeks to deny. It has been able to do so because it has been able to ground itself in apparently apolitical discourses of utility, policy and governance that already assume a sovereigntist account of what politics is. Conversely, aided by distinctions between high and low politics and socalled realist (in fact, paradigmatically idealist) accounts of the inevitable convergence of nation and state, intergovernmentalists simply rely on stipulative de®nitions of change as that which occurs within that which remains the same, the territorial state as the natural container of all political life. So push the nationalist button, and the illusions of change, integration and even Europe will simply fall away. Like the entire edi®ce of so-called political realism in the theory of international relations, everything hangs on af®rming the necessary and suf®cient condition of sovereignty without paying the slightest attention to what and where sovereignty is or what it does. Consequently, on neither side of this debate is it possible to ®nd much engagement with the political, though it is precisely with the political that any claim about Europe as something other than a collection of sovereign states must engage. The only way out of this dilemma, it seems, is upwards, or perhaps both upwards and downwards: to redistribute an already known conception of the political in vertical rather than horizontal space, to aim for some kind of federalist mediation of the horizontal and the vertical, to spruce up notions of subsidiarity from the world of Aquinas and hope they still work in the age of the microchip.

Sovereignty as spatial practice The degree to which contemporary thinking about Europe is framed by theoretical traditions that encourage us to choose between a horizontal axis of territoriality or a vertical axis of integrations, levels, subsidiarities, federalisms and cosmopolitanisms should come as no surprise once we remember that modern politics has always been constituted on spatial assumptions. This is the legacy of the polis and the republic quite as much as of the modern sovereign state. And not the least of the dilemmas involved in thinking about contemporary Europe is that if Europe is not appropriately conceived as a modern state, or a republic, or a polis writ large, then it is far from clear what it means to think about Europe as a site of political life at all. This is why the modern political imagination strives to retain some kind of spatial community ± like Europe ± as the only alternative to the modern state. This is also why it is so tempting to read the problem of political community vertically rather than horizontally. Without a spatial community to contain spatially diverse subjects, it is dif®cult to make much sense of the most basic categories of modern political life; no need to reconcile citizens

22

R.B.J. Walker

and sovereigns, no democratic participations or representations, no public or private realms. This is why it is sometimes possible to read preoccupations with `policy' or `governance' as attempts to think more creatively about politics in some other terms rather than as the more usual attempt to avoid it like the plague. This is also why comparisons are sometimes made with an image of medieval Europe constituted less by Thomistic hierarchies than by multiple disorders and partial authorities; that is, as an exotic place in which we hardly have to think about questions of ± to use what in such contexts can seem like an increasingly quaint term ± authority, and get on with identifying the powers that govern as they choose. And this is also why, most of all, once we look beyond the siren rei®cations of the realists/intergovernmentalists and the integrationists, the questions that prove to be most urgent and contentious are precisely those involving claims to authority. And claims to authority, of course, take us directly to claims about sovereignty; to sovereignty not as some simple given or some cartographic coloration, but as a complex practice of authorization, a practice through which speci®c agencies are enabled to draw the line. Theorists of international relations ®nd themselves in a very odd position in this context because questions about authority and sovereignty are technically beyond their jurisdiction. Authorization is an internal matter. In the great division of labour generated by the formation of the modern sovereign state as a ®eld of territorial extension with a clear line drawn between inside and outside as well as between the legitimate and the illegitimate inside, theorists of international relations are expected to take authority as a given, or at least something subject to the appropriate attentions of the political theorists. International relations are supposed to deal with mere power rather than authority, with relations rather than politics. This may be why those theorists of international relations who have turned their attention to Europe ± who have, so to speak, crossed the line ± have tried either to reproduce the inside/outside distinction as eternal or to apply the most depoliticized forms of utilitarian analysis to claims about integration. In crossing the line from mere relations to politics, from power to authority, from anarchy to community, they have reversed polarities, shifted from horizontal to vertical, but hardly even thought about what it means to cross, or draw, the line, to shift from power to authority, or to treat vertical space as an alternative to horizontal space. In taking sovereignty for granted, they have taken politics for granted also (for a more elaborate version of this argument, see Walker 1993). There are many people who have argued that we must indeed take sovereignty for granted as if our lives depended on it. Thomas Hobbes was perhaps foremost among them, and he certainly made the most brilliant attempt to persuade the world that the force of this `must' comes from nature rather than from mere convention. Therein lies the importance of recent attempts to come to terms with sovereignty as something that cannot be taken for granted precisely because it works so as to naturalize,

Europe is not where it is supposed to be

23

to authorize, the merely conventional, and not least to authorize all claims to be able to distinguish the internal from the external and the legitimate from the illegitimate. These attempts are liable to be far more important to thinking about the future of Europe than the constant reproduction of all those political realisms (idealisms) and utilitarianisms that work only because of a continued willingness to believe in old Hobbes' admittedly brilliant portrayal of arbitrary convention as natural necessity. They are liable to be more important simply because they force us to confront the limits of modern conceptions of the political and not just the territorial limits of the state as the modern container of politics. It is possible to distinguish three pervasive themes in the recent literature in international relations theory seeking to dislodge claims about state sovereignty from its strange status as an uncontested concept marking the ultimate site of all political contestation. Analyses of these three themes overlap and even contradict each other in different texts, but they amount to three different forms of the more general critique of the rei®cation of the modern subject that has been taken up in so many other areas of contemporary social and political thought.7 First, and perhaps least controversially, there is the insistence that state sovereignty is not a permanent and unchanging principle or institution but a practice with a history, or better, a genealogy, and a practice with characteristic modes of performance. State sovereignty is historically constituted and historically variable. Rather than being fully formed in the writings of, say, Bodin and Hobbes, or in the Treaty of Westphalia, state sovereignty must be understood in terms of the macrohistory of modern state formation (Spruyt 1994; Thomson 1994); as a practice that has been fundamentally reconstructed as a popular sovereignty of peoples capable of reorganizing themselves in response to changing conditions (as well as standard references to Locke, Rousseau and the rest, see Morgan 1988); as an historically constituted institution of the international system or society (Krasner 1989); as a social construct produced by historically speci®c agents and resistances (Biersteker and Weber 1996); as a product of a complex intellectual history (Hinsley 1966; Linklater 1982; Onuf 1991); as a genealogy that is closely concerned with parallel claims about epistemology (Bartelson 1995); as an effect of modern practices of representation that are currently being challenged by practices of simulation (Weber 1995); as an impulse that is always in tension with the impulse of exchange, a tension that is being reshaped in response to `global ¯ows' (Derian 1992; Enzensberger 1994; Shapiro 1991; Shapiro and Alker 1996); and as an effect of a speci®cally modern, and gendered,8 conception of man as an individual subject (Ashley 1988; Ashley and Walker 1990), a subject that also participates in the mutually constitutive relationship between sovereignty and modern nationalism (Campbell 1992; Doty 1996a; Doty 1996b). In one way or another, all these lines of analysis converge on a sense that state sovereignty has no essence or unchanging being other than its historically variable

24

R.B.J. Walker

modes of performance, a performance that is also constitutive of the world in which the performance occurs. Second, there is the insistence that state sovereignty works to obscure/ reify and by obscuring/reifying a multiplicity of potential identities and interests under the (paradoxically) universalizing banner of a single sovereign identity/interest. It is in this context especially that many of the historical/genealogical speci®cities of sovereignty and its multiple techniques of legitimation have been framed. For as almost everyone concerned with what has recently come to be known as the `politics of difference' has complained, where state sovereignty, and those accounts of nations and citizens that simply reproduce it, insist on the effective homogeneity of each of the societies that constitute modern states, such societies are in fact constituted by a multiplicity of groups, interests, classes, races, nations and genders. For the early-modern European theorists confronting the universalizing pretensions of Christianity and empire, some account of citizenship within a speci®c sovereign community offered the basis for constructing an alternative account of political legitimacy that effectively dispensed with God as the explicit source of earthly authority (whether as natural law, natural rights or natural reason, of course, He remained, and still remains, a crucial implicit presence in this respect). Paradoxically, but crucially, these theorists outlined the possibility of an alternative account of universality ± a universality of law, rights or reason ± that might be constituted in a particular community, the sovereign state located in a speci®c territorial space. A great many dif®culties were generated by this move, not least questions about how to authorize authorization (or the paradox of founding), about how precisely to reconcile speci®c earthly authorities with theological universals, and about how to reconcile claims to universals within particular states with different claims to universals in other states. These dif®culties are still visible in some of our most passionate political debates, not least those involving claims about reason, citizenship, the theory of international relations, and, not surprisingly, security. They lie at the heart of the opposition between political realism and political idealism in the theory of international relations. Though many familiar debates may have been set in motion, however, modern political life gradually congealed around the claim that one could only properly be, or become `human' by being a citizen of a speci®c political community. It may well be that in practice the priority of citizenship over humanity was rarely clear-cut. Dual allegiances to God and State, the splitting of a speci®cally political identity from all other, somehow more human identities, the reconciliation of earthly and heavenly duties through notions of property or an ethical imperative, and so on, have all served to muddy the stark choice that accompanied the `huge outbreak of dualisms' (Collingwood 1960) that characterized early European modernity. Yet if the choice was rarely clear-cut, the implications of pushing the choice into clarity were well understood: allegiance to the sovereign has priority over

Europe is not where it is supposed to be

25

allegiance to God;9 and the priority of a singular conception of citizenship requires a monolithic conception of political community, the erasure of most diversities and identities in the ¯at spaces of Euclidean territories. Third, there is the insistence that state sovereignty works as a spatially and temporally speci®c, and spatially and temporally expressed, answer to all questions about the proper relation between the universal and the particular, between the ®nite and the in®nite, between self and other, and so on, that af®rms both its natural necessity as an answer and the impossibility of reopening the questions to which it responds. State sovereignty, it has been claimed by many analysts, works as a genealogically constituted and reconstituted performance. Yet the performance seems to be enabled by the core claim of state sovereignty to be able to express a speci®cally modern subjectivity, the subjectivity that is at once always potentially universal but always embodied in a particular space (Agnew 1994; Agnew and Corbridge 1995), whether a territory or a body (Butler 1993; Grosz 1995). The challenges posed by claims of difference within speci®c societies, however, come up against the capacity of modern sovereign subjects to insist on a singular identity. In relation to the sovereign state, the appeal of a nationalist Machtstaat may have lost some of its allure, but appeals to some kind of autonomous republic or democracy are still alive and well; though they may be in better health in the rhetorics of professional politicians than among those who have to grapple with emerging patterns of transnational production and trade on a daily basis. Moreover, state sovereignty has enabled a variety of institutions and practices through which to save the claim that all particularities can indeed be reconciled in a more or less homogeneous territoriality. Principles of formal equality, both of individuals and states, serve as a regulative and legitimizing principle despite obvious disparities of wealth and power. Federalisms, devolutions, and regional organizations provide spaces in which the sharp edges of state sovereignty are dispersed across a gradient from centre to periphery. Spatially conceived distinctions between public and private spheres, or urban and rural jurisdictions, or the architectures of institutions and public spaces, make the transitions seem smooth and seamless. But these solutions are precisely spatial, and for all its apparent seamlessness, the space is organized hierarchically. Private is subordinate to public (though in an age of global capital this is subject to interesting reversals); the global city is a contradiction in terms, or at least an experience that does odd things to our understanding of local government; social movements are supposed to be small events among the many small events that push interests upward to the great sovereign power; subnational provinces/ states are supposed to be clear about the hierarchical rules governing their allocation of national tax receipts ± no foreign embassies, no armed forces, no pretence to national security. The twin sirens at either end of this

26

R.B.J. Walker

spatially organized hierarchy are clear enough. One can go down to the local, the regional, the small, the weak, the individual; or up to the EU (or, elsewhere, to NAFTA or ASEAN) and then to the international/global, and eventually to the human. The Great Chain of Being, it seems, has not been erased by the advent of modern spatial subjectivities. It has been reconstructed as an effect of modern spatial subjectivities.

Integration/politicization It is in this context that we can see how the term `political integration' expresses a widespread habit of claiming to analyse political change while af®rming the principle that no change is possible. The term `political' here refers to the already known phenomenon that allows us to know both what is being integrated and what the end result of integration must or should be: a reproduction of what we already have that effectively negates what we already have. Politics is understood to be something that is already integrated somewhere ± in the sovereign state ± but consequently also to be disintegrated in this same somewhere ± in the sovereign state in a system of states ± and as a further consequence available for reintegration somewhere else, in this case in Europe. The term thus expresses a logical consequence of taking sovereignty, and the distinction between politics and international relations, at face value, as an apolitical given rather than a political production. As long as one is prepared to buy into some universalizing and essentialist de®nition of what politics is, all might be well. One can keep shopping at the supermarkets of political science, and the shelves marked `struggles for power', `rational self-interest', or `who gets what from whom', will be restocked according to demand. Among the many problems raised by this familiar procedure, however, is that the very act of de®ning what is political is itself political. It is what is enacted by the practice of sovereignty, by the authorization of authorizations. While the theory of political integration is most often framed in relation to the presence of (state) sovereignty, it invariably assumes and reproduces the practices of sovereignty. As a practice of authorization, modern sovereignty works by af®rming an ontology of spatial separations, of inclusions and exclusions, that enable a capacity to draw the line between the legitimate and the illegitimate, the legal and the illegal, the normal and the exceptional. In Hobbes' paradigmatic rendition, sovereignty is constituted in an instant of fear and reason, and it either is or it is not. Given this structure of inclusions and exclusions, it is possible to constitute new inclusions and exclusions, or superiorities and inferiorities, within any given community of inclusion. Change is possible within unchanging structures. Governments and regimes may come and go but sovereignty goes on for ever.

Europe is not where it is supposed to be

27

Modern sovereignty af®rms an account of politics in space. The modern sovereign state af®rms an account of politics in a geographical territory. Europe names an alternative geographical territory and invites a reproduction of state sovereignty on a larger scale. This is also an invitation to reproduce an account of politics in space, the presence of an authority that can draw the line. And if the lines cannot be drawn quite so effectively in territorial space, they can be drawn vertically instead. Thus attention is directed to the question of whether modern politics will play itself out in territorial space in terms familiar to those who have sought to explain the external ± international or intergovernmental ± practices of the sovereign state, or in some combination of territorial and vertical spaces in terms familiar to those who have sought to explain the internal practices of sovereign states. But attention is directed away from both the question of sovereignty ± about the conditions under which authorizations of authority become authorized ± and from the spatial practices of modern sovereignty articulated as a capacity to draw the line. What both sides of the debate about European integration have missed so often is that the conception of politics they take for granted, and thus the most basic questions of identity, community and legitimacy, are exactly what must be up for examination. The future of Europe does not hang on the fate of political integration. It hangs on the fate of the political. It hangs on a refusal to assume that Europe is where it is supposed to be, that is, where the practices of sovereignty tell us it must be. It hangs on a willingness to open up questions about the character and location of politics that the practices of sovereignty insist are already answered in an account of a capacity to authorize subjectivities and agencies, inclusions and exclusions, the legitimate and the illegitimate, by drawing lines in a universe of static spatial coordinates. It is in this context that the most interesting puzzles in contemporary Europe can be framed less in terms of a simple move from sovereignty to integration, from horizontal/territorial space to vertical/hierarchical space, than of a rearticulation of principles that modern sovereignty articulates as a spatial resolution of the relation between unity and diversity. One key ®eld of examples here is offered by contemporary debates about the principle of citizenship. Where entrenched conventions encourage us to choose between the ideal of the unitary citizen of states, framed as free and equal member of a unitary community, and the ideal of a citizen of Europe, similarly framed in relation to a unitary though now larger, higher community, it seems likely that both the identities/subjectivities of citizens and the communities in relation to which such identities/subjectivities are being constructed will have to be understood in increasingly pluralizing rather than universalizing terms. Citizenships are becoming functionally disaggregated, migrations multiply communitarian attachments, and while the liberal political theorists blithely assert their faith in the rational and

28

R.B.J. Walker

self-identical individual, everyone else is becoming used to a world of multiple and overlapping identities/subjectivities (for a more sustained version of this claim, see Walker 1999). Much the same can be said in relation to the dissolution of entrenched claims about national security and the conventional claim that the only alternative to it is some kind of human security. Instead, discussions of security are now more likely to engage with a multiplicity of insecurities for a multiplicity of peoples and situations (I develop this argument in Walker 1997). Notions of multiple identity or subjectivity tend to discourage concern with the problem of how to reconcile an identity or a subjectivity, whether individual or national, and a political community or state, and encourage concern with the multiplicity of relations between multiple sites. To the extent that the term political community, as a singular totality, now retains much meaning, it is more as a network of relations than as a container of agencies, subjects and representations. Sociologists, urbanists, geographers, and systems theorists have long argued that networks offer a much more useful metaphor for social life than the spatial container assumed by modern political analysis. Moreover, networks do not organize themselves either horizontally or vertically. They also resist the notion that change is something that only occurs within a container that stays the same. It does not take much imagination to think of Europe as a site of multiple identities/subjectivities, or of networks, or of movements that consistently exceed boundaries trying to contain them; nor is there much risk in suggesting that such an imagination will increasingly inform analyses of the rearticulation of European political life. Such a Europe would not be free of spatial boundaries, though it is unlikely that the historical experience of sharp territorial borders at the edge of states, or the projection of clear hierarchies of authority upwards, would do much to help us understand the complexity, the constant mutation or the productive/destructive capacities of such boundaries. Unlike Hobbes, we now have great dif®culty imagining the line between before and after as a magical instant of creation, or between here and there as a straight line of zero width. But we also have the dif®culty of imagining politics in other terms than those given by Hobbes, by a metaphysics of horizontal and vertical lines, by the assumptions of a sovereignty we may all be ready to dismiss but which still authorizes our account of what and where politics must be. The very existence of a theory of international relations, as of the political theory to which it is counterposed, depends precisely on this authorization. Europe presents a situation in which neither side of this spatial divide has very much to say, except to repeat the stories that have kept them apart. Theories of European integration are an effect of this divide. Many people still struggle to force Europe into the apolitical categories these theories have produced. This is an effect of an idealization of political life rooted in a misplaced claim to know where Europe is. Consequently, to rethink the

Europe is not where it is supposed to be

29

possibilities of politics in this context must be to conclude that Europe really isn't there.

Notes 1 For a helpful introduction to the various ways in which theories of European integration express a politics of language, see Thomas Diez (1999). 2 The argument I develop here assumes and seeks to augment a wide range of observations about the political effects of spatialized analytical categories in the contemporary social sciences, perhaps most obviously those distinguishing the so-called First, Second and Third Worlds and those which reify territorial regions (see, for example, Lewis and Wigen 1997; Pletch 1981). 3 For analyses of this issue which continue to work within assumptions about the range of possible alternatives that I seek to challenge, see Anthony Smith (1992) and JuÈrgen Habermas (1992). Smith's scepticism about an emerging European Identity is framed in terms of a projection of nationalist assumptions about what it would mean to refer to a European Identity, a projection that is neither plausible nor evidence of the plausibility of existing statist nationalisms. Habermas' greater optimism is framed through an account of a continuity of state citizenship and world citizenship (he concludes by saying that `State citizenship and world citizenship form a continuum which already shows itself, at least, in outline form') that simply fails to understand the contradictions expressed in and enabled by modern claims to sovereignty. While both Smith and Habermas articulate positions that make sense to a great many analysts, they seem to me to be more usefully read as expressions of the limits of the modern political imagination. The same may be said about the continuing tendency to posit the only alternatives before us as either cosmopolitan or communitarian, or as somewhere in between. As in so many other contexts, there is no middle ground between impossible extremes; in this context, sovereignty is the middle, the line of discrimination, that produces apparent extremes, and sovereignty is an act, not a ground. 4 Questions of legitimacy are increasingly central to debates about the future of Europe, some invoking degrees of progress, others invoking a major legitimation crisis. Part of the burden of the present argument is to suggest that these questions are indeed important, but also not obviously susceptible to standards of judgement that permit easy claims about either progress or crisis. For helpful discussions of this theme see, e.g. Lene Hansen and Michael C. Williams (1999) and J.H.H. Weiler (1996). 5 I am thinking especially of Moravcsik's recent claim to take ideas seriously, a claim that serves more effectively to af®rm the charmingly Lockean social ontology that enables his categorizations of the economic and the political (Moravcsik 1999). 6 Here I am especially thinking both with and against Andrew Linklater's attempt to develop a difference-sensitive vision of a cosmopolitan European community (Linklater 1998). 7 For example, Butler (1997); Braidotti (1994); Cadava et al. (1991); Elliot (1996); Heller et al. (1986); Melucci (1996); Miller (1993); Nandy (1983); Rajchman (1995); Shildrick (1997); and de Vries and Weber (1997). 8 For brief guides to large literatures on both the `inside' and `outside' of the modern state see (Brown 1995; Sylvester 1996). For the themes pursued in the present paper, however, the forms of feminist analysis developed explicitly as critiques of international relations and the state are much less interesting than

30

R.B.J. Walker

those developed in relation to the claims of a sovereign subjectivity more generally, especially those developed in the complex conversations among poststructuralist and postcolonial feminists. 9 It is surprising how rarely this theme has been discussed with any clarity in the modern theory of international relations. The major (though brazenly Hegelian) exception is Andrew Linklater (1982).

References Agnew, J.A. (1994) `Timeless Space and State-Centricism: The Geographical Assumptions of International Relations Theory', in S.J. Rosow, N. Inayatullah and M. Rupert (eds) The Global Economy as Political Space, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, pp. 87±106. Agnew, J.A. and Corbridge, S. (1995) Mastering Space: Hegemony, Territory and International Political Economy, London: Routledge. Ashley, R.K. (1988) `Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematique', Millennium: Journal of International Studies vol. 17, pp. 227±62. Ashley, R.K. and Walker, R.B.J. (1990) `Reading Dissidence/Writing the Discipline: Crisis and the Question of Sovereignty in International Studies', International Studies Quarterly vol. 34, pp. 367±416. Barlelson, J. (1995) A Genealogy of Sovereignty, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Biersteker, T.J. and Weber, C. (eds) (1996) State Sovereignty as Social Construct, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Braidotti, R. (1994) Nomadic Subjects: Embodiment and Sexual Difference in Contemporary Feminist Theory, New York: Columbia University Press. Brown, W. (1995) `Finding the Man in the State', in W. Brown (ed.) States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 166±96. Butler, J. (1993) Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Matter of `Sex', New York: Routledge. ÐÐ (1997) The Psychic Life of Power, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Butler, J. and Scott, J. (eds) (1992) Feminists Theorize the Political, New York: Routledge. Cadava, E., Connor, P. and Nancy, J.L. (eds) (1991) Who Comes After the Subject?, London: Routledge. Campbell, D. (1992) Writing Security, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Casey, E.S. (1997) The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Collingwood, R.G. (1960) The Idea of Nature, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Connolly, W. (1995) The Ethos of Pluralization, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Corlett, W. (1989) Community Without Unity, Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Der Derian, J. (1992) Antidiplomacy: Spies, Terror, Speed and War, Oxford: Blackwell. Diez, T. (1999) `Speaking ``Europe'': The Politics of Integration Discourse', Journal of European Public Policy vol. 6, no. 4, pp. 598±613.

Europe is not where it is supposed to be

31

Doty, R.L. (1996a) `The Double-Writing of Statecraft: Exploring State Responses to Illegal Immigration', Alternatives vol. 21 no. 2, April±June, pp. 171-89. ÐÐ (1996b) `Sovereignty and the Nation: Constructing the Boundaries of National Identity', in T.J. Biersteker and C. Weber (eds) State Sovereignty as Social Construct, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Elliot, A. (1996) Subject To Ourselves: Social Theory, Psychoanalysis and Postmodernity, Cambridge: Polity Press. Enzensberger, H.M. (1994) Civil Wars: From L.A. to Bosnia, New York: The New Press. Grosz, E. (1995) Space, Time and Perversion: Essays on the Politics of Bodies, London: Routledge. Haas, E. (1970) `The Study of Regional Integration: Re¯ections on the Joy and Anguish of Pretheorizing', International Organization vol. 24, no. 4, Autumn, pp. 607±46. Habermas, J. (1992) `Citizenship and National Identity: Some Re¯ections on the Future', Praxis International vol. 12, no. 1, April, pp. 1±19. Hansen, L. and Williams, M.C. (1999) `The Myths of Europe: Legitimacy, Community and the ``Crisis'' of the EU', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 37, no. 2, June, pp. 233±49. Heller, T.C., Sosna, M. and Wellberry, D.E. (eds) (1986) Reconstructing Individualism: Autonomy, Individuality, and the Self in Western Thought, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Hinsley, F.H. (1966) Sovereignty, London: C.A. Watts. Krasner, S. (1989) `Sovereignty: An Institutional Perspective', in J. Caporaso (ed.) The Elusive State: International and Institutional Perspectives, Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Lewis, M.W. and Wigen, K.E. (1997) The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Linklater, A. (1982) Men and Citizens in the Theory of International Relations, London: Macmillan. ÐÐ (1998) The Transformation of Political Community, Cambridge: Polity Press. McClintock, A., Mufti, A. and Shohat, E. (eds) (1997) Dangerous Liaisons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Marks, G., Hooghe, L. and Blank, K. (1996), `European Integration from the 1980s: State-Centric v. Multi-level Governance', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 34, no. 3, September, pp. 341±79. Melucci, A. (1996) The Playing Self: Person and Meaning in the Planetary Society, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Miller, T. (1993) The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture, and the Postmodern Subject, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Moravcsik, A. (1999) `The Future of European Integration Studies: Social Science or Social Theory?', Millennium: Journal of International Studies vol. 28, no. 2, pp. 371±91. Morgan, E.S. (1988) Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America, New York: Norton. Nandy, A. (1983) The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism, Delhi: Oxford University Press.

32

R.B.J. Walker

Onuf, N.G. (1991) `Sovereignty: Outline of a Conceptual History', Alternatives vol. 16, no. 4, Fall, pp. 425±46. Pentland, C. (1973) International Relations Theory and European Integration, London: Faber and Faber. Pletch, C.E. (1981) `The Three Worlds, or the Division of Scienti®c Labor, circa 1950±1975', Comparative Studies in Society and History vol. 23, pp. 565±90. Rajchman, J. (ed.) (1995) The Identity in Question, London: Routledge. Shapiro, M. (1991) `Sovereignty and Exchange in the Orders of Modernity', Alternatives vol. 16, no. 4, Fall, pp. 447±77. Shapiro, M. and Alker, H.R. (eds) (1996) Challenging Boundaries: Global Flows, Territorial Identities, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Shildrick, M. (1997) Leaky Bodies and Boundaries: Feminism, Postmodernism and (Bio)Ethics, London: Routledge. Smith, A. (1992) `National Identity and the Idea of European Unity', International Affairs vol. 68, no. 1, pp. 55±76. Spruyt, H. (1994) The Sovereign State and its Competitors, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Sylvester, C. (1996) `The Contributions of Feminist Theory to International Relations', in S. Smith, K. Booth and M. Zalewski (eds) International Theory: Positivism and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 254±78. Thomson, J.E. (1994) Mercenaries, Pirates and Sovereigns, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Tully, J. (1995) Strange Multiplicity: Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vree de, J.K. (1972) Political Integration: The Formation of Theory and its Problems, The Hague: Mouton. Vries de, H. and Weber, S. (eds) (1997) Violence, Identity and Self-Determination, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Walker, R.B.J. (1993) Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ÐÐ (1997) `The Subject of Security', in K. Krause and M.C. Williams (eds) Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 61±82. ÐÐ (1999) `Citizenship and the Modern Subject', in K. Hutchings and R. Dannreuther (eds) Cosmopolitan Citizenship, London: Macmillan, pp. 171±200. Weber, C. (1995) Simulating Sovereignty, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weiler, J.H.H. (1996) Legitimacy and Democracy of Union Governance: The 1996 Intergovernmental Agenda and Beyond, Working Paper No. 22/96, Oslo: ARENA, Research Council of Norway.

2

International theory and European integration Steve Smith

Introduction European integration has always been a bit of a mis®t as far as international theory is concerned. It never quite ®tted within the dominant paradigm: it did not quite suit the ontological assumptions of realism or the methodological assumptions of behaviouralism. My concern in this chapter is to see how it now ®ts within contemporary international theory by examining the relationship between the current state of international theory and the literature on European integration. I write as an international theorist, not as a specialist in European integration, and my main claim will be that rationalist international theory is of restricted use in explaining European integration, especially given the current agenda facing the European Union, because it has a very restricted notion of politics. In other words, the ontology, methodology and epistemology of rationalist international theory combine to form a seriously limited social theory, one which cannot deal with large, important, I would claim critically important, aspects of European integration. The underlying theme of this chapter is that rationalist theory, far from being the explanatory theory it claims to be, instead provides a political and normative account of European integration whereby (positivist) notions of how to explain a given `reality' in fact constitute the reality of European integration. This chapter will proceed by looking at contemporary international theory, noting that the most signi®cant distinction is that between rationalist and re¯ectivist theories, with social constructivist theory located between them. I will then look at the main work on European integration within the rationalist tradition, before turning to look at the kinds of account of European integration offered by both re¯ectivist and social constructivist theory.

International theory and the relationship between power, security and community My starting point is very similar to that of Morten Kelstrup and Michael

34

Steve Smith

Williams in their Introduction to this volume. International theory has, at least in its dominant US version, been overwhelmingly positivistic in orientation and therefore has represented itself as an explanatory theory, one reporting on the social world. As such, it sees itself as engaged in a relationship with the world of empirical evidence that, although complex, is essentially unproblematic. For positivists, theories make sense of the social world, they do not construct that world. With regard to European integration, theories are useful (or to be tested) according to how well they can account for the empirical domain. Yet, this is a very restricted and problematic notion of theory. As Kelstrup and Williams have noted, international theory has tended to be embedded within a liberal interpretation of politics, by postulating the relationship between power, security and community in a speci®c (liberal) way. Community is de®ned as the existence of sovereign government, power is seen as an aggregate capacity (measured quantitatively) and security is the security of the state, de®ned in terms of the power relationship between it and other sovereignties (the inside/outside construction of international relations). Like Kelstrup and Williams, I think that this is a limited conception of politics, and this is one that fails to see just how far this liberal notion of politics provides the warrant for the evaluation of theories. Politics, in this view, is the relationship between atomised individuals and the state, with the key concept, power, being seen in aggregate terms. Following Hindess (1996: 1±22), this is a particular reading of power, one that has its roots in liberal notions of the individual and the state; for Hindess, there is another version of power in the canon of Western political theory, one that sees it as more to do with the rights and obligations associated with consent. As Kelstrup and Williams note, it is the ®rst of these versions of power (and thus of politics) which has dominated the literature of international relations, and, crucially, it is this move which has provided the space for the dominant theories to claim that they are `merely' reporting on the relationships between the `objective' furniture of the social world. Thus, theories are assessed by their ability to explain empirical reality without any re¯ecting on the extent to which that empirical world is rendered natural and unproblematic for theory. Thus, like Kelstrup and Williams, I am interested in the discourses that provide the prerequisites for knowledge claims, and in the ways that traditional international theory has hidden normative orientations behind explanatory claims. In short, international relations has been based on one particular reading of politics, and on one set of theoretical prerequisites as to what counts as knowledge. The former deproblematises politics, while the latter provides an epistemological warrant for ontological claims. The result is a discipline based on an aggregative rather than a constitutive notion of power, with actors seen in materialist and atomistic terms, rather than caught in norm-based regimes of governance.

International theory: European integration

35

Contemporary international theory: rationalism As I have argued elsewhere (Smith 1995, 1996 and 1997), international theory can be usefully divided into three main camps: rationalism, re¯ectivism and social constructivism. The dominant literature throughout the history of international relations as a discipline has been rationalism, with the central debate within the rationalist camp being that between liberalism and realism. What is important to note is that for most of the last century, realism and liberalism have differed over their view of international relations; but in the last two decades, they have begun to overlap considerably. I would claim that the two are importantly distinct social theories, with signi®cantly different views of the world of international relations. Historically, I would argue that realism could be said to have ®ve broad core assumptions: 1 2 3

4 5

States are the major actors, and they exist in a structural situation of anarchy. International anarchy is the main force shaping the behaviour of states; domestic factors and actors other than states tend to be much less important in¯uences on state behaviour. The international environment, being anarchic, penalises states if they fail to protect vital interests; thus states tend to possess military forces to protect their interests, and tend to behave as instrumentally rational, unitary actors. In anarchy, states are preoccupied with survival, power and security. They can never be sure about the intentions of other states and therefore often fail to co-operate even if they have common interests. International institutions affect the prospects for co-operation only marginally; states will attempt to shape international institutions in their interests and therefore institutions tend to be the settings for con¯icts between the interests of states rather than autonomous forces acting to in¯uence state behaviour. They are intervening not independent variables.

In contrast, liberalism's core assumptions have been: 1 2 3

States are not central in many issue areas; instead, international organisations and non-state actors can be critically important in certain issue areas. States are not unitary actors; different bureaucracies will have different views of the `national interest'. States are not therefore instrumentally rational. States are less concerned about peace and security and more with economics; states are therefore inclined to co-operate since they see each other as partners.

36 4

5

Steve Smith State behaviour is not only affected by international anarchy; indeed, domestic factors, and especially the domestic political debate can affect the foreign policies of states, all of which mean that international anarchy can be transcended. International institutions can therefore signi®cantly help co-operation and thereby mitigate the effects of international anarchy.

In the last two decades, this debate has become less of a debate between two rival social theories and more of a debate within one world view. The neorealist/neoliberal debate is essentially one between two theories that have very similar views of the social world. Indeed, neoliberals and neorealists agree on most of the main features of the furniture of the international environment: states are the main actors, they act rationally, and anarchy is a major force shaping their behaviour. Moreover, they agree on the methods most appropriate for studying this world; critically, they share a commitment to a theory of knowledge, based on the liberal notion of power and politics noted above, which under-problematises the empirical material. Both are positivist in orientation, and both see the key issues as analysable within a view of power that treats power as the mechanistic and material aggregations between autonomous individual actors. What has emerged in the last decades, then, is a very narrow debate within international theory, with both neorealists and neoliberals agreed on not only the ontology of the social world but also the methods and epistemology for studying it. Nowhere is this clearer than in the signi®cant intellectual development within the recent work of the leading neoliberal (or institutionalist), Robert Keohane (see, in particular, Goldstein and Keohane 1993: 3±30), who has sought to develop a theory of the role of ideas as a way to link the material and the ideational worlds. As such, he sees institutional work sitting between rationalist and re¯ective international theories, since he sees rationalists as under-estimating the role of ideas and re¯ectivists as underestimating the role of material factors. This is an important theoretical move, since it allows Keohane to differentiate his work from that of neorealists, at the same time as he claims to be able to deal with ideas, which are the focus of the re¯ectivists. In reality, however, he is doing no such thing, since his view of the role of ideas is ®rmly limited to their impact as causal phenomena. Once ideas can be conceived of in this way (and not, by contrast, as constitutive of the social world), then neoliberals can portray their differences with neorealists as concentrating on the extent to which ideas are materially based. As with the notion of power and politics that unites neorealism and neoliberalism, this is a very different view to that held by those who see theory in a constitutive way (re¯ective theorists in Keohane's terminology). The result is that neoliberals share much of the neorealist view of the social world, differing only on the questions of the extent to which in any particular instance ideas are materially based, on

International theory: European integration

37

whether international institutions can mitigate anarchy, and on whether states pursue relative or absolute gains. As a leading realist, John Mearsheimer, sees it: `liberal institutionalism in its latest form is no longer a clear alternative to realism, but has, in fact, been swallowed up by it. The most recent variant of liberal institutionalism is realism by another name' (1995b: 85).

Contemporary international theory: re¯ectivism Neo-liberalism and neorealism share a set of assumptions that permits them to be classi®ed as rationalist approaches; by way of contrast, re¯ective theories (for example, critical theory, feminist theory, postmodern theory, and normative theory) are those theories that see theory as constitutive of the social world, in much the same way as in Hindess's second view of power. There is of course an important distinction to be drawn between those re¯ective theories that are foundational and those that are antifoundational (Smith 1995: 26±30; 1996: 11±44; 1997: 167±9), but re¯ective theories share an opposition to the positivism that has dominated rationalist approaches (take the notion of ideas in Keohane's work as a classic example of this dominance; for Keohane, ideas and material factors are separate entities, each analysable in causal terms). The ®ve core assumptions of positivism are empiricism, naturalism, objectivism, behaviouralism, and the fact-value distinction. Re¯ective approaches have problems with all these to differing degrees (for example, critical theory will be less troubled by naturalism than will post-modernism, and feminist standpoint theory will be more troubled by behaviouralism than will critical theory). Nonetheless, each re¯ective theory will be implacably opposed to the empiricism that is central to rationalist accounts. Each also will have its own speci®c theoretical focal point (women for feminist theories, identity for post-modernists, the state/class relationship for historical sociologists, etc.) but each will reject rationalism's focus on the atomised state within a network of aggregative power relations. Of course, re¯ectivist approaches do not add up to one theory to rival what Ole Wñver has called the `neo-neo synthesis' (1996), which is one signi®cant reason why they have yet to offer anything like a sustained challenge to the rationalist orthodoxy. Nonetheless, by their opposition to rationalism's core assumptions, and by their separate foci, re¯exive approaches offer a much wider agenda for the study of international relations. But it is worth noting that this wider agenda, as popular as it is, does not begin to challenge the institutional power of rationalism. One obvious reason for this is that rationalism is particularly effective at dealing with the policy agendas of governments, given its view of politics and power; in contrast, re¯ective approaches can be characterised as refusing to deal with governmental policy agendas. The other main reason of course is that rationalism has been especially successful in de®ning the

38

Steve Smith

objects of study for international relations, so much so that rationalism looks like common sense; given the `realities' facing governments, then neorealist and neoliberal approaches seem to cover the relevant waterfront.

Contemporary international theory: social constructivism Sitting between rationalism and re¯ectivism, although sometimes being seen as within one or the other, is social constructivism. There is a lot of confusion about the central claims of constructivism, especially over how precisely it differs from re¯ective approaches. As Knud Erik Jùrgensen has persuasively argued (1997a), the most important of these is how constructivism relates to interpretive approaches. My own view is that social constructivism is indeed an attempt, to coin Emanuel Adler's phrase, to `seize the middle ground' between rationalism and re¯ectivism (or, in his terms, relativist theories) (Adler 1997). As he notes, it stands at the intersection of the two major debates within the social sciences, that between materialism and idealism, and that between agency-based and structure-based models of the social world (ibid.: 323±6). With regard to the former, constructivism treats the relationship between ideas and material factors in a way that is distinctly different to that of rationalists (neoliberals and neorealists, who see ideas as secondary to material causes) and re¯ectivists (who, for Adler, see the text as primary and material causes as meaningless outside of discourse); instead, constructivists (or mediativists) see ideas as collective understandings and ideas attached to objects that exist independently of our ways of describing them. As for the latter, constructivists see neither agency nor structure as primary, and instead prefer structurational accounts of the social world. For these reasons, Adler sees constructivism lying between rationalism and re¯ectivism. He de®nes it as: `the view that the manner in which the material world shapes and is shaped by human action and interaction depends on dynamic normative and epistemic interpretations of the material world' (ibid.: 322, emphasis in original). Its importance for the study of international relations is that its emphasis is on `the ontological reality of intersubjective knowledge and on the epistemological and methodological implications of this reality. Constructivists believe that International Relations consist primarily of social facts, which are facts only by human agreement' (ibid.: 322±3). Adler's claims are important ones and there is not space in this chapter to discuss them in the detail that they deserve, but my most signi®cant concern is whether his claim that constructivism can serve as the middle way is in fact tenable. This, of course, refers to my long-standing concern that understanding accounts and explaining accounts cannot be combined (Hollis and Smith 1990). Adler's way of combining the two is to ®nd a way of dealing with interpretive accounts in a way that preserves causal analysis (Adler 1997: 329). In other words, he has, following Davidson, to treat reasons as causes. In this way, Adler can present constructivism as the third

International theory: European integration

39

way between rationalism and re¯ectivism. His crucial formulation of this move is: It follows that causality in social science involves specifying a timebounded sequence and relationship between the social phenomena we want to explain and the antecedent conditions, in which people consciously and often rationally do things for reasons that are socially constituted by their collective interpretations of the external world and the rules they act upon. (Adler 1997: 330) The problem with this is that it relies on us treating the reasons people give for their behaviour as causes, and I have serious reservations over that move because it seems crucially to mis-represent the nature of the social world. Treating reasons as causes is a very narrow form of constructivism, one that Adler himself terms `modernist' (ibid.: 334±5), and one that comes directly from his prior portrayal of the relationship between materialism and idealism as mediative. There is neither the space nor the need to go into this further in this chapter, except to note that it is ®rmly based on the mediative view of the relationship between the ideational and the material, and that of course is a highly contestable relationship. Constructivism thus described does not seem to penetrate very deeply into the social world.

International theory and European integration As I noted above, European integration has never quite ®tted into realistdominated international theory. Indeed, the early classics of European integration1 constituted one of the most signi®cant challenges to realism's dominance, since they offered a view of international politics that stressed precisely how anarchy might be transcended, and a notion of politics that focused on governance and consent rather than power relations between autonomous and atomised individual actors. They also pointed out the limitations of the distinction between domestic and international politics and to the transformative potential of co-operation and learning. All of this was a signi®cant challenge to traditional international relations theory, one that resulted in the argument that integration was only about the `low politics' of a non-state actor; once either the European Community/Union became more like a state, or the politics became `high politics', then realism would be the better explanatory theory. In this sense, work on European integration was outside the mainstream of international relations theory. But, the emerging overlap between neorealism and neoliberalism has been nowhere better illustrated than in the area of European integration. In recent years, neorealists and neoliberals2 have sought to explain developments in the EU from the perspective of mainstream American cooperation theory. A key issue here is the neoliberal claim that neorealism's

40

Steve Smith

emphasis on relative gains, and its neglect of the role played by international institutions, are seriously challenged by recent developments in the EU. For this reason, recent contributions have sought to advance on existing neorealist and neoliberal approaches to the EU. I will ®rst outline the key differences between neorealist and neoliberal expectations about European co-operation before turning to look at Grieco's `voice opportunities' thesis, and Andrew Moravcsik's `liberal intergovernmentalism'. Although the contributions of Grieco and Moravcsik have received a certain prominence in the literature on Europe, their work has tended to reproduce some of the key blind spots which mainstream IR theory has had in relation to the EU.

Neorealism and European integration Although neorealists and neoliberals have both viewed the EU as a product of the Cold War, there are key differences in how they view the prospects for European co-operation and the future development of the EU.3 Given that the development of the EU was facilitated by the bipolar Cold War world order, some realists expect that the end of the Cold War will undermine the prospects for co-operation between the European states (Mearsheimer 1990a: 46±7; 1990b: 199). These expectations are based on two key realist arguments. First, realists expect that the end of the Cold War will increase relative gains concerns among the European states. This view is related to the realist argument that states' fears about relative gains present barriers to co-operation even among allies or `friendly' states, such as the European partners (Grieco 1993a: 306, 316, 323; 1988; 1990 and 1993b; see also Krasner 1991; Mastanduno 1991). Put simply, states will always be concerned about relative gains, as this is a structural effect of anarchy. As Grieco puts it, states' sensitivity to relative gains concerns `can be expected to vary' but will `always . . . be greater than zero'. In other words, `states always care about relative gains concerns to some degree' (Grieco 1993a: 323). Second, realists argue that institutions could not overcome this barrier to co-operation. According to Mearsheimer, for example, `institutions have minimal in¯uence on state behaviour, and thus hold little promise for promoting stability in the post-Cold War world' (1995a: 7). This is because `institutions re¯ect state calculations of self-interest based primarily on concerns about relative power; as a result, institutional outcomes invariably re¯ect the balance of power. Institutions, realists maintain, do not have signi®cant independent effects on state behavior' (Mearsheimer 1995b: 82). For Mearsheimer, neorealism indeed paints a `grim picture' of international politics but it is an accurate account. Policies based on a faith in institutions, he claims, are `bound to fail' (ibid.: 9, 49). Co-operation between states does happen, he admits, but it is always limited by the relative gains problem. Institutions themselves always re¯ect the interests of

International theory: European integration

41

the most powerful states, because the most powerful states create the rules that create the institutions. International institutions therefore become arenas for competition between states; they are `merely an intervening variable in the process' by which the balance of power mechanism leads to war (Mearsheimer 1995a: 13).

Neoliberalism and European integration In contrast to this, neoliberals have argued that neorealist assumptions about anarchy and relative gains are seriously challenged by the nature of co-operation in contemporary Western Europe. First, although neoliberals readily acknowledge the signi®cance of realist arguments about states' fears about relative gains,4 they argue that realist logic does not re¯ect the nature of relations among the West European partner states. Most important here is the absence of threats of force among the west European partner states. For neoliberals, the absence of force, or what Powell (1993a) has called the `specter of war', facilitates the pursuit of cooperative relationships among states. For Powell, states' fears that their partners will gain relative advantages from co-operation will present barriers to co-operation as long as states fear that such advantages may be used against them. In Grieco's phrase: Gaps in gains from co-operation detract from a state's utility, and may cause it to choose not to co-operate, if it fears that the advantaged partner could use the additional capabilities produced by the gap in gains to be a greater military threat. (Grieco 1993a: 312±13) But, Powell's main point is that it is exactly these factors that are absent when states are allies: states are concerned about relative gains when the possible use of force is at issue. Cooperative outcomes that offer unequal absolute gains cannot be in equilibrium in this system . . . If the use of force is no longer at issue, then a state's relative loss will not be turned against that state. Relative gains no longer matter, and co-operation now becomes feasible. (Powell 1993a: 229) Thus, for Powell, dif®cult negotiations among `friendly' states or allies cannot be explained in terms of states' fears about relative gains if these states do not face military threats from one another. Indeed, where co-operative negotiations do appear to suggest evidence of relative gains concerns, neoliberals argue that there is a dif®culty in distinguishing evidence of states' fears about relative gains from what Keohane

42

Steve Smith

has called `tough bargaining' (1993: 279). Keohane has argued that there is a `fundamental ambiguity' between the distributional con¯ict in interstate bargaining emphasised by realists, and tough negotiations where states are `simply seeking a better deal for themselves' (ibid.: 280). In order to distinguish relative gains calculations from `tough bargaining', neoliberals argue that there must be evidence that a state can use the gains from collaboration to disadvantage its partners over the longer term (ibid.: 275±6, 281). Where the gains from collaboration do elicit opportunities for a state to use such gains against its partners over the longer term, neoliberals have, however, questioned whether the `motivation' for such behaviour is present among the West European partner states. As Keohane has argued: States evaluate intentions as well as capabilities. Even if asymmetrical gains from co-operation would increase the power of some states, those governments expecting smaller gains than those accruing to their partners (in Grieco's language, `absolute gains but relative losses') will not ask whether these shifts in capabilities could be used against them, but how likely this is to happen. If such shifts in capability seem very unlikely to be used adversely, concern for relative gains in these relationships may be of minor signi®cance. (Keohane 1993: 276) Finally, neoliberals such as Robert Keohane and Lisa Martin argue that the degree of institutionalisation in contemporary Western Europe provides a means by which states can overcome the barriers to co-operation expected by realists. International institutions do not remove the condition of international anarchy in the sense that they do not exert any hierarchical authority over their Member States. They do, however, provide opportunities and incentives for their members to pursue common interests through co-operation. In particular, institutions offer a means to stabilise members' expectations about each other's behaviour and intentions (Keohane 1993: 288). Moreover, institutions may come to play a role in shaping the interests and preferences held by states. Although neoliberals characterise states as `rational egoists' driven primarily by their own self interests, over time institutions may play a role in changing the ways in which states view their interests.5 Finally, in contrast to realist claims, neoliberals argue that `distributional con¯ict may render institutions more important' (Keohane and Martin 1995: 45). This is because `institutions can facilitate co-operation by helping to settle distributional con¯icts and by assuring states that gains are evenly divided over time' (ibid.: 45±6). In short, institutions matter for neoliberals for ®ve main reasons: ®rst, they encourage co-operation by providing the shadow of the future; second, they encourage issue-linkage between different issue areas; third, they increase the amount of information available, and improve transparency; fourth, they reduce transactions costs;

International theory: European integration

43

and, ®nally, they increase the size of the cake, thereby making more likely absolute gains all round. Neoliberals recognise that there is nothing constant or inevitable about these effects. However, if there is a context in which such effects could be expected, Western Europe is likely to be it. As Keohane and Nye have argued, at the end of the Cold War, Western Europe `only distantly resembled the textbook portrayal of sovereign states pursuing self-help policies under conditions of anarchy' (1993: 2). The problems that the EU presents to neorealism are increasingly acknowledged by leading neorealists. Most notably Joseph Grieco has acknowledged that the apparent reinvigoration of the EU, in the 1980s and early 1990s, issues a challenge to neorealist pessimism about the European co-operation. In contrast to neorealist expectations about European co-operation after the Cold War, Grieco points out that: The Europeans are seeking to intensify their co-operation and are doing so precisely through institutions . . . Even if they fail or yield only limited success, there is still the fact that the EC countries have been stubbornly trying to build stronger institutions. (Grieco 1996: 283±4) The next section will discuss two recent attempts to amend neorealism and neoliberalism towards better explanations of European co-operation/ the EU.

Grieco's `voice opportunities' thesis Grieco's `voice opportunities' thesis is an attempt to engage directly with the problems which the revitalisation of the European integration process has created for neorealism.6 For Grieco, the key question here is `why did the EC countries undertake such an ambitious, and with hindsight we may now say risky, programme of institutional innovation as is envisioned by the Maastricht Treaty, and especially its elements on EMU?' (Grieco 1995: 23). More speci®cally, Grieco argues that neorealism faces `an acute need' to explain why `key middle-rank' EU members, particularly France and Italy, decided to `join with a potentially hegemonic partner . . . in an economic balancing coalition' (Grieco 1996: 304). In keeping with this, Grieco offers `a revised neorealist argument about secondary states and the interests that might lead such states to choose to cooperate with stronger partners through international institutions (Grieco 1995: 24). Grieco argues that collaboration may offer states two kinds of bene®ts. First, the `substantive results of successful joint action' such as `enhanced price stability and more ef®cient cross-border ¯ows of capital arising from successful joint action on exchange rates.' (Grieco 1996: 287). In addition to this, however, collaboration may offer states a second type

44

Steve Smith

of bene®t namely `the level of policy in¯uence' which they might attain from collaboration (ibid.: 287). Grieco's understanding of this second type of bene®t draws on Albert Hirschman's concepts of `exit' and `voice'. Following Hirschman, Grieco argues that: `states might look at a collaborative arrangement in terms both of the substantive bene®ts it yields and the opportunities for effective voice it provides.' Here Grieco de®nes the `voice opportunities' that may be sought by states as: `institutional characteristics whereby the views of partners (including relatively weaker partners) are not just expressed but reliably have a material impact on the operations of the collaborative arrangement' (Grieco 1996: 288). In the context of the EU, therefore, the `voice opportunities' associated with participation in institutions may offer states a means both to encourage the `compliance of stronger partners' and to address any unequal distributions of gains which may arise in the course of co-operation (ibid.: 288). In this manner, Grieco argues that `neorealism can be amended to ascribe signi®cance to institutions' because the `voice opportunities thesis' suggests that: for weaker but still salient states, institutionalization might constitute an effective second-best solution to the problem of working with, but not being dominated by, a stronger partner in the context of mutually bene®cial joint action (the ®rst-best solution would be to become more powerful and thus be on more equal terms with the stronger partner, or perhaps even not to acquire cooperation). (ibid.: 289)

Criticisms of Grieco Despite this genuine attempt to amend neorealism to meet the challenge of the European integration process, there are a number of key dif®culties associated with Grieco's approach. A key problem for Grieco is that his concern to retain the `hard core' of the neorealist research programme means that his `model' is bound up with realist assumptions about cooperation which many critics would see as out of keeping with the nature of co-operation in the `new Europe'. First, Grieco's emphasis on states' concerns about the distribution of capabilities/relative power may misrepresent the nature of European partnership. Grieco understands institutionalisation as a means for secondary states to gain in¯uence in relation to stronger, or `hegemonic', powers, such as Germany. Arguably, however, Grieco's view of Germany as a hegemon is quite out of step with the extent to which relations among the European partners are informed by complex social ties.7

International theory: European integration

45

Furthermore, by retaining the state-centric assumptions of neorealism, Grieco fails to acknowledge the impact of supranational institutions on state interests and behaviour. For writers who seek to problematise the role of the state, Grieco's view of states as rational actors choosing to participate in `voluntary co-operation' does not accord with the nature of European `governance'. Jachtenfuchs, for example, argues that neorealists view the EU in terms of `voluntary cooperation' whereby states do not cooperate in order to pursue jointly de®ned goals which might even change domestic de®nitions of state interests. Instead, states cooperate in order to pursue their own interests. These interests exist before cooperation and are independent of it. ( Jachtenfuchs 1997: 41±2) Moreover, the `rational decision of sovereign states to cooperate . . . can be revised at any time should the state calculate its interests differently' (ibid.: 41). For Jachtenfuchs, however, `governance by and within the European Union is developing towards a model of political organization which cannot be adequately described anymore by the concept of the externally and internally sovereign state (ibid.: 39). Grieco's attempt to apply IR orthodoxy to the EU thus obscures the ways in which supranational pressures may alter state interests, or even bind states into cooperative relationships and outcomes over which they have little control. These problems are also evident in Andrew Moravcsik's liberal intergovernmentalism.

Moravcsik's liberal intergovernmentalism Andrew Moravcsik's liberal intergovernmentalist approach to Europe received a great deal of attention, particularly in the early 1990s (Moravcsik 1991, 1993a).8 Marlene Wind argues that `the intergovernmentalist position that Moravcsik belongs to represents the mainstream point of departure ± not only of today's study of international politics ± but increasingly also of European integration studies' (Wind 1997: 28). Moravcsik's work is speci®cally framed as a critique of theories such as neo-functionalism, which emphasised the supranational dimensions of European co-operation (Moravcsik 1993a: 476). In contrast to neofunctionalism's emphasis on supranational pressures, Moravcsik has sought to explain the EU as `a series of celebrated intergovernmental bargains' (ibid.: 473). For example, Moravcsik has argued that the ®ndings of his study of the Single European Act challenge the prominent view that institutional reform resulted from an elite alliance between EC of®cials and pan-European business interest groups. The negotiating history is more consistent with the alternative

46

Steve Smith explanation that EC reform rested on interstate bargains between Britain, France and Germany. (Moravcsik 1991: 20±1)

Thus the Single European Act was not the result of spillover, or institutional momentum, or transnational business activity, or of international political leadership. Instead, the outcome was due to the dominance of the three main aspects of intergovernmental institutionalism: intergovernmentalism, lowest-common-denominator bargaining, and the protection of sovereignty (ibid.: 48±9). His main conclusion is that `the primary source of integration lies in the interests of the states themselves and the relative power each brings to Brussels' (ibid.: 56). Indeed, one of Moravcsik's key claims is that the EU `strengthens the state'. In particular, Moravcsik has argued that `EC institutions strengthen the autonomy of national political leaders vis-aÁ-vis particularistic social groups within their domestic polity'. The EU, Moravcsik argues `enhances the autonomy and initiative of national political leaders' (Moravcsik 1993a: 507; 1994). In contrast to neorealist models, Moravcsik has combined this emphasis on intergovernmental bargaining with a concern for the sources of state interests (Moravcsik 1991: 21; 1993a: 481). In Moravcsik's model, `governments are assumed to act purposively in the international arena, but on the basis of goals which are de®ned domestically . . . the foreign policy goals of national governments are viewed as varying in response to shifting pressure from domestic social groups' (ibid.: 481). Moravcsik has thus sought to combine `two types of general international relations theory often seen as contradictory: a liberal theory of national preference formation and an intergovernmentalist analysis of interstate bargaining and institutional creation' (ibid.: 482, see also p. 480).9

Criticisms of Moravcsik There are two main criticisms of Moravcsik's approach. First, critics have argued that his understanding of the relationship between domestic politics and state interests is `simplistic'. According to Moravcsik, `international con¯ict and co-operation can be modelled as a process that takes place in two successive stages: governments ®rst de®ne a set of interests, then bargain among themselves in an effort to realise those interests' (Moravcsik 1993a: 481). Wendt, however, has criticised the rationalist `two-step' model on which liberal intergovernmentalism is based: `®rst interests are formed outside the interaction context and then the latter is treated as though it only affected behaviour'. There is thus no attempt to consider how state interests may be shaped by interaction (Wendt 1994: 384). With regard to Moravcsik's claim that European integration is a means for states to gain autonomy from domestic pressures, Wincott argues that this contradicts Moravcsik's argument that domestic interests determine

International theory: European integration

47

state preferences. If the EU is a means for states to gain autonomy from domestic interests, this suggests that states are not constrained by domestic pressures. If this is the case, Wincott argues, Moravcsik is left without an explanation of where state interests come from (Wincott 1995: 601). Fioretos also describes Moravcsik's theory of preferences as the `weakest' element in his liberal intergovernmentalism. As Fioretos points out, in Moravcsik's model it is `not clear how governments discriminate between their own preferences and those of domestic groups' (Fioretos 1997: 229). Despite his best intentions, therefore, Moravcsik neglects the `domestic interdependence between interest groups and governments' (Fioretos 1997: 301). Second, it has been argued that the intergovernmental bias in Moravcsik's account obscures the importance of supranational pressures in the EU (Wincott 1995: 602±3). A key problem here is Moravcsik's focus on interstate negotiations. In contrast, Wincott argues that the `pre-existing supranational character of the Community' provides the conditions in which the interstate bargains emphasised by Moravcsik take place. In other words, Moravcsik's prior conceptionalisation of the EU as an intergovernmental bargaining process ignores how wider supranational processes create the terms of what is possible in interstate negotiations. Although the work of Grieco and Moravcsik constitutes a `major contribution' in terms of their dominance as reference points in the literature, critics would dispute whether they offer a major contribution to our understanding of the `new Europe'. As Marlene Wind has argued, by looking at Europe through intergovernmentalist glasses (neo-realist or neo-liberal) one will ®nd that only very few changes have ± or can be expected to occur. Power and sovereignty is ± it seems ± eternally retained in the member states. The state is the most signi®cant actor in the integration process and decides on the speed and depth of co-operation through `big bargains' in the European Council. (Wind 1997: 17) In contrast to mainstream international relations' assumption of statecentrism, Wind argues that, `Whether the state is the most important actor and indeed capable of directing and controlling the process is the crucial empirical question to be analyzed. So is the question of who is sovereign in contemporary Europe' (ibid.: 17). For Wind, rationalist approaches are `insuf®cient and in many cases even directly misleading when it comes to detecting the often rather subtle elements of transition' (ibid.: 16). Thus, to the extent that Grieco and Moravcsik remain moored to the underlying assumptions of neorealism and neoliberalism, these contributions miss the fundamentally transformative potential of developments in the EU.

48

Steve Smith

Re¯ectivism, social construction and European integration In my view, there is little doubt that European integration has been dominated by rationalist approaches, speci®cally neoliberalism. European integration is almost the perfect test-bed for the `neo-neo synthesis', involving as it does the rare combination of structural anarchy and powerful institutions. Yet I feel that the above discussion has shown how limited a view of politics underlies rationalist accounts. There are three main limitations: ®rst, the notions of politics and the individual actor are very narrow ones; they are also very culturally based. Politics is the realm of activity of atomistic and pre-formed actors, with relations between them based upon the aggregations of a materialist notion of power. Note the implicit separation of the realm of the political from other areas of human activity that this de®nition implies. Second, as a result, the range of questions that rationalist accounts can deal with is very narrow. Indeed, I would argue that much of the contemporary agenda of European integration does not ®t into this narrow de®nition of politics. Finally, rationalist accounts do not enquire into the conditions by which their knowledge is possible; moreover, the epistemological warrant provided by the positivist assumptions central to rationalism restrict the range of things about which it is possible to have knowledge. By way of contrast, I think that re¯ective and social constructivist accounts of European integration have much more to say about the deeper questions of identity and governance than has the rationalist orthodoxy. Of course, these are early days for re¯ective and constructivist approaches to thinking about European integration, but there are already encouraging signs that their much wider notions of politics, identity, the individual, power and knowledge are opening up major avenues for research. I would like to point to examples within both re¯ectivist and constructivist theory. Re¯ective approaches seem to offer important insights into major areas of European integration ignored by the rationalist orthodoxy. Critical theory, for example, can focus on questions of inclusion and exclusion within the new political `community' of Europe, on the nature of civil society±state relations, on the political economy of the `new Europe', and on the nature of democracy being created and defended. Feminist theory can deal in depth with not only the gendered aspects of the `new Europe', speci®cally the effects on women (both inside and outside the EU), of the integration and enlargement process but also with the role of the EU in constructing speci®c forms of gendered identities. Postmodern accounts offer enormous potential for dealing with the entire integration process as an aspect of modernization, looking at how identities and subjectivities are formed through the deepening and widening of the EU. Postmodern approaches would also enquire into the construction of the `other' (again both inside and outside the EU). Following Foucault, notions of governance offer

International theory: European integration

49

enormous insights into the politics of the `new Europe', whereby the nation±state is but one of the actors in the Europe of the regions. One obvious problem with this sort of agenda is that re¯ective accounts of European integration do not answer the same questions as those set by the ruling rationalist paradigm; and this is a problem because the kinds of questions raised by that paradigm seem to be the `natural' ones to ask about Europe. They seem to relate easily to the `facts' and to the obvious political realm. This of course is precisely why rationalist accounts are far more than simply explanatory theories; their methods and assumptions delineate the political realm to be explained. But equally, re¯ectivist accounts are going to have a dif®cult time within the discipline of international relations because they do not deal with politics thus de®ned. There seem to me to be few examples of truly re¯ective accounts of European integration, despite the title of a major set of essays implying just that! ( Jorgensen 1997b). The best example of such an approach is the study by Henrik Larsen (1997) which uses discourse analysis to analyse British and French policies towards Europe. But this judgement is in part a re¯ection of the importance of academic boundaries, since there is much re¯ective work in other social science disciplines such as sociology and gender studies, but of course these do not de®ne the central problems of European integration in the way that international relations does. The main opposition to the rationalist orthodoxy therefore comes from constructivist accounts. Constructivist accounts offer a way of studying European integration that is different from that of rationalist theories, in that they see ideas and norms as in part constituting the political realm, rather than being essentially intervening variables as in rationalist accounts. Emanuel Adler has outlined a constructivist research agenda, which indicates possible ways forward for constructivists working on the `new Europe'. For Adler (1997: 334), constructivist research must be empirically grounded (he is critical of re¯ectivism's failure to do this), and suggests ®ve focal points for research: change as cognitive evolution, epistemic communities and the construction of social facts, the emergence of security communities, national security and social construction, and the social construction of the democratic peace. Each of these focal points has something of relevance to the politics of European integration, and they are of course suggestive of many more research areas. Recent books by Martha Finnemore and Peter Katzenstein offer other powerful models for how constructivist approaches might contribute to the study of European integration (Finnemore 1996; Katzenstein 1996a, 1996b). It is also important to note that precisely because the approach has such a narrow de®nition of social construction, the possibilities of overlapping with neoliberal notions of the role of ideas is considerable. Maybe this will be the next research paradigm in international relations; as neorealism

50

Steve Smith

seems increasingly unable to explain contemporary world politics, the emerging overlap between constructivism and neoliberalism could well become the next `great debate' in the discipline. In this sense, constructivism could be rationalism's next defence against re¯ectivists; note that Adler sees re¯ectivism as `relativist', and seeks to show that the same criticism cannot be levelled at constructivism. But, of course, re¯ectivists would note that this move puts Adler, and in fact all constructivists, on the rationalist side of the rationalist±re¯ectivist divide. But this may simply mean that constructivism may well turn out to be the most powerful (if limited) `alternative' to rationalism. The recent book edited by Knud Erik Jorgensen (1997b) offers an excellent example of the ways in which constructivist approaches might improve the study of European integration; it should be pointed out immediately, however, that all the contributors in fact adopt a constructivist rather than a re¯ectivist approach as their preferred alternative to rationalist ways of looking at European governance. Indeed, as Jorgensen notes: `Re¯ective scholars who wish to conduct theoretically informed, empirical research on European governance cannot allow themselves the luxury of a comfortable, postmodernist position' (1997a: 7). Nonetheless, the contributions show clearly how a constructivist research agenda might offer powerful accounts of European governance, accounts that offer wider and deeper accounts than those offered by the rationalist orthodoxy. As Marlene Wind notes in her chapter in that book, it is becoming increasingly unfruitful to distinguish neorealist and neoliberalist approaches to European integration rather than to work with them as one single rational-institutionalist position. Utilizing game theoretical metaphors, both are individualistic in their explanatory origins and in their conception of institutions. The main point of divergence remains the rather arti®cial dispute over relative and absolute gains. (Wind 1997: 24) For Wind, the kinds of explanation that rationalists can offer are severely limited because of their view of the restricted role of institutions. Re¯ectivist and constructivist accounts share a much deeper notion of institutions than this, and are more interested in history and in change than are rationalist accounts. Thus, as Wind has argued elsewhere, European integration challenges the entire notion of sovereignty that is central to rationalist accounts (Wind 1996: 49±52). This is a conclusion shared by Thomas Christiansen in his analysis of the nature of governance in contemporary Europe (Christiansen 1997). A recent set of papers, again edited by Knud Erik Jorgensen, con®rms the potential of the emerging constructivist research agenda on European integration (Jorgensen 1998).

International theory: European integration

51

Conclusion In this chapter I have argued that the rationalist consensus, focused on the `neo-neo synthesis' has dominated the study of European integration. Speci®cally, neoliberal approaches have become the orthodoxy. In recent years this dominance has been contested by both re¯ective and constructivist accounts. My main conclusion is that re¯ective and constructivist approaches offer a much richer set of accounts about European integration than do rationalist theories. Thus, despite the seeming dominance of neoliberal and neorealist assumptions in the international relations literature on European integration, I feel that these accounts involve only the most super®cial notion of politics. They reify the political, divorce it from economics and from history, and end up as `problem-solving theories', in the Coxian sense of making the social framework seem natural. They work within the existing distribution of power and never question how the political problems they focus on became political. Moreover, they focus on such a formal and governmental de®nition of the political, on such a restricted view of who are the relevant actors, on such a separation between the state and civil society, and on such a liberal notion of the separation between politics and economics, that their assumptions about what the political comprises ends up being considerably restricted. Both re¯ectivism and constructivism work with a much wider notion of the political and thus can potentially deal with more fundamental questions about European governance. Of these, constructivism seems to hold out most promise for the study of European integration precisely because it offers a norm-based account of institutions that overcomes many of the weaknesses of the stark instrumental rationality-based models of rationalism. My judgement is that social constructivism will vie with neoliberalism as the most persuasive account of European integration. This will doubtless be an improvement on the current situation, but there remains the problem that social constructivism also has a restricted view of politics and a very narrow de®nition of the nature of ideas and identities in the social world. In my view, constructivism is ®rmly on the rationalist side of the rationalist±re¯ectivist divide. As such, I think that although it can deal with a much wider set of questions than those raised by the `neo-neo orthodoxy', I fear that it, too, will fail to get to grips with the most important aspects of European integration, namely the changing natures of European governance and the construction of post-sovereign politics and identities in Europe. To be able to deal with these sorts of political question requires the adoption of re¯ective approaches. If the neoliberal/social constructivism debate looks likely to emerge as the next great debate in the international relations literature on European integration, then the turn towards re¯ective accounts may well be the next stage in the development of the study of European integration. The problem is that the questions posed by such a turn may be so

52

Steve Smith

fundamental that they cannot ®nd a place within the discipline, especially when confronting an orthodoxy that (via social constructivism) says it already deals with the issues of identity, norms and ideas. In that way, the study of European integration would remain restricted to problem-solving theory that questioned neither its own assumptions nor the framework within which it operated.

Notes 1 See in particular Ernst Haas (1958, 1964); Leon Lindberg and Stuart Scheingold (1970, 1971); Leon Lindberg (1963); David Mitrany (1966); Charles Pentland (1973). 2 Keohane has stated that he prefers the term `institutionalist' to `neo-liberal institutionalist' or `liberal institutionalist'. According to Keohane, this change is consistent with the way in which his institutionalist theory differs from liberal theories, which would seek to investigate state preferences. In contrast to this, Keohane's institutionalism `takes state preferences as given'. For the purposes of this chapter, however, I use the term `neo-liberal' (see Keohane 1993: 298, note 3). 3 On the signi®cance of the Cold War for European co-operation, see Kenneth N. Waltz (1979: 70±1); see also John J. Mearsheimer (1990a: especially pp. 46± 7). For a neoliberal view, see Robert O. Keohane and Stanley Hoffman (1991: especially pp. 4±5). 4 Although Keohane acknowledges that relative gains may impede co-operation, he argues that the neoliberal position emphasises the conditionality of gain questions to a much greater extent than does Grieco. Keohane's arguments about the conditions under which relative gains problems are expected to vary draw on the work of Robert Powell and Duncan Snidal. See Keohane (1993). See also Powell (1993a, 1993b). For Duncan Snidal's arguments, see Snidal (1991). 5 Keohane and Nye state that The issue is whether states view institutions purely instrumentally ± as means to given ends ± or whether they come to rede®ne their own interests in light of the rules and practices of the institutions. We expected that instrumental uses of institutions would predominate, as indeed they have. But we also found, . . . some interesting instances of institutions helping to de®ne state preferences. In this context, Germany is cited as a case where `international institutions seem to have affected how governments view their own interests: that is institutionalization can affect preferences' (see Keohane and Nye 1993: 9, 15±16). 6 Grieco's `voice opportunities thesis' is outlined in two key articles: Grieco (1996) `State Interests and Institutional Rule Trajectories: A Neorealist Interpretation of the Maastricht Treaty and European Monetary Union', and Grieco (1995), `The Maastricht Treaty, Economic and Monetary Union and the neorealist research programme'. 7 For an account which disputes the notion that Germany represents a hegemon in the EU, see Matthias Kaelberer (1997). 8 Moravcsik's liberal intergovernmentalism is set out in two key articles: Moravcsik (1993) `Preferences and Power in the European Community: A Liberal Intergovernmentalist Approach', and Moravcsik (1991), `Negotiating the Single European Act: National Interests and Conventional Statecraft in the

International theory: European integration

53

European Community'. More recently, Moravcsik has contributed with `Why the European Community Strengthens the State: Domestic Politics and International Co-operation' (Moravcsik 1994) and `Liberal Intergovernmentalism and Integration: A Rejoinder (Moravcsik 1995). 9 Moravcsik's work is thus related to the two-level games literature (see Moravcsik 1993b).

References Adler, E. (1997) `Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics', European Journal of International Relations vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 319±63. Baldwin, D. (ed.) (1993) Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate, New York: Columbia University Press. Baylis, J. and Smith, S. (eds) (1997) The Globalisation of World Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Booth, K. and Smith, S. (eds) (1995) International Relations Theory Today, Cambridge: Polity Press. Christiansen, T. (1997) `Reconstructing European Space: From Territorial Politics to Multilevel Governance', in K.E. Jorgensen (ed.) Re¯ective Approaches to European Governance, Houndmills: Macmillan pp. 51±68. Finnemore, M. (1996) National Interests in International Society, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Fioretos, K.O. (1997) `The Anatomy of Autonomy: Interdependence, Domestic Balances of Power, and European Integration', Review of International Studies vol. 23, no. 3 (July 1997), pp. 293±320. Goldstein, J. and Keohane, R. (1993) `Ideas and Foreign Policy: An Analytical Framework', in J. Goldstein and R. Keohane (eds) Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Grieco (1988) `Anarchy and the Limits of Co-operation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism', International Organization vol. 42, no. 3 (Summer 1988), pp. 485±507. ÐÐ (1990) Co-operation Among Nations: Europe, American and Non-Tariff Barriers to Trade, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ÐÐ (1993a) `Understanding the Problem of International Co-operation: The Limits of Neo-liberal Institutionalism and the Future of Realist Theory', in D.A. Baldwin (ed.) Neo-realism and Neo-liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 301±39. ÐÐ (1993b) `The Relative Gains Problem for International Co-operation', American Political Science Review vol. 87, no. 3 (September 1993), pp. 729±43. ÐÐ (1995) `The Maastricht Treaty, Economic and Monetary Union and the Neorealist Research Programme', Review of International Studies vol. 21, no. 1 ( January 1995), pp. 21±40. ÐÐ (1996) `State Interests and Institutional Rule Trajectories: A Neorealist Interpretation of the Maastricht Treaty and European Monetary Union', Security Studies vol. 5, no. 3 (Spring 1996), pp. 261±305. Haas, E. (1958) The Uniting of Europe: Political, Social and Economic Forces, 1950±1957, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ÐÐ (1964) Beyond the Nation-State: Functionalism and International Organization, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

54

Steve Smith

Hindess, B. (1996) Discourses of Power: From Hobbes to Foucault, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Hollis, M. and Smith, S. (1990) Explaining and Understanding International Relations, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Jachtenfuchs, M. (1997) `Conceptualizing European Governance', in K.E. Jùrgensen (ed.) Re¯ective Approaches to European Governance, Houndmills: Macmillan, pp. 39±50. Jùrgensen, K.E. (1997a), `Introduction: Approaching European Governance', in K.E. Jùrgensen (ed.) Re¯ective Approaches to European Governance, Houndmills: Macmillan. ÐÐ (ed.) (1997b) Re¯ective Approaches to European Governance, Houndmills: Macmillan. ÐÐ (1998) The Aarhus-Norsminde Papers: Constructivism, International Relations and European Studies, Aarhus: Department of Political Science, University of Aarhus Press. Kaelberer, M. (1997) `Hegemony, Dominance or Leadership? Explaining Germany's Role in European Monetary Co-operation', European Journal of International Relations vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 35±60. Katzenstein, P. (ed.) (1996a) The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics, New York: Columbia University Press. ÐÐ (1996b) Culture, Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Keohane, R. (1993) `Institutionalist Theory and the Realist Challenge After the Cold War', in D.A. Baldwin (ed.) Neo-realism and Neo-liberalism: The Contemporary Debate, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 269±300. Keohane, R. and Hoffman, S. (1991) `Institutional Change in Europe in the 1980s', in R. Keohane and S. Hoffman (eds) The New European Community Decisionmaking and Institutional Change, Oxford: Westview Press, pp. 1±39. Keohane, R. and Martin, L. (1995) `The Promise of Institutionalist Theory', International Security vol. 20, no. 1 (Summer 1995), pp. 39±51. Keohane, R. and Nye, J. (1993) `Introduction: The End of the Cold War in Europe', in R.O. Keohane, J.S. Nye and S. Hoffman (eds) After the Cold War: International Institutions and State Strategies in Europe 1989±91, London: Harvard University Press, pp. 1±19. Krasner, S.D. (1991) `Global Communications and National Power: Life on the Pareto Frontier', World Politics vol. 43 (April 1991), pp. 336±66. Larsen, H. (1997) Foreign Policy and Discourse Analysis: France, Britain and Europe, London: Routledge. Lindberg, L. (1963) The Political Dynamics of European Economic Integration, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Lindberg, L. and Scheingold, S. (1970) Europe's Would-Be Polity: Patterns of Change in the European Community, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. ÐÐ (1971) Regional Integration: Theory and Research, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mastanduno, M. (1991) `Do Relative Gains Matter? America's Response to Japanese Industrial Policy', International Security vol. 16, no. 1 (Summer 1991), pp. 73±113. Mearsheimer, J. (1990a) `Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War', International Security vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 5±56.

International theory: European integration

55

ÐÐ (1990b) `Correspondence. Back to the Future, Part II: International Relations Theory and Post-Cold War Europe', International Security vol. 15, no. 2, pp. 191±9. ÐÐ (1995a) `The False Promise of International Institutions', International Security vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 5±49. ÐÐ (1995b) `A Realist Reply', International Security vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 82±93. Mitrany, D. (1966) A Working Peace System, Chicago: Quadrangle Books. Moravcsik, A. (1991) `Negotiating the Single European Act: National Interests and Conventional Statecraft in the European Community', International Organization vol. 45, no. 1 (Winter 1991), pp. 19±56. ÐÐ (1993a) `Preferences and Power in the European Community: A Liberal Intergovernmentalist Approach', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 31, no. 4 (December 1993), pp. 473±524. ÐÐ (1993b) `Integrating International and Domestic Theories of International Bargaining', in P.B. Evans, H.K. Jacobson and R.D. Putnam (eds) DoubleEdged Diplomacy International Bargaining and Domestic Politics, London: University of California Press, pp. 3±42. ÐÐ (1994) `Why the European Community Strengthens the State: Domestic Politics and International Co-operation', paper presented at the Conference of Europeanists, Chicago, IL, April 1994. ÐÐ (1995) `Liberal Intergovernmentalism and Integration: A Rejoinder', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 33, no. 4 (December 1995), pp. 611±28. Pentland, C. (1973) International Theory and European Integration, London: Faber and Faber. Powell, R. (1993a) `Absolute and Relative Gains in International Relations Theory', in D.A. Baldwin (ed.) Neo-realism and Neo-liberalism, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 269±300. ÐÐ (1993b) `Guns, Butter and Anarchy', American Political Science Review vol. 87, no. 1 (March 1993), pp. 115±32. Smith, S. (1995) `The Self-Images of a Discipline: A Genealogy of International Relations Theory', in K. Booth and S. Smith (eds) International Relations Theory Today, Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 1±37. ÐÐ (1996) `Positivism and Beyond', in S. Smith, K. Booth and M. Zalewski (eds) International Theory: Positivism and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 11±44. ÐÐ (1997) `New Approaches', in J. Baylis and S. Smith (eds) The Globalisation of World Politics, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 165±90. Smith, S., Booth, K. and Zalewski, M. (eds) (1996) International Theory: Positivism and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Snidal, D. (1991) `Relative Gains and the Pattern of International Co-operation', American Political Science Review vol. 85 (September 1991), pp. 701±26. Wñver, O. (1996) `The Rise and Fall of the Inter-Paradigm Debate', in S. Smith, K. Booth and M. Zalewski (eds) International Theory: Positivism and Beyond, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Waltz, K. (1979) Theory of International Politics, New York: McGraw-Hill. Wendt, A. (1994) `Collective Identity Formation and the International State', American Political Science Review vol. 88, no. 2 (June 1994), pp. 383±96.

56

Steve Smith

Wincott, D. (1995) `Institutional Interaction and European Integration: Towards an Everyday Critique of Liberal Intergovernmentalism', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 597±609, see p. 601. Wind, M. (1996) Europe Towards a Post-Hobbesian Order? A Constructivist Theory of European Integration, Florence: Robert Schuman Centre. ÐÐ (1997) `Rediscovering Institutions: A Re¯ectivist Critique of Rational Institutionalism', in K.E. Jùrgensen (ed.) Re¯ective Approaches to European Governance, Houndmills: Macmillan, pp. 15±35.

3

European communities in a neo-medieval global polity The dilemmas of fairyland? N.J. Rennger

It has long been recognized that contemporary world politics is having to cope with an increasing variety of forms of community, however central a form the state is still thought to be. There is, of course, considerable disagreement about the implications of this; whether it presages a change in the kind of international system we have or whether it is simply a change in degree, but about the fact itself there can surely be little disagreement. Among the more important implications of this development, however, are widely held to be its effects on structures of political authority and the character and possibility of ethical and effective political action. While there are, of course, many ways of trying to assess these implications, the one I follow here is to seek to locate them in what is, as I hope to show, at least a plausible trajectory for contemporary world politics: to wit, the claim that the world is increasingly, at least in some areas, analogous to the (European) medieval one. I would emphasize that the chapter makes no claim to either exhaustiveness or de®nitiveness. Though I hope plausible and convincing, it is an exercise in, and of, political imagination, as all such attempts must be. Most particularly, and to use a phrase of Ronald Diebert's, to whose general argument I will later return, the ascription of a `neo-medieval character' to contemporary world politics should be seen as a `therapeutic redescription' (Diebert 1997) designed to prompt some hard thinking about the current con®gurations and interrelations of power and ethics in world politics, rather than any attempt to suggest that `the future will be like the past'.

Neo-medievalism and world politics To begin with, then, I need to delineate a little more clearly what it might mean to talk of a `neo-medieval' world polity. The idea of `neomedievalism'1 is not new, of course. It has been available in one way or another for nearly thirty years, though it has unquestionably gained increasing currency over the course of the last ten. For many of its recent advocates, perhaps most, such a view is a pessimistic one. It is sometimes, for example, seen as the `dark side' of globalization ± a view for instance

58

N.J. Rennger

implied in Ben Barber's recent Jihad versus McWorld (1995). Even the name `neo-medievalism' seems to give it a faintly sinister air. The `Middle Ages', however inaccurately, has not lost a faintly sulphurous whiff; random violence, social decay, brutal oppression and rampant superstition are still popularly held to have characterized the medieval world. Perhaps unre¯ectively, we still often hold our noses at that which the Enlightenment found offensive. Much of the literature that anticipates or parallels that of neomedievalism echoes such pessimism. Robert Kaplan, for example, speaks of `the coming anarchy';2 Conor Cruise O'Brien, citing perhaps the most familiar line of Yeats: `Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold, Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world' - a line that will I fear, be so gratuitously overused in the coming year or so that it may permanently harm the Poet's reputation - talks of us living through `an age of unreason . . . on the eve of the millennium'. (O'Brien 1995) Phil Cerny, rather more soberly, sees `Neo-medievalism' as a version of `complex globalization', a version of it at the level of `chaotic anarchy' (Cerny 1996: 7). Alain Minc (1993) suggests one of the most important characteristics of such a development is the evolution of `zones grises' ± grey zones ± where the rule of law does not run. The list could go on and on, but we seem, for these prophets, to be living in `a wolf's age, an axe age before the world's ruin' (cited by Clark 1989: 108). Obviously one of the central tasks here is to examine the phenomenon of globalization, try and arrive at a rather more nuanced approach to it than is often the case and see whether the resulting interpretation is as pessimistic as the above quotations suggest and whether it is or not, whether the result can plausibly be labeled `neo-medieval'.3 However, I have neither the time nor the space for that here. Instead, I shall simply offer readings of two texts that I take to be particularly suggestive in delineating the hallmarks of what a `neo-medieval' global polity might look like. The two texts are Hedley Bull's The Anarchical Society (1977) and Jean Marie Guehenno's The End of the Nation State (1995), and in each case I shall try and identify the central pivot of their arguments before, at the end of this ®rst section, comparing them and through that comparison saying something about the range of possible readings of a neo-medieval global polity. Bull's `new medievalism' Bull's presentation of the neo-medieval world view as it was perceived in the late 1970s was, of course, largely critical. He is responding to the suggestions of some that this view offers a `superior path to world order' to the

Neo-medieval global polity

59

`states system' as we traditionally conceive it. Bull's suggestion is that we understand it as a modern and secular equivalent to the medieval pattern of Western Christendom whose central characteristic was `a system of overlapping authority and multiple loyalty' (Bull 1977: 254). He goes on to suggest that: The case for regarding this form of . . . political organization as representing a superior path to world order to that embodied in the states system would be that it promises to avoid the classic dangers of the system of sovereign states by a structure of overlapping authorities and criss-crossing loyalties that hold all peoples together in a universal society, while at the same time avoiding the concentration of power inherent in a world government. Bull (1977: 254) Bull starts his presentation of the case for a `new medievalism' by suggesting that there are ®ve features of contemporary world politics which provide prima facie evidence of a trend. These are: (1) the regional integration of states (for example, obviously the EU but also the growing sense that such organizations are increasingly part of the matrix of all regions ± hence ASEAN, SAARC, etc.; (2) the disintegration of states (Rwanda, Liberia, Yugoslavia, possibly Russia, etc.; (3) the restoration of private international violence (terrorism, international organized crime); (4) the rise of transnational organizations; and (5) what Bull calls the `technological uni®cation of the world'. It is manifest, of course, that these tendencies have all become more pronounced since Bull wrote (in 1977). Guehenno and the `end of the nation±state' 4 Guehenno's vision is, on the surface, strikingly different from Bull's. In the ®rst place it was expressed twenty years after Bull's and in the immediate aftermath of the events of 1989±91. Rather than criticizing the idea, Guhenno is developing it and even ± though in quali®ed terms, welcoming it. Guehenno articulates especially well one of the most important aspects of the `neo-medieval thesis', namely, the thesis that the state is losing ± he even claims has already lost ± its monopoly not of power but of legitimacy as the central organizing unit of political activity. He also claims that what he calls `the networks' are systematically draining the state of its power as well by changing the character of power, but important though this is for Guehenno it is a secondary claim. To outline his basic argument, let me quote him at length. According to him: [1989] marks the twilight of a long historical era, of which the nation state progressively emerging from the ruins of the Roman empire, was

60

N.J. Rennger the culmination. This political form, far more European than is the idea of empire, has imposed itself on the world in the last two centuries, and we have taken for an inevitable ending point what is perhaps only the precarious result of a rare historical conjunction, closely linked to particular circumstances and which could disappear with them. We call this coming age `imperial' because, ®rst, it is succeeding the nation state as the Roman empire succeeded the Roman republic: the society of men has become too vast to form a `political entity' . . . (secondly) the idea of empire is not proper to Europe and is thus not the prisoner of our political tradition. It corresponds to a new age, one . . . that is at once uni®ed and without a centre. The existence of a centre recalls an organizing pyramid of power that no longer corresponds to our complicated world . . . (and) as it changes in scale, power changes its nature . . . we must, then, understand the rules of this new age, not in order to ®ght against it ± that would be a wasted effort ± but to save what can and must be the idea of freedom. We are at the inception of the fourth empire, both strong and fragile, closer to Rome and the Ancient world than to Christianity, it has been created on the ruins of ideology and of that Soviet empire that once claimed to be the Third Rome. (Guehenno 1995: xii±xiii)

It is worth pointing out some of the basic features of this `fourth empire' as Guehenno goes on to elaborate them in his book. His chapter headings which begin as helpful signposts seem, on the surface, to retreat into Gallic obscurity quite quickly. The death of the nation (Chapter 1), the death of politics (Chapter 2), the lebanization of the world (Chapter 3), an `Empire without an emperor' (Chapter 4), invisible chains (Chapter 5), the need for conformity (Chapter 6), religions without God (Chapter 7), the golden calf (Chapter 8), imperial violence (Chapter 9) and the Imperial Age (Chapter 10). The key to this analysis lies in his belief that the end of nations means the end of `politics' and that the resulting form can be characterized as imperial. The bulk of the book is taken up with explicating this view and relating it to contemporary developments. What might it mean, however, to talk of the death of politics and the end of nations? Surely, the post-Cold War period has seen a revival of nations? As Guehenno himself says: [I]t may seem paradoxical to evoke the demise of the nation at the very moment when the Soviet Union is breaking up under the pressure of nationalism, when the German nation is recreating itself and when the UN has never before known so many nations . . . but what is a nation? . . . it is time to realize that the idea of the nation that Europe gave to the world is perhaps only an ephemeral political form,

Neo-medieval global polity

61

a European exception, a precarious transition between the age of kings and the `neo-imperial age'. (1995: 4) Guehenno goes on to argue that the nation de®nes itself primarily as the `locus of a common history and, ®rst and foremost, a place'. Yet it is precisely these two things, common history and a clear sense of `place' (in the form of a clear territorial jurisdiction) that are becoming increasingly problematic in our time, Guehenno argues. The territorial given is outmoded, he suggests, and yet no utilitarian, functional version of the state can replace it. Why? Because `everything changes when human activity liberates itself from space'. The spatial solidarity of territorial communities (and with it their rootedness in place and their shared historical sense) is disappearing, Guehenno says, and is being replaced by shifting coalitions of temporary interest groups. From the beginning, since the polis, politics has been the art of governing a collectivity of people de®ned by their rootedness in a location, city or nation. If solidarity can no longer be locked into geography, if there is no longer a city, if there is no longer a nation, can there still be politics? Guehenno's answer, of course, is no and with that answer lie the seeds of the original French title of his book, La ®n de la deÂmocratie. For, of course, liberal democracy, he argues, rested on two premises, both of which are now increasingly contested: the existence of a political sphere ± the locus of a social consensus and of the general interest (what political theorists have traditionally called the `common good') and the existence of autonomous and `pre-societal' actors. But now, `instead of autonomous subjects, there are only ephemeral situations . . . [and] instead of a political space, a locus of collective solidarity, there are only dominant perceptions, as ephemeral as the interests that manipulate them'. This is ampli®ed in his ®nal chapter. According to Guehenno, we have [B]uilt on sand and the foundations are crumbling. The great shibboleths of yesterday ± democracy, liberty ± ring hollow. Thrown into disarray we have a choice between two attitudes. The ®rst is to return to the origins of the institutional order that is disappearing and to search, with broad agreement on some universal principles, for the foundations of a new religion, the natural law without which there is no law . . . [but] we are no longer in the age of enlightenment and there is no longer a political order capable of establishing values . . . The other path, which we have tried to follow [in this book] is to contemplate reality head on, to take stock of the end of enlightenment and only then to try and save what can be saved . . . the most one can hope from the unfolding imperial age is, in fact, that it resembles the Empire of Hadrian or Marcus Aurelius; like the empire it should not claim either to elevate itself to the heavens or to appropriate the heavens for its earthly purposes. It would accept being only a functional mode,

62

N.J. Rennger and knowing that that is all it is. That will be its fragility and its grandeur. (1995: 126±7)

At one level, of course, this argument puts Guehenno in the camp of those who suggest that we end our attempts to revive the ever more obviously dead body of the Enlightenment. However, his argument is also subtly different from theirs. Not for Guehenno the appeal to the giants of French post-structuralism or German Existenzphilosophie that marks what I have elsewhere called the `postmodern mood' (Rengger 1995). Rather, he appeals to a much older sense of the relationship between reason and action. It is the stoics that are his models, `the stoics of antiquity' who were able to infuse liberty with a more philosophical than political meaning' (Guehenno 1995). The result of this, however, for Guehenno, is that the debates of the future will be ethical debates, but that `through them, perhaps, politics may be born again, in a process that will start from the bottom, from local democracy and the account a community can give of itself and proceed upward' (ibid.). For Guehenno then, the new age, the new order, will be an imperial one, but one in which it is the Holy Roman Empire that perhaps springs mostly to mind rather than Rome at its zenith. It is this, of course, that makes Guhenno's `neo-imperial' vision plausibly also a neo-medieval one. What might we say then, about these two views taken together? Neo-medieval reveries? The most interesting feature of both treatments is their conviction that the central pivot of the `neo-medieval' case is not a decline in power per se ± not the `end of the nation state' in the sense implied by, say, Kenichi Ohmae (1986, 1990) but rather a shift in practices and conceptions of legitimacy. A neo-medieval world for Bull, is one characterised by `shifting and overlapping patterns of loyalty' and for Guehenno, though shifts in power are real enough, it is the disappearance of the state not as a bureaucratic structure but as a rooted, physical, spatial location and the normative implications of this disappearance, that are central. I want to suggest that this recognition is an important one and want to put it together with another claim which, while implicit in a good deal of `neo-medieval' writing, is not often made explicit. This claim is that a central feature of contemporary world politics is not the `decline of state power' but rather the rise of other kinds of actor with growing ± and differentiated ± legitimacies. As I have made this case in more detail elsewhere (Rengger 1997),5 I will only outline the argument here. Very simply put, it suggests that a de®ning feature of contemporary world politics is the growing complexity of institutions, actors and agencies (in both the political and philosophical senses of that word). As Yale Fergusson and Richard

Neo-medieval global polity

63

Mansbach (1996) have recently suggested, it might be better to refer to political associations as `polities' which does not commit all the now relevant ones to being `states' in the traditional sense of that term. Jessica Mathews has put her ®nger on the central implication of this when she remarks `states feel that they need more capable international organizations to deal with a lengthening list of transnational challenges, but at the same time fear competitors' and that as a result clashes between these differing polities will grow as they evolve and develop alongside existing states and `take over some of [their] power and emotional resonance' (Mathews 1997: 58, 61). As Mathews also notes, one of the inevitable tendencies of this process is precisely that ®xed upon by Bull and Guehenno above, that is to say, the growing decay in the ability of the state to command legitimacy or priority above other kinds of polity. However, it is worth emphasizing here that this is not quite the same problem as we saw foregrounded in what we might call, following Yahya Sadowski, the `global chaos theorists' (1998). For them, the key problem of the late twentieth century is `chaos', or lack of control. However, on the neo-medieval account it is not chaos, strictly speaking, not lack of control, but the changes in the character of control and the progressive draining of contemporary political structures of real legitimacy and authority that are the problem. This suggests a central problematic for a neo-medieval world: how, given these changes we might think about reconstructing, rebuilding or enhancing legitimate political authority and what are such changes likely to do to the current structures of public ethics?

A `multitudinous in¯ux of fairy'? To begin to address this question, let me start here by making an observation about the character of the relationship in the traditional `state-centred' model of world politics ± one which, incidentally, is held not just by scholars of world politics or international relations but by dominant discourses in the human sciences generally.6 As Stephen Toulmin has suggested (1992),7 it is perhaps best to see the relationship between norms, community and practice as part of the `intellectual scaffolding', within which the dominant conceptions of the modern age were constructed. As far as ethics is concerned, roughly from the seventeenth century onwards, `ethics' became seen as part of a theoretical construction ± it became, in other words, ethical theory ± a construction which was part and parcel of, and intimately connected with, the establishment of the modern state and of the states system. Just as the state was the centrepiece of a citizen's loyalty and political allegiance horizontally, as it were, so ethical allegiance turned upon reasoned argument in a strict logical hierarchy where there was ± in principle ± an `answer' to any speci®c question of `ethical theory'.

64

N.J. Rennger

The development of the neo-medieval world we have explored above, however, shatters this neat equivalence. Social and political relations both within and between `states' are scrambled and complex. There is no simple hierarchy. Equally, the notion of `ethical theory' has increasingly been challenged. Rather than a rigorous, reasoned conception of ethics, ethics is increasingly commonly thought of in terms that emphasize ± in addition to reason not instead of it, of course ± rhetoric, sympathy, the mixing of ethical traditions, rather than their incommensurability and the conviction that one must triumph over others. Toulmin refers to the `medieval' emphasis on case ethics approvingly (Johnson and Toulmin 1989) suggesting that in most serious ethical situations: multiple considerations and co-existing traditions need[ed] to be weighed against one another . . . case ethics did not aim to provide a unique resolution of every moral problem: rather it triangulated its way across unexplored ethical territory, using all the available resources of moral thought and social tradition . . . moral issues had pluralism built in from the start: the wisest resolution came from steering an equitable course between the demands that arose in practice, in speci®c cases. (Toulmin 1992: 135±6) The suggestion that I want to explore in this second section of the chapter, then, is that we need to see the relationships between norms, communities and practice in terms of highly variegated, diverse communities and ethical traditions and where our best chance of making ethical choices that are both coherent and robust depends upon us being able to develop a version of the `case-based ethics' that the medieval and renaissance worlds deployed. Fairies and mortal gods It goes without saying that a neo-medieval world will, by de®nition, be a world where normative and ethical dispute is at the core of human action. Contrary to what the dominant models of ethics in the human sciences today would have us believe, such dispute is constitutive of ethics, not merely a feature of our inadequate knowledge, or reasoning power. It is precisely this feature of contemporary ethics which has given rise to the most powerful counter-hegemonic style of ethical thinking in the Anglo-American philosophical world, the rise of so-called virtue ethics and especially the argument from `tradition dependent reason' associated with, among others, Alasdair MacIntyre (1981) and Stanley Hauerwas (1989)8 and it is also a feature of our situation, re¯ection on which has loomed increasingly large in `continental traditions' of ethical thought; it can be seen especially

Neo-medieval global polity

65

clearly, for example, though in differing ways in Heidegger, Gadamer, Ricouer, Foucault, Derrida and Levinas.9 It is this feature of our emerging neo-medieval world which has perhaps generated more hostility than almost anything else, for it seems to suggest that we would have to live in an ethical and indeed ontological vacuum, where no truths hold: political, ethical or even scienti®c. Yet this is a reading of the possibilities only plausible if one already accepts the story about ethics told by the modern age which, along with Toulmin, I would reject; if one in other words sees `ethics' as requiring ethical `theory'. If one does not do this, then certainly one must address `the problem of difference' but such `difference' does not look especially different from the fairly consistent function that human ethical judgement has had over the centuries and in numerous cultures; the practical mediation of such difference. Of course, it does depend how one sees this `difference'. My own idiom is doubtless different to many, even to many of those who would be sympathetic to the general argument I am putting forward, but it has, or so I believe, some advantages (I would otherwise hardly be using it). I have elsewhere made much use of the notion of a `mood' as a powerful constellation of forces in contemporary social and political theory and here I want to elaborate on this a little. The philosopher Stephen Clark is the one contemporary thinker I know of who has taken seriously the insights of those ± like Yeats ± who took the consistent concern human cultures have had with magic and with `extra-human' peoples seriously. As he says, `A Fairy, Yeats explicitly declares, is a mood or a mode of conscious being . . . [fairies] exist within our experience as moods and images and symbols . . . .what Yeats aimed to describe were provinces of human meaning' (Clark 1989). What he did, in fact, describe, as Clark goes on to say, is the vision of the contemporary moral order familiar from the likes of MacIntyre and post-structuralism ± though of course he had his own particular reading of it.10 This world is `in the Grip of Fairy' (Clark 1989: 31) in the sense that we ®nd it invaded by a `multitudinous in¯ux' of such moods, but drained of the faith in anything that might link them. As Clark puts it, `Fairyland, as it takes shape on the common earth, is a land of wars between incommensurable simplicities, where no loyalty is owed forever' (1989: 32). This is not, of course, dissimilar to the world described by Bull and Guehenno and it is not accidental that the one great casualty of such a world is the mortal God famously described by Hobbes (1962: Book 2, Chapter 19) and which we would usually see as the `fairy' ± mood, image, symbol ± of the modern state. The complex, multifaceted character of the power shift described by Mathews heralds a `multitudinous in¯ux of fairy', in Clark's phrase ± of competing moods, images and symbols, where no polity has determinate loyalty and where ethics is irreducibly plural and can be commanded by none.

66

N.J. Rennger

Mediating the transition `From Leviathan to Lilliput'?11 In his recent book Parchment, Printing and HyperMedia, Ronald Diebert (1997) comes to a not dissimilar conclusion to the general argument I have advanced here, though he does not express it in quite the way I do (happily, as some will no doubt think). In his conclusion, he offers the opinion that the gradual shift to what he, too, sees as a `neo-medieval world' ± and for both of us the phrase is, as I remarked at the outset, `therapeutic redescription' ± will generate a plausible `®t' (the word is his) between the condition of world politics and those ways of describing it usually referred to as post-structural. I think there is something to this in that, as he says: postmodern notions of decentred selves, pastiche like, intertextual spatial biases, multiple realities and worlds and fragmented imagined communities `®t' the hypermedia environment where personal information is dispersed along computer networks and privacy is rapidly dissolving, where disparate media meld together into a digital intertextual whole, where digital worlds and alternative realities are pervasive and where narrowcasting and two way communications are undermining mass `national' audiences and encouraging non-territorial niche communities. (Diebert 1997: 204) The overall effect of this, Diebert thinks, is that it greatly increases the power of those most protean late modern inhabitants of fairyland, the owner and users of capital. The dispersal and diffusion of political authority ± the chief effect of the decentredness of the neo-medieval world, as we have seen ± need much more complex networks of governance above and below the `state' level, than exist at present if the political values held to be important by a growing number of societies ± openness, tolerance, freedom, accountability ± are to be enhanced or even secured at all. Such networks are, to a greater or a lesser extent emerging, but in a very haphazard way and certainly not equally in all relevant sectors and certainly not with the requisite authority. This, therefore, gives great and growing power to those whom Diebert quotes Tim Sinclair as calling the `private makers of global public policy'. For Diebert, the overall effect of this is that one of the central sites of political contestation in the neo-medieval world will be where the interests of the representatives of currently hegemonic market forces and those of the sometimes embryonic and sometimes powerful forces of global civil society intersect. The current evolution of our neo-medieval world of course gives by far the most strategic power to the former. But this does not have to be the case. An interesting question, therefore, though curiously not one which Diebert discusses, is how we might seek to shape political communities so as to enhance justice and create virtue. Political experiments such as the

Neo-medieval global polity

67

European Union are very welcome, for all their problems and failures because they represent the ever-present possibility of changing the character of political association to deal with perceived major issues. The fact that, currently, the EU is as affected by the sway of global market forces as anywhere else is unfortunate but not determinative. The trick, of course, is to develop polities that can enhance our chances of embedding practices that will support those elements of global civil society most powerfully committed to justice and virtue. For in truth, though our neo-medieval world is indeed a world in transition, there are no guarantees that the transition will be from `Leviathan to Lilliput' ± as Toulmin's formulation has it. If we are unfortunate, or careless, it could easily be from Leviathan to Behometh ± though the form Behometh might take will vary.12 Even Lilliput would have its dangers. Toulmin's image is of a mighty Gulliver-like state waking up to the postmodern age to ®nd itself tethered by `innumerable tiny bonds' (Toulmin 1992: 198). But we may ®nd that there are occasions yet when we will require that cumbersome Leviathan to act on our behalf, or on behalf of a cause that our case ethics, no longer in any sense bound to it to be sure, but prepared to use it as one, among a number of other possible agents to secure as ethically justi®able a result as possible. If this is so, we will have to have a care that the bonds that tether it, tether its capacity for evil, but do not restrict its capacity for good, however tenuous or ¯eeting such a capacity might be. We should ponder, I think, in this context on Michael Ignatieff's remark that `it may be that we are losing our capacity to do good in the world because we are no longer willing to risk the moral dangers of doing some evil' (1997). It may be that we need our old Leviathans for a while yet, without trusting them, and without giving our loyalty to them unconditionally but simply because they are there, and for some things, they are all we have. So, in much the same spirit, did many in the High Middle Ages look on the Empire. Indeed, if Diebert is correct about the currently dominant forces in world politics, our mortal gods might be more important on occasion not less. This need not deny the essentially neo-medieval character of the emerging world. Rather, it is to say that we need to develop, and/or sustain, polities that can overlap in their ability to act. Polities such as the European Union are, in principle, well placed to facilitate this, but, of course, are failing to do so in any meaningful way. In the European case, this is in part because they have resolutely refused to take the obvious course that might generate some speci®c loyalty to it as an institution, to raise a genuine constitutional debate. Of course, its Member States are equally opposed to such a possibility for the reasons that Mathews gives and that I cited earlier. The result, transparently, is a growing sense of crisis within the union and yet a seeming inability to do anything about it as the Yugoslavia, Bosnias, Kosovos and failed inter-governmental conferences pile up and as the Union's stock among what are (since 1992) its citizens goes persistently down.

68

N.J. Rennger

Mediating this transition, then, may be even harder than the pessimists suppose, for there is a particular danger among the many that the `multitudinous in¯ux of fairy' that comprises the neo-medieval world brings with it. For while many of the moods, images and symbols it brings in its wake are worthy of respect, the character of political authority and legitimacy seems almost endlessly elusive. Leviathan is a hobbled giant and other symbols remain, at best, partial in commanding our allegiance. Yet if this remains the case, the neo-medieval world we have evolved will become progressively drained of the capacity to sustain or enact the political values and virtues we need: freedom, justice, tolerance. Depressing as it is, such a condition may, indeed, be our fate. However, there are two ways we might confront, perhaps even with luck, avert it. At the deepest level we might try and sketch a conception of political association as such that can frame (but not ground or be seen as a `foundation' for) our contextual judgements. Given the character of our world now ± and whatever might have been true for earlier periods ± this can only be a `global' conception, a conception, in other words, of `world order'. However, as we need to see `order' in world politics not as something ®xed but rather as a constant process of `ordering' the multiple and diverse ends worthy of our respect. Thus we would have to frame a conception of `world order', that accepts this and accounts for it. But framing such a conception would require, I think, an image of this process of ordering; a sense of how we should see it and how we could do it. This, of course, is hardly the place to seek to develop such a conception nor is it central to the tasks of practical reasoning in the here and now which remain the more urgent task. However, I suspect that, in the long run, such an image is probably our best insurance against the darker potentialities of fairyland. The more immediate, and more urgent task, however, is to develop a practical reason for our times as they are that will ®nd ways of developing, sustaining and revising the values and practices we need. Such a task requires in the ®rst place what Toulmin refers to as an `ecology of institutions' for our neo-medieval world: a sense of how they interpenetrate and intertwine, how they impact on the practices and customs we value and how we might reposition such practices and customs so as to give them greater purchase in our changing world; a map, in other words, of our contemporary political terrain on which we might chart our journeys. It also requires an accompanying map of the contemporary intellectual territory through which we must all perforce move, a map which is much stranger and more complex ± and also much older, in a sense, than has generally been supposed. To develop a coherent and appropriate conception of legitimate, i.e. normatively justi®able, political action (and thus contextually appropriate political actors) is, therefore, the central question of contemporary world politics, and such a question is fundamentally normative since legitimacy is a normative conception. Most contemporary attempts to do this, however,

Neo-medieval global polity

69

are either one-sidedly universalist (either methodologically or ethically or both13) or unhelpfully particularistic (in variously divergent ways14). To seek to ®nd ways of defending the practices and values we require without falling into either of these traps is perhaps the most dif®cult task of all and one for which our existing recent political vocabulary is of only limited help. Yet it is, I suggest, the one path that might give us some optimism that the neo-medieval world of the twenty-®rst century might offer greater opportunities, as opposed to greater disasters, than its calamitous predecessor. Dif®cult as it is, then, we must do what we can.

Notes 1 For a variety of extant treatments of this theme, some of which I shall return to below, see, Eric Voeglin (1962); Hedley Bull (1977: 254±5; 264±76); Alain Minc (1993); Jean-Marie Guehenno (1995); Robert Kaplan (1996) and Phil Cerny (1996). 2 In an article of the same name in the Atlantic Monthly. He has reworked and expanded the argument ± and greatly in¯ated the rhetoric ± in a subsequent book, To the Ends of the Earth. 3 This is what, from his perspective, Diebert does, extremely interestingly. For the most thorough and exhaustive attempt to delineate the character of the `global' in the current literature see D. Held et al. (1999). 4 Some of what follows in the next few paragraphs is similar to views outlined in my paper `The Beginning of the End of Modernity? Honour, Ethics and the Practice of Civil War at the Fin de SieÁcle' (Rennger 1998). 5 See N.J. Rennger, `The Ethics of Trust in World Politics' (1997). Another article, on which I draw in the above mentioned one and which outlines the essentials of this case very well is Jessica Tuchman Mathews, `Powershift' (1997). 6 Of course, in different ways. A detailed critique of these discourses and their implications, focusing on the vexed question of practical reason will be found in Part One of N.J. Rennger and Stephen Toulmin Practical Reason in Practice (forthcoming). Much of what I say in this section is congruent with the revised conception of practical reason we outline in Part Two, though I express it differently here. A full attempt to put the two together lies in the future, however. 7 In Toulmin's Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (1992). The forthcoming book referred to above is, effectively, a sequel to Cosmopolis, concentrating on practical reason and its effects. 8 In After Virtue, MacIntyre (1981) begins his diagnosis of our current moral situation with the `disquieting suggestion' that it is the incommensurable pluralism of our moral vocabulary that reveals the bankruptcy of our moral culture. Hauerwas' arguments for a speci®cally Christian virtue ethics in A Community of Character (1989) make a similar case, explicitly indebted to MacIntyre. 9 See, for representative samples, Heidegger (1967), Wegmarken; Gadamer (1989), Das Erbe Europas: BeitraÈge; Foucault (1981), The Order of Things; Derrida (1992), The Other Heading: Re¯ections on Today's Europe. 10 Yeats, of course, believed that the `second coming' that the title of the poem that speaks of things falling apart and centres not holding refers to is a dawning of a new age, as Clark puts it, `in the Grip of Fairy' (see below).

70

N.J. Rennger

11 This is a section heading in the ®nal chapter of Toulmin, Cosmopolis (1992: Chapter 5: 192). 12 I am thinking, for example, of the sort of claims made ± however tentatively ± by Alex Wendt in his essay `Collective Identity Formation and the International State' (1994), and by Michael Shaw, as well as by some theorists who discuss the `totally administered world', Adorno and Horkheimer for example in their darker moods and in Dialectic of Enlightenment (Adorno and Horkheimer 1990). 13 I am thinking of both mainstream conceptions of social science and the usually dominant modes of thought within Anglo-American philosophy and political theory, as well as their epigones in international studies. 14 Most notably variants of `post-structural'/postmodern literatures and, obviously very different in content but not dissimilar in form, some `cultural values' theses such as the Asian values thesis very popular with certain Asian autocrats and its Westernised version that we can ®nd in the writings of, amongst others, Samuel Huntington, especially, of course, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (Huntington 1996).

References Adorno, T. and Horkheimer, M. (1990) Dialectic of Enlightenment, London: Continuum Barber, B. (1995) Jihad versus McWorld: How the Planet is Coming Together and Falling Apart and What This Means for Democracy, New York: Ballantine Books. Bull, H. (1977) The Anarchical Society, London: Macmillan. Cerny, P. (1996) `Globalization, Fragmentation and the Governance Gap: Towards a New Medievalism in World Politics', paper presented at the Globalization: Critical Perspectives Conference, University of Birmingham, 14±16 March. Clark, S. (1989) Civil Peace and Sacred Order, Oxford: the Clarendon Press. Derrida, J. (1992) The Other Heading: Re¯ections on Today's Europe, trans. P.A. Brault and M.B. Naas, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Diebert, R. (1997) Parchment, Printing and HyperMedia, New York: Columbia University Press. Fergusson, Y. and Mansbach, R. (1996) Polities: Authorities, Identities and Change, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Foucault, M. (1981) The Order of Things, London: Routledge. Gadamer, H. (1989) Das Erbe Europas: BeitraÈge, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Guehenno, J.-M. (1995) The End of the Nation State, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Hauerwas, S. (1989) A Community of Character, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Heidegger, M. (1967) Wegmarken, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. Held, D. et al. (1999) Global Transformations: Politics, Economics, Culture, Cambridge: Polity Press. Hobbes, T. (1962 [1651]) Leviathan. New York: Collier Books. Huntington, S. (1996) The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon and Schuster. Ignatieff, M. (1997) `The Gods of War', New York Review of Books, 9 October.

Neo-medieval global polity

71

Johnson, A. and Toulmin, S. (1989) The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Kaplan, R. (1996) The Ends of the Earth, London: Macmillan. MacIntyre, A. (1981) After Virtue, London: Duckworth Mathews, J.T. (1997) `Powershift', Foreign Affairs vol. 76, no. 1, Jan/Feb, pp. 50± 66. Minc, A. (1993) Le nouveau Moyen AÃge, Paris: Gallimard. O'Brien, C.C. (1995) On the Eve of the Millennium, the published version of his Massey lectures for the CBC. Ohmae, K. (1986) The Borderless World, New York,: Harper. ÐÐ (1990) The End of the Nation State, New York: Simon and Schuster. Rennger, N.J. (1998) `The Beginning of the End of Modernity? Honour, Ethics and the Practice of Civil War at the Fin de SieÁcle', Civil Wars vol. 1, no. 2, Summer, pp. 32±51. ÐÐ (1997) `The Ethics of Trust in World Politics', International Affairs vol. 73, no. 3, pp. 469±87. ÐÐ (1995) Political Theory, Modernity and Postmodernity: Beyond Enlightenment and Critique, Oxford: Blackwell. Rengger, N.J. and Toulmin, S. (forthcoming) Practical Reason in Practice, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Sadowski, Y. (1998) The Myth of Global Chaos, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. Toulmin, S. (1992) Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Voeglin, E. (1962) `World Empire and the Unity of Mankind', International Affairs. Wendt, A. (1994) `Collective Identity Formation and the International State', American Political Science Review June, pp. 384±96.

4

The art of war and the construction of peace Toward a virtual theory of international relations James Der Derian Let those who have already been recognized and canonized curse us! Let them excommunicate us from the Church of Tried-and-True Painting. Let them call us Barbarians and `non-painters.' Because afterward ± and I wish to comfort the timid ± art historians will explain everything. They will propound their justifying theories, their systems, their psychological explanations. They will recognize and acknowledge [our] commonality with ancient culture. (Aleksandr Rodchenko, quoted in Dabrowksi et al. 1998: 54) During the epoch of reconstruction, technology determines everything. (Stalin, quoted by Kornely Zelinsky, in Tatlin 1932) To live as poet or assassin? (`The Suicidal State', L'inseÂcurite du territoire, quoted in Der Derian 1998: 43)

Interzone virtual 1. a. Possessed of certain physical virtues or capacities; effective in respect of inherent natural qualities or powers; capable of exerting in¯uence by means of such qualities. Now rare. 4. g. Computers. Not physically existing as such but made by software to appear to do so from the point of view of the program or the user. The virtual, on the other hand, does not have to be realized, but rather actualized; and the rules of actualization are not those of resemblance and limitation, but those of difference or divergence and of creation. (Deleuze 1988: 97)

A virtual theory of international relations is introduced in this chapter, by taking a quantum leap back to the future, that is, to the history and theory of another era of great scienti®c discovery, technological innovation and

Art of war and construction of peace

73

political revolution: the inter-war. This is done for four, interrelated reasons. The ®rst is to use an historical approach to offset the presentday polemics that surround the virtual discourse.1 The second is to offer a counter-narrative to the theoretical and strategic lessons of the `twentyyears' crisis' ± from E.H. Carr's 1939 revival of political realism to current military planning in the Pentagon ± which have transformed the concept of the inter-war from an historically complex struggle over the construction of international institutions of peace into a theoretically simple analogue for American national security policy. The third is to reintroduce the critical inter-war debate on the relationship of art, war and technology, which will form the basis of a virtual theory of international relations. Finally, this chapter seeks to move international theory away from the closed historicity and ethical paucity of the `inter-war' concept, in which international politics is always already conceived as being-between wars, toward the openendedness of virtual theory, in which international politics is potentially constituted as becoming-different than war. The ®rst task is to determine whether there exists a `virtual condition' of international relations that justi®es a shift in theoretical strategies. The task is not an easy one: by de®nition, the power of the virtual is elusive, and yet, thanks to the spread of networked computers, nearly pervasive. The traditional and technological de®nitions give us a sense of this quality. According to the OED, the virtual is `capable of producing a certain effect or result', as well as `not physically existing as such but made by software to appear to do so from the point of view of the program or the user'. Or, in the idiom of the information age, the real is morphed by the virtual. Any exploration of the virtual condition must begin with the foundation of Realpolitik, the state. Has it proven immune from virtualization? Sovereignty, the primary means by which the supreme power and legitimate violence of the state is territorially ®xed, has been declared once, manytimes dead, both in and outside IR theory. But now its political identity seems increasingly dependent upon media actualizations of the virtual, in which self-identical `heres' are opposed to external, alien `out-theres'. Many of the virtual means by which the state regains its political vigour have become disturbingly familiar. Instant scandals, catastrophic accidents, impending weather disasters, `wag-the-dog' foreign policy, live-feed wars, and quick-in, quick-out interventions into moribund or still-born states ¯ash across the screen, producing an ephemeral, pixellated, virtual semblance of sovereignty and order inside, and uncertainty and chaos outside the state. The production of internal security through the construction of external threats certainly predates the information age. But never has such a production become so dependent upon, and indeed, generated by the technical means of conveying information. Consider the ultimate reality-check of international politics, war. As prototyped in the Gulf War, a seamless integration of how we prepare for, execute, and represent war is taking

74

James Der Derian

place, through the convergence of battle®eld simulations and public dissimulations, of battle sites and websites, of the PC and TV. Infowar, netwar, cyberwar, techno war, postmodern war, antiwar, and pure war are just nominal samplings of a new phenomenon. Prime time combines with Command and Control networks to bring us `virtual wars' in near real-time. The United States Institute of Peace, beltway think-tanks, and information technology industries promote a `virtual diplomacy'. Meanwhile, for the intractable post-cold war problems which are short of war, like terrorism, ethnic con¯ict, nuclear proliferation, and chemical and biological warfare, the virtual ®x-at-a-distance ± in the global form of surveillance and sanctions backed by the threat (and occasional use) of smart bombs and cruise missiles ± acquires a new lustre. Virtual rather than real interventions become more appealing as public support wanes for overseas commitments ± especially if they entail the prospect of bodybags coming home. And, as the Asian ®nancial crisis sweeps westward, the global economy verges further towards the viral and the virtual. One ®nancial expert emphatically states that `the distinction between software and money is disappearing', to which a Citibank executive responds `it's revolutionary ± and we should be scared as hell' (Time Magazine, 27 April 1998). A veteran observer remarks that the `virtual economy' of Russia has produced a new Potemkin village, in which `every major indicator ± wages, taxes, production, prices, budgets ± is basically an illusion' (Schmemann 1998: 28). To be sure, questions of power and identity, space and borders, legitimacy and meaning will continue to be determined by the material necessities of personal and public security framed by the legal imperative of sovereignty. But in the new hyper-realms of global politics produced by economic penetration, technological acceleration, and new media, these questions now also entail virtual investigations. Will sovereign states become so spectral as to disappear all together, one more unholy relic for the museum of modernity? Or will they re-emerge in global, virtual forms? Does globalization enhance the prospects of a democratic peace? Or does virtualization assure the continuation of war by other means? Has Clausewitz been repudiated or merely brought up to speed? Is virtuality replacing the reality of war? Is it the harbinger of a new world order, or a brave new world? Most importantly, will processes of virtualization help to close or to further open the gulf between those who have and those who do not? New thinking often lags behind transitions driven by new technologies, and, as Albert Einstein famously remarked about the atom bomb, the results can be catastrophic. The virtual effects of new media warrant a commensurate critical scrutiny. New media, generally identi®ed as digitized, interactive, networked forms of communication, now exercise a global effect if not ubiquitous presence, through instant video-feeds, satellite linkups, T1±T3 links, overhead surveillance, global mapping, distributed computer simulations, programmed trading, and movies with Arnold

Art of war and construction of peace

75

Schwarzenegger in them. Virtualization represents the most penetrating and sharpest ± to the point of invisibility ± edge of globalization. The power of virtuality lies in its ability to collapse distance, between here and there, near and far, fact and ®ction. Moreover, the virtual effect of bringing `there' here in near real-time and with near-verisimilitude adds a strategic as well as comparative advantage in the production of violence ± what one futurist at a recent military conference referred to as the `®fth dimension' of global warfare (Bunker 1998). However, like all complex systems, there also lurks within the virtual the potential for the kind of catastrophe that produced Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, what organizational theorist Charles Perrow (1981) calls `normal accidents' or negative synergy. The spatialist, materialist, positivist, that is, rationalist approach in international theory, renders it less than adequate for a critical inquiry into the temporal, representational, and deterritorial powers of virtual technologies. Semiotic, critical and constructivist approaches are better suited to the study of virtual phenomena, having led the way in tracing the recon®guration of power into new representational and immaterial forms. They have helped us to understand how acts of inscription and the production of information can reify consciousness, ¯oat signi®ers, and render concepts undecidable. As the globalization of new media further disengages meaning from conventional moorings, and sets information adrift as it moves with alacrity and celerity from phenomenal to virtual forms, one searches for supplemental modes of understanding. One searches for a virtual theory of international relations. For the most part, the search is in vain: ubiquitous in popular discourse but highly complex in the philosophical idiom, the virtual usually comes with an academic taboo. Nonetheless, there are compelling reasons to construct a virtual theory of IR. There is a pragmatic need to understand the power of the technology involved; a philosophical need to interpret the spatio-temporal `ef®ciency' (virtus) of virtual effects; and a political need to assess the potential bene®ts against the dangers of the virtual. Moreover, an etymological imperative is constituted when the `virtual' is joined to the `theoretical'. `Theory', from its Greek root of theorein, contains within it the notions of a journey or embassy (theoria), which involves an attentive contemplation (horao) of a spectacle (theama), like theatre (theatron) or oracular deity (theon).2 `Virtual', from the Latin virtualis, conveys a sense of inherent qualities, which can exert in¯uence, by will (the virtuÁ of Machiavelli's Prince) or by potential (the virtual capacity of the computer). By this uni®cation of the classical and the digital, virtual theory becomes both software and hardware for IR: it has the potential to make meaning, produce presence, create the actual through a theoretical differentiation and a technical vision. It constructs worlds ± not ex nihilio but ex machina ± where there were none before.3 On the epistemological spectrum of IR, this clearly places virtual theory nearer to the constructivists than the rationalists. Virtual theory challenges

76

James Der Derian

the philosophical realism and positivism underlying most international theory, where words transparently mirror objects, facts reside apart from values, and theory is independent of the reality which it represents (Der Derian 1995). Occupying a de-territorialized interzone of being ± neither here nor there as being but always as becoming different ± virtuality represents a paradoxical extra-reality that does not ®t the dominant dyad of IR, the real and the ideal. As Deleuze puts it, the virtual possesses a reality, which is not yet actual, somewhat like Proust's remembrances, which are `real without being actual, ideal without being abstract' (1988: 96). Unlike the Aristotelian concept of the potential, the virtual has a constitutive capacity of its own, creative of rather than dependent upon the actual.4 Just as the simulacrum has no `real' identity, there is no natural `there' to the virtual: its identity is based on pure difference, a difference-in-itself, which privileges differentiation over resemblance, and the creative over the imitative. Deleuze provides a complex model of the virtual as a problematic, which is resolved through interpretations of its eventual actualization. Organic examples ± like the seed that carries the virtual code for but cannot control the circumstance of its actualization as a tree ± do not adequately convey the power and complexity of the virtual in a media-saturated environment (LeÂvy 1998: 24). Following Deleuze's dictum that `the task of philosophy is to be worthy of the event', one is better advised to pick up the newspaper to ®nd evidence of virtuality at work. Consider a single day in The New York Times. An op-ed piece by the economist Paul Krugman invokes the Wall Street crash of 1987 (which was accelerated by programmed computer trading) to demonstrate how the current economic crisis in Asia and Russia will cease to be a `real-economy non-event' and be transformed into a global slump should the private sector succumb to `a self-ful®lling pessimism' (Krugman 1998). After a movie (Wag the Dog) became the virtual standard by which President Clinton's foreign policy is framed, it is no surprise that in another article, on President Clinton's trip to Russia, former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleberger says `the trouble Clinton is going to have . . . is that we talk so much about him weakened that it becomes a self-ful®lling prophecy' (Sciolino 1998). Most traditional approaches in IR, assuming a bifurcation rather than a constitutive interaction of subjective mind and objective nature, are not philosophically inclined to explore this interzone of the virtual, where simulacra reverse causality, being is simultaneously here and there, and identity is deterritorialized by interconnectivity. Virtual theory posits that the retrieval of facts ± empirical or social ± is preceded by interpretation, conveyed by technical media, conducted through experimentation, and succeeded by the creation of new virtualities. IR is still in need of approaches that study what is being represented. But it is also in need of a virtual theory which can explore how reality is seen, framed, read, and generated in the actualization of the virtual by the event. This does not

Art of war and construction of peace

77

preclude a scienti®c investigation ± unless one ignores the advances of Heisenberg, Einstein, and quantum theory in general, and con®nes science (as is often the case in the social sciences) to the Baconian±Cartesian± Newtonian mechanistic model. Virtual theory relies on the scienti®c approach mapped out with clarity if not clairvoyance by Heisenberg: We can no longer speak of the behaviour of the particle independently of the process of observation. As a ®nal consequence, the natural laws formulated mathematically in quantum theory no longer deal with the elementary particles themselves but with our knowledge of them . . . The atomic physicist has had to resign himself to the fact that his science is but a link in the in®nite chain of man's argument with nature, and that it cannot simply speak of nature `in itself.' Science always presupposes the existence of man and, as Bohr has said, we must become conscious of the fact that we are not merely observers but also actors on the stage of life. (Heisenberg 1958 [1955]: 12±16)5

Interlude interlude, n. 1. A dramatic or mimic representation, usually of a light or humorous character, such as was commonly introduced between the acts of the long mystery-plays or moralities, or exhibited as part of an elaborate entertainment; hence (in ordinary 17±18th c. use) a stage-play, esp. of a popular nature, a comedy, a farce.

Though in no way a classic ®lm, The Blob is perhaps the archetypal 1950s' cross-pollinating of the `misunderstood teen' and `outer-space monster' genres. In his ®rst starring role, Steve McQueen plays a typical oversexed, car-lovin' highschooler who can't get anyone to believe his story about a huge meteor, which crashes to earth and begins exuding a pink, gooey substance. Af®xing itself to the body of an old man, the `blob' begins parasitically sucking the life out of several unfortunate humans, growing to an enormous size. Problem is, the disappearances of the victims can all be explained (one is supposed to be out of town, another is attending a convention), so the cops still won't believe McQueen. Rallying his teen pals, McQueen ®nally manages to get the adults' attention ± but by now, the Blob is consuming entire city blocks. It takes a blast of ice-cold CO2 to halt the Blob in its path . . . at least until the 1972 sequel Beware the Blob!. Beware the Blob of Constructivism! Where once regime theorists ruled, critical theorists critiqued, standpoint feminists stood, epistemic communities communed, and poststructuralists problematized, there remains only a protoplasmic trace. Not even the `English School' of international theory could raise the Oxbridge in time against the constructivist onslaught. Only the neorealists and neoliberals, occupying the higher reaches of the

78

James Der Derian

discipline, protected by positivism from non-observable phenomena like the Blob, have so far escaped its saprophytic attack. This is something of a dramatic exaggeration as well as a theoretical caricature. But some blobular hyperbole is warranted, both because of the supplemental relationship of virtual theory to constructivism, and more critically, because of the remarkable capacity of constructivism to absorb any approach which privileges epistemology over methodology, identity over interest, relativism over rationalism, social facts over empirical data. To be fair, there are less metaphorical, not quite so philosophically amorphous, more practical reasons for the growth of constructivism. It can be attributed to the quality of its scholarship, the proselytizing energy of its proponents, as well as the strategic if somewhat compromising position it strives to occupy between other `post-modern', `rigid', `hardcore', `radical', or `strong' approaches.6 It could be argued that constructivism is spreading because it provides new and valuable concepts for interpreting a rapidly changing world that older approaches in IR have not, and perhaps cannot, provide.7 Indeed, it could be argued that argumentation itself (i.e., `a link in the in®nite chain of man's argument with nature'), now thriving in the increasingly pluralistic and fragmented sub-®elds of IR and schools of the social sciences, favours a constructivism, which practises (a pragmatic evaluation of competing truth-claims) what it preaches (the world is what we make of it).8 How, then, to assess the relationship of virtual theory to constructivism ± without falling prey to its blob-like qualities? There is the conventional approach, that would test constructivist claims with precise de®nitions, comparative literature reviews, theoretical analysis, and empirical data, namely, the kind of professional activity that keeps us all busy and our journals in business. Following modernist economic models, this primitive accumulation of knowledge might well result in a great leap forward to a new stage of intellectual development in international relations. However, progress in history, as well as discontinuous, epistemic innovation in science, does not always take the linear path of incrementalism. A supplemental critique might be more effective. It need not be on the order of past polemics, like Hedley Bull's frontal assault on behaviouralists, which, we should remember, was spurred by his belief that one should `study their position until one could state their own arguments better than they could and then ± when they were least suspecting ± to turn on them and slaughter them in an academic Massacre of Glencoe' (Bull 1976/91: xi). Given the nature of the beast, it might be more appropriate to play down the minor differences, to mimic constructivism, say, as predators do their prey, and co-opt it from without. However, as Steve McQueen discovered the hard way, Blobs are pretty much immune to ¯aming or caging; direct confrontation is just more thought for food. Not wishing to escalate to the thermonuclear level (as they did, counter-productively, in the sequel to the Blob), I choose a different strategy in this interlude.

Art of war and construction of peace

79

My intention is to de-blob constructivism. By revisiting its historical, political, and ethical roots, this chapter re®gures constructivism as a progenitor rather than pre-emptor of virtual theory. My reasons for this reinterpretation of constructivism are threefold and interdependent. First, constructivism in IR, for all its metatheoretical trappings, is a curiously sui generis creature; as conventionally told in IR theory, constructivism could just as well have come from outer space.9 Originary conceits are not con®ned to constructivists, but one would think that, by stint of name and nature, they would be less inclined to contribute to the philosophical amnesia that seems to strike successive generations of IR theory. A genealogy of constructivism is past due, and doubly needed, to reestablish the disparate beginnings and multiple alternatives that have escaped the of®cial story. A genealogy ± what Nietzsche refers to as `effective history' (wirkliche Historie) and Foucault as a `history of the present' ± functions as a theoretical intervention into the past which illuminates and seeks to transform present political practices. Second, a genealogy is needed because constructivism in IR is becoming increasingly bleached of politics as well as history. Although it might make constructivism more amenable to the disciplinary imperative of a value-free social science, this renders it less useful for a transformative and transvaluative period in contemporary international relations. Third, constructivism, in its currently de-historicized and de-politicized condition, is left incapable of responding to the most vexing ethical question, which it ®rst raised if not begged. If we do indeed construct the world we live in, if our theories are inextricably interdependent with our practices, why do we go on reproducing so much of its violence, criminality, and outright evil? Must we not, as Bohr said, `become conscious of the fact that we are not merely observers but also actors on the stage of life'? Perhaps these last remarks are unfairly directed and overly righteous. After all, most constructivists are quick to claim that there is no single theory of constructivism. Indeed, many have argued that there is no theory of constructivism per se: there is only an `approach', `analysis', `model' or, at best, a `research program' for IR, and as such, they should not be held to strict scienti®c, predictive, or prescriptive standards (Adler 1997: 321±3; Hopf 1998: 196±7; Wendt 1995: 153±6). Nor do I ± as someone close to the constructivist project and identi®ed by others as one (Hopf 1998: 182) ± wish to contribute to one of the least attractive pathologies of the academy, the narcissism of petty intellectual differences. Theory-bound and structurally constrained, having reduced the `agent' to a very puny actor on the world stage, constructivists nonetheless suffer from an ethical imperative that other approaches ± or at least those on its epistemological right ± do not. For example, to the left, poststructuralism has, from its beginnings outside and through its deliberations inside international relations, wrestled with the issue of ethics.10 To the right, `hardcore' realists, evincing material interests, amoral actors, repetitious history, need not

80

James Der Derian

bother with such `idealist' concerns ± thereby repudiating any responsibility for reproducing a world they claim only to record. Constructivists, operating in a more intersubjective, constitutive, normative model of the world, cannot duck the ethical question. They might `problematize' (a word overdue for retirement) the subject of the question, by attacking the universalist and masculinist assumptions behind the use of a self-identical `we' and a metaphysical sense of human nature (Tickner 1992 and 1996). They might `disaggregate' the object of the question, by positing a more `mediative' and scienti®c, rather than `constitutive' and critical role for constructivism (Adler 1997: 330±6). They might even `interpellate' the answer, by arguing that a `bounded' rationality delimits the constitutive options of the structurally `embedded' agent. However, demonstrations of epistemological correctness and ontological hair-splitting will not make the ethical question go away, and like the dead upon the living, the question will continue to haunt constructivism until it confronts its variegated past as well as its current abeyance of responsibility for the future.

Internecium constructivism 1. [ad. Russ. konstruktivõÂzm] a. The theory or use of mechanical structures in theatrical settings. 1924 H. Carter New Theatre Soviet Russia 71 `Constructivism was also in¯uenced by futurism.' b. An artistic movement, originating in Moscow in 1920, concerned mainly with expression by means of constructions.

What is constructivism? In the search for answers, some might venture only so far from the mainstream as the near-abroad, to the recently emergent `schools' of constructivism clustered, not surprisingly, around a variety of universities which have expediently assembled over the last decade a critical mass of professors, graduate students, and ®ne scholarship, as demonstrated by the `Minnesota', `Copenhagen', `Aberystwyth', and, some might now add, `Cornell' schools. Others have recognized the extra-disciplinary in¯uence of social and political theorists like Anthony Giddens and JuÈrgen Habermas. This chapter travels further a®eld, to avoid the internecine wars of taxonomy that pose as theoretical dialogue, but also to estrange through genealogy a parochial version of constructivism, which currently prevails in North American IR. However, genealogy acts as little more than a philological palliative for this state of affairs, unless it links beginnings to the dangers and opportunities of new endings, which is why a genealogy of constructivism must go back to the Soviet experience of the inter-war. Before all else, before its academization, stalinization, and eventual internecine eradication, constructivism was a revolutionary movement in Russian art and politics. If one takes a strictly nominalist approach, constructivism ®rst appears in Russian in the early 1920s to describe the revolutionary effort `to create

Art of war and construction of peace

81

a New World' by linking new technologies to a new politics. Artistrevolutionaries stand out, like Valdimir Tatlin, El Lissitzky, Naum Gabo, Antoine Pevsner, and, most prominently, Aleksandr Rodchenko. From the outset, the concept of constructivism is a site of great semantic, artistic and political contestation. One of its earliest invocations, `The Realistic Manifesto', written by Gabo and Pevsner for an open-air exhibition and posted all over Moscow in 1920, calls for `the construction of the new Great Style' which would succeed where the Futurists (`clad in the tatters of worn-out words like ``patriotism,'' ``militarism,'' ``contempt for the female'' ') and Cubists (`broken in shards by their logical anarchy') had failed: We construct our work as the universe constructs its own, as the engineer constructs his bridges, as the mathematician his formula of the orbits . . . We af®rm in these arts a new element, the kinetic rhythms as the basic forms of our perception of real time. We assert that the shouts about the future are for us the same as the tears about the past: a renovated daydream of the romantics. (Gabo and Pevsner 1974: 3±10) Over the next ®ve years, a wide variety of new journals and magazines, congresses, and factions would ®ght over and against the constructivist label. In 1922 Alexei Gan opens the wars with a published programme of the `The 1st Working Group of Constructivists', which lead in bold block letters with the declaration: `WE DECLARE UNCOMPROMISING WAR ON ART!'.11 At the Congress of International Progressive Artists held in DuÈsseldorf the same year, the International Faction of Constructivists strikes a discordant note, calling for a `new art . . . founded not on a subjective but on objective basis . . . [that] like science, can be described with precision and is by nature constructive . . . the artist is companion to the scholar, the engineer, and the worker' (Bann 1974: 58±69). By 1923, constructivism is a presence in practically all of the major cities of Europe, abetted by the start-up of Lef in Russian and G. Lef in Europe. Through these journals the in¯uential art theorist Osip Brik attempts to forge an alliance, tantamount to a united front, for all progressive movements, from the futurists to the formalists. In the ®rst editorial of the inaugural issue of Lef, he offers both support and criticism for the constructivists: Constructivists! Be on your guard against becoming just another aesthetic school. Constructivism in art alone is nothing. It is a question of the very existence of art. Constructivism must become the supreme formal engineering of the whole of life. Constructivism in a performance of shepherd's pastorals is nonsense. Our ideas must be developed on the basis of present-day things. (Brik 1974: 80±3)

82

James Der Derian

Probably no artist embodies the intellectual tenets and creative talents of constructivism greater than Rodchencko. In quality and range, he surpasses his peers in sculpture, drawing, painting, photography, photomontage, collage, as well as design in architecture, furniture, and even fashion ± as one quickly discovers upon entering the recent remarkable exhibition of his work at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, where a lifesize photograph of Rodchenko in Devo-oid, constructivist coveralls greets the viewer. Rodchenko's career is a case study of the internecine battles of art and politics in the avant-garde of the inter-war. Experimentation, innovation, rigorous intellectual application mark his early vision of constructivism. His ®rst paintings, like the `Black on Black' series, ®rst shown at the 10th State Exhibition in Moscow in April 1919, display no ®gurative content; instead, there is a preoccupation with surface texture and technique, or faktura as it was called (Dabrowski 1998). In the ®nal paragraph of the catalogue for the 10th State Exhibition, he distills the `Rodchenko System' into a single sentence: `The motive power is not synthesis but invention (analysis). Painting is the body, creativity the spirit' (Dabrowski 1998: 32). One year later he was experimenting with highly cerebral and reductionist linear constructions (Construction no. 89, 90, 127, etc.). The essay that accompanied their installation at the 19th State Exhibition in 1920 imparted a scienti®c message in its title: `Everything is Experiment' (Lavrent'ev 1998). In 1921, ®ve artists, including Rodchenko, each contributed ®ve works, to stage the 5  5 ˆ 25 exhibition in Moscow. Monochromal canvases, devoid of content, comprised Rodchenko's contribution. It was, he wrote later, to signal the end of representation, and the beginning of the extension of constructivist art into more utilitarian and practical applications. From designs for a working men's club and magazine covers to advertisements for state enterprises during the period of the New Economic Policy (NEP) period, Rodchenko's constructivism evolved from a theoretical `laboratory experiment' to a progressive social function. Operating at the very nexus of theory and practice, constructivism became the ®rst experiment in art with mass media and politics. Rodchenko's in¯uence would spread throughout the avant-garde movements of Europe and the United States. In the Soviet Union, however, it did not survive the inter-war, as nineteenth-century realism returned in the ideological and totalitarian form of socialist realism. Rodchenko, after a period in the 1930s of placing his photographic talents in the service of ®ve year plans and `heroic projects' (i.e., construction by penal labour) like the White Sea Canal, returned to ®gurative representation, ending his artistic career with paintings of clowns. Is there a lesson here for constructivism, as we know it in IR? There might only appear to be a super®cial resemblance. However, as Rodchenko demonstrated, from the study of surface faktura, new meanings and possibilities can be generated from older forms. A deeper investigation into and a

Art of war and construction of peace

83

broader dialogue about the multiple origins of constructivism might produce more pluralist forms and applications for constructivism in IR. It might also just help to pre-empt a repetition of the internecine con¯icts which befell the ®rst constructivists.

Interview For the comfort of origins, I would say that my interest in the inter-war probably begin in 1994, when I was sent by Wired magazine to write about `Operation Desert Hammer IV', the ®rst `digitized' rotation of troops at the US Army's National Training Center at Fort Irwin. We ± meaning four military correspondents, our handler, and myself ± were watching from a Mojave hilltop a digitized brigade from the 24th Mechanized take on the OPFOR, opposing forces known as the Krasnovians. As the simulated battle began at dawn with Black Hawks and Apaches ¯ying so close to the deck they were below us, F-16s and A-10s roaring overhead, followed by the dust and smoke trails of MIA2 tanks, it was dif®cult to tell just what was going on. Our personable handler, Major Childress, former commander of an OPFORS unit, did his best to explain, providing a running commentary for what we could see ± and also what we could hear as we eavesdropped on the radio traf®c among the combatants. Accounts of confusion and in more than one instance, fratricide or `friendly ®re', were overheard. But it was an aside from one of the journalists that provided some perspective on all the confusion. At that moment, Austin Bay, ex-Army, military historian, ABC consultant during the Gulf War, and coauthor of A Quick and Dirty Guide to War, turned to me, and said: `It's just like Salisbury Plain'. Fortunately we were interrupted by `Krasnovians' in mock T-80 tanks, who were about to overrun our perch, so I never had to let on that I did not have a clue about the Salisbury Plain. I would not learn the full signi®cance of Bay's remark until a year later, when I went to interview Andrew Marshall at the Pentagon. At several points in my research travels, I was told that Marshall was someone that I must interview. Marshall is over 70 years old; a survivor of six administrations, he has spent close to a quarter-century at the Pentagon. Originally brought in from the Rand Corporation by President Nixon, he helped set up the Pentagon's Of®ce of Net Assessment. The purpose of this innocuously-sounding bureaucracy was, according to its founding document: to weigh the military balance in speci®c areas, what the important long-term trends are, and to highlight existing or emergent problem areas, or important opportunities that deserve top level management's attention to improve the future US position in the continuing militaryeconomic-political competition.

84

James Der Derian

It might seem like quite a leap, from Rodchenko at the Museum of Modern Art, to Austin Bay at the National Training Center in the high Mojave Desert, to Marshall at the Pentagon, but they all have something in common: constructions of the inter-war. Marshall is famous for his in¯uential memoranda, which are, for the most part, still classi®ed. They range from broad politico-strategic issues like the decline of the Soviet Union, to no less important tactical debates about the advantages of sending Stingers to Afghanistan (a decision that recently has come back to haunt the USA, and probably factored into the choice of cruise missiles rather than aircraft for the retaliatory strike in August). But one in particular interested me. Only seven pages long, it had created a serious ripple in several policy circles. It bears the simple title of `Some thoughts on Military Revolutions'. When it was circulated ®ve years ago (23 August 1993), it was an idea in the wind; a year later, there were ®ve task forces at the Pentagon alone, exploring the rami®cations of the `Revolution in Military Affairs', or RMA. Marshall is in the virtuality business ± and not just because he believes information rather than territory will be the battle®eld of tomorrow. He is more interested in the process of problem-making than problem-solving, for he believes that the stakes are higher in the former than the latter. Besides, Marshall considers it sound methodology to avoid the business and social science models of simultaneously investigating problem and solution: it corrupts the process of diagnosis. The result is an impressive track record. In the medium of virtual theory, Marshall produces a series of problematics ± the problem of problems ± that invoke a process of actualization, albeit in this case a bureaucratic rather than academic process is involved. During our interview, he told me of two major projects in progress. The ®rst, predictably, was an assessment of threats, which might emerge from Asia. The second was of possible political and military parallels with the inter-war period. They were trying to ®gure out whether the RMA in both periods were re¯ections, or possible triggers of great social and political upheaval. He was less than sanguine about the results of the study: But if you look back into history I think you can see . . . that the twenties turned out to be a period of illusion about what the world was going to be like. I think we are in the twenties. Both in terms of the beginning of technical change which is working out its implications, and terms of, well, in terms of the twenties the United States didn't really have any big immediate threat. And the forces were very small. Whether something like the thirties is before us, I don't know.12 Marshall spelled out the analogy for me, focusing on the dangerous lag between military technological innovation and contemporary diplomatic practice in Europe between two world wars. His example, of course, was

Art of war and construction of peace

85

Salisbury Plain, the site where the British Army ®rst combined air, armour, and radio in a series of war games. While on a fellowship at Oxford, I was able to further investigate Marshall's claims at the Bodleian Library. I searched the micro®che roles of the Daily Telegraph, not so much out of curiosity about the events as how they were reported. Was it recognized as a problem, a solution, a revolution? I chose the Telegraph because I knew that Liddell Hart had been its military correspondent ± and much more.13 Hart, a decorated of®cer during the First World War, had made a name for himself as an early proponent for mechanization, for a `New Model' army based on `tank marines' ready to use `the indirect approach', to ®ght highly mobile battles on land as the navy fought at sea. At a time when Germany was disarming under the agreements of the Treaty of Versailles, and the French, under the direction of war minister Andre Maginot, were re-casting trench warfare and protecting falling birth rates by a defensive frontier of concrete, the British had the luxury (no real enemy threat), the temperament (no desire to repeat the slaughter of the previous war) and the technology (still the leader in industrial innovation) to experiment (Bond and Alexander 1986; Hart 1925). From August 1927 to 1931, Salisbury Plain became the premier laboratory of a new form of warfare. Armoured cars, light and medium tanks, motorized artillery, infantry in trucks and half-tracks, and even the odd horse were on the move, ®rst during the day, later even at night. Hart's initial reports on the ®rst exercises in 1927 were somewhat disdainful; aircraft were simulated, coloured ¯ags stood in for anti-tanks guns, and radios, where in evidence, rarely worked. But by the `Armoured Force' exercise of 1928, the tone begins to change: 150 wireless sets were used for a manoeuvre that left an assembled group of brass and Members of Parliament highly impressed. Hart considered the exercises a success in 1931, when the 1st Brigade Royal Tank Regiment, taking orders by radio, managed to manoeuvre through the fog in concert to arrive on time before a gathering of the Army Council. What follows is the ®rst and last report that he ®led in the Daily Telegraph on the exercises at Salisbury Plain during one seminal year, 1927. Some historical context might be useful. On the front pages were stories about the Naval Conference in Geneva (most notably, friction between the USA and Great Britain ± with Japanese support ± on cruiser tonnage and gun size); death sentences for Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the Italian anarchists; and my favorite headline ± `Trotsky's Victory ± Stalin's Move Checked ± Surprise for Moscow'. Hart's initial articles were on page 5 or later, mixed in with pictures of military bands and tanks bogged down in the mud; gradually the articles moved up to page 1. Entertainment is liberally mixed with education: the reports read like the bread and circus of late empires ± much like our own evening news. Here is an excerpt from

86

James Der Derian

his ®rst report, `Tidworth Tattoo ± Modern War Staged', dated Monday, 1 August 1927: Tidworth is the home of the mechanized force which is expected to play a great part in the future development of the Army. Therefore it is ®tting that the star attraction of the Southern Command Tattoo, which commenced before many thousands of people in the arena in Tidworth on Saturday night, should be a `battle' in which the latest mechanized units take part. When an interesting programme was nearing its end, the searchlights ¯ashed on to an Eastern fort, where picturesque Eastern marauders were taking rest. Almost immediately the battle began. A signal for assistance sent by the British commander brought a reconnaissance car to the spot, and, following quickly in its wake, came the mechanized machine guns, the latest swift-moving tankettes spitting ®re, with a self-propelled gun giving protection to the British force, and in doing so adding to the din. The mobility of the new armoured units enhanced the realism of the episode, and undoubtedly this battle will prove one of the most attractive features of the performances. There is plenty of variety in the programme, for following community singing and the fanfare of trumpets, massed bands of the 2nd Cavalry and 7th Infantry Brigades enter the arena in peace-time uniform, the cavalry bandsmen mounted, and all playing delightful music . . . Lancer trick riders carry through amazing feats and some remarkable jumping, the obstacles including a donkey and cart, bed, ®re hoop, and ®re bar . . . The concluding item before the reassembling of the soldier actors is a display by the Royal Air Force in illuminated aeroplanes. . . . The tattoo was a huge success on its ®rst night and will be continued during the week . . . the railway companies are running excursions from all over the South of England and buses are expected to bring many hundreds of spectators. Here is the last account of the Salisbury `tattoo, from 23 August 1927, headlined ` ``Mechanical Gods'' of Modern Warfare ± Tanks in Night Move ± Driving Feat in the Dark': I watched the column from a point close to Stonehenge, and in the apt and eerie setting of that dreary monolith-surmounted down, at midnight, little imagination was needed to picture it as the passage of a herd of primeval monsters or legendary dragons, with glassy eyes shining in the darkness, ®ery breath, and scale-coated body. So irresistible was the impression that I pity any belated motorist who met them, unprepared on his homeward road. And the passage by Stonehenge had also a symbolical effect, for there the gods of the prehistoric past could be conceived as watching from their long-abandoned altars the

Art of war and construction of peace

87

procession of the mechanical gods of modern man ± both equally the creation of man, but the one expressing the static mentality of the past, and the other the ever-changing, restless motion of the mind of to-day. Impressed, but not convinced, the British general staff failed to learn the lessons of armoured warfare wargamed on Salisbury Plain. Defeated, and some might even say rendered desperate by disarmament and the ®scal restraints imposed by reparations, the German staff did not. As virtual theorists of warfare, they carefully studied Hart's writings as well as Brigadier Charles Broad's 1929 booklet Mechanized and Armoured Formations, which conceived of the tank not as a support for infantry but as a fast-moving independent force that could create shock, chaos, and demoralization in enemy forces. In 1939, they applied those lessons with spectacular results, staging the Blitzkrieg into Poland. One should also note a coterminous revolution in virtual technology. Although it did not receive equal billing, on the same day, on the same page of the Daily Telegraph that covered Hart's report, there was a headline, `Hearing a Face ± Television Broadcast': Giving a broadcast lecture at the British Empire Exhibition at Edinburgh on Saturday night, Mr. J.L. Baird, the inventor of television, said he had asked three chance acquaintances the meaning of the word `television'. One said that it was an island off the Coast of Africa, the second that it was a form of telepathy, and the third that it was a kidney disease. Television meant actually seeing by wireless. The scene was ®rst turned into a sound, which was then broadcast, and turned back into an image at the receiver. Every face had its own particular sound. A phonograph record was then played on which the television sound of Mr. Baird's face had been recorded. It sounded something like the rasp of a ®le with a peculiar rhythmic whistle underlying it. This was broadcast by the BBC, so that listeners for the ®rst time in history had the opportunity of hearing what a face sounded like. The lecturer went on to describe his discovery of television, and said that the ®rst person ever seen by television was an of®ce boy, who had to be bribed with 2s 6d to submit to the experiment. The latest development of television had rendered it possible to see in total darkness, invisible rays being used. Steady progress was being made in developing the invention to a commercial stage, and he hoped that television would very shortly be available to the general public. One year after motorized and wireless transmissions were linked in simulated warfare on Salisbury Plain, similar breakthroughs in television were made by engineers at General Electric. From experimental station

88

James Der Derian

`W2AXAD' they broadcast the second-ever television image, about the size of an index card. What did they choose to broadcast? A simulation of a missile attack on New York City. The point of view was from the missile, a ¯ight ending in an explosion, then nothing (Barnouw 1966: 231). To hammer the virtual point home, Paul Virilio writes in the preface to the English edition of War and Cinema: A war of pictures and sounds is replacing the war of objects (projectiles and missiles). In a technicians' version of an all-seeing Divinity, ever ruling out accident and surprise, the drive is on for a general system of illumination that will allow everything to be seen and known, at every moment and in every place. (Virilio 1989: 4) Compare the reports in the Daily Telegraph to one seventy years later, in USA Today, on a wargame at the National Training Center in the high Mojave desert, where Fort Hood's 1st Brigade of the 4th Infantry Division, kitted out with $250 million in computers, satellites and digital links, was about to face the Army's Opposing Forces for the fourth digitized rotation at the NTC. The article is titled `Cybersoldiers test weapons of hightech war': Assuming the digital force passes muster, the Army could soon be asking Congress for lots more money. The General Accounting Of®ce estimates it would cost $4 billion to out®t all 10 active-duty divisions. But Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, author of the of®cial Army history of the gulf war, warns it will be money ill-spent if all the Army does is perfect war as we know it today. That's what France did after World War I with its Maginot line, a defense easily overrun because it failed to anticipate Adolph Hitler's high-speed mechanized attack. (USA Today, 6 March 1997) Are we entering an era of democratic peace? Or the new inter-war? While an attenuated irenist model prevails in most academic and civilian circles, Marshall's worst-case analogy, based on the virtual and inertial tendencies of new destructive technologies toward actualization (nuclear weapons and deterrence notwithstanding), deserves critical scrutiny. This is especially warranted when the most critical areas of foreign policy become dependent upon virtual forms of military planning, when what one technologically can do comes to dominate what one legally, ethically, or even pragmatically should do. My own research suggests that such virtual planning makes for a permanently potential state of inter-war. Over the last several years, I have travelled into the cyborg heart of the most powerful tribe in the United States, what I call the Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment complex

Art of war and construction of peace

89

(MIME for short).14 Apologies are probably due President Eisenhower who warned in his farewell address of the `military-industrial complex' and the `danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scienti®ctechnological elite'.15 But what would he make of current newspaper headlines and Sunday news programmes that lead with `wag-the-dog scenarios' of why President Clinton recently decided to launch cruise missile attacks against Sudan and Afghanistan? With the addition to Eisenhower's complex of the seductive and mimetic elements of media and entertainment industries, the now virtual tail wags the body politic all the more vigorously. A full appraisal of the power of the MIME is beyond the scope of this chapter.16 My intention is to apply virtual theory to the inter-war period, to envision an interzone without the brackets of war. The ®rst step is to understand how violence travels virtually, from object to subject, from person to person, from one period to another, and how that path might be broken. This requires an investigation of a concept which was in¯uential in the inter-war debate about art, politics, and new technology, yet has been neglected in international theory: mimesis.

In terrorem mimesis 1. Rhet. A ®gure of speech, whereby the supposed words or actions of another are imitated. 3. Sociol. The deliberate imitation of the behaviour of one group of people by another as a factor in social change. 1934 A. J. Toynbee Study of Hist. III. 245 `The problem of bringing the uncreative rank and ®le of a growing society into line with the creative pioneers cannot be solved in practice, on the social scale, without also bringing into play the faculty of sheer mimesis ± one of the less exalted faculties of Human Nature which has more in it of drill than inspiration.'

As the modern myth goes, contemporary political realism was born of the `twenty-year crisis' of the inter-war (Carr 1981). Rather than engage in analogical and teleological scenarios of the worst-case (like Andrew Marshall, who believes we are going back to a dismal future) or the bestcase (like Francis Fukuyama (1992), who argued ± at least up until the Asian economic crisis ± that we are coming to the liberal end of Hegel's History), the ®nal two sections of this chapter present a virtual counternarrative to the realist legacy of the inter-war. My purpose is to challenge the imitative allure of mimesis with the creative force of poiesis, by returning to the profound work done on this subject in the inter-war by Walter Benjamin, which was then adapted by Jean Baudrillard and Paul Virilio for their own investigations into hyperrealism and virtualism. By returning to the future one more time, we might come to a better understanding of how our own mimetic interactions with the world seem to be in the control of virtual `things' that imitate reality (like worst-case scenarios, opinion polls, Sky TV, Microsoft, Disney Inc.). For the excessive hazards of a

90

James Der Derian

virtualized global politics, the chapter ends by taking a tentative ®rst step toward an extra-disciplinary, intersubjective, ethical inquiry into the mimetic relationship of realism to organized violence, which begins with but reaches beyond the state violence of political realism, the class violence of social realism, the global violence of nuclear realism, the techno-violence of hyperrealism.17 From its original conception as the reproduction of reality through dance, ritual, theatre, image, and writing, mimesis thrived as an aesthetic concept, capturing the perceptual and representational powers of mimicry, imitation, and metaphor.18 Its linguistic roots go back to ®fth-century Greece, to mimos, whose many derivatives convey a dramatic act of representation through imitation. At the outset, mimesis attracted philosophical criticism, as one would expect from any powerful form of representation that created whole worlds, that made one thing into something other, even if it was done through symbolic actions. Perhaps we moderns are most familiar with mimesis through the ®gure of the `mime' ± someone who depicts life `as it is', but with a satirical twist: he or she `fools' people (which is one of many reasons Plato came down hard on mimesis in the Republic). This performative element of mimesis, ranging from theatrical arti®ce to political deceit, came under renewed scrutiny in the inter-war period, when modes of organized violence took an aesthetic turn. The concept was revived by Benjamin, Kracauer, Adorno, and others from the Frankfurt School, to comprehend the power of new mimetic media like radio, ®lm, and the popular press. Considered by positivists as too vague, or worse, too much in vogue, the concept never caught on in the social sciences. In our virtual condition of over-mediated politics, I think a serious reconsideration of mimesis is overdue. Benjamin was acutely aware that new technologies were changing the nature of politics and that theory and ethics were not keeping apace. This was most apparent in the marrying of new technologies of killing with new technologies of representation. In his highly in¯uential essay, `The Work of Art in the Age of its Technical Reproducibility', Benjamin warns of the evolution of warfare into an art form. War was becoming the deadliest exhibition of l'art pour l'art, in which self-alienated humans become `their own showpiece, enjoying their own self-destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the highest order. This is the aestheticisation of politics that fascism manufactures, which is answered by communism's politicization' (Benjamin 1974±89).19 The message was a radical, dialectical one: technical reproducibility, in mass art and total war, was self-reproducing, assuring the transformation and spread of modes of perception, information, as well as existence in advanced societies. In one form or another, mimesis shows up in Benjamin's most signi®cant essays on the tumult of the inter-war period, running as a common thread through his early essays on aesthetics and later ones on technology. As imitation and repetition, mimesis emerges as a fundamental force in human

Art of war and construction of peace

91

development. In a highly condensed, almost poetic form, Benjamin presents his case in the 1933 essay `On the Mimetic Faculty'. Language and play, mystery and violence are evinced as mimetic manifestations. He opens the essay with a general statement: Nature creates similarities. One need only think of mimicry. The highest capacity for producing similarities, however, is man's. His gift of seeing resemblances is nothing other than a rudiment of the powerful compulsion in former time to become and behave like something else. Perhaps there is none of his higher functions in which his mimetic faculty does not play a decisive role. (Benjamin 1978: 333) But the mimetic faculty `has a history' in the development of language and the self, or as Benjamin puts it, `in both the phylogenetic and the ontogenetic sense' (ibid.). In self-development, `the school' for mimetic development is `play'; children imitate not only others but objects. In linguistic development, children learn through the mimetic faculty of onomatopoeia. Language, through script, becomes `an archive of non-sensuous similarities', the most important site where the semiotic and the mimetic fuse (ibid.: 335). In a poetic passage, he tries to re-instil mystery into the mimetic activity of reading by tracing it back to the earliest mimesis, the reading of entrails and the stars by the ancients. But he ends on a melancholic note, acknowledging that modern forms of writing have reached `the point where they have liquidated those of magic' (ibid.: 336). Benjamin identi®es a link between mimesis and violence that stretches from the earliest forms of inscription to the latest technical reproduction of art. In `On Aesthetics', a short piece dating from 1936, he paints a vivid image of a possibly originary relationship between the two: It would be more emphatic than it ever has been up until now, to make fruitful for the early history of the arts the recognition, that the ®rst material to which the mimetic faculty applied itself is the human body . . . Perhaps the human from the stone-age sketches the elk so incomparably, only because the hand which leads the crayon still recalls the bow with which it shot the animal. (Benjamin, 1974±89: VI: 127 quoted by Hobby 1996: 270)20 Language and violence, politics and aesthetics, technology and war: in 1930s, the mimetic faculty returns as the repressed. In his 1930 `Theories of German Fascism', a review of Ernst Junger's collection of essays War and Warrior, Benjamin attacks the `boyish rapture that leads to a cult, to an apotheosis of war'. He fully acknowledges the `signi®cance of the economic causes of war', but adds that `one may say that the harshest, most disastrous aspects of imperialist war are in part the result of the

92

James Der Derian

gaping discrepancy between the gigantic power of technology and the minuscule moral illumination it affords'. He concludes that: `Any future war will also be a slave revolt of technology.' In a Berlin radio programme for children from the same period, he speaks of the origins of toys in the artisan workshop, as `miniature reproductions of everyday life' (Benjamin, quoted in Mehlman 1993: 4). With echoes of Freud, he elsewhere links the repetition of playing to the `domestication of trauma' (Benjamin, quoted in Mehlman 1993: 5). Toys, again are key: `Toys, even when not imitative of adult utensils, are a coming to terms, and doubtless less of the child with adults than of adults with him' (Benjamin, quoted in Mehlman 1993: 4). Benjamin's message is deeper and certainly more complex than critics who would dismiss modern warfare as `boys with toys'. But his study of mimesis does give the idea that we are performatively prepped for war from an early age with considerable philosophical depth.21 Benjamin challenges the hegemony of realism in international politics with several critical insights. The ®rst is obvious but often submerged by the ®rst wave of post-Cold War optimism: mimesis can reproduce and spread social perceptions of violence, which runs against current conceits that sociability alone might be a guarantee of progressivist, pluralistic, or, for all the rhetoric of `partners in peace', paci®stic communities. This is where Benjamin's warning and Marshall's planning deserve joint scrutiny. There is good reason, indeed, a necessity to go back to a world marked by totalitarianism, genocide, and revolution, if only to counter the current world view of Western leaders which propagates the virtual rhetorics of a democratic peace and globalization at a time when the majority of the world experiences a perpetuation of inequality, exploitation and what Virilio refers to as `endo-colonization' (Virilio 1998: 7,10 and 59). Second, Benjamin provides a timely reminder of the dangerous consequences, unintended as well as intended, of a realism that purports to be realistic, yet takes no account of differing realities, whether they are culturally, historically, virtually produced. This is where Benjamin's philosophical perspective provides a pragmatic advantage over Marshall's instrumental rationality. Traditional realism assumes, and through mimesis, asserts a sameness of motives, human nature, geopolitics. In contrast, Benjamin posits the importance of recognizing human alterity, and confronting it with imagination in politics. He deals perceptively with the sources of recurrent dangers in world politics, like the interrelationships of sovereignty, violence, nationalism, technology, and war, without recourse to the realist conceit of parsimony, which reduces all actors to single mimetic identity, the self-maximizing unit. While this `ideal' typology of human behaviour might grant the parsimonious realist an advantage in explaining simple events in a disinterested way, it leaves them at a loss when it comes to virtual forms of representation, complex social issues, transformative political moments, and crimes against humanity ± all of

Art of war and construction of peace

93

which have taken place over the last decade, all of which have de®ed the realist imagination (to the extent there can be said to be one). Third, Benjamin pursues these hard questions of human relations with the kind of theological, existential, even metaphysical re¯ections that one rarely if ever ®nds in IR theory. Paradoxically, he sounds and looks, again, like a pragmatist, if not a realist for it. For he is after the truth; not truth as a universal waiting to be deciphered or learned, but as the most powerful norm of the day, whose normalizing nature (to paraphrase Nietzsche22) has been hidden or forgotten ± at potentially great peril for the politics of their era as well as ours. The truth is not to be found in some Aristotelian via media, or through a Weberian disenchantment: surrounded by ambiguity, contingency, and uncertainty, the truth is to be attacked from the periphery, discerned from all, even the most oblique angles. But this is not an excuse for quietism. This is a politics of subjective perception and social construction based on decisiveness, which for Benjamin meant a willingness to decide on a course of action when confronted by paradox, especially those that arise between religious or moral observance and political obligations: I am speaking here of an identity that manifests itself solely in the paradoxical reversal of the one into the other (in whichever direction) and only under the indispensable precondition that each observance be carried out ruthlessly enough and radically in its own sense. The task here, therefore, is to decide, not once and for all, but in every moment. But to decide . . . To proceed always radically, never consistently in the most important matters. (Benjamin's letters, quoted in McCole 1993: 12) In our own shape-shifting `phase transition' between order and disorder (so far, the best non-mathematical description physicists have come up with for `complexity'), when rationalist methods appear inadequate, the temptation grows to use coercive interventions or technical ®xes to seemingly intractable problems of subjectivity, like immigration, ethnic cleansing, fundamentalist politics. In his own way, Benjamin warns us of the dangers that attend such efforts. He helps us to understand (in ways that rationalist methods do not) how a `social problem', like the role of the other in society, can suddenly escalate into a life-and-death `security issue'. By making ways of being and ways of knowing one and the same, Benjamin shows us how questions of violence are always already problems of identity. When a whole people become a `problem', violent ®nal solutions result. I invoke Benjamin's work, life, and times for more than heuristic reasons. Many of us come from safe or de-traumatized zones of living and learning, where we are tempted, even trained to ignore new dangers. We leave it to the Andrew Marshalls of the world, and, in the process, abdicate one of our primary intellectual obligations. The promise of peace comes with a

94

James Der Derian

dark side, that Zygmunt Bauman, a social theorist with intimate knowledge of these dangers, locates in the rationalist myth of modernity: None of the things that happened in this century were, however, more unexpected than Auschwitz and the Gulag, and none could be more bewildering, shocking and traumatic to the people trained, as we all have been, to see their past as the relentless and exhilarating progression of the ages of reason, enlightenment and emancipatory, liberating revolutions . . . What we learned in this century is that modernity is not only about producing more and travelling faster, getting richer and moving around more freely. It is also about ± it has been about ± fast and ef®cient killing, scienti®cally designed and administered genocide. (Bauman 1995: 193)

Interlocution poiesis Creative production, esp. of a work of art. 1971 G. Steiner In Bluebeard's Castle iii. 72 `The equivocations between poiesis ± the artist's, the thinker's creation ± and death. 1973 Matias & Willemen tr. Cegarra & Metz in Screen Spring/Summer 152 `Metz uses the term realism to characterise both types [of ®lmic modernity]: in the case of Godard, ``a copiously disorganised realism, a brilliant and euphoric avatar of poiesis''.'

What lies ahead? Internecine theory wars on the one side of the barricade, mimetic terror and inter-war on the other? It might seem tendentious ± especially at a time when world leaders and leading political theorists herald a coming epoch of democratic peace ± to invoke thinkers, concepts, and experiences drawn from an inter-war. At a diagnostic level, perhaps Marshall is right: are we not experiencing a similar acceleration of technological, social, and political change? In the last decade, there have been abrupt shifts not only in con®gurations of power, but also in what Benjamin referred to as radical breaks in `the structure of experience', that is, how we think about and represent change. Any answer, however, must recognize the real powers at the disposal of Marshall and the MIME to render any virtual prophecies `self-ful®lling.' We cannot ignore the of®cial mimetic actions that are currently underway to plot an uncertain future, i.e., the mimetic powers of military, diplomatic, and media simulations. Sold by their users as mere preparations for or representations of worst-case scenarios, they help to produce and delimit, through holistic training, hyperreal modelling, and potential negative synergy, the dangers and possibilities of the virtual future. Digitized, virtual wargames and peacegames, twice removed by scripted strategies and technological arti®ce from the bloody reality of war, take simulation into another realm. They take us to Jean Baudrillard's fractal

Art of war and construction of peace

95

turf of the hyperreal, where distinctions between the simulated and the real begin to break down. Baudrillard is willing to concede distinctions of a Baconian nature, stating: `To dissimulate is to feign not to have what one has. To simulate is to feign to have what one hasn't. One implies a presence, the other an absence' (Baudrillard 1983: 5). However, in societies suffused with virtual technologies, `the matter is more complicated, since to simulate is not simply to feign' (ibid.). Simulations produce real symptoms, hyperreal effects: `Thus, feigning or dissimulating leaves the reality principle intact: the difference is always clear, it is only masked; whereas simulation threatens the difference between ``true'' and ``false'', between ``real'' and ``imaginary'' ' (ibid.). Things get further complicated when `the real is no longer what it used to be' (ibid.: 12) ± an apposite description of post-Cold War attitudes ± and the power of simulation, magni®ed by a fear of the future or a nostalgia for a mythical past, comes to dominate all other forms of representation. It becomes, says Baudrillard, `a strategy of the real, neo-real, and hyperreal, whose universal double is the strategy of deterrence' (ibid.: 13) A neoliberal order, that ultimately relies on the cyber-deterrence of an overwhelming US superiority in military planning, logistics, and information technology, seems uncomfortably close to Baudrillard's simulacrum. Paul Virilio sheds similar light on the current shift of representation into what he calls the `virtual theatricalization of the real world': it has taken us from statistical management to electoral polls to video wars, until politics becomes a form of `cathodic democracy' (Virilio 1991). An obsessive media vigilance of behaviour combines with political correctness to transform democracy from an open participatory form of government into a software program for the entertainment and control of all spectators. Speed enhances a global `shrinking effect': `With acceleration there is no more here and there, only the mental confusion of near and far, present and future, real and unreal ± a mix of history, stories, and the hallucinatory utopia of communication technologies' (ibid.: 35). The coeval emergence of a mass media and an industrial army was the signifying moment of modernity, of a capability to war without war, producing `a parallel information market' of propaganda, illusion, dissimulation. However, technological accelerants like satellite link-ups, real-time feeds and high-resolution video threaten the power of television to dissimulate. Now the danger lies in the media's power to `substitute' realities. With the appearance of a global view comes the disappearance of the viewer subject: in the immediacy of perception, our eyes become indistinguishable from the camera's optics, and critical consciousness goes missing. In one of his signature, panoramic scans of contemporary society, Virilio early on captured the virtual effects of new media: In our situations of televisual experience, we are living in nothing less than the sphere of Einstein's relativity, which wasn't at all the case at

96

James Der Derian the time that he wrote it since that was a world of trolley cars, and at most the rocket. But today we live in a space of relativity and nonseparability. Our image of time is an image of instantaneity and ubiquity. And there's a stunning general lack of understanding of speed, a lack of awareness of the essence of speed . . . And this passage from an extensive to an intensive time will have considerable impact on all the various aspects of the conditions of our society: it leads to a radical reorganization both of our social mores and our image of the world. This is the source of the feeling that we're faced with an epoch in many ways comparable to the Renaissance: it's an epoch in which the real world and our image of the world no longer coincide. (Virilio 1991: 139±40)

Mimetic war might be phyllogenetic, ontogenetic, even autogenetic but it is not inevitable. A virtual approach in theory, a critical pluralism in new media, civic scrutiny of the MIME complex: together they might check the self-prophesying realism, which purports to re¯ect rather than reproduce reality. But this will only be possible if we foreground in all our investigations the virtual problematic, which opened this chapter: why, if we do indeed construct the world we live in, do we go on repeating so many of its crimes? Kierkegaard and theologians believe this not to be so much a problematic as a paradox that only faith can transcend. His advice is to accept the paradox and get on with it: It is the duty of the human understanding to understand that there are things which it cannot understand, and what those things are. Human understanding has vulgarly occupied itself with nothing but understanding, but if it would only take the trouble to understand itself at the same time it would simply have to posit the paradox. (Kierkegaard 1993: 1854 entry) But from classical times to our own, there has always been against and also within the mimetic powers of virtual technologies the productive force of poiesis. A deeper investigation of its creative powers would require a return to, among other works, Plato's myths in The Republic, Nietzsche's Twilight of the Idols, Heidegger's The Question Concerning Technology (1977), and Lacoue-Labarthe's Typography (Plato 1961: 395±7; Nietzsche 1968: 29± 41 and fn. 5 and 43). Out of time and space, I can only offer one potential way out of the mimetic inter-war through a virtual poiesis, as presented by the anthropologist Michael Taussig: History wreaks its revenge on representational security as essentialism and constructionism oscillate wildly in a death-struggle over the claims of mimesis to be the nature that culture uses to create a now-

Art of war and construction of peace

97

beleaguered second nature . . . It seems to me that the question of mimetic faculty tickles the heels of this upright posture and makes it interesting once again. With good reason postmodernism has relentlessly instructed us that reality is arti®ce yet, so it seems to me, not enough surprise has been expressed as to how we nevertheless get on with living, pretending ± thanks to the mimetic faculty ± that we live facts, not ®ctions. (Taussig 1993: xv) Taussig goes on to suggest that the Academy, that is, we, are rendered complicitous, as much by the shorthandedness of our critiques as by the shortsightedness of our imagination. The toxicity of the mainstream for creativity is of our own making: I think construction deserves more respect; it cannot be name-called out of (or into) existence, ridiculed and shamed into yielding up its powers. And if its very nature seems to prevent us ± for are we not also socially constructed? ± from peering deeply therein, that very same nature also cries out for something other than analysis as this is usually practiced in reports to our Academy. For in constructions place ± what? No more invention, or more invention? And if the latter, as is assuredly the case, why don't we start inventing? Is it because at this point the critic fumbles the pass and the `literary turn' in the social sciences and historical studies yields naught else but more meta-commentary in place of poesis, little by way of making new? (ibid.: xvi±ii) Not a bad place to end and to begin: exposing the dangers of mimesis, extolling the virtues of poeisis.

Acknowledgements This chapter has a pre-history of morphing through several close encounters. I'd like to thank all those who offered tough questions and critical comments at the Conference on International Norms and Security Problems at Hebrew University, Institute of Politics at Copenhagen University, Seminar on Ethics and International Affairs at Harvard University, the Current Research in International Theory Seminar at Brown University, the International Relations Theory seminar at Princeton University, and the Conference on Media and Social Perception at the Institute of Cultural Pluralism, Candido Mendes University, Rio de Janeiro. I am of course also grateful to those who offered only praise. Michael Degener helped me out on the theoria; Mick Dillon on the poeisis; and Ian Douglas on all things virtual.

98

James Der Derian

Notes 1 See, for example, the debate between the so-called techno-realists (http:// www.technorealism.org) clustered around Harvard University Law School's Berkman Center for the Internet and Society (http://cyber.law.harvard.edu), what I refer to as the techno-irenists, clustered around Wired magazine (http:// www.wired.com/wired/ and http://www.hotwired.com/). 2 This etymology is drawn from Martin Heidegger (1977), The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays; Costas Constantinou (1996), On the Way to Diplomacy and the always insightful suggestions of Michael Degener. 3 This de®nition and the description of the virtual which follow are a shorthand, highly condensed interpretation drawn from the work of Martin Heidegger, Gilles Deleuze, FeÂlix Guattari, Jacques Derrida, Pierre LeÂvy, and Paul Virilio. See Heidegger (1977); Deleuze (1968; 1988), and Deleuze and Guattari (1987); Derrida (1994); LeÂvy (1998); and Virilio (1998). 4 On the virtual and the real, Deleuze says: One question becomes pressing: what is the nature of this one and simple Virtual? . . . The possible has no reality (although it may have an actuality); conversely, the virtual is not actual, but as such possesses a reality . . . [The virtual] does not have to be realized, but rather actualized; and the rules of actualization are not those of resemblance and limitation, but those of difference or divergence and of creation . . . While the real is in the image and the likeness of the possible that it realizes, the actual, on the other hand does not resemble the virtuality it embodies. It is difference that is primary in the process of actualization ± the difference between the virtual from which we begin and the actuals at which we arrive, and also the difference between the complementary lines according to which actualization takes place. In short, the characteristic of virtuality is to exist in such a way that it is actualized by being differentiated and is forced to differentiate itself, to create its line of differentiation in order to be actualized. (Deleuze 1988: 96±7) See also Constantin Boundas (1996). 5 Heisenberg is worth quoting at length: When we speak of the picture of nature in the exact science of our age, we do not mean a picture of nature so much as a picture of our relationships with nature. The old division of the world into objective processes in space and time and the mind in which these processes are mirrored ± in other words, the Cartesian difference between res cogitans and res extensa ± is no longer a suitable starting point for our understanding of modern science. Science, we ®nd, is now focused on the network of relationships between man and nature, on the framework which makes us as living beings dependent parts of nature, and which we as human beings have simultaneously made the object of our thoughts and actions. Science no longer confronts nature as an objective observer, but sees itself as an actor in this interplay between man and nature. The scienti®c method of analysing, explaining and classifying has become conscious of its limitations, which arise out of the fact that by its intervention science alters and refashions the object of investigation. In other words, method and object can no longer be separated. The scienti®c worldview has ceased to be a scienti®c view in the true sense of the word. (The Physicist's Conception of Nature, Werner Heisenberg 1958, [1955]: 12±16, 28±9, 33±41)

Art of war and construction of peace

99

6 These are terms used by many constructivists to self-differentiate from similar approaches, as well as to claim the `modern', `soft' and `mediative'; `milder'; or more `conventional' middle ground in IR theory. See, respectively, Alexander Wendt (1995: 131±3, 153±5); Emanuel Adler (1997: 321±3, 333±7); Ronald Jepperson, Alexander Wendt, and Peter Katzenstein (1996: 33±75); Daniel Deudney (1996: 192±5) and Ted Hopf (1998). Dating back at least to Aristotle, the via media is hardly a novel move. However, earlier practitioners of it in the so-called `English School' of IR, like Martin Wight and Hedley Bull who advocated a `Grotian' approach over against `Kantian' or `Machiavellian' ones, recognized and advertised this gambit as an ethical preference ± especially when one takes into account the cultural, social, and economic diversity of international society ± no matter how others might dress it up as a neutral exercise in typological classi®cation. See Hedley Bull (Bull and Holbraad 1979: xiv, xxi) and Martin Wight (1991: 259, and especially 265, where he also distinguishes `soft' from `hard' versions of realism, rationalism, and revolution). See also Martin Wight's related claim ± `To describe either international revolution or power politics as ``normal'' is to make a statement of belief about the way international politics ought to go' (Wight 1979: 94). 7 As for testing constructivism by its ability to interpret or explain international politics, there is another obstacle: the singular tendency in IR to confuse causal links between theory and practice with the food chain of disciplinary schools of thought and proximity to powerful institutions (for prima facie evidence, see the ingratiating notes of acknowledgment which grace most IO or ISQ articles). 8 Two recent articles stand out in this regard: Ted Hopf, in one of the best overviews to date of constructivism, makes a virtue of its `heterogamous research approach: that is, it readily combines with different ®elds and disciplines' (Hopf 1998: 196); and Neta Crawford presents a persuasive case for a constructivist ethics in postmodern times (Crawford 1998). 9 The two early exceptions, by Nicholas Onuf and Friedrich Kratochwil, provide extensive, critical expositions of the precursors of constructivism in IR. The fact that they rely for the most part on legal philosophers and speech-act theorists, not a favoured analytic in North American IR, and favour agent-based over structural arguments, helps to explain their limited impact on the development of constructivism. See Onuf (1989) and Kratochwil (1989). 10 There has been an ongoing debate in poststructuralism on subjectivity and ethics, based on the work of Nietzsche, Bakhtin, Foucault, Levinas, Derrida, Rorty and others, in the political theory of Judith Butler, Wendy Brown and William Connolly; and in the international theory of David Campbell, Daniel Warner, and Jim George, among others. For a fuller account, see Der Derian (1997). 11 It also contains `The First Slogan of Constructivism': `Down with Speculative Activity in Artistic Labor!' ± one of my favourites (Bann 1974: 3342). 12 Andrew Marshall, interview, 21 June 1996. 13 In a footnote ± the only footnote ± in his most popular book, Strategy, Hart's contribution to the Salisbury Plain exercises is acknowledged: `The strategy and tactics of the Mongols are dealt with more fully in the author's earlier book Great Captains Unveiled ± which was chosen for the ®rst experimental Mechanized Force in 1927.' See Strategy (Hart 1974: 62). 14 To separate the hype from the hyperreality of virtual war, I have made many forays into the ®eld. I decided early on to forgo the public affairs machine of the Pentagon and to go where doctrine confronts reality (or, as my military handlers liked to put it, `where the rubber meets the road'). I travelled twice

100

James Der Derian

to Orlando to see military of®cers and corporate leaders show-case their information technology at the IT/SEC joint conferences on simulations; twice chased after the `Krasnovian Brigade' in a Humvee during digitized wargames at the Army National Training Center in the East Mojave desert; made a stop at the Central Command in Tampa to learn how computer gamers were busy programming the lessons of the Gulf War for the next war; rode in a tank simulator at Fort Knox and observed a distributed SimNet exercise in action; made a transatlantic visit to the Combat and Maneuvering Training Center in Hohenfels, Germany, to watch the First Armored Division `peacegame' their humanitarian intervention into Bosnia; spent three months researching possible historical parallels at the Bodleian Library in Oxford; entered X-File territory during a trip to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Virginia, to learn how the Synthetic Theater of War (STOW) was being created to integrate virtual, live and constructive simulations of war in real time; and went south again to Orlando, to visit STRICOM (Simulation, Training, and Instrumentation Command), the newest, and probably the most unusual command post in the military, as suggested by its motto, `All but war is simulation'. See Der Derian, Virtual War (virtually forthcoming). 15 The quote, from his 1961 Farewell Address, bears repeating at length: This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total in¯uence ± economic, political, even spiritual ± is felt in every city, every statehouse, every of®ce of the federal government . . . In the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted in¯uence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist . . . The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scienti®c research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scienti®c-technological elite. 16 Obviously, a comparative political economy with the inter-war needs to be done. But a virtual theory can provide a supplemental, comparative cultural economy, that is, a study of the how the exchange of signs, in particular, the treatment of money as a symbolic value, impinges on international politics. For instance, in a New York Times op-ed article published shortly after Wall Street plunged over 500 points this August, Ron Chernow suggests that the ubiquity of the stock market in popular culture is `a tell-tale sign' that it now `seems to drive the economy, not mirror it', which means that `we are headed for trouble' ± not unlike `the roaring market of the Jazz Age'. One does not have to travel far for evidence: on the same page, Mareen Dowd writes of how the media is providing `T.M.I.' ± `Too Much Information' ± about `America's twin obsessions ± money and sex', which `were captured most hilariously on Monday when CNN put a little stock ticker to the left of Trent Lott as he chastised Bill Clinton for diminishing the Presidency. It was impossible to focus on the majority leader's moral umbrage with the Dow plummeting 110 point right next to his helmet head.' See Chernow, `Hard-Charging Bulls and Red Flags', New York Times (2 September 1998), p. A31; and Dowd, `U.S.A. T.M.I.', New York Times (2 September 1998), p. A31. 17 One methodological note is required. My approach to virtual matters might be a bit thick on description and speculation, and thin on explanation, but I think

Art of war and construction of peace

101

that many of the new, protean forces that I am investigating are resistant to current models of explanation in the social sciences. The political theorist, William Connolly, contrasting the work of Deleuze to social scientists, puts it best in `The Liberal Image of the Nation' (unpublished essay, p. 18): Deleuze and Guattari are neither indeterminists nor causalists in the traditional sense. Their multicausualism projects a world of multiple, microcausal agents too dense in texture and multiple in shape to be captured by any theory simple enough to be explanatory. They are thus philosophers of intervention rather than explanation. It might also be useful, as a cautionary road sign for the trip ahead, to quote the rest of the paragraph: But many critics miss this point, asserting over and over, `Deleuze can't explain this . . . ' `Foucault fails to account for that . . . ', thereby defending a dubious model of explanation comparable in form to the monotheistic model of moral evaluation by inadvertently pointing to those who fail to live up to a model they actively resist. 18 For an excellent introduction to the concept, see Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wulf (1995). There is a wide range of literature on the subject, but my own interpretation of the history and persistent power of power of mimesis relies on the allusive work of Walter Benjamin on the mimetic faculty, Rene Girard (1977) on the relationship of mimetic desire to violence and the more analytical interpretation of mimesis and poeisis by Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe (1989). 19 Walter Benjamin (1974±89) `Das Kusntwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit'. I rely here on Jeneen Hobby's translation and interpretation of the `second version' of the essay (discovered by Gary Smith in the Max Horkheimer Archive in the 1980s and included in the collected works) since it includes the epilogue as well as material on mimetic theory which are missing from other versions. See Jeneen Hobby (1996). 20 Compare to an earlier, more general statement by Benjamin: `The gift to see similarities which we possess, is nothing else but a weak rudiment of that violent compulsion in former times to become similar and to behave similarly' (1974±89: II: 210). 21 Adorno, although critical of Benjamin's interpretation of mimesis, does acknowledge that `Art that seeks to redeem itself from semblance through play becomes sport' ± opening another important link to practices of war. See Aesthetic Theory p. 100, and Dialectic of Enlightenment, where he also links technologies of mimesis to fascism (Adorno 1997 and 1990). 22 Nietzsche's de®nition is worth quoting at length, since it foreshadows the power behind Benjamin's `mimetic faculty': Insofar as the individual wants to preserve himself against other individuals, in a natural state of affairs he employs the intellect mostly for simulation alone. But because man, out of need and boredom, wants to exist socially, herd-fashion, he requires a peace pact and he endeavors to banish at least the very crudest bellum omnium contra omnes from his world. This peace pact brings with it something that looks like the ®rst step toward the attainment of this enigmatic urge for truth . . . What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms ± in short, a sum of

102

James Der Derian human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and theoretically, and which after long use seem ®rm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.

See Friedrich Nietzsche (1976: 44), `On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense', in The Portable Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Penguin, 1976), p. 44.

References Adler, E. (1997) `Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics', European Journal of International Relations vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 319±63. Adorno, T. (1997) Aesthetic Theory, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Adorno, T. and Horkheimer, M. (1990) The Dialectic of Enlightenment, London: Continuum. Bann, S. (ed.) (1974) The Tradition of Constructivism, New York: Da Capo Press. Barnouw, E. (1966) A Tower in Babel: A History of Broadcasting in the United States, vol. I: to 1933, New York: Oxford University Press. Baudrillard, J. (1983) Simulations, New York: Semiotext(e). Bauman, Z. (1995) Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Morality, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Benjamin, W. (1930) `Theories of German Fascism: On the Collection Of Essays on War and Warrior edited by Ernst Junger', in Gesammelte Schriften, vol. III, ed. R. Teidemann and H. Schweppenhauser, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, pp. 238±50. Benjamin, W. (1974±89) `Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit', in Gesammelte Schriften I.2, ed. R. Teidemann and H. Schweppenhauser, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. ÐÐ (1978) `On the Mimetic Faculty', in E. Jephcott (ed.), Re¯ections, New York: Schocken. Bond, B. and Alexander, M. (1986) `Liddell Hart and De Gaulle: The Doctrines of Limited Liability and Mobile Defense', in G. Craig and F. Gilbert (eds) Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 598±623. Boundas, C. (1996) `Deleuze-Bergson: An Ontology of the Virtual', in P. Patton (ed.) Deleuze: A Critical Reader, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, pp. 81±106. Brik, O. (1974) `Whom is Lef Alerting', in S. Bann (ed.) The Tradition of Constructivism, New York: Da Capo Press, pp. 80±3. Bull, H. (1976/91) `Martin Wight and the Theory of International Relations', in G. Wight and B. Porter (eds) (1991) International Theory. Three Traditions. Martin Wight, London: Royal Institute of International Affairs, pp. ix±xxiii. Bull, H. and Holbraad, C. (eds) (1979) Power Politics, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.

Art of war and construction of peace

103

Bunker, R. (1998) Five-Dimensional (Cyber) War®ghting: Can the Army After Next be Defeated Through Complex Concepts and Technologies?, Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute. Carr, E.H. (1981) The Twenty Years Crisis 1919±1939, London: Macmillan. Chernow (1998) `Hard-Charging Bulls and Red Flags', New York Times, 2 September, p. A31. Connolly, W. `The Liberal Image of the Nation', unpublished essay. Constantinou, C. (1996) On the Way to Diplomacy, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press Crawford, N. (1998) `Postmodern Ethical Conditions and a Critical Response', Ethics and International Affairs vol. 12, pp. 121±41. Dabrowski, M. (1998) `Aleksander Rodchenko: Innovation and Experiment', in M. Dabrowski, L. Dickerman and P. Galassi (eds), Rodchenko, New York: Museum of Modern Art, pp. 19±49. Dabrowski, M., Dickerman, L. and Galassi, P. (eds) (1998) Rodchenko, New York: Museum of Modern Art. Deleuze, G. (1968) DiffeÂrence et ReÂpeÂtition, Paris: PUF. ÐÐ (1988) Bergsonism, trans. H. Tomlinson and B. Habberjam, New York: Zone Books. Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. B. Massumi, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Der Derian, J. (1995) `A Reinterpretation of Realism: Genealogy, Semiology and Dromology', in J. Der Derian (ed.) International Theory: Critical Investigations, New York: New York University Press, pp. 363±96. ÐÐ (1997) `Post-Theory: The Eternal Return of Ethics in International Relations', in M. Doyle and J. Ikenberry (eds), New Thinking in International Relations Theory, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 54±76. ÐÐ (ed.) (1998) Virilio Reader, Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers. ÐÐ (forthcoming) Virtual War. Derrida, J. (1994) Specters of Marx, trans. P. Kamuf, New York and London: Routledge. Deudney, D. (1996) `Binding Sovereigns: Authorities, Structures, and Geopolitics in Philadelphian Systems', in T. Biersteker and C. Weber (eds) State Sovereignty as Social Construct, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dowd, M. (1998) `U.S.A. T.M.I.', New York Times, 2 September, p. A31. Friedheim, D. and A. Wendt (1996) `Hierarchy under Anarchy: Informal Empire and the East German State', in T. Biersteker and C. Weber (eds) State Soveriegnty as Social Construct, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fukuyama, F. (1992) The End of History and the Last Man, London: Hamish Hamilton. Gabo, N. and Pevsner, A. (1974) `The Realistic Manifesto', in S. Bann (ed.) The Tradition of Constructivism, New York: Da Capo Press, pp. 3±10. Gebauer, G. and Wulf, C. (eds) (1995) Mimesis: Culture, Art and Society, trans. D. Reneau, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Girard, R. (1977) Violence and the Sacred, trans. P. Gregory, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Hart, B.H. (1925) Paris, or the Future of War, London: Kegan Paul & Co. ÐÐ (1974) Strategy, second revised edition, New York: Signet.

104

James Der Derian

Heidegger, M. (1977) The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. W. Lovitt, New York: Harper. Heisenberg, W. (1958, [1955]) The Physicist's Conception of Nature, trans. A.J. Pomerans, New York: Hutchinson & Co. Hobby, J. (1996), `Raising Consciousness in the Writings of Walter Benjamin', PhD dissertation, University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Hopf, T. (1998) `The Promise of Constructivism in International Relations Theory', International Security vol. 23, no. 1 (Summer 1998), pp. 171±200. Jepperson, R., Wendt, A. and Katzenstein, P. (1996) `Norms, Identity, and Culture in National Security', in P. Katzenstein (ed.) The Culture of National Security, New York: Columbia University Press. Kierkegaard, S. (1993) The Journals of Sùren Kierkegaard: A Selection, no. 1395, ed. and trans. by Alexander Dru, London: Collins. Kratochwil, F. (1989) Rules, Norms, and Decision, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Krugman, P. (1998) `Let's Not Panic ± Yet', New York Times, 30 August, p. 13. Lacoue-Labarthe, P. (1989) Typography: Mimesis, Philosophy, Politics, ed. C. Fynsk, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Lavrent'ev, A. (1998) `On Priorities and Patents', in M. Dabrowski, L. Dickerman and P. Galassi (eds), Rodchenko, New York: Museum of Modern Art, pp. 51± 61. LeÂvy, P. (1998) Becoming Virtual: Reality in the Digital Age, trans. R. Bononno, New York and London: Plenum. McCole, J. (1993) Walter Benjamin and the Antimonies of Tradition, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Mehlman, J. (1993) Walter Benjamin for Children: An Essay on his Radio Years, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nietzsche, F. (1968) Twilight of the Idols, trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Harmondsworth: Penguin. ÐÐ (1976) `On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense', in ed. and trans. W. Kaufmann, The Portable Nietzsche, New York: Penguin. Onuf, N. (1989) World of Our Making, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press. Perrow, C. (1981) `Normal Accident at Three Mile Island', Society, no. 18, pp. 17± 26. Plato (1961) The Republic, Book III trans. P. Shorey, (ed.) E. Hamilton and H. Cairns, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Schmemann, S. (1998) `How Can You Have Bust if You Never Had a Boom?', New York Times Magazine, 27 December, p. 28. Sciolino, E. (1998) `Dear Mr. President: What to Do in Moscow', New York Times, 30 August, p. 11. Taussig, M. (1993) Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses, New York: Routledge. Tickner, A. (1992) Gender in International Relations, New York: Columbia University Press. ÐÐ (1996) `Identity in International Relations Theory: Feminist Perspectives', in Y. Lapid and F. Kratochwil (eds), The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Time Magazine, 27 April 1998, vol. 151, no. 16.

Art of war and construction of peace

105

USA Today (1997) `Cybersoldiers Test Weapons of High-Tech War', 6 March. Virilio, P. (1989) War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception, trans. Patrick Camiller, New York: Verso. ÐÐ (1991) Art and Philosophy, Milan: Giancarlo Politi Editore. ÐÐ (1998) `Critical Space', in J. Der Derian (ed.) The Virilio Reader, Oxford and Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers. Wendt, A. (1995) `Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics', in J. Der Derian (ed.) International Theory: Critical Investigations, New York: New York University Press. Wight, M. (1979) Power Politics, eds H. Bull and C. Holbraad, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. ÐÐ (1991) International Theory: The Three Traditions, eds G. Wight and B. Porter, Leicester and London: Leicester University Press.

5

Sovereignty, anarchy and law in Europe When legal norms turn into political facts Marlene Wind Europe is a forest of symbols. It is the name of a place, the name of a past, the name of subjectivity. For those of us who live within the European symbol-forest, our imagination is hardly powerful enough to see Europe as a totality, to objectify our passionate subjectivity. Those who see us from the outside see our extraordinary achievements ± all the good we have done, all the evil we have done ± and they must wonder what the word Europe symbolizes, what possible totality could integrate such a place, such a past, such a subjectivity. (Allott 1997: 439)

Introduction Common to conventional theories in sociology, law and political science lies the question of how order may come about in a system with no central authority. We are, in other words, confronted with some version of the well-known Hobbesian dogma that for order to exist you need a hierarchical coercive structure to keep it all in awe: `where there is no common power, there is no law' (Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter 13. Here cited from Bull 1977: 129). Implicit in this assertion is that it becomes close to impossible to conceive of systems where several authoritative orders `rule' at the same time or where competencies are overlapping and perhaps even dif®cult to locate. You either have law or no law ± order or anarchy. In international relations, whether in older or newer versions of the theoretical mainstream, this contention is well known. Following Kenneth Waltz, only two types of political structure are available: society can either be anarchically or hierarchically organized ± there is no in-between. When applied to the European integration process, sovereignty can be `pooled' but it cannot be divided (Keohane and Hoffmann 1991). But international relations specialists are not alone. For law and legal theory the idea of overlapping authoritative structures and competencies is equally highly problematic. Traditionally, for law to be `true' law, it would need either a sovereign commander capable of enforcing his will on his sub-

Sovereignty, anarchy and law in Europe

107

ordinates, or as in the newer versions of legal positivism, a rule-hierarchy specifying the validity of different rules in relation to each other (Hart 1961; Kelly 1992; MacCormick 1993, 1995). Because international law does not have such qualities it is understood as a system of horizontal norms that exists as law because states have voluntarily agreed to abide by them ± either through explicit consent or silently by accepting established practice. It is with this background that the development of European Community law the past 30±40 years becomes highly interesting. Even though the EC originally was and formally still is based on traditional international law, the unprecedented transformation of the original treaties of Rome into some kind of semi-hierarchical constitution has come to pose a fundamental theoretical puzzle to international lawyers as well as international relations specialists. It simply does not ®t into our conventional categories for political organization. One of the puzzling things about this `constitutionalizing process' (Weiler 1991) and the European Court's (in the following I use the term `the Court' for the ECJ) role herein, is that it came about only gradually and almost unnoticed. Or to put it less bluntly, it emerged without ordinarily constitutional amendment and thus without any deliberate consent of the Member States. However, the structural process has turned out to be as important as any treaty revision undertaken at one of the Community's intergovernmental conferences (Weiler 1994: 516). What has struck many observers is the way in which the European Court by inventing doctrines of `direct applicability', `supremacy', `pre-emption' and `exclusivity' with intrusive effects for the legal orders of the Member States, gradually established a governance system of sub- and super-ordination that signi®cantly limits national autonomy. It is important to note already at this point, that the success of the European Court to foster such a novel legal order rests not just with its own legal and discursive innovativeness, but just as much on its ability to convince the national courts and judges of the inevitability of such a new legal hierarchy. Because the constitutional transformation has not and is not within the reasonable future likely to turn the Community into a new territorial supra-state, we are in fact envisaging a European governance system never seen previously in the modern period. We are confronted with an order of functionally overlapping authorities which fundamentally compromises the Westphalian model where sovereignty is de®ned by territoriality and power and not least by having no higher political authority above it (Jackson 1997: 35; Ruggie 1992). We could join Weiler in calling the constitutional transformation of Europe a `Quiet Revolution' (Weiler 1994). Not only because for a long time it went unnoticed by the governments of the Community, but because political scientists have paid just as little attention to the power of European

108

Marlene Wind

law as they traditionally have to international law. Or as I have argued elsewhere, applying a constructivist approach to the otherwise traditional political science study of integration, in privileging `actors', i.e. the Member States and their negotiations in the Council, the important element of `structure' ± i.e. legal structure ± has been omitted (Wind 1996, 1998a). What came out of this was a very partial understanding of European integration. It would be wrong to say that the Member States were completely apathetic to the creation of a supranational compliance regime. On numerous occasions they completely opposed the Court's rulings and thereby its constitutional doctrines (see Burley and Mattli 1993; Rasmussen 1986, 1998; see generally Slaughter et al. 1998). However, because the national courts (in particular the lower national courts) so vigorously enforced Community law in their own legal orders, the Member States found themselves unable to do much about it. Despite their obvious reluctance for what was going on, the Member States thus gradually endogenized the new rules of the game carved out by the European Court in its expanding and path-breaking case law. The aim of this chapter is twofold. First, it demonstrates how the European transformation confronts the Westphalian vision of law, power and sovereignty as we have known it in this part of the world for the past half millennium. Second, the chapter looks at the consequences of the constitutional revolution for our traditional categories of power, sovereignty, law and Europe more broadly. As regards power, we thus have to shift our focus away from power as capability towards a conception of power as legitimacy. Whereas conventional IR theory sees power in the European integration process as something played out in the grand bargains in the Council, this methodology simply cannot grasp this much more subtle struggle over the Community's basic constitutional rules (Wind 1997). This understanding clearly also links power to sovereignty and law in the sense that the changing division of competencies between different authoritative bodies in Europe, can be traced to the way law and new legal sources over a certain time period are applied, legitimized and accepted in ordinary political discourse (Zahle 1986: 752). Before we get more into some of the doctrinal details, however, we will have brie¯y to confront how traditional IR approaches have analysed European integration and in particular the European Courts role in the process. At the core of this question lies the concept of sovereignty and the way it has functioned to structure the discourse about change (or lack thereof ) in the traditional IR literature.

Sovereignty non-divided One either has to take seriously that the state is only limited by its own will; but in that case there will be no real limits, no real international law. Or one

Sovereignty, anarchy and law in Europe

109

will have to embrace completely, the restrictions of international law. However, in that case the state will be bound by things beyond its own free will and will in that case not be `absolutely sovereign'. (Ross 1942, author's translation from Danish)

The idea of sovereignty as something that cannot be divided among several authorities in the same time and space bears long traces in the history of the European state system (for an exellent elaboration of this, see Bartelson 1995). The founder of the modern concept of sovereignty, Jean Bodin was presumably the ®rst in 1576, to note that `La Souverainete est la puissance absolue et perpeÂtuelle d'une ReÂpublique' (Bodin 1576). However, if sovereignty is absolute, indivisible and eternal, a phenomenon like `law beyond the state' comes to imply nothing but morality `set by general opinion', as John Austin once put it (1832/1954: 347). In other words, law beyond the state cannot be `real' law (Manning 1972: 307; Nardin 1983: 116).1 This conception of the national/international divide has, as we all know, become almost identical with the international relations ®eld (Walker 1993). However, when law is built on nothing but consent, the question remains whether such voluntary law can be considered truly binding at all? Or as David Kennedy has noted: `while the notion that a positivist sovereign could not be bound without his consent eliminated the possibility of a naturalist scheme, no theorist satisfactory explained why a sovereign could be bound with his consent' (1980: 380). As this by now conventional understanding of the state as a kind of pre-given entity gained general acceptance, it turned international law into the immanent negation of municipal law and the so-called `domestic analogy' (Bull 1966) came to emphasize exactly what the international realm was not (ibid.; Kratochwil 1989: 2). International relations realists after the Second World War repeated this scheme. To Morgenthau ± the alleged father of the IR discipline and himself a lawyer by training ± the indivisibility of sovereignty was beyond dispute. In his seminal `Politics Among Nations' from 1946, he called the idea that sovereignty was divisible: `the last and perhaps the most important misunderstanding in the modern world' (Morgenthau (1946) 1985: 341). For the realist, in other words, the sovereignty/anarchy dichotomy became two sides of the same coin. That sovereignty cannot be divided is simply a logical consequence of the fact that anarchy is an ordering principle in the international system. As Mearsheimer spells out: [A]narchy as employed by realists has nothing to do with con¯ict; rather it is an ordering principle, which says that the system comprises independent political units (states) that have no central authority above them. Sovereignty, in other words inheres in states, because there is no higher ruling body in the international system. There is no `government over governments'. (1995: 10)

110

Marlene Wind

But what happens if this de®nitive logic is transferred to the current European integration process and in particular the constitutional transformation as sketched brie¯y in the introduction? It would here be selfcontradictory even to suggest that states voluntarily should have accepted the emergence of a new authoritative compliance structure at the European level. As realist IR scholars keep repeating ± sovereignty might have been `pooled' but it cannot be divided. Inherent in this intergovernmentalist position is the idea that the European Community amounts to little more than ordinary diplomacy and, roughly speaking, evolves or devolves as Member States ®nd bene®cial. This thesis was ®rst explicitly articulated in the mid-1960s by Stanley Hoffmann who drew this conclusion on the basis of De Gaulle's empty chair policy and the Luxembourg compromise in 1965±66. Hoffmann had little sympathy with the neofunctionalism of Haas, Lindberg and Scheingold, among several others, writing in the 1950s and 1960s. What the neofunctionalists predicted was an inevitable hollowing of Member State sovereignty as the integration project matured and as ordinary people and interest groups saw some evident economic advantages of the European project. Hoffmann was not impressed. Member States would, he argued, only surrender power to an international body if they deliberately decided no longer to put `essential interests of the nation' above particular interests of certain categories of nationals' ± i.e. those of elites, interests groups and so on (Hoffmann 1966: 884), a development that Hoffmann did not consider very likely, nor was it as he sensed, to be wished for. The same line of argument has been echoed by what one without hesitation can call the most in¯uential American IR scholars of European integration in the 1980s and 1990s, such as Andrew Moravcsik, Geoffery Garrett and Barry Weingast, and Robert Keohane and Stanley Hoffmann. What makes these writers of particular interest in this context is that they have attempted ± from a traditional IR perspective ± to make sense of the legal/institutional development of the Community. According to their narratives, there has been no or only very insigni®cant empowerment of supranational structures as the integration process has evolved and there has been no diffusion of competencies over time. National governments, it is argued, remain in ®rm control and their sovereignty has not in any important way been undermined by institutional processes. Or as historian Alan Milward is happy to note: `Political science seems increasingly to accept that any theoretical explanation of European integration should start from and perhaps be con®ned to those areas of state activity which used to be called ``die grosse Politik''' (Milward 1997: 6). Power equals high politics.

The `treaty perspective' and European legal integration In a recent article on the EU legal order, the German attorney Theodor Schilling, notes that: `The single most far-reaching, and probably most

Sovereignty, anarchy and law in Europe

111

disputed principle of the European Community and of the European Union is its claim to a legal order autonomous from the Member State Law' (Schilling 1996: 389). The ECJ's assertion that the `EEC Treaty has created its own legal system' in the international system was ®rst promoted in the Costa case2 from 1964 which in practical terms subordinated Member State law to the supremacy of Community law. In doing so, the Court deliberately distanced itself from its original international law basis where the Member States as `Herren der VertraÈge' are seen as the dominant players in the integration process. Because the Court at the conclusion of the Treaty of Rome was given the competence to review the Community's legislative acts through Art. 177, it thus ®nds itself much closer to that of a constitutional than an ordinary international court. Traditionalists obviously reject this interpretation, however. They ®rst and foremost direct our attention to the fact that the Community is based on an ordinary international treaty between sovereign states. The Community never had a formal constitution. The law obtaining between states in the Community can accordingly best be characterized as international ± and not constitutional, federal or municipal law. This is congruent with the picture of Community as based on traditional diplomacy. Paul Taylor has noted the following: It is vital to recognize that the regional arrangements rest on an international treaty ± in the case of the European Community, the Treaty of Rome ± which has validity because of its acceptance according to the different constitutional arrangements of the separate states. This document is not a constitution and there is absolutely no reason to suppose that it is different from any other international treaty in its implications for the rights of states with regard to its abandonment or avoidance. For instance, unlike constitutions it can only be amended on the basis of the unanimous consent of all signatories . . . it remains possible for each state to negate the effect of any of the laws of the Community within its frontiers and to withdraw altogether from the system . . . [A]s long as the Community rests upon a Treaty, and not a constitution, it is very dif®cult to see how the legal or constitutional situation could ever be taken beyond this point. (1991: 121, my emphasis) Following this narrative, in other words, changes in the Community's constitutional structure can be reduced to formal treaty revisions decided on the conclusion of intergovernmental conferences. Developments as a result, for instance, of changed ideas, norms and practices by the national courts or administrative agencies in their interpretation and implementation of Community norms are not considered relevant. The treaty character itself is thus expected to provide the Member States with a large amount of

112

Marlene Wind

discretion over the institutional development, as Hurrell and Menon point out: [T]he treaty basis allows member states to isolate some areas of policy from the ambit of the EU, limiting the power of the supranational institutions over them, as they did with the creation of the pillared structure in the treaty on the European Union. Treaty evolution can occur without reference to past agreements. While constitutional amendments require attention to be paid to previous developments, new developments can be quite separate, as with the signing of the European Union quite apart from the Treaty of Rome. This clearly endows member states with a large degree of control over institution-building. (Hurrell and Menon 1996: 391, my emphasis) This contention is, however, more than problematic when looking at the speci®c structure and development of European Community law. As opposed to traditional international agreements, there are `material limits' to revision of the Community treaties (de Witte 1996). The acquis communautaire has to be respected and the unanimity requirement to treaty changes makes it extremely dif®cult for the Member States to agree on, for instance, cutting back institutional power once it has become institutionalized and functioned over a certain period of time (see de Witte 1994: 312±13; 1998). From an intergovernmentalist viewpoint the European Court of Justice was meant to function as nothing but a neutral and voluntarily installed surveillance institution that in the interests of the Member States was given certain limited powers to monitor transgressors of EC law and regulation in relation to the establishment of the internal market (Garrett 1992: 533, 558; 1995; Garrett and Weingast 1991; Moravcsik 1993: 513). What intergovernmentalists forget, however, are the actual effects of the crucial doctrines of direct effect and supremacy. The doctrines not only make European law `the highest law of the land' but equally make regulations and many directives directly applicable in the legal orders of the Member States ± that is, without any previous national legislative involvement.3 To intergovernmentalists, the entire body of Community doctrines, rules and norms is of little importance and easily decomposable should they no longer serve the expectations of those who once installed them. But are states really able to manipulate Community law in the same way as they have often manipulated international law? As we are to see below, Community law has in the preceding forty years developed so far away from its original international law foundations, that this is a highly questionable contention.

Sovereignty, anarchy and law in Europe

113

The recourse to law In the remaining part of this chapter I will try to illustrate how problematic the traditional `Westphalian' perspective is when looking at normative transformation of Europe over the past decades. I will, as promised earlier, also look at some of the consequences of this for how we should go about studying sovereignty and integration in Europe. It will be argued that not only does law have a logic of its own that is almost intractable from a conventional power analysis approach, but the constitutional transformation has also gone much further than what was (and perhaps still is) the original intention of the Member States (see Wind 1996; 1998). It is, to put it bluntly, illusionary to believe that `actors' (the Member States) always will be able to control the `structure' (i.e. the constitutional development). Or to phrase it in a constructivist terminology, agency and structure are mutually constitutive and over time interaction will always produce effects that were never anticipated at the outset (Wind 1998: 164±5). Because the evolution of institutional processes as well as normative ideas often will be extremely dif®cult if not impossible to `master', they may over time be endogenized by those very actors whose initial mission it was to preserve sovereignty and independence (see also Pierson 1996). But how did it look when it all started? The founding document of the European communities was, as we all know, nothing but a `treaty' like many others in international law. However, although it has been ignored by most IR theorists, Community law, norms, rules and institutional practices have changed the character of the Community and thus its state-tostate relations as these evolved from the 1960s onwards. It is true that there have been very few formal changes in the legal status of the original documents, but when looking at the degree of Community law penetration into the domestic spheres of the Member States, the effects have gone far beyond what one would normally attribute to international agreements. It is crucial to stress that the degree of formal Community regulation only captures the tip of the iceberg. Still, formal regulation alone has in its effects, and especially in its overall positive reception among national courts and administrative agencies, contributed to a gradual transformation of the status and legitimacy of Community norms at all levels. The transformation has thus `nationalized Community obligations and introduced on the Community level the habit of obedience and respect for the rule of law which traditionally is less associated with international obligations than national ones' (Weiler 1991: 2421±2; author's emphasis). With speci®c reference to traditional IR narrative of the integration process, Weiler summarizes the paradox of this gradual `habit of obedience' in the following manner:

114

Marlene Wind Although the governments of the member states of the European Community (EC) have always had a principal role in fashioning EC policies and norms, from the 1960s through the 1980s the European Court of Justice played a key role in imposing a compliance regime with these norms that has resembled in its structure and rigor the constitutional order of a federal state. To an extent unprecedented in other international organizations, states have found themselves locked into this regime and unable to enjoy the more common international legal compliance latitude. Interestingly, member state courts, legislatures, and governments seemed, by and large, to accept the new constitutional regime `imposed' by the European Court with a large measure of equanimity ± a veritable `quiet revolution'. (Weiler 1994: 510)

From treaty to constitution If we take a short glance at the original Treaty of Rome it soon becomes clear that even though the founding fathers were `determined to lay the foundations of an ever closer union of the European people', the treaties resembled most of all a traditional international law agreement concluded among sovereign states (de Witte 1996; Schilling 1996; Weiler 1991: 2413; Weiler and Haltern 1996: 419; Wyatt 1982).4 The Treaty contained at least one very explicit `sovereignty-protecting' principle, the so-called principle of enumerated powers (Art. 4) which was meant to secure (a) that institutions should act within the limits of their power and; (b) that all laws issued by the Community should originate directly in the Treaty. There was, in other words, nothing in the original texts which anticipated the development of a case law-based constitutional system as has been the actual result of thirty years of practice by the European Court of Justice.5 As Hjalte Rasmussen has put it: `Few, if any, of the founding fathers of the European Community . . . who drafted the Paris and Rome Treaties thought they were participating in constitutional conventions' (1992: 1). What the founders of the Community thought they were doing was, in Rasmussen's words: negotiating treaties featuring a limited number of real departures from well-established canons of international law. Over time, however, the Treaties, in particular the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community [`EEC Treaty'], metamorphosed into constitutional texts. Admittedly, they never acquired that quality in any formal sense but rather as a matter of substance, they increasingly occupy the same function in the Community's legal order as constitutions do in states, federal or otherwise. (ibid.)

Sovereignty, anarchy and law in Europe

115

It would thus not be far wrong, at least initially, to adopt an international law and thereby also intergovernmental interpretation of the founding of the European Community. However, an initial international law interpretation tells us only little about the actual development of the EU legal system. Over a period of thirty years the European Court developed a number of constitutionalizing doctrines and general principles of law that were not written in the treaties or anywhere else but which came to function, as Hartly has bluntly put it, to `cloak the nakedness of juridical law-making' (1981: 119). Nothing in the Treaty of Rome talked about the highly unusual situation that citizens could have rights directly deducible from an international agreement, nor was there any indication that EC law in due time should be supreme to national law and even to national constitutions. Neither did the original documents contain any legal basis for national courts to accept the supremacy principle unconditionally just to use it against their own governments. These are, nevertheless, just a few examples of the actual consequences of the ECJ's practice over the past four decades. Whereas the political climate in the Council in the 1960s was increasingly fragmentary and almost anti-integrationist (the most well-known crisis being de Gaulle's empty chair policy, leading in 1966 to the Luxembourg compromise), the legal sphere moved quietly but nevertheless decisively in a semi-federal direction (Weiler 1981; Wind 1998a). The ®rst and probably most decisive step from international to constitutional law originates in two ECJ judgments from the early 1960s (direct effect and supremacy of Community law). I will focus on these two judgments only in this short elaboration, primarily because they have been characterized as the two most path-breaking when it comes to establishing a hierarchical relationship between the Community and its members and because they illustrate the powerful discourse of the ECJ in direct confrontation with several Member State governments. The two judgments demonstrated, as Pierre Pescatore, a now former ECJ judge has argued, that the judges at the court had ``une certaine ideÂe de l'Europe' of their own (Pescatore 1983: 157). There is thus little doubt that the Court already in these early judgments sought to place itself as the ®nal arbiter of law within the Community system. While this self-reliance may invoke little surprise, it has clearly been more puzzling to observers that the Court managed to convince the national courts of this as well. The ®rst doctrine which established direct effect of Community law in the national legal orders is the Van Gend case from 1963.6 The other was the Costa case from 1964 which instituted the supremacy doctrine, making all Community law with direct effect supreme vis-aÁ-vis national legislation even for national legislation enacted after the entering in force of the international agreement. When compared to traditional international law this is a revolutionary invention. The classical principle of `parliamentarian

116

Marlene Wind

sovereignty' has thus until now automatically granted states the privilege of being able to trump already accepted international conventions through ordinary parliamentary acts. With the acceptance of the supremacy clause, this is no longer possible. Supreme Community law will be the highest law of the land no matter what any given parliament later may think of it. Making Community law directly effective in the Member States Seen from a non-legal point of view the cases that established some of the Community's most important principles looked rather harmless when they ®rst surfaced. The Van Gend case, for instance, dealt with what seemed to be some rather tedious technicalities related to customs duties on imports to The Netherlands. In the same vein the Costa case featured an Italian lawyer who refused to pay a ridiculously small electricity bill because he thought that the national government had illegally nationalized an electricity plant in which he was a share-holder. The Van Gend case appeared when the customs union was not yet implemented and at a time when the internal tariffs between the Member States were still not abolished (Pescatore 1974: 92). The legal basis for the Court's judgment in the case was Art. 12 of the EEC Treaty which prohibited Member States from increasing customs duties on imports from other Member States: Member States shall refrain from introducing between themselves any new customs duties on imports or exports or any charges having equivalent effect, and from increasing those which already apply in their trade with each other.' More speci®cally the case concerned a Dutch ®rm which imported chemicals from the German Federal Republic and which was confronted with a customs duty of 8 per cent by the Dutch authorities on these speci®c imports. The authorities taxed the imports by reclassifying it in accordance with a so-called `Benelux protocol' at a time when the Treaty of Rome and thereby Art. 12 had obviously already come into effect. The Dutch importer objected to the reclassi®cation, arguing that the higher tax was an infringement of Art. 12 and sued the Dutch tax administration before a Dutch administrative tribunal, the Tariefcommissie. The Dutch tribunal was unsure how to handle the complaint and decided to try to use the Rome Treaty's new Art. 177 which allowed a national court, on behalf of an ordinary law-suit by an EC citizen, to ask the ECJ for its interpretation of a national regulation's compatibility with Community law. The Tariefcommissie wanted to know whether Art. 12 of the Treaty actually had `direct effect' within the territory of a Member State. If answered in the positive, it wanted to know whether this would make it possible for a citizen to claim legal rights on it that a national court was expected to protect. Before we proceed to the concrete Court ruling itself, it might be of interest to ®nd out how the national governments involved reacted to the fact that a lower Dutch court on behalf of a citizen made a reference to the

Sovereignty, anarchy and law in Europe

117

ECJ. The interesting thing here is clearly that those governments we normally conceive of as inherently pro-integrationist, The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany, all objected strongly to this juridical review mechanism. Even though the alleged purpose of the Art. 177 procedure was to ensure a uniform implementation of rules throughout the Community, the governments in question all refused to take anything but a classical international law approach to the matter and thus to the Rome Treaty as such. They argued that compliance or non-compliance with the agreement was an entirely intergovernmental matter in which neither national courts nor individual citizens should bother to interfere. The governments argued that the only acceptable remedy available against treaty infringements was Art. 169±170 of the Rome Treaty where only the Commission or a Member State was allowed to put a charge against another Member State (Rasmussen 1986: 248). Individuals had no role to play in international affairs, it was argued. But, could one ask, had the Member States not themselves endorsed Art. 12 and indeed agreed to the review procedure when signing the Treaty of Rome? Were they not themselves eager to establish a single market with no internal borders? The governments deliberately ignored this question and instead came up with a rather emotional and certainly non-legal response, holding that the case could: `not be referred to the Court of Justice by a national court under Art. 177 lest ``the legal protection'' of the state be ``considerably diminished''' (Stein 1981: 5). Quite clearly, national sovereignty was at stake here. The argument didn't stop there, however, for the Member States went on to argue that even if the Art. 177 reference was possible, the case in question concerned the implementation of international law into Dutch internal law which had to follow traditional rules of incorporating international obligations into national legal orders. Even before the Court came up with its ruling on the matter, in other words, the governments had bluntly rejected that the ECJ could have any say in judging Treaty infringements when the complaint came from an individual channelled through a lower national court. All in all this demonstrates that the Member States had not envisaged the implications of what they agreed to when signing Art. 12 of the Rome Treaty. At the end of the day, however, neither the Commission nor the ECJ accepted the Member States' interpretation. The Advocate General, on the other hand, whose job it is independently to comment on ongoing cases before the Court, seemed to be more on the side of the Member States. He admitted that there clearly was some ambiguity as regards the formal status of EU law as international law and as to whether Art. 12 was supposed to have direct effect or not (Stein 1981: 5±7). The Commission was clearly much more pro-integrationist, arguing that if the ECJ did not allow review of Member State statutes in cases raised by private litigants, individual rights would have no protection under Community law in cases

118

Marlene Wind

where a Member State had infringed the Treaty (ibid.: 5). But what did the Court itself argue to what the judges referred to in making their point? The Court to a large extent endorsed the Commission's pro-integrationist view, but chose primarily to focus more modestly on the question of how treaties concluded among sovereign states under certain circumstances can create direct effect in national legal orders and thereby establish both rights and obligations for nationals. On closer inspection, however, the Court seemed to accept the governments' view in admitting that the Community was based on a traditional international treaty: `To ascertain whether the provisions of an international treaty extend so far in their effects, it is necessary to consider the spirit, the general scheme and the wording of those provisions.' After having accepted the general international law characteristics of the Treaty, the Court went on to say that: The objective of the EEC Treaty, which is to establish a Common Market, the function of which is of direct concern to interested parties in the Community, implies that this Treaty is more than an agreement which merely creates mutual obligations between the contracting states. This view is also con®rmed by the preamble to the Treaty which refers not only to governments but to peoples. It is also con®rmed more speci®cally by the establishment of institutions endowed with sovereign rights, the exercise of which affects Member States and their citizens. (My emphasis) Here the Court clearly departs from a clear-cut international law interpretation by arguing that the treaty is more than an ordinary agreement between sovereign states. It is also a treaty of the people. The Court then moves on to defend explicitly the preliminary ruling system and the national courts' obligation to refer cases to the ECJ by stressing (a) that the entire purpose of this exercise has to do with accomplishing a uniform interpretation of the treaties in all Member States; and (b) that the Member States must have known and accepted the review system and the national courts' role herein when adopting Art. 177 provision and the Treaty in the ®rst place. The Court therefore concluded that: the Community constitutes a new legal order of international law for the bene®t of which the states have limited their sovereign rights, albeit in limited ®elds, and the subject of which comprise not only Member States, but also their nationals. Independent of the legislation of Member States, Community law therefore not only imposes obligations on individuals but is also intended to confer upon them rights which become part of their legal heritage. These rights arise not only where they are expressly granted by the Treaty, but also by reason of obligations which the Treaty imposes in a clearly de®ned way upon

Sovereignty, anarchy and law in Europe

119

individuals as well as upon Member States and upon the institutions of the Community. (My emphasis) It is impossible at this point to go into all the legal and political implications of this by now famous judgment. It is, however, safe to say that the Court differentiated itself from traditional international law even though it ± at least at this stage ± does preserve a reference to international law. Saying that the Treaty creates rights for individuals that become part of their legal heritage is, however, an important point to hold on to. The entire idea that international treaty obligations should be able to produce effects for ordinary citizens is unheard of in traditional international law even where the international obligation itself is intended to produce such effects. As Weiler has made clear: `the individual cannot invoke the international obligation before national courts, unless internal constitutional or statutory law, to which public international law is indifferent provides for such a remedy' (1991: 2414). Or to put it differently, normally an international treaty would need to be transplanted into national law by a parliamentary statute before it would have any effect for individuals. This implies that in international law, citizens and ®rms will never be able to base legal rights directly on an agreement entered into by the `true' subjects of international law: sovereign states. The new and interesting thing about the Van Gend case is exactly that this principle has now been broken. This does not mean that we are dealing with an innovation in international law but rather that Community law is no longer international law (Haltern and Weiler 1996). Turning Community law into the superior law of the land in the Member States In Van Gend the ECJ proclaimed the Community legal system to constitute `a new legal order of international law'. The Court was, however, not at all happy with being categorized as `just' another International Court and less than one year later in the Costa case the Court ± discursively ± at least changed its own legal status by dropping the word `international', now arguing that the Member States by adopting the EEC Treaty had `created its own legal system' different from `ordinary international treaties'. European law from this time on is no longer to be considered law which merely functions between like units, nor is it simply the aggregate of the national legal orders of the Member States. The Costa case confronted some of the highly delicate unresolved problems in the Van Gend case, namely, what one should do if one found national legislation directly con¯icting with an already existing Community regulation. Which would win? In traditional international law there would be little doubt. Due to the principle of parliamentary sovereignty, a national

120

Marlene Wind

statute would always be able to overrule an international agreement. With the Costa case, however, this is no longer possible. It says that Community law is superior no matter what a national parliament might come up with later in time. One can say that whereas in Van Gend the Court did not go all the way to establishing itself as a new hierarchical authority with the ®nal say in cases of con¯ict, this was exactly what happened in the Costa case. The case concerned an Italian gentleman (and practising lawyer) Signore Costa who refused to pay a minor electricity bill of $3.00, arguing that the nationalization of the electricity company ENEL in which he himself was a shareholder and to which he had to pay the fee, was an infringement both of Community law and of the Italian constitution. The controversial point concerned the classic question of whether a national statute enacted after the entering into force of an international agreement, would leave the agreement void due to lex posterior derogat legi apriori.7 In such an understanding the national parliament would have the last word in deciding what would count as law within its own borders. This well-established principle, which also holds in monist legal systems of international law,8 was, however, exactly what the ECJ altered, not by refusing it as such ± but simply by refusing to see European law as international law. The lower Italian court which Signore Costa had addressed sent a preliminary ruling simultaneously to the Italian Constitutional Court and to the ECJ. The Constitutional Court rejected the supremacy of Community law arguing that due to the lex posterior derogat legi apriori, the parliament's decision to nationalize the electricity company could not be questioned. Consequently there was no need to send the case to the ECJ. The ECJ didn't agree and used the following supremacy rhetoric to differentiate its legal regime from that of traditional international law: By contrast with ordinary international treaties, the EEC Treaty has created its own legal system which, on the entry into force of the Treaty has become an integral part of the legal systems of the Member States and which their courts are bound to apply. By creating a Community of unlimited duration, having its own institutions, its own personality, its own legal capacity and capacity of representation on the international plane and, more particularly, real powers stemming from a limitation of sovereignty or a transfer of power from the States to the Community, the Member States have limited their sovereign rights, albeit within limited ®elds and have thus created a body of law which binds both their nationals and themselves . . . The transfer by the States from their domestic legal system to the Community legal system of the rights and obligations arising under the Treaty carries with it a permanent limitation of their sovereign rights, against which a subsequent unilateral act incompatible with the concept of the Community cannot prevail. Consequently Article 177 is to be applied

Sovereignty, anarchy and law in Europe

121

regardless of any domestic law, whenever questions relating to the interpretation of the Treaty arise. (My emphasis) The Court went on to conclude that: It follows from all these observations that the law stemming from the Treaty, an independent source of law, could not, because of its special and original nature, be overridden by domestic legal provisions, however framed, without being deprived of its character as Community law and without the legal basis of the Community itself being called into question. (My emphasis) To talk about a `permanent limitation of sovereign rights' is radical. In traditional international law commitments are almost always of limited duration (Ross 1984: 128) and agreements certainly don't have this character of irreversibility (Dehousse and Weiler 1990: 255). The Court's position, however, emerges from the rather remarkable assertion that the Community has its own personality and capacity for representing the Member States on the international scene, a provision that later came to exclude Member States from action had the Community occupied competence vis-aÁ-vis third countries.9 The fact that Community law will have supremacy over national law also when a national legislation goes against it constitutes a radical departure from the working of traditional international treaty law. With the supremacy and direct effect doctrines, the Member States have thus become integral parts of a EC legal order. In more recent cases like Simmertal (106/77), Blaizot (24/86) and Francovich (joined cases C-6/90 and C-9/90) the Court's power to review even national constitutional law were further institutionalized (see Shapiro and Stone 1994). One can also argue that with the doctrines of supremacy and direct effect, ordinary people in collaboration with the national courts became the new monitors of European law. Quite obviously, governments have no in¯uence over the acts of individual litigants, nor do governments control the national courts when they decide to refer questions to the ECJ. The effect of the supremacy clause and the doctrine of direct effect could thus not have obtained the present in¯uence on national legal orders had the national courts not been willing to cooperate.10 The fact that individuals affected by a Community regulation may take their own governments to court in cases of violation or non-implementation, has intrusive implications for the effectiveness of the Community system. As Weiler puts it: `Here we are faced with a bald political fact: A member state ± in our Western democracies ± cannot disobey its own courts' (1994: 515). Any governmental attempt to question or compromise court-to-court interaction has been regarded as an

122

Marlene Wind

unsuitable interference in the legitimate working of the juridical branch. The importance of letting the national courts and not an `international super-Leviathan' be the practical guardian of EC law can hardly be overestimated. Because the national courts over the years in fact endorsed all ECJ doctrines into the law of their own land, the direct and indirect impact of the ECJ's jurisprudence has been substantial. The collaboration between the ECJ and the national courts has thus integrated the two into a unitary system of juridical review unprecedented in Western legal history. This does not mean of course that governments have not objected to and attempted to circumscribe this evolving system (Burley and Mattli 1993: 51; de Witte 1996; see Slaughter et al. 1998). As former Chancellor Kohl put it at the intergovernmental conference in 1992: If one takes the Court of Justice . . . it does not only exert its competencies in legal matters, but goes far further. We have an example of something that was not wanted in the beginning. This should be discussed so that the necessary measures may be taken later. (Kohl 1992) What Kohl suggested was that by treaty amendment Member States should try to limit the preliminary review to the highest courts which traditionally have been much more sceptical than the lower courts to the construction of a novel legal hierarchy. Others have proposed to politicize the ECJ, implying, for instance, that judges be politically nominated like in the USA. This would include removing the anonymity principle of the present system so that the vote of each judge becomes public. The interesting thing is, however, that none of these scenarios have materialized or even left the drawing board. Due to the unanimity requirement in the Council it has so far been impossible to ®nd a common footing when it comes to fundamental constitutional changes of the present system (de Witte 1996).

Towards a polycentric European order? Despite the rather remarkable developments in the past forty years there is no clear indication that such an almost linear constitutionalization process will eventually turn the Community into a formalized federal polity. Were that to be the case, we would be back on `highway one' with the traditional state-centric inside/outside logic just at a new higher European level. Several things suggest that the picture will remain blurred in both the close and remote future. Of importance here are, ®rst and foremost, past challenges to the European Court's claim to supremacy as sugested in the judgments by an increasing number of national constitutional courts. As opposed to the lower national courts, the highest courts in the Member States have

Sovereignty, anarchy and law in Europe

123

been ambivalent, to say the least, towards the creation of a new legal hierarchy in Europe, a hierarchy that obviously would degrade them vis-aÁ-vis the ECJ as the ultimate interpreter of the treaties. The most signi®cant outcry has clearly come from the German Bundesverfassungsgerichts in its Maastricht judgment from 1993.11 The German court made clear that while it regarded the Maastricht Treaty as constitutional, it reserved for itself the right to render future Community law inapplicable in the German legal order should it be out of tune with the constitution. A constitutional court thus for the ®rst time in European integration history felt a need to emphasize that the supremacy of Community law over national law was conditional and based on an attribution of powers (Kokott 1998). The German court also stressed that it saw itself not as subordinate to but rather as part of an equal dialogue with the ECJ. When the German ruling surfaced it came as a great shock for most observers, in particular because of the rather aggressive tone and the words chosen. What was perhaps most surprising was the court's long exegesis about what constitutes a `real' people, arguing that since the European Union does not have an ethnic `Staatsvolk' there can be no true Union to which additional competencies could be transferred (de Witte 1998: 299). Other European High courts ± the Danish, the Italian and the Belgian ± have later followed the lead of the German court and emphasized that they also see the legal hierarchy established by the ECJ as at least potentially conditional. These more recent developments do, however, not necessarily imply that the legal hierarchy is falling apart. Rather, they illustrate, that we are in the midst of a constitutional battle that may have to be fought on a caseby-case basis in order to settle the question of authority in each particular area of decision. This may constitute not a `war' but perhaps the beginning of a juridical dialogue between different legal authorities and sources. Or to put it differently, if the objections against a comprehensive ECJ-dominated legal order in Europe intensi®es, one may expect a situation where future legal decisions increasingly will be produced in negotiation between different authoritative bodies (Zahle 1995). What consequences will this have for sovereignty and integration in Europe? A leading Dutch text-book on constitutional law from 1990 says that `the Dutch state is no longer sovereign with regard to the powers attributed to the EC!' (de Witte 1998: 189). Such an analysis is not rare when one looks at the legal writing on the Community in the past; still, it would be presumptuous to jump to such a radical conclusion. What we may be dealing with in Europe is an increasingly polycentric system of overlapping or shared powers. As legal theorist Henrik Zahle has put it: When the different [authoritative] orders are not irrelevant for each other, then a con¯ict between them may create a new situation with a concrete priority for one of them, a situation which in the long term

124

Marlene Wind may have the effect of [law] harmonization. But another possibility is that the con¯ict or the clash happens without harmonization being the result. The several orders, the polycentricity, continue to exist. In the speci®c decision, priority may be given to one of them, but without the general aim of harmonization. (1995: 196)

The long debate over who has the ultimate authority in Community law matters may in this manner be avoided. The disadvantage will clearly be the risk of legal uncertainty, but this might be avoided if structured dispute resolving mechanisms can be established. At the moment, however, we are far from this scenario in Europe. We still have a rather ®rm legal hierarchy which is respected and acknowledged in the Member States. We do, however, have different ideas about on what basis such a legal hierarchy exists. Where the ECJ sees it as autonomous and legitimized though the treaties, an increasing number of higher courts now choose to see the ECJ's power as based on their explicit attribution.

In conclusion Legal theorist and Community law scholar Christian Joerges recently criticized political scientists for their profound negligence of law when studying international relations in general and European integration in particular. What is almost even worse than negligence, however, is the way in which law is treated when political scientists come round to talking about it. Political scientists tend, as Joerges puts it, to `rely upon an instrumentalist view of the legal system which fails to acknowledge the law's normative logic and discursive power' (Joerges 1996: 2).12 There is little doubt that if we are to gain anything of importance from studying rules, norms and questions of legitimacy in relation to international transformation, we will have to skip entirely such an instrumentalist view of law and legal discourse. Law and legal doctrine are ®rst and foremost social and thereby inherently political phenomena which contribute to disciplining society and to the construction of our ordinary conceptions of right and wrong, normality and deviation. Martin Shapiro once emphasized that: `Law is neither a natural phenomena, descriptions of which can be empirically [scienti®cally] correct or incorrect, nor a logical phenomena like mathematics where answers can be either correct or incorrect' (1983: 545). Legal discourse is, in other words, an important mechanism through which constitutive norms are produced and reproduced and which over time may provide legitimacy for new types of political organization. Such a structuring process quite clearly has to do with power, but not in the ordinary `strategic-action-game' sense of the term where power is closely linked to an attribute exercisable by a speci®c

Sovereignty, anarchy and law in Europe

125

agent. Rather, it is power as `social empowerment'. As Richard Ashley has put it: [T]he very status of an agent is not in any sense attributable to the inherent qualities or possessions of a given entity. Rather, the power and status of an actor depends on and is limited by the conditions of its recognition within a community as a whole. To have power, an agent must ®rst secure its recognition as an agent capable of having power . . . It is always by way of performance in reference . . . to collectively `known' [structures], that actors gain recognition and are empowered. (1986: 291±2) The power of the European Court was exactly about being recognized as having the ®nal say in judgments with consequences for the division of competencies. As we saw in the Court's legal discourse, law is always produced in reference to a `collectively known structure' which again can be seen as a social product that has grown and gained general acceptance through ordinary language. If and when the collective ideas of legitimate governance change, the legal discourse will gradually follow. One might go on to suggest that the `constitutionalization process' which has moved Europe from a horizontal system of decentralized authority to an increasingly polycentric power structure, can be seen as a general example of how social systems may transform over time (Wind 1998a). There is clearly an important self-positioning in the European Court's attempt to situate itself as the ®nal arbiter of law in Europe. In the Court's arguments for constituting `a new legal order' in the international system, it seeks to distance itself and thereby the Community as such, from the vicissitudes of traditional international law. In doing so, however, the Court's lawyers clearly attempt to hold on to and reproduce a classical Westphalian state system. They thus continue to regard law as something that needs a hierarchical structure in order to be characterized as effective law. The nation or federal state model is in other words still the ideal for many theoretical engineers. If we follow this to its logical conclusion only two options will be open for the future: the Community either has to be fully sovereign or to amount to nothing but the aggregation of fully sovereign Member States. The question is nevertheless whether legal, political and thereby authoritative integration in Europe really constitutes such an all or nothing process. If one follows the logic of the ECJ, ultimate authority clearly cannot reside simultaneously in two political spheres. One will have to be superior. However, by endorsing such a narrow view of legal and political system one implicitly excludes even a conceptual transcendence of conventional thinking about political organization in Europe. Keeping to such a narrative

126

Marlene Wind

may, however, represent a desperate attempt to reinvigorate a world that we have already put behind us. We may, in other words, ask with Neil MacCormick: Do politics or law always have to resolve distributions of power in favor ultimately (perhaps after moments of diffusion) of some absolute and ®nal centralized authority on everything, subject to doubt only on the number of power centres there are to be ? . . . If it is true, we can only either go forward or go back ± lateral thinking or movement will be out of the question. Either we are fated to go forward to a situation in which there is massively centralized European Community which takes over the dominant place in legal imagination . . . The other way would be the way back. No doubt many are tempted by it. Their siren voices urge us to go back to the good old world in which we did not face the loss of sovereignty through its being granted somewhere else. The quest is to go back to a European order of fully sovereign states, with no links stronger than those of treaties which bind only rebus sic stantibus. (MacCormick 1993: 17, author's emphasis)

Notes 1 Rousseau once put it in the following manner: As for what is commonly called international law, because it lacks any sanction, they are unquestionably mere illusions even feebler than the law of nature. The latter at least speaks in the heart of individual men; whereas the decisions of international law, having no other guarantee than their usefulness to the person who submits to them, are only in so far as interest accords with them. (1753/1970: 175) 2 Case 6/64, Costa v. ENEL, 15 July 1964. See also the Van Gend case below. Whereas Costa instituted the principle of Community law supremacy, Van Gend ± another of the Court's most in¯uential doctrines ± dealt with the question of direct effect. 3 Sociologist Michael Mann holds a parallel view. He sees little difference between organizations like the World Bank, IMF, GATT and the EU. All were set up after 1945 with the well-de®ned purpose of institutionalizing the relations between the social classes (Mann 1993: 125). Constraining sovereignty, yes, but building fully on consent and oversight by national governments. As Mann phrases it, compared to the other organizations: `The EC became more sovereignty-constraining-by-consent than its comparable global institutions. But it has largely extended the same types of functions' (1993: 122). 4 This can be concluded even though it did contain some unique features. One of these was the possibility under the EEC Treaty article 189 of making binding decisions and majority voting in the Council.

Sovereignty, anarchy and law in Europe

127

5 For exellent general introductions to Community law see Dehousse (1994); Snyder (1990); Rasmussen (1986); Joseph Weiler (1981,1991,1994). 6 Case 26/62, Van Gend en Loos v. Nederlandse Administratie der Belastingen, 1963 E.C.R. p. 12. 7 `The latest law must always trump previous laws.' 8 As Weiler puts it: even in monist systems where international law is incorporated directly into the legal order of the state in question, it holds that: A national legislator unhappy with an internalized treaty norm simply enacts a con¯icting national measure and the transposition will have vanished for all internal practical effects. (1991: 2415) 9 Cf. the ERTA case 22/70 which transferred treaty-making power and `legal personality' to the Commission. It stated that: Every time the Community, with a view to implementing a common policy envisaged by the Treaty, adopts provisions laying down common rules, the Member States no longer have the right to undertake obligations with third countries which effect these rules. After the adoption of such internal measures, the Community alone is in a position to assume and carry out contractual obligations towards third countries; the system of internal Community measures may thus not be separated from that of external relations. See Rasmussen, `European Community Case Law' 1.200. 10 The Treaty of the European Union now makes it possible for the Court to sanction non-implementation of Community regulation through ®nes. 11 Similar sovereignty-protecting judgments have appeared in Belgium, Italy, Denmark and are expected in Greece. 12 I am here citing from a draft version of an article that was published in European Law Journal in 1996 2/1.

References Allott, P. (1997) `The Crisis of European Constitutionalism: Re¯ections on the Revolution in Europe', Common Market Law Review vol. 34, pp. 439±90. Aron, R. (1966) Peace and War: A Theory of International Politics, New York: Anchor Press. Ashley, R. (1986) `The Poverty of Neorealism', in R. Keohane (ed.) Neo-realism and its Critics, New York: Columbia University Press. Austin, J. (1832/1954) The Province of Jurisprudence Determined, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Bartelson, J. (1995) A Genealogy of Sovereignty, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bodin, J. (1576/1986) Les Six Livres de la ReÂpublique I±VI, Paris: Libraire ArtheÂme Fayrd. Bull, H. (1966) `Society and Anarchy in International Relations', in H. Butter®eld and M. Wight (eds) Diplomatic Investigations, London: Allen and Unwin. ÐÐ (1977) The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, London: Macmillan. Burley, A.M. and Mattli, W. (1993) `Europe before the Court: A Political Theory of Legal Integration', International Organization vol. 87, pp. 205±39.

128

Marlene Wind

Dehousse, R. (ed.) (1994) Europe After Maastricht: An Ever Closer Union?, Munch: Law Books in Europe. Dehousse, R. and Weiler, J. (1990) `The Legal Dimension', in W. Wallace (ed.) The Dynamics of European Integration, London: Pinter. de Witte, B. (1994) `Rules of Change in International Law: How Special is the European Community?', Netherlands Yearbook of International Law vol. XXV, pp. 299±334. ÐÐ (1996) `International Agreement or European Constitution?', in J.A. Winter, D. Curtin, A.E. Kellermann and B. de Witte (eds) Reforming the Treaty on European Union, Dordrecht: Asser Institute, Kluwer Law International. ÐÐ (1998) `Sovereignty and European Integration: The Weight of Legal Tradition', in A.M. Slaughter, A. Stone Sweet and J.H.H. Weiler (eds) The European Courts and National Courts: Doctrine and Jurisprudence, Oxford: Hart Publishing. Garrett, G.(1992) `International Cooperation and Individual Choice: The EC's Internal Market', International Organization vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 533±60. ÐÐ (1995) `The Politics of Legal Integration in the European Union', International Organization vol. 40, no. 1, pp. 171±81. Garrett, G. and Weingast, B. (1991) `Ideas, Interests and Institutions: Constructing the EC's Internal Market', manuscript. Gillespie, P. (1997) `The Promise and Practice of Flexibility', in B. Tonra (ed.) Amsterdam: What the Treaty Means, Dublin: Institute of European Affairs. Haltern, E. and Weiler, J. (1996) `The Autonomy of the Community Legal Order ± Through the Looking Glass', Harvard International Law Journal vol. 57, no. 2, pp. 411±48. Hart, H.L.A. (1961) The Concept of Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hartly, T.C. (1981) The Foundations of European Community Law: An Introduction to the Constitutional and Administrative Law of the European Community, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hoffmann, S. (1966) `Obstinate or Obsolete? Re¯ections on the Nation-State in Western Europe', Daedalus vol. 95, pp. 862±915. Hurrell, A. and Menon, A. (1996) `Politics Like Any Other? Comparative Politics, International Relations and the Study of the EU', West European Politics vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 386±402. Joerges, C. (1996) `Taking Rights Seriously: On Political Science and the Role of Law in the Process of European Integration', European Law Journal vol. 2, no. 2, pp. 105±35. Judt, T. (1996) `Europe: The Grand Illusion', New York Review of Books vol. 11, no. 7, pp. 6±9. Kelly, J.M. (1992) A Short History of Western Legal Theory, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kennedy, D. (1980) `Theses about International Law Discourse', German Yearbook of International Law vol. 23, pp. 354±91. Keohane, R. and Hoffmann, S. (1991) The New European Community, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Kohl, H. (1992) in Europe, 14 October. Kokott, J. (1998) `Report on Germany', in A.M. Slaughter, A. Stone Sweet and J.H.H Weiler (eds) The European Courts and National Courts: Doctrine and Jurisprudence, Oxford: Hart Publishing. Kratochwil, F. (1989) Rules, Norms and Decisions: On the Conditions of Practical and Legal Reasoning in International Relations and Domestic Affairs, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sovereignty, anarchy and law in Europe

129

Kumm, M. (1998) `Who is the Final Arbiter of Constitutionality in Europe? Three Conceptions of the Relationship between the German Federal Constitutional Court and the European Court of Justice', forthcoming in J. Weiler and M. Wind (eds) When High Courts Clash: National Resistance to European Supremacy. MacCormick, N. (1993) `Beyond the Sovereign State', The Modern Law Review vol. 56, pp. 1±18. ÐÐ (1995) `The Maastricht Urteil: Sovereignty Now', European Law Journal vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 219±59. Mann, M. (1993) `Nation-States in Europe and Other Continents: Diversifying, Developing, Not Dying', Daedalus vol. 122, no. 3, pp. 115±40. Manning, C.A.W. (1972) `The Legal Framework in a World of Change', in B. Porter (ed.) The Aberystwyth Papers: International Politics 1919±1969, London: Oxford University Press. Mearsheimer, J. (1995) `The False Promise of International Institutions', International Security, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 5±50. Milward, A. (1992) The European Rescue of the Nation State, London and New York: Routledge. ÐÐ (1995) `The Springs of Integration', in P. Gowan and P. Anderson (eds) The Question of Europe, London: Verso. ÐÐ (1997) Der Zweite Weltkrieg: Krieg, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, MuÈnchen: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag. Moravcsik, A. (1993) `Preferences and Power in the European Community: Liberal Intergovernmentalist Approach', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 473±524. Morgenthau, H.J. (1946/1985) Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, New York: McGraw-Hill. Nardin, T. (1983) Law, Morality and the Relations of States, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Pescatore, P. (1974) The Law of Integration, Leiden: A.W. Sijthoff. ÐÐ (1983) `The Doctrine of ``Direct Effect'': An Infant Disease of Community Law', European Law Review vol. 8, pp. 155±77. Pierson, P. (1996) `The Path to European Integration: A Historical Institutionalist Analysis', Comparative Political Studies vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 123±63. Rasmussen, H. (1986) On Law and Policy in the European Court of Justice: A Comparative Study in Juridical Policymaking, Dordrecht: Nijhoff. ÐÐ (1992) Towards a Normative Theory of Interpretation of Community Law, Copenhagen: Copenhagen Political Studies Press. ÐÐ (1998) European Court of Justice, Copenhagen: GadJura. Ross, A. (1984 [1942]), (in Danish) International Law: An Introduction, Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag. Rousseau, J.J. (1753/1970) `The State of War', in M.G. Forsyth, M.A. Soper and P. Savigear (eds) The Theory of International Relations: Selected Texts from Gentili to Treitschke, London: George Allen & Unwin. Ruggie, J. (1992) `Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations', International Organization vol. 47, no. 1, pp. 139±74. Schilling, T. (1996) `The Autonomy of the Community Legal Order: An Analysis of Possible Foundations', Harvard International Law Journal vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 389±409. Shapiro, M. (1983) `Recent Developments in Political Jurisprudence', The Western Political Quarterly vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 541±8. Shapiro, M. and Stone, D. (1994) `The New Constitutional Politics of Europe', Comparative Political Studies vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 397±440.

130

Marlene Wind

Slaughter, A.M, Stone Sweet, A. and Weiler, J.H.H. (eds) (1998) The European Courts and National Courts: Doctrine and Jurisprudence, Oxford: Hart Publishing. Snyder, F. (1990) New Directions in European Community Law, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Stein, E. (1981) `Lawyers, Judges and the Making of a Transnational Constitution', The American Journal of International Law vol. 75, pp. 1±27. Taylor, P. (1991) `British Sovereignty and the European Community: What is at Risk?', Millennium: Journal of International Studies vol. 20, no. 1, pp. 73±80. Walker, R.B.J. (1993) Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weiler, J. (1981), `The Community System. The Dual Character of Supranationalism', Yearbook of European Law vol. 1, pp. 269-306 ÐÐ (1991) `The Transformation of Europe', The Yale Law Journal vol. 100, pp. 2405±83. ÐÐ (1993) `Journey to an Unknown Destination: A Retrospective and Prospective of the European Court of Justice in the Arena of Political Integration', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 417±46. ÐÐ (1994) `A Quiet Revolution: The European Court of Justice and Its Interlocutors', Comparative Political Studies, vol. 26, no. 4, pp. 510±34. ÐÐ (1997) `The Reformation of European Constitutionalism', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 97±131. Weiler, J. and Haltern, U. (1996) `The Autonomy of the Community Legal Order ± Through the Looking Glass', Harvard International Law Journal vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 411±48. Weiler, J. and Wind, M. (eds) When High Courts Clash: National Resistance to European Supremacy, forthcoming. Wind, M. (1996) Europe Towards a Post-Hobbesian Order?, Working Paper no. 31, European University Institute, Florence: Robert Schumann Centre. ÐÐ (1997) `Rediscovering Institutions: A Re¯ectivist Critique of Rational Institutionalism', in K.E. Jùrgensen (ed.) Re¯ective Approaches to European Governance, London: Macmillan. ÐÐ (1998a) `IR Theory Meets European Union Law: Constitutional Battles, Sovereign Choices and Institutional Contingencies in the Legacy of the European Integration Process', PhD thesis, European University Institute, Florence. ÐÐ (1998b) `Flexible Integration: The European Union as a Polycentric Polity?', in J. Weiler and M. Wind (eds) When High Courts Clash: National Resistance to European Supremacy, forthcoming. Wyatt, D. (1982) `New Legal Order or Old?', European Law Review vol. 7, pp. 147±66. Zahle, H. (1986) (in Danish) `Polycentricity in Legal Sources', in A. Bratholm, T. Opsahl and M. Aarbakke (eds) Samfunn, Rett, Rettferdighet, Norway: Tano A/S. ÐÐ (1995) `The Polycentricity of the Law or the Importance of Legal Pluralism for Legal Dogmatics', in H. Petersen and H. Zahle (eds) Legal Polycentricity: Consequences of Pluralism in Law, Aldershot: Dartmouth.

6

Gendered communities The ambiguous attraction of Europe Lene Hansen1

Studies of the EU have devoted increasing attention to the role of identity, community and legitimacy as well as to the challenge European integration poses to the principle of state sovereignty. Yet, these studies have rarely investigated the gender dimensions of these questions. On the one hand, this is hardly surprising: the disciplines of IR and European integration studies have been slow to take on board feminist scholarship and the interstate focus of these disciplines is one which, certainly in its neorealist and neoliberal formulations, privileges the analysis of the relationship between governments and the EU at the expense of groups based on non-state identity such as gender. But the absence of gender analysis within the current academic EU debate can, on the other hand, also be seen as odd. If the EU has become, in Ruggie's words, the `®rst truly postmodern international political form', one would expect an engagement with those forms of communities which do not conform with the rigid inside±outside division of state sovereignty (Ruggie 1993: 140; Walker 1993; Walker in this volume). Gender constitutes one of the most obvious alternative subjectivities around which non-national communities might be formed and found within a European context, in part because of the active role the EU has played in terms of addressing women's issues in the labour market. The Commission and the European Court of Justice have on several occasions been more supportive of women's rights than have the majority of the Member States, and the latter have as a consequence been compelled to improve their legislation (Hoskyns 1996: 61). This pro-women course of the EU institutions has spurred an extensive feminist body of literature on women and the EU (GarcõÂa-Ramon and Monk 1996; Hoskyns 1996; Pillinger 1992). This literature takes, however, either an economic or a legal view of the effects of EU's social policy on women's rights which means that although these analyses are very informative, they are also fairly limited in terms of their engagement with the current debate on legitimacy and European identity.2 The classical feminist discussion of how to negotiate the relationship between women and the nation±state takes a new and interesting spin when conducted in the context of the EU. The EU has developed into a

132

Lene Hansen

unique form of political space; it is no longer an international organisation, nor is it (yet) a federal state. Its reconstruction of political space is de®ned by a combination of forces, not least the Member States themselves and the EU's institutions. This provides a possibility for rethinking relations among women: the existence of more formalised channels than in normal inter-state cooperation and the weakening of the state relative to the European level might provide new opportunities for women to organise politically, similar to what national minorities and cross-border regions have experienced at the sub- and trans-state level (Eriksen 1992; Wñver and Kelstrup 1993). But, argue more critical voices, while the postsovereign political form of the emerging EU might provide new feminist opportunities, it might simultaneously enforce a neoliberal mode of economic organization which is detrimental to many women who have a weaker standing in the labour market and who as a consequence are more dependent on the state.3 An understanding of how the EU relates to questions of gender, and how feminists relate to the EU, must therefore involve a discussion of the character of this political space and how it produces particular divisions and exclusions.4 The aim of this chapter is to bring together the debate on the EU's legitimacy crisis and the feminist debate on the advantages and disadvantages of the EU (for a summary of the legitimacy debate, see Hansen and Williams 1999). Put simply, if the EU involves a transformation of national sovereignty and identity, how have the EU and feminists respectively constructed the relationship between the national, the European, and gender communities? Gender is an alternative ± possibly complementary or competing ± subjectivity with the capacity to in¯uence the construction of the national and the European. It articulates an aspect of political subjectivity which is potentially transnational by virtue of including women from all countries and cultures. It is a subjectivity which can form the basis for groups which de®ne themselves as being in opposition to and in con¯ict with their `own' state. But there is, on the other hand, no guarantee that a feminist project will break with the traditional privilege bestowed on the national community: while the principle of state sovereignty is under pressure within the EU it is still pervasive enough to make it dif®cult for feminist analysis to present the political future as something other than a choice between the national community and the European one. The choice of some feminists in favour of the national has been mirrored historically in lower levels of female support for the EEC/EU. With the heightened focus on addressing the EU's legitimacy problem in the 1990s the `gender question' has become an increasingly crucial one both for the EU itself and for politicians seeking to mobilise political support for their European policy among their national constituencies. This chapter proceeds by looking ®rst, at the way in which the EEC's/ EU's policies and the rulings of the European Court of justice have supported `women's rights' within the labour market by pressuring the

Gendered communities

133

Member States to change their legislation. The development of more progressive European standards has contributed positively to the enhancement of women's social and economic status, but the EU's politics towards `women's rights' has also been limited in scope inasmuch as it continues to evolve around a liberal construction of the political, the public and the private realms. After an examination of how this liberal construction locates `women' within an individualised sphere which constrains the formulation of a gender-based collective community, the chapter turns to a more concrete discussion of how the EU has addressed the `gender gap' in the attitudes to European integration. The ®rst part of the strategy argued by the EU, but with some feminist support, builds on a de®nition of `women' as a subject with a right to, and a need for, representation within and vis-aÁ-vis the EU. An increase in the number of women within the political and administrative structures of the EU is thus presumed to increase women's support for European integration. The second part of the EU's strategy consists of increasing the amount of information about the EU, this strategy evolves around an understanding of `women's reluctance' as based not on political views but on ignorance. The third part of the chapter turns to the feminist debate on the EU. It is argued that there is general consensus around locating the EU within a `sceptical dichotomy' where the EU is seen as representing elitism, patriarchy, masculinity and economic neoliberalism and the feminist project as representing the opposite values: community, equality, femininity and responsible economic and ecological modes of production. But when it comes to concrete political evaluation of whether to support the EU or not there is feminist disagreement as to how the `sceptical dichotomy' should be negotiated.

Women's rights and the public±private divide Identities, and communities based thereon, are not given once and for all. Rather, their current manifestation is dependent on processes of articulation and sedimentation to produce a `natural' understanding of what it means to be, for example, Danish, European, and woman. The contingency as well as the power structures involved in these constructions are made explicit once they are fundamentally challenged, as when the women's movement in the 1960s began to attack the patriarchal foundation of Western democracies. At that time the gaze of the EEC was a relatively narrow one which in accordance with the economic focus of the institution viewed women as holders of rights within the labour market, but it nevertheless played a not unimportant role in the ensuing rede®nition of women's position and status throughout the Member States. The story of the development of protection of women's rights within the EU is one of unintended consequences as well as of inter-linkage between (national) economic rationality and legal precedence. The founding act, the Treaty of Rome, includes the famous Article 119 which stipulates that

134

Lene Hansen

`men and women should receive equal pay for equal work'; an article included due to French pressure. At the time France had recently adopted a policy of equal pay and feared that if other EC members could pay `their' women less they would be able to lower labour costs and as a consequence produce more cheaply and competitively than France (Hoskyns 1996: 43± 59). The facts that no women were present on the Commission drafting the Treaty of Rome and that only two out of 101 members on the advisory committee were women provide fodder for a rendition of Article 119 as an outcome of traditional economic reasoning only. However, as Elman points out, this would underestimate the support for equal rights which had developed; an identical ILO convention had been rati®ed in 1951 and `France's request for equal pay legislation was neither extreme nor innovative' (Elman 1998: 226). The adoption of Article 119 did therefore stem from a (perhaps unequal) combination of national French economic concerns, on the one hand, and, on the other, the changing gender norms within West European societies which by the 1950s made `women' a subject with legitimate needs in the labour market. Regardless of whether Article 119 was included more out of economic protectionism than genuine support for women, its inclusion in the founding treaty made it a strong legal instrument for feminist groups in the 1960s and 1970s who used it to bring their cases to the European Court of Justice. The Court's tradition of ruling in such a way as to enhance integration probably made it more willing to `play a small but important role' as the Court's ambition to strengthen its own power through the enforcement of common European standards worked in favour of promoting women's rights (Hoskyns 1994: 231 and 226, Wind in this volume). At this point, the concern was primarily with protecting women from the most overt cases of unequal pay discrimination. This did not, in other words, address the larger structural questions in¯uencing women's location within the labour market, for example, access to education or child care. Nor did it involve any concern with societally sedimented norms and traditions. Moreover, this was a process which took place through the legal system where decisions made by the Court were to be incorporated into the Member States' national legislation. The initiatives travelling from the European to the national level were if not particularly innovative or radical still politically important as they forced Member States to comply with the new practices. In the 1980s the focus on `women's equal rights' became the subject of critique and reinterpretation. Feminists argued that the stance of the EU was built on an understanding of `equality as sameness' which implied that women should strive for conditions identical to men's, but, they argued, the obstacle confronting women was not just the achievement of equal pay for equal work, but the more sedimented, patriarchal structures of subordination underpinning society. Because of the gender bias ingrained in the very construction of Western societies, a more radical policy going beyond an equal pay perspective based on `rights' was needed. A major

Gendered communities

135

problem with the rights perspective was that it only accords rights to those who are in the labour market, and in many cases not even to those who are part-time employed. As Hoskyns noted: `EU discourse constructed ``women'' as a uni®ed and homogeneous category' where `women' stood for ` ``white women in paid employment''' (Hoskyns 1996: 9). The rights focus leads furthermore to a narrow view of `women's experiences', according to Jalna Hanmer, `The European Union agenda is one that excludes most of women's lives, in particular, the complexity of the connections between family, work, welfare, and the labor market' (1996: 143). Limited de®nition of rights as related to the market leaves out questions of sexual abuse, violence against women, and abortion; all questions related to women as sexual bodily beings (Elman 1996a and 1998). The institutions of the EU have tried to respond to this critique, most substantially through the action programmes on `Equal Opportunities for Women and Men' adopted by the Council of Ministers. These programmes, the ®rst one running from 1982 to 1985, have been located within DG V which deals with social policy and they have, in response to the criticism levelled against the EU, gone increasingly beyond a narrow equal pay perspective (for a discussion, see Elman 1998: 231±3). The broader scope has been captured through `mainstreaming', a concept introduced by the third action programme and further developed in the fourth and most recent one (1996±2000): `Mainstreaming' is de®ned as the systematic consideration of the differences between the conditions, situations and need of women and men in all Community policies, at the point of planning, implementing and evaluation, as applied to Europe, the industrialised countries and the developing countries. (`Equal Opportunities for Women and Men in the European Union ± 1996') The weaknesses of the action programmes are, however, that beyond these de®nitions and declarations, the focus is still for the vast majority related to women, and families, in regard to the labour market. Second, because they are not legally binding in the same way as the Treaty and Directives, they do not provide the same possibility for pursuing legal action in the European or the national courts. The vast majority of the feminist ± and non-feminist ± literature on women and the EU has, as argued in the introduction, analysed the legal and economic consequences of the social policy of rights. But an analysis of the way in which the questions of gender and the legitimacy of the EU are related needs to investigate more fully how the rights perspective provides a particular construction of `women' and the way `they' can in¯uence and relate to the EU. This construction is based on an articulation of political space which divides the public and the private spheres. Limiting

136

Lene Hansen

the EU to the public and economic nexus, `those with power were [reluctant] to allow EU policy to ``spill over'' from the public to the private', leaving as a consequence the regulation of `private issues' to the individual Member States (Hoskyns 1996: 106). This public±private dichotomy is central not only to the practice of the EU but to Western liberal thought which centres on two sets of divisions. The ®rst separates the political sphere, on the one hand, and the social sphere, on the other; the second, the public and the private realm (Elshtain 1981: 241±2; Pateman 1983: 123 and 128). The result is a construction of the public sphere as composed of a political and an economic part, but both parts are inhabited by discrete individuals pursuing private political and economic interests (Pateman 1983: 122). The private sphere is also comprised of separate individuals, but these are located outside of the public view and united through the intimate bonds of the family. This delineation of political space is one in which women are the subject of a double exclusion: `woman' becomes relegated to the private sphere due to her nature and biology; but even within the private, woman's `natural home', she is constructed as inferior to her man, the head of the household (ibid.: 120). It is not only the hierarchical subordination of women to men within the private sphere which limits the identi®cation of the female political subject, perhaps even more important is the conception of society itself as atomistic, as `a collection of aggregates, social atoms performing roles' (Elshtain 1981: 243). This conception underplays the importance of structural constraints by arguing that change can simply take place through the adoption of a different role. Although things have changed in Western Europe since seventeenth-century liberalism was formulated ± women are no longer formally excluded from the public sphere, the right to vote provides a possibility to in¯uence the composition and the boundary of the political, and ®nally, the subordination of women within the private sphere can no longer be openly justi®ed ± the liberal mindset is still present in as much as the public±private divide continues to exert a structuring in¯uence on our political debates, including the debate on the EU's policy vis-aÁ-vis `women'. Starting from the assumption that the EU is an institution built on a liberal articulation of the political, public and private, what kind of insights can one gain in terms of understanding the EU as constructing gender and political space (or the lack thereof)? First, the focus on women's rights within the labour market constructs women as subjects within the public sphere. Obviously, it is important that women are granted equal rights; however, this is also a location within a particular liberal ordering of political/non-political space. It draws more speci®cally on a construction of the public as composed of private individuals with private interests. As a consequence, there is very little room within this public sphere to articulate a political project which is built on a construction of individuals as tied together with elements of their (gendered) subjectivity providing the basis

Gendered communities

137

for a community. As formulated by Elshtain, a liberalism built on a selfinterested individualism has `no vision of the political community which might serve as the groundwork of a life in common' (1981: 246). The problem is thus not simply that the policy of equality promoted by the EU Commission `obscured the existence of women's subordination; [that] it simply placed women and men together in search for equal opportunities as if one sex held no power over the other' (Elman 1998: 231). Rather, the more fundamental problem is that the liberal construction provides no point from which this subordination can be addressed as a political and collective problem. This implies that the feminist problem with the EU's policy cannot simply be the absence of `spill-over' from the public to the private, but how to make `private' questions a part of the political in a way which is conducive to a feminist politics. This is not to say either that `the private' or the public±private divide will disappear altogether as a category in political debate, or that the EU will ± or should ± take over all `private' questions from the Member States. The point is simply that the current framing of the `gender question' within the EU is structured around a broadly de®ned liberal conception of the individual and space as divided into political, public, and private realms.

Integrating women: representation and information The liberal conception of the individual has had a substantial in¯uence on the EU's approach to its `gender problem'. The latter was highlighted in the 1990s as the combination of deepening integration and popular resistance turned popular support into a pressing concern for the EU. The identi®cation of `women' as a particular political subject whose stance towards the EU should be determined, discussed and addressed is in part due to the EU's own social policy of women's rights: by the time public support became a crucial issue, the EU had become used to considering `women' an important strata of its constituency. The EU's strategy towards closing the gender gap has been a dual one of representation and information. The former would give `women' more in¯uence, make them involved and thus more sympathetic towards speci®c EU decisions as well as towards the institution more generally; the latter should convince women that the EU was really in their interest. Both of these strategies read, as we shall see, women's opposition in accordance with the liberal conception of the political and the individual as outlined above. Turning ®rst to representation, the Commission identi®ed the problem in such radical terms: `Women's under-representation results in a democratic de®cit, a serious loss of talent and expertise and a failure to engage with women's particular concerns and needs' (`Equal Opportunities for Women and Men in the European Union ± 1996'). Increasing the representation of women could be achieved through either of two models: by raising the percentage of women within the different branches of the institution, the

138

Lene Hansen

Parliament, the Commission, and the expert committees associated with it, or by securing the representation of a particular set of well-de®ned women's interests or needs. The weakness of the ®rst model is its assumption that any woman automatically behaves politically as would `all women', or as a minimum that women, as political beings, are distinct from men. The weakness of the second model lies in its assumption that `women's interests' exist a priori, that they can be identi®ed and actual action can be measured against them. Both models of representation build, in other words, on a conceptualisation of `women's interests' as constituted prior to politics, either through a location within the individual's gender or through an a priori de®nition. This conception is one which follows the liberal construction of the political as composed of self-interested individuals; as a consequence the possibility of the formation of a political community which goes beyond a simple commonality of interests is rather limited. The establishment of the European Women's Lobby (EWL) in 1990 provides an interesting concrete illustration of the problematique of representation (Hoskyns 1991). At ®rst it might seem surprising that a women's lobby has been formed as recently as 1990, nineteen years after the ®rst case invoking Article 119 was brought in front of the European Court of Justice. However, this should be understood in the context of the renewed integration in the late 1980s; the EC was not only widening and deepening integration, it was also ± mirroring classical corporativist ideas ± coming to see the usefulness of connecting women's representatives more tightly to the work of the Commission and the Parliament. It was with the encouragement of these two institutions that EWL was formed (Bretherton and Sperling 1996: 490), an encouragement shown by the fact that the Parliament ®nances 85 per cent of its budget (Stelling 1999). Calling the EWL a `lobby' might, however, misrepresent not only its formal and ®nancial connection to the Parliament and the Commission but also its form of organisation. Its membership is composed of representatives from grassroots organisations, like the European Network of Women, and from the European Trades Union Congress (ETUC), and most importantly, each Member State gets to send four representatives. While the selection of these representatives differs from country to country, the idea is clearly to secure a strong element of national representation. And national clashes do occur within the EWL, in particular between French and Dutch representatives, and in particular over three issues: abortion, whether to legalise prostitution, and the use of quotas favouring the employment of women (Stelling 1999). The EWL can be seen as an attempt to bridge, or mediate, between different concerns and communities, not least between the abstract universal concept of `women's interests', on the one hand, and the speci®c national positions on particular questions, on the other. In this respect, the EWL is struggling with representing the universal `woman' at the same time as this is fundamentally impossible since the subject supposedly being represented is so diffuse, diverse and elusive.

Gendered communities

139

The character of the female European subject is at the centre of a recent extensive study carried out by the Commission's DG X, the of®ce for information and culture, called `Women's Attitudes to the European Union: A Typology of Public Opinion among Europe's Women' (Eurobarometer 1997), from December 1997. This report provides an illustration of the assumptions underlying the EU's second strategy for countering the gender problem, namely the strategy of information. In order to achieve a more differentiated view of `women's' traditionally more sceptical view of the EU, the report divides the surveyed population into ®ve groups, each with a distinct view on the EU, in decreasing order of support: the Sympathizers, the Pragmatics, the `Middle-of-the-roaders', the Undecisives, and the Sceptics. These groups are analysed in turn to map the relationship between attitude to the EU and nationality, age, education, occupation, media consumption, and political pro®le. Rather than going into the speci®c datasets, what is of interest in the context of this chapter are the assumptions the report makes about (female) rationality and information. Crudely put, women have traditionally been constructed within Western political thought as less rational than men, their location within the private sphere was seen as logically connected to women being moved more by emotion than by reasoning. It would be misleading, however, to argue that the EU repeats this construction slavishly, it seems more accurate to say that the EU's information strategy is built on a liberal individual who can be convinced by rational arguments showing that the EU is really in her interest. It is a central assumption within much EU material that resistance largely stems from the lack of information. Often, this assumption is merely implied as in the Eurobarometer report: while no questions speci®cally concern rationality, it suddenly appears as a decisive element in the identi®cation of the second most EU-positive group, `the Pragmatics', who `have rationally come to the conclusion that the uni®cation represents a positive element in the history of Europe' (1997: 15). It is not clear from where it can be observed `that ``the Pragmatics'' use rationality to form their opinions'; but perhaps it is inferred from the fact that this is also the most well educated of the ®ve groups. More importantly, the report's own rationality assumptions come through in two places: it is argued that `as a result of their rationality, they are less inclined than the Sympathisers to give the EU as much decision-making power' (ibid.: 4), and that many Pragmatics put their own nationality before their European identity (73%) as a way of saying `yes I feel European, but I can't deny the fact that I am a citizen of my country.' This is a sign of the rationality of the Pragmatics. (ibid.: 18) What these quotes reveal is the report's own, rather interesting, construction of what constitutes rational behaviour and view of the EU rather than

140

Lene Hansen

either the Pragmatics' own assessment or any objective de®nition. It appears that the most rational group gains its seal of approval not only through its higher level of education, but through its moderated view of European integration. The Pragmatists do not, like the Sympathisers, get carried away on an emotional wave of Europeanism, but keep a `balanced' view on pros and cons based on a clearer sense of where one's interests and loyalties lie. The preference for rationality over emotion, even at the possible expense of EU support, runs as an implicit assumption throughout this report as does the idea that rationality and EU-positive attitudes go hand in hand. An example of the belief in absent information as an explanation of women's attitude to the EU is the recent launching of a website devoted to women and the Euro. Here the greater opposition to the Euro among women is seen as stemming from the fact that women are facing the dual challenge of familiarising themselves with the new currency both at work and at home; men by comparison in general only have to deal with the Euro at work. The empirical truthfulness of the female over-representation of `family managers', as the Commission would have it, notwithstanding, this opposition is to be countered by `an extensive information and communication campaign'. Speci®cally, the solution will be `the rapid implementation of the dual-currency display system' which shows both the national currency and the Euro. `Dual price displays for a suf®ciently long period (six months either side of 1 January 2002) would be helpful to get consumers used to thinking and counting in Euro and would help build con®dence' (`The Euro and Women'). Whether `con®dence' should be understood as a matter of increasing women's con®dence in their own calculating abilities or their con®dence in the Euro and the EU is unclear, the idea that opposition is based on insecurity rather than politics is not. In other words, the possibility that women ± and men ± might be against the Euro because of the ensuing loss of certain political-economic instruments at the national level, is not considered. If the latter were the case, more information might increase rather than diminish opposition. The strategy of information draws, in other words, on a liberal individual whose interests are constituted prior to the political process. Because it is simultaneously presupposed that these interests will be secured within the EU, the possibility that EU scepticism could be built on political opposition rather than on the lack of knowledge cannot be raised within this optic. The result is a framing of the gender problem in terms of `contingent rationality': the rational female is susceptible to information campaigns which will reveal the commonality between her interests and the EU, but for her to qualify as rational she needs to have already conformed to the EU's de®nition of her interest.

Gendered communities

141

Feminism and the sceptical dichotomy Feminists have, despite the EU's strategies of representation and information, been quite sceptical as to the progressive nature of the EU. Their assessment of the EU has been represented through what we could call the `sceptical dichotomy': the construction of elitism, patriarchy, masculinity, and neoliberalism on the side of the EU and community, equality, femininity and some form of social democratic economic order on the other. An important element of this dichotomy is the construction of the EU as an elitist project, according to Hoskyns, `the predominantly elitist view of women's issues taken by the EU re¯ects the elitism inherent in the integration project as a whole' (1996: 205). The employment of `elitist' to describe the EU effectively juxtaposes one form of political organisation, `elitism' to another non-elitist form which by de®nition is closer to `the people', in this particular case, women are singled out as the speci®c victims of elitism. While the elitist±popular dichotomy is a familiar one within debates on the EU's so-called legitimacy crisis, it is sometimes coupled within feminist literature to an identi®cation of the EC/EU, or parts of it, as `patriarchal' and/or `masculine'. Leo Flynn argues, for example, that EC law is masculine, oriented towards the market and `that failure cannot be addressed until EC law adopts other values of connection and solidarity, and a different epistemology, contemplating ``masculine'' assumptions of atomistic, de-contextualized objects and individuals as well as a ``feminine'', holistic vision' (Flynn 1997: 71). This critique strikes a chord with Elshtain's account of liberalism's conceptualisation of individual and society, but Flynn takes the liberal individual, argues that it is masculine and contrasts it to a feminist understanding of community.5 Patriarchy as ingrained in the EU is, in Hoskyn's view, intimately related to the patriarchy of the state, `the EC's formal institutions are the products of ``gendered states'', to use Spike Peterson's term, and both re¯ect and reproduce the gender exclusions existing at the national level' (Hoskyns 1994: 237). The claim that the state as well as the EU are patriarchal builds on the argument that `women', and their interests and values, are excluded from the higher echelons of power in both cases. Finally, while less uniform than the elitist and patriarchal designations, several feminists put emphasis on the economic ordering of the EU which they see as neoliberal: the current trend in the EU seems to be dominated by an explicit neo-liberal agenda. . . . As these processes play themselves out, women of the EU seem set to lose some of the bene®ts that have distinguished them from women in other parts of the world. (Monk and GarcõÂa-Ramon 1996: 27; see also Kofman and Sales 1996: 31)

142

Lene Hansen

The feminist alternative is, if made explicit, usually some form of social democratic or Scandinavian welfare state. The `sceptical dichotomy' maps the majority of the feminist debate on the EU, but the general agreement as to the problems of the EU has not been followed by a shared concrete assessment as to whether one should be in favour of the EU or not. This disagreement over practical policy is closely connected to the question of how one gets to `the other, feminist side' of the chain of dichotomies. And what exactly is `the other side' if the state is seen as harbouring a set of problems similar to the ones of the EU, although perhaps to a smaller extent? Are European feminists confronting a choice between two roughly identical constructions, the state and the EU, or is there something about one of them which makes it more conducive to a feminist politics? It is at this point that the importance of sovereignty and political strategy becomes apparent and where we might begin to link the feminist debate over the EU to the debate over the EU's legitimacy crisis. State sovereignty provides a particular organisation of political space into that which is `inside' the state and that which is `outside' in the international sphere. The location within a particular national community provides the inherently unstable `us' with a political identity through a set of inclusions and exclusions (Walker 1992: 189; see also Campbell 1992 and Neumann 1999). The challenge for a feminist theory of world politics becomes in this context to `identify possibilities for political community other than the bounded community of state, and of knowing what differences critical feminist practices might make to their achievement' (Walker 1992: 197). The admittedly dif®cult task is to begin to think about feminist theory and politics in a way which does not replicate the unproblematic acceptance of the inside±outside distinction key to IR, precisely because this distinction allocates `women' very limited political space. The public±private divide and state sovereignty combine, ®rst, to locate women outside of the political on the inside of the state, and then, second, make the international the realm of states. The more speci®c question in the context of the EU is thus whether it is possible to re-think the relationship between `women' and sovereignty in such a way that one is not simply either replicating the EU as the sovereign state writ large, with an ensuing limited space for `women' and a feminist politics, or, con®ning oneself to a continued insistence on the privilege of the national Member States which provides limited room for an international, feminist politics. Feminist support of the EU has been based to a large extent on the EU's contribution to the improvement of women's rights in several Member States. Even if the European Court of Justice's support of women's rights has stemmed in part from the Court's wish to enhance its own scope and not from a genuine concern for women, an `alliance' between feminists and those EU institutions pushing for allocating more power to the European level, most importantly the Commission and the European Court of Justice, has developed (Hoskyns 1996: 159±60; see also Collins

Gendered communities

143

1996: 33). Some supporters follow the liberal view that a more adequate representation of women and their needs, interests and concerns should be secured; with increased channels of representation women's opposition to the EU would in all likelihood decrease, is the reasoning. But some go further than the representational focus to argue that `regional divisions affect Europe's ability to advance feminism, for only a strong Europe could do so, if it wanted to sway its Member States in the right direction' (Delphy 1996: 148). Delphy argues further that limited political integration within the EU leads to a neglect of the common EU legislation; more political integration would spur the integration of EU legislation into national legislation to the bene®t of women. This belief in strengthening rather than weakening the European level is probably most explicitly stated by Hoskyns who argues that the EU's legitimacy crisis stems from the fact that: there is no participatory political system into which this [shift of attention towards the supranational level] can feed, instead of being reinforced and becoming genuinely transnational, the impetus is redirected back to the national. Thus people are discouraged from feeling `European' and the political base of the nation state is in formal terms at least preserved. (Hoskyns 1996: 208) It is therefore logical to strengthen the European level, `seeking to push the policy beyond the market-making, and towards state-building or societycreating measures which would create greater autonomy and power for women' (Hoskyns 1996: 202; see also Ailbhe Smyth, quoted in Elman 1996b: 8). The EU can, if constructed in a proper way, be an advantage for women. It needs, however, to develop its foundation politically (`statebuilding') as well as culturally (`society-creating'). The resolution of the `sceptical dichotomy' demands in other words that the EU develops a communitarian basis with more deeply held bonds of solidarity and loyalty than required by the self-interested individual. It is not only a matter of representing women, but of changing the `elitism' and `masculinity' of the EU. This articulation of the `sceptical dichotomy' with its emphasis on stateand society-building strikes a familiar cord within the general legitimacy debate where people like Paul Howe and Daniela Obradovic argue that the EU can no longer rely on a functionalist logic, it needs a political and cultural foundation if it is to secure for itself a stable foundation among the peoples of Europe (Howe 1995; Obradovic 1996). The weakness of this suggestion from a `post-sovereign' as well as from a feminist point of view is that this vision to a remarkable extent builds on the familiar national, territorial state. The question becomes therefore whether the feminist pro-EU position still operates within a model of the state, just lifted onto the European level. To avoid this replication Delphy and Hoskyns

144

Lene Hansen

must implicitly assume that the envisioned EU would be different from the Member States; speci®cally that this EU would be more in favour of women's rights and issues than `the' European Member State, and that this new European space would provide a better opportunity for feminist organisation, not just representation within the political and administrative bodies of the EU. Other feminists interpret the `sceptical dichotomy' quite differently from the pro-Europeanists, concluding that by trying to transform the EU from the inside one might `come to mirror it and practise similar forms of exclusion' before the deeply institutionalised patriarchal structures have begun to change in a feminist direction (Hoskyns 1994: 237). This assessment is often based on a radical feminist scepticism as to the possibility of changing political structures from the inside. But one should be cautious in concluding from this that there is a straightforward relationship between liberal feminism and EU support; or between radical feminism and resistance to the EU: some liberals might be against and some radicals in favour. Liberals could be unconvinced that the EU offers suf®cient improvement of one's own national standards or that it could improve women's representation to such an extent that the EU would solve its gendered legitimacy problem; radicals might ®nd that the post-sovereign organisation of the EU provides valuable feminist opportunities despite the institution's current problems. It is also worth noticing the combination of a radically inspired critique and a Romantic position towards women and the nation. In Denmark, for example ± the only country to turn down the Maastricht Treaty in a referendum ± one ®nds such a combination6 (Hansen forthcoming). The question of sovereignty and gender is here couched in traditional modern and national terms: the argument is that the EU compares unfavourably to the national level when the protection of women's rights within the two are compared (Dahlerup 1993: 63). The `European±national' problematique is, in other words, evaluated within a logic of measuring and `adding up' national and European standards. But underneath the apparently rational arguments of objective legal standards lies a more basic reference to the national community as the only one which can truly be trusted. This construction locates `women' as the privileged core of a national Romantic community and elaborates the basic `sceptical dichotomy' laid out above by adding a `rationalism±emotion' dichotomy. The EU is in short characterised by `cold' rationalism far removed from women's more emotional and intuitive approach to politics, and by means of force and power politics rather than debate and tolerance. As long as the national is the ontologically privileged reference which cannot be doubted, any feminist arguments in favour of the EU which build on objective achievements are unlikely to be successful. And scepticism here goes much deeper than can be solved through an enhancement of the EU's political and cultural identity. In fact, it is precisely this possible enhancement which triggers opposition from the Romantic nation as well as

Gendered communities

145

from the feminists who rely upon it: it is not only the current standards of the EU which are at stake but the loss of political sovereignty and thereby how future changes might negatively affect women. The key assumption of this discourse is that while the state might entail some of the same problems as the EU, it nevertheless operates within a political and cultural ®eld that one knows and shares, while the EU, on the other hand, does not. Concretely, this articulation of the `sceptical dichotomy' implies, for example, that one is against suggestions to strengthen the power of the European Parliament, a suggestion often made by those who believe that a solution of the EU's legitimacy problem lies in increasing popular representation vis-aÁ-vis the EU. There is certainly an element of national self-suf®ciency in this construction: the superiority of one's own country compared to the `other' EU members both in terms of the legal protection of women's rights and the norms concerning relations between the genders is continuously repeated. Yet even if the EU in this construction appears to repel rather than attract, it still holds an ambiguous attraction as the Other which the `good feminist, national project' can be identi®ed against. The EU and `Europe' function in other words as an institution and an identity presenting what `one' is through juxtaposition to what `one' is not; and one achieves a de®nition and a direction of the feminist project which had perhaps been lacking since the women's movement of the 1970s. But despite the superiority accorded to the national community, those arguing within this discourse cannot simply declare that they have no concern for the `other' women of Europe. Rather, the (self-declared) radical feminist element of this discourse demands that one articulates a vision of feminist solidarity across borders. This demand is ful®lled through an articulation of the `sceptical dichotomy' which argues that all women, not only Danish women, would in fact be better off without the EU dealing only with their `normal' states. The dichotomous division between `elites' and `people/women' of the `sceptical dichotomy' is thereby employed throughout each state: `women' need to connect with each other throughout the EU, but the EU itself cannot provide a framework for doing so due to its elitist and inorganic nature. A true `women's' community' has, on the other hand, to evolve `beyond' and in opposition to EU and state structures.

Conclusion The development within the EC/EU in the area of women's rights constitutes an important example of how speci®c policies and legislation might play a role in creating political subjectivities who are not de®ned according to their national identity. `Women' provide an interesting study, precisely because once created as an over-arching category it stands simultaneously in an ambiguous relationship to the EU: while both the EU itself and many feminists have pointed repeatedly to the achievements of the EU in the ®eld

146

Lene Hansen

of women's rights, `women' have consistently under-performed in terms of providing support for the EU. This might illustrate that it is perhaps more dif®cult to create a particular subject than is often assumed in the legitimacy debate; and that it is even more dif®cult to shape the European attitude of this subject once it has come into being. Certainly, it appears that there is signi®cant political and cultural opposition to increased European integration among women which cannot be met through employment of the strategies of representation and information and, to the extent that the EU continues to rely on these strategies, it will be unlikely to solve its `gender problem'. An extension of the focus beyond the question of women's rights to how political space and identity become constructed shows that `the gender question' is still struggling to escape the constraints imposed by the public± private and the national±European dichotomies. If `women' need to travel from the private over the public to the political on the inside of the state before they can engage with other `women', our conceptualisation of political space will remain locked into the rigid divisions of state sovereignty. The question therefore becomes to what extent the developing EU will provide ± even if it takes on a post-sovereign form ± a radical transformation of these terms of organisation. There is no guarantee that an integrated EU will entail radically different, or better, possibilities for `women', but it is, on the other hand, equally impossible to conclude that it might not. The EU is not a ®xed entity and its future shape will depend not only on the ability of feminists to in¯uence its course, but also on the stances and policies of its member governments, the stability ± or passivity ± of the popular commitment, and on the transformations brought about by the future enlargement to `the East'.

Notes 1 I wish to thank the participants at the CORE conference in October 1997, Barry Buzan, Thomas Diez, Ulla Holm, Ole Wñver, and in particular the two editors for helpful discussions and comments. 2 For a study of sexual politics and the EU from a similar perspective, see Elman (1996a). 3 For a neo-Gramscian analysis of the EU as a set of economic practices, see Johansen 1999. 4 A complete and thorough analysis would involve a study of the EU's institutions, the national governments, feminist political groups as well as others. However, the focus in this chapter will be on the Commission, the European Court of Justice and the feminist debate. While clearly interesting and relevant, the more sustained integration of the national policies, perspectives and debates will have to await future study. 5 It should be noted that while Elshtain is critical of liberalism's view of the individual/community, she is also highly critical of radical feminism's ahistorical use of patriarchy and the feminist utopia (Elshtain 1981: 213±28).

Gendered communities

147

6 My claim is not that the Danish example is common throughout the EU or that it is uncontested within Denmark. The point is, on the contrary, that it provides a good illustration of a radically different articulation of the sceptical dichotomy. Nor should the feminist constructions identi®ed in this section be seen as exhausting the empirical or theoretical possibilities of what a feminist perspective on the EU might look like.

References Bretherton, C. and Sperling, L. (1996) `Women's Networks and the European Union: Towards an Inclusive Approach?', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 487±508. Campbell, D.(1992) Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, Manchester: Manchester University Press. Collins, E. (1996) `European Union Sexual Harassment Policy', in R.A. Elman (ed.) Sexual Politics and the European Union: The New Feminist Challenge, Providence and Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 23±34. Dahlerup, D. (1993) `More Women than Men Said ``No'' to Maastricht', in H.N. Carlsen, J.T. Ross Jackson and N.I. Meyer (eds) When No Means Yes, London: Adamantine Press, pp. 61±5. Delphy, C. (1996) `The European Union and the Future of Feminism', in R.A. Elman (ed.) Sexual Politics and the European Union: The New Feminist Challenge, Providence and Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 147±58. Elman, R.A. (1996a) Sexual Politics and the European Union: The New Feminist Challenge, Providence and Oxford: Berghahn Books. ÐÐ (1996b) `Introduction: The EU from Feminist Perspectives', in R.A. Elman (ed.) Sexual Politics and the European Union: The New Feminist Challenge, Providence and Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 1±12. ÐÐ (1998) `The EU and Women: Virtual Equality', in P.-H. Laurent and M. Maresceau (eds) The State of the European Union: Deepening and Widening, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, pp. 225±39. Elshtain, J.B. (1981) Public Man, Private Woman: Women in Social and Political Thought, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Eriksen, T.H. (1992) `Linguistic Hegemony and Minority Resistance', Journal of Peace Research vol. 29, no. 3, pp. 313±32. `Equal Opportunities for Women and Men in the European Union ± 1996', http:europa.eu.int/comm/dg05/equ_opp/resume/resen.htm Eurobarometer (1997) `Women's Attitudes to the European Union: A Typology of Public Opinion Among Europe's Women', no. 47.1, December. Flynn, L. (1997) `Marketing the Union: Some Feminist Perspectives', Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift vol. 100, no. 1, pp. 67±73. GarcõÂa-Ramon, M.D. and Monk, J. (eds) (1996) Women of the European Union: The Politics of Work and Daily Life, London: Routledge. Hanmer, J. (1996) `The Common Market of Violence', in R.A. Elman (ed.) Sexual Politics and the European Union: The New Feminist Challenge, Providence and Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 131±46. Hansen, L. (forthcoming) `Sustaining Sovereignty: The Danish Approach to Europe', in L. Hansen and O. Wñver (eds) Between Nations and Europe: Regionalism, Nationalism and the Politics of Union, London: Routledge.

148

Lene Hansen

Hansen, L. and Williams, M.C. (1999) `The Myths of Europe: Legitimacy, Community and the ``Crisis'' of the EU', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 233±49. Hoskyns, C. (1991) `The European Women's Lobby', Feminist Review no. 38, pp. 67±70. ÐÐ (1994) `Gender Issues in International Relations: The Case of the European Community', Review of International Studies vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 225±39. ÐÐ (1996) Integrating Gender: Women, Law and Politics in the European Union, London: Verso. Howe, P. (1995) `A Community of Europeans: The Requisite Underpinnings', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 27±46. Johansen, H. (1999) `Constructing the Socio-Economic Order and Emerging Polity of the EU: A Neogramscian Approach', paper presented at the International Studies Association's annual convention in Washington, DC, 16±20 February. Kofman, E. and Sales, R. (1996) `The Geography of Gender and Welfare in Europe', in M.D. GarcõÂa-Ramon and J. Monk (eds) Women of the European Union: The Politics of Work and Daily Life, London: Routledge, pp. 31±60. Monk, J. and GarcõÂa-Ramon, M.D. (1996) `Placing Women of the European Union', in M.D. GarcõÂa-Ramon and J. Monk (eds) Women of the European Union: The Politics of Work and Daily Life, London: Routledge, pp. 1±30. Neumann, I.B. (1999) The Uses of the Other: ``The East'' in European Identity Formation, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Obradovic, D. (1996) `Policy Legitimacy and the European Union', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 191±221. Pateman, C. (1983) `Feminist Critiques of the Public/Private Dichotomy', in S. Benn and G. Gaus (eds) Public and Private in Social Life, London: Croom Helm. Pillinger, J. (1992) Feminising the Market: Women's Pay and Employment in the European Community, London: Macmillan. Ruggie, J.G. (1993) `Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations', International Organization, vol. 47, no. 1, pp. 139±74. Smyth, A. (1996) ` ``And Nobody Was Any the Wiser'': Irish Abortion Rights and the European Union', in R.A. Elman (ed.) Sexual Politics and the European Union: The New Feminist Challenge, Providence and Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 109±30. Stelling, I. (1999) `Stñrke Kvinder Styrer EU' (`Strong women are running the EU'), Politiken, 1 February, Section 1, p. 12. `The Euro and Women', can be located at http://europa.eu.int/euro/html Wñver, O. and Kelstrup, M. (1993) `Europe and its Nations: Political and Cultural Identities', in O. Wñver et al. (eds) Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe, London: Pinter, pp. 61±92. Walker, R.B.J. (1992) `Gender and Critique in the Theory of International Relations', in V.S. Peterson (ed.) Gendered States: Feminist (Re)Visions of International Relations Theory, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, pp. 179±202. ÐÐ (1993) Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

7

Contested community Migration and the question of the political in the EU Jef Huysmans

The transnational immigrants' movements function as sanctions which force western Europe to act responsibly in the aftermath of the bankruptcy of state socialism. Europe must make a great effort to quickly improve conditions in the poorer areas of middle and eastern Europe or it will be ¯ooded by asylum seekers and immigrants. (Habermas 1992: 13)

I was rather surprised to ®nd these sentences in a text which argues for the transformation of the restrictive migration policies of nation±states in Western Europe. The quote represents migration movements through a powerful metaphor which is used to justify restrictive policies: the ¯ood of migrants (threatening the survival of Western Europe in the aftermath of the end of the Cold War). But it simultaneously transforms the consequences of the ¯ood. Instead of calling for a restrictive and managerial policy, the in¯ow of migration calls into being the question of responsible practices. Given that Habermas' text is in the ®rst place concerned with the possibilities of transforming West European political community as institutionalised in the nation±state into a post-national political community and with the normative basis of this transformation, the question of responsibility is ®rmly linked to the question of the nature of the political community in which this responsibility is enacted. The interesting point here is that this text shows the ambivalence in the concept of the migrant in the Western European political scene today. Although migration is often represented as a managerial problem and as a nuisance or even a threat, it is also a force which has a capacity to call into being or at least to support a struggle about responsibility and the nature of the political community in which this responsibility is institutionalised and enacted. In other words, migration is not just a threat or a risk for a community, leading to a call for preserving the community as it is, it is also an anchoring point for political movements seeking the transformation of the political community. This is not only visible in the forces arguing for a liberal multicultural society or in the forces expressing a desire for a

150

Jef Huysmans

post-national republican community with autonomous citizens, also the extreme Right seeking to overturn liberal democracies through a conservative revolution ± probably at present most successfully ± uses the power of migration to raise fundamental questions about political community. This chapter looks speci®cally at the political signi®cance of migration as it arises in a European integration process facing and instigating (again) a crisis of the political. The functional, systemic nature of the integration process which emphasises the economic management of problems is questioned on the basis of its discrepancy with the normative organisational principles of the community, more speci®cally, with the request for democratic value determination ± the question of the democratic de®cit. Furthermore, the integration process partly draws on the crisis of state±society relations at the national level but without institutionalising an alternative political space. In this context, migration emerges as a signi®cant issue in the struggle for and against the development of a post-national, politically signi®cant European Union. The ®rst section of this chapter looks at the capacity inherent in the name `migrant' to put a political community to the test in Europe today. The second section deals with the relationship between the European integration process and challenges to political legitimacy which is the general problematic within which the political capacity of `migration' is triggered. The third section focuses on how the politicisation of migration is embedded in a struggle for a post-national and multicultural European Union. The concluding section formulates the question if de-politicising migration would not be a more viable strategy to improve the rights of migrants in Europe.

Migration and political identity Bureaucratic, corporate, academic and political actors most of the time represent migration policy as a reaction to an increasing migration pressure. Migration is thus approached like any other economic, social, or psychological challenge: a problem that presents itself in front of the policymakers and that demands effective action.1 However, this approach hides the fact that questions relating to migration are posed in the context of a crisis of political identity in Europe today. In this process immigrants and refugees are not only a challenge to which one reacts but they also become anchoring points for political (self-) identi®cation, that is, they mark a battle®eld of identity politics ( Jopke 1998; Kastoryano 1998; Miles and ThraÈnhardt 1995). The name `migrant' draws its political signi®cance in this context from articulating a liminal position.2 Migrants are members of society and therefore entitled to rights and duties. But they cannot be full members of this society because of the sin of late entry. Migrants have not belonged to the group from the beginning and thus import `strange qualities into it, which do not and cannot stem from the group itself ' (Simmel 1964: 402). They

Contested community

151

therefore simultaneously belong and do not belong. This results in a liminal position in the sense that they cannot be fully classi®ed by means of the institutionalised categories regulating membership, such as nationality, labour market utility, etc. For example, permitting family reunion after the migration stop in most West European countries in the 1970s has gradually blurred the image that immigrants are provisionally staying guest workers ± both in the immigrant community and among the `host' population.3 Migrants also challenge the viability of nationalist classi®cations of political membership. For example, immigrants are often pictured ideally as a labour force. But this does not eliminate the fact that they are essentially caught in a nationality problematique. Immigration today also essentially refers to the presence of non-nationals in the national order, and emigration refers to the absence in the national order of nationals belonging to it (Sayad 1991: 292). Despite ± or is it rather exactly because of? ± this internal linkage between the order of migration and the order of nationality, the migrant falls in the non-space between two national communities. They do not fully belong to the political community in which they live and they do not live in the political community to which they should fully belong, and therefore do not fully belong (Miles 1993: 211; Sayad 1991: 295). This paradoxical condition makes it dif®cult to reduce the migration problematique to a simple self±other dialectic in which migrants become the other who essentially belongs elsewhere and from which `we' can distance ourselves easily (Sayad 1991: 292). It is important to see that migrants do not raise questions of identity only because they are the other nationality but precisely also because they signify the possibility of the impossible position of simultaneously belonging and not belonging. Furthermore, migration also easily evokes moral questions about rights and the common good which de®ne the political community. Although one can turn a migration question into a technical issue of labour demand and supply, thresholds of tolerance, etc., the name essentially retains a capacity to ask moral questions about the good life in the community. Migrants are never purely a machine or a number in a calculus. They are captured in a game of domination and subordination and a symbolic game of de®ning the good and right life. This is most explicitly visible in the case of refugees and asylum seekers which raises most directly the issue of respect for human rights (Gowlland-Debas forthcoming). However, economic immigrants also raise questions about housing, social rights, political rights, etc. (Faist 1994; Soysal 1994). As a result, the name `migrant' has an essential capacity to raise or become involved in what could be called a problematique of contested political community. That means that the name `migrant' can be easily drawn into a struggle over the transformation of political identity and the concept of the common good and rights it incorporates. Therefore, it should not be surprising that migration has been a key phenomenon ± together with war

152

Jef Huysmans

and class differences ± in relation to which political community and citizenship has traditionally been de®ned (Habermas 1994: 33; Turner 1992; Weber, 1996). Of course, the name `migrant' connotes also judicial, demographic, geographical, economic and social questions, but its capacity to raise questions about political identity remains part of the connotative kernel of the name. Although there often is a strategy of dissimulating the political connotations of migration ± a de-politicisation of migration ± which may be necessary for a smooth regulation of the issue (Guiraudon 1998; Sayad 1991: 304), the political connotations can always be invoked by using the name `migrant'. According to Sayad: Au fond, c'est tout l'entendement que nous avons de notre ordre social et politique, ce sont toutes les cateÂgories de notre entendement politique (et pas seulement politique) qui sont en cause dans les `perceptions collectives' qui sont au principe de la de®nition donneÂe de l'immigre et du discours qui met en úuvre cette de®nition.4 (Sayad 1991: 63) Politicising societal questions such as the crisis of the welfare state or the proper functioning of the internal market via the name `migrant' can always slip into a political struggle in which the sedimented imaginations constituting a political community are questioned. For example, limiting access to welfare provisions and social assistance to national citizens will almost inevitably trigger reactions from some of the grassroots which would ®ght this `welfare chauvinism' in the name of a multicultural society (Ireland 1991; Kastoryano 1997). This means that even in a context in which functional processes dominate the regulation of migration, the very name `migrant' retains an essential capacity to be appropriated by political forces both pro- and anti-migration to transform the policy debates from one focusing on functional regulation to one concerned with fundamental political values such as nationalism, multiculturalism, human rights, social welfare, etc. It is in this sense that politicising migration often puts a political community to the test, as Legomski states in his interpretation of the signi®cance of immigration law: [I]mmigration laws are about as central to a nation's mission as anything can be. They are central because they literally shape who we are as a people. They are central also because they function as a mirror, re¯ecting and displaying the qualities we value in others. For both reasons, decisions on immigration policy put us to the test as no other decisions do. They reveal, for ourselves and for the world, what we really believe in and whether we are prepared to act on those beliefs. (Legomski 1993: 335)

Contested community

153

The political crisis of Europe This capacity of migration to become an anchoring point for political forces struggling over the de®nition of the political is prominent in Western Europe today. The political meaning of migration arises from severe political and economic challenges to the welfare state leading to a problem of political legitimacy (Faist 1994, 1995). In this context social forces have transformed migration from an economic and managerial question into a key issue in the struggle over questions about the nature of the political community. One of the key questions is the ®ght for or against a more multicultural political community which would recognise the political rights of non-national residents. The European integration process enters the picture as a development with a capacity to simultaneously challenge the institutionalised form of political community ± the nation±state ± and reproduce the legitimation problematique which arises from the tension between functional system integration and normative integration via democratic value determination in the European Union. The European Union capitalises on the crisis of political legitimacy in its Member States. European integration is commonly interpreted as an instrument for addressing some of the problems of political legitimacy of the postwar state (Leander and Guzzini 1997; Milward 1984; Moravcsik 1993). The need to manage trans-societal ¯ows, for example, arising from a globalising ®nancial market for the purpose of retaining the economic basis to deliver welfare provision may bring states to integrate.5 However, the integration process is also understood as an instrument for dealing with the crisis of national democracy and the problem of nationalism and multiculturalism (Ferry 1990, 1991; Habermas 1992; Kastoryano 1998). For example, the European Union could be understood as a guarantee against regressive politics at the national level curtailing achieved rights for migrants. Or, constructing a political community at the European level would almost by necessity have to integrate relations on other grounds than the creation of a Euronationalism (Ferry 1998: 183; Smith 1992). European integration has also become a force which to an extent challenges the national states. Besides absorbing some of the decision-making power of the nation±states, the European Union has also given rise to a transnationalisation of political struggles in Europe. For example, in their struggle for achieving more rights and in response to European integration the immigrants have not limited their political organizing to the national and subnational level within each host society: they have demonstrated a growing propensity to develop cross-national contacts and activities, stitching together a continental organizational framework. Immigrants are thereby becoming truly European political actors. (Ireland 1991: 459)

154

Jef Huysmans

To indicate their independence from understanding identity along national lines, migrant movements have consciously looked at the European Union as a point of support for articulating identity along non-national or postnational lines (Kastoryano 1997: 62). Thus, European integration generates to an extent an attractive political sphere because it functions as a political institution and reference point but without providing a clear articulation of its identity (Ferry 1998; Kastoryano 1998). As a result, it has provided political forces seeking to transform nationalist forms of political identity ± for example, for the purpose of improving the rights of refugees and immigrants ± with an opportunity to signi®cantly transnationalise their political mobilisation. But this is only one side of the story. While challenging the sedimented political sphere of the nation±state and offering indications of having a capacity to develop an alternative political sphere, the European integration process has largely failed to signi®cantly institutionalise a political identity and a public sphere of contest. In other words, although one can observe seeds of an alternative political organisation, they have not generated an alternative institutionalised political community. Ferry speaks in this context of the European Union being anti-political: through its existence the European Union emphasises that the national state is no longer the ultimate reference point of political identity and sovereignty but the Union does not provide political sense. It does not represent citizens or ethically justify norms. Nor does it organise the function of a public contest of decisions (Ferry 1992: 211±12). The European Union remains ®rst of all an administrative and economic organisation which is primarily concerned with steering problems, that is with the regulation or administration of the internal market, rather than with redistributive politics, democratic value determination, and normative integration of its citizens (Majone 1996). It is not that clear-cut whether the integration process is the rescue of the nation±state or rather a fundamental challenge to its viability and sovereignty claims (Hooghe 1996; Majone 1996; Marks et al. 1996; Milward 1994; Milward et al. 1995; Moravcsik 1993). But as a process capitalising on the legitimation problems in the nation±state it is by de®nition positioned in a tension which follows from its dualistic sociological identity. On the one hand, the Union institutionalises an instrument for sustaining political legitimacy of the post-war national states while, on the other hand, it articulates an opportunity to institutionalise an alternative political reference point which has a capacity to severely challenge the supremacy of the nation±states. From the perspective of national governments this tension arises in the form of a dilemma. For example, on the one hand, governments felt compelled to cooperate on home and justice affairs to counter perceived challenges resulting from the completion of the internal market such as an increase in transnationally organised crime while, on the other, this may imply a loss of national control and thus increase the insecurity of the governmental elite (Anderson et al. 1994: 112).

Contested community

155

This tension arises from the complex relation between the European Union and the nation±states. However, the Union also incorporates another tension which arises more exclusively from the internal dynamic of the integration process. The integration process in itself ± that is not directly derived from the legitimacy problems in the nation±states ± faces a crisis of the political which is mostly referred to as the question of the democratic de®cit (Beetham and Lord 1998; Weiler 1997a). Although the main basis of binding individuals into the European order and of justifying European interventions in society is of a functional, utilitarian and therefore of a largely de-politicised nature, the process of European integration also triggers more political debates about values, the right form of life, etc. In particular, the question of democratic legitimacy and the complex relation between regional nationalist movements and the integration process play a signi®cant role in raising the issue of the political sense of the European Union (on the critical signi®cance of the question of regionalism, see Hooghe 1996 and Le GaleÁs and Lesquesne 1998). Should the Union become more political? If so, how is democratic value determination to be organised within the Union? The most common interpretation of this phenomenon is that the far-reaching functional process of integration has triggered (again) a quest for a more political and democratic European Union (Patomaki 1997). The discussions about citizenship, democratic de®cit, and legitimation crisis suggest that there is a general sense that further integration would require a real political integration resulting in the creation of a European polity (Andersen and Eliassen 1996; Beetham and Lord 1998; Chrysochoou 1996; Garcia 1993; Minkkinen and Patomaki 1997; Weiler 1997a). In other words, integration cannot really progress further unless it ®nds support in the European population and a European democratic public sphere. Therefore the political elite faces the question of the transfer of loyalty and the development of a European democratic polity. What this neofunctionalist narrative does is to embed a tension inherent in modern liberal democracy ± instrumental rationalisation versus democratic value determination ± in a linear and progressive understanding of time. It interprets the tension between rationalisation and democratic value determination as two different moments of a process of integration. In this story, the crisis emerges as an almost inevitable consequence of a progressing functional integration process. because the integration process has already gone so far, as symbolised by the single currency and its indication of a singular space, the quest for normative justi®cation is bound to go beyond the possibilities provided by the Monnet method and functionalist thinking. (Patomaki 1997: 199)

156

Jef Huysmans

Although it is clearly the case that the deepening of the functional integration process with among others the development of the internal market and the EMU has played a role in triggering the question of democratic de®cit in the European Union today, the tension between functional, rationalising processes of social integration and communicative processes concentrating on public deliberation and decisions about the common good is not limited to the European integration process. It is a more general tension at the heart of imaginations and institutionalisations of the modern, liberal-democratic political community (Beck 1992, 1993; Habermas 1973; McCormick 1997; Weber, 1958). On the one hand, modern liberal politics has incorporated the idea of democracy, thereby de®ning a deliberative politics in which the population provides the ®nal ground of the legitimation of authority and of value determinations. On the other, it has been thoroughly integrated into a process of rationalisation in which expert knowledge and instrumental rationality provide the ground for policy decisions. One could easily argue that the latter empties the political, deliberative dimension of liberalism, and is therefore a de-politicising development. Governing society becomes a more or less functional, technocratic process in which battles about the true nature of society, the best form of rule, etc. are neutralised via value-free expert knowledge and systemic motives driven by instrumental rationality. Democratic value determination, on the other hand, requires communication about true and desirable constructions of a common world in which both the ruled and rulers participate. The communicative logic always risks being squeezed into insigni®cance by the demand for expert knowledge and the request for progress. In this interpretation, the political crisis of the European integration process is not just an outcome of a progressive functional integration of Europe but a replay of a more fundamental question which articulates the fact that the modern form of the political is essentially torn between the `Iron Cage' of rationalisation and the quest for value determination and democratic legitimation. One of the consequences of this reading is that one avoids singularising the legitimation problems the European Union faces. They emerge as a particular historical manifestation of a key issue of modern politics (Held 1987: 221±42, for an interesting historical analysis; Donzelot 1994). This reading pushes interpretations of the legitimation problems of the European Union to explore how they relate to the legitimation crisis of the Western European welfare states. The very tension between a de-politicising, functional logic of instrumental necessity and the need for democratic value determination emerges in the kernel of the integration process today. But there is more at stake than a manifestation of this tension at a supranational level. The integration process also provokes tension and this relates the second tension which rests on the de-politicising dimensions of integration back to the ®rst one which rests on the contest between the European Union and the nation±states

Contested community

157

over political identity and sovereignty. The integration process does not only embody most explicitly a functional rationality, it also challenges fundamentally the common, sedimented locus of the political, that is the national state, as indicated above. Thereby the functionalising process of integration risks cutting away the primary and most institutionalised sphere for providing political sense in modern societies. Doing this without offering an alternative political sphere for democratic value determination renders the integration process anti-political. It introduces a fundamental question concerning the nature and place of the political by contesting the link between citizenship and nationality, the political and the state, and the people and the nation but does not provide an alternative institutionalisation (yet?) (Ferry 1992: 211±12; Habermas 1992, 1994; Weiler 1997b). Thus, the integration process incorporates two interrelated tensions: a tension between the nation±state and the European Union as signi®cant reference points for political identity and sovereignty, on the one hand, and a tension between functional integration on the basis of instrumental rationalisation and democratic value determination, on the other. Because of the double tendency to become anti-political and emphasising depoliticising regulations, the integration process always risks constituting a political crisis in its true sense, that is a crisis of the imagination and institutionalisation of the political in Europe.

Migration, multiculturalism, and post-national Europe Migration is embedded in a process of politicising the European Union. It emerges in a struggle over the transformation of the nature of the political in the European Union. More speci®cally, the migration issue has been embedded in a contest to change the de-politicising and anti-political nature of the European integration process. As a result, the name `migrant' has become a political name rather than a purely managerial problem in the European Union. Not only the transnational articulation of interests of immigrants and refugees but also the debates about a post-national and multicultural Europe testify to this politicisation of migration. In this context of the question of the political legitimacy of the European Union the political struggles over policies towards immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees, which ultimately give `migration' its political signi®cance, emerge in two interrelated settings. On the one hand, there is the struggle for and against improving the rights of refugees and immigrants which thrives on a desire for or fear of a multicultural political community. Multiculturalism can refer here both to a political community in which political and social rights are not granted on the basis of nationality but rather on the basis of residence and other non-ethnic criteria or to a political community in which the rights are explicitly granted to different ethnic groups which are of®cially recognised. The European Union enters the picture as a structure of opportunity to establish this multicultural community which

158

Jef Huysmans

ultimately will grant migrants full political citizenship. In other words, through Europeanising the politicisation of migration one attempts to escape the constraints faced in the nation±state (Ireland 1991; Kastoryano 1997). The European Union is embraced as a politically signi®cant reference point in this struggle because it incorporates the promise of a political community which goes beyond integrating its citizens on the basis of a European nation ± that is, a mirroring of social integration on the basis of nationality at the European level (on the limitations of establishing vertical integration on the basis of a form of Euro-nationalism, see Ferry 1998; Smith 1992). On the other hand, the increasing Europeanisation of migration policy also integrates the political capacity of the name `migrant' to call Europe responsible towards migrants ± and also to its own historico-political project (Derrida 1992) ± in the European integration process itself. Although the integration of migration policy develops largely in a regulative framework which emphasises the instrumental need to cooperate for the purpose of effectively managing the migration problem, it unavoidably also transfers the capacity of `migration' to call into being the question of the common good and responsible action towards other people. Consequently, the increasing Europeanisation of migration policy which is generally understood as restricting the rights of immigration and asylum (Collinson 1993; Lavanex 1998; Miles and ThraÈnhardt 1995; Ward 1997) also opens a window of opportunity to test the political and normative signi®cance of the European Union. This is rendered even more signi®cant in an integration process which increasingly articulates respect for universal, moral principles embodied in human rights, democracy and free market as the kernel of its identity. As a result questions such as `how does the European Union reconcile its repressive migration policy with its political identity which rests on the support for human rights and democracy?' gain in political signi®cance (Gowlland-Debas forthcoming). At the heart of the political struggle is the viability and desirability of a rearticulation of the relationship between citizenship and nationality. This question raises the issue of the nature of the European public identity and of the proper government of inclusion and exclusion in the political community. Post-national citizenship operates in this context as an important vehicle. It ties together a thorough politicisation of the European integration process and the search for a more responsible policy towards immigrants, asylum seekers, and refugees. It connects to the idea of constructing a multicultural political community in which economic, social, and political rights are obtained on the basis of residence. The normative concern about migration instigates to a considerable extent this search for a transformation of national citizenship by means of constructing a post-national European political community (Habermas 1992; Martiniello 1995; Soysal 1994; Tassin 1992).

Contested community

159

The Habermasian view probably most explicitly raises the issue of postnational citizenship in this way. It focuses on the possibilities of opinion and will formation through formal and informal networks of communication in a transnational European political space. It stresses the need to separate political culture from national culture through establishing a democratic political culture with which citizens identify at the European level. The nation can still be a reference point for cultural identi®cation but no longer for political identi®cation. The European Union is the main locus of this political identity. Consequently, in terms of national identity Europe would be fragmented and thus be multicultural while it would be united by a shared political culture. In a post-national Europe political integration is not based on national identity but on reciprocating a democratic disposition. It is respect for and enactment of the democratic values and rules of the political game which determine political participation (Ferry 1990, 1991). In other words, one does not have to give up one's cultural identity to become a member of the political community. One only has to participate in the common political culture which is a deliberative, pluralist culture of argumentation and persuasion.6 This opens the possibility of using residence combined with a reciprocation of democratic disposition as the criterion of European citizenship. For immigrants and refugees the post-national political space allows them to become active members of the political community. If they have lived in a particular political community, they have a right to participate as actively as anyone else in the construction of the world the people of the community hold in common. The European states should agree upon a liberal immigration policy. They should not draw their wagons around themselves and their chauvinism of prosperity, hoping to ignore the pressures of those hoping to immigrate or seek asylum. The democratic right of selfdetermination includes, of course, the right to preserve one's own political culture, which includes the concrete context of citizen's rights, though it does not include the self-assertion of a privileged cultural life form. Only within the constitutional framework of a democratic legal system can different ways of life coexist equally. These must, however, overlap within a common political culture, which again implies an impulse to open these ways of life to others. (Habermas 1992: 17, italics in original) This interpretation of a post-national Europe also articulates a speci®c imagination of the political. Post-national citizenship does not just refer to the need to create a multicultural Europe. It also incorporates a speci®c understanding of the nature of the political space in which this multicultural identity is to be articulated. It combines the search for a multicultural identity with a transformation of the political space itself (more extensively on

160

Jef Huysmans

how thinking multiculturalism is also about [re]imagining democracy, see Martiniello 1997). Post-national citizenship aims at displacing passive citizenship with active citizenship. Instead of de®ning citizens as objects of care-taking or passive recipients of rights and duties, the post-national position argues for de®ning citizens as active political subjects who can bring in¯uence to bear on public life and who participate in the constitution of a political space (Turner 1992). This republican ideal of citizenship emphasises civic engagement and active political deliberation as essential conditions for the development of public identity, effective political agency, and a vibrant democratic political culture. Citizens participate in a public sphere through deliberation and persuasion with the aim of in¯uencing the de®nition and regulation of matters affecting the political community. This view af®rms the signi®cance of the political in liberal democracy. The political is not a sphere which is functional for obtaining other ends ± such as capital accumulation, welfare provisions or social assistance ± and which is external to the identity of the citizens. Rather, political activity is valued in itself and is a key dimension of the public identity of individuals in a democracy (Benhabib 1996: 172±220; d'EntreÁves 1994; Mouffe 1993). This republican imagination of the political articulates a transnational European political space which differs considerably from two political rationalities common to the regulation of migration: utilitarian and communitarian forms of mediating inclusion and exclusion. A utilitarian logic de®nes criteria of belonging on the basis of performance. One receives bene®ts in relation to what one has delivered. This logic does not exclude immigrants or refugees from bene®ts if they have contributed to society (for example, if they have paid taxes or if they are employed). This logic underlies among others the legitimacy of guest workers' claims of social provisions. They have contributed to the social security system (for example, pension contributions) and therefore they can claim particular bene®ts, in principle just like any other employee. But, it also implies that if one has not delivered (for example, unemployed immigrants of the second generation) the rights could be reduced or denied. In principle this logic does not mediate inclusion and exclusion on the basis of nationality or foreignness. It is contributions to the social system which count and which determine the rights one receives. This is a de-politicised mediation of inclusion and exclusion which reproduces the functional imagination of a community. Inclusion and exclusion of immigrants and refugees, of the healthy and the sick, of the have and have-not are not regulated via a harsh battle for power, a clash of different views of the true society, or emotional and ritualised rhetoric of belonging. Rather, it is done by means of so-called neutral calculations of costs and bene®ts encapsulated in a moral of matching the levels of giving and receiving. This utilitarian rationality is in contemporary Europe overdetermined by a communitarian logic. This is especially visible in the increasing articulation of a welfare chauvinism in Western Europe. Welfare chauvinism

Contested community

161

melds questions of social solidarity and redistribution of welfare provisions with privileging nationality. In other words, it implies that socio-economic rights are delivered ®rst and foremost to nationals of Member States of the European Union (Brochmann 1993: 103; Ceyhan forthcoming and 1998; Faist 1994: 61±6). According to the communitarian logic belonging should be regulated on the basis of an equality of condition, especially cultural equality. For communitarians individuals are not just atomic agents integrated into society via utility calculations. They form a community because they share an identity, or better, the identity of individuals is constituted in and through the community rather than being externally given to them. One belongs to the imagined community because one is identi®ed as a national. Immigrants can only become full members of the community through naturalisation. In the EU this logic of belonging certainly overdetermines the utilitarian one at present. The concept of third-country nationals whose freedom of movement is seen as a problematic issue within the project of the internal market is a good indication of this. They are not fully included in the internal market because they do not have the nationality of one of the Member States. This also raises another interesting issue, namely that there is a certain tension within the communitarian logic between nationality and Europeanness. The concept of European citizenship as developed in the Treaty of the European Union (1992) attempts to moderate this tension by constructing an indirect form of European citizenship which limits European citizenship to nationals of the Member States (Behnke 1997; Martiniello 1995; Meehan 1992; Rosas and Antola 1995). The post-national alternative posits a transnational European political space which is certainly more inclusive than the communitarian logic which decides participation on the basis of nationality and certainly more political than the utilitarian one which makes rights dependent upon performance ± i.e. the contribution of taxes. Its republican understanding of political community supports active citizens who have political agency and develop a capacity for judgement which they articulate in a public sphere where decisions are made on the basis of collective deliberation about matters of common concern (d'EntreÁves 1994: 146.). It does not limit participation in this public sphere on the basis of nationality. The main criterion is participation in the community and reciprocating the democratic dispositions and the democratic rules of the game which de®ne the political space. This implies a thorough politicisation of both the European Union and migration on the basis of a shared political culture which is cut loose from the criterion of nationality.

Politicising or de-politicising migration in the European Union? In the above, I have shown that the political signi®cance of migration emerges in a European Union facing a crisis of the political. This crisis

162

Jef Huysmans

results from the de-politicising and anti-political nature of the European Union. In this context the political capacity of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers to call a community responsible and test its rules of mediating relations between self and other arises in the European integration process. The migration question sustains a struggle about a political and multicultural European Union. The post-national position which favours a multicultural and more political Europe uses a political strategy of simultaneously spelling out the political identity of Europe and the political quality of the migration question. In other words, its supporters develop a process of double politicisation: politicising the European integration process and the question of migration. This view thus very much emphasises a strategy of further politicisation for ethico-political reasons: the transformation of nationalism and of the integration process. However, politicisation does not happen in a vacuum or from scratch. Migration is already heavily politicised. Or, in other words, the postnational multicultural position enters a political ®eld in which relations of power have already been drawn. In such a setting political acts may have unintended consequences which may contradict the original intention of transforming simultaneously the political identity of the European Union and the crystallisation of a democratic form of multiculturalism. This raises the question of whether politicisation is necessarily a good strategy, or, in other words, if de-politicising the migration issue would not result in more successful reforms extending the rights of immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees. The consequences of an af®rmative answer to the latter question would imply an argument for de-linking the struggle for a multicultural community from the struggle for a more political European Union. Before delving a bit further into this crucial issue for post-nationalist discourses let's ®rst quickly look at the meaning of politicisation. What does it mean for an issue like migration to be politicised? An immediate response could be that it implies that migration has become an electoral issue (Schnapper 1992: 38±41). However, politicisation is not limited to party politics and electoral campaigns. It involves a more general process of making an issue into a subject of public debate. Social forces discuss and challenge each other in reference to the question of migration. This also implies that migration has become a question of choice to an extent. The de®nition and regulation of migration are no longer settled ± if they ever were. There is a request or even an imperative to choose. In a sense one could say that the public contest is about how to understand the choices regarding migration and which choices to make. Furthermore, the choice has a direct bearing on `the community as a whole' rather than on a particular section of it. Politicisation blows questions up to make them a subject of the general interest or will. The de®nition of the `community' becomes at stake in the public realm. For example, this is articulated by those who argue that thinking about multiculturalism is also thinking about

Contested community

163

democracy and thus by implication about the political self-understanding of the political community (Martiniello 1997). In that sense one could say that politicisation implies a request for and dispute of public government while the identity of the political community that is to be governed is drawn into this public struggle over the question of responsible and correct government. A key characteristic of this understanding of politicising an issue is that it widens the scope of the political debate. This implies a change in the actors and the processes involved. More speci®cally, it refers to expanding the participation in the debate on migration beyond clientelistic networks and bureaucratic politics to reach larger constituencies. This often develops through an increased use of emotional language by politicians and by appealing to issues of wider signi®cance such as national identity (Guiraudon 1998a: 289). For example, the famous question of the veil in France involved a considerable widening of what may have seemed to be only a local decision. When two girls who wore Islamic veils in a Creil high school in 1989 were expelled, the case was rede®ned as an issue about cultural rights, secularism, French national identity, and the future of the public school system; and it involved every national political group during two months of intensive media coverage (Cesari 1997; Guiraudon 1998a: 289). Widening the scope of the political debate can also transform migration into a meta-issue ± as has happened in Western Europe today. As a metaissue migration refers to a question which links a whole range of domestic problems such as unemployment, ®nancial challenges to the welfare system, crime, drugs, degeneration of large areas in cities, etc. (Faist 1994: 52). As a result migration develops a symbolic value which makes it increasingly dif®cult to limit the debate to a materialist question of economic costs and bene®ts. Rather, public debates referring to migration tend to expand immediately into wider questions of political legitimacy, national identity, crisis of the welfare system, etc. (Guiraudon 1998a: 289). One of the consequences is that the balance between the domestic bene®ciaries ± for example, the industry employing guestworkers ± and the costbearers of migration ± for example, the unemployed who are competing with the employed guestworkers ± may be disrupted because non-costbearing actors who oppose migration on symbolic grounds ± for example, the extreme right ± enter the political game. This is one of the arguments which leads Virginie Guiraudon to argue that moving from a closed, rather de-politicised political arena of bureaucratic politics to an open arena in which a wide range of political actors enter and drive the debate and in which electoral concerns start playing a crucial role will not enhance the chances to improve the rights of immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees. whereas Garry Freeman would argue that the bene®ciaries of immigration outweigh in resources the cost-bearers, I would argue that there

164

Jef Huysmans are non-cost-bearers who will oppose immigrant rights on symbolic grounds, which is one reason why an expanded scope of debate will not result in more rights for aliens. (Guiraudon 1998a: 289±90, reference to Freeman 1995)

The media which play a key role in the construction of political questions and in mediating between politicians and the public often stereotypically cast migration and emphasise its disrupting consequences (Bigo 1998; Guiraudon 1998a: 290). They tend to emphasise the immigrant and refugee involvement in violence and other forms of illegal or illegitimate practices. The political representation does not necessarily differ much from the media coverage. Electoral concerns in a context of stereotypical media coverage and with a public opinion which seems to be rather receptive for xenophobic arguments push many politicians to support a restriction of migration or even to support unambivalent anti-migration views. Expanding the scope of the debate also draws in more marginal actors, such as the extreme right. Opening the debate allows participation of political actors who do not have immediate access to the restricted policy venues of more technocratic decision-making (Guiraudon 1998a: 290±3). The way in which the political ®eld in which migration is politicised is structured and the stereotypical nature of dominant representations of migration in this ®eld lead Guiraudon to conclude that politicisation of migration is a high risk strategy if the objective is to improve the rights of immigrants, asylum seekers and refugees. In her opinion, a depoliticisation of migration would most probably have a higher probability of success. She therefore argues for discussing alien rights in `restricted loci of debate'. The main relevant `policy venues' can be found in the executive realm (administration and government), and the judicial sphere (national and European courts, administrative and constitutional courts, as well as bodies with overseer power such as the Council of State in France). (Guiraudon 1998a: 293) She thus argues that a more powerful mode of developing a multicultural Europe is `multiculturalism by stealth' which relies on the more hidden, closed sphere of judicial and bureaucratic decision-making for its success (ibid.: 293±304). I would not fully agree with Guiraudon's tactical choice which is also an ethico-political choice which implies diluting the democratic idea in the name of multiculturalism. Politics by stealth can also sustain a highly restrictive migration policy and instigate an obsession with control. This is extensively argued for example in Didier Bigo's detailed interpretation of the role of transnational networks of security professionals, especially police and customs, in the securitisation of migration in Western Europe.

Contested community

165

By showing how the restrictive migration policies are entangled with the technocratic construction of an internal security ®eld in the European Union, Bigo's analysis raises some serious questions about her argument that more narrowly de®ned policy venues enhance the chances to improve the rights of migrants (Bigo 1996, and in this volume).7 Nevertheless, Guiraudon's analysis raises serious questions for the postnational positions which strongly favour politicisation as a strategy to develop a more post-national, multicultural Europe. The post-national position necessarily implies a further politicisation of the migration question because they incorporate the struggle for migration rights into a struggle for the transformation of the European Union into a republican democratic political space. By pointing out that politicisation of migration necessarily takes place in an already heavily pre-structured ®eld of power relations and already entrenched stereotypical representations, her story cautions against normative celebrations of the mutual politicisation of migration and European political identity which often rests on an ethico-political concern about democratising the transnational political space in a multicultural way.8 She draws attention to the fact that post-national imaginations do not escape the sociology of the political ®eld in which the political capacity and signi®cance of migration emerge and in which they intervene.

Conclusion This chapter focused on the political signi®cance of the migration question in the European Union. It highlighted how migration essentially articulates more than a managerial question of how to effectively manage transnational population ¯ows and the integration or assimilation of immigrant communities. It is entangled with a complex challenge to the legitimate political order of post-war Europe ± the welfare state ± which is partly re¯ected in the European integration process and partly exacerbated by it. It is in the context of these legitimation problems that the essential political capacity of migration to put a community to the test is drawn upon by different political forces in the European Union. They often combine a struggle over the political identity of the European Union with the struggle over improving the rights of immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers. Although the politicisation of migration has the capacity to call Europe responsible to its history and the `civilian' image it projects into the world and to sustain the creation of a multicultural, post-national Europe, one should be cautious about an indiscriminate celebration of politicising migration in the context of the European Union. There is a risk that it may unintendedly support a further curtailing of the rights of migrants and therefore of the multicultural identi®cation of the European Union. This does not mean that a depoliticisation of migration and the creation of multiculturalism by stealth would be a better strategy. But, it indicates that the politicisation of migration should tread carefully because the multicultural, post-national

166

Jef Huysmans

position may sustain a ®eld of power in which the political forces hindering the development of a multicultural and/or politically signi®cant European Union dominate.

Notes 1 Juliet Lodge's piece on internal security is a good example of an interpretation which simultaneously reproduces this functional, instrumental understanding of migration policy (Lodge 1993). Didier Bigo (1996) offers an excellent analysis which counters this interpretation by emphasising how bureaucratic agents have transformed the migration problematique in the process of Europeanisation. 2 On the concept of liminality see Anne Norton (1988). 3 For an interesting view on the paradoxical position of being simultaneously permanent and provisional of migrants see Abdelmalek Sayad (1991: 51). 4 This translates as: Basically, it is the full understanding that we have of our social and political order, it is all the categories of our political understanding (and not only political) that are at stake in the `collective perceptions' that are at the heart of the given de®nition of the immigrant and the discourse that sets this de®nition at work. (Sayad 1991: 63) 5 This is the classic argument about the democratic management of interdependence. Integration is one of the options, for example, Karl Kaiser (1969). 6 In the context of a de facto multi-cultural Europe this raises the challenging question: How are we to make the distinction between those values and customs in our `public morality' that are speci®c to Christianity and which we therefore cannot justly impose on everyone in what has become objectively a multiethnic and multi-cultural society, and those values and customs that are an expression of principles without which pluralist democracy could not continue to exist? (Mouffe 1993: 132) 7 In addition, also welfare institutions and policy agents offer highly effective instruments for control (Ceyhan 1998; Crowley 1998). 8 For a brief but interesting discussion how European integration enters her view more explicitly see Guiraudon (1998b).

References Andersen, S. and Eliassen, K.A. (eds) (1996) The European Union: How Democratic is It?, London: Sage. Anderson, M., den Boer, M. and Miller, G. (1994) `European Citizenship and Cooperation in Justice and Home Affairs', in A. Duff, J. Pinder and R. Pryce (eds) Maastricht and Beyond. Building the European Union, London: Routledge Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society, London: Sage. ÐÐ (1993) Die Er®ndung des Politischen, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

Contested community

167

Beetham, D. and Lord, C. (1998) Legitimacy and the European Union, Harlow: Longman. Benhabib, S. (1996) The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt, London: Sage. Behnke, A. (1997) `Citizenship, Nationhood and the Production of Political Space', Citizenship Studies vol. 1, no. 2, pp. 243±65. Bigo, D. (1996) Polices en ReÂseaux, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. ÐÐ (1998) `SeÂcurite et Immigration: Vers une Gouvernementalite par l'InquieÂtude?', Cultures & Con¯its, no. 31±32, pp. 13±38. Brochmann, G. (1993) `Control in Immigration Policies: A Closed Europe in the Making', in R. King (ed.) The New Geography of European Migrations, London: Belhaven Press. Cesari, J. (1997) Faut-Il Avoir Peur de L'Islam?, Paris: Presses de Science Po. Ceyhan, A. (1998) `Towards a Bifocal Control: Border and Welfare Controls in the United States and in France', paper presented at the Annual Convention of the ISA, 17±21 March 1998, Minneapolis, Minnesota. ÐÐ (forthcoming) `Migrants as a Threat: A Comparative Analysis of Securitarian Rhetoric: France and the United States', in V. Gray (ed.) A European Dilemma. Immigration, Citizenship, Identity, Providence and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Chrysochoou, D. (1996) `Europe's Could-be Demos: Recasting the Debate', West European Politics, vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 787±801. Collinson, S. (1993) Beyond Borders: West European Migration Policy Towards the 21st Century, London: RIIA. Crowley, J. (1998) `Where Does the State Actually Start? Border, Boundary and Frontier Control in Contemporary Governance', paper presented at the ISA Annual Convention, 17±21 March 1998, Minneapolis. Derrida, J. (1992) The Other Heading: Re¯ections on Today's Europe, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Donzelot, J. (1994) L'Invention du Social, Paris: Editions du Seuil. d'EntreÁves, M. P. (1994) The Political Philosophy of Hannah Arendt, London: Routledge. Faist, T. (1994) `How to De®ne a Foreigner? The Symbolic Politics of Immigration in German Partisan Discourse, 1978±1992', in M. Baldwin-Edwards and M.A. Schain (eds) The Politics of Immigration in Western Europe, Ilford: Frank Cass. ÐÐ (1995) `Boundaries of Welfare States: Immigrants and Social Rights on the National and Supranational Level', in R. Miles and D. ThraÈnhardt (eds) Migration and European Integration: The Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion, London: Pinter, pp. 177±95. Ferry, J.M. (1990) `Que'est-ce qu'une Identite Postnationale?', Esprit vol. 59, no. 7, pp. 80±90. ÐÐ (1991) `Pertinence du Postnational', Espri, vol. 60, no. 11, pp. 80±93. ÐÐ (1992) `Une Philosophie de la CommunauteÂ', in J.M. Ferry and P. Thibaud, Discussion sur l'Europe, Paris: Calmann-LeÂvy. ÐÐ (1998) `L'Etat EuropeÂen,' in R. Kastoryano (ed.) Quelle Identite pour l'Europe? Le Multiculturalisme aÁ l'EÂpreuve, Paris: Presses de Science Po, pp. 169±217. Freeman, G. (1995) `Modes of Immigration Politics in Liberal Democratic States', International Migration Review vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 881±903.

168

Jef Huysmans

Garcia, S. (ed.) (1993) European Identity and the Search for Legitimacy, London: Pinter. Gowlland-Debas, V. (forthcoming) `European Asylum Policies and the Search for a European Identity,' in L.-E. Cederman (ed.) Constructing Europe's Identity: Issues and Trade-offs. Guiraudon, V. (1998a) `Citizenship Rights for Non-Citizens: France, Germany, and the Netherlands', in C. Jopke (ed.) Challenge to the Nation-State, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 272±318. ÐÐ (1998b) `Multiculturalisme et Droit des EÂtrangers dans l'Union europeÂenne', in R. Kastoryano (ed.) Quelle Identite pour l'Europe? Le Multiculturalisme aÁ l'EÂpreuve, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po, pp. 158±61. Habermas, J. (1973) Legitimation Crisis, Cambridge: Polity. ÐÐ (1992) `Citizenship and National Identity: Some Re¯ections on the Future of Europe', Praxis International vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1±19. ÐÐ (1994) `Citizenship and National Identity', in B. van Steenbergen (ed.) The Condition of Citizenship, London: Sage. Held, D. (1987) Models of Democracy, Cambridge: Polity. Hooghe, L. (ed.) (1996) Cohesion Policy and European Integration: Building Multi-Level Governance, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ireland, P. R. (1991) `Facing the True ``Fortress Europe'': Immigrant and Politics in the EC', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 29, no. 5, pp. 457±80. Jopke, C. (ed.) (1998) Challenge to the Nation-State, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kaiser, K. (1969) `Transnationale Politik. Zu einer Theorie der multinationalen Politik', in E.-O. Czempiel (ed.) Die anachronistische SouveraÈnitaÈt, Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag, pp. 80±109. Kastoryano, R. (1997) `Participation Transnationale et CitoyenneteÂ: Les ImmigreÂs dans l'Union EuropeÂenne', Cultures & Con¯its, no. 28, pp. 59±73. ÐÐ (1998a) ` ``Multiculturalisme'' une identite pour l'Europe', in R. Kastoryano (ed.) Quelle Identite pour l'Europe? Le Multiculturalisme aÁ l'EÂpreuve, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Kastoryano, R. (ed.) (1998b) Quelle Identite pour l'Europe. Le Multiculturalisme aÁ l'EÂpreuve, Paris: Presses de Science Po. Lavanex, S. (1998) `Transgressing Borders: The Emergent European Refugee Regime and ``Safe Third Countries'' ', in A. Cafruny and P. Peters (eds) The Union and the World, London: Kluwer. Leander, A. and Guzzini, S. (1997) `Economic and Monetary Union and the Crisis of European Social Contracts', in P. Minkkinen and H. Patomaki (eds) The Politics of Economic and Monetary Union, Helsinki: The Finnish Institute of International Affairs, pp. 131±61. Le GaleÁs, P. and Lesquesne, C. (eds) (1998) Regions in Europe, London: Routledge. Legomski, S.H. (1993) `Immigration, Equality, and Diversity', Columbia Journal of Transnational Law vol. 31, pp. 319±35. Lodge, J. (1993) `Internal Security and Judicial Cooperation,' in J. Lodge (ed.), The European Community and the Challenge of the Future, London: Pinter, pp. 315±39. McCormick, J. (1997) Carl Schmitt's Critique of Liberalism: Against Politics as Technology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Contested community

169

Majone, G. (ed.) (1996) Regulating Europe, London: Routledge. Marks, G., Hooghe, L. and Blank, K. (1996) `European Integration from the 1980s: State-centric vs. Multi-level Governance', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 34, no. 3, pp. 341±78. Martiniello, M. (1995) `European Citizenship, European Identity, and Migrants: Towards the Post-national State?' in R. Miles and D. ThraÈnhardt (eds) Migration and European Integration: The Dynamic of Inclusion and Exclusion, London: Pinter. ÐÐ (1997) Sortir des Ghettos Culturels, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Meehan, E. (1992) Citizenship and the European Community, London: Sage. Miles, R. (1993) Racism after Race Relations, London: Routledge. Miles, R. and ThraÈnhardt, D. (eds) (1995) Migration and European Integration: The Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion, London: Pinter. Milward, A. (1984) The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945±1951, London: Methuen & Co. ÐÐ (1994) The European Rescue of the Nation-State, London: Routledge. Milward, A., Ranieri, R., Lynch, F., Romero, F. and Sorensen, V. (1995) The Frontiers of National Sovereignty. History and Theory, 1945±1992, London: Routledge. Minkkinen, P. and Patomaki, H. (eds) (1997) The Politics of Economic and Monetary Union, Helsinki: UPI. Moravcsik, A. (1993) `Preference and Power in the EC: A Liberal Intergovernmental Approach', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 31, no. 4, pp. 473± 524. Mouffe, C. (1993) The Return of the Political, London: Verso. Norton, A. (1988) Re¯ections on Political Identity, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Patomaki, H. (1997) `EMU and the Legitimation Problems of the European Union', in P. Minkkinen and H. Patomaki (eds) The Politics of Economic and Monetary Union, Helsinki: UPI, pp. 162±204. Rosas, A. and Antola, E. (eds) (1995) A Citizen's Europe: In Search of a New Order, London: Sage. Sayad, A. (1991) L'Immigration ou les Paradoxes de l'AlteÂriteÂ, Bruxelles: De Boeck. Schnapper, D. (1992) L'Europe des ImmigreÂs, Paris: Edition FrancËois Bouvin. Simmel, G. (1964) `The Stranger', in K.H. Wolff (ed.) The Sociology of Georg Simmel, New York: The Free Press. Smith, A. (1992) `National Identity and the Idea of European Unity', International Affairs vol. 68, no. 1, pp. 55±77. Soysal, Y. (1994) Limits of Citizenship: Migrants and Post-Colonial Membership in Europe, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Tassin, E. (1992) `Europe: A Political Community?', in C. Mouffe (ed.) Dimensions of Radical Democracy London: Verso, pp. 169±92. Turner, B. (1992) `Outline of Theory of Citizenship', in C. Mouffe (ed.) Dimensions of Radical Democracy. Pluralism, Citizenship, Community, London: Verso. Ward, I. (1997) `Law and the Other Europeans', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 25, no. 1, 1997, pp. 79±95. Weber, F.P. (1996) `Expulsion: GeneÁse et Pratique d'un ControÃle en Allemagne', Cultures & Con¯its no. 23, pp. 107±49.

170

Jef Huysmans

Weber, M. (1958) The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, New York: Scribner's. Weiler, J.H.H. (1997a) `Legitimacy and Democracy of Union Governance', in G. Edwards and A. Pijpers (eds) The Politics of European Treaty Reform, London: Pinter, pp. 249±87. ÐÐ (1997b) `Demos, Telos, Ethos and the Maastricht Decision', in P. Gowan and P. Anderson (eds) The Question of Europe, London: Verso, pp. 265±94.

8

When two become one Internal and external securitisations in Europe Didier Bigo

Threats, internal security and defence: some entanglements Society is undergoing fundamental transformations because of the rise of new forms of governmentality in the Western world. The transnational is blurring the distinction between the internal and external, and destabilising related concepts: sovereignty, territoriality, security (Badie 1995). Sovereignty is meaningless and must be adjusted to the processes of European construction and economic globalisation. The notion of borders is fading away, as is the old notion of lines or fronts. In its place are boundaries and regions, (NAFTA, `Schengenland') and the concept of security must be adapted accordingly to take account of these changes. The transnationalisation of security opposes national (and societal) security. It creates, as in a MoÈbius ribbon, a situation where one never knows whether one is inside or outside (Bigo 1999; Walker 1993). This relation of inside and outside is central and more important than the need to distinguish between state and societal security (Wñver et al. 1993). The process of `securitisation' is not only enlarging towards identity, it involves a more profound move. Internal and external security are merging and de-differentiating after a period of strong differentiation where the two worlds of policing and war had little in common (Bayley 1975). Now, particularly after the end of bipolarity, external security agencies (the army, the secret service) are looking inside the borders in search of an enemy from outside. They analyse `transversal threats' (supposedly coming from immigrants, second generation of citizens of foreign origin, people from some inner cities or from the populous and disadvantaged suburbs). Internal security agencies (national police forces, police with military status, border guards, customs) are looking to ®nd their internal enemies beyond the borders and speak of networks of crime (migrants, asylum seekers, diasporas, Islamic people who supposedly have links with crime, terrorism, drug traf®cking, transnational organised crime). This so-called convergence towards new threats and risks is considered the main justi®cation for new structures and more co-operation between the agencies (internal as well as external) as well as a rationalising of their budgets in a

172

Didier Bigo

period of ®nancial crisis for security affairs. The core of this new securitisation is related to transnational ¯ows and to the surveillance of boundaries (physical, social, and of identity), and can be seen as attempts to re-draw a border between an inside and an outside, a border different from state frontiers.

Beyond the borders: policing today Discussing the move of internal security agencies beyond their borders, numerous works have described the transformation affecting the national police forces of all Member States of the EU, even if we have less material on customs and police with military status (Anderson and Den Boer 1994; Anderson and Den Boer et al. 1996; Bayley 1985; Bigo 1992; Brogden 1990; Busch 1991; Finault and Hermans 1991; Mawby 1990; Nayer et al. 1995; Reiner 1992; Van Outrive et al. 1996). They have highlighted how the Europeanisation process interferes with purely national logics and invalidates analyses of internal security as an isolated phenomenon. The international is now both a constitutive and explicative dimension of internal security and police work, even if intellectual traditions and academic separation between internal and external tend to make one forget this. These works have shown that within the European area, national police forces from different countries are driven towards closer collaboration and exchanges of knowledge. This is particularly the case for special police forces (against drug traf®cking, organised crime, terrorism, hooliganism and illegal immigration). Information exchange (Interpol, Schengen Information System, Europol) has intensi®ed, and new technologies (computers, telesurveillance) as well as new administrative personnel (liaison of®cers, of®cials from the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Justice, security attacheÂs within the embassies) have been set up in parallel with an exacerbated development of private activities in what has become an internal security market (Milipol). Poles of European groupings such as Schengen, Trevi ± then the third pillar of Maastricht, or Europol have emerged. In these areas of high policing, police work is not carried out simply at local or national level, but on a European or even an international scale. The wider scope of internal security goes beyond the frontiers of the state and forces a change in the notion of sovereignty (at the intellectual and constitutional levels). Internal security will include undertaking activities such as surveillance of clandestine immigration, surveillance of cultural, religious and social in¯uences from the country of origin of migrants and even on their offspring, surveillance and maintenance of order in so-called problem districts, and control of transborder ¯ows. The maintenance and restoration of order without opening ®re, even in situations involving hostile foreign populations, are also connected to the ®rst activities: they use almost identical knowledge, but in different contexts. Some French policemen or gendarmes explain that the knowledge gained in African riots or even in

When two become one

173

Sarajevo is relevant to the management of the riots in French suburbs. This crossing of borders is not only territorial. The connection is also about identity: not the minority versus majority, but cross-border activities and transboundary problems, including that of transgressing boundaries of identity with mixed marriage. Internal security thus implies collaboration with foreign countries and dissatisfaction with clear lines or borders between inside and outside, state and society, sovereignty and identity. Internal security activities block the possibility of distinguishing between an outside, state, sovereign security and an inside, societal, identity security. They are always entrenched and cannot be isolated from foreign policy or considered simply as `the protection of national territory against internal threats by using national means'. Internal security is not an `internal problem between communities in a public sphere about the de®nition of national identity', internal security is a transversal vision of some knowledge about public order and surveillance inside or outside the territory, associated with speci®c devices of control.

Convergence towards the same enemy? If internal security is not only from the `inside', if it goes beyond the border, if it is transversal, is it because of the change in the nature of the threats? Is the inside adversary coming from outside? This could be an explanation, and the transformation of violence in the last decades is an incentive for the de-differentiation of security, but it is not as a direct answer to violence that security is changing. It is through this connection between the devices of control and the management of fear and unease that links are made between military and police forces. The enlargement of the concept of internal security now links these two different `universes'. Military forces want to be in charge of surveillance of the borders and to look for `in®ltrating enemies'. Although the `street corner criminal' and the `soviet enemy' used to belong to two separate worlds, the idea that police of®cers, customs of®cers, gendarmes, intelligence agencies and the army, all can share the same enemies (terrorists and the countries that support them, organised crime and drug traf®cking, corruption and Ma®osi, the risk of urban riots of an ethnic nature and their implications for international politics with the immigration countries) is gaining more and more support inside different agencies. A `common' list of threats is being drawn up. A ®eld of struggle and domination is emerging, as well as interests in cooperation. This ®eld reacts on the socialisation of the agents and they behave as if a new situation constrains them to act now in a different way. So, security, and in particular internal security, must be understood as a process of securitisation/insecuritisation of the borders, of the identities and of the conception of orders. Securitisation is, in this sense, not an

174

Didier Bigo

answer to insecuritisation, but a capacity to manage (and create) insecurity. When securitisation enlarges, so insecuritisation enlarges also, as metaphorically, it is the envelope of the sphere of security. More than that, sometimes security creates unwanted side effects towards other groups of people and as well as one having a security dilemma at the external and state level, one has a security dilemma at the internal and the community level. This dilemma creates insecuritisation due to the self-ful®lling prophecy of security discourses, for example, between migrants and border police, or between citizens of foreign origins and policemen controlling the suburbs. Internal (in)security must be analysed in connection with institutional knowledge and knowledge of the agencies, their devices and practices, including their discursive practices, as these are determinant factors in understanding how de®nitions of those who provoke fear, the adversary and the enemy are socially constructed. We need to understand the social construction of fears. And why they are now converging on the ®gure of the migrant, as the key point inside a continuum of threats. In order to analyse the above phenomenon, it is possible to speak of a ®eld of security where the different security agencies (police, gendarmeries, custom of®cers, army and information services, private security agencies and more marginally local security agencies, pro and anti-immigration agencies) participate de facto in the global rede®nition of their respective attributions. This thesis of a security ®eld where the border between internal and external security can hardly be detected (like on a MoÈbius ribbon), has the advantage of linking what is too often disconnected: namely defence studies and studies on police. Such an approach enables one to understand that internal security extends beyond organisational questions of territorial defence on which the agencies focus. Consideration of internal security questions calls us to think about security issues in general, the relations between the state and individual as well as the relation to democracy in the contemporary age. They require us to retrace the structural evolutions and emergence of a risk society, which transforms the actual conception of security. They lead to questions beyond security needs, concerning not only the interests of social groups pushing for securitisation but also collective behaviour and cultural norms which form the framework of what we will call security and internal security in a given society. It needs to take into consideration who are the producers of the social construction of threats and how these fears are connected with (in)securitisation. So, even if we agree with some of the descriptions concerning the convergence of threats, they need to be analysed as a social construct which is not independent of the security agencies and whose legitimacy to declare the truth of the threats needs to be put in question. Such an analysis implies the articulation between a Foucaldian approach and Pierre Bourdieu's theory of ®eld. The methodology which underpins this research is discussed in two other articles (Bigo forthcoming). Here I

When two become one

175

want only to illustrate what could be the transformation of this epistemological stance into speci®c research concerning the merging of the internal and external security. I want to explain why, at some points, the two dimensions of security become one.

The framing of the security question It is dif®cult to ®nd an article on societal security or about the enlargement of the scope of security which avoids a lengthy description of the transformation of threats, and which assesses the government's `reaction' to these `new' dangers. Some demand global solutions and military involvements. Others refuse this `militarisation' of security and demand more police activities. Others want more prevention and less coercive measures to struggle against the threats. But they all agree that the threats come from the social world and that a government has the responsibility to answer them. The notion of the `survival' of states, nations, collective identities continues to be at the core of these descriptions. But despite their claim to `neutrality', these descriptions are embedded with moral judgements, with `preÂjugeÂs' concerning the legitimacy of ®ghting against `crime, the Ma®as, the terrorists', or `the Europeanisation, the cosmopolitanism . . . '. They claim that, so long as they are `well balanced' between right and left, they have some truth. Have they? At the political level, for different governments, the legitimacy of `reacting' acts as a `puri®cation ritual' where everything is legitimate against these new threats, where exceptional measures are `normal' in front of such dangers. The lines between security and liberty blur. Liberty is not the limit of security but the condition of security, so security has no limits. Security is unlimited (Wñver 1997). Security needs to be `global'. At that point, governments want to take account of all the different security agencies and to co-ordinate their activities without creating the problem of duplication of tasks which would disrupt their normal operation and raise the budget. Politicians at the national, European and sometimes western level want to say that they can answer these `new threats'. They ask for advice and many academics want to be `councillors to the Prince'. Notions circulate between political labellisation, administrative registrations and academic conceptualisations. Academics want to propose new de®nitions and new solutions for security, but often they begin with statistics coming from political labels or registrations of bureaucracies and they forget this point. Thus, they analyse security as a by-product of fears which come from `society' and which are legitimate even if they are without substance, because they are registered by state authorities. Discussions about the fear of crime or feelings of insecurity are good examples of this problem. Thus, a large number of academics are trying to help the government ®nd an `answer'

176

Didier Bigo

to a problem without recognising that they are framing some events as political or security problems, and have part of the responsibility for how `security' problems become framed ± not of the events but of the aggregation of different events under the same category. Politicians' and agencies' uncertainty about where to draw the boundaries of security issues has had a marked in¯uence on the way works on international relations were undertaken, if only as a result of the role of foundations and the ®nancial structure of social science research programmes. Some studies claim to be direct operational responses and ¯ood institutions with contradictory recommendations explaining why NATO or the UN should or should not intervene to re-establish law and order, or why French or American soldiers should or should not intervene in urban riots. The available military and police means to combat the `risk' of migration are discussed without stopping for a moment, just to think about the legitimacy of such a question. Other studies avoid being so directly in¯uenced by the interests of the different agencies and propose new concepts, but the knowledge stakes cannot be analysed independently from the power stakes. The rede®ning of security questions is not just a simple point of learning within the small world of internationalists. Disregard of this rule in the social game in favour of an idealistic epistemology sometimes leads international relations scholars to discuss the relationship between security, borders and identity as if they were `pure' concepts and as though their symbolic power were not drawn from the existence of institutions, which moreover are the same institutions that manage the government's claim to a monopoly on legitimate physical violence. The articulation of relations of knowledge, ranking and limits between concepts is thus also the articulation of the power struggle between the security agencies, a relation with the truth on what security means. To overcome the `idealisation' of security, the `essentialisation' of a meaning of security, one of the best approaches seems to be ± to analyse `security' as a `device', as a `technique of government' ± to use a Foucaldian framework. But security does not emerge everywhere, it is connected with special `agents', with `professionals' (military agencies, secret services, customs, police forces). And it is only if we follow in detail how they manage to control people, to put them under surveillance, that we will understand how they frame security discourses. If we refuse to do this sociological work, if we try only to analyse the inter-discursive practices (which has the `advantage' of leaving the researcher alone, far from these `bad guys'), we will `intellectualise' the securitisation in a way that is correlated with the habitus of the researcher which does not ®t with the habitus and practices of the security agencies. To analyse these processes fully requires spending time with the people of the agencies, understanding how and why they use these techniques, and their legitimation of the routines of coercion, control and surveillance.

When two become one

177

Analysing securitisation/insecuritisation practices Too often, analyses of security are far too inattentive to the social practices of security professionals. In many cases they are the product of secondary rationalisations which reduce security or identity to natural objects. These are discussed as if they were `things'. There is an attempt to de®ne security or identity by reifying their objecti®cations as natural objects. As Paul Veyne puts it: We are taking the spot that a projectile is going to land of its own accord as an intentionally aimed target. We apply a philosophy of the object as end or cause rather than a philosophy of relation which approaches the problem not from both ends, but from the middle, from practice or discourse. (1971: 97) The evolution of security and its various forms throughout history is explained either as an anthropological need (ontological security or security desire), as a legitimate demand from citizens (safety), or as a speech act which varies according to the moment (security discourses), rather than analysing the practices of securitisation/insecuritisation and the set up of the social power balance that enables them to be applied. This neglect of practices, of the actions of security agents, is a result of an inversion that would have us believe that `what is done determines the doing, when in fact the opposite is true'. The illusion of a natural object (the governed throughout history [or societal security]) conceals the heterogeneous nature of practices. The governed are neither one nor a multiple, any more than repression is, for the simple reason that it does not exist: there are just multiple objecti®cations which are correlative to heterogeneous practices. The relationship of this multiplicity of practices to a unit only becomes an issue if one tries to ascribe a unity that they do not have; a gold watch, lemon zest and a racoon are also a multiplicity and do not seem to suffer from the fact that they do not have either origin, object or principle in common. Only the illusion of a natural object creates a vague impression of unity . . . there is no subconscious, no repression . . . just the eternal teleological illusion and we are wrong to imagine that the doing, or practice, can be explained based on what is done, as on the contrary, what is done is explained by what the doing was at any point in history. Things, objects, are simply the correlate of practices. (ibid.: 99) Thus we should not re¯ect on the right de®nition of security and the diverse forms that it takes according to the `sectors', but on the securitisation/

178

Didier Bigo

insecuritisation practices which run through the internal sphere as much as the external sphere. We need to analyse the heterogeneity of practices and we should remember that practices are interspersed with empty spaces, that they are few and far between and that objecti®cations ®ll the space by updating the potential left in the hollow. If the neighbouring practices change, if the limits move, then practice will update the new potentials and it will no longer be the same. A genealogy of practices is necessary. And we need to ask in each case: what exactly are the practices of coercion, of protection, of paci®cation, of ®xed guard, of control, of surveillance, of information gathering and sorting, of information management, of covering areas, of calming, of dissuasion, of locking up, of turning back, of removal from the territory, all techniques which are used by security agents, and through what technology? Each has its own repertoire of actions, its own knowledge, its own technology. Practices are heterogeneous and dispersed, but are they not the response to political rationality? And if so, how should we envisage that rationality? As FrancËois Ewald points out, either it is examined from the point of view of the practices that it orders or forbids, of the way in which it problematises its objects, and it is a programmatic rationality, or it is examined as a diagram rationality by looking at the practices and trying to identify what the plan for their set up, what the ideal of their adapted function, may have been. (1996: 17) This diagram rationality crosses the whole of society and can be found in the most basic representation of immigrants. Nevertheless, it originates in the practices of security professionals and we can certainly evoke the ®eld that these security professionals constitute, one of whose aims it is to `manage and control life through concrete organisations such as schools, hospitals, the police and the army'.

Delimiting the problem of internal security ± the perspective of security agencies Security on an internal level: from police to internal security Security is no longer an issue which can be solely assimilated with the collective security of a state, it also, and increasingly so, concerns the individual security of each one of us ± whether the individual is threatened by criminal acts or from attacks from abroad. The contemporary state is no longer only held responsible for assuring the institutional survival of the collectivity, it must also guarantee the personal survival of each of its constitutive members, regardless of where they are. An attack which occurs thousands of kilometres away from the national territory, but which

When two become one

179

involves French citizens will be considered as an unacceptable threat to security. It's the same concern that is expressed when stating that too many people voluntarily use drugs and endanger their lives. Similarly, concern is expressed with regard to religious conversions (Islam, for fear of radical proselytism; sects for health reasons). The semi-settled foreigner, even when he has citizenship, is suspected of disrespecting the host society's norms and of disturbing the notion of public space. The state thus wants to take charge of individual security and widen the notion of public order. It aims to realise the truth programme, that it has been trying to assert for a long time with contract theories, but lacked the means to carry out. Control and surveillance technologies and new knowledge in the social sciences reinforce this push towards maximising security, to implement a body politics, to have a `life' policy where the production of life is more important for the government than the right to deliver death. At the same time, the practical realisation of such a truth programme involves an ever increasing delegation of responsibilities to the private commercial sphere. This gives rise to important contradictions. The illusion of mastering life disappears under the pressure of commercial and capitalist approaches. Class logic is resurfacing and the private sector tends to objectify security through selling goods and advice about the good and secure life. Thus, the state has perhaps less impact than ever on the social practices of securitisation even if those responsible say the contrary. They are more and more interdependent with social and commercial interactions. They cannot escape this privatisation of security issues and they cannot continue to distinguish between state and non-state security. This change in attitude of the state, the will to master individual security, must not of course be exaggerated. It has been a slow metamorphosis during which the citizens' points of view has been gradually taken into consideration. It is the progress of democratisation and state making that has taken place over centuries (Bayley 1975; Elias 1993; Lacroix 1985). We will not develop here ± as it is not the aim of the chapter ± how the state progressively af®rmed its claim to assuring and gained an effective monopoly over crime control in its territory, nor will we expose how this latter function has been increasingly contested as the state has acquired the means to control the coming and goings over its borders, the movement of people within its territory, and delinquent populations (Foucault 1975; Reiner 1992; Tilly 1990). Possible illegalities have indeed been reduced through the multiplication of laws, legislative and administrative networking, control technologies (identity cards, passports) (Noiriel 1991; Torpey 1996) and although they have always been taken care of, it has not been without provoking near revolts and, in each instance, installing great fear in the leaders (vagabonds, anarchists, working class as dangerous class, lumpenproletariat, long-haired youths, and now youths from the ghettos) (Cesari 1997; Delumeau 1989; Duhamel 1993; Rey 1996). By reinforcing surveillance over a speci®c group, the state has been able to consolidate its

180

Didier Bigo

hold over territory and guarantee the security of other strata of the population, but at the same moment securitisation has created insecuritisation, fears and the myth that the full implementation of public order, of tranquillity, of the peace of the public space is always endangered by revolts, or even by hunger strikes of the people excluded or under surveillance. So, as Norbert Elias has pointed out, the paci®cation of customs and the reduction in murderous crime over a long period, in parallel with the strengthening of both self-constraint and state power have not diminished the feeling of insecurity. The immense fear of losing one's life and soul (in the course of one's travels) while travelling the highways and byways has instead been replaced by the multiplication of trivial fears concerning one's property (Elias 1993). The population could all the more easily change their concerns with regard to security because the essential was no longer endangered. It is only in times of social peace that we feel threatened by uncivil actions of our neighbours (Roche 1993). The feeling of insecurity experienced by the individual is always relative to and conditioned by a particular context of global security. The role of the police and the discourse on their role have evolved and become more complex. The massive transformations of the construction of the parliamentary State and its legitimation have been followed by the progressive demilitarisation of the police. The state police also wanted to be society's police. Intelligence is but one of the tasks of the police, whose functions also include providing emergency aid, crime control, assuring public order, i.e. peace. The `police' organisation brings together very diverse professions and duties (Berliere 1991; Buisson 1949; Buttner 1987). With the development of a parliamentary system, the state learned to look after its populations and no longer to treat them as enemies, even during uprisings (Rabinow 1991; Veyne 1971). The individual's security has become an increasingly important issue and the populations' expectations in this area have been reinforced to the present point where public organisations fall far short of being able to satisfy the massive `demands' for security. The privatisation of security was created by the will of the state to implement its own programme. The focus on identity, on personal security, falls into the private sector. Politicians try to disengage themselves from individual security but too many links were created between public administrations and private agencies (recruitment, money, personal links with politicians). This short genealogy enables us to reposition what is at stake in internal security (cahiers de la securite inteÂrieure no. 3 and 24 ). For centuries crime has been treated in an ordinary way without major implications for politicians. Even if the latter were aware of threats of revolutionary subversion, they were not concerned with individual security. Now, however, police issues have become political issues in the sense that they incite public debate (Edelman 1964). If one were to exaggerate somewhat, one could say that whereas before police only had to do their work and the state had only to provide them with the means for doing so, now

When two become one

181

governers are asked for explanations: explanations concerning both crime and police (Robert and Sack 1985). With regard to this change James Rosenau (1990) speaks of a transformation in the allegiance system and an obligation on the part of the state to get results in security matters whereas before the state was obeyed and no one questioned its competence. The widening of internal security is due to the fact that the security of individuals, their personal feeling of insecurity and the link between this type of security and collective security have progressively been taken into account via security of citizens and society and no longer via the state and national security. This heavy structural tendency towards management of individual security and taking care of the individual by way of all conduits of the state: societal security, civilian security, road security is part of the development that FrancËois Ewald has termed an insurance society (socieÂte assurantielle) where risks are minimised. Numerous liberal thinkers have quite wrongly viewed this phenomenon as a suffocation of individuals by the state. On the contrary, individualisation only becomes possible when a state exerts its control in this domain. The two phenomena ± individualisation and state control ± are in fact two different sides of the same process. For a long time individual security was considered in terms of a given territory delimited by state borders. This was the scope of the state's responsibility. Beyond national boundaries, one could only rely on other states (Chapus 1997). Now the security of nationals abroad has become a constant concern for Western nations. Numerous military operations have been carried out in the name of such a priority, even if this were to conceal other priorities. One evoked a secret return to a cannon policy, or inversely the humanitarian dimension alone was stressed, or otherwise one spoke of an appeal for imperial intervention (Ru®n 1996; Salame 1996). However, it seems that what was at stake in all cases was above all a transplantation of internal security operations to foreign territory (Cultures et Con¯its 1993: 11). The techniques used in these operations transformed them into international police operations for the maintenance of order, and not armed con¯icts. The mobilisable knowledge in conjunction with this vision of things was often poorly understood by public opinion and the media. International mobility, movement of populations, especially tourists, have rendered one's relationship with the territory more complex. The notion of citizenship has supplanted a purely territorial logic. Security can no longer be conceived as protection behind state borders: borders that they have tried to make as impermeable as possible. Although numerous texts uphold this vision of a `forti®ed castle' or a fortress nation or Europe, it is undeniable that the security of individuals has become deterritorialised. It now depends on networks, agreements between countries and security agencies and private insurance mechanisms (Bigo 1996a). What are the present consequences of such social global transformations? The notions of internal security, individual security and the security of citizens have become politically important issues, surpassing in this respect

182

Didier Bigo

police and crime issues. There has been a tendency towards assimilating the police with the public service, despite resistance from those with monarchic views. Police issues have been politicised by placing them under the banner of internal security in the sense that what was before a little police matter is becoming an important stake in political struggles, especially as it seems to be a decisive factor in determining undecided votes, particularly at the local level. The `politicisation' of internal security issues has gone through cycles of secrecy and public exposure. There is nothing radically new about that. But, what concerns us, one could say that it was in the 1980s and 1990s that questions about police become the subject of public debate, at the same time as discourses on urban insecurity and the city, on the one hand, and discourses about stopping immigration of salaried manual workers, on the other, appeared (Ackerman et al. 1983). It is in fact possible to consider that the real turning point was when questions about urban insecurity became important (in the mid-1970s, ®rst in the USA and Canada, then in Great Britain and Germany and after in the beginning of the 1980s in Italy and France). At that time, these questions were approached from the angles of destructuration of citizen identity, anomie, loss of values, and geographical and social exclusion. Con®dence in the city and civilisation had been lost. A declinist discourse had emerged. In connection with the latter there was a progressive transition between discourses on the working class (a loss of meaning in the workers' movement, a loss of coherence), the role of immigrants (different values and religions) and a discourse on problem districts (inner cities or suburbs) as well as delinquency (the informal drug economy). The existence of extremist parties with anti-immigration rhetoric and their relative electoral success in certain countries reinforced the belief that public opinion was largely securityorientated and sensitive to arguments for a greater use of coercion. Politicians were quick to `ethnicise' the urban problem and numerous discourses revolved around the merits and drawbacks of multiculturalism. The mid-1980s saw the increase in political violence by clandestine organisations on European soil. This, in conjunction with the Iranian Revolution and the Middle East situation, served to reinforce this climate of anxiety and turn the focus not towards all immigrants, but on those coming from Islamic countries swept up in the wave of re-Islamisation, or countries in the middle of civil war. Islam, especially when it reached the Maghreb, was seen as a direct threat not only for these countries but for Europe too, and particularly for France. A durable connection had been made. There is no doubt that politicians' fears concerning the political violence of Islamic radicalism, discourses on urban insecurity and the transformation of migration ¯ows, play a decisive role in the progressive politicisation of crime, insecurity and immigration. Internal security emerged at the time when economic and social questions started being approached from a security and cultural angle and when this latter perspective became important in determining institutional replies to these questions.

When two become one

183

There emerges a dialectical tension between internal security and national territory: as the latter appears to de®ne the scope of so-called internal security, the security agencies themselves are more concerned with what is going on beyond the national territory. They are more interested in security beyond the border than in focusing on identity inside the border, on multiculturalism problems. Local and practical problems are now under privatisation and they move from that to transversal security. Politicisation and public debate, consideration of individuals' feelings of insecurity, the connection between territorial protection and border crossing, the necessary collaboration with foreign countries: put together all these form a polyhedron through which internal security is rendered intelligible ( polyeÁdre d'intelligibiliteÂ, quoted by Foucault in Dits et Ecrits (1994: vol. II). Internal security thus implies, inconsistent with the traditional activities of the national police, a widening of the geographical sphere of activities. In other articles and books lengthy descriptions have been given as to why the establishment of a common enemy enabled the idea of police collaboration, how the CIPC and then Interpol developed, and why it was that Europe, ®rst on an informal basis in the 1970s and then formally in the 1980s, was chosen as the platform for negotiation between the police forces of the EU countries. It is crucial to understand that internal security cannot be reduced to the national territory. As it has been shown in both debates and actual practice (including the formulation of legislative norms), internal security has developed on a European scale. The number of countries participating in these forums has increased ± the Nordic countries including Norway and Iceland have joined and the Central and Eastern European countries and even Russia are interested; USA and Canada have a role in these forums as does Switzerland ± to the point of diluting the notion of Europe. Judicial norms have been constituted (Articles K1±K9 of the Maastricht treaty, recommendations from JAI Council, Conventions including Europol, the Amsterdam Treaty which places further constraints on national governments, the Schengen requirements). The sphere of security activities has extended to include migration ¯ows and transfrontier ¯ows. Europeanisation had the effect of allowing a logic of con®dentiality to come to the forefront. It meant that administrations and experts from each country had to confront each other, but it also allowed them to avoid dialogues with other sectors in their own society. Not only were associations excluded from the game, but so were local actors and parliamentarians. Even local police were progressively marginalised and replaced by European specialists. The technicality of the matter served to justify their absence from the debate. Paradoxically, Europeanisation thus served to reinforce the tendency towards secrecy and con®dential reports. This was all the more so because the procedures that were chosen excluded the Commission from playing its role. There are endless examples. All these phenomena prove that internal security is a way of labelling the transformation of professional practices and not simply an ideological discourse.

184

Didier Bigo

I have shown elsewhere (Bigo 1996a) that police forces are not simply responding to the developments in crime; as crime is now organised at European or international level, it is not a kind of functional spill-over that has now reached police functions. We have analysed the semi-autonomy of the security agencies by highlighting the transformations within the world of security without regarding these transformations as a pure re¯ection of and reaction to the evolution in violence and crime. We have shown that it would be inconsistent not to analyse these developments in violence, but that the main point lies in the way that the social structure of the threat induces the police not only to rise to these threats but also to take part in their de®nition. These games of de®ning what is and what is not threatening can mostly be explained away by inter-agency rivalry and by the politicisation of matters of public security. Thus, to sum up, it could be said that internal security has experienced a double widening process. It extends beyond the national territory and is directly linked to European and international issues. In no instance is it autonomous and independent from the collaboration of security agencies (police, customs, gendarmerie) on an international scale. On the contrary, its existence is almost wholly dependent upon such collaboration. This widening of the network of contacts which the agencies judge necessary to combat terrorism, drug traf®cking and organised crime raises the questions of levels of trust and con®dentiality as well as that of the autonomy of an internal security (and immigration) policy of each EU state with respect to the whole of Europe. We will return to this later. Internal security is also connected with the emergence or not of a feeling of European citizenship which over¯ows national frontiers, and reactions from different social groups with respect to practical consequences of European citizenship on national life. If internal security extends beyond the national territory, we have insisted that it also extends beyond the usual activities of the police and gendarmerie. The connections which are made between terrorism, drugs, crime, delinquency, border surveillance, ®ghting against major drug traf®cking, and controlling clandestine immigration widen the spectrum of public security towards different activities: information and military activities to ®ght against clandestine organisations coming from abroad (from a government, community or diaspora) who use political violence against citizens or use the national territory as a transit site or for sale of drugs, and have an effect on the usual activities of custom of®cers (border controls, the ®ght against drug traf®cking, economic intelligence) who ®nd themselves drawn into internal security, surveillance activities which are increasingly delegated to private operators on a local scale. The connection is stronger when the different agencies use the same technologies and knowledge (®ngerprints, unforgeable ID, computerised tracking of entrance, residence, accommodation and exit, setting up expert IT systems, satellite surveillance, widespread data-stocking). Policing is now carried out using

When two become one

185

networks: networks of administrative bodies in which customs of®cers, immigration of®ces, consulates and even private transport companies and private security companies join forces with the national police forces and gendarmes; networks of information technology with the creation of national or European data ®les on wanted or missing persons, on those who have been denied residence, expelled, turned back at the frontier or refused asylum (FNE ± ®les on foreigners, FPR ± ®les on wanted persons, OFPRA ± ®les on refugees, SIS ± Schengen ®les, Interpol and Europol ®les); networks of liaison of®cers who have been sent abroad to represent their governments and enable information exchange; networks of semantics in which new doctrines and new concepts on con¯ict and political violence are developed. Remote policing is ever more frequent with work outside the national territory and the help of technology. Security checks are no longer necessarily done at the border on a systematic and egalitarian basis, but can be carried out further downstream, within the territory, within the border zone or even upstream with police collaboration in the home country of the immigrants, through visa-granting systems and through readmission agreements. There is a change in the categories of police action (from national police forces controlling national crime to internal European security, tracking world-wide organised crime, migration ¯ows and refugee movements), a change in security-check targets (from the control of and hunt for individual criminals to the policing of foreigners or to the surveillance of so-called risk groups that have been de®ned using criminology and statistics that, according to circumstances, bring them to focus on extra-community immigration and those diaspora that are the origin of the most frequent and most serious of threats to security), an alteration in the time frame of security-checks (from systematic, generally slow intermittent checks to virtually permanent surveillance that focuses on a few target groups and reacts with maximum rapidity). Thus systematic control of the territory has been marginalised, although it still exists, in comparison to the surveillance of certain populations. New practices are emerging. New posts such as liaison of®cers and police attacheÂs in embassies are being created. A result of these new forms of control is that face-to-face relations are decreasing in favour of a proactive mentality where one tries to determine which populations are likely to commit an infraction before they even do so. These methods are applied to crime as much as to immigration. Target categories are identi®ed through the statistical analysis of information produced by the networks, and they become the object of increased surveillance. The idea is to anticipate the ¯ows and movements of particular groups rather than to follow individuals after the fact. This is done by `morphing', where a scenario is reconstructed from just a few fragments. The very term policing loses its sense when it is widened outside crime control to such an extent (Bigo 1996a). Indeed, the term internal security

186

Didier Bigo

takes into account this extension of police activities to cover a wide variety of fears and insecurities.This widening of internal security leads to its interpenetration with external security which is itself undergoing complete change and restructuring due to the questioning of realists and neorealists theses on security (associated with defence) and the emergence of a transnational view of security. It is becoming dif®cult to differentiate between internal and external security and divide them into distinct sectors. The Vigipirate plan against terrorism in France is one example of the ambiguous relationship between Ministries of internal and external affairs. They are both in fact merging so as to end up constituting the one and same security ®eld. Security in the external arena: from defence to internal security The military no longer know what their duties are. Honour and sacri®ce associated with death in combat are exaggerated by some who fear that these values will become folklore and are condemned to disappear. The socialisation of the soldier's profession and learning about `the licence to kill' have been replaced by a muscled maintenance of peace. The rules of engaging in combat have been modi®ed. In certain extreme conditions, soldiers in their role of surveillance become targets for the enemy (blue and white helmets) and do not have the authorisation to engage in ®re. This provokes much questioning which is only partially masked by political obedience and discipline. So far, studies on humanitarian interventions have been more focused on motivation and legitimacy than on the practical knowledge that is mobilised. Should one send the military or the gendarmerie to carry out these operations? What should be thought of the establishment of Civil Affairs to accompany certain so-called humanitarian peace-restoring operations? What should the military be used for? As politicians see it, war is indeed an external projection but this justi®cation alone calls upon the global legitimacy of the army. The military are returning to the national territory and emphasising the role of protection. The military are thus returning to the interior at a time when war beyond national borders has become a rare occurrence. If war and the state, war making and state making, have been closely linked in the history of European state formation, if the army has defended the collective security of the group from aggression by other groups or communities, enabling the distinction to be drawn between combatants and non-combatants, the front and behind the front, if behaviour was for a long time determined by the protecting function of borders, now we question the role of war and predict the end of the military order. If all threats stemmed from the Soviet enemy, did its disappearance mean that we were then moving towards global peace and the end of con¯icts? If this was the case, another painful question arose: what should be done with the military, with defence industries? What was to become of defence

When two become one

187

after the Soviet enemy had disappeared? Without taking the same view of numerous NGOs that were demanding `peace dividends', governments took advantage of this wave of ideas to cut spending during a period of economic and ®nancial crisis. Entire sectors of activity are being questioned. Arms and research programmes are being cancelled. In some countries the format of the army is being altered. In France it is being made professional, despite the long tradition of a citizens' army. Defence industries have been caught unprepared and in certain countries reconversion programmes using high technology for border surveillance and immigration control have been developed. An additional link has been woven between internal and external security. Economic and ®nancial interests have emerged inciting translation of the spectrum of threats and the rediscovery of local con¯icts and their so-called damaging effects. By the mid-1990s a sort of global con®guration of convergent representations had emerged which joined internal and external security, integrating the former into the latter. Crime, borders, immigration, threat to national identity and the ideology of the Fifth Column became inextricably intermingled and were taken up again in a matrix which owes practically everything to defence research in which the habits of the actors had been formed. The potential powers of terrorist activities and their effectiveness against democracies have largely been overestimated, as this enables a link to be made between `exotic' con¯icts and national territory. In the same step a link has been established between terrorism, drugs, organised crime and immigration through the terms grey zone and urban savages. The recent debates on the threat from the South and the clash of civilisations have shown exactly how these shifts in positions have come about and why, trapped as they are between the hammer of the bene®ts of peace and the anvil of the threat from the South, those who never really believed in this threat but have budgets and interests to defend have adopted a standpoint in which terrorists and Ma®a groups are their new enemies. The `end of military rule' referred to by Maurice Bertrand (1996) implies reconversions that are not simply of equipment. The strategisation of the `threats' to internal security is self-justifying. This strategisation has some practical consequences. It more or less rede®nes the tasks allotted to the different services. The Italian Minister for Defence points to Islamism as the threat that replaces the threat of communism and proposes the use of the army in immigration control. In Germany, Helmut Kohl considers the PKK an exclusively terrorist party and a threat to national security. In France, the bomb attacks of 1995 relaunched the surveillance of all immigrant associations and the strengthening of legislation concerning not only terrorism but immigration and political asylum. Apart from Islamism considered as subversive terrorism, all countries talk of a grey zone, of global Ma®a organisations and of changing forms of criminality (Raufer 1993). Intelligence services turned towards counter-espionage have found new missions with

188

Didier Bigo

the in®ltration of Ma®a networks and economic intelligence but still use the same procedures. On the other hand, the vision in terms of an external projection of humanitarian operations has concealed the meaning of missions carried out and cleared questions of projection from internal security, whereas they should undoubtedly be linked. Thus an important link between internal and external security has been neglected, because it functioned in the other direction and brought military activities closer to police activities. Thus far from being an extension as some rhetorics argue, external security is in full retraction or at least, redeployment. In certain countries, the army format has been transformed. Everywhere budgets are cut. This situation is very different from ten years ago. This change in such a short time frame has destabilised the most deep-set beliefs. As war has been replaced by international police operations, operations for restoring peace, which mobilise a different knowledge, the military ®nd themselves in situations of international collaboration where they have to take care of restoring peace, in the same way as police and gendarmes. Consequently, they transfer internal security beyond the national borders. Should one then consider sending police and gendarmes instead of the military? Such chasseÂ-croiseÂs (mix-ups) whereby the military would operate internally and the police externally are destabilising. As in the case of the police, internal security appears here a priori as a means of labelling practical transformations within the profession. Indeed, it is a more delicate matter when demonstrating this same transformation with the military. Studies need to be done on the Europeanisation of defence forces and the networks that have been constituted by the WEU and Eurocorps, both within and outside the NATO framework. Nevertheless, the same thing is at stake: internal security does not mark out the same universe of practices, as territorial security, it marks out what is in the process of changing within police, gendarme, customs and military activities. Internal security and the `intermediate' agencies: from marginal to central roles? The uncertainty surrounding the missions and limits between the social universes of the police and the military affects in particular the organisations and agencies, such as the gendarmerie, or a number of border police, which ®nd themselves positioned in the interface between these two social universes. It is these bodies at the interface which consider this uncertainty an attack on their professional identity, and which are anxious about their future (customs, certain information services), or who on the contrary, such as the police with a military status (gendarmerie, Bundesgrenzschutz, carabinieri, guarda civil), consider these transformations of violence as an opportunity to occupy a recognised position among the agencies specialising in safeguarding public order and those specialising in combat and

When two become one

189

dissuasion. These agencies are thus the ®rst ones to insist on the interpenetration of the internal and the external, on the transversal dimensions of the `new threats', and on their speci®c knowledge. They do not see themselves as marginal to these two worlds, as devalorised intermediaries in the two social universes, but as central in the face of one and the same universe in constitution. This is so to the extent that a large spectrum of their activities allows them to be present where the police dare not go (restoration of order in a crisis situation), and where the military do not want to, or do not know how to intervene (not to kill the enemy, but to control the opponent). Thus the French gendarmerie considers that it has been prepared for centuries for these missions of internal security, pretending that it possesses an advantage over all other corps due to its role as soldiers of the law, to its power to use military means which it masters in a civilian context, while knowing not to transform its opponent into an enemy to be eradicated. The gendarmerie favours, they say `the unbroken passage from the normal period to the crisis period, or even war. Well adapted to low intensity con¯icts, whose extent exceeds the regular bounds of national police actions, but which do not justify the intervention of other armed forces, it is essential.' It is able to respond better than other institutions to the continuum of peace, crisis, war and can deal with `prolonged crises'. Its structure, being of variable geometry, allows it to closely accompany the rise of violence without a brutal change of position and without breaching the public opinion threshhold. Moreover, what it has learnt on French terrain, it will be able to apply at the other end of the world, or so it is believed. The transfers of knowledge between the interior and the exterior, the intimate knowledge of crisis management, could be important assets. Exploiting the fact that it is both `civilian due to its missions, but military due to its statutes and missions in times of crisis', the gendarmerie considers itself ready to be the kingpin of internal security missions, in France or abroad. The customs agencies, in their reorganisation, tend also to modify their design of security. Previously focusing on considerations of public health, of hygiene, of transport, there was little place for questions of drug traf®ckers or in®ltrations of organised crime. The border was for them the place to work on. Now they think in term of zone, in®ltration of networks of traf®ckers, information by collaboration with their foreign colleagues. They paradoxically are more in¯uenced by the methods of the DEA in the USA. For these agencies the concept of internal security cannot be reducible to the security of a closed territory protected by insuperable borders. This concept of interior security is rarely used. They are the ®rst to favour an analysis in term of transborder networks, of securitisation of the human networks, of monitoring of ¯ows. Security at the borders is necessarily transborder and is ensured by international collaboration of the security agencies. Their vision of security seems the most in¯uenced by the

190

Didier Bigo

transnational approach and this is undoubtedly because they listen more than other agencies to their economic partners. They also differentiate explicitly between threat and risk. Unfortunately these agencies are one of the least studied as security agents. There are many other examples of the de-differentiation between matters of internal and external security. For example, the intelligence and counterespionage services (MI5, DGSE, CIA) have only about one-third of their staff working on espionage, and the rest focus on international terrorism, economic intelligence and issues such as the laundering of drugs money. Thus they enter into competition with the drug squads of Europol and Interpol. On the other hand, Europol wants to deal with `nuclear crime' and follows the transfer of ®ssile material from one country to another, but in so doing it is poaching on counter-espionage's and the army's hunting ground of nuclear proliferation. The German border police (BGS) has undergone reforms that nearly doubled their number and altered their mission, thus provoking intense debate over the nature of their military status, particularly when they were invited to take part in missions outside the NATO area. Thus if one wants to summarise the positions taken by the different agencies, one can distinguish two different visions of internal security in relation to their structural positions inside the ®eld of security. The ®rst type of discourse is based on the traditional concepts of territory, national sovereignty and objective threats to collective security. In France this is the position of the army (terrestrial as well as aerial headquarters) and of the urban police. It assumes there to be a difference in nature between internal and external security, the activities of police forces and military activities. In this traditional view of security, coordination is necessarily minimal: it is limited to periods of crisis when national territory is attacked by foreign forces. Otherwise, interior security falls within the competence of the police forces and it is dangerous for soldiers to intervene as this would be to risk drifting towards the national security doctrine. This vision is structured around the concepts of physical borders of the state, territorial security and military defence. The aim of security is protection from threats, it is an established fact. The second conception which is more the vision of the gendarmerie nationale, the customs, and the UCLAT (the anti-terrorist squad of the police) is founded upon a transnational approach to security. In this view, internal security always has an extra-territorial dimension and the opposition between internal and external security is a pretence. There is, indeed, de-differentiation between the internal and external. What occurs in one affects the other and vice versa. The same analytical framework and same repertoire of activities can be applied to both. Cultural norms relativise the separation between an internal policed order and an anarchic international order: missions of maintenance of law and order, both internal and external, take the life of the individuals into consideration and war tends to

When two become one

191

become a disquali®ed mode of action. The agencies which have the knowledge to prepare for violence without entering into war are privileged. Furthermore, internal security has a geographical dimension which extends beyond national borders. It is European, Western, or international in the sense that it is based on networks of collaboration between security agencies. Whereas before there was a clear and simple division between administrations based on border demarcations, there now reigns a complex overlapping of activities. Whereas before it was possible to clearly distinguish between the police and the army activities, now a ®eld of the security has emerged whose central knowledge is located at the interface between the police and the military. The interest in studying the vision of the agencies of internal security lies precisely in the fact that it cannot be reduced to traditional questions of security in the way they are treated by realists and neorealists. Internal security is not the opposite of external security. Instead, internal security questions destabilise the border between the internal and external, as well as between the state and the individual. It is indeed from here that both their complexity and their interest stem.

Internal security and societal security as seen by the international relations theorists Internal and societal security All these transformations force us to reconsider, not only internal security, but the concept of security itself, its link with the notion of defence, and the role which armies can play with regard to overall or sectoral security (military, civil, economic, environmental, internal or societal). This brings us back to the debate between analysts and their in¯uence on politicians and security agencies (Bigo 1996a). Even in the 1980s, the majority of IR scholars and strategists did not consider internal security as constituting a legitimate part of security studies. For them, the latter was related to the agenda of defence policies. In the Anglo-American debate defence and external security were considered synonymous. Defence always referred back to the military component alone, and security was assimilated with the collective security of the nation. To speak about security `seriously' was to envisage developments of defence systems and policies. `True' security was that which concerned the physical survival of the nation, and its protection from potential armed aggression (Walt 1991). Beyond this acceptance of security as existential survival, security lost its purpose. Security was a strategic affair of the state. Resistance to any intrusion in this ®eld, or attempts to draw parallels between civil and military security was savage. It was claimed that the values of sacri®ce for the safety of the nation made all the difference and that it was scandalous to compare the missions requested from the army

192

Didier Bigo

for civil security and its proper military missions. French people, very often generals, in some rare exceptions, tried to put forward their originality, insisting that in the design of French defence (the organic law of 1959), it was impossible to reduce military affairs to defence; that defence was global and included military, civil and economic components. But they were too little involved in this debate. Thus, it was necessary to wait for the pioneering work of Barry Buzan to rediscover these questions. Buzan in his ®rst edition of People, State and Fear (1983), lets us know of his irritation at being con®ned in strategic studies, discussing SDI, technology, disarmament, without any thought about the concepts. He noted the shift between the concerns of the analysts of defence and security and that of politicians asking always for more studies on terrorism, drugs, immigration. Thus, he proposed to study the speci®c logics of security. According to him, security went well beyond defence and affected the sectors of environment, the economy, politics and society (Buzan 1991). He noted a broadening of the spectrum of security to new objects, and to new sectors. By delinking studies of security from studies of defence, he re-established a real theoretical dimension to the question of security. First, he insisted on the fact that, contrary to the realist approach, it is impossible to reduce security to national security. Nevertheless Buzan did not cut all the bridges with the traditional vision of security. While proposing to de®ne security in terms of survival or as freedom from threats, he continues to declare himself a structural realist. From these theories he picks up the idea that security is a fundamental human need for individuals as well as for communities, and at the level of the state, security was analysed as the absence of threat against the survival of the nation. One could thus, according to him, `possess' a certain dose of security, one can analyse objectively the probabilities that security is threatened and react consequently (new system of weapons, reinforcement of alliances). Within this conception, even if the purpose of security affects varied sectors, one can continue to distinguish each sector clearly: the strategic stakes remain independent of the ecological or societal stakes. There is no confusion or superposition or merging between the various sectors and each one has its own logic. As Jef Huysmans noted, it seems that each author preferred to add an adjective to characterise security (global, economic, environmental, etc.) without taking the trouble to de®ne the object of security, other than by its opposite: the threat, and without explaining this latter concept (Huysmans 1996b). Thus the real innovation came later, in 1990 and in 1991 when, in their common works, Buzan and Ole Wñver proposed aggregating these ®ve sectors in two categories: national security, having sovereignty and the survival of the regime as its main concern; and societal security having the identity and the survival of society as its main preoccupation. The distinction between threats to sovereignty and threats to identity was their main contribution to research on the subject. The concept of societal security had been born and was designed to free security matters from the narrow

When two become one

193

sector of military defence. It was typically American, forged by the distinction created by the Posse Comitatus that internal and external matters were clearly separated. It was very different from the French, but also Spanish, Greek visions that defence includes civil matters. In those countries constitutions create a hierarchy (in the sense of Louis Dumont's inclusion of the contrary) between defence (as a whole), including defence (as military matters), and civil affairs (as coordination between civil and military peoples). But who cares about exotic countries? Nevertheless, the semantic innovation of societal security had real success. The term of societal security was immediately adopted by other IR scholars as well as by American of®cials in charge of the State Department (even if they mainly use the term internal security and not societal security in their administrative documents). The category of societal security was more or less used to discuss the so-called `new threats' coming from society itself and migrants. It was used as a semantic equivalent of internal security or non-military threats. This ambiguity was also present in the ®rst book by Wñver and Buzan et al. (1993). According to them, societal insecurity is on the increase with the end of bipolarity, it is society more than the state which is threatened, they claim. The perception of a threat to identity comes, on the one hand, from cosmopolitanism, from a standardisation, and, on the other, from the ¯ow of immigrants and from ethnic fragmentation. By way of supporting their claims, they refer to the rejection of Maastricht by Denmark, the xenophobic attacks against asylum seekers in Germany, and the policy of ethnic puri®cation in Yugoslavia (Wñver et al. 1993). According to them, the notion of security must therefore be enlarged, since from a moral point of view in order to ®nd a solution to the problem, one has to feel concerned by all threats whether they are aimed at the state or at society. These sentiments were the foundation of the success in American military circles of the notion of societal security. But, paradoxically, societal security was also overwhelming successful in peace research centres in the Scandinavian countries for other reasons. First of all, the terminology has different ideological signi®cance. If on the American side, one saw societal security as a means of extending security and allowing the military to turn their knowledge to other ®elds than defence, as a reactivation of the concept of global defence, of total strategy leading to a maximal security, on the Scandinavian side, people understood societal security as a means of describing the practices of the soldiers and of the other agencies of security. They add for the better a constructivist posture, a critical framework to the label societal security. Of course the promoters of the concept of societal security are not responsible for the social and political effects they have, and the initial ambiguity does not exist in their latest book. On the contrary, they try to use the concept to criticise these culturalist and essentialist visions. They understand that the narratives of security after the bipolar period are often

194

Didier Bigo

the result of an ignorance of the real stakes of police collaboration and of their `encryption' within a narrative structured by the traditional stakes of defence. They understand that they are used by some military people to enlarge the role of the military in internal affairs, to reintroduce their own interests of budget and legitimacy and symbolic power `inside'. They understand that threats from below could lead to the construction of an `internal enemy'. They understand that the interests of the professionals of security are strengthened by the enlargement of the notion of security and by the interconnections between internal and external security. But criticising the notion of societal security as it is used by those who have the symbolic power (the security professionals) is necessary. Even if I agree a lot with the constructivist vision and with a very large part of the work of Ole Wñver, we need to continue to deconstruct the notion of security and of societal security as Campbell, Dillon, Williams and Der Derian have done. Even if we distinguish societal security from these instrumental and culturalist visions, I have further reservations about the use of this concept because it creates some misleading understandings of the transformation of the global order and the evolution of the ®eld of security. First of all, it risks focusing the analysis on the person who is speaking instead of analysing the con¯icts which oppose several de®nitions of the same situation and the con¯icts which may have as an object the imposition of a particular de®nition, as well as the interdependence between several distinct de®nitions, as Michel Dobry underlines. Indeed, the labelling is always the product (often in the form of a compromise) of power struggles between groups about legitimate statements. It does not belong to a person or to a group, it is the product (often in the form of compromise) of this power struggle for the legitimate use of a term. It is the result of the struggle for symbolic power, and nobody possesses a monopoly on this symbolic power. There is not a plot by a group, even a dominant group, it is a ®eld effect. This distance from one actor-narrative is important for it allows us to avoid reversing the conspiracy theory where the conspirators become those who produce the security norms, somewhat akin to the way in which Chomsky analyses these phenomena in `manufacturing the consensus'. It is not certain that Ole Wñver (as opposed to Michael Williams 1997) has always clearly seen this. His approach in terms of enunciation may push him to analyse exclusively one side of the relationship ± a strategy of actors ± to the detriment of symbolic power struggles. By stressing only language, this type of analysis omits all that is of semiotic interest, such as gestures, manoeuvres, the rituals of demonstration of force which are of course fundamental in the economy of securitisation. It is possible to securitise certain problems without speech or discourse and the military and the police have known this for a long time. The practical work, discipline and expertise are as important as all forms of discourse. Not everything is securitisable either, even when one holds a position of authority. Securitisation is not simply rhetoric, an ideology that imposes

When two become one

195

itself (to which one could oppose an alternative ideology, that of reciprocal con®dence, for example). It is the product of a considerable work of mobilisation. Securitisation rests on the capacity of actors to constitute statistics about their aim and under their own categories, to put them in series, to be able to submit them to examination, to protocols of research, with empirical checks, in short, to produce `a truth' on these statements. Truth which needs to be congruent with what is the current knowledge about the world. This of course is given only to the security professionals. Only they may impose a hierarchy of threats, rendering certain phenomena not only dangerous but more dangerous than others. The young, of course, hooligans a little more so, coloured immigrants, young `Beurs', members of a diaspora crossing borders (Neumann 1998). The strength of the police in this regard is its capacity to ®nd illegal activities when looking among the targets that the police choose themselves. They do not necessarily discover the illegal activities they are looking for (for example, the traf®cking of heroin among the diaspora from Asia and the South East) but they ®nd the traf®cking of clandestine labour, the smuggling of cigarettes which reinforces the statistical correlations and `proves the truth' created by this tendency to focus on the immigrant or some diaspora or another. The intelligence services have also shown their capacity to constitute, via the mediatisation of a few isolated cases of which they themselves were willing parties, well-founded fears with regard to nuclear proliferation in the Soviet Union. Thus not everyone has the ability (social or political) to enunciate a security statement even though they may have it linguistically. The real principle of the magic of performative statements resides in the `mystery of the minister', that is to say in the delegation of the term about which an agent is authorised to speak and act in the name of the group. A position of authority recognised by the group in one area of knowledge or another is necessary, and in particular in the domain of political professionals or that of the professionals who manage threats, in order to securitise a problem. A security statement, even if articulated within a speci®c discourse, does not in itself have illocutionary power. Delivered by any citizen or by a militant or even a politician in an individual capacity, the securitisation of an object (asylum seekers, for example) will have no force. It depends on the social position of those who produce these statements concerning insecurity and threats, as well as the recognition by the other social actors of their legitimacy to enunciate what causes the particular fear, for example, in the case of a Home Of®ce minister, a minister of the Ministry of Justice, or a minister for Defence, or a senior police of®cer speaking in the name of the relevant institutional group, or a `recognised' expert or a `specialist' journalist speaking in the name of public opinion. So, there is no process of securitisation independent of a ®eld of security constituted by groups and institutions that authorise themselves and that are authorised to state what security is.

196

Didier Bigo

To question who produces the narratives on the threat makes it possible to analyse the standpoint of each actor of the ®eld of security and to analyse the correspondence between this standpoint and the objective position of each one of these actors in the ®eld (position determined by seniority and knowledge). That makes it possible to understand that actors who appeared marginal in the universes of defence and the police force can, if there is de-differentiation, ®nd themselves in key positions in the ®eld of security, if this is in process of uni®cation. That changes the power struggle between the actors. All those who are located at the interface between territorial internal security and external security bene®t from the merging of the ®eld to improve their position and their capacity, whereas those who were originally dominant are in defensive positions. The notion of the ®eld of security allows us to understand the dynamic of the transformations affecting police and military cooperation in Europe. It allows us to analyse the latter as a `social space' transcending the break internal/external, national/international. This social space is constructed from the differentiated positions of the agents of security (national and local police forces, customs of®cers, border police forces, intelligence agents and armies). It is de®ned by the place that the different agencies occupy with respect to the national interest and to the international networks of relationships that they have developed. It is closely dependent on the forms taken by the political con¯icts surrounding Europeanisation but it is not a by-product of this. It anticipates changes in the Schengen relationships with the Nordic Union and Switzerland or of Europol with the ex-communist countries or yet again, of Eurocorps with NATO. It results from the internal competition between the agencies and their strategies of searching out alliances beyond Europe in the strict sense. Securitisation and its statements are thus still dependent on power struggles and not on the single strategy of an actor. This social space functions as a ®eld of power whose necessity imposes itself on the agents who ®nd themselves engaged therein and it leads to a certain homogeneity which expresses itself by the same bureaucratic interests, the same kinds of de®nition of the enemy, and the same types of knowledge of the latter. It tends to `homogenise' the ways of looking at a problem, to de®ne a `focus' shared by everyone. If the immigrant has a tendency to become the common enemy, it is not because he is de®ned globally by everyone, in a consensual manner as this enemy, but rather because different insecuritisations converge on him (the police with crime, terrorism, drugs; the military with subversion, grey zones, the Fifth Column; the economic actors with the crisis, unemployment; the demographic actors with natality and the fear of racial mixing, of interbreeding). The discourse on integration, moreover, has itself become a line of securitisation when it is a question of integrating, not in order to develop but in order to protect against future revolts.

When two become one

197

It functions also as a ®eld of struggles within which agents confront each other with the means and the differentiated ends according to their position. If struggles exist between these actors, if there is competition, it is precisely because they have the same interests, the same sense of the game and of what is at stake. It is also because all action undertaken by one of the agencies to modify the economy of power in their favour has repercussions on the rest of the actors. These struggles are fundamental to understanding the internal economy of the ®eld and the processes of constitution and extension of the latter. The positions of the actors and even more their trajectories tend to determine their `prises de positions', the types of discursive register that they will use, the statements that they will mobilise for their combat, thus blinding them to their similarities. This ®eld is determined, not so much by the possibility of the use of force such as classical sociology accords it in Hobbes or Weber, making of force a property of coercive moments, but by the capacity for a production of statements on the image of the enemy and the polarisation between us and them (Bigo 1996b). It functions ®nally as a ®eld of domination in relation to other social ®elds and tends to monopolise the de®nition of legitimately recognised threats; that is to say, that the agents who are involved ®ght for the ability to impose their authority on the de®nition of what frightens, and ®ght also to exclude from the ®eld other actors (the Church, human rights organisations). It is essentially a ®eld encompassing public bureaucracies but it also includes political and associative links aiming to `develop a security way of thinking' in society. These associative links may be organisations having interests in selling certain technologies, associations of senior former military or police leaders, anti-immigrant associations, newspapers or television. All these communication links spread or at times compete over, the production of security `truths'.

References Ackermann, W., Dulong, R. and Jeudy, H.P. (1983) Imaginaires de l'InseÂcuriteÂ, Paris: Librairie des MeÂridiens. Albert, M. (1997) Security as Boundary Function, Toronto: IBO. Albert, M. and Brock, L. (1996) `Debordering the World of States: New Spaces in International Relations', New Political Science no. 35, pp. 69±106. Alker, H.R. and Shapiro, M.J. (1996) Challenging Boundaries, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Anderson, M. (1994) Objectives and Instruments of Police Cooperation, Madrid: ECPR. Anderson, M. and Bort, E. (1996) Boundaries and Identities: The Eastern Frontier of the EU, Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh. Anderson, M. and Den Boer, M. (1994) Policing across National Boundaries, London: Pinter Publishers.

198

Didier Bigo

Anderson, M., Den Boer, M., Cullen, P., Gilmore, R.C. and Walker, N. (1996) Policing the European Union, Oxford: Clarendon Studies Press. Badie, B. (1995) La Fin des Territoires: Essai sur le DeÂsordre International et l'Utilite Sociale du Respect, Paris: Fayard. Badie, B. and Smouts, M.C. (1995) Le Retournement du Monde, Sociologie de la SceÁne Internationale, Paris: Presses de la FNSP. ÐÐ (1996) `L'International sans Territoire', Cultures & Con¯its no. 21±2, Spring± Summer. Badie, B. and Wenden, C. (1994) Le De® Migratoire: Questions de Relations Internationales, Paris: Presses de la FNSP. Barber, B.R. (1996) Djihad versus McWorld, Mondialisation et InteÂgrisme contre la DeÂmocratie, Paris: DescleÂe de Brouwer. Bayart, J.F., Ellis, S. and Hibou, B. (1997) La Criminalisation de l'EÂtat en Afrique, Brussels: Complexe. Bayley, D.H. (1975) `The Police and Political Development in Europe', in C. Tilly (ed.) The Formation of National States in Europe, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ÐÐ (1985) Patterns of Policing: A Comparative International Analysis, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, London: Sage. ÐÐ (1996) `World Risk Society as Cosmopolitan Society?', Theory Culture and Society 13, 4. ÐÐ (1996) The Reinvention of Politics, Cambridge: Polity Press. Benyon, J., Davies, P. and Willis, A. (1990) Police Co-operation in Europe: A Preliminary Investigation, Report to the Commission of the European Community, Leicester: CSPO. Berger, P.L. and Luckmann, T. (1967) The Social Construction of Reality. A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge, New York: Allen Lane. BerlieÁre, J.M. (1991) L'Institution PolicieÁre en France sous la IIIeÁ ReÂpublique (1875±1914): 3 tomes, theÁse Etat (historie): Lille. Bertrand, M. (1996) La Fin de l'Ordre Militaire, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Bigo, D. (1991±92) L'Europe de la SeÂcurite InteÂrieure, Paris: Institut des Hautes Etudes de SeÂcurite InteÂrieure. ÐÐ (1992) `Les Con¯its Post Bipolaires, Dynamiques et CaracteÂristiques', Cultures & Con¯its no. 8, Winter. ÐÐ (1993a) L'Europe des Polices et de la SeÂcurite InteÂrieure, Brussels: Complexe. ÐÐ (1993b) `Ma®a, Globalisation et Fragmentation', Nouvelles litteÂraires. Special edition on globalisation. ÐÐ (1995) `Grands DeÂbats dans un Petit Monde', Cultures & Con¯its no. 19, 20, Autumn±Winter. ÐÐ (1996a) Polices en ReÂseaux, l'ExpeÂrience EuropeÂenne, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. ÐÐ (1996b) `Con¯it, Guerre et Territoire', in B. Badie and M.C. Smouts, `L'International sans Territoire', Cultures & Con¯its no. 21, 22, Spring±Summer. ÐÐ (1998a) `L'Europe de la SeÂcurite InteÂrieure: Penser Autrement la SeÂcuriteÂ', in A.M. Le Gloannec (ed.) Entre Union et Nations: l'Etat en Europe, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po.

When two become one

199

ÐÐ (1998b) `Nouveaux Regards sur les Con¯its', in M.C. Smouts, Perspectives Critiques Internationales: Les Nouvelles Relations Internationales; Pratiques et Theories, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. ÐÐ (2000) `The MoÈbius Ribbon', in M. Albert, D. Jacobson and Y. Lapid (eds) Identities, Orders, Borders, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bourdieu, P. (1979) La Distinction, Paris: Ed. de Minuit. ÐÐ (1980) Questions de Sociologie, Paris: Ed. de Minuit. ÐÐ (1982) Ce que Parler veut Dire, Paris: Fayard. ÐÐ (1986) Choses Dites, Paris: Ed. de Minuit. ÐÐ (1990) In Other Words. Essays Towards a Re¯exive Sociology, trans. M. Adamson, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ÐÐ (1994) Raisons Pratiques: sur la TheÂorie de l'Action, Paris: Seuil. Brodeur, J.P. (1983) `High Policing and Low Policing: Remarks about the Policing of Political Activities', Social Problems vol. 11. Brogden, M. (1990) `Institutional versus Structural Approaches', Acta Juridica vol. 1. Brown, C. (1994) `Turtles All the Way Down', Millennium vol. 23, no. 2, Summer, pp. 213±36. Brubaker, R. (1994) `Are immigration control efforts really failing?', in W. Cornelius, P. Martin and J. Holli®eld (eds) Controlling Immigration, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Buisson, H. (1949) La Police, son Histoire, Paris: Nouvelles EÂditions Latins. Burchall, G., Gordon, C. and Miller, P. (1991) The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Busch, H. (1991) `Die Debatte um organisierte KriminalitaÈt in der BRD', BuÈrgerrechte und Polizei no. 39 2. Buttner, F. (1987) Les Compagnies de ReÂserve Departmentale (1805±1814) Montpellier: Centre d'histoire militaire et d'eÂtudes de deÂfense nationale. Buzan, B. (1983) People, States and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations, Brighton: Harvester. ÐÐ (1991a) `New Patterns of Global Security in the Twenty-First Century', International Affairs vol. 67, no. 3, 431±51. ÐÐ (1991b) People, States and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, 2nd edn, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Campbell, D. (1992) Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics of Identity, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Catanzaro, R. (1991) `Cosche-Cosa nostra, les Structures Organisationnelles de la Criminalite Ma®euse en Sicile', Cultures et Con¯its. ÐÐ (1993) `La ReÂgulation Sociale par la Violence, le RoÃle de la Criminalite OrganiseÂe dans l'Italie MeÂridionale', Cultures & Con¯its no. 9±10. ÐÐ (1995) `La ``Ma®a'' et les Recherches sur la ``Ma®a'' en Italie', DeÂviance et socieÂte vol. 19, no. 2, June, pp. 201±13. Cesari, J. (1997) Faut-il Avoir Peur de l'Islam?, Paris: Presses de Sciences Po. Ceyhan, A. (1997) Migrants as a Threat: A Comparative Analysis of Securitarian Rhetoric in France and in the US, paper presented to ISA conference, Toronto. Chapus, F. (1997) Traite de Droit Public, Paris: MontchreÂtien. CILIP (1996) `Innere Sicherheit in der EU', BuÈrgerrecht and Polizei vol. 53, no. 1. Clutterbuck, R. (1990) Terrorism, Drugs and Crime in Europe after 1992, London: Routledge.

200

Didier Bigo

Cornelius, W., Martin, P. and Holli®eld, J. (1994) Controlling Immigration, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Cox, R. (1998) `Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond IR Theory', in R. Keohane (ed.) Neorealism and its Critics, New York: Columbia University Press. Cronin, C. (1996) `Bourdieu and Foucault on Power and Modernity', Philosophy and Social Criticism vol. 22, no. 6. Cultures & Con¯its (1993) `Interventions armeÂes et causes humanitaires', no. 11. ÐÐ (1995) `Troubler et inquieÂter, les discours du deÂsordre international', no. 19, 20, Autumn±Winter. Czempiel, E.O. and Rosenau, J.N. (eds) (1989) Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges, Approaches to World Politics for the 1990s, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books. Daudet, Y., Morillon, P. and Smouts, M.C. (1997) La Vision FrancËaise des OpeÂrations de Maintien de la Paix, Montchrestien, Paris: Universite des Nations Unies. Deleuze, G. (1986) Foucault, Paris: Ed. de Minuit. Delmas, P. (1995) Le Bel Avenir de la Guerre, Paris: Gallimard. Delumeau, J. (1989) Rassurer et ProteÂger. La Sentiment de SeÂcurite dans l'Occident d'autrefois, Paris: Librairie ArtheÂme Fayard. Der Derian, J. (1992) Antidiplomacy, Spies, Terror, Speed, and War, Oxford: Blackwell. ÐÐ (ed.) (1995) International Theory, Critical Investigations, Basingstoke: Macmillan. ÐÐ (1997) `Virtual Violence: Mimesis in Theory, Politics and War', manuscript Copenhagen. Dillon, M. (1996) Politics of Security: Towards a Political Philosophy of Continental Thought, London: Routledge. Dobry, M. (1986) Sociologie des Crises Politiques: La Dynamique des Mobilisations Multisectorielles, Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques. Downs, G.W. (ed.) (1994) Collective Security Beyond the Cold War, Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Dreyfus, H.L. and Rabinow, P. (1983) Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Duchacek, I.D. (1986) The Territorial Dimension of Politics, Within, Among and Across Nations, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Duclos, D. `Les DeÂplacements de la Menace', Cultures & Con¯its no. 2. Dufour, J. L. (1990) Les Vraies Guerres, Paris: La Manufacture. Duhamel, A. (1993) Les Peurs FrancËaises, Paris: Flammarion. Eberwein, M.D. (1994) `Humanitarian intervention', Colloquium at Centre Marc Bloch, April 1994. ÐÐ (1995) `The Future of International Warfare, Toward a Global Security, Community?, International Political Science Review vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 341±60. Edelman, M. (1985) The Symbolic Uses of Politics, Urbana, ILL: University of Illinois Press. ÐÐ (1991) PieÁces et ReÁgles du Jeu Politique, Paris: Seuil. Elias, N. (1993) La Civilisation des Múurs 1, La Dynamique de l'Occident 2, Paris: Calmann LeÂvy, Presses Pocket. Esprit (1996) `Le Choc des Civilisations aÁ l'Heure de la Mondialisation', April.

When two become one

201

Ewald, F. (1996) Histoire de l'EÂtat Providence, Paris: Point. Ferguson, Y.H. and Mansbach, R.W. (1989) The State, Conceptual Chaos, and the Future of International Relations Theory, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. ÐÐ (1996) `The Past as Prelude to the Future? Identities and Loyalties in Global Politics', in Y. Lapid and F. Kratochwil (eds) The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, pp. 21±46. Finaut, C.J. and Hermans, R.H. (1987) Police Co-operation in Europe, Lochem: Van Den Brick. ÐÐ (1991) Crime in Europe: Police Cooperation within Western Europe, London and New York: Routledge. Foucault, M. (1966) `Sur le Rapport entre les EÂnonceÂs et la Visibilite Voir, in Naissance de la clinique, Paris: PUF. ÐÐ (1969) L'ArcheÂologie du Savoir, Paris: NRF Gallimard. ÐÐ (1975) Surveiller et Punir, Naissance de la Prison, Paris: Gallimard. ÐÐ (1989) `SeÂcuriteÂ, Territoire et Population', ReÂsume des cours, Paris: Juliard. ÐÐ (1994) Dits et Ecrits, 4 vols, Paris: NRF Gallimard. ÐÐ (1997) Il Faut DeÂfendre la SocieÂteÂ, cours au colleÁge de France 1976, Paris: Seuil Gallimard. Fritz, S. and Robert, P. (1995) Les Comptes du Crime, Paris: l'Harmattan. Giddens, A. (1985) The Nation State and Violence, Cambridge: Polity Press. ÐÐ (1987) Social Theory and Modern Sociology, Cambridge Polity Press. ÐÐ (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity, Cambridge: Polity Press. Halliday, F. (1995) Islam and the Myth of Confrontation, London: Tauris. Hassner, P. (1995) `Par delaÁ le National et l'International, la DeÂrision et l'Espoir 1993', in La Violence et la Paix, Esprit. ÐÐ (1996) `Ni Sang ni Sol? Crise de l'Europe et Dialectique de la TerritorialiteÂ', Cultures & Con¯its no. 21, 22, Spring±Summer. Heisler, M.O. (1996) The Transnational Nexus of Security and Migration, paper presented to IPSA Conference. Hoffman, B. (1994) The Urbanization of Insurgency, Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, Droit International Public Horchem, H.J. (1992) `Terrorisme 2000', traduit par la lettre d'information sur le terrorisme, IEPS Galvez Cantero, December. ÐÐ (1995) `The New Mass Migrations and Internal Security', Democracy & Security, no. 1, April, GIRIS. Huntington, S.P. (1993a) `The Clash of Civilizations? The Debate, with Responses by Fouad Ajami, ed. by J. Hoge, Jr. N.Y., Council on Foreign Relations. ÐÐ (1993b) `The Clash of Civilizations', Foreign Affairs vol. 72, no. 3, pp. 22±49. ÐÐ (1997) Le Choc des Civilisations, Paris: Jacob. Huysmans, J. (1996a) Making/Unmaking the European Disorder, Leuven: University of Leuven Press. ÐÐ (1996b) Securitising Europe, Europeanising Security: The Construction of migration in the EU, unpub. ms. Jamieson A. (1992) `Drug Traf®cking after 1992', Con¯ict Studies no. 250, April. Joenniemi, P. (1997) `Wild Zones, Black Holes and Struggles Void of Purpose: Has War Lost its Name?, paper presented to IPSA, Seoul 1997. Joxe, A. (1990) Le Cycle de la Dissuasion `1945±1990': Essai de StrateÂgie Critique, Paris: La DeÂcouverte.

202

Didier Bigo

Katzenstein, P. (1989) `International Relations Theory and the Analysis of Change', in E.O. Czempiel and J. Rosenau (eds) Global Changes and Theoretical Challenges, Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, pp. 291±304. ÐÐ (1994) Coping with Terrorism: Norms and Internal Security in Germany and Japan, West Germany's Internal Security Policy: State and Violence in the 1970s and 1980s, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ÐÐ (ed.) (1996) The Culture of National Security, Norms and Identity in World Politics, New York: Columbia University Press. Katzenstein, P., Keohane, R. and Goldstein, J. (1993) Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Keohane, R. and Levy, M. (eds) (1996) Institutions for Environmental Aid: Pitfalls and Promise, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Klare, M.T. and Chandrani, Y. (eds) (1998) World Security, Challenges for a New Century, New York: St Martin's Press. Klare, M.T. and Kornbluh, P. (eds) (1988) Low-intensity Warfare, Counterinsurgency, Proinsurgency, and Antiterrorism in the Eighties, New York: Pantheon. Kratochwil, F. (1986) `Of Systems, Boundaries, and Territoriality: An Inquiry into the Formation of the State System', World Politics vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 27±52. Lacroix, B. (1985) `Ordre Politique et Ordre Social', in J. Leca et M. Grawitz (eds), Traite de Science Politique, tome 1, Paris: PUF, 469±565. Lake, D. and Morgan, P.M. (eds) (1997) Regional Orders, Building Security in the New World, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press. Lapid, Y. (1997) Identities, Borders, Orders: New Cartographies for Security Studies, paper presented to ISA conference, Toronto. Lapid, Y. and Kratochwil, F. (1996) The Return of Culture and Identity in IR Theory, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Latter, R. (1990) Crime and the European Community, Conference paper: Wilton Park, November 1990. Lebow, N.R. (1997) `Transitions and transformations, Building International Cooperation', Security Studies vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 154±79. Lodge, J. (1992) Internal Security and Judicial Cooperation beyond Maastricht, Hull: University of Hull. Lynn-Jones, S. (ed.) (1991) The Cold War and After: Prospects for Peace, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mabhubani, K. (1992) `The West and the Rest', The National Interest, Summer. McCoy, A. and Block, A. (1992) Studies in the Failure of US Narcotics Policy, Oxford: Westview Press. McIntosh, M. (1975) The Organisation of Crime, London: Macmillan. Mansbach, R. and Wilmer, F. (1998) `War and the Westphalian State of Mind', working paper, Minneapolis: ISA. Mawby, R.I. (1990) Comparative Policing Issues, London: Unwin Hyman. Migaux, P. (1993) `SeÂcurite inteÂrieure et menaces exteÂrieures', CASE no. 1, May. Monar, J. and Morgan, R. (eds) (1995) The Third Pillar of the European Union, Brussels: College of Europe, European Interuniversity Press. Nayer, A., Nys, M., Bouras, F. and Maesschalk, A. (1995) Libre Circulation, Espaces EuropeÂens et Droits Fondamentaux des Citoyens, Brussels: La Charte. Neumann, I.B. (1997) Russia and the Idea of Europe Modelled, Oslo: Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

When two become one

203

ÐÐ (1998) `European identity, EU expansion and the inclusion/exclusion nexus', Alternatives July, vol. 23, pp. 397±416 Noiriel, G. (1991) La Tyrannie du National: Le Droit d'Asile en Europe 1793± 1993, Paris: Calmann Levy. Nolutshungu, S.C. (1996) Margins of Insecurity, Minorities and International Security, London: University of Rochester Press. Nuggil, A. (1985) Prophets of Extremity: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Putter, N. (1996) `Organised Crime in Germany', preliminary report Florence, manuscript. Rabinow, P. (ed.) (1991) The Foucault Reader, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Rattansi, A. and Westwood, S. (1994) Racism, Modernity, Identity on the Western Front, Cambridge: Polity Press. Raufer, X. (1993) Les Superpuissances du Crime, Paris: Plon. Reiner, R. (1992) Politics of the Police, Hemel Hempstead: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Rey, H. (1996) La Peur des Banlieues, Paris: Presse de Science Po. Robert, P. and F. Sack (1994) Les Comptes du Crime, Paris: L'Harmatan. RocheÂ, S. (1993) La Sentiment d'InseÂcuriteÂ, Paris: PUF sociologie d'aujourd'hui. Rosenau, J.N. (1990) Turbulence in World Politics: A Theory of Change and Continuity, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ru®n, J.C. (1991) L'Empire et les Nouveaux Barbares, Paris: Pluriel. ÐÐ (1996) Le PieÁge Humanitaire, (2nd edn), Paris: Pluriel. Ruggie, J.G. (1992) `Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations', International Organization no. 472, pp. 139±74. Salame, G. (1996) Appels d'Empire, Paris: Fayard. SauveÂ, L. and Torrelli, M. (1990) `SeÂcurite et Harmonisation Juridique EuropeÂenne', in Les Fondements de la SeÂcurite et de la Paix en Europe aÁ l'Horizon 2000, SGDN, 12 September. Schmitt, C. (1972) La Notion de Politique et TheÂorie du Partisan, Paris: Flammarion. Sheptycki, J. (1996) Insecurity, Risk Suppression and Segregation: Policing in the Transnational Age, unpub. ms. Solomos, J. and Back, L. (1996) Racism and Society, London: Macmillan. Sorman, G. (1992) En Attendant les Barbares, Paris: Fayard. Sterling, C. (1981) The Terror Network, New York: Readers' Digest Press. ÐÐ (1990) La Pieuvre, la Ma®a aÁ la ConqueÃte du Monde 1945±1989, Paris: Laffont. Strunk, S. (1995) Organised Crime: A Foreign Threat?, Conference paper, Berlin HCM. Tilly, C. (1990) Coercion, Capital, and European States: AD 990±1990, Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Torpey, J. (1996) Coming and Going, paper presented at APSA. Published in Torpey, J. (2000) The Invention of the Passport, London: Cambridge University Press. Van Outrive L., Renault, G. and Vanderborght, J. (1996) `La collaboration policieÁre en Europe', DeÂviances et SocieÂteÂs vol. 20, no. 2. Vasquez, J.A. (1983) The Power of Power Politics: A Critique, London: Pinter. ÐÐ (1995) `Why do Neighbors Fight? Proximity, Interaction of Territoriality', Journal of Peace Research vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 277±93.

204

Didier Bigo

Veyne, P. (1971) Comment on EÂcrit l'Histoire: Essai d'EÂpisteÂmologie, Paris: Seuil. ÐÐ (1976) Le Pain et le Cirque, Paris: Seuil. ÐÐ (1983) Les Grecs ont-ils Cru aÁ leurs Mythes?, Paris: Seuil. Wñver, O. (1997) Concepts of Security, Copenhagen: Institute for Political Science, University of Copenhagen. Wñver O., Buzan, B., Kelstrup, M. and Lemaitre, P. (1993) Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe, New York: St. Martin's Press. Walker, N. (1996) `Political Theory of Police Cooperation', in M. Anderson et al. (eds) Policing the European Union, Oxford: Clarendon Studies Press. Walker, R.B.J. (1993) Inside-Outside: International Relations as Political Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Walker, R.B.J. and Mendlovitz, S.H. (eds) (1990) Contending Sovereignties, Rede®ning Political Community, Boulder: CO: Lynne Reinner. Walt, S. (1991) `The Renaissance of Security Studies', International Studies Quarterly no. 35, 2/91, 211±30. Weil, P. (1991) La France et ses EÂtrangers, Paris: Gallimard. Wieviorka, M. (1998) `Un Nouveau Paradigme de la Violence?', Cultures & Con¯its Spring±Summer, no. 31±2. Wilkinson, P. (1990) `Terrorist, Target, and Tactics', Con¯ict Studies, no. 236. Williams, M.C. (1997) `The Institutions of Security: Elements of a Theory of Security Organizations', Cooperation and Con¯ict vol. 32, no. 3, pp. 287±307.

9

The European Central Bank and the problem of authority1 Randall D. Germain

It must be considered that there is nothing more dif®cult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. (Machiavelli, The Prince)

New institutions and the problem of authority Speculating about new and future developments is always dif®cult, and nowhere is this truism better illustrated than in current thinking about institutional developments in the rapidly changing system of global money and ®nance. Traditional private ®nancial institutions such as banks and securities houses are changing out of all recognition as they combine across borders and merge their operations, producing hybrid institutions active over a range of markets and subject to a wide array of regulatory authorities (Hamilton 1986; Spero 1988/89; Underhill 1997). Some have gone so far as to argue that these changes have altered the role of ®nance within the global economy (Drucker 1986). Within the public domain, however, institutional development has been much more restrained. A new order of things has yet to be con®rmed: central banks, treasuries, ®nancial institutions watchdogs and stock market regulators remain the key guardians to the gates of capital, much as they have since the turn of the century.2 Some of this is now about to change. Economic and monetary union in Europe (EMU) is set to alter the landscape of global ®nance by consigning to history the currencies of eleven Member States of the European Union (EU); by elevating in their stead a new currency for national and international use ± the euro; and by creating an entirely new institution, the European Central Bank (ECB). This institution, moreover, will assume direct responsibility for the monetary policy of one of the largest economies in the world, and it will have nearly complete autonomy over the exercise of its remit. Although limited in membership and primarily regional in focus,

206

Randall D. Germain

it is likely that the ECB will take its place alongside a select group of internationally-powerful ®nancial institutions, including the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and three or four of the world's most powerful central banks and treasuries (from the USA, Germany, Japan and United Kingdom), all of whom bear a substantial collective responsibility for the stable operation of the global ®nancial system. The creation of the ECB, therefore, is an event of almost unique proportions in the twentieth-century history of the global ®nancial system. As Machiavelli would remark, however, initiating a new order of things is fraught with risk. In terms of EMU and the ECB, the technical issues alone are daunting: should the currencies of participating Member States be locked in at unsustainable rates, the entire project could unravel from within; if currency support operations send con¯icting signals to the markets, monetary union will be subjected to unremitting pressure from without; and if the models used to measure and predict growth rates in money supply and in¯ation across Europe are inaccurate, the golden promise of economic stability will be compromised. No less signi®cant are the political issues: will key appointments to the ECB be subject to partisan political manoeuvring, as the imbroglio over the appointment of the ®rst president suggests? How independent will these individuals be in the exercise of their duties? How is the key relationship between the EU's Council of Ministers and the ECB over the value of the euro to work in practice? And how will the triangular working relationship between the ECB, national central banks of participating Member States, and their governments, evolve? Given that this new order will come into being over a relatively short period of time and possibly during a recession, it is unsurprising that these issues have dominated discussion of the ECB.3 What those who consider these issues share is the presupposition that the institutional authority of the newly created European Central Bank can be taken for granted. The question for most analysts is not whether this institution will carry the legitimacy and authority of the EU behind it, but rather how precisely will it carry out its duties in light of its presumed authority (e.g., Dornbusch et al. 1998; Giordano and Persaud 1998). I would argue, however, that this assumes that which in fact must be explained or accounted for. All institutions require authority in order to be effective, yet not all institutions acquire the authority to become so. Authority is not simply a matter of ®at, to be delegated at will by a superior body. Rather, authority is a relational disposition in which the capacity to command is legitimated by those who obey. Moreover, it is reciprocated between and among those who ®nd themselves bound together under conditions of either hierarchy or equality. Beyond the important technical and so-called political questions confronting the ECB, therefore, we need also to ask the more general question of how new institutions gain the authority which allows them to be effective in the ®rst place. In terms of the ECB, we can

European Central Bank: problem of authority

207

frame this question as: `What is the basis of the institutional authority of the ECB?' Set within the contested nature of monetary union itself, the juridical equality of the participating Member States, and the unresolved nature of the vision of Europe that lies at its heart, this is a necessary ®rst-order question to ask of the ECB. I would also contend that this is a critical question to ask of much of the institutional fabric of money and ®nance more generally. Unlike institutions which have access to tangible resources such as the power to command payment of taxes, enforce behaviour, or unleash death and destruction, ®nancial institutions are involved in a world built upon fragile relations of trust and perception played out against an uncertain future, where the scope of an institution's resources are as dependent on the cooperation and perception of others over time as on what lies deposited in its vaults. Credit is an inherently social resource, where the dividing line between power and legitimacy, compulsion and acquiescence, or indeed valuable `money' and worthless `paper', must be accounted for in terms which acknowledge their contested status (Germain 1997: 17). It is this terrain of contestation that I wish to explore here. In particular, I wish to consider the question of authority in terms of `community' as the principal terrain within which institutional authority is constituted. Why `community'? The notion of community embodies two dimensions. First, it represents an ideational commitment to a set of beliefs which tie individual agents into a broadly familiar context that enables their own particular actions to gain collective meaning. The notion of community connects individuals across social space and through time. Second, communities stand as a material connection between collective networks of agents. They provide support and resources which help agents to realize their aims and objectives. In this sense communities help to empower agents both by embedding their ways of looking at the world into an inter-subjective context, and by enabling them to construct the mechanisms and modalities to act. More broadly still, the terrain of community provides the ideational and material base upon which institutional authority is constructed. Understanding the communities within which institutions are embedded, therefore, might be considered the prolegomena to a consideration of the more narrowly technical issues which dominate most discussions of how and why institutions work as they do. For the ECB, the problem of authority in terms of community can be framed at several levels. First, Member States of the EU constitute one terrain of community within which the question of authority can be posed. Within this community there seems little doubt of the veracity of Member States' claims to endowing the project of monetary union with the necessary authority for effective institutions to develop. Despite contrary claims by Eurosceptics across the EU, the commitment to making monetary union work is not an issue for any of the current governments of Member States.

208

Randall D. Germain

They all recognize that Europe's collective future is intimately bound up with the success of monetary union. Second, social class can be considered another terrain of community through which to pose the question of authority. In general, transnational capital, the European-oriented business class and large-scale agriculture are all committed to monetary union, while small business and some labour organizations are opposed to it. Support for or against monetary union, however, is fragmented along more than class lines in Europe today, with national and racial sentiment also playing an important part in the decision of whether to adhere to the vision of Europe which informs monetary union. Nevertheless, outside of the social classes that direct ®nancial institutions throughout Europe, the question of the institutional authority of the ECB (as opposed to the pros and cons of monetary union itself, which are hotly contested) has little resonance beyond the purely instrumental issue of the ECB's independence. It is within the speci®c social and political constituencies into which the ECB will be embedded for whom the problem of authority is posed most acutely. Yet, in current debates, the problem of authority is most often considered in terms of a single element of each of these communities, whether it is the community of Member States of the EU or the particular class which stands to gain most from monetary union. In what follows I wish to broaden this debate in order to sketch a fuller account of the ECB's principal communities, together with the way in which the question of authority is posed by them for the ECB. A more nuanced conceptualization of the problem of authority will emerge as a result, which can then be used to interrogate the more general question of how new institutions gain authority. The basic argument of the chapter is that the institutional authority of the ECB cannot simply be delegated; rather, it must be constituted out of the current relations prevailing among the ECB's natural constituencies. This cannot be done only with respect to getting the institutional structure of the ECB `right'. It must extend to embedding the ECB carefully into the European communities of which it is a part, and through which its in¯uence and authority will ¯ow. This means striking an effective balance between the institutional autonomy of the ECB and the inclusion of representatives of signi®cant communities into its decision-making structure. Such a balance departs signi®cantly from prevailing models of central banks, which tend to be embedded almost solely within the community of banking regulators or the economics profession. This chapter therefore questions whether the ECB can create the kind of institutional authority which will be required to meet the demanding challenges of monetary union. The remainder of the chapter comprises three sections. First, I brie¯y canvass the literature in International Political Economy (IPE) and International Relations (IR) more generally to ask how the problem of institutional authority is usually posed. While the majority of the literature assumes

European Central Bank: problem of authority

209

rather than accounts for the existence of institutional authority, some strands of a more historically-informed IPE and IR are helpful in this regard. I then use these strands of what I characterize as an historicalpolitical economy to problematize the question of the ECB's authority in terms of community. Here I highlight the particular way in which the ECB is embedded into its principal communities in order to gauge the potential of the ECB's authority over the medium term. I conclude by using the above arguments to re¯ect on the broader problem of institutionalizing authority internationally.

Understanding authority: insights from IPE and IR The problematical nature of authority is seldom directly addressed within the mainstream literature on international institutions in IPE and IR. Rather, authority is often considered in terms of `competence', namely the relationship between the tasks an institution must perform and the legislative powers and resources awarded to it that will enable these tasks to be carried out (e.g. Simmons 1993). Rarely do scholars step back and ask questions about how a particular institutional fabric can gain `authority' within the context of existing international political relations, in the manner for example of Richard Cooper (1975) in relation to the international monetary system, or Craig Murphy (1994) in relation to the coming world order. Part of the reason for this lack of interest in the broader problem of authority lies in the way in which the leading approaches within IPE and IR consider this issue. Table 9.1 summarizes these approaches in terms of the terrain of community and the basis of authority used to conceptualize institutional authority. Following Caporaso and Levine (1992: 181±96), we can argue that `statepower' theories of political economy ± which in the context of IPE and IR are neorealist and hegemonic stability theories ± consider authority essentially as a by-product of the distribution of material resources together with the working out of the international balance of power. Authority to compel others lies in achieving a preponderance of material resources and through the balance of power of gaining the recognition from others for that state of affairs (Gilpin 1982: 30; cf. Waltz 1979). Here authority is a derivative product which accrues to certain states by virtue of their position within the international system, and which they can bestow onto institutions under certain conditions. The terrain of community over which this positional game is played comprises the ®eld of inter-state relations, and the principal actors involved are states. Such states, moreover, are what we may call `pre-constituted', either in the sense of being a necessary prior condition for the game to be played or in terms of realizing a certain functional similarity of behaviour. There are two main objections to conceptualizing authority in these terms. First, the basis of authority cannot be reduced simply to a product

210

Randall D. Germain

Table 9.1 Conceptualizing international institutional authority IPE and IR approaches

Terrain of community

Basis of authority

state-power

. inter-state relations . communities as pre-constituted

. preponderance of material resources . balance of power

regimes

. inter-state relations . non-state international relations, including IOs . communities as pre-constituted but developmental

. preponderance of material resources . constitutional arrangements . shared inter-state norms and values

epistemic communities

. inter/intra-state relations . elite transnational policy networks . communities as partially contingent and developmental

. control of knowledge/ technology . social solidarity . shared beliefs

. material resources neo-Gramscian and . internationalized state . balance of power constructivist . globalized civil society . communities as contingent . transnational solidarity/ shared identity and developmental . ideational consensus . founding myth . `®t' between state and civil society . rule-based behaviour

of material resources. While attaining a position of strength ± whether economic, military or social ± may well be a crucial element of authority, it cannot be reduced to this alone. There are aspects of social and political relations which transcend these elements and which must be accounted for in any notion of authority. Second, the terrain of community itself is static. Although state-power theories acknowledge that communities ± in this case states ± are the products of human agency, they do not consider that fundamental transformation in the form and structure of communities is possible. As a result, authority itself is static: it can only be considered a derivative product of state power, and never an enabling construct for state power. Regime theories, within which I would include some forms of realist and neoliberal institutionalist theorizing, address some of these problems. They consider the terrain of community to extend beyond inter-state relations to embrace non-state relations, including relations among international institutions (Keohane 1989). They also allow particular communities and their

European Central Bank: problem of authority

211

institutional structures to change and develop over time (Young 1991). In this way they offer a developmental conception of the terrain of community upon which authority can be built. In terms of the basis of authority, regime theories recognize the signi®cance for institutions of constitutional arrangements, shared inter-state norms and values, and use these to supplement an assessment of material resources in their consideration of power and authority in international politics (Ruggie, 1982). Regime theories are thereby able to recognize the reciprocal nature of authority and its grounding in rule-based behaviour. While regime theories are an improvement over state-power theories in terms of their conceptualization of authority, they are still unable to consider authority adequately in terms of community. Despite rejecting a reductionist view of authority as resulting from a preponderance of material resources, for example, they fail to move beyond state-based conceptions of constitutional arrangements and their consideration of norms and values. For regime theories, authority is ultimately derived from a complex combination of material and ideational resources which accrue from states. In this reading, however, authority remains largely derivative of states. A similar logic is at work with regard to the terrain of community. Here, while communities are considered in a developmental sense, their starting point remains the pre-given one of states. Although states inform the origins and development of regimes, the only impact which regimes have on states is that of altering their behaviour; they cannot, for example, alter the form and structure of states (Keohane 1984: 63±4). While regime theories thus represent an important advance on state-power theories, they continue to uphold a one-dimensional view of authority: states have it and use it to construct regimes that operate within strictly limited (albeit signi®cant) contexts. In order to move beyond this one-dimensional view of authority, we can turn to other approaches within IPE and IR that in different ways both outline a more suggestive terrain of community to consider and draw our attention to important and under-speci®ed dimensions of authority. First, by focusing on discrete policy networks, the epistemic communities literature broadens the terrain of community to consider the circumstances and mechanisms of networks of decision-makers coming into being which are distinctly transnational in form (Haas 1992: 32±3). That is, the terrain of community cuts across and transforms traditional domestic and international political structures. A level of reciprocity exists between community and authority in this reading, which is based in the ®rst instance on the way in which knowledge is organized and communicated. By recognizing that traditional political structures can develop and be transformed, the epistemic communities literature refuses to consider communities as preconstituted. Rather, it sees communities as at least partially contingent. The focus on the way in which knowledge is controlled is also a helpful addition to the concern which regime theorists display towards the shared

212

Randall D. Germain

inter-state norms and values which constitute the ideational core of particular regimes. This focus directs our attention to what must now be considered one of the foundational elements of authority in the modern world, namely, the capacity to control and use knowledge. Second, by considering what Robert W. Cox (1981/1996: 107±9; 1983/ 1996: 126) calls the `internationalizing of the state' and its relationship to a globalized civil society, those who deploy a distinctly Gramscian language focus our attention on an entirely new terrain of community within which to consider the question of the changing structure of authority today. Most signi®cantly, these scholars argue that it is within a globalized or internationalized civil society that power and authority are forged (Murphy 1994: 31). And while material resources and the balance of power are clearly important to the construction of authority, equally signi®cant for the precise nature of authority at any given point in time is the degree of ideational consensus within and across societies together with the social myths which inform this consensus (Augelli and Murphy 1997: 26±9). These considerations encourage us to consider the way in which authority emerges out of the particular `®t' between state and society at the international level, especially in relation to the balance of power between public and private agents. And while important questions can be raised about the analytical clarity of these conceptualizations (Germain and Kenny 1998: 14±17), there is little doubt that they help to sharpen our understanding of authority in terms of community. Finally, some constructivists have been concerned with the way in which conceptions of identity have been constituted so as to motivate the construction of particular forms of community which have then mediated individual behaviour through negotiated rule-based agreements (Burch and Denemark 1997; Wendt 1994). Their primary concern lies in exposing the contingent nature of communities, and through this contingency the shifting terrain of community over the modern era. Moreover, their focus on the construction and destruction of rules brings into sharp relief the problematic basis of authority: it is a created and enabling relational disposition rather than a derivative product of state action. Taken together, the strands of scholarship identi®ed in these last few paragraphs might be considered generically as elements of an historicalpolitical economy. They share a critical disposition which focuses on the practices of agents active internationally, and seek to understand these agents in light of the particular historical context which gives meaning to their actions. More importantly, however, they recognize the contingent nature of the terrain over which agents act, and the articulation of that terrain in terms of social communities. This suggests that the construction of institutional authority is a matter of negotiation and agreement rather than delegation, and that a critical aspect of the construction of authority is the particular way in which ideas, material resources and identities are

European Central Bank: problem of authority

213

welded together to enable institutions to embed themselves within their relevant communities, as well as to exercise whatever powers they possess effectively. In the case of the ECB, deploying an historical political economy approach suggests that we ought to examine the communities which constitute the central terrain over which the ECB will operate, the extent to which these communities and the ECB enter into reciprocal relations, and the knowledge claims upon which the authority of the ECB will be based. These are brie¯y explored in the following section.

Principal communities, authority and the ECB We have considered authority as a relational disposition that is shared between two or more agents. It is on this basis that we can distinguish between the problems and prospects of monetary union broadly construed and the particular consideration of authority associated with the ECB. The success of economic and monetary union will of course depend critically upon the ability of the ECB to execute its responsibilities in an effective manner. At the same time, however, economic and monetary union is becoming broadly insinuated across the breadth of European society, and its legitimation depends upon the cross-cutting actions of agents active over a wide range of issues. In other words, monetary union is a macroprocess in which agents participate collectively, yet over which individually they often have very little control. The process of economic and monetary union cannot itself be considered an agency in need of `authority'. The ECB, on the other hand, is a single institution with a narrow mandate and an identi®able set of social constituencies. Its authority will depend crucially upon the extent of the reciprocity between itself and other agents involved in relations with it. Here we can begin to discuss the problem of authority in concrete terms, focusing upon the claim to authority in light of the terrain of community and the degree of reciprocity between the agents involved. Some of these issues are schematically represented in Table 9.2. The terrain of community There are two sets of principal communities within which the ECB operates. One set comprises public bodies such as the governments of the Member States of the EU, participating members of the European System of Central Banks, various organs of the EU, and more controversially, other key international institutions engaged in similar ways with the global ®nancial system (including, for example, the BIS, the Federal Reserve Board of the United States, and the Bank of Japan). The other set includes the relevant communities of business and ®nance across Europe, together with certain groupings within an increasingly Europeanized civil society. The ®rst set of

214

Randall D. Germain

Table 9.2 Institutional authority and the ECB Institutional considerations

Communities

Authority

Political legitimacy

. governments . European System of Central Banks . EU Council, Commission, and Parliament . other key international institutions (BIS, FED, BoJ)

. relationship to state authority . structure . resources . founding myth

Social legitimacy

. pan-European ®nancial community . pan-European business community . national ®nancial communities . national business communities . academic communities . national civil societies

. knowledge claims (economic expertise) . track record (unavailable yet) . degree of reciprocity between communities . shared identity with other European institutions

Note: BOLD denotes axes of contemporary debate.

communities can be identi®ed as crucial to the political legitimacy of the ECB, while I would associate the second set more closely with its social legitimacy. Critics might argue that this argument ignores the broader public as one of the ECB's principal communities. In the case of central banks, however, the relationship between the broader public and these institutions is mediated in two important senses. First, the relationship is mediated by the particular constitutional arrangements that govern the relationship between the central bank and the government. For example, in both the United States and Germany, the central bank is statutorily independent. The lines of accountability for both the Fed and the Bundesbank, as it does also for the ECB, run through the government. It is to the government that these institutions are responsible for their mandate, and this accountability is in turn consecrated through the procedure by which key appointments within these institutions are made by government (Spindler 1984). The broader public may be a key community in a kind of ultimate sense, but its relationship to central banks remains mediated by existing political institutions. Second, the relationship between a central bank and the broader public is mediated by public opinion. In this case the key dimension is opinionmakers in the press and elsewhere who are able to frame debates in particular ways. It is in terms of this latter form of mediation that the second set of

European Central Bank: problem of authority

215

communities identi®ed above becomes critical. Here it is important to note that the broader public plays a role in the construction of a constitutionally independent central bank by mobilizing support for different positions in a debate largely determined by opinion-makers and others with a claim to highly specialized forms of knowledge. In this sense the broader public provides the backdrop to debates within the kinds of principal communities outlined below. For the set of principal communities composed of the major public bodies of Europe, the political legitimacy of the ECB is not in question. Despite the occasional trenchant criticism of the adequacy of the Maastricht Treaty articles which deal with the institutional structure of the ECB (e.g. Dowd, 1998), most analysts accept that public institutions within and across the EU fully support the ECB and are actively working to realize its success. Even those countries which have not joined in the ®rst wave, such as the UK, are fully signed up to the strategic importance of making the institutions of monetary union work. And while there may be ambiguities to resolve about the precise way in which these institutions will work, no one in a position of political responsibility questions the logic of making the newest European institution work effectively. Nevertheless, questions do remain regarding how other signi®cant international institutions will work with the ECB in maintaining the integrity of the global ®nancial system. Here important questions have been raised by some about precisely how the ECB will ®t into the established fabric of global ®nance, and whether it will be stabilizing or destabilizing in its effects (Henning 1997; Kenen 1995). In particular, the ambiguity surrounding who exactly has the political responsibility for negotiating and ratifying international agreements may cast a shadow over the extent of the ECB's authority in these matters, especially in a situation of crisis. At the same time, these institutions all belong to a close-knit transnational banking fraternity which will be very familiar to the denizens of the Euro Tower in Frankfurt. Among them the supreme importance of trust and credibility is well recognized as a critical foundation of institutional `authority', and for this reason they would be extremely reluctant to openly question the authority of the ECB. Although institutions such as the BIS will have many technical questions to sort out with the ECB, these will be framed in ways which help to establish rather than undermine the ECB's authority. The recent history both of relations among central banks in Europe and the close working relationship between the BIS and the ECB's predecessor, the European Monetary Institute (EMI), strengthen the claim that among these institutions the authority of the ECB will be robust. European central banks have of course a long history of cooperating among themselves in pursuit of their objectives, and this cooperative strain has been emphasized in the run up to monetary union, especially among the key central banks of north-west Europe. Multiple Europe-wide and issue-speci®c committees

216

Randall D. Germain

provide in-depth exposure to one another's culture and working environment, while the practice of strong internal promotion (for the most part) ensures that once established, these links are maintained throughout the long working lives of central bankers. At the top of the decision-making hierarchies which knit together European central banks stands the central banker's central bank, the Bank for International Settlements in Basle, Switzerland. It is host to regular meetings of all the top central banks from Europe and around the world, and allows those who have reached the pinnacle of their careers to cultivate a strong sense of solidarity among their peers. This dense set of cross-cutting linkages among senior European and international central bankers, facilitated by the BIS and its history of providing links between the world's central bankers, means that for the central banking community at least, the ECB is very much an `authoritative' international institution. For them its political legitimacy is a closed rather than an open question. The social legitimacy of the ECB, however, is a more delicate issue. Unlike the set of public institutions into which the ECB is closely embedded across Europe, there are few direct ties binding the ECB into the business and ®nancial communities of Europe. The model for the ECB here is one that follows a growing trend across the industrialized world, namely to statutorily remove the central bank from domestic social pressure. The justi®cation for this stance is to avoid placing the central bank in a position where it favours particular interests over that of the general economy. One important advantage of this trend is that it helps to ensure that governments eliminate their capacity to substitute monetary for ®scal intervention in the economy. This should in theory have the effect of minimizing the unanticipated consequences of monetary intervention for the economy. For central banks, however, it also produces a signi®cant disadvantage: insulating central banks from sectoral pressures within the national economy narrows the scope of their claims to authority and/or credibility by making these claims heavily reliant on the track record of central banks and their claim to possess a monopoly of specialized economic expertise. It is precisely in terms of its track record and a special claim to economic expertise, however, where the `authority' of the ECB remains most fragile. The ECB, of course, has an unproven track record, having begun operations only at the start of 1999. And while some participating central banks do have excellent in¯ation-®ghting records (e.g. the Bundesbank), others do not (e.g. the Bank of Italy). More crucial, though, is the uncertainty surrounding the capacity of the ECB to measure and predict monetary aggregates and in¯ation across Europe. Not only is the measurement of monetary aggregates (M1, M2, M3, etc. . . .) a dif®cult exercise, but the connection between these and in¯ation is no longer as certain as in the past. Indeed, several central banks have moved away from using these altogether (Giordano and Persaud 1998: Chapter 6). Furthermore, how to compile these statistics on a Europe-wide basis so that a European mone-

European Central Bank: problem of authority

217

tary policy can be pursued in an appropriate manner is a daunting task, and one never before conducted. The ECB has no one but itself to rely on to construct its authority in these areas. Equally important, monetary policy needs to work smoothly and directly through the ®nancial system if it is to be effective. This practical reality places great emphasis upon establishing a solid working relationship between the central bank and the banking and/or ®nancial system. This is so for three reasons. First, a large number of monetary policies work most effectively through the banking and/or ®nancial system, such as setting reserve ratios, engaging in open market operations and establishing interest rates. Although these monetary instruments can and do affect all economic actors, they are most directly effective if banks cooperate in their implementation. Second, central banks are almost always the lender of last resort to banking institutions, which means that in the event of a ®nancial failure or crisis, central banks must rely on adequate information and established working relations if they are to act quickly and in the best interests of the ®nancial system. And ®nally, in many countries central banks are wholly or partly responsible for regulating banks. Indeed, the need of central banks to be aware of the banking environment in order to successfully execute monetary policy is often referred to whenever a move to separate the responsibilities of banking regulation and monetary policy is afoot. For these reasons, the successful implementation of monetary policy requires central banks to be solidly embedded into their ®nancial communities. In the case of the ECB, however, this degree of embeddedness is unlikely to be achieved easily. On one hand, the ECB will not have regulatory authority over the banks and other ®nancial institutions operating within its jurisdiction. Rather, its sole remit is to pursue price stability. And while the policy instruments it utilizes in order to do this will involve concerted interaction with the European ®nancial community, the ECB itself will have only an indirect knowledge of that community. This knowledge will come to the ECB through the ESCB, since it will fall to national central banks to implement ECB decisions. This arm's-length relationship has its drawbacks, however, in that the members of the ECB's Governing Council will be most familiar with the details of their own ®nancial community.4 There will be few, if any, central bankers familiar with the broader European environment, or who put this environment on an equal footing with their own. Finally, the ECB will not act as the lender-of-last-resort to banks active in Europe. This role will remain with national central banks, muting once again the need to maintain close working relations across Europe's banking community. At the same time, this lack of embeddedness will to some extent be offset by the close relationship which the ECB will maintain with participating central banks of the monetary union. The key here will be the ESCB and how well it works in practice. Given that it will be up to participating

218

Randall D. Germain

national central banks to implement ECB monetary policy, some scope will exist for these banks to tailor monetary policy to local conditions, as for example in the precise timing and targeting of open market operations. These operations could well vary from country to country, thus taking cognizance of the variation in national conditions across Europe. Nevertheless, the point remains that the ECB will gain its knowledge of the European ®nancial community at second hand, via national central banks of participating countries. Finally, it is important to recognize that the ECB does not have ultimate responsibility for the exchange rate of the euro. Like most central banks (the Bundesbank being a rare and special exception), the ECB has a juridical duty to comment on or assist in consultations regarding the value of the euro and any arrangements which the EU believes ought to be concluded between itself and other countries on currency matters. But it is not actually responsible for the external value of the euro. Its responsibility lies in being the institution which organizes the interventions used to support the euro at whatever rate decided upon by the EU Council of Ministers and/or Eco®n. Although the ECB will have a signi®cant de facto in¯uence in shaping the international monetary arrangements into which the EU enters, in practice this will transpire largely behind closed doors. Like similar arrangements across most industrialized countries, the politics of exchange rate policy are played out one step removed from the active participation of the broader public (Destler and Henning 1989). Overall, then, it is hard not to escape the conclusion that the ECB will be poorly embedded into Europe's ®nancial community outside of the organs of the EU and the ESCB. Not only has the governing structure of the ECB excluded as participants representatives drawn from what might be considered (broadly) the European ®nancial community, but its mandate mitigates against gaining direct exposure to this community by engaging in regulatory supervision of banking at the European level. Fortunately, this lack of exposure to the banking community will be marginally attenuated in two ways: on one hand, the ECB will run the TARGET inter-bank payment system for intra-European transfers, while on the other hand it will require banks to deposit funds on its books to meet reserve requirements. Both of these actions will bring the ECB into direct contact with at least the largest of Europe's banks, and those moreover which are most critical for the operation of the `European' ®nancial system. Nevertheless, the question remains of just how that ECB's authority is to be fashioned once it becomes fully operational. Authority and the terrain of community: problems for the ECB Given the present set-up of the ECB, there are three concrete steps which it can take to ensure the successful construction of its authority. These are,

European Central Bank: problem of authority

219

®rst, to `get its policies right' in the initial phase of operation, i.e. to establish a credible track record; second, to put in place a transparent decision-making structure; and, third, to work to increase its degree of embeddedness into the wider European ®nancial community, especially in light of its juridical independence from the organs of government across the EU. Unfortunately these steps are not necessarily complementary, and indeed could actively work at cross-purposes to disrupt one another. Establishing a credible track record is of course one of the keys to institutionalizing the ECB's authority in the eyes of all its principal communities. To do this requires employing an appropriate mix of monetary policies and being somewhat lucky in their effects. It also means developing models which accurately identify the key variables and make effective causal connections between them. Among other things this demands that the effects of the monetary transmission mechanisms throughout Europe are accurately gauged (Dornbusch et al. 1998). The uncertainty involved here should not be under-estimated, and it is quite likely to lead during the initial phase of ECB operations to an overshooting of the estimation of in¯ation across the area of monetary union. This over-estimation will require the ECB to be more hawkish than is perhaps warranted by the condition of the economy, and to set interest rates higher than they might otherwise need to be in order to signal its credibility clearly and without prejudice. Such an initial policy stance, while helpful to the establishment of the ECB's in¯ation-®ghting credentials, will undermine its degree of embeddedness into the broader fabric of European ®nance. Getting its policies `right' will not be a costless achievement.5 The ECB can lower these costs, however, by making its decision-making structure as transparent as possible. Transparency is important to the construction of authority because it allows claims of economic expertise to be critically reviewed and debated. The link between authority and transparency is perhaps even more signi®cant in a situation of limited accountability, such as with the ECB. Although it must report to various EU political organs such as Parliament and consult with the Council of Ministers over exchange rates and its employment of monetary policy instruments, the ECB's degree of accountability to its various constituencies is severely circumscribed. In this sense the price of juridical independence weighs most heavily in terms of the ECB's institutional accountability. Transparency of decision-making has therefore been a key feature of the design of the ECB (Giordano and Persaud, 1998: 87±9). It is to publish the data it bases its analyses on in a clear and timely way, as well as the analyses themselves. It will also, with suitable lags, publish the minutes of some of its meetings, although the decisions of the Executive Board and the Governing Council are to remain con®dential. Nevertheless, it is signi®cant that the guidelines to be used by the ECB to make decisions will be fully transparent. In conditions of limited accountability, such transparency will help to

220

Randall D. Germain

achieve a certain degree of authority by opening the ECB up to legitimate debate regarding its models and indicators, as well as the causal connections it makes between its key variables. Transparency is most effective, however, when it is buttressed by strong connections between the institution in question and its principal communities, and this is clearly the ECB's weakest link. What can it do to rectify this problem? The short answer is that it must embed itself across the terrain of its principal communities. The conundrum for the ECB, however, is that all of the decision-making positions on the Governing Council need to be ®lled initially by individuals with a recognized central banking background. The fact that there are only four available positions in addition to the President and Vice-President on the Executive Board means that the scope for inclusion of other communities into the decision-making structure is extremely limited. Alternative methods of embedding the ECB into the fabric of European ®nance will therefore need to be explored, including perhaps recruiting senior individuals within European ®nancial institutions and business ®rms for secondments to special positions in the ECB, as well as providing research fellowships for academics and distinguished journalists who specialize broadly in central banking matters. It is important, however, to be clear regarding the appropriate communities into which the ECB must be embedded. Four initial communities suggest themselves for the development of closer relations. These would include Europe-wide ®nancial institutions (banks and non-banks such as securities ®rms); Europe-wide commercial businesses in a key range of export-oriented industries; academics across those disciplines who contribute to the political and economic analysis of monetary union; and opinion-leaders across a range of media forms. These are the communities which act as transmission mechanisms for monetary policy, feel the brunt of monetary policy, or contribute to the specialized knowledge which informs the formulation and implementation of monetary policy. In different ways, each of these communities has a degree of reciprocity ± either direct or indirect ± with the ECB. They are the natural constituencies within which the ECB must embed itself if it is to successfully construct its authority across a wide range of European society.6 Thus embedded, the ECB could become perhaps a prototype for a new kind of European institution, one which is accountable to its constituent communities precisely because it achieves a certain level of reciprocity with them. Such a model might be especially useful within the context of the EU's so-called democratic de®cit. It would mean that accountability and transparency are themselves shaped by the particular needs of the institution in question, in this case by the need to often take decisive action over short periods of time with limited information. In such conditions, even though the direct participation of the broader public has by necessity to be limited, strenuous efforts to be as inclusive as possible may well attenuate the broader problems of accountability.

European Central Bank: problem of authority

221

Should the ECB fail to take these steps, it will not necessarily founder as an institution by any stretch of the imagination. For behind the ECB and monetary union stand the legal power of the EU, together with the political determination of participating Member States to make EMU succeed. And while this political determination is important, the legal prerogative of the EU is absolutely crucial to the ultimate sanction of the ECB's authority. This sanction gains its power primarily from the legal status of money and the absolute dependence of credit on legal ®at. The force of law is the ultimate sanction in ®nancial matters, without which ®nancial institutions cannot function in a monetized economy. The dependence of the European economy on legal tender and credit requires the force of law to be in effect, and as long as the EU and its Member States stand behind monetary union (and the ECB), there is nowhere for individuals and companies to turn but the ECB or the participating members of the ESCB. Even if it is botched, monetary union and its key institution ± the ECB ± will remain the only game in town.

Authority and the ECB: broader re¯ections Creating a new order of things is never without risk, and this is certainly the case with monetary union in Europe. This chapter has argued that one important aspect of this risk ± under-explored in the literature ± is how to ensure that the European Central Bank achieves the authority necessary for carrying out effective monetary policy. Although the force of EU law stands behind the creation and operation of the ECB, there are a number of initiatives which the ECB could take to help construct its authority among its natural constituency outside of EU organs. These include, in addition to the obvious injunction to `get its policies right', making its decisionmaking structure as transparent as possible and more fully embedding itself across the terrain of communities over which it wields considerable power. These actions would increase the reciprocity between the ECB and these communities, and thereby build up its authority with them. This analysis of the authority of the ECB harbours insights for how we might think more generally about institutionalizing authority internationally. While endowing institutions like the International Monetary Fund, World Trade Organization and the Bank for International Settlements with adequate material resources and narrowly speci®ed mandates is clearly important, so too is ensuring that they make decisions in a transparent manner and are strongly embedded in their natural constituencies. In particular, transparency and embeddedness help to fashion authority in situations of equality among participants, especially where the rule of law does not derive from the exercise of power by a single sovereign entity. Transparency helps to fashion authority in two ways. First, it makes clear how decisions are made and upon what grounds. While transparency does not eliminate the disadvantages which some may experience as a result of

222

Randall D. Germain

decisions being made, it helps to alleviate the disquiet attendant upon those decisions by shifting dispute to the grounds upon which decisions are made. Authority is thus fashioned in the search for a consensus regarding the grounds upon which decisions can be made. At another level, transparency invites critique and forces dialogue, so that one of the key foundations of accountability ± debate ± can be realized. Making transparent how and why decisions are made in institutions enables debate to occur, thereby forcing both critics and supporters of these policies to be held accountable for their positions. The weakest link in terms of the authority of international institutions, however, as with the ECB, is the degree to which they are embedded within their constituent communities. By this I do not mean the ambiguous relations between states and international institutions (and the feeble support the former often give to the latter), but rather the poor record of inclusion of those who are the targets of the policies and resources of international institutions, whether governments of developing countries in crisis, labour organizations who pay the direct cost of structural adjustment policies, or ®nancial institutions who must adhere to international banking regulations.7 While this lack of embeddedness does not interfere in the capacity of these institutions to act, it does impair their capacity to act with authority, especially in situations of crisis where the assistance of those on the ground is needed. It can also affect the ability of these institutions to gather the information necessary for appropriate decision-making. Exploring the role of international institutions without re¯ecting on how their authority is constituted in terms of community thus remains blind to an important dimension of how their place within the international system or global political economy is achieved. It is precisely this re¯ection on the nature of authority which is absent from most discussions of international institutions within the general literature in IR and IPE. Recovering this dimension of international institutions will demand an engagement with what was identi®ed earlier as a broadly historical-political economy tradition. Although the discussion of authority here has been rudimentary and highly schematic, it has at least outlined some of the contours which such a discussion might follow. In particular, the terrain of community was singled out as a crucial element within the construction of institutional authority, whether at the national, region or international level. It is within the terrain of community that authority can take root most ®rmly, leading with patience and luck to a vibrant and robust institution. Without authority, institutions remain simply another way to distribute resources, useful in good times but rudderless when crisis strikes. But with authority, they become part of the general provision that Machiavelli (1950: 91) believed at least offers the hope of protecting people from the ravages of Fortuna, and thereby regaining that part of their free will left open to their own in¯uence.

European Central Bank: problem of authority

223

Notes 1 I wish to thank Michael Williams and Craig Murphy for helpful comments on a previous draft, as well as the participants at the Copenhagen conference which gave rise to this volume and a panel at the 1998 annual meeting of APSA, where earlier versions of this chapter were presented. 2 Sinclair (1994) presents a persuasive argument that we must now consider credit-rating agencies as part of this network of guardians. 3 For a consideration of these and other issues associated with the stable operation of the global ®nancial system, see Kenen (1995) and Henning (1997). 4 The Governing Council includes the Executive Board of the ECB (comprising the President, Vice-President and four other members) and central bank governors from participating EMU countries. 5 As of the time of writing (January 1999), the possibility of this scenario has diminished due to a combination of continuing international ®nancial turmoil and the threat of recession in Europe. How much longer this condition will persist is unclear. 6 The Bank of England might be considered as a quasi-model here, as it has on its Monetary Policy Committee academics, Bank insiders and the chief economist of British Airways. It should be noted, however, that the links between the Bank of England and the kind of constituencies outlined here is not particularly strong. 7 It must be noted that this weakness is not applicable to many small grass-roots non-governmental organizations active in developing countries. But these `international' institutions are not the focus here.

References Augelli, E. and Murphy, C.N. (1997) `Consciousness, Myth and Collective Action: Gramsci, Sorel and the Ethical State', in S. Gill and J.H. Mittelman (eds) Innovation and Transformation in International Studies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Burch, K. and Denemark, R.A. (eds), (1997) Constituting International Political Economy, Boulder, CO: Lynne Reinner Publishers. Caporaso, J. and Levine, D. (1992) Theories of Political Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cooper, R.N. (1975) `Prolegomena to the Choice of an International Monetary System', International Organization vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 63±97. Cox, R.W. (1981/1996) `Social Forces, States, and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory', in R. Cox with T. Sinclair (eds) Approaches to World Order, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ÐÐ (1983/1996) `Gramsci, Hegemony and International Relations: An Essay in Method', in R. Cox with T. Sinclair (eds) Approaches to World Order, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cox, R.W. with Sinclair, T.J. (1996) Approaches to World Order, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Destler, I.M. and Henning, C.R. (1989) Dollar Politics: Exchange Rate PolicyMaking in the United States, Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics.

224

Randall D. Germain

Dornbusch, R., Favero, C. and Giavazzi, F. (1998) `Immediate Challenges for the European Central Bank', in D. Begg, J. von Hagen, C. Wyplosz and K.F. Zimmermann (eds) EMU: Prospects and Challenges for the Euro, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Dowd, K. (1998) `The Misguided Drive toward European Monetary Union', in K. Dowd and R. Timberlake (eds) Money and the Nation-State, London: Transaction Publishers. Drucker, P. (1986) `The Changed World Economy', Foreign Affairs vol. 64, no. 4, pp. 768±91. Germain, R.D. (1997) The International Organization of Credit, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Germain, R.D. and Kenny, M. (1998) `Engaging Gramsci: International Relations Theory and the New Gramscians', Review of International Studies vol. 24, no. 1, 3±21. Giordano, F. and Persaud, S. (1998) The Political Economy of Monetary Union: Towards the Euro, London: Routledge. Gilpin, R. (1982) War and Change in World Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haas, P. (1992) `Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination', International Organization vol. 46, no.1, pp. 1±35. Hamilton, A. (1986) The Financial Revolution, New York: The Free Press. Henning, C.R. (1997) Cooperating with Europe's Monetary Union, Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics. Kenen, P. (1995) Economic and Monetary Union in Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Keohane, R.O. (1984) After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ÐÐ (1989) International Institutions and State Power, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Machiavelli, N. (1950) The Prince and the Discourses, with an Introduction by Max Lerner, New York: Random House, Inc. Murphy, C.N. (1994) International Organization and Industrial Change, Cambridge: Polity Press. Ruggie, J.G. (1982) `International Regimes, Transactions, and Change: Embedded Liberalism in the Postwar Economic Order', International Organization vol. 36, no. 3, 379±415. Simmons, B. (1993) `Why Innovate? Founding the Bank for International Settlements', World Politics vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 361±405. Sinclair, T.J. (1994) `Passing Judgement: Credit Rating Processes as Regulatory Mechanisms of Governance in the Emerging World Order', Review of International Political Economy vol.1, no.1, pp. 133±59. Spero, J.E. (1988/89) `Guiding Global Finance', Foreign Policy (Winter), pp. 114± 34. Spindler, J.A. (1984) The Politics of International Credit, Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution. Underhill, G.R.D. (1997) The New World Order in International Finance, Basingstoke: Macmillan.

European Central Bank: problem of authority

225

Waltz, K.N. (1979) Theory of International Politics, Reading, MA: AddisonWesley. Wendt, Alexander (1994) `Collective identity formation and the international state', American Political Science Review vol. 88, no. 2, 384±96. Young, O. (1991) `Political Leadership and Regime Formation: On The Development of Institutions in International Society', International Organization vol. 45, no. 3, 281±301.

10 `And never the twain shall meet?' The EU's quest for legitimacy and enlargement Lykke Friis and Anna Murphy Introduction The European Union in the 1990s is a contested, open-ended polity. It regulates almost as many policy issues as nation±states and has been accepted by politicians, interest groups and many parts of the public as an appropriate framework for policy-making. Despite the increasing importance of the EU there is, however, no consensus about what the EU actually is, yet alone where it is heading. The ever-expanding agenda of integration in the 1990s has also led to considerable public scepticism towards the EU project. Indeed, legitimacy crisis and democratic de®cit have become the codewords in the literature and practice of European integration in the 1990s. At exactly this time of contestation, the EU has launched two major integration projects, the common currency and enlargement to the East, both of which have major implications for the polity. The main objective of this chapter is to study the links between enlargement and attempts to enhance the EU's legitimacy. Can the EU, at one and the same time, take on new members and defuse the perceived legitimacy crisis? Without public backing, the enlargement project is bound to run into severe dif®culties and could place the overall EU integration process at risk. However, a shelving or inde®nite postponement of enlargement would have equally important consequences for legitimacy and integration. Not only would the EU have to search for a new foundation for its legitimacy ± other than its raison d'eÃtre as a means to create peace, security and democracy on the European continent ± but equally certain EU members (especially Germany) would perceive the EU has having failed to address their central security concerns. This would beg the question of how then to encourage democracy and prevent instability in Central and Eastern Europe given that setbacks could easily spill over into neighbouring EU states, e.g. in terms of immigration. Despite the crucial links between legitimacy and enlargement, the academic literature has largely failed to set the current enlargement project in this context. Instead it focuses on the classical `deepening±widening dilemma' where institutional, policy and budgetary issues are the focus of attention (cf. for instance Grabbe and Hughes 1997). This chapter addresses

EU quest for legitimacy and enlargement

227

this gap by demonstrating how enlargement concerns deeper issues concerning the nature and construction of the European polity and its normative underpinnings. These issues surface in the integration literature in debates about what the EU is and what the Member States conceive and wish it to be. The ®rst part of the chapter asks how the EU, as a contested polity, which is neither a state nor an international organisation, can be and is legitimised. This concludes with a discussion of how enlargement to the East might affect the EU's present, perceived legitimacy crisis. The chapter then turns to the 1996 Inter-Governmental Conference and questions the extent to which the resulting Amsterdam Treaty tackled legitimacy and the capacity of the EU to enlarge. The third and ®nal part of the chapter presents our conclusions. We ®nd that although enlargement could enhance legitimacy, it has thus far actually complicated endeavours to strengthen legitimacy. It is, however, too early to conclude that the `twain shall never meet', i.e. that enlargement and legitimacy cannot go hand in hand. Much will depend on the ability to break away from the present conceptualisation of legitimacy ± although the EU is not a nation±state it is often implicitly and sometimes even explicitly weighed and found wanting according to state-centric yardsticks for legitimacy.

What kind of legitimacy for a contested polity? Forty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome the European Union is still an enigma in international relations which cannot be captured by our present political vocabulary (Schmitter 1996). Indeed, the most quoted sentence in integration studies is probably Wallace's classic statement that the EU is `less than a federation and more than a regime' (Wallace 1983). In the 1990s, however, a growing number of scholars broke free of approaches which (implicitly or explicitly) analysed the EU in terms of what it is not and launched an approach which sees the EU as a multidimensional polity which allows for the co-existence or fusion of various levels of governance (Banchoff and Smith 1999; Stone Sweet and Sandholtz 1998; Wessels 1997a). The EU represents a new, heterogeneous centre of governance, which produces directly binding legislation for Europe's citizens, often on the basis of quali®ed majority voting across a broad range of issues. The emergence of this new centre has not replaced the nation± states with a nascent superstate: on the contrary, internationalised governance (Laffan 1998) is established and produced in a complex web, which links European national and sub-national institutions. The acknowledgement that the EU is a polity in its own right has major implications for how scholars view legitimised. Unlike intergovernmentalists, who look upon the EU as a state-based intergovernmental bargaining forum where decisions are legitimised by the very participation of democratically elected governments (Moravcsik 1994), `polity scholars' pledge the need for legitimacy beyond the state. H. Wallace presents this as follows:

228

Lykke Friis and Anna Murphy If the EU is de®ned essentially as a policy-generating process only, then the issue of how to maintain legitimacy could be argued to rest with the participating member governments . . . but if the EC is de®ned as a partial polity, i.e. as an entity that might develop into a form of direct governance in its own right, the questions of what political identity, loyalty and af®liation to the EC level of governance become crucial. (1993: 100±1)

Without a direct legitimacy, the EU would (like any other polity) ®nd it dif®cult to maintain the system intact in the face of serious policy failure or challenge (Beetham 1991: 118). The key question is obviously what kind of legitimacy the EU can and should acquire. In addressing this, we are confronted by major conceptual and practical problems. The conceptual problem is linked to the fact that `legitimacy' is closely linked to the historical development of the nation±state, i.e. to the notion of a territorially uni®ed, hierarchically organised and more or less centralised system of governance ( Jachtenfuchs et al. 1998: 417). Although the EU is anything but a state, one can easily be caught in the conceptual trap of the nation± state: the EU is not legitimate because it does not live up to the yardstick of a state-centric concept of legitimacy and indeed it can never become legitimate, since it will never become a nation±state. The conceptual challenge therefore is to unhinge the concept of legitimacy from that of the nation±state so as to permit consideration of different sources and strategies for legitimation of the EU. The main theoretical approaches to European integration do not allow us to embark easily on such a task. Indeed, both federalism and intergovernmentalism continue to take the model of the nation±state as their analytical point of departure; arguing that a strong shared sense of history and culture are necessary requirements for EU legitimacy. For intergovernmentalists, the model of shared identi®cation is the Member States which, as representatives of popular sovereignty, legitimise EU decisions. For federalists, in contrast, shared identi®cation refers to a common European identity in the context of an emergent super-state (Banchoff and Smith 1999: 6±7). One is therefore forced to search for alternative theoretical building blocks. The new (if diverse) theoretical school, which conceptualises the EU as a multidimensional governance system or a contested polity provides us with an excellent starting point (Banchoff and Smith 1999; Stone Sweet and Sandholtz 1998). Precisely by not looking upon the EU as an intergovernmental organisation or a super-state in the making the state-centrist trap is avoided and the door is opened to different yardsticks of legitimacy. Unlike nations and federations, the governance perspectives point to a `nesting' of compatible regional, national and supranational identities as a viable basis for a stable and legitimate polity. Instead of a monolithic European identity, which replaces the national ones, the thrust is on the compatibility of contrasting identities (Banchoff and Smith 1999: 13; Pantel 1999: 46).1 In

EU quest for legitimacy and enlargement

229

addition, this unique polity does not require the same degree of legitimacy as a state (or a federation), given that it has `no need to spill the blood of its population, to dig deep into the taxpayer's pocket, to function as the ®nal rule-making body in all areas of policy, or even to impose a uniform set of rules in all matters' (Lord 1998: 108). Turning to the practical side of the legitimacy question, another dif®culty arises. This concerns the contested character of the EU in which all Member States have different polity-ideas concerning the EU, i.e. different normative ideas about what the EU is and what a legitimate Union should be like in the future ( Jachtenfuchs et al. 1998). The divergence of polity-ideas complicates the EU's ability to enhance its legitimacy. Any strategy to strengthen the EU's legitimacy is bound to be assessed on the basis of divergent normative criteria in the Member States: that which increases the legitimacy of the EU in one Member State can do exactly the opposite in another (as debates on EU citizenship demonstrate ± see below). The practical challenge for the EU is therefore to carve out a legitimacy strategy which is not unidimensional but comprises several sources of legitimacy. The following section takes up the conceptual challenge by identifying the principal sources of legitimacy which the Union can and does draw upon and which extend beyond a state-centric understanding of legitimacy. By highlighting several potential sources of legitimacy, derived from the broader ®elds of politics, the section explicitly acknowledges that efforts to enhance the legitimacy of the EU cannot rely upon one-dimensional strategies. Sources of legitimacy and the EU Foundational legitimacy: rule of law, ethnos and demos The `rule of law doctrine' refers to the fact that governance systems can obtain legitimacy by being subject to democratic rules and judicial control. Legitimacy can be based on an appeal to a deep structure of rules of recognition or rules about rules (Weber 1978). Legitimacy can also depend upon the extent to which the law in itself is justi®able and in line with political principles that are rationally defensible (Beetham 1991: 5). In the case of the EU, which has its own legal order, the Member States and institutions are bound to abide by its founding Treaties and are subject to the authority of the European Court of Justice. However, the claim to the priority of EC over national law is contested (see Wind, in this volume). A further foundational source of legitimacy is the existence of demos to whom the governance system is addressed. This refers to a sense of collective identity and belonging which legitimates a governance system. To quote Obradovic: `people unconditionally support a polity to which they see themselves as belonging. There must exist some kind of identi®cation between the citizen and the political system' (1996: 209). This can also

230

Lykke Friis and Anna Murphy

refer to a certain `we-feeling', a sense of common identity or belief that others are of the same community (Howe 1997: 44). This affective dimension of legitimacy is critical as it is not reliant on outcomes (utility or performance) or a reciprocal relationship between the governors and the individual. Rather, individuals give their consent to a governance system because it is seen to embody and represent a collective identity. Usually, this identi®cation or sense of community is linked to ethnic af®liation, e.g. to the nation±state (ethnos) and equips a governance system with a strong foundation myth. Since the EU is not endowed with an ethnos, one might be tempted to sideline this as a possible source of legitimacy in the EU. This ignores the fact that communities can be constructed or imagined and do not necessarily have to centre on ethnos. They may emerge and change over time. In principle, collective identities can be grounded in civic rather than national or ethnic bonds, such as respect for democracy and human rights. This accepts the idea of constitutional patriotism (Habermas 1992) and the co-existence of multiple identities. In other words, civic ties can cement a collective identity (for a sceptical view, see Smith 1992). Political (democratic) legitimacy Legitimacy can be grounded in consensus about the institutions and structures of a governance system, e.g. in speci®c forms of representation and participation. As pointed out by Weiler, `any notion of legitimacy [in today's Europe] must rest on some democratic foundation loosely stated as the People's consent to power structures and process' (1991: 183). Key yardsticks for democracies are proximity, responsiveness, representation and accountability of the governors to the governed (ibid.: 184). In the case of the EU, this involves the representation and participation of both states and peoples in EU governance. Due to the size of the EU, and the physical distance of decision-making from most EU citizens, it should nonetheless be obvious that direct participation is bound to be more limited than in a nation±state. This is exacerbated by the lack of a common culture and language in the EU ± two factors, which limit the chances of generating public discourse, which is essential to expansive participation. Utilitarian legitimacy Drawing upon Mill (1972) and Rothschield (1977), legitimacy can also be obtained by the promise of material (economic) bene®ts and their actual delivery. In principle, this concerns an economic quid pro quo whereby legitimacy is conditional upon the provision of economic goods. The provision of goods can be useful to either states or society and individuals ± by enabling them to meet their goals or actually producing goods. Utility is closely linked to capacity to adapt to changing needs and to effectiveness

EU quest for legitimacy and enlargement

231

and ef®ciency. It follows that, if a governance system does not ful®l these, it will hardly be able to deliver material bene®ts. However, utility alone is an inherently fragile basis for legitimacy ± a systemic crisis can be triggered should the system cease to be enabling or should economic bene®ts fail to materialise. As Wallace states: When the going gets rough, whether prompted by economic strains or the result of political con¯ict, material needs become harder to satisfy and cohesion becomes more conditional. Disappointment about particular substantive outcomes very easily breeds disaffection, unless tempered by conviction that the collective framework also protects embedded-shared values. A conviction that carries one forward to one's long-term goals. (1993: 100) Mythical legitimacy Finally, a governance system can appeal to and construct a community vision as a means of legitimisation. That vision can refer to a future which the collectivity shares or to a past which distinguishes the community from others. Ideas about a common destiny can also provide an important element of community. This community can be constructed or imagined and is often centred around speci®c myths (Anderson 1991). As pointed out by the post-structuralist school of international relations, a sense of community can also be de®ned against the outside (Walker 1993). With respect to the EU, Smith (1992) argues that the absence of a pre-modern past or pre-history which could give Europe emotional substance and depth prevents the emergence of a European identity (as the nation has all the aces in this regard) whereas others such as Chryssochoou (1996), Howe (1996), Laffan (1996) argue that it can be constructed on the basis inter alia of group consciousness, appeals to the future and respect for national identities. The following section examines how the EU drew upon and developed these sources of legitimacy over time. This is followed by a discussion of how enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe may affect legitimacy in the EU. The EU's quest for legitimacy ± from Monnet to Maastricht From the outset, the architects of European integration, such as Monnet and Hallstein, both appealed to community and myth as the basis of integration and assumed that this would develop over time. The integration project aimed to tame the dark side of nationalism and build a common future. This objective can be found in the Preamble to the ECSC Treaty (1951) where national leaders:

232

Lykke Friis and Anna Murphy resolved to substitute for age-old rivalries the merging of their essential interests; to create, by establishing an economic community, the basis for a broader and deeper community among peoples . . . and to lay the foundations for institutions which will give direction to a destiny henceforward shared. (EC Treaties 1987: 19)

The aim was to create a community among peoples who share a common history (age-old rivalries) and destiny (one of peace and security). The project thus appealed to both governments and their peoples but did not aim to supplant either by forging a unity of them. Indeed, the reference to peoples seemed to indicate that these `peoples' of Europe would retain their distinct identities. Instead of `imposing' something new, the EU embarked on a `unity-in-diversity' strategy (Pantel 1999: 50). The signatories of the Rome Treaty, continuing in a similar vein, `determined to lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe' and `resolved to ensure the economic and social progress of their countries by common action to eliminate the barriers which divide Europe'. They also called on other European states to join in the venture. This community, then, was based on a shared wish to break with the past: the past was the `other' around which the EU tried to construct a sense of community. A closer look at the EU's early history reveals that `the past' was not the only relevant `other': the EU was de®ned by the `other' Europe of communist rule and hence conceived itself as a project rooted in the values of democracy and the market, despite its declared openness to all Europe. With respect to membership, only democratic European states need apply. In the early decades of the EU, much of its legitimisation was indirect ± it was achieved through governments acting in the name of the peoples. Economic integration provided utilitarian bene®ts for states and sections of society. This was adequate to sustain the project until the 1970s. In addition, at the heart of the Monnet method was the belief that a sense of community would develop automatically: once the EU started to produce results, ®rst the elites and then the public would transfer their loyalties to the new system. The `empty-chair-crisis' in the mid-1960s, caused by De Gaulle, ®rst revealed the problems with the Monnet method. Certain Member States (especially Brandt's Germany) and also the Commission argued that efforts should be made to develop a deeper sense of community by developing direct forms of legitimacy. Brandt speci®cally referred to the need to give the Community a `human face'. After De Gaulle's departure ± who had emphasised legitimisation through the states ± initiatives including the Copenhagen Declaration on European Identity and the Tindemans Report were tabled. The former stated that the EU was built on the principles of representative democracy, the rule of law, social justice, and respect for

EU quest for legitimacy and enlargement

233

human rights (Obradovic 1996: 211). This community vision was ¯eshed out in the Tindemans Report, which, under the heading of Citizens Europe, called for a European citizenship which, would build upon the economic rights already created for European citizens. In the light of the oil shock and the recession of the 1970s, these initiatives were not acted upon. The only signi®cant development in this area was the move to direct elections to the European Parliament. Later, the re-launching of integration in the 1980s saw the return of ideas to develop direct legitimacy. The European Commission, led by Jacques Delors, made a direct link between deepening integration through completing the Single Market and strengthening `the sense of being part of a European culture'. In two central documents (`A Human Face for Europe' and `A Fresh Boost for Culture in the European Community'), it outlined its vision of a European cultural identity. Emphasis was placed upon a `shared pluralistic humanism based on democracy, justice and freedom' and the fact that this should in no way replace national identities. In other words, Europe should make the most of its diversity and `turn European culture into a culture of cultures' (Pantel 1999: 51). The European Council endorsed the connection between cultural identity and deeper integration. Further efforts were made to construct a sense of community through creating symbols of belonging and a consciousness of being in the EU. The Addonino committee (1984), tasked to prepare a People's Europe in the run-up to the Single European Act, led to initiatives for an EU ¯ag, anthem, driving licence and passport which are typical nation or community-building strategies. The aim of developing a strong community and belonging was heavily affected by enlargement. On the one hand, enlargement increased the internal heterogeneity within the Union by adding several new conceptualisations or polity-ideas about what a legitimate Union should look like. The Union's economic rather than its political character was underlined in the ®rst enlargement to Denmark, Ireland and the UK, in that they joined the Union, also shared in its vision but, clearly, were less attracted to its security dimension than the six founding members. Successive UK governments viewed the EU as primarily a free trade area and opposed the deepening of political integration. For Greece, Spain and Portugal, the EU was viewed primarily as an anchor for democracy (thereby, reinforcing the EU's myth of supporting democracy). In the 1990s, the EFTA states, freed of Cold War ties, were attracted by membership largely as a means to manage economic interdependence. These perspectives re¯ected different normative views about integration and, alongside the increased heterogeneity of interests within the Union, tested its legitimacy in terms of capacity to deliver outputs and a shared sense of community. On the other hand, however, enlargement also contributed positively to community-building. First, the principles of solidarity and cohesion between the regions, states and peoples of the EU were given added weight after

234

Lykke Friis and Anna Murphy

Mediterranean enlargement and in the plan to complete the internal market. These were re¯ected in the principles and norms underlying integration, in its Treaties and its substantive agenda (e.g. the evolution of the structural and cohesion funds expressed solidarity within the Union). Regardless of the motivation for their introduction, solidarity and cohesion have become cornerstones of integration for poorer Member States and are thus central to their perceptions of legitimacy in the Union. Second, enlargement also con®rmed the EU's foundation myth: it is a `club' which is open to all European democracies that want to join. In the 1980s, a combination of factors including enlargement, the expansion of the agenda of the EU and the limited progress in developing its `human face' demanded further moves to develop legitimacy in the Union. The Treaty on European Union was largely seen to trigger an acute legitimacy crisis. The fragile basis of popular consent, exposed by the Danish `petite non' and the French `petite oui' in their respective Maastricht referenda, catapulted legitimacy to the very top of the political agenda. Several factors contributed to this (perceived) crisis:2 1

2

3

The Maastricht Treaty contained a number of initiatives, such as those on a common foreign and security policy, an economic and monetary union and a European citizenship which seemed to strengthen the state-like character of the Union. As a result, a large part of the European population saw the Treaty as a threat to their national identities. Linked to this was the fact that the expanded agenda, stemming from the Single European Act, placed the spotlight on the so-called democratic de®cit of the Union. Thus, it was one thing for governments to regulate issues like trade liberalisation and agricultural quotas behind closed doors but it was quite another when their negotiations focused on issues such as food additives, parental leave, cocoa in chocolate, etc. Suddenly, the EU was no longer perceived as being a club of merchants and bankers but a governance system which had a major impact on the ordinary citizen. The legitimacy crisis was linked to the fact that national governments (and their citizens) could not or would not accept that the political boundaries of their governance system were no longer national but European, if not international. In other words, despite all the rhetoric of interdependence and `smallness' of the nation±state, the necessity of governance beyond the state was still questioned (Weiler 1991). Exactly because this was the case, attempts to improve the democratic credentials of the Union (for instance, by strengthening the European Parliament) were seen not as a solution but rather as an aggravation of the problem by some Member States. The legitimacy crisis re¯ected the dif®culty of creating a sense of community (a) from the top-down (cf. Olsen 1995: for the limitations of agency in this area), and (b) by Member States which viewed the

EU quest for legitimacy and enlargement

4

235

Union from the basis of different normative ideas. One example should be suf®cient to illustrate this point: the EU introduced the concept of citizenship to strengthen the civic dimension of community but, despite Treaty-based assurances that `the Union shall respect the national identities of the Member States' (Art. F), the concept still triggered public opposition. This was strongest in Denmark where the very introduction of a European citizenship was seen as yet another indication that the EU was becoming more state-like ± a development which, in the long run, was perceived as inevitably threatening to national identity. The legitimacy crisis was also connected to the dilution of the EU's foundation myth. Several decades after the end of the Second World War and with the passing of the Cold War, reconciliation between states and peoples had a limited appeal for public opinion. Similarly, it was dif®cult to rely on the democratic values of the Union as a means to demarcate it from the broader democratic-minded Europe of the 1990s and hence as a basis for a distinct community. To a large extent then, the legitimacy crisis was linked to relevance: what purpose did the EU serve? If reconciliation was no longer relevant and the `other' of communist Europe was gone, what then if the EU was to rest on little more than the limited basis of utility and weak affection? It was exactly this question which the 1996 Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC) was forced to address.

The challenge of enlargement to the east ± consequences for legitimacy? Although the above legitimacy crisis presented the EU with a major challenge, the fall of the Berlin Wall prevented the EU from devoting itself exclusively to this. After the end of the Cold War, it was also forced to deliver upon its promise that it was not simply a `rich man's club' but was open to all democratic European states including the newly democratised Central and Eastern European Countries (CEEC). This section analyses the link between these two challenges. Does Eastern enlargement provide the Union with a helping hand in building legitimacy or does it rather hinder the process? Looking at enlargement one is struck by its Janus-like character. As with previous rounds of accession, enlargement seems both to strengthen and weaken the possibilities of enhancing legitimacy. On the strengthening side, enlargement could affect the sense of community in several ways. First, enlargement to the emerging democracies in the East would (just like, for instance, Spanish accession) reinforce the EU's foundation myth: that of a shared past, a common destiny and of being a community of values. Enlargement could be presented as putting an end to the allegation that the EU was a rich man's club but that it was designed to foster security and democracy among its members based on shared principles and values.

236

Lykke Friis and Anna Murphy

Enlargement would extend the foundation myth to the East ± it would `do onto Central Europe what we have already done onto ourselves'. Admittedly, however, this idea of this shared destiny would undoubtedly ®t better with, for instance, the German and Danish polity-ideas than the Spanish, UK or Irish. Second, enlargement could strengthen the utilitarian basis of EU legitimacy. It could provide a framework for the adjustment of states to the dramatic changes in the CEEC and new security challenges that this poses (i.e. it extends the mechanisms for managing intra-state behaviour to the East). It provides a mechanism to deliver a new regional division of labour in Europe and creates opportunities for trade and the promotion of economic welfare (Zysman and Schwarz 1998). The strengthening of this strand of legitimacy has differential effects on the existing EU states (and regions or sectors within them) ± for states such as Spain, Portugal, Greece and regions within Germany and Austria, enlargement can potentially weaken their economic position in the EU or in speci®c sectors. The perception of enlargement then is linked to the new balance of utility with respect to states and society. While enlargement could contribute to legitimacy, two major factors pull in the opposite direction. The ®rst refers to the issue of whether citizens will approve of enlargement of their community to the East, given that there was scant contact between the two halves of Europe during the Cold War. Indeed, because communist Central and Eastern Europe constituted `the other' for the EU's identity-project, this region was removed from the mental maps of the public if not of its own elites. Cities like Washington and Boston appeared a lot closer than Warsaw and Budapest (W. Wallace 1995/96: 160). Considering this, it is entirely conceivable that a Spaniard or a Belgian will not look upon a Pole or a Bulgarian as `one of us'. This is reinforced by the fact that enlargement (even in Scandinavia and Germany) is largely an elite-driven project and, according to Eurobarometer surveys in 1997/98, one for which popular support is declining: [T]he value preference for extending the European family of democratic countries, while repeatedly articulated by political leaders, is weakly supported by societal engagement, in that the transactions between Western and Eastern Europe remain concentrated among rather small groups of policy-makers, politicians and entrepreneurs. (H. Wallace 1998: 14) Moreover, the liberalisation of Central and Eastern Europe has created an uncertainty as to where the geographical boundaries of the `European' community lie. Is it only countries like Poland and Hungary which are `us' or does the de®nition also include Romania, Estonia and possibly the Ukraine? And how is one to draw the boundary?

EU quest for legitimacy and enlargement

237

Even if the citizens of EU states were convinced that all the present applicant countries are part of their community, one would still have to question whether they would be willing to share the economic costs and bene®ts of EU membership with newcomers. This raises utilitarian concerns about preserving the existing economic bene®ts of membership. This is especially relevant when one considers that the GDP of the CEEC-10 combined is only one-®fth of that of the EU and that their purchasing power is about one-third of that of the Union. Would then, Enrique Gonzalez of Alicante really give up some of his cohesion-Euro for Pal Kovacs in southern Hungary? A brief look at government positions on this issue only con®rms the point: even pro-enlargement states such as Germany, Sweden and Austria refuse to increase their ®nancial contributions to the EU after enlargement takes place.3 On the contrary, all actually want to pay less to the budget. Considering that the CEEC-applicants lag considerably behind even the poorest members of EU and are in far greater need of assistance than any of its present members, the EU seems to be faced with two (admittedly extreme) options: either the EU abandons its present principle of assisting laggards or losers, or it develops second-class membership for newcomers. Both options would have major repercussions for the legitimacy and governance of the EU. Solidarity is an important legitimating factor for the so-called cohesion states (Ireland, Spain, Greece and Portugal) who, in an enlarged community look like graduating out of this status and becoming net contributors to the EU budget. For those states which have stressed solidarity and access to funding as a cornerstone of EU membership, this could impinge on continued public support for the EU and enlargement. This is also relevant for all states which have implemented tough costcutting measures (which, in some cases encountered deep public hostility) in order to ful®l the EMU convergence criteria. The possible abandonment or weakening of the solidarity principle would also impinge on a another EU norm ± that of the uniform application of EU legislation and policies. The solidarity principle provides a cushion for the negative social and regional effects of adopting EU policies such as completing the internal market and EMU. That trade-off could be jeopardised by a reduction in EU transfers ± states could then demand opt-outs or derogations which, in turn, would affect the unity of the enterprise. The alternative solution of granting second-class membership to the CEEC ± by, for instance, offering the CEEC less aid from the structural funds than that afforded to the present members ± could create of®cial and public disaffection towards the EU and weaken their sense of belonging in the Union. Finally, enlargement can also impact on the ef®ciency of the Union, an important dimension of utilitarian legitimacy. An enlarged Union would need to deepen its structures, i.e. to move to more quali®ed majority voting (QMV) in the Council and reduce its numbers of Commissioners in order to retain ef®ciency. Enlargement also affects the intra-state dimension

238

Lykke Friis and Anna Murphy

of utilitarianism in that the states face dif®cult choices in forging institutional arrangements which preserve their in¯uence in the system and at the same time guarantee its effectiveness. This could also prejudice the goal of moving the EU closer to the citizens. This could be aggravated by the possibility that, if, for example, Danes, Germans and Greeks do not view Hungarians and Poles as part of their community, they will hardly view an EU decision in which they are outvoted by the newcomers as legitimate. In conclusion, although enlargement can also strengthen the EU's legitimacy, so far it has rather acted as a complicating factor. Indeed, considering that enlargement coincides with the general legitimacy crisis and requires the EU to make room for applicants which are economically signi®cantly weaker than any of their predecessors, this enlargement does appear more complicated than the previous rounds of accession. How complicated this accession will be, will obviously depend on how the EU tackles the two core issues, enlargement and legitimacy. The EU's Amsterdam Treaty, negotiated in 1996±97, provides some evidence of how this might be done.

The Amsterdam Treaty: a ®rst response to the EU's dual challenge While in 1991, the second-in-command in Delors' cabinet, Pascal Lamy, could still argue that the elites should deepen the integration process `without telling [the public] too much about what was happening' since the `people weren't ready to agree to integration' (Ross 1994: 194), the tune was radically different in 1994±95. The change of approach was summed up by slogans such as `bringing the EU closer to its citizens'. That this was not simply a change of rhetoric became clear once the Re¯ection Group began to prepare the groundwork for the IGC: it argued that the theme of `The Citizens and the Union' should be a key concern of the IGC (Re¯ection Group, 1995). This was quickly taken up by EU governments, who asked the IGC `to base its work on the fact that the citizens are at the core of the European construction: the Union has the imperative duty to respond concretely to their needs and concerns' (European Council 1996: 2). By putting this issue at the top of the agenda, alongside that of institutional reform, this was the ®rst IGC to deal `with questions of European governance, notably effectiveness, legitimacy and diversity' (Laffan 1997: 3). Enlargement was the second major item on the IGC agenda. In principle, the objective of making the EU's institutions ®t for enlargement had already been agreed upon at the Copenhagen Summit in June 1993 (for the EU's decision to offer membership, see Friis and Murphy 1999). Then, the promise of membership for the CEEC was given provided that it would not undermine the EU's institutional capacity. Even regardless of enlargement, institutional adaptations were needed to improve ef®ciency (attempts to reweigh voting in the Council to deal with the earlier EFTA enlargement had failed). Following the advice of the Re¯ection Group, the IGC was

EU quest for legitimacy and enlargement

239

not, however, mandated to prepare the Union as a whole (i.e. its policies and ®nances) for enlargement, but restricted itself to institutional issues only. This was based on the rationale that an attempt to re-think both institutions and policies such as the CAP could overload the system (Re¯ection Group 1995: 44). The Treaty of Amsterdam and legitimacy The Amsterdam Treaty which materialised after ®fteen months of IGC negotiations contains provisions which attempt to strengthen each of the four categories of legitimacy outlined above. The objective of combining a utilitarian with a community-building strategy for legitimisation appeared dominant. The following section highlights the various sources of legitimacy and how their introduction was prompted by the prospect of enlargement. Enhancing legitimacy by making the EU more relevant to its citizens (utilitarianism with a dose of community vision) The core of this approach was captured in the ®rst sentence of the Draft Treaty of the Irish Presidency: `the EU belongs to its citizens' (Draft Treaty 1996). As a logical consequence, the EU should concentrate on issues of key concern to citizens, e.g. unemployment, crime, immigration and social rights. Although guided by utilitarianism, this differed from the original Monnet-approach according to which the elites determined the issues independently of the people. The Amsterdam-approach was to deal with those issues which were high on the citizens' agenda. This was clearly linked to attempts to strengthen the civic dimension of community. By addressing unemployment and social rights, the EU could convey the image that it was a community guided by social values and not just market liberalisation. It could represent the existence of a `European social model', which re¯ected the tradition of the welfare state in Western Europe (European Commission 1996: 9).4 In concrete terms, this strategy resulted in new Treaty provisions which aim to make the Single Market more relevant to the citizen. As indicated in Box 10.1, issues such as environmental protection, public health, consumer policy, unemployment, immigration and social policy are given far greater attention than in earlier Treaties. Although the proof of the pudding is in the eating, one can at least argue that the EU now has the legal doorhandles to transform itself into a polity of greater relevance to the European public. Enhancing legitimacy by clarifying and protecting the civic community The IGC also tried to hammer out political values at the core of the EU's civic community. In other words: by clearly stating `who is us' the EU lent

240

Lykke Friis and Anna Murphy

Box 10.1 Amsterdam Treaty's `citizen-relevant' face . Environmental protection: becomes a core goal of the Union; emphasis on sustainable development (Art. 2) and strengthening of the environment `safeguard clause' (Art. 95: 3±10). . Social policy: becomes a core goal of the Union; the Social Protocol is written into the Treaty (Art. 136±137). . Employment: new Treaty objective to reach low level of unemployment (Art. 2); co-ordination of employment policy (Chapter VIII); The Amsterdam Resolution on Growth and Employment and the Stability and Growth Pact). . Health policy: becomes an EU-policy (Art. 152). . Consumer protection: henceforth to be taken into account in de®ning and implementing other Community policies and activities (Art. 153). . Justice and Home Affairs (Schengen Co-operation) is incorporated in the Treaty; part of Pillar III is `communitarised'.

greater weight to its political identity and sense of belonging. This move was also motivated by the prospect of enlargement to the CEEC: before enlarging, the EU had to clarify who `we' are and who can become part of `us'. This was important in that a functioning democracy was deemed critical to successful integration into the Union (i.e. ability to live with the Union). The Union could also be discredited were it to include a member who practised non-democratic rule. Several articles in the Amsterdam Treaty refer to the political values of the Union (see Box 10.2). Of central importance is the new Article 6 which, for the ®rst time in the EU's history, sets out the various principles which lie behind the project: liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law. To a large extent, this article removes one of the paradoxes of EU integration: while the EU always pictured itself as a democratic community, this was not expressed in Treaty provisions. Strikingly, Article 6 makes respect for these principles an explicit condition of membership. Moreover, a `serious and persistent breach by a Member State of the principles' can now lead to the suspension of membership rights (Art. 7). Where protection of human rights was previously a matter for the members states alone, it is now an issue for the EU. The introduction of this article was also triggered by the prospect of enlargement to the CEEC where, in some cases, democracy has not been consolidated, where the protection of human rights is not fully guaranteed and where inter-state tension over minority rights persists. That the EU aimed to create a civic rather than an ethnos-based citizenship is underlined in at least two articles. In Art. 6 (3), the Treaty clearly states that the Union respects the national identity of its Member States, and Art. 7 (1) af®rms that `the European Citizenship shall complement and

EU quest for legitimacy and enlargement

241

Box 10.2 Amsterdam Treaty's `civic' face . `Founding principles' of the Union concerning democracy and human rights are now written into the Treaty (Art. 6). . Acceptance of `founding principles' is an explicit condition of accession (Art. 49). . New membership-suspension provision (Art. 7). . Social rights are now written into the Treaty (Art. 2, Art. 136). . Fight against non-discrimination becomes an area of EU competence (Art. 13), sexual equality is emphasised (Art. 2, Art. 3, Art. 142). . New provision stating that the Union respects national identity (Art. 6, 3). . New provision states that European citizenship complements and does not replace national citizenship (Art. 17, 1).

not replace national citizenship'. By underlining that the EU should `respect and promote the diversity of its cultures', EU leaders once again tried to drive home the point that an EU identity should not replace national ones (Pantel 1999: 60). Although the above strategy clearly indicates that there is a `de®nitive move from an economic institution to the Union as a community of shared values' (Laffan 1997: 16), it is not yet clear that this actually enhances the legitimacy of the EU. Again, the proof of the pudding is in the eating ± ®rst in the debates on the rati®cation of the Treaty and then in its implementation. Enhancing legitimacy through democracy (accountability) Not surprisingly, much of the effort to increase democratic accountability was focused on the European Parliament. Indeed, most scholars agree that the Parliament emerged as the institutional winner at Amsterdam (Nentwich and Falkner 1997; Wessels 1997). In the future this `democratic chamber' will be a true co-legislator; having secured for itself as a ground rule the power of co-decision in those areas where the Council decides by quali®ed majority voting (Nickel 1997). Although the powers of the Parliament still fall short of those of national parliaments, it has made remarkable strides since the Single European Act. The fact that the Amsterdam Treaty did not con®ne itself to the European Parliament re¯ected dif®culties arising from the fact that Member States have different ideas of what a legitimate Union should be. A more powerful European Parliament would not necessarily improve the legitimacy of the Union for all Member States. Indeed, for countries like the UK and Denmark which emphasise the indirect legitimacy of the Union through the national parliaments, this could be counterproductive. Re¯ecting this,

242

Lykke Friis and Anna Murphy

Box 10.3 Amsterdam Treaty's `democratic' face . New powers for the European Parliament (i.e. expansion of co-decision to 23 new areas, assent of EP required to activate provision on membershipsuspension (Art. 7, 1); consultation procedure introduced for justice and home affairs; EP acquires right to sanction the nominee for Commission President, Art. 214). . Declaration urges governments to send proposals for legislation `in good time' to national parliaments (Declaration number 13). . Provision on commitment to transparency and openness (Art. 1). . Provision establishing a general right of access to documents (Art. 255). . Provision on data protection (Art. 286).

the Treaty contains a broadly formulated declaration to strengthen the role of national parliaments in the EU. In addition, the Amsterdam Treaty incorporated a number of protocols on transparency and openness (See Box 10.3): the very ®rst article of the European Union Treaty now states that decisions in the EU are to be taken `as openly as possible'. The Treaty codi®es rights concerning data protection and public access to EU documents. However, the new provisions leave plenty of room for interpretation and, on balance, do not redress the complexity and incomprehensibility of EU governance for its citizens. Enhancing legitimacy through ef®ciency Relatively little progress was made with respect to improving the ef®ciency of the Union in the IGC. Although the Member States clearly aimed to streamline the EU's institutions, the Amsterdam Treaty does not introduce major institutional changes but contains a triple postponement whereby questions of the size of the Commission, voting weights in the Council and moves toward more quali®ed majority voting should be addressed in the future. Minor changes include the extension of quali®ed majority voting into a few new areas; constructive abstention with respect to decisionmaking on the CFSP; and a strengthening of the role of the President of the Commission (see Box 10.4). One exception, however, is the introduction of the so-called ¯exibility clauses which, for the ®rst time, `constitutionalise' the principle that all members should not necessarily be obliged to participate to the same degree in all aspects of EU business. Even though these clauses, in the absence of fundamental reform could, in theory, be used to overcome institutional deadlock, early academic assessments of their utility are sceptical. Many strings are attached to their use ± for example, ¯exibility can only be used as a last resort, if it does not affect the acquis,5 or the functioning of the institutions.

EU quest for legitimacy and enlargement

243

Box 10.4 Amsterdam Treaty's `ef®ciency' face . The role of the Commission President is strengthened (Art. 219). . Quali®ed majority voting (QMV) is extended to a number of new areas. . `Enhanced co-operation' or a ¯exibility clause is introduced in Pillar I (EC) and Pillar III ( Justice and Home Affairs). . Streamlining of decision-making in Pillar II (CFSP); introduction of concept of constructive abstention and QMV with regard to implementation.

Considering what few institutional changes were made, one has to conclude that the strategy of obtaining legitimacy through ef®ciency bore little fruit. As a matter of fact, one cannot exclude the possibility that the EU ± due to its cumbersome decision-making procedures ± will not be able to deliver the legislative and policy output which could increase its (utilitarian) legitimacy. The Amsterdam Treaty and enlargement As already highlighted, the IGC was not only mandated to bring the EU closer to its citizens, but also to gear its institutions for enlargement. As argued above, this task was largely postponed. Nentwich and Falkner go so far as to argue that Amsterdam is `a failure . . . with respect to the preparation of enlargement' (1997: 15; cf. also Bieber 1997). In the ®nal hours of the IGC, governments attached a protocol to the Treaty which underlined the need for further institutional reform. In order for the EU to facilitate the next wave of enlargement, a solution should be found to the size of the Commission and the voting weights in the Council (Protocol 11, Art. 1). Art. 2 of the Protocol adds to this by stating that at least one year before the membership of the EU exceeds twenty, a new IGC must be convened to `carry out a comprehensive review of the provisions of the Treaties on the composition and functioning of the institutions' (Protocol 11, Art. 2). Even if one might not deem this to be a catastrophe, as Delors did (European Voice, 26 June 1997), the postponement of institutional changes appears to complicate the enlargement process. As argued earlier in this chapter, the Member States, in order to avoid overload, decided to separate the institutional issues from the reform of CAP and reform of EU ®nances. However, failure to agree institutional reform adds to that very risk of overload. The very fact that some applicants will have to wait for possibly two rounds of institutional change before they can join also appears worrying. For some countries the road towards EU membership might simply appear so long and dif®cult that their perspective on membership is weakened. Moreover, there is a danger that the enlargement process will be delayed or suspended after the ®rst wave. Enlargement could run out of steam

244

Lykke Friis and Anna Murphy

precisely because yet another round of enlargement would require even more substantial institutional changes. Despite these shortcomings, agreement in Amsterdam at least avoided the worst-case-scenario of a failed IGC and postponement of accessions talks. This is con®rmed by the decision to open substantive accession negotiations with six applicants, Poland, Hungary, Estonia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Cyprus, at the European Council in Luxembourg in December 1997.6 In considering the Amsterdam Treaty's attempt to both enhance legitimacy and prepare for enlargement, one has to conclude that the Member States had great dif®culty in reconciling these two aims. Indeed, at that stage in the enlargement process the two objectives appeared to con¯ict. The ®rst example of this con¯ict concerns the postponement of institutional adjustments. Substantial institutional reform could have been counterproductive to efforts to bring the EU closer to its citizens. At a time when the prospect of enlargement had hardly caught the imagination of the West European public there was at least a danger that the loss of a Commissioner or a radical extension of quali®ed majority voting could be perceived as follows: look the EU has not learned anything from Maastricht. It is still pursuing integration in blinkers. Partly because of this, the Member States were quick to postpone the most prickly `enlargement thorns' to yet another IGC.7 Second, tension between legitimacy and enlargement is clear when attention is turned to the `civic' face of Amsterdam. By increasing its legitimacy vis-aÁ-vis the citizens of the Union, the EU unintentionally increased the membership threshold for the CEEC. In reality, it placed more stress on those issues where the CEEC are lagging most behind ± such as environmental protection, social policy, consumer policy ± thereby making it even more dif®cult for them to join. This tension has not been publicly acknowledged. Indeed, some governments, in particular the Scandinavian ones, have made an explicit link between developing a more Nordic Union (e.g. with greater stress on issues such as consumer and social policy) and public acceptance of the enlargement project ± they ignore the fact that a more `Nordic Union' will make it more dif®cult for the CEEC to join. To quote the Danish Prime Minister directly: `Enlargement is the greatest challenge of our generation, but in order to accomplish enlargement we have to be in close contact with the people's wishes . . . Therefore the new Treaty must bear the Nordic stamp' (Weekendavisen, 15±21 August 1997, authors' italics and translation). This dilemma is anything but eased by the fact that an increased EU emphasis on the so-called European Social Model (or the Nordic model above) will not necessarily ease acceptance of enlargement by the Southern Member States. A more Social or Nordic Union is not high on their list of priorities. As a matter of fact, the increased use of the European Social Model as a legitimating device could trigger some thorny questions for enlargement: can the EU at one and the same time develop the image of preserving a European Social Model rhetoric

EU quest for legitimacy and enlargement

245

and offer the new members substantial transition phases with respect to the social acquis? If not, how is the EU to take on new members, which do not have a chance of ful®lling these core parts of the acquis within the next decades? Conversely, if long transition phases can be agreed, how is one to persuade, for instance, the Southern members that they should ful®l the entire acquis, whereas their competitors, for instance with regard to cheap labour, will not have to?

Conclusion This study has revealed real tensions between enlargement and attempts to enhance the EU's legitimacy. This arises from different normative views about what is legitimate, if and how legitimacy can be constructed, and the inter-related debate about what the EU polity should be. Although enlargement can strengthen legitimacy, there is a risk that it will instead exacerbate the EU's problems of developing closer bonds between the Member States and with their citizens. Enlargement requires the EU to improve the ef®ciency of its institutions ± an improvement, which could be seen as undermining the representation of the Member States and citizens in the EU (e.g. through losing a Commissioner or seeing an individual Commissioner's position decline vis-aÁ-vis the rest). Moreover, enlargement could undermine utilitarian legitimacy in at least two important ways ± by introducing costly competition in labour markets or re-directing economic aid from the present Member States to the newcomers in the East, and by adding complexity if not hampering ef®ciency in decision-making. It adds to existing tension between representation and ef®ciency. Despite these dif®culties with respect to preserving and strengthening existing levels of legitimacy, the EU cannot simply throw in the towel and drop the enlargement project. As this chapter has argued, a strategy of noenlargement would have just as severe consequences for legitimacy and the integration process as a whole. To a large extent, the EU is therefore condemned to make the twain meet ± it has to enlarge and it has to improve its legitimacy. Whether and how the EU will shoulder this twofold task in the long run remains unclear. So, instead of opting for the pessimistic conclusion that `the twain shall never meet', we prefer to draw comfort from the fact that the EU has always been a contested, evolving polity, which has been able to adapt to signi®cant internal and external changes over time. Taking this perspective, the Treaty of Amsterdam was only the ®rst round in the contest. This was followed by Agenda 2000 which opened up possibilities for addressing future challenges including that of enlargement. At the moment of writing, the EU is already taking the ®rst steps towards yet another intergovernmental conference. That being said, Amsterdam may, in time, be seen to have introduced one of the core pivotal points of contest in the future, namely, the idea of ¯exibility. This idea opens a polity-perspective in which all (twenty or more)

246

Lykke Friis and Anna Murphy

members need not necessarily participate to the same degree in all areas of integration. This ®ts with the theoretical approach lying behind this chapter: a multi-dimensional polity not only opens the door for different overlapping, compatible identities, but also for different kinds of membership. Undoubtedly, and in clear con®rmation of the EU's de®ning characteristic as being that of a contested polity, the move to a more ¯exible Union would meet opposition. Indeed, for some Member States, ¯exibility could undermine the legitimacy of the Union. In a ¯exible Union, where Member States have greater freedom to design their scope of participation, it would be more dif®cult to persuade richer countries to show solidarity with less af¯uent members. This could threaten one of the cornerstones of legitimacy. Although Europe should undoubtedly prepare itself for a long-drawn, dramatic `polity contest' (which will probably never produce the ®nal polity formation), one should not overlook the fact that also legitimacy is likely to be `re-imagined' or re-constructed as the developments in the discourse of integration, most recently with respect to the social model, suggest. Over time, governments and citizens might settle for different kinds and standards of legitimacy for their enlarged multi-dimensional polity. After all, as this chapter has argued, legitimacy is not a static (nor a statist) term, but a concept which changes over time and in respect to polity-formations.

Notes 1 In reality, the EU-system can therefore also be legitimised if governments succeed in re-casting European integration as an extension of national history, culture and political values (Banchoff and Smith 1999: 180). 2 To be sure, this chapter shares Banchoff and Smith's (1999: 3) view that the diagnosis of a legitimacy crisis was largely based on a (unsuitable) nation±state yardstick for legitimacy. This does not, however, alter the fact that the perception of crisis was dominant and that the EU is engaged in a dif®cult legitimation process. 3 The following statement from the Prime Minister of Luxembourg, Juncker, only adds to the above: `The planned enlargement will more and more become the most unpopular project of the coming years in all the member states' (Reuters 28 October 1997). 4 It should be noted that this model is somewhat mythical given different social/ welfare traditions in the member states and is largely constructed with reference to the `other' of the USA. 5 The reference to the acquis underlines that `enhanced co-operation' (which ¯exibility clauses are intended to permit) will probably not play the role in the enlargement process that some had hoped for i.e. that of facilitating the absorption of new members. As pointed out by de la Serre and Wallace, it is precisely the acquis which lies at the heart of accession negotiations (de la Serre and Wallace 1997: 37). 6 The remaining candidates were not simply left out in the cold but were offered a means to speed up their preparations for membership (see Friis and Murphy 1999).

EU quest for legitimacy and enlargement

247

7 It should be said that the postponement of preparations for enlargement was also linked to the fact that member states gave top priority to the EMU (and tackling unemployment) and that as enlargement was not looked upon as being just around the corner, the EU would have other opportunities later to reform its institutions (cf. Grabbe and Hughes 1997).

References Anderson, B. (1991) Imagined Communities, London: Verso. Banchoff, T. and Smith, M.P. (1999) `Introduction: Conceptualizing Legitimacy in a Contested Polity', in T. Banchoff and M.P. Smith (eds) Legitimacy and the European Union, London: Routledge, 1±27. Beetham, D. (1991) The Legitimation of Powers, Macmillan, London. Bieber, R. (1997) `Reformen der Institutionen und Verfahren ± Amsterdam kein MeisterstuÈck', Integration vol. 20, no. 4/97, pp. 236±46. Chryssochoou, D. (1996) `Europe's Could-Be Demos: Recasting the Debate', West European Politics vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 787±801. de la Serre, F. and Wallace, H. (1997) `Flexibility and Enhanced Co-operation in the European Union: Placebo rather than Panacea?', Paris: Groupement d'eÂtude et de recherches `notre Europe', Research and Policy Papers, No. 2, September. Draft Treaty (1996), presented by the Irish Presidency, 5 December, published in European Report, supplement No. 2181, 7 December. EU Commission (1996), Commission Opinion: Reinforcing Political Union and Preparing for Enlargement, Brussels: EU Commission. European Communities (1987) Treaties establishing the European Communities. Of®ce for Of®cial Publications of the EC, Luxembourg. European Council (1996), `Presidency Conclusions', Turin, 26 March, published in European Report, supplement no. 2121, April 3. Friis, L. and Murphy, A. (1999) `EU and Central and Eastern Europe ± Governance and Boundaries', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 233±49. Grabbe, H. and Hughes, K. (1997) Eastward Enlargement of the European Union, London: RIIA. Habermas, J. (1992) `Citizenship and National Identity', Praxis International vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 1±20. Howe, P. (1997) `Insiders and Outsiders in a Community of Europeans: A Reply to Kostakopoulou', Journal of Common Market Studies, vol. 35, no. 2, June, pp. 309±14. Jachtenfuchs, M. et al. (1998) `Which Europe?', European Journal of International Relations vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 419±45. Laffan, B. (1996) `The Politics of Identity and Political Order in Europe', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 81±102. ÐÐ (1997) `The IGC as Constitution-Building ± What's New at Amsterdam?', paper prepared for ARENA Annual Conference 1997: The Amsterdam Treaty ± Implications for Nordic Countries: Analytical Approach and Empirical Results, Oslo, 6±7 November. ÐÐ (1998) `The European Union: A Distinctive Model of Internationalization', Journal of European Public Policy vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 235±54.

248

Lykke Friis and Anna Murphy

Lord, C. (1998) Democracy in the European Union, Shef®eld: Shef®eld Academic Press. Mill. J.S. (1972) Utilitarianism: On Liberty and Representative Government, London: Dent. Moravcsik, A. (1994) `Preferences and Power in the European Community: A Liberal Intergovernmentalist Approach', in S. Bulmer and A. Scott (eds) Economic and Political Integration in Europe, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 29±81. Nentwich, M. and Falkner, G. (1997) `The Treaty of Amsterdam: Towards a New Institutional Balance', Vienna: European Integration Online Papers (EIOP), vol. 1, no. 15, 25.8. http: //eiop.or.at/eiop/texte Nickel, D. (1997) `Ein Kommentar zum Amsterdamer Vertrag aus Sicht des EuropaÈischen Parlaments', Integration vol. 20, no. 4/97, pp. 219±27. Obradovic, D. (1996) `Policy Legitimacy and the European Union', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 34, no. 2, pp. 191±221. Olsen, J.P. (1995) The Changing Political Organization of Europe, Arena Working Paper, no. 17, September. Pantel, M. (1999) `Unity-in-Diversity: Cultural Policy and EU Legitimacy', in T. Banchoff and M.P. Smith (eds) Legitimacy and the European Union, London: Routledge, pp. 46±66. Re¯ection Group (1995) Report of the Re¯ection Group, SN 520/95, 5 December, Brussels. Ross, G. (1994) Jacques Delors and European Integration, Cambridge: Polity Press. Rothschield, J. (1977) `Observations on Political Legitimacy in Contemporary Europe', Political Science Quarterly vol. 92, pp. 487±501. Schmitter, P.C. (1996) `Examining the Euro-Polity with the Help of New Concepts', in G. Marks et al. (eds) Governance in the European Union, London, Sage. Smith, A. (1992) `National Identity and the Idea of European Unity', International Affairs vol. 68, no. 1, January, pp. 55±76. Stone Sweet, A. and Sandholtz, W. (1998) `Integration, Supranational Governance and the Institutionalisation of the European Polity', in W. Sandholtz and A. Stone Sweet (eds) European Integration and Supranational Governance, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 1±27. Walker, R.B.J. (1993) Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory, New York: Cambridge University Press. Wallace, H. (1993) `Deepening and Widening: Problems of Legitimacy for the EC', in S. Garcia (ed.) European Identity and the Search for Legitimacy, London: Pinter, pp. 95±105. ÐÐ (1998) Coming to Terms with a Larger Europe: Options for Economic Integration, Working Paper No. 23, University of Sussex: Sussex European Institute. Wallace, W. (1983) `Less than a Federation, More than a Regime: The Community as a Political System', in H. Wallace et al. (eds) Policy-Making in the European Community, Chichester: John Wiley. ÐÐ (1995/1996) `Current State and Future Prospect of the Euro-Atlantic Security Order', in G. Bonvicini et al. (eds) A Renewed Partnership for Europe, BadenBaden: Nomos Verlag, pp. 155±71. Weber, M. (1978) Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, vol. 1, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

EU quest for legitimacy and enlargement

249

Weekendavisen (1997) Copenhagen, 15±21 August. Weiler, J. (1991) `Problem of Legitimacy in Post-1992-Europe', Aussenwirtschaft vol. 46, no. 3/4. ÐÐ (1995) `Does Europe Need a Constitution? Re¯ections on Demos, Telos and the German Maastricht Decision', European Law Journal vol. 1, no. 3, pp. 219±58. ÐÐ (1997a) `Legitimacy and Democracy of Union Governance', in G. Edwards and A. Pijpers (eds) The Politics of European Treaty Reform, London: Pinter, pp. 249±88. ÐÐ (1997b) `An Ever Closer Fusion?', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 35, no. 1, pp. 91±131. Wessels, W. (1997) `Der Amsterdamer Vertrag ± Durch StuÈckwerksreformen zu einer ef®zienteren, erweiteren und foÈderalen Union?', Integration vol. 20, no. 3/97, pp. 117±35. Zysman, J. and A. Schwarz (1998) `Reunifying Europe in an Emerging World Economy', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 405±29.

11 The EU as a security actor Re¯ections from a pessimistic constructivist on post-sovereign security orders Ole Wñver The process of European integration is the main pillar of stability on the European continent. It holds the potential rivals in the West (France and Germany) together (or apart as one might prefer it), it generates a `security community' of de-securitization for the rest of Western Europe, pre-empts con¯icts in East Central Europe through the power of `magnetism' and ®nally has a certain and probably increasing role to play as more direct intervenor further away from the Western core. Yet, the standard models of what a `security system' is does not allow for this kind of security provision to be a security system. Therefore, one ends up discussing instead either NATO and the WEU as alliances (collective defence) or the same institutions and the OSCE as candidates for collective security. The only alternative to this seems to be more societal ± usually liberal ± strategies for post-security orders such as the democratic peace.1 To practitioners and many observers the security centrality of the EU is obvious, only theorists, Americans and the most intellectually ambitious of politicians cannot talk about this, because they want security ®tted into the established models for security orders.2 Only there the EU cannot ®nd a place. The explanation for this, it will be argued, is that the EU has evolved into post-sovereign experimentation and also its security functions can be made sense of only in terms that violate the rules of our sovereignty-bound political lexicon. Analogies with other non-sovereignty based systems ± the Middle Ages or more importantly ancient empires3 ± give some clues, but only that. Such historical analogies are helpful mainly in telling us that we should be `allowed' to think of new models because of a historical precedence for deviation from sovereignty-based security models. The more exact forms and methods are, however, most likely quite different. This chapter tries to describe how the EU provides security in Europe, how this can be ®tted into more systematic concepts of security orders, and, not least, what emergent processes of identity formation and rearticulation are involved at the level of the existing nation±states and at the European level. Finally, it is discussed in what senses the EU might be seen as a security actor ± and what it generally means to be an actor in international relations. As a sub-text throughout, the chapter has the personal

The EU as a security actor

251

function of sorting out possible connections between different parts of my writings. This is triggered by the context of putting an argument I often make, to an audience with whom I usually talk about different themes ± a policy-oriented security argument to more or less post-structuralist IR theorists. This breakdown of my secret lives has forced out into the open a number of (seeming?) inconsistencies and more voluntary provocations. Therefore, the deliberately `inappropriate' title `The EU as a security actor' ± not exactly PC in a post-structuralist/re¯ectivist context. The chapter tries to expose this policy analysis to critical self-re¯ection at a more theoretical level. All those readers who couldn't care less whether one obscure Wñver paper is compatible with another, and whether a poststructuralist can talk policy talk in relatively straightforward and passable ways, should skip the ®rst, penultimate and ®nal sections ± or maybe the whole chapter.

Security, security orders and security actors Security is the speech act where a securitizing actor designates a threat to a speci®ed referent object and declares an existential threat implying a right to use extraordinary means to fence it off. The issue is securitized ± becomes a security issue, a part of what is `security' ± if the relevant audience accepts this claim and thus grants the actor a right to violate rules that otherwise would bind. Different times and places have exhibited different patterns of what counted as security ± in terms of sectors (military or more?) and in terms of who holds a claim for survival in this way (the state or also individuals or maybe systemic referents like the environment and the liberal international economic order?). It often carries great political implications to have an issue moved into the security realm ± it is prioritized above `normal politics' ± which is exactly the reason for doing the security move. In contrast to the standard perspective of security studies, where it is taken for granted that we are ultimately talking about security `out there' which exists independently of our putting it into security terminology, the speech act perspective claims that an issue becomes a security issue by the securitizing act. There is accordingly no way to sort out what are `really' security issues, and therefore it is always a choice to treat something as a security issue. In some democratic perspective, `de-securitization' is probably the ideal, since it restores the possibility of exposing the issue to the normal haggling and questioning of politicization, but if one is actually concerned about something, securitization is an attractive tool that one might end up using ± as a political actor. This creates a complex relationship between the role of security analyst and actor when writing about security. In one sense, the securitization approach heightens awareness of the difference between the two: about the possibility of writing about the practices of securitization and avoiding pronouncing in objectivist ways about what `is' a security issue ± and thereby pointing out to traditionalists

252

Ole Wñver

that when they write about security, they actually combine the roles of analyst and securitizing actor. In another sense, the approach shows the inescapable inner link between the two roles. Even when talking security in order to achieve de-securitization, it is possible that one contributes to securitization by the very fact of producing more security talk. Such ethical questions should be central to a ®eld of security studies transformed into `securitization studies' that investigates who can securitize what under what conditions and with what effects (Eriksson et al. 1999; Huysmans 1995; 1998a, 1998b). In this securitization perspective, does it then make sense to talk about security orders and what can possibly be the meaning of `providing security'? Among the many criticisms I have understandably had about my inconsistency, this is strangely one that I have not met yet, but here it is offered for future usage: when I write about the concept of security, securitization, security as a speech act and all that,4 there are no security problems as such, only constructions of issues as security problems. But in my more `structural' writings and some of the policy articles, I talk about different security orders, security systems, strategies that are more or less helpful in a security perspective, etc. ± what can that possibly mean (except inconsistency or opportunism)? It could hardly make sense to say that these systems `provide security'. Based on what we know about processes and dynamics of securitization, it is possible to recommend structurations that are less likely to generate negative spirals of insecurity. Partly based on the element of the theory which speci®es felicity conditions and partly from the understanding of dynamics of security interactions, it is possible to anticipate whether a situation is more or less likely to lead to problematic cases of securitization, especially instances that trigger vicious circles of mutual fear. This part of the theory dealing with conditions is highly sensitive (because it can lead to a re-introduction of objectivism into the theory) and it is necessary to be very precise about the exact status of the different elements of the theory. Securitization is ultimately constituted in the inter-subjective realm and therefore even very important conditions for successful securitization can never replace the political act as such.5 No condition (any number of tanks at the border) or underlying cause (motivation of leaders), not even a solid position of authority of the speaker of security, can make for a securitization ± they can only in¯uence a political interaction which ultimately takes place among actors in a realm of politics with the historical openness this entails. This, however, does not make the conditions uninteresting. On the basis of theories of speech acts (Austin 1975: 34; Bourdieu 1991; Butler 1996, 1997; Forrester 1990), we can say that there are three `felicity conditions' 6 of a successful security speech act: (a) the demand internal to the speech act of following the grammar of security and constructing a plot with existential threat, point of no return and a possible way out; (b) the social

The EU as a security actor

253

capital of the enunciator, the securitizing actor, who has to be in a position of authority, although this should neither be de®ned as of®cial authority nor taken to guarantee success with the speech act;7 and (c) conditions historically associated with a threat: it is more likely that one can conjure a security threat if there are certain objects to refer to which are generally held to be threatening ± be they tanks, hostile sentiments, or polluted waters. In themselves, they never make for necessary securitization, but they are de®nitely facilitating conditions.8 From a general understanding of the conditions and patterns of securitization, it is possible that one can foresee whether some situation will most likely lead to a great deal of securitization or less, in one form or another, and more speci®cally from studying particular actors or settings one can estimate whether some action is likely to lead to a powerful securitizing move, say, in France even if the same was unlikely to happen in Germany. On this basis, political action informed by securitization studies might be able to contribute to minimizing or curtailing dynamics of mutual provocation and securitization. In the classical (soft realist) tradition of Herz, Wolfers, Kissinger, Jervis and Buzan it is the task of security studies to operate at the relational level and help to avoid the worst spirals and security dilemmas. This means having a classical diplomatic sense of what will push some actor into extreme action. Rather than objective measures of what actors `should' perceive as threatening, this tradition worked from a perspective where one used all the relevant information to predict how far one could go without pushing the other side to take defensive countermeasures likely to get or keep a spiral going. Something close to the securization perspective was implicit in much of this work because its inner (diplomatic) logic led it to take the vulnerabilities and likely security concerns of the other seriously ± in contrast to more objectivist and universalist security studies. A strategy based on securitization studies will (everything else being equal) try to keep issues de-securitized. When issues have been securitized, it will try to move them from insecurity to security, or if they stay securitized, to keep the responses in forms that do not generate security dilemmas and other vicious spirals. Especially in the societal sector, securitizations have a particularly strong self-reinforcing character due to the circular, empty reference of concepts of collective identity (cf. Gellner, Manning and Zizek as presented in Wñver 1997: 328±31). Where security action on behalf of other referents typically gives the defended a higher sense of short-term security, while possibly decreasing it in the long run due to the negative effects on someone else's security (the security dilemma), security action on behalf of identities typically decreases the sense of security even for those defended because problematizing the security of an identity and triggering attempts to de®ne and complete it tend to expose its contingency, incompleteness and impossibility and thus lead to further action. Studies of societal security should

254

Ole Wñver

therefore not lead to attempts to construct `societal security policy' in a direct sense ± which is almost a contradiction in terms but rather an interest in identity constellations and thus attempts to avoid the triggering of societal security concerns in the ®rst instance. Securitization studies are thus likely to lead to a special interest in strategies that pre-empt or forestall securitization rather than those that solve already declared security problems. Such almost structural security policy tends to be under-estimated in traditional security studies, because security systems and security organizations are discussed in terms of how well they `solve security problems', i.e. problems have to have become and articulated as security problems in order for the organization to prove itself by afterwards handling it (mediating, intervening, or whatever). This is part of the reason why the speci®c discussion of organizations for security in Europe tends to forget the EU and focus on the organizations with `security' written on their door. Thus, this section which at ®rst aimed at only clarifying whether it was at all logically possible to combine the issue of security orders with the securitization approach generated not only an af®rmative answer, it also pointed to a priority for pre-emptive, structural mechanisms over reactive handling of security problems, and thus showed an inner link between the securitization approach and the argument about the primacy of the EU in European security.

Sovereign and post-sovereign security orders What are, then, the possible security orders to be imagined for Europe? What overall structures or (more or less) institutional settings can direct security dynamics into more or less constructive patterns? There are three positions in the debate as it usually goes: most well established is collective defence, i.e. alliances against an external threat and thus usually combined with the concept of the balance of power. Second comes collective security where a group of states organizes to suppress possible aggressors within the system (thus also using balance or rather preponderance of power and deterrence). (Position number 2‰ is `concert' which can be said to build on a combination of the two ®rst and therefore not need to be discussed in detail on this occassion.) Third, a great deal of liberal thinking about security ± the democracy-peace thesis, modernization theory, two worlds theory, complex interdependence ± assumes that although the nature of sovereignty might be changing, the basic political units are still all of the same type ± states ± only with increasing interaction, development or enlightenment, they start to behave differently, and we get security through a domestic transformation of the units, and thus the need for classical inter-unit arrangements evaporates. If states are the only constitutive units of the system and basically are like units, the possible roads are:

The EU as a security actor 1 2 3

255

balance of power, deterrence, alliance systems (standard realism); collective security (inverted realism; idealist realism); liberal democracy, security community (post-realist systems).

But if we can imagine a system made up of multiple kinds of units, it is possible (within realism, by the way), to imagine: 4

centred, concentric circles, quasi-imperial, `integration' systems (postsovereign realism).

Most of the world, most of the time has had security concerns handled by some version of the last. This has not been much studied in the discipline of international relations due to its anarchophilia (Buzan and Little 2000). An important exception is one strand within the so-called English School. Its most widely read ®gure, Hedley Bull, has mostly explored the logic of one particular international system, the European-turned-global one, and thereby occasionally given the impression that `international society' is a question of more or less and thus close to the American study of regimes and institutions. However, the work of the second main ®gure, Martin Wight, pointed to the unique trajectory of each international society in¯uenced by religion, culture and politics. From this starting point, it was an obvious agenda to study different international systems across time and space (Wight 1977) and this research programme was realized by Adam Watson with his The Evolution of International Society (1993).9 Wight supplemented sovereign states-systems with suzerain state-systems: `Here there is indeed a group of states having relations more or less permanent with one another, but one among them asserts unique claims which the others formally or tacitly accept' (1977: 23f.). China is the obvious example of a major part of world history that becomes invisible to IR if it is only interested in systems based on sovereign equality. Watson changes Wight's dichotomy into a spectrum from `multiple independences' to `empire'. The extremes are unstable and rare ± while the pendulum (see Figure 11.1) moves back and forth it tends to spend most time in the middle positions of hegemony and dominion (Watson 1992, pp. 17, 22, 136, 228, 252, 254f. and especially 122±5). Modern writings on IR have tended to downplay this for a number of reasons: in the nation±state-based construction of world history, (intraEuropean) empires were of course unnatural, and Europe furthermore prides itself on being the continent that avoided centralization which allegedly caused its dynamism (in contrast to Asian despotism and stagnation). Therefore, empires were presented as unambiguously negative (except of course for European overseas empires). In reality, however, empires have not always been unpopular or imposed. The world of `business' has usually since the times of Babylon been positive, because

256

Ole Wñver

Watson’s pendulum

Multiple Hegemony Independences

(Suzerainty)

Dominion

Empire

Figure 11.1 Watson's pendulum

empires establish a zone of peace which enhances trade and thereby wealth. Also politically, the peace of an empire was often preferred, at least if the empire understood the principle of subsidiarity, which empires usually did. The spectrum from direct rule to multiple independent political units exists not only in time, but also in space (see Figure 11.2). The system not only moves back and forth between the forms, the single system usually combines the different forms in a distinct pattern. Imperial and quasiimperial systems are usually organized as concentric circles. The ruler does not control the whole space of an empire with legal equality the way a modern state operates. He or she only rules directly a core area; then comes a periphery of locally autonomous rulers, who recognize overlordship and pay tribute; in the circle furthest out, the units have almost full domestic independence but their foreign policy is circumscribed, not least by the prohibition against war among the subjects of the centre; and ®nally beyond this there are units recognized as independent but not equal ± they all recognize that the emperor or suzerain is of a different order.

Hegemony: external relations controlled Dominion: subject communities have varying degrees of autonomy Direct rule

Independent states and other imperial structures – included in the network of interest and pressures

Figure 11.2 The structure of imperially organized systems

The EU as a security actor

257

If we view international relations from a slightly wider perspective than usual ± all world regions for, say, 5,000 years ± the normal pattern that emerges is such mixed constellations: concentric circles around more or less tight empires, dominions or hegemons. Watson argues that an important factor in¯uencing where the pendulum settles at any given time (in addition to relations of power and the momentum of the swing as such) is legitimacy. By this Watson means the assumptions in a given region at a given time about what is the natural balance between centrality and diversity. Whereas Europe for a long time tried to recite its own story in terms purely of sovereign equality, it becomes clear ®rst that the pendulum has been moving back during the twentieth century and Europeans exhibit a `will to centre', a decreasing legitimacy of balance of power as organizing principle, and an attempt to create a centred order. Second, it becomes visible that European history had all along contained a remembrance of and appeal to unity and universality. As argued by several in the English School (but maybe most forcefully Herbert Butter®eld), international societies usually form in areas that have previously been uni®ed in an empire which has fallen apart but left the cultural and historic conditions for the ensuing states to ®nd back in an international society. Only for around ®fty years (from the 1860s to 1918) did Europe spend time at the extreme end of the spectrum with mechanical and social-Darwinistic assumptions of the nature of international order (cf. Kratochwil 1982). So centrism has returned with increasing legitimacy, but why should this order be called post-sovereign? Because the EU is more than an international organization and less than a state. Europe is marked by overlapping and unsettled authorities. The non-members are in an asymmetrical relationship, and they accept it because the EU holds legitimacy ± beyond its circle of members ± as representing Europe. They do so because of the swing of Watson's pendulum: Europe is more than the sum of the stateparts and the EU can act on behalf of `Europe'. Europe does not consist of either the EU with components or Member States with an added international organization: both layers are politically real and cannot be reduced to the other (cf. Ruggie 1993). The mechanisms that pre-empt most of the main security problems derive from this order, and therefore it is a security system on a par with the classical ones. Such security stabilization is neither collective security (because it is not about equal states and a general mutuality, and not even explicitly about aggression), nor collective defence/ alliance (because it is not directed against outsiders). Finally, it is not the liberal transcendence of power politics through domestic transformation because it is not based on territorially exclusive units that change in parallel domestically and therefore conduct horizontal inter-unit relations of a less con¯ictual kind.

258

Ole Wñver

Europe after 1989 and the three security functions of the EU Despite the magnitude of political failure and calamity in South Eastern Europe in particular, one has to notice what did not happen after 1989. Europe has not unfolded according to the classical rivalry of e.g. France, Germany, England, Russia, Turkey and Italy, as projected by the Back to the Future brand of neorealists (Mearsheimer 1990). At ®rst sight, some could conclude that the gloomy Mearsheimer predictions have been vindicated, and one could conclude with him: `because of Bosnia, I am a realist'.10 However, developments in Europe went wrong the wrong way. Yes, there are con¯icts in Europe, but no, they are neither driven by nor have they triggered balance of power behaviour, competitive interventions and rivalling alliances among the powers of Europe. The basic pattern in Europe is not one of a number of centres competing (the `normal' one), nor is it simply one of abstract `cooperation' or collective security ± it is too asymmetric for that. It is one where the many centres have been replaced by the centre, by a pattern of concentric circles around the EU centre. The normal pattern from the last centuries consists of a number of centres (as e.g. Figure 11.3). Lea®ng through the European history book, the story is one of great powers, their rise and fall, alliances and antagonisms. Viewing this from a small state, history consists of manoeuvring between the centres. This has not been the pattern of politics since 1989. European politics unfolds not between the centres but around one centre (see Figure 11.4).

Anglo-Saxon

Russian German

French

Figure 11.3 Fragmentation scenario

The EU as a security actor

259

Figure 11.4 The integration scenario

Take a country like Sweden which has de®nitely been challenged by the changed circumstances. Sweden has been slaughtering sacred cows on a production line, but the reason for Swedish foreign policy panicking has not been a fearful debate about the future relationship between Russia, Britain and Germany. No, it has been driven by a fear that Sweden landed too far out in the circles, a fear of becoming periphery in the new politicoeconomic geography of Europe (cf. e.g. Wñver 1992; Mouritzen 1993). (And Denmark's 1992 `No' to Maastricht was driven by a certain fear of coming too close to the centre.) A surprisingly large section of European controversies of the last years can be translated into issues of centre± periphery, distance, questions of getting in to achieve in¯uence versus keeping distance for the sake of independence. The overarching image is of one centre and concentric circles, a completely different mental geography from the usual one of several competing centres (great powers). Both the argument that `back to the future' is a realistic possibility ± but not necessity ± and the argument of the next section that the domestic pillars of current policy are fragile, are arguments found more often among politicians than among academics. In particular, in the case of France and Germany, the argument about the necessity of integration in order to avoid a potentially dramatic change to the worse has become self-ful®lling, i.e. it has entered into policy-making, and this security argument more and more often appears as the last instance argument for integration. Clear illustrations were Mitterrand's farewell speech to the European Parliament and Chancellor Kohl's speech the same place the year after about European

260

Ole Wñver

integration as the necessary venture to prevent future wars (Kohl 1996; Mitterrand 1995; for further analysis of the importance of this argument, see Banchoff 1996; Barry Buzan et al. 1997: Chapter 8; Wñver 1996a). At this point, academic re¯ections ± and security theory in particular ± need to take a round of re¯ection to check whether we have fallen behind the reasoning of the practitioners. This is not necessarily the case ± their `action theory' (Pedersen 1969) might be wrong, but then at least we need to accommodate it as really existing reasoning. Also, it could be right, and they have spotted a missing link in much of the academic literature. There is a strong (neorealist)11 and a weak (constructivist) version of this argument: either these are the options given the structure of international relations; or in Europe today, the political imagination is structured so that these become the only options. In the latter case, the two-scenarios-only theory has become a self-con®rming hypothesis, and policy-makers act to make it come true. For our present purpose this difference is of little consequence (for IR theory it is of major importance, but actually hard to settle from current evidence). An argument structured along these lines is very powerfully present and makes the two-scenario theory true for now ± it is an argument which in interesting ways merges identity, integration and security. It is argued that the meaning of Europe today is to avoid a speci®c typically European pattern ± mutual balancing and rivalry, and therefore integration becomes security. Both versions point to the EU as the most important security `institution'. It decides which of the two European patterns will unfold: integration or fragmentation. Here it becomes a problem that the study ± and public debate ± of security and integration have been strangely separated. Integration is assumed to be mainly about economic and non-security matters; security about organizations speci®cally designated to security tasks (NATO, OSCE). However, I would argue that security and integration are closely linked: the most important security institution in Europe is the EU, and integration is becoming dependent on security-derived arguments. More concretely, the EU is important for European security at three levels ± where debate too often jumps immediately to the third with erroneous conclusions. The EU has the following roles: 1 2 3

the primary function of keeping the core intact, ensuring there is one centre rather than several in Western Europe; silent disciplining power on `the near abroad'; the magnetism working already in East Central Europe; a potential role as direct intervenor in speci®c con¯icts.

These three functions follow a quasi-geographical pattern of concentric circles. The ®rst is about the core itself, the second is about the close outsiders, and the third about those peripheral actors that circle around this centre at a larger distance, geographically and politically. The two ®rst are

The EU as a security actor

261

non-military, the third probably largely military; the two ®rst are primarily structural and pre-emptive, the third is mostly reactive. The ®rst will be argued in the next section, the third is the most familiar (and so far least ful®lled), so I will here explain only no. 2. Implicit disciplining refers to the role of EU in exercising `power' through its attractiveness to the Eastern countries, and perhaps to the close South as well (Maghreb). In the words of Robert Keohane: a recommended strategy against `hyper-nationalism' in Eastern Europe should be to use the economic and technological dependence of Eastern European societies on Western Europe as a source of leverage . . . Some combination of EC as magnet and CSCE as encompassing framework of rules would seem to be the proper institutional antidote to the danger of hypernationalism in Eastern Europe. (1990: 10f.) And certainly the most Western part of Eastern Europe (Poland, Hungary and what used to be Czechoslovakia) has been strongly in¯uenced ± not to say disciplined ± by being close to the EU. The `magnet' clearly had an impact on foreign as well as domestic developments: politicians in these countries know very well that the eyes of the EU are on them, and they knew what counted as good and bad behaviour (regarding democracy, minorities, privatization and sub-regional relations). Since they have had expectations that gradually moving closer to and eventually joining the EU was a realistic option, it made sense to act according to anticipated Western reactions. In the long run, the issue for these countries is EU membership. This of course gives the EU an enormous leverage which is operative both when consciously activated and when not.12 This mechanism is not and should not be visible ± it is not very `democratic' or `equal', not very politically correct if spelled out. Therefore, the EU does not get credit but this invisible and polite `disciplining' is no less important for that. One clear illustration was the Czech and Slovak divorce. If one reads the divorce papers, one notices the curious presence of a third party in these papers: the EU. It was decisive to both parties to ensure that the divorce was carried out in a way which was deemed civilized by the West and which allowed both of the new states to carry over all their arrangements with the EU (Pehe 1992). Both sides intensively consulted Western diplomats in Prague about the likely reactions to actions and schemes as they were considered. The `stability pact' (the so-called Balladur plan which was adopted as a project by the EU, eventually launched in one grand European conference in Paris in May 1994 and ®nalized in a similar event in March 1995) is an attempt to formalize this role, to use the political and economic leverage of the EU to secure a stabilization of borders, minority rights and related issues. It basically says: `You can only become members of the EU if you

262

Ole Wñver

have solved your problems about borders and minorities. We don't really care how you solve it, but please sit down with your neighbours and work out an agreement (we might help you in various ways ± but ®rst of all by supplying this pressure). If you do, you are on the list of potential members, if you don't you are not.' And it worked. NATO of course has a similar function but mostly in relation to civil±military relations. EU is much more general and in¯uences to a larger extent the overall orientation of these countries. Not least it serves to `de-securitize' various con¯icts: the Hungarians downplay the issue of Hungarian minorities because they realize it will be less ef®cient to appear as a nationalist and old-fashioned power in comparison to the indirect strategy of gaining the support of the West by being `less ethnic', in some circles expecting thereby to ultimately gain a stronger position in relation to Slovenia and Romania. However, in the process, Hungarians increasingly get their attention focused on other issues, become integrated in the economic and political games of the West ± and what was previously a hot security issue possibly slides down the scale. Thus, the ®rst step is a rational decision by policy-makers, the second is an unexpected process which implies changes of identity and interests. At the core of such a process of de-securitizing a potentially major ethnic friction13 is the magnetism of the EU. All this demands a well-balanced EU policy of appearing open enough to attract, to keep the East Europeans on the magnet, and not enlarge so fast that the EU stops being the EU and the magnet thereby stops being magnetic. This stabilizing factor is therefore equally threatened by eurocrats favouring deepening and institutional ef®ciency over enlargement and by the argument mostly heard from the British, Scandinavians and American security experts: enlargement is the big calling of the EU which can thereby realize its continental security mission, while deepening can only detract from this goal. Deepening is, however, necessary in relation to the East as well, for two reasons. First, the EU process has to appear as progressing in order for it to be interpreted as the organizing factor for their national future. The East Europeans probably would like to join even if the EU had ground to a halt, or even started a mild decay but they would not calculate their future in terms of the EU, as they do now. Second, the possibility of incorporating the East Europeans demands an EU where the FrancoGerman partnership functions. Should relations at the core deteriorate, the consensus necessary for enlargement would disappear. Enlargement questions would be interpreted only as part of a zero-sum balance of power among the states, and would be vetoed by those who expected to lose. Only as part of a process seeming to move steadily beyond any given static game, can this contradiction be dissolved. Thus, it is only an actually integrating Europe that has a magnetic, stabilizing lure on Eastern Europe. Ideally, the EU grows at the slowest possible speed. It must never stop (or give the impression of stopping); it has to move, but almost the slower the

The EU as a security actor

263

better. To pull off this incredible trick, the EU probably has to show a bit more of diplomatic and political acumen than has usually been the case. The transformation whereby the EU becomes the organizing centre for a much larger area than it could possibly integrate right away demands an elegant structuration of both time and space which in practice hinges on balancing deepening, widening and promises about widening. If the EU expands too fast and/or is watered down internally, it will lose the very value that in the ®rst instance made it attractive and kept the Western core together, while, on the other hand, if widening slows down, countries might start to fall off the magnet. This is the place to address one of the themes of this volume: who is European? Or: where does Europe end? It doesn't ± at least not on the Eastern side. The EU policy ± which re¯ects the basic concentric circles pattern ± is to avoid ever saying `no'. The answer is always `not yet' or `yes, but'. The EU practice towards the East is not to draw a line between those who are European and potential members and those who are not. With the possibility of drawing on the classical uncertainty about the Eastern boundary of Europe,14 the EU manages to place nobody as nonEuropean but everybody as more or less European, more or less close to the centre (of Europe and of Europeanness). Applicants are layered, and although they try to produce a threat of `rejection shock', the actual effect of the long queue is mostly to spur more efforts to advance. And as the ®rst group gets closer to memberhip, the `yes, but but' group moves up to `yes, but' status (and they start to be more fully structured by the disciplining mechanism), and simultaneously the `yes but but but' countries become `yes but but's. This rolling set of layers is ideally able to keep a maximum number of countries attached to the core, and in identity terms it means that `Europe' is not de®ned negatively against (a spatial) non-Europe but temporally: Europe's future must not become a return of Europe's past (more on this below). And acquiring full European credentials is also a question of time: membership is not denied but deferred ± how long will it take before you live up to the conditions fully? This perspective can shed light on the pressing issue of the relationship between the EU's Eastern and Southern policies. Frequently, when Scandinavians, Germans or other North Europeans talk of the importance of the EU's relationship to the Eastern neighbours, their Southern colleagues will bring up the parallel case of North Africa. The two regions are structurally in parallel positions, and raise for the EU countries many of the same problems and not least threats associated with a breakdown: migration, economic effects, potential con¯icts, international organized crime. Therefore, it is natural that deals are often made where a certain amount of Euros towards the East has to be balanced by more or less equivalent contributions southward. However, the parallel breaks down at one very precise point: the Eastern neighbours are paid half in cash, half in membership promises. The latter cannot be used towards the Southern neighbours.

264

Ole Wñver

Towards the East, the EU has wisely refrained from de®ning `Europe' and thus says only `yes but' and `not yet' to Eastern applicants ± never `no'. Towards the South, the Mediterranean is taken as the border of Europe, and North African applicants have received or will receive a no (or a `no but' leading to other programmes).15 Ultimately, it might therefore be more expensive and demanding to handle the Southern periphery, because there one is without the (at ®rst) cheap and powerful instrument of promises about enlargement. The absence of a membership outlook de®nes a completely different set of relations and thus a very different periphery.16 This crucial difference becomes visible with an understanding of the key mechanism of the EU's relationship to its Eastern periphery which is the dynamic of gradual enlargement, the structuration of time and space in a series of concentric circles. Such security stabilization is neither collective security (because it is not about equal states and a general mutuality, and not even explicitly about aggression), nor collective defence/alliance (because it is not directed against outsiders). Nor is it any of the liberal visions of transforming the nature of states or inter-state relations ± the power element is far too high for that. Very often in debates on European security, this the most important form of security provision is forgotten. We could call it regional unipolarity, quasi-empire or integration in concentric circles. The EU is usually not mentioned as a security organization. Actually, it is probably the most important one. Not the derived activities of the EU in the form of the WEU or the common foreign and security policy, but integration itself. The EU's security importance lies ®rst of all in having reshaped the basic geopolitical pattern from one of centres to one of the centre. And it keeps large parts of Europe in place by the magnetism of this centre. The pattern of concentric circles around a power centre should remind us of (especially ancient) empires, and the EU could be seen as yet another instance of the most well-tried method of peace provision in history: that a region does not have a balance of power among competing powers, but a clear though far from all-dominant centre whose power extends radially with fading force, as a number of quasi-independent political units operate around the centre with increasing independence as the distance to the centre increases (Kupchan 1998a; Wñver 1996c; Watson 1992, 1997). The reason why this system is dif®cult to grasp is probably, that in contrast to the other security systems (collective defence, collective security, domestic transformation), it does not ®t the model of sovereign equality. An emerging European post-sovereign complexity includes the EU (as neither state nor international organization), Member States, nations as increasingly separate from states, micro-regions and trans-regions of various kinds, and non-members that relate to the EU not as to an external, imperial threat because they see the EU as holding some legitimacy on behalf of Europe and thus also in relation to them as not (yet) member. This system of multiple, overlapping authorities, asymmetries and non-like

The EU as a security actor

265

units naturally produces security in ways that deviate from the classical security models. The difference is of great practical importance. From the classical perspective, the security value of the EU in relation to the East Europeans has to stem ultimately from the value of membership ± the effects of applicanthood can only be a secondary, derived bene®t. In the perspective of centre and concentric circles, the mechanism related to semiindependent peripheries is an equally important kind of relationship. However, it is only visible when you focus on the grey zone between external and internal ± exactly what is invisible to classical security orders. In a traditional perspective, enlargement can only be security provision because it brings the new countries into the EU. The EU is imagined either as collective security or as a state, i.e. in line with the domestic analogy. Stabilization, however, works most ef®ciently when countries are outside, but on the way to possible membership. The most important mechanism is made invisible by the prejudice of sovereign equality. This is similar to the literature on empires, where even the most sophisticated IR treatment of the subject, Doyle's book Empires, is misleading in de®ning empires as `relationships of political control imposed by some political societies over the effective sovereignty of other political societies' (Doyle 1986: 19). It is assumed that the relationship is between basically like units who are only temporarily put in a deviant form. The de®nition builds into the analysis an assumption about the natural relationship and thereby also ruins the possibility of analysing the existing relationship fully on its own terms (for a more elaborate critique, see Wñver 1996c: 225f.). To understand empires, one has to see a system of differentiation between different kinds of units: an imperial centre and semi-independent city-states and kingdoms. Likewise in the EU: the EU is a political unit and so are the Member States. It is not one or the other but both (cf. Ruggie 1993).

A pessimistic (or even alarmist) interpretation of identities and interests of the European nation±states All this sounds very optimistic: in contrast to the picture of the East as crisis zone. The above section presented for East and Central Europe a basically positive development, a rolling integration where the ®rst circle soon moves to member-status and a second circle moves into the place of closest neighbours thereby becoming exposed more fully to the non-military stabilizing discipline of applicanthood. Why, then, the sub-title about pessimism? Because this whole development is contingent on a collection of quite precarious articulations of political key concepts in the main powers. The worry surprisingly follows from the (radically) constructivist nature of the analysis. In much of the debate on constructivism, the roles have been distributed so that constructivists appear as necessarily the more optimistic side.

266

Ole Wñver

A constructivist like Wendt argues that, `Anarchy is what states make of it' and self-help could be replaced with more cooperative international relations (Wendt 1992; for a critique that assumes that constructivism and critical theory necessarily play this political part, see Mearsheimer 1994/ 1995), whereas realists (and other rationalists) insist that the international system has some given and unalterable laws. The constructivist role is allegedly to say: yes we have mostly seen self-help and balance of power so far, but the rules of the international system are socially constructed and thus they could change ± a more other-regarding and cooperative system is possible too. This is not my line. Much of the chapter is quite alarmist in emphasizing the contingency and fragility of some of the stability in European security and integration. What currently looks stable could change dramatically and abruptly.17 The existing degree of stability and insecurity avoidance rests on contingent constructions, not some deep structural pillar. It is possible to change the game that is played, but the most likely is not from competition to cooperation, security to welfare or some of the other standard `progressive' or liberal visions. More likely, security concerns will continue to be central and their effects hazardous. But it is possible to transform the social formation in Europe and thereby the dynamics and outcomes of security competition. Most importantly, by giving the continent a centre (symbolically in Brussels), a great deal of security policy is transformed from state-to-state competition within Western Europe to a combination of joint concern for the continued avoidance of this rivalry (in the name of `Europe') and equally corporate competition with other regions. While `socially constructed', such regional dynamics do not violate the traditional principles of `realism'. Possibly, they are incompatible with some versions of the more recent `neorealism', and it is not in¯exibly and a priori statecentric the way most current international relations theory is; Europe/EU can become a political centre and reference point concurrently with a continuing importance of the nation±states. Multiple layers are possible even with continued power politics (as they were in the Middle Ages, for instance). The central category in grasping the stability of this order is identity. The de®nition of interests and options is conditioned by national identity and state identity; and these in turn can be bound up with a joint regional project like European integration. Emphasis is thus on the relative malleability both of the meaning of each state and of the nature of the system in Europe: each country has some deep-seated traditions of how to think about state and nation, but they can be articulated in a number of ways to become the basis for concrete policy; and the system is changing by becoming centred rather than balanced. Because this happens without replacing the nation±states, but through adding another layer, Europe attains postsovereign qualities.

The EU as a security actor

267

As often pointed out in recent years, identity is important because what is the value of studying the self-interested action of states without knowing what this self is: what appears as our `interest' is highly dependent on who `we' are. A major rede®nition of a community's conception of where they are coming from and where they are going ± what they are about ± is likely to have effects on how they interpret events, calculate interests and choose lines of action. In ± especially Continental ± Europe today, concepts of nation and state have been fused with concepts of Europe. This changes the `self' of `self-interest'. The main centres of decision-making remain the national capitals, but this does not mean that `Europe' is irrelevant. We have to know what the identities are on whose behalf national action is taken. In discussions about `European identity' it is often said that, `There is no European identity for which people are willing to make sacri®ces in a sense compared to that which national identity continues to command.' This is a false either/ or: European identity will be important only if it outcompetes the national identities and until then is irrelevant. `Europe' is important for the way the national identities have been reshaped. Since concepts of state and nation are strong organizing ideas for foreign policy, a consistent European de®nition of these could be the social anchor for security stability. As Michael Barnett has noticed in relation to the Arab world: `scholarship on Arab nationalism has an either/or quality: the Arab nation either takes precedence over all other identities or it is meaningless; either Arab nationalism necessitates political uni®cation or it is without force' (1995: 509). Similarly, `Europe' is too often seen as either a project replacing the nation±state or irrelevant. More likely, it is an additional layer of identi®cation, and since this is vulnerable to re-mobilization of the more well established nation± state identities, it is important to study how the nation±states themselves have been transformed, and the European level integrated into the meaning of nation±state. Thus, the method is to study internal relations among concepts (in contrast to much `constructivist' work on `norms' and other ideational phenomena where one question is singled out and traced sociologically). In contrast to most of those who do take seriously the coherence and internal logic of conceptual systems, the concepts are not studied at a general level of international discourses, but are more localized and varied in order to capture the grounding within each polity of overall foreign policy lines in political discourse. The focus in the concrete discourse analysis is different conceptions of `we'. This is because narratives connecting past, present and future have to build on these, and thus overarching foreign policy lines have to be articulated with these concepts. It is here crucial to avoid two methodological fallacies. First, we are not interested in individual opinion, perceptions or images, but in discourses, and more speci®cally those of politicians that make up an inter-subjective political discourse. Second,

268

Ole Wñver

focus should not be on separate norms and loyalties (as in much of mainstream constructivism), but on constellations of concepts that are articulated with each other. A common identity means that the category of the collective is part of the self-conception of individuals. It can always only be a part of and therefore its stability depends on how well it is articulated with other identity components. `We's cannot be studied as `us and our identity'. An identity has to be seen in relation to other identities, not only the famous `Other' of self±other arguments, but also other `we's, because everybody constructs their self with the help of a complex constellation of collective identi®cations ± identi®cations that have to be articulated with each other. For instance, national identity often depends on how the identi®cation with nation works synergetically with an identi®cation as man (`just warrior') or woman (the defended `beautiful soul') (Elshtain 1987; cf. also Lene Hansen in this volume). Hereby emerges analytically a distinct ®eld of discursive identity where different collective categories are de®ned in relation to each other ± a layer quite different from actual `similarity' or connectedness or loyalty among Europeans which is often misleadingly taken to be the meaning of `European identity'. Political categories can be more or less central, more or less inescapable as components of the dominant narratives of `who I am'. Thus, for instance, opinion polls can show a decreasing love of `Europe' or the EU in Germany, while the dominant political lines all become increasingly dependent on a concept and vision of an EU-based Europe in order to tell convincing stories about where Germany goes ± and then, probably, `Europe' has become both more central and more stabilized in Germany, despite opinion polls to the opposite effect. This is not to say that `the elite' is more important than `people', but that what is called `public opinion' really is `private opinion on public matters' ± and what matters is real public opinion. When asked individually about an isolated political question, one might for instance be sceptical about EMU, but unless the issue is heading for a referendum this is usually not decisive (despite politics becoming increasingly poll-driven). More important are the judgements people make about general policy orientations and an `unpopular' opinion might be an integral part of making such a line compelling. The discursive role of `Europe' is best captured by studying how e.g. the meaning of `German' interests is rede®ned by an inclusion of `Europe'. The central narration of what `Germany' is and where it is heading in the future is one, where `Europe'/EU is essential. If Europe was removed (integration collapsed), the meaning of Germany would have to be radically rearticulated. Identity is narrative (Brunner 1991; Ricoeur 1995), and there are only so many basic stories to be told about what Germany is about. Europe is always part of the story ± in some versions as purely external arena, in most of the present ones as something with which Germany has an internal relationship.

The EU as a security actor

269

The interweaving of state, nation and Europe is probably easiest to see in the case of Germany which has systematically tried to act only `in Europe's name' (Ash 1993), but also for France it is more and more dif®cult to imagine a policy which projects an attractive and realistic France without implicating a European project. Projects for France have inescapably been tied up with projects for Europe. Not that this is a guarantee for a speci®c `pro-EU' line, only that in order to act French, one has also to be able to construct a vision for Europe. Especially for a major power, the overall foreign policy line must be explainable as to where this leaves `us': what kind of future for `France'/ `Germany'/`Russia' in what kind of Europe? This is not a static challenge in the sense that there is one ®xed idea of, say, France. But there are some basic core meanings (the nation±state) that can only be related to Europe in a limited number of ways, and thus one can construct several different Europe policies that are meaningful in a French political context ± but not just any Europe policy. Several policies that would seem perfectly logical from a Finnish perspective ± or from the perspective of some abstract theory of `state interests' ± can be very dif®cult to present in the French political language. Kissinger once introduced the important concept of a power's vision of itself: [Security] is not a mechanical problem . . . an exact balance is impossible . . . because while powers may appear to outsiders as factors in a security arrangement, they appear domestically as expressions of a historical existence. No power will submit to a settlement, however well-balanced and however `secure', which seems totally to deny its vision of itself. (1957: 146) There are several articulations possible of the basic ideas in each nation, and good statesmanship will try to ®nd ways to articulate the nation±state through Europe policies that also leave room for the other major nation± states (and their Europes). In the months following the fall of the Berlin Wall, such a constellation of mutually compatible Europes was developed (Wñver 1990). In particular Germany ± who had potentially much to win, but also a lot to lose if others turned against it ± was active in building the French Europe and the Russian Europe (and the Americans by playing with and not against uni®cation secured some place for the Atlantic Europe). This led to the relatively successful `grand bargain' of 1990. Europe to the French meant strengthening of a France-like EU, to the Russians it meant securing some allEuropean framework that de®ned Russia as within Europe, and to the Germans Europe meant allowing interactions, societies and economies to re-connect across old divisions. In 1990 it was possible to give Europe a direction of development where all of the Europe projects could unfold

270

Ole Wñver

simultaneously. They are competitors, but not incompatible ± and thereby all major powers were able to imagine themselves in the Europe promised. Europe is made up of a number of constellations of `Europe' and nation± state `self'. Therefore, `the struggle for Europe begins with a struggle inside each nation' (Tassin 1992: 189). The main question for the future of Europe, for stability and security, is now not directly the relations among the major powers, but the inner struggles over national identity/Europe projects in France, Germany and Russia. In each country strong competitors have emerged to the project that functioned in the comprehensive quid pro quo of 1990. European stability requires two kinds of compatibility: that it is in each of the major countries possible to construct a narrative of state, nation and Europe that makes sense in relation to the national tradition of political thought; and then when we in this way get Europe in the plural, that these different Europes are politically compatible, that it is possible for e.g. a French integration project, German border-penetrating networks and Russian all-European structures to unfold at the same time (see Figure 11.5). It is no condition that the powers agree on any shared conceptions. It is quite OK that e.g. the German version of creating a `vision of itself' ± with low political pro®le, emphasizing economy, and downgrading of borders ± is seen as mildly ridiculous in France. Possibly, it is even a condition for European stability, that the major powers think differently about Europe. If they all thought according to the same logic ± and e.g. wanted a French kind of role ± there might not be room for all of them. It is a general predisposition of political scientists and international relationists to think that France

Russia

Nation

State

State

Nation Europe

Europe

Europe State Nation

Germany Relation of discursive stability Relation of political compatibility

Figure 11.5 Three competing Europes

The EU as a security actor

271

the condition for cooperation and institution building is that the different parties agree and come to de®ne concepts identically (cf. the story about the demise of superpower deÂtente due to con¯icting de®nitions) (George 1983), but probably there are important cases, where the condition is the opposite: the actors pursue policies that are compatible (and they might even agree on building an institution), while the story that sustains this policy is very different in one country and the other. Shared meanings are not needed, but just as it has always been, it is the task of diplomats and statesmen to understand how other powers make sense out of politics and thus avoid making them offers on the basis of what would make sense only in one's own case.18 To judge how stable this constellation is, one has to enter into the different constructions as they look in order to speak from the inside. This is of course a quite demanding task, and I will here summarize the results of a study of only two of the most important countries, France and Germany. This leads among other things to the somewhat surprising conclusion that, ®rst of all, Europe does not have a German problem, but a French problem. After World War II, German foreign policy was marked by an enthusiasm for joining almost all available international institutions and especially in expressing its foreign policy through strong multilateral institutions like NATO and the EU.19 Although this was for forty years oriented towards a regaining of sovereignty, it paradoxically implied a policy that led Germany into the most far-reaching internationalization of state identity (Katzenstein 1998). Eventually, the vision of itself, the vision of a German future came to be not only thoroughly entwined with European (and NATO) integration, it also came to imply that the sense of what was `German' about these interests became transformed. The vision was not closely tied to separate concepts of a German state or a German nation, but to Germans living beyond the sovereign nation±state. Although a sharp break with the past, this vision builds on German traditions regarding concepts of state and nation. Most importantly, the central concept of the power state remained central but was turned from promise into peril: concentration of power in the state was to be avoided, exercise of power by the state too, and internationally, it was a German interest to avoid a return to a balance of power, classical, state-to-state Europe where Germany for geopolitical reasons would again be the loser. Germany after the Cold War has witnessed an increasing presence of alternative lines, of more nationalist suggestions for a more German, less European policy, but basically the very Europe-oriented version of what Germany is, where Germany is going, and thereby what German `interests' are, have kept its solid hold on the political elite. This, however, has one important precondition for continuing to function as the framework for German self-realization ± that the European integration project actually

272

Ole Wñver

continues. Not that federal Europe is necessary tomorrow, but the vision of it and the direction of change are necessary for the stability of the antipower state as founding concept for German foreign policy. In various corners ± literary debate, historians, geopolitics ± intellectuals articulate a position which is still rather marginal, but has gained respectability as a rightist intellectual position: a seemingly formalist argument saying a state is a state is a state, and Germany has to play according to its power position. Allegedly, this is not because there are speci®c German interests or gains to be pursued, but because it is the only natural thing to do; Germany has already once in this century taken its own special track (Sonderweg), now it has an obligation to become a normal state, which entails also following the abstract logic of state and power. The argument is not linked strongly to ethnic nationalism, and thus is quite different from the extremist right-wing; it is neo-statist rather than neo-nationalist (on neo-statism, see Giesen 1993; Heilbrun 1996; Hellmann 1996; Schirrmacher 1990; Wñver 1995b). This position should be noticed ®rst of all because it has a strong logic to it. At present, it has ± at least is its radical version ± not very much attraction in policy circles, but this is because the elite has been able to keep up its story about where Germany is going, one based on European integration. This only works if there is some relatively successful European integration to point to. Most of the day-to-day struggles that dominated German politics during the 1990s were between the Kohl government and its Social Democratic and Green opposition. In particular much of the foreign speculation about Germany's orientation was mainly tied to the debate on German soldiers abroad and more generally a normalization of Germany's role in European defence. However, these two sides actually share a basic concept of state and nation as well as a deep commitment to European integration. In terms of a quasi-structuralist analysis of French and German foreign policy discourse: in a three-tiered discursive structure the two main combatants are based on the same position at the second tier of the three-tiered structure (Holm 1992, 1997; Wñver 1998b; Wñver et al. forthcoming). They both believe that it is in Germany's interest to avoid a recreation of a Europe of nation±states. The Social Democrats (and even more the Greens) emphasize a little more the moral argument that Germans are obliged because of their history to ®ght nationalism and the power-state, and to construct a Europe that prevents as thoroughly as possible any reappearance of a German power-state. The Kohl-type politicians emphasize somewhat more the geopolitical argument, that Germans should have learned from history that a balance of power Europe ultimately means anti-German alliances, and therefore it is in Germany's interest to create a Europe of a different kind even though this implies a deep-going transformation of what Germany is, a move beyond the nation±state in its classical sense (cf. Schwarz 1994; StuÈrmer 1990). The debates over German out-of-area participation, for instance, have taken place between semi-paci®st Greens and social demo-

The EU as a security actor

273

crats who want a continuation of total abstentionism and the present government which also emphasizes integration as the rationale for Germany, but is interested in gradually taking on more `normal tasks'. The two sides have locked German nation±state identity into Europeanization much the same way.20 The most visible challenger outside this branch is an economic nationalism wanting to defend the D-mark. In its mainstream version it builds on European integration, only claims that integration is so much more robust that Germany can actually be more sel®sh without risking dramatic effects on the EU as such. Only if the EU breaks down will the situation change radically ± then all of these three positions will drop out, and the only serious candidate is the neo-statist position of `we have to act as a great power because we are one'. In the case of France, it is even more clear what the basic logical options are. There is a very distinct French concept of the nation±state saying ®rst of all that state and nation are mutually de®ning (and then furthermore hints at the patrie as their deep root and at an external role for the state as its mission) (Holm 1992; Wñver 1990; Wñver et al. forthcoming). This nation±state can relate to Europe in three ways: (a) externally with Europe as the scene on which France acts; (b) through a doubling where Europe is created as a larger France which takes on the tasks and ideals of France because France has become too small to project its universal values itself (Mitterrand); and (c) to execute the typical French nation±state operation on Europe as such, i.e. to create a Europe that is French in its form, but not with a distinct France in it. What is remarkable about French politics ± in contrast to German ± is that the three main competing rationales for French foreign (and domestic) politics represent fundamentally different concepts of how to relate the nation±state to Europe, i.e. in the structural analysis (most clearly in the graphic representation in e.g. Wñver et al., forthcoming; Wñver 1998b), they are the three different second-tier options, and thus France's disagreements are far deeper than those in Germany. Whereas Mitterrand ten years ago had a solid consensus around his position of the doubling of France as EU, and therefore transferring state-qualities to Europe, there have been increasing problems and challenges. Especially in the 1992 Maastricht referendum and less in the 1995 Presidential election, ideas of more strict Gaullist derivation were present as the main challenger ± much stronger than the third option: a federalist alternative (ambiguously) represented by Giscard d'Estaing. Chirac is ruling on a coalition that mixes Mitterrand continuation with strong elements of a rationale of French independence including state-based alliance politics both with and against Germany. Various internal as well as external problems have made the `Mitterrand line' more and more dif®cult to present convincingly, and therefore a meaning vacuum threatens in France. Up to the EU's 1996±97 inter-governmental conference, France

274

Ole Wñver

which normally represents `the vision thing' found it unusually dif®cult to come up with any concept for Europe. Those who assume that `talk is cheap' will say, you can always come up with a narrative for France. If, in contrast, one believes there is structure to language and that a large part of politics is about structuring the national conceptual landscape, options are not so abundant. For France there are the three basic structural routes, and each of these can be given different concrete policy formulations. But there are many policies (for instance, most of the roles allocated to France in US plans for Europe) that are completely unrealistic. Even if the actual resources of France make most of the grand visions hard to carry through, it is more likely that the winning line will either be a self-defeating grand policy or eventually the far-reaching federalism that at least takes a French political form, rather than an unheroic, Angli®ed policy without any vision for France and for Europe. For most major states a policy is not stable if it is not able to answer questions about, so to say, the meaning of life: who are we (we Germans, for example), where are we going (building Europe/becoming the most powerful nation±state in Europe/winning economically instead of old-fashioned state politics)? Several very different answers are possible, but some answers are almost totally excluded since they go against the whole national repertoire of political key terms and connotations. And a non-answer is unlikely too. This is the cause of proactive policy, or non-linear reactions. If one line breaks down, at least for a medium or major power, it is likely that one will not just live with the ensuing vacuum, but the question about the meaning of and future for the nation±state will generate a new concept that can lead to discontinuous developments in foreign policy. For instance, the alternative to what has become known as `Mitterrand's Europe policy' ± i.e. the project of `lifting' France to the European level ± is not necessarily something a bit different (which one would expect with the usual input± output models; factor x causes increased pressure in some direction) but could very likely be something radically different. If this general line breaks down (which it has not done after so far ®ve years under Chirac), French politicians would have to say `go one level down' and pick up the French concept of nation±state and give it a different articulation, which could easily mean very different policies. The new policy lines would be dif®cult to explain on the basis of contemporary `input'. It will be a creative act from a French foreign policy leadership trying to shape a world, internally and externally, that is France-compatible. With increasing tensions both on the internal side ± making the new Europeanized France compatible with basic traditions of French statehood (discussions on banalization, regionalization, etc.) ± and on the external side (are we binding Germany or rather binding ourself?), there is increasing room for alternative stories. If implemented, they would demand radical change on either side ± in France, in Europe or both. It is increasingly questioned whether the existing France and the evolving Europe are immediately compatible, or whether a

The EU as a security actor

275

new compatibility must be created by statesmanship in either the internal or external arena.21 Germany and France have been given most attention here because they are decisive for the basic form of politics that the continent takes. Russia is the next most important power because it determines how far an eventual cooperative formation reaches geographically. Unfortunately, it is no longer possible to say that the European order in relation to Russia rests on the kind of mutual accommodation outlined here. For some years it has been very dif®cult for Russians to see the evolving Europe as one that leaves Russia with a role with which to identify. Certainly, Russia has been offered a place in Europe, but not one that is compatible with the aspirations and self-perception of most Russians. Increasingly, Russian policy has become more external to the construction of Europe, one where explicit threats lead to limited concessions, but not a role in any way parallel to France and Germany. The fault is therefore partly structural, partly political. The structural problem is that the emerging order grows out of a kind of concert politics ± mutual adjustment among the most important powers in 1990 ± which entails equality among the great powers, but a key component of this deal was to speed up European integration as a response to German uni®cation, and European integration increasingly creates an unbalanced continent, one centre and peripheral circles. The Russia problem is partly structural, caused by the contradiction between concert and integration (Wñver 1995a). Partly, the explanation is political inattentiveness by the West, especially the West Europeans. The problems of handling European integration were so big and the dif®culties of striking bargains so complicated that it was just registered with relief that Russia represented by Kozyrev was amicable. Shortsightedly, Russia was not offered the Europe necessary for Russian politicians to claim that developments left Russia in a role with which to identify. First of all the neglect of the CSCE (later OSCE) ± understandable in many ways ± was unfortunate because of its symbolic importance in Russia. The Kozyrev line came to be seen in Russia as one of US foreign policy rather than Russian (Arbatov 1993). With a little more effort by the West it might in time have appeared to Russians as a policy for Russia, Russia in another form. Now, it is more and more likely that Russia will slide out of the bargain to a mixture of confrontation and cooperation. Not anything like cold war, but maybe what former President Yeltsin dubbed `cold peace'; at least much less than equal participation in a concert-like grand bargain. A cooperative, parallel realization of the different Europes has already been broken on the Russian side, and the best we can hope for is probably continued Franco-German compatibility. This would ensure that Western Europe is centred rather than balance-of-power-driven while Russia is kept in a semi-cooperative relationship to the West. In Germany an alternative story is available, but it is not able to break the hold of the dominant one

276

Ole Wñver

± nor is there any need for this, because the dominant one continues to produce a convincing vision for Germany's future. But France is the weak point of the European scene ± the Europe-oriented self-interpretation of France is challenged. And if France turns away from this line, Germany's overall concept of Europe and thereby of itself will lose its rationale. Then the alternative narratives in Germany will suddenly have the chance of ®lling a vacuum, and German `interests' and `orientations' could change drastically. This interaction of domestic struggles over the meaning of state, nation and Europe, is where the direction of developments will be decided. Europe does not in an immediate sense have a German problem, it has a French problem. The French problem is the more serious because it will by necessity bring about the German problem, if not attended to. In policy terms, this points to the importance of accommodating `the most vulnerable signi®cant actor' (Christensen 1993) which in this case is France. And the seriousness of not doing so, because changes are likely not to be gradual but abrupt, involves a possible swing to a much less European line which would in turn bring down the Europe orientation of ®rst of all Germany. The focus when studying community and identity should not be the isolated question of `we-feeling' for the region (in this case Europe) ± something on which opinion polls can nicely be constructed ± because this leads into the hopeless discussion over the relative power of loyalty to Europe versus that to the nation±state (where the latter is still likely to win out and thus make `Europe' seem irrelevant).22 More interestingly, one can try to capture how a concept of Europe is stabilized by its inner connections to other ± maybe more powerful ± we's. Thus we avoid a return to old discussions like: are cosmopolitan loyalties really stronger than (or strong enough to withstand) nation±state identity in case of crisis? (answer: probably not!). This simply is not the question, because what the nation±state identity is has been transformed. This is primarily a question of how `Europe' has in each unique case been integrated into the `we's' of the different nation±states.23 This is a warning against con®dence in extrapolations from current trends, against the too rational arguments that new rivalry in Europe is impossible because it would be against the interests of the main powers. Well, that depends on how they de®ne their identity and thereby their interests. Current cooperative policies rest on national identities where Europe as a project has become crucial to identity. This in turn means that some success with European integration is necessary for these identities to be stable. Success is measured in different terms by different powers because it is different aspects of integration that are crucial to their vision of where they are heading. By being sensitive to the speci®c way the different powers are dependent on European processes, it is possible to stabilize a continuation of their broader self-conception and thereby continue to avoid narrowly de®ned competitive security rivalries. At present, this

The EU as a security actor

277

means ®rst of all taking seriously the complex and contradictory French demand for Europe. European stability hinges to a very large extent on the contingent and contradictory continuation of the European project as such ± ®rst of all because of the roles it plays in domestic patterns of meaning and policy. Therefore, the decisive ± but also slightly frightening ± criterion is Europe as seen from the single power (in this case France).

What is an actor? What is the EU? OK, so the EU is an important security institution, but the question was about the EU as a security actor. This analysis seems to show that the EU is a security structure which, according to IR conventions, must be the opposite of an actor. Of the three security functions, the third is most easily addressed in terms of actor, because intervention is rather foreign policy-like, something an actor does. The second is also formulated in relation to the EU as such, but it is mostly an effect of the EU as a process rather than deliberate choices. Still, it is seen from the outside and therefore the EU appears as an actor to the applicants. The ®rst ± and most important ± function, however, does not look much like the deed of an actor. It is about European integration as a process. The notion of an actor is in itself problematic. To say precisely who or what acts is always a tricky question because one can disaggregate any collective into sub-units and down to individuals and say: it is not really the `state' that acts, but some particular department ± or in the last instance individuals. But to disaggregate everything into individuals is not very helpful, because a lot of social life is only understandable when collectivities are seen as more than the sum of their members and treated as social realities (methodological collectivism). Identifying actors involves a level of analysis problem: the same event can be attributed to different levels (individual, bureaucracy, state for instance) (cf. Hollis and Smith 1990). The designation of actor is in some sense arbitrary. That is, arbitrary if ascertained through causal analysis. This is different if `the agent' is seen as a social construct, as actor on the international scene and as collectivity for a number of individuals. The social reality of `agents' is not arbitrary at all ± you certainly cannot get away with everything in terms of whom or what to treat as agents. What is particularly agential about agents is the `faculty or state of acting or exerting power' (Webster's de®nition of agency quoted in Buzan et al. 1993: 103). This, ultimately, is a way of telling stories. Normally, when an account is given of an event or a development, one inscribes a story about choices, about responsibility, about the points where things could have progressed differently: these are the points where some referents are endowed with the capacity to in¯uence, to choose, to direct. They are the agents.

278

Ole Wñver

In international relations there are conventions for de®ning `actors'. Responsibility is attributed to states. When a statesman acts on behalf of a state (e.g. signs a treaty), this act will be binding on the state even when the regime has changed ± whereas the individual will only in the most extreme cases be held responsible. States are constructed as quasi-subjects, i.e. they are constructed as `communities', as we's that are allotted collective ideas of interests, aims and fates (cf. Manning 1962). Therefore, focus has to be on the way agential structures are empowered to speci®c qualities/ abilities. In the states-system, for instance, some qualities that we normally think of as human reappear in this speci®c `cosmos' of `diplomatics' (cf. Manning 1962). They are generated at the inter-state level where these terms become meaningful with reference to the relevant actors/members, the states. Ultimately, individuals can always be said to be the actors, but if they are locked into strong roles, it is usually more relevant to see as the speaker the collectivities for whom they are designated authoritative representatives (parties, states or pressure groups), e.g. France-materialized-asde Gaulle, rather than the person de Gaulle. France was constituted as the actor in the world of diplomatics (Manning 1962). The state is real in the sense that all act as if the state existed (ibid.; see also Suganami 1999; Wñver 1997, Chapter 11). Agents are narratively constituted, but this does not mean that anybody who mentions something immediately has created it. The role of intersubjective judgement points to the general question of which agents are empowered more than others by given social structures. As phrased by Hidemi Suganami (1999): `We might ask ± what sorts of entitities are treated and treat themselves as agents in different social set-ups?; in what ways are the agents empowered within different social structures?; and how does one form of social structure move towards another?' The EU is an actor in the sense of the securitization theory: it securitizes by telling stories like the present one ± about integration vs. fragmentation and the threat from Europe's past. Stressing the narrative nature of actors helps also to see that becoming an actor is not simply a question of becoming as coherent and stable as possible (as assumed in much of the literature on the EU as international actor; cf. e.g. Ginsberg 1999). Complexity and differentiation are needed if an actor should be interesting enough to become a decisive locus in a narrative (Cadava et al. 1991; Copjec 1994). An actor is not just a thing, given and easy; it is instead problematic, critical ± a cracked actor. As argued by Jacques Derrida in relation to Europe, it is only possible to imagine a European identity, if conceived of not as self-identity but as a project and thus an opening towards an unknown future.24 We have to respond to the call of/for Europe, to show in this sense responsibility. But to turn it into a project that is particularly open to its non-de®ned future. We must take responsibility for this discourse about Europe and create a European identity `that consists precisely in not closing itself off in its own

The EU as a security actor

279

identity' (Derrida 1992a: 29), thereby opening the name of Europe to its future (ibid.: 35), but a future which we could not and should not pretend to know.

Defence, international identity and agentiality To see how the EU is becoming increasingly constituted as an international actor in the security ®eld, a speci®c discursive complex is particularly enlightening. It draws on a story as much about failure, doubt and ambivalence as it projects a kind of natural unity and subjectivity. The EU is often weighed as security actor and found too light because it does not act decisively in terms of military interventions in its periphery (the Gulf, Bosnia, Kosovo). Also efforts to build a common identity are judged unrealistic because a nation-building cultural effort (¯ag, anthem, passport, history books, etc.) will create a backlash because it challenges the nations directly. The only possible way to international solidarity and joint identity is the unsightly one of de®ning a new common enemy, of Othering somebody ± probably either Russia or Islamic fundamentalists; it is said. Against this, I will argue that we see the contours of a logic and a process whereby these two seemingly unrelated problems ± security role and identity ± become each other's solution. Europe's `Other' these years is Europe's own past. What is most often presented as the big threat is a return to European normality of power balancing, rivalry and wars. This `mythic' narrative of European history together with an international actor pro®le can produce a European international identity. Security, integration and identity are closely linked. The scenarios argument about the stark choice between integration and fragmentation is not only an academic theory, it is ®rst of all a dominant perception among continental statesmen. They act on the basis of this which has made security an increasingly important rationale for integration: integration in order to avoid fragmentation. Thereby, Europe's past becomes the threat image, not Russia, Moslems, Japan ± or the USA. The expression `European security' has always been ambiguous. Did it refer to the security of the states in Europe, or was it really Europe's security? In the ®rst instance, it would be a variation on `international security' which usually means only stability and a general ful®lment of the security aim of the units, i.e. `regional international security', whereas the second would make for `euro-national security'.25 There is no easy way to document this, but there seems to be a trend towards using increasingly the expression in the sense where it refers to the security of Europe as more than the sum of its parts. A responsibility towards the predicament of Europe.26 One explicitly European security argument is that Europe needs integration in order to avoid fragmentation. Europe has for most of its modern history been a balance of power system where a number of great powers

280

Ole Wñver

compete for in¯uence and allies, the argument goes. The Cold War was an exception where Europe interrupted this internal power balancing (and wars following from it) as external powers `overlaid' the European system (Buzan et al. 1990; Buzan 1991). Without this overlay, Europe after the Cold War faces the basic choice whether to return to traditional powerbalancing or create enough concentration of power to get a centred development. In this argument, it is obviously Europe which is at stake. At stake in some fateful manner: which direction shall European history take? In one (integration) there is room for much more `Europe' than in the other (fragmentation); when ®rst it has turned onto one track, this will be dif®cult to change. This is a security argument that is clearly attached to Europe as such. And appeals to `European security' increasingly build on this argument. (At least if promoted in an EU context. In and around NATO, `European security' has somewhat different connotations and could until a few years ago even have anti-EU connotations, but around the EU, European security means the `integration in order to avoid fragmentation' argument.) The balance of power had previously been seen as a value, a speci®c European quality (in the seventeenth and especially the eighteenth centuries) (cf. Pim den Boer 1995: 43f.). From the beginning of this century, criticism of the balance of power as peace strategy began to grow, ideas about collective security gained ground, and the balance of power was associated with power politics, aggression and dominance, not freedom and pluralism. This was expressed even stronger after World War II, where the European idea was to a large extent shaped as a revolt against Europe's own past. Only to a limited extent was the European project promoted as a return to a lost time of greatness, much more as the possibility that Europeans learn from their past and set new aims (den Boer 1995: 151±3, 174; Lipgens 1968; Monnet 1978). Some parts of the Europe discourse of the 1990s contain a more nostalgic, euro-national celebration of uniquely European traditions. However, in the ®eld of security there is a strong emphasis on the self-negating, self-transforming argument in relation to Europe itself. Europe's `Other', the enemy image, today is not to a very large extent `Islamic fundamentalism', `the Russians' or anything similar ± rather Europe's Other is Europe's own past which should not be allowed to become its future (Baudrillard 1992: 32ff.; Derrida 1992; Rytkonen 1995). The issue of common security and defence has moved steadily up the EU agenda in recent years. The extent should, however, be noticed to which the foreign policy enters as an identity argument. It is in the Zeitgeist to put political questions in identity terms. For the EU this can take two directions. The most common one is a culturalist one asking for European nation-building and leading to the conclusion that `we are not enough alike' ± we have to create more symbols of Europe, rewrite the history books, etc., etc. Otherwise, because we do not share historical memories and myths, the nations will win out. Especially after 1989 and the revival of nationalisms, this strategy has lost much of its credibility. A second

The EU as a security actor

281

direction is, however, possible: the identity of a political entity should not be thought of as stemming from its members being alike. Its identity gets ascribed on the international scene: it is recognized as someone by others, as an actor, by acting ± it gains identity from without instead of from within. In much classical political thinking, today most strongly alive in France, there is a sense in which you can only exist if you act on a scene, you only are if you are recognized as such by others. There are now a number of articles on `does Europe exist?' which puts the identity question in relation to the common foreign and security policy, most notably a joint piece by the French and German members of the `re¯ection group' preparing the EU's inter-governmental conference of 1995 appearing in French and German newspapers in December 1995.27 Thus, the decisions about organizing European security are always subjected to a dual security evaluation. At one level, there is a discussion in more `traditional' terms about the bene®ts of this or that organization, the ef®ciency of connecting or disconnecting organizations in one way or another, and the appropriateness of these constructs in relation to the expected challenges and threats, but at another level, the construct is judged in terms of the impact on the actor and thereby the being of the EU. Therefore, it was despite all the practical problems of implementing common defence, most likely (from this perspective ± opposite most others) that all alliance decisions on European security would have to be carefully balanced but each time imply one little step further towards an involvement of security within the EU. To attempt to build a clear NATO®rst structure in Europe would have major effects on European integration and thereby create more security problems than it solved ± not because NATO is not good at what it does, but because it is the EU that holds the key on the second dimension. Much that seems to make sense in narrow military security terms can be disastrous if the identity argument and the dynamics of the organizing selfreferential process are considered. Foreign and security policy is increasingly relevant as an identity factor. European identity will come not from cultural homogenization ± a dangerous self-defeating strategy leading most likely to nationalist backlashes ± but from international action, being recognized by others. All this is of course a warning against attempts to build European security through downsizing European integration (on the basis of the ¯imsy record of the joint foreign and security policy), i.e. concentrating on NATO. Not only will such attempts run into strong opposition due to the vision outlined here, they also risk undermining the identity pillars of existing institutionalization and trigger nationalist and unilateralist reorientation in France and thereby Germany. The acceleration of defence cooperation in 1999 after the Kosovo war should be seen as a dual agenda: concretely about defence, peace-keeping and humanitarian interventions, but simultaneously as a crucial component

282

Ole Wñver

of the identity project. Maybe it is less important whether the new European defence structures can actually put up 50,000 men or not and whether they would be able to conduct a Kosovo-like operation without the Americans or not ± the effort and all the talk along the way help to constitute the EU as an international actor and thereby structure narratives more and more systematically with the EU as the primary occupant of the role of `actor' ± responsible, blamable, the one that makes a difference.

Pessimism beyond realism This chapter has largely taken its questions from the traditional agenda and its answers from a much less traditional quarter. The establishment is likely to have some problems accepting the logic of the reply (even if it might like where it ends) ± and the post-structuralists will hesitate before granting the terms for the question, the phrasing of the problematique. Who says we need security systems? Isn't this to accept `the anarchy problematique'? Does it presuppose a need for arrangements to curtail some kind of natural or inherent violence and anarchy? Yes and no. Yes, world politics is indeed complex, unstable ± and could easily be called anarchic. Many unpleasant possibilities can be imagined, and some are suf®ciently likely to justify a term like pessimism. Still, this is exactly not the anarchy problematique in its traditional IR sense, because as Richard Ashley has pointed out, the anarchy problematique of `cooperation under anarchy' and other rational choice themes `assumes to be solved, the better part of the problem it purports to state' (1988: 229). The lack of central rule can easily be admitted, but the dominant IR agenda is produced by moving immediately from this ± the real anarchy ± to a speci®c articulation of the question in the form of sovereign states rationally calculating their mutual relations. Resisting the `heroic practice' of the sovereignty/anarchy blackmail, we do not get an ordered, peaceful world order ± quite the contrary, we are left with that excessive amount of openness and indecision which is mostly held to be intolerable and therefore absorbed into the anarchy problematique. `The absence of a central agency of rule would mean only that, an absence of a central agency of rule' (ibid.: 239). Like classical realism, this anarchy without the anarchy problematique points to a world of little stability, few guarantees and much violence of many sorts. Mainstream constructivists only avoid this confusing world by de facto riding on much of the disciplining and promises of the anarchy problematique: state-centredness (allegedly only as an academic assumption), domestic order and an agenda of inter-state co-operation. If the existing order is ± as the classical realists secretly suspect (Ashley 1988, 1996), and the post-structuralists claim ± built on ultimately arbitrary instalments of self-evidence, meaning and problems, one should be prepared for change to mean not necessarily gentle improvement but possibly (or most

The EU as a security actor

283

likely) quite dramatic changes which no-one can guarantee will be for the better. This Ashleyan image of realists as almost knowingly ®ghting an abyss of indeterminancy, creating limitations but not out of rigidity or narrowmindedness but in order to create order, contrasts strongly with the dominant self-image of most critical international relationists (most constructivists and some post-structuralists). They usually picture the problem of realism and rationalism as one of superstition or religion, of the mainstream dogmatically holding on to positivist limitations. This naturally endows the critical theorist with a much nicer position: the one of criticizing, transgressing and thinking the new. Paradoxically, this is the archmodernist position, the Enlightenment rhetoric in pure form. In contrast, we could admit that realists and other rationalists are actually Enlightenmentinspired thinkers ± often progressives ± who want to improve and transgress but of course have problematized in the dual sense of questioning and of imposing a certain set of limitations by de®ning the relevant problem. When realists and others resist the openings and modi®cations suggested by critical theorists, it is often not because of pure epistemological conservativism, but on the contrary a political practice based on their sense that their order is arbitrary and therefore in need of protection, that e.g. the channelling of violence into a state-based order has been an enormous historical gain that is too lightly given up if the implied ontological and epistemological decisions are reversed (Walker 1993; Williams 1998).28 Then, the decision to go ahead, to question and thereby re-open the historical resolution of dif®cult political problems, is not taken lightly with a sense of progressing towards a new (liberal-constructivist) dawn, but rather with a dif®dent sense of making a dif®cult political choice with unknown consequences.29 Just as this task and this impossible decision are accepted at the metatheoretical level, they should be accepted in concrete political struggles. Two main lines are available to a post-structuralist. One is to answer with meta-politics: much of post-structuralism takes an ethical or political stance for opening, pluralization, un®xing, and radical democratization ± it wants to open up the space for new thoughts, new actions, for transgression. This is an obvious way to translate post-structuralism into politics. However, if not carefully done, this politics of opening appears as necessarily good, as somehow metapolitically true, and thus ± paradoxically ± politically innocent. Problematically, this stance implies that one can deduce a progressive political position from a philosophical premise. At a meta-level, it consistently contributes to a questioning of authorities and experts, and thus abstractly to the development of radical democracy, but a political situation is always unique and concrete, a ®eld of forces, a situation demanding a choice, a choice that has consequences. To take the speci®c situation seriously includes the possibility that one would for other (non-meta) reasons favour other choices than opening and rather close off

284

Ole Wñver

some options (the easy illustrations: trying to close off fascism and racism; cf. Derrida 1996, 83f ). To assume that general `opening' and democratization lead to people resisting the bad and choosing the good would be a surprising Enlightenment optimistic audacity. No formula can ensure in advance that one's action is `good' or `progressive'. As argued most elegantly by Arendt (1958), the meaning of an action is constituted afterwards, by the storyteller not in the action, because politics is inter-action and therefore unpredictable and one cannot know what one does (cf. also Morgenthau 1946: Chapters 7±8). The other main possibility is to stress responsibility. Particularly in a ®eld like security one has to make choices and deal with the challenges and risks that one confronts ± and not shy away into long-range or principled transformations. The meta-political line risks (despite the theoretical commitment to the concrete other) implying that politics can be contained within large `systemic' questions. In line with the classical revolutionary tradition, after the change (now no longer the revolution but the meta-physical transformation), there will be no more problems whereas in our situation (until the change) we should not deal with the `small questions' of politics, only with the large one (cf. Rorty 1996). However, the ethical demand in poststructuralism (e.g. Derrida's `justice') is of a kind that can never be instantiated in any concrete political order ± it is an experience of the undecidable that exceeds any concrete solution and re-inserts politics. Therefore, politics can never be reduced to meta-questions; there is no way to erase the small, particular, banal con¯icts and controversies. In contrast to the quasi-institutionalist formula of radical democracy which one ®nds in the `opening' oriented version of deconstruction, we could with Derrida stress the singularity of the event. To take a position, take part, and `produce events' (Derrida 1994: 89) means to get involved in speci®c struggles. Politics takes place `in the singular event of engagement' (Derrida 1996: 83). Derrida's politics is focused on the calls that demand response/responsibility contained in words like justice, Europe and emancipation. Should we treat security in this manner? No, security is not that kind of call. `Security' is not a way to open (or keep open) an ethical horizon. Security is a much more situational concept oriented to the handling of speci®cs. It belongs to the sphere of how to handle challenges ± and avoid `the worst' (Derrida 1991). Here enters again the possible pessimism which for the security analyst might be occupational or structural. The in®nitude of responsibility (Derrida 1996: 86) or the tragic nature of politics (Morgenthau 1946, Chapter 7) means that one can never feel reassured that by some `good deed', `I have assumed my responsibilities' (Derrida 1996: 86). If I conduct myself particularly well with regard to someone, I know that it is to the detriment of an other; of one nation to the detriment of another nation, of one family to the detriment of another family, of

The EU as a security actor

285

my friends to the detriment of other friends or non-friends, etc. This is the in®nitude that inscribes itself within responsibility; otherwise there would be no ethical problems or decisions. (ibid.; and parallel argumentation in Morgenthau 1946; Chapters 6 and 7) Because of this there will remain con¯icts and risks ± and the question of how to handle them. Should developments be securitized (and if so, in what terms)? Often, our reply will be to aim for de-securitization and then politics meet meta-politics; but occasionally the underlying pessimism regarding the prospects for orderliness and compatibility among human aspirations will point to scenarios suf®ciently worrisome that responsibility will entail securitization in order to block the worst. As a security/securitization analyst, this means accepting the task of trying to manage and avoid spirals and accelerating security concerns, to try to assist in shaping the continent in a way that creates the least insecurity and violence ± even if this occasionally means invoking/producing `structures' or even using the dubious instrument of securitization. In the case of the current European con®guration, the above analysis suggests the use of securitization at the level of European scenarios with the aim of preempting and avoiding numerous instances of local securitization that could lead to security dilemmas and escalations, violence and mutual vili®cation.

Notes 1 Accordingly, realists who discuss European security, often treat the case for the EU as a sub-set of liberal strategies such as economic interdependence or `institutions' (cf. e.g. John Mearsheimer 1990: 5±56). 2 When Americans enter this sweeping generalization it is because Americans generally underestimate the transformative nature of the EU project. In one way, this is surprising because given their own history Americans should be open both to the possibility of actual Union-building and to the possiblity of odd mixes of `states' and `federal authorities' (cf. Deudney 1996). However, American policy-makers and policy advisers have a surprising tendency to underestimate the EU as witnessed in, for instance, thinking of NAFTA and the EU as parallel or imagining a North Atlantic Free Trade Area or even an `Atlantic Union' (see the opposed views of Charles Kupchan and myself in Kupchan 1998b). That theorists and politicians wanting to use the established categories are particularly blind to post-sovereign developments is probably less surprising. 3 On neo-medievalism, see Bull 1977: 254f., 264ff., 285f. and 291ff.; Der Derian 1987: 70 and 79ff.; Wñver 1996b: 107±28. On empires, see references below in note 9. 4 Most of the early writings are collected in Wñver (1997), the currently authoritative presentation of the theory is Buzan et al. (1997), and various aspects have been further explored in a number of recent articles, see www.polsci. ku.dk/people/faculty/~Ole_Wñver.htm

286

Ole Wñver

5 Or at the risk of moving very close to a Schmittian dezisionismus: the very choice about whether to make something a case of security (as in his studies: of friend/foe or of sovereignty) is irreducible. And ± in order to avoid simply moving from objective to subjective ± it should be stressed that since securitization is never (in contrast to Schmitt) decided by one sovereign subject but in a constellation of decisions it is ultimately inter-subjective and irreducible to causal background factors. Causes always have to pass a number of decisions of a political nature and the status of `security' is therefore as socially and politically constructed. 6 The theory of speech acts introduces the ideas of `performatives', utterances which are used to perform an act instead of describing it, e.g., by uttering `I apologize for my behaviour' the speaker actually makes an apology, he does not describe himself apologizing for his behaviour. This distinguishes performatives from constatives which are used to make a true or false statement. Performatives do not have truth conditions but felicity conditions. These are conventions regulating the appropriate use of performative utterances. The felicity conditions for the utterance `I hereby declare you husband and wife' is ± among other things ± that the speaker must have the authority to marry two people (Cf. The Lexicon of Linguistic, http://helpdesk.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/ ~rustless/ling/). 7 The importance of cultural capital for the ability to perform a speech act has been argued by Pierre Bourdieu (1991 [1982]). A speech act is not only linguistic, it is also social, and depends on the social position of the enunciator, and thus in a wider sense is inscribed in a social ®eld. Later, however, Bourdieu has explained that this was an argument he made in order to counter a tendency of some post-structuralists and philosophers of everyday language to make the purely linguistic, internal features of a speech act completely determining (Bourdieu 1996). Thus, he accepts the critique by Judith Butler (1996, 1997) that since the speech act needs to include Bourdieu's own idea of `social magic' it has to be indeterminate, open for surprises. The magic whereby some are accepted as holding authority, others not, is not purely a question of a formal position of authority (Austin's example where `I declare you man and wife' is an effective speech act only when performed by a properly authorized authority). There is a performative force of the speech act; to use Bourdieu's own concepts: it has a magical ef®ciency, it makes what it says. A speech act is interesting exactly because it holds the insurrecting potential to break the ordinary, to establish meaning that is not already in the context. It reworks or produces a context by the performative success of the act. While it is important to study social conditions of successful speech acts, it is necessary always to keep open the possibility of failure of an act that previously succeeded and where the formal resources and position are in place (the breakdown of communist regimes in Eastern Europe) and conversely that new actors can perform a speech act they previously where not expected to (the environmental movement) (cf. Butler 1996; Derrida 1977a[1972], 1977b, 1986; Wñver 1997). Therefore, the issue of `who can do security?' and `was this a case of securitization?' can ultimately only be judged in hindsight (Wñver et al. 1993: 188). It cannot be closed off by ®nite criteria for success. 8 A political element is always added, because it is a collective decision whether we will deal with something in one mode or another, as `security' (with all that this entails) or only as say a `challenge'. 9 Watson (1992). On empires as an analogy of current relevance, see Wñver (1996c); Kupchan (1998a); Watson (1997). 10 Rumour about alleged Mearsheimer remark at APSA, mid-1990s.

The EU as a security actor

287

11 The neorealist version takes the form of security complex theory (cf. Buzan 1991: Chapter 5). The scenarios were ®rst presented in Buzan et al. (1990) with more theoretical elaboration in some simultaneous articles.; and most upto-date empirically in Buzan's chapter 1 and the concluding chapter 10 to Wñver, Buzan et al. (1993). The most recent re¯ection on this security complex analysis of the scenarios is Wñver, `En sikkerhedsteoretisk forklaring paÊ europñisk integration, inaugural lecture 17 September 1999 and Buzan and Wñver, in preparation. 12 The Eastern neighbours operate in the shadow of the EU where the `would-be insiders' have a more narrow margin of manouevre than the `insiders' and the voluntary or inescapable `outsiders' (Mouritzen et al. 1997). 13 Probably, a survey among security experts in 1990 would have placed Hungary, its minorities and its neighbours as one of the potentially most dangerous complexes of con¯icts (cf. the inter-war period), and now it is generally seen as much less pressing. Not that any formal `solution' has been found, but energies have been re-directed, and the involved parties have changed identities, interests and agendas. 14 Historically, the Eastern border originally had to be a river (for theological reasons ± the Bible said that the three Continents were divided by water) and debate roared over which river of the many large North±South oriented rivers in Russia was to count. But in the nineteenth century, the relatively inconspicious Ural Mountains became the most prevalent border between Europe and Asia, partly because of a Romantic preference for mountains (Parker 1960), partly as a result of a Russian conscious effort (Neumann 1997). In any case, the border runs down through Russia and this converges with the ambivalence of Russian self-de®nition to produce an image of Europeanness as fading off gradually over the great Russian land masses. 15 Morocco applied in the 1970s and basically received the answer: Read the treaty ± it says European states ± and you are not Europe. 16 On these matters, Turkey is the crucial country in practice. Here has been some ambivalence from the side of the EU: should Turkey, this large and geostrategically important country to the South-East of the EU be dealt with as Southern (i.e. like Morocco) and get a `no' or as Eastern and get a `yes, but'. During 1999, the position seemed to move towards an Easterni®cation of Turkey. 17 But why deal with the present analysis as an instance of `constructivism'? Usually, I do not label myself a constructivist because my main inspiration comes from IR realism and post-structuralism (`post-structuralist realism'; cf. Wñver 1989). But in the current terminology of the discipline, any middle position is usually called constructivist, and thus the deviant post-structuralism and odd realism brings me onto constructivist terrain. More appropriately the socalled Copenhagen School (when combining Buzan and Wñver) tends to become constructivist in a more traditional sense ± and even uses the label on itself, cf. Buzan and Wñver 1997. Still, it could be argued that it is misleading to group the current approach together with American mainstream constructivism which is more sociological, the current approach still discourse-based, mainstream constructivism increasingly liberalist, the present one highly critical of liberalism; cf. Wñver forthcoming. 18 One of the sources of instability in European integration is probably that with integration involving more and more of society, this demand for mutual readability extends from a narrow professionalized diplomatic community to society at large. With referenda and European politics generally becoming domestic politics, the population has to have some sense of how the others

288

Ole Wñver

think Europe. We are far from having one European OÈffentlichkeit, but it might be realistic to cultivate a mutual sensitivity to modes of thinking politically (cf. Wñver 1995a). 19 According to Katzenstein (1998): This is not to argue that German policy re¯ected idealist motives in the 1980s or 1990s. It did not. It re¯ected German interests. But those interests, pursued through power and bargaining, were fundamentally shaped by the institutional context of Europe and the Europeanization of the identity of the German state that had taken place in the preceding decades. 20 Much of their disagreement can be summarized as the argument that the other side was most likely to produce an isolated Germany embedded in power politics. The right said that loyalty and sharing of burdens within the alliance were crucial for avoiding isolation of Germany and more generally for keeping intact the multilateral structures on which de-nationalization rested. The left, however, argued that a more militarily active Germany would contribute to a strengthening of power politics. Because of this structure, it was relatively easy for the new SPD±Green Government in 1998 to take over the more activist line which it had fought as opposition. It had been introduced slowly and carefully without creating unfortunate counter-effects and thus it was now fully consistent with the arguments of social democrats and Greens to continue this policy when they took over. Thus, post-war German foreign policy has produced one more of its classical cases of Aufhebung: every major new move was resisted by the opposition ± be it the West orientation of Adenauer, the Ostpolitik of Brandt, the Germany policy of Kohl or now the more active foreign and defence policy also of Kohl ± in order to become afterwards the shared and uncontested platform for governments of both sides. 21 For the theoretical framework behind this theory of foreign policy change see Wñver et al. (forthcoming) and (more easily available and briefer) Wñver (1994). The empirical interpretation of France is based on Ulla Holm (1992). 22 Anthony Smith (1992), for instance, has argued that European identity is unlikely, because Europe does not have a suf®cient arsenal of common myths and symbols. 23 One has to study internal relations among concepts ± how the meaning of one is necessarily linked to the meaning of other concepts. This is very different from the soft constructivist study of `norms' and other free ¯oating international things studied outside any concrete meaning-generated universe. 24 Derrida conceives of the European project as a named open-ended journey. On the one hand, in contrast to the (post-structuralist) attitude that only celebrates openness and resists any naming, any speci®c shape (to be discussed in the last section), he takes the concept of Europe ± with all the risks it involves ± and tries to give it a speci®c (non-)direction: what is proper to a culture is not to be identical to itself. Not to not have an identity, but not to be able to identify itself, to be able to say `me' or `we'; to be able to take the form of a subject only in the non-identity to itself or, if you prefer, only in the difference with itself. (Derrida 1992: 9) On the other hand, it is a call not given to ®nd a de®nite solution but to keep questions and demands for responsibility alive. 25 Egbert Jahn's terms used in Jahn et al. (1987).

The EU as a security actor

289

26 One way to investigate this would be a study of the metaphors used in relation to European security. Are they drawn from the cluster connected to personi®cation ± where Europe has a face, a will, is embarrassed, etc. ± or is Europe imagined as a family, a system, a structure, a building or something else where it is only the framework for or the constellation of the `real' units? (Cf. Thornborrow 1993.) 27 See the article by the German and French members of the EU's `re¯ection group' that prepared the IGC-96: Hoyer and Barnier (1995). Marlene Wind quotes an article by FrancËois Goguel from Le Figaro of 4 April 1991 entitled `Europe does not exist' (re¯ecting on the feeble appearance of the EU in the Gulf War) (Wind 1992: 24) and e.g. French historian FrancËois Furet writes, `Europe now stands at a crossroads, where only by uniting may it still parry its decline. If it cannot accomplish this, the twenty-®rst century may well take shape without it' (Furet 1995: 89). 28 Much liberal security practice is paradoxical. It undermines its own premises, because it reinforces post-sovereign developments including multiple referent objects for security while liberal security discourse conceives of security order in state-centric terms and aims at de-securitization and de-politiczation, certainly not a re-securitization in post-statist forms (cf. Wñver 1998a). Thus, although the strategy is a gradual down-grading of sovereignty and security and an increase of economic and civic relations in a state-based system, the effect might well be much less orderly. 29 Williams makes an argument which I take to be related: Hobbes' `antiobjectivist epistemological stance does not lead to a happy world of openness, play, and difference; rather it highlights the ways in which such a position can underlie dangerous and potentially bloody dynamics' (1996: 233).

References Arbatov, A. (1993) `Russia's Foreign Policy Alternatives', International Security vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 5±43. Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Ash, T.G. (1993) In Europe's Name: Germany and the Divided Continent, New York: Vintage. Ashley, R. (1988) `Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematique', Millennium vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 227±62. ÐÐ (1996) `Critical Spirits/Realist Specters: Some Hypotheses on the SpectroPoetics of International Relations', unpublished MS. Austin, J.L. (1975 [1962]) How To Do Things with Words, 2nd edn, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Banchoff, T. (1996) `The Narrative Sources of EU Legitimacy in France and Germany', draft paper. Barnett, M.N. (1995) `Sovereignty, Nationalism and Regional Order in the Arab States System', International Organization vol. 49, no. 3, pp. 479±510. Baudrillard, J. (1992) The Illusion of the End, trans. C. Turner, Standford, CA: Stanford University Press 1994. den Boer, P. (1995) `Europe to 1914: The Making of an Idea', in P. den Boer, P. Bugge and O. Wñver, The History of the Idea of Europe, vol. 1, Milton Keynes: Open University, pp. 13±823. Bourdieu, P. (1991 [1982]) Language and Symbolic Power, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

290

Ole Wñver

ÐÐ (1996) Response at seminar on `Fin-de-Siecle Intellectuals: Looking Back, Looking Forward', University of California at Berkeley, April. Brunner, J. (1991) `The Narrative Construction of Reality', Critical Inquiry vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 1±21. Bull, H. (1977) The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics, London: Macmillan. Butler, J. (1996) paper presented at seminar with Pierre Bourdieu on the future role of intellectuals at the University of California at Berkeley, April. ÐÐ (1997) Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative, London: Routledge. Buzan, B. (1991) People, States and Fear: An Agenda for Security Studies in the Post-Cold War Era, Hemel Hempstead: Wheatsheaf. Buzan, B., Jones, C. and Little, R. (1993) The Logic of Anarchy: Neorealism to Structural Realism, New York: Columbia University Press. Buzan, B., Kelstrup, M., Lemaitre, P., Tromer, E. and Wñver, O. (1990) The European Security Order Recast: Scenarios for Post-Cold War Europe, London: Pinter. Buzan, B. and Little, R. (2000) An Introduction to International Systems, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Buzan, B. and Wñver, O. (1997) `Slippery? Contradictory? Sociologically Untenable? The Copenhagen School Replies', Review of International Studies vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 143±52. ÐÐ (in preparation) Regions and Powers in the Post-Cold War Security Order. Buzan, B., Wñver, O. and de Wilde, J. (1998) Security: A New Framework for Analysis, Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Cadava, E., Connor, P. and Nancy, J.-L. (1991) Who Comes After the Subject?, New York: Routledge. Christensen, T.J. (1993) `Conclusion: System Stability and the Security of the Most Vulnerable Signi®cant Actor', in Coping with Complexity in the International System, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 340±53. Clark, C. (1997) `Forging Identity: Beethoven's ``Ode'' as European Anthem', Critical Inquiry vol. 23, no. 4, pp. 789±807. Copjec, J. (ed.) (1994) Supposing the Subject(S), London and New York: Verso. Der Derian, J. (1987) On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement, Oxford: Blackwell. ÐÐ (1995) `A Reinterpretation of Realism: Genealogy, Semiology, Dromology', in J. Der Derian (ed.) International Theory: Critical Investigations, London: Macmillan, pp. 363±96. Derrida, J. (1997a [1972]) `Signature Event Context', Glyph vol. 1, pp. 172±97. ÐÐ (1977b) `Limited Inc a b c', Glyph vol. 2, pp. 162±254. ÐÐ (1986) `Declarations of Independence', New Political Science, 15, pp. 7±15. ÐÐ (1991 [1988±89]) ` ``Eating Well,'' or the Calculation of the Subject: An Interview with Jacques Derrida', in E. Cadava, P. Connor and J.-L. Nancy (eds) Who Comes After the Subject?, New York: Routledge, pp. 96±119. ÐÐ (1992a [1991]) The Other Heading: Re¯ections on Today's Europe, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. ÐÐ (1992b) `Force of Law: the ``Mystical Foundation of Authority'' ', in D. Cornell, M. Rosenfeld and D.G. Carlson (eds) Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice, London and New York: Routledge.

The EU as a security actor

291

ÐÐ (1994 [1993]) Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, London: Routledge. ÐÐ (1996) `Remarks on Deconstruction and Pragmatism', in C. Mouffe (ed.) Deconstruction and Pragmatism, London: Routledge, pp. 77±88. Deudney, D. (1996) `Binding Sovereigns: Authorities, Structures, and Geopolitics in Philadelphian Systems', in T. Biersteker and C. Weber (eds) State Sovereignty as Social Construct, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Doyle, M.W. (1986) Empires, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Elshtain, J.B. (1987) Women and War, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Eriksson, J. et al. (1999) `Observers or Advocates?: On the Political Role of Security Analysts', Cooperation and Con¯ict vol. 34, no. 3, September, pp. 310±52. Forrester, J. (1990) The Seduction of Psychoanalysis: Freud, Lacan and Derrida, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Furet, F. (1995) `Europe after Utopianism', Journal of Democracy vol. 6, no. 1, January, pp. 79±89. George, A. (ed.) (1983) Managing U.S.±Soviet Rivalry: Problems of Crisis Prevention, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Giesen, B. (1993) Die Intellektuellen und die Nation: Eine deutsche Achsenzeit, Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Ginsberg, R. (1999) `Conceptualizing the European Union as an International Actor: Narrowing the Theoretical Capability±Expectation Gap', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 37.3, pp. 429±54. Heilbrun, J. (1996) `Germany's New Right', Foreign Affairs vol. 75, no. 6, pp. 80± 98. Hellmann, G. (1996) `Goodbye Bismarck? The Foreign Policy of Contemporary Germany', Mershon International Studies Review vol. 40: Supplement 1, April, pp. 1±40. Hollis, M. and Smith, S. (1990) Explaining and Understanding International Relations, Oxford: Clarendon Press. Holm, U. (1992) Det Franske Europe (The French Europe), AÊrhus: AÊrhus Universitetsforlag. ÐÐ (1997) `The French Garden is Not What it Used to be', in K.-E. Jùrgensen (ed.) Re¯ective Approaches to European Governance. London: Macmillan, pp. 128±46. Hoyer, W. and Barnier, M. (1995) `Existiert Europa? Ein deutsch-franzoÈsischen PlaÈdoyer fuÈr eine gemeinsame Auûen- und Sicherheitspolitik', Frankfurther Allgemeine Zeitung, 7 December 1995. Huysmans, J. (1995) `Migrants as a Security Problem: Dangers of ``Securitizing'' Societal Issues', in R. Miles and D. ThaÈnhardt (eds) Migration and European Integration: The Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion, London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ÐÐ (1998a) `Security! What Do You Mean? From Concept to Thick Signi®er', European Journal of International Relations vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 226±55. ÐÐ (1998b) `Revisiting Copenhagen: Or, On the Creative Development of a Security Studies Agenda in Europe', European Journal of International Relations vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 479±506. Jahn, E., Lemaitre, P. and Wñver, O. (1987) European Security: Problems of Research on Non-Military Aspects, Copenhagen: Copenhagen Papers no. 1.

292

Ole Wñver

Katzenstein, P.J. (1998) `United Germany in an Integrating Europe', in P.J. Katzenstein (ed.) Tamed Power: Germany in Europe, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Keohane, R.O. (1990) `Le istituzioni internazionali del mondo nuovo', Relazioni Internazionali December, pp. 3±17. Kissinger, H.A. (1957) A World Restored: Castlereagh, Metternich and the Restoration of Peace 1812±1822, Boston: Houghton Mif¯in Company. Kohl, H. (1996) address to the European Parliament, February. Kratochwil, F. (1982) `On the Notion of ``Interest'' in International Relations', International Organization vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 1±30. Kupchan, C. (1998a) `After Pax Americana: Benign Power, Regional Integration, and the Sources of a Stable Multipolarity', International Security vol. 23, no. 2, pp. 40±79. ÐÐ (ed.) (1998b) Atlantic Security: Contending Visions, New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press. The Lexicon of Linguistic, http://helpdesk.rus.uni-stuttgart.de/~rustless/long/ Lipgens, W. (1968) Europa-FoÈderationsplaÈne der Widerstandsbewegungen 1940± 45, Munich: Schriften des Forschungsinstitutes der deutschen Gesellschaft fuÈr AuswaÈrtige Politik No. 26. Manning, C.A.W. (1962) The Nature of International Society, London: LSE. Mearsheimer, J. (1990) `Back to the Future: Instability in Europe after the Cold War', International Security vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 5±56. ÐÐ (1994/1995) `The False Promise of International Institutions', International Security vol. 19, no. 3, Winter 1994/95, pp. 5±49. Mitterrand, F. (1995) address to the European Parliament on 15 March 1995. Monnet, J. (1978) Memoirs, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company. Morgenthau, H.J. (1946) Scienti®c Man vs. Power Politics, Chicago: Chicago University Press. Mouritzen, H. (1993) `The Two Musterknaben and the Naughty Boy: Sweden, Finland and Denmark in the Process of European Integration', Cooperation and Con¯ict vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 373±402. ÐÐ (1995) `The Nordic Model as a Foreign Policy Instrument: Its Rise and Fall', Journal of Peace Research vol. 32, no. 1, pp. 45±59. Mouritzen, H., Wñver, O. and Wiberg, H. (1997) European Integration and National Adaptations: A Theoretical Inquiry, New York: Nova Science Publishers. Neumann, I.B. (1997) `The Geopolitics of Delineating ``Russia'' and ``Europe'': The Creation of the ``Other'' in European and Russian Tradition', in O. Tunander, P. Baev and V.I. Einagel (eds) Geopolitics in Post-Wall Europe: Security, Territory, and Identity, London: Sage, pp. 147±73. Parker, W.H. (1960) `Europe: How Far?', Geographical Journal vol. 126, pp. 278± 96. Pedersen, O.K. (1969) Udenrigsminister P. Munch's Opfattelse af Danmarks Stilling i International Politik, Copenhagen: GAD. Pehe, J. (1992) `Czechs and Slovaks De®ne Postdivorce Relations', RFE/RL Research Report (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty) vol. 1, no. 45, 13 November 1992, pp. 7±11. Ricoeur, P. (1995) `Re¯ections on a New Ethos for Europe', Philosophy and Social Criticism vol. 21, nos 5±6, pp. 3±14.

The EU as a security actor

293

Rorty, R. (1996) `Response to Simon Critchley', in C. Mouffe (ed.) Deconstruction and Pragmatism, London: Routledge, pp. 41±6. Ruggie, J.G. (1993) `Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations', International Organizations vol. 47, no. 1 (Winter), pp. 139±74. Rytkonen, H. (1995) `Securing European Identity ± Identifying Danger', paper presented at the annual meeting of International Studies Association, Chicago, February. Schirrmacher, F. (1990) `Abschied von der Literatur der Bundesrepublik', Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, literature section p. 2, 2 October. Schwarz, H.-P. (1994) Die Zentralmacht Europas: Deutschlands RuÈckkejr auf die WeltbuÈhne, Berlin: Siedler Verlag. Smith, A. (1992) `National Identity and the Idea of European Unity', International Affairs vol. 68, no. 1, January, pp. 55±76. StuÈrmer, M. (1990) Die Grenzen der Macht: Begegnung der Deutschen mit der Geschichte, Berlin: Siedler, Verlag. Suganami, H. (1999) `Agents, Structures, Narratives', European Journal of International Relations vol. 5, no. 3, September, pp. 365±86. Tassin, E. (1992) `Europe: A Political Community?', in C. Mouffe (ed.), Dimensions of Radical Democracy: Pluralism, Citizenship, Community, London: Verso. Thornborrow, J. (1993) `Metaphors of Security: A Comparison of Representation in Defence Discourse in Post-Cold-War France and Britain', Discourse and Society vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 99±119. Wñver, O. (1989) `Beyond the Beyond of Critical International Theory', paper presented at the joint meeting of ISA and BISA, London, March 1989, COPRI Working Paper 1989/1. ÐÐ (1990) `Three Competing Europes: German, French, Russian, International Affairs vol. 66, no. 3, July, pp. 477±93. ÐÐ (1992) `Nordic Nostalgia: Northern Europe after the Cold War', International Affairs, vol. 68, no. 1, January, pp. 77±102. ÐÐ (1993) `Europe: Stability and Responsibility', in Internationales Umfeld, Sicherheitsinteressen und nationale Planung der Bundesrepublik. Teil C: UnterstuÈtzende Einzelanalysen. Vol. 5, Ebenhausen: Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, SWP ± S 383/5, February, pp. 31±72. ÐÐ (1994) `Resisting the Temptation of Post Foreign Policy Analysis', in W. Carlsnaes and S. Smith (eds) European Foreign Policy: The EC and Changing Perspectives in Europe, London: ECPR/Sage, pp. 238±73. ÐÐ (1995a) `Power, Principles and Perspectivism: Understanding Peaceful Change in Post-Cold War Europe', in H. PatomaÈki (ed.) Peaceful Changes in World Politics, Tampere: TAPRI, pp. 208±82. ÐÐ (1995b) `Hvordan det hele alligevel kan gaÊ galt . . .', in H. Gottlieb and F.P. Jensen (eds) Tyskland i Europa, Copenhagen: SNU, pp. 297±336. ÐÐ (1996a) `European Security Identities', Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 34, no. 1, March 1996, pp. 103±32. ÐÐ (1996b) `Europe, State and Nation in the New Middle Ages', in J. de Wilde and H. Wiberg (eds) Organized Anarchy in Europe: The Role of Intergovernmental Organizations, London: Tauris, pp. 107±28. ÐÐ (1996c) `Europe's Three Empires: A Watsonian Interpretation of Post-Wall European Security', in R. Fawn and J. Larkins (eds) International Society After

294

Ole Wñver

the Cold War: Anarchy and Order Reconsidered, London: Macmillan in association with Millennium 1996, pp. 220±60. ÐÐ (1997) Concepts of Security, Copenhagen: Copenhagen Political Studies Press. ÐÐ (1998a) `Insecurity, Security and Asecurity in the West European Non-War Community', in E. Adler and M. Barnett (eds) Security Communities, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 69±118. ÐÐ (1998b) `Explaining Europe by Decoding Discourses', in A. Wivel (ed.) Explaining Europe, Copenhagen: Copenhagen Political Studies Press, pp. 100± 47. ÐÐ (1999) `Security: A Conceptual History for International Relations', paper presented at the general meeting of the Nordic Political Science Association, Uppsala, August 1999. ÐÐ (forthcoming) `Does the English Schools' Via Media equal the Contemporary Constructivist Middle Ground? ± or: on the difference between philosophical scepticism and sociological theory', paper presented at BISA December 1999, under revision. Wñver, O., Buzan, B. et al. (1993) Identity, Migration and the New Security Agenda in Europe, London: Pinter. Wñver, O., Holm, U. and Larsen, H. (forthcoming) The Struggle for `Europe': French and German Concepts of State, Nation and European Union. Walker, R.B.J. (1993) Inside/Outside: International Relations as Political Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Watson, A. (1992) The Evolution of International Society, London: Routledge. ÐÐ (1997) The Limits of Independence, London: Routledge. Wendt, A. (1992) `Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics', International Organization vol. 46, no. 2, pp. 391±426. Wight, M. (1977) Systems of States, Leicester: Leicester University Press. ÐÐ (1986) Power Politics, 2nd rev. edn (1st edition 1946), London: Penguin. Williams, M.C. (1996) `Hobbes and International Relations: A Reconsideration', International Organization vol. 50, no. 2, pp. 213±36. ÐÐ (1998) `Security and the Politics of Identity', European Journal of International Relations vol. 4, no. 2, pp. 204±25. Wind, M. (1992) `Eksisterer Europa? Re¯ektioner over Forsvar, Identitet og Borgerdyd i et nyt Europa', in C. Sùrensen (ed.) Europa Nation-Union ± efter Minsk og Maastricht, Copenhagen: Fremad, 23±81.

Index

academics, the role of 175±6 see also security analyst acquis communautaire 112, 242 actors 34±5, 277±8, 281±2; individual 48; international 279 Addonino committee, the 233 Adenauer, K. 288 Adler, E. 38±9, 49±50 Adorno, T. 90 Advocate General 117 agencies 188; external security 171; police 180; security 176, 183±4 Agenda 2000 7, 245 agent 278±9; model 38; security 177; socially constructed 277 Amsterdam Treaty 2, 4, 7, 183, 227, 238, 240±4 see also Treaty of Amsterdam anarchy 35, 36 anti-political 154, 157 see also political Arendt, H. 284 Article 119 138; as economic reasoning 133±4 Article 177 120; procedure 117±18 articulation 133, 135 Ashley, R. 125, 282±3 asylum seekers 162, 165 audience 251 Aurelius, M. 61 Auschwitz 94 Austin, J. 109 authority 22, 63, 205±6, 208±13, 215±16, 222, 264±5; of decision 123±4; of the ECB 218±21; of international institutions 222; levels of 15±16; overlapping 107 authorization 26, 28 autonomy 47

balance of power 40, 209, 254±5, 280 Balladur plan 261 Bank of International Settlements (BIS) 206, 213±16, 221 Barber, B. 58 bargaining 42, 46 Barnett, M. 267 Bartelson, J. 109 Baudrillard, J. 89, 94±5 Bauman, Z. 94 Bay, A. 83 Behometh 67 Benjamin, W. 90, 92±3 Bertrand, M. 187 Bigo, D. 165±6 bipolarity 171, 194; end of 193 Blitzkrieg 87 The Blob 77±8 Bodin, J. 23, 109 Bohr, N. 79 Bosnia 67 Bourdieu, P. 174±5, 286 Brandt, W. 232, 288 Brik, O. 81 Broad, C. 87 Bull, H. 58, 65, 78, 255 Bundesverfassungsgerichts 123 Butter®eld, H. 257 Buzan, B. 192±3, 253 Campell, D. 194 Caporaso, J. 209 Carr, E.H. 73 causality 39 Central and Eastern European countries 226, 235±40 centre-periphery 259, 265 Cerny, P. 58

296

Index

change 266 Chernobyl 75 Chirac, J. 273±4 Chomsky, N. 194 Christiansen, T. 50 CIA 190 CIPC 183 citizen 229; -ship 6, 24±7, 152, 155, 157±60, 240 city-states 265 civic 230, 235, 239±40, 255 civilizations, clash of 187 Clark, S. 65 class 152 Clausewitz, C. von 74 Clinton, W.J. 89; foreign policy of 76 co-decision procedures 241 coercion 176 Cold Peace 275 Cold War 235, 271, 280; end of 43; world order 40 co-legislator, European Parliament as 241 collaboration 43 collective: defence 250, 254, 264; security 186, 190, 254±5, 258, 264±5, 280 command and control networks 74 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 239, 243 common currency 226; see also Economic and Monetary Union common European identity 228, 230, see also identity common European standards 134 Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) 234, 242, 264 common market 118 see also internaland single market common security 280 communism 187 communitarian 160±1 communities 64, 210, 220±1, 278; constructed 230; imagined 230; national 151; non- national 131; principal 213±15, 220 community 4±5, 7, 11±12, 33±4, 57, 63, 137, 149±50, 162, 207±13, 217, 230±5, 267, 276; constructed 132, 231; imagined, 231; political 3, 11, 142, 153, 156± 7, 160, 163; recognition of 125; the role of 131 concentric circles 255±60, 262, 264±5

constitution: formal 111; semihierarchial 107 constitutional 211; battle 123; change 122; patriotism 230; transformation 113 Constitutional Court 111, 120 constitutionalization: doctrines 115; process 107, 122, 125 construction 11, 139; of the EU 141; of Europe 15; of the European polity 227; gender 132, see also gender; of the inter-war 84 constructivism 35, 38±9, 50, 77±9, 81, 83, 193, 207, 210, 212, 265±8, 282±3, 287; schools of 80 constructivist 3, 50±1, 75, 80±2, 194; accounts 49; approach 108 consumer policy 239±40 contemporary international theory 33, 35 contested polity 227, 245 conventional theories 106 co-operation 41, 42; theory 39 Copenhagen Declaration on European Identity 232±3 Copenhagen School 287 Copenhagen summit 238 Costa case 111, 116, 119, 120 Cox, R.W. 51, 212 crime 184, 239, see also organized crime critical theory 37, 48, 266, 283 cyberwar 74 Daily Telegraph 85 de Gaulle, C. 110, 232, 273, 278; empty chair policy 110, 115 de Witte, B. 112 DEA 189 deconstruction 11 see also construction de-contextualized objects 141 deepening 263; deepening-widening dilemma 226 defence 171, 191, 279; industries 187 Degener, M. 97 Deleuze, G. 72, 76 Delors, J. 233, 238, 243 Delphy, C.143 democracy 61, 153, 156±8, 174, 226, 230, 232, 235, 283±4; cathodic 95 democratic community 240; de®cit 137, 220, 226, 234; European 155; idea 164

Index democratic peace 74, 88, 94, 250, 254 demos 229 de-politicizing 156, 161±2 see also politicizing Der Derian, J. 194 Derrida, J. 65, 278±9, 284±5, 288 de-securitization 250±2, 262, 285, see also securitization dichotomous division 141±6; elitistpopular 141; European-national 146; public- private 133, 137, 142; rationalism-emotion 144; sceptical 133, 141±5 Diebert, R. 57, 66±7 Diez, T. 18 difference, problem of 65 differentiation 65, 72, 76 Dillon, M. 97, 194 diplomacy 84, 110 direct: applicability 107; legitimacy 228 see also legitimacy discourse 34, 194: analysis 267; change in IR-literature 108; of the ECJ 115; of Europe 280; practices 174 distributional con¯icts 42 Dobry, M. 194 doctrines of the European Community 112 domestic: interests 46±7; politics 46 Douglas, I. 97 Doyle, M.W. 265 drugs 187, 190; traf®cking 184 Dumont, L. 193 dyads 76; alternatives 19; logic of 19±20 Eagleberger, L. 76 Eco®n 218 Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) 2, 10, 43, 156, 205±6, 213, 221, 234, 237, 247, 268 ECSC Treaty, preamble to the 231±2 EEC Treaty 111, 114 Einstein, A. 74, 77, 95 Eisenhower, D.D. 89 Elias, N. 180 elite, scienti®c-technological 89 Elman, R.A. 134 Elshtain, J.B. 137, 141 embedded 217, 220±2 empire 60, 250, 255±6, 264±5, 286 empirical world 34 empirically grounded 49

297

`empty-chair-crisis' 232, see also de Gaulle English School of international theory 77, 257 enhanced co-operation 243, 246 enlargement 226±7, 231±8, 240, 243, 245, 262; EFTA 238; ®rst 233; Mediterranean 233±4; process of 7 enlightenment 58 environmental protection 239±40 epistemic communities 210±11 epistemology 33; idealistic 176 Equal Opportunities for Women and Men, action programme on 135 ESCB 218, 221 ethical theory 63±4 ethnos 230, 240 Eurocorps 188 Euronationalism 153, 158 Europe as a puzzle 18 European: citizenship 15, 161, 184, 233±5; ®nancial community 218±19; monetary policy 216±17; network of women 138; order 126; parliament 233, 241±2; state system 109; symbol-forest 106 European Central Bank (ECB) 205±6, 208, 213±15, 218, 221; authority of 209; juridical independence of 219 European Community law, development of 112 European Community of law 10 European Court of Justice (ECJ) 107, 112, 114, 117, 125, 131±4, 142, 229; direct effect of 112, 115, 118; disputed power of 124; exclusivity of 107; governance system of 107; jurisprudence of 122; legal discourse of 125; legal system of 119±20; practice of 115; pre-emption of 107; supremacy of 115 European governance 50±1; system 107 European High courts 123 European identity 131, 231, 267±8, 278; political 165, see also identity European integration 4, 33, 39±41, 48, 50±1, 108, 131±3, 153±8, 228, 250, 275±7, 281; legal 110; process of 156±7, 162 European Monetary Institute (EMI) 215 European security 12, 280±1, 289 see also security

298

Index

European Trades Union Congress (ETUC) 138 European Union: as direct intervenor 260; as magnet 260±2; as political experiment 67; as polity 155, 227; as security actor 277; as security institution 260; as state 265; strategy towards women 133; as superstate 227 European Women's Lobby (EWL) 138 Europeanization 158, 172, 183, 188, 196, 213, 273, 274 `European-national' problematique 144 Europe's past 263, 279 Europol 172, 185, 190 eurosceptics 139, 207 Ewald, F. 178, 181 exclusion 6, 136, 142, 144 external security 171, 186, 188, 190, 196 see also security extreme right 150, 272 extremist parties 182 fairy 64±5; -land 68 federal development, semi- 115 Federal Reserve Bank 213±14 federalism 114, 228; state 125±32 female: European subject 139; political subject 136 feminism 132, 134±5; debate of 132±3; EU's policy 137; holistic vision of 141; as legal instrument 134; liberal 144; politics of 137; radical 144 feminist theory 37, 48; scholarship 131; of world politics 142 Fergusson, Y. 62 Ferry, J.M. 154 ®eld of power 196 ®eld of security 174 Fifth Column 187, 196 ®nancial institutions 205, 207 Finnemore, M. 49 Fioretos, K.O. 47 ¯exibility 242±6 Flynn, L. 141 FNE 185 foreign and security policy 281 Foucault, M. 9, 48, 65, 79, 174, 176, 183 FPR 185 fragmentation 4, 260, 279±80; scenario of 258±9; see also integration scenario

France 186, 250, 269±78, 281 Frankfurt school 90 Freeman, G. 163±4 functional integration process 156 functionalist logic 143 Gabo, N. 81 Gadamer, H. 65 gains, relative/absolute 37 Gan, A. 81 Garrett, G. 110 gender 132; bias in West 134; communities 131; constructing 136; dimensions 131; gap 133, 137; identities 48; norms 134; perspective 6; question of 132; subjectivity 136 gender problem 139, 146; as contingent rationality 140 gender-based collective community 133 genealogy 23, 80; of constructivism 79 Germany 44, 250, 268±76, 281 Giddens, A. 80 Giscard d'Estaing, V. 273 global: civil society 67; conception 68; legitimacy of the army 186; polity 57±8; transformations 181 global economy 205; political 222 global ®nance 205, 215; system 213 globalization 4, 57±8, 74±5, 171 governance 22, 39, 45, 48, 237; legitimate 125; multi-level 9; system 228±30, 234 governments 7±8 Gramsci, A. 212 Grieco, J.M. 40±4, 47 Guehenno, J. M. 58±62, 65 Guiraudon, V. 163±4 Gulag 94 Gulf War 73, 83 Haas, E. 17, 110 Habermas, J. 80, 149, 158±9 Hallstein 231 Hammer, J. 135 Hart, L. 85, 87 Hartly, T.C. 115 Hauerwas, Stanley 64 hegemonic stability theories 209 Heidegger 65, 96 Heisenberg, W. 77 Held, D. 1 hierarchial: structure 106, 125; subordination 136

Index Hindess, B. 7±8, 34, 37 Hirschman, 44 historical political economy 213, 222 Hobbes, T. 20, 22±3, 28, 65, 106, 197, 289 Hoffman, S. 18, 110 horizontal: norms 107; space 18 Hoskyns, C. 135, 141, 143 Howe, P. 143 human rights 151±2, 158, 230, 240±1 humanitarian: interventions 186, 281; operations 188 Hurrell, A. 112 Huysmans, J. 192 idealism 38 see also liberalism ideas 36, 38, 49 ideational 211±2; structures of power 10 identity 3, 48, 51, 74, 151, 154, 173, 180, 192, 212, 230, 260±3, 265±8, 273±81; collective 29±30, 253; community based 133; cultural identity 159; formation of 250; gender 131; local 16; monolithic 228; multiple 28, 230; political 150± 1, 157, 159, 162, 165; project 282; regional 228; role of 131; state 266 identity, national 228, 235; french 163; supra- 228; transformation of 132 IGC see Inter-Governmental Conference Ignatieff, M. 67 ILO convention 134 immediacy of perception 95 immigrants 165, 171, 196 see also migrants immigration 185, 187, 239 see also migration imperial 60; age 61; systems 256 inclusion 6 individualization 181 in¯ation 206, 216, 219 insecuritization 173±4, 177 see also securitization insecurity 180, 266 see also security inside/outside 171, 173, 231; distinction 142; division 131 instantaneity 96 institutional: knowledge 174; power 112; reform 243±4; structure of the ECB 208 institutional, authority 206, 212; of the ECB 207±8

299

institutionalism 284 institutionalization 42 institutionalized: patriarchal structures 144; power for the ECJ 121 institutions 40, 42±3, 50±1, 62; of the EU 131±2, 135; international 36 integration 14, 26, 39, 46, 123, 155, 226, 231±3, 240, 260±4, 271, 279±80; literature 227; political 26, 155; scenario 258±9; social 158; theory 20±1, 28 interests 42, 265; groups 226 intergovernmental bargains 45 Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC) 107, 111; IGC of 1992 122; IGC of 1996 227, 235, 238, 242±4 intergovernmentalism 19, 21, 46±7, 110±112, 227±8 internal market 156; see also common market and single market internal securitization 171 see also securitization internal, security 171±3, 178, 181±8, 190±1, 196; agencies 171±2; of the European Community 183; internal/ external 12, 171, 189; market 172; widening of 186 international: civil society 212; society 255; structures 210±11; system 222 international law 107, 111 see also law International Monetary Fund (IMF) 206, 221 International Political Economy (IPE) 208±9, 211, 222 International Relations (IR) 33±4, 39, 208±9, 211, 222, 251, 278; ethics in 79 internecine theory 94 Interpol 172, 183, 185 interpretive approaches 38 inter-state cooperation 132 inter-subjective 207, 252, 267, 286 inter-war 73, 83, 88, 94; period 89 interzone 76 inventing doctrines 107 Ireland, F.B. 153 Islamic 187; fundamentalism 279; radicalism 182 Jachtenfuchs, M. 45 Jervis, R. 253 Jihad versus McWorld 58 Joerges, C. 124

300

Index

Jùrgensen, K.E. 38, 50 Juncker, Prime Minister of Luxembourg 246 Junger, Ernst 91 juridical: dialogue 123; equality 207; review 122 Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) 240 Kant, I. 15 Kaplan, R. 58 Katzenstein, P. 49 Kelstrup, M. 33±4 Kennedy, D. 109 Keohane, R. 36±7, 41±3, 110, 261 Kierkegaard, S. 96 Kissinger, H. 253, 269 knowledge, theory of 36 Kohl, H. 122, 187, 259±60, 288 Kosovo 2, 67 Kracauer 90 Krugman, P. 76 Lacoue-Labarthe, P. 96 Lamy, P. 238 Larsen, H. 49 law: discursive power 124; municipal 109; normative logic 124; recourse to 113; relationship national/ Community 115, 117; treaty 121 law of the European Community 108, 112, 119, 122, 141; case based 108, 114; domestic legal provisions 121; individual rights 117 law, international 109, 115, 118, 119; agreement 114; EU law as 117; traditional 121 legal: discourse 124; hierarchy 123±4; order of EU 110, 229; rights 119; system of EU 115; theory 106 legitimacy 7, 59, 62, 68, 131, 155, 160, 194, 220, 226±9, 232, 236±9, 241, 244±5, 257, 264; command 63; crisis of 132, 226±7, 234; democratic 230; of EMU 213; of EU 206, 226; governance 125; mythical 231; political 150, 153±4, 157, 163, 214±16, 230; problem of 132, 145; social 214, 216; utilitarian 230, 236, 243 Legomski, S.H. 152 Leviathan 66±8 Levinas E. 65 Levine, D. 209

liberal: articulation 136; conception 137; construction 137±8; democracy 155±6; institutionalism 17, 37; intergovernmentalism 45; international economic order 251 liberalism 35±6, 156, 254±5 Lindberg 110 Lissitzky, E. 81 Locke, J. 20 Lodge, J. 166 loyalty 62 Luxembourg compromise 110, 115 see also de Gaulle Maastricht Treaty 2, 123, 172, 183, 215, 231, 234 MacCormick, N. 126 Machiavelli, N. 205, 206, 222 Machiavelli's Prince 75 Machtstaat 25 MacIntyre, A. 64 McQueen, Steve 77, 78 Maginot, A. 85 magnetism 250, 260±4 mainstreaming 135 Mansbach, R. 62±3 Marshall, A. 83, 88, 92±4 Martin, L. 42 masculine, EU constructed as 141 material: factors 36; limits 112; structures of power 10 materialism 38, 211±12 Mathews, J.T. 63, 65, 67 Mearsheimer, J. 37, 40, 109, 258 media 38, 164 medieval 18; case ethics 64 see also Middle Ages Menon, A. 112 methodology 33 MI5 190 Middle Ages 250, 266 see also medieval migrants 6, 174 see also immigrants migration 149±54, 157±8, 161, 164±5, 183, 263 see also immigration military 186, 188; security 281 Military-Industrial-MediaEntertainment complex (MIME) 88±9, 94 Mill, J.S. 230 Milward, A. 110 mimesis 90, 97; linked to violence 91 mimetic: faculty 91, 97; terror 94; war 9

Index Minc, A. 58 minority rights 261±2 Mitterand, F. 259±60, 273±4 MoÈbius ribbon 171 modernity 94; myth of 94 monetary policy 218, 221 Monetary Union 207 see also Economic and Monetary Union Monnet, J. 231, 232, 239 morality 151 Moravcsik, A. 18, 40, 45±7, 110 Morgenthau, H. 109, 284±5 Mouffe, C. 166 multicultural 149, 152±3, 157, 160, 162, 164, 182 multilayered political systems 2 myth 231, 234±6, 279±80 NAFTA, 285 nation 60±1, 157, 159, 270 national 151, 157±8; autonomy 107; culture 159; identity 159, 163; leaders 46; security 192; sovereignty 190; subjectivities 20; territory 183±4, 186±7 National Courts 108, 111 nationalism 152±3, 231, 272, 280 nationalized community obligations 113 nation-state 149, 153±8, 226±8, 246, 250, 255, 265±6, 269±76; challenges to 154, end of 58±9, 62; viability of 154 NATO 176, 188, 190, 196, 250, 260, 262, 271, 280±1 natural understanding 133 naturalization 161 negative synergy 75 negotiations 212 Nentwich, M. 243 neo-functionalism 45, 155 neo-Gramscianism 210 neo-imperial 62 neoliberal 40, 131; approaches 51; debate 51; EU constructed as 141; institutionalism 210; institutionalists 3; mode 132 neoliberalism 41, 48 neoliberals 36, 42, 43, 77 neo-medieval 57, 58, 62, 285; order 6; thesis 59; world 66±9 see also medieval

301

neo-neo: debate 36; synthesis 37, 48, 51 neorealism 40, 43, 209, 258, 266, 287; state-centric assumption 45 neorealist 3, 17, 36, 40, 77, 131; models 46; nesting 228 networks 59, 207 new media 74±5 new medievalism see neo-medieval new thinking 74 NGO 187, 223 Nietzsche, F. 79, 93, 96 Nordic Union 196, 244 normative theory 37 norms 49, 63, 64 Nye, J. 43 O'Brien, C.C. 58 Obradovic, D. 143, 229 OED 73 OFPRA 185 ontology 33 Operation Desert Hammer IV 83 order, in world politics 68; without central authority 106 organization: sub-state level 132; trans-state level 132 organized crime 172, 184, 187, 263, see also crime orthodoxy 51 OSCE 260, 275 parliamentarian: supremacy 115±16; sovereignty 119 Patomaki, H. 155 patriarchal 141; EU constructed as 141; foundation of West 133; structures 134 pay discrimination 134 peace: zone of 256; keeping 281 Perrow, C. 75 Pescatore, P. 115 Peterson, S. 141 Pevsner, A. 81 PKK 187 Plato 96 pluralism 20 poiesis 89, 94, 97; virtues of 97 police 178, 185; issues 182 policy networks 211 political 157; action 57; authority 18, 57, 66; changes 2; citizenship 15; crises 156; culture 159; order 165;

302

Index

project 136; rationality 178; realm 49; space 61, 161; structure 106, 211; subjectivity 132; system 229; violence 182 politicization 26, 90, 162, 183, 251; migration 165 politicizing 161, 163, 182 politics 48; aestheticization of 90; end of 60; global 74, 90; high 21, 39; low 21 polity, multi-dimensional 246 polycentric 123; European order 122; power structure 125 popular sovereignty 228 see also sovereignty positivism 33±4, 36, 37; assumptions 48 postmodern 3, 66, 97; approaches 48; theory 37 post-national 149, 159, 162, 165: citizenship 158; Community 158; Europe 157; sovereignty 160 post-realist 255 see also realism post-security 250 see also security post-sovereign 143, 146, 254, 257, 264, 266, 289; organization 144; political form 132; politics 51; realism 255 poststructuralism 3, 66, 79, 231, 251, 282±4, 286±7 post-war Europe 165 post-Westphalian 17 Powell, R. 41 power 7±10, 33±4, 59, 74; as capability 108; distribution of 126; institutional 48, 112; as legitimacy 108; materialist 48; organizing pyramid of 60; as social empowerment 124±5; state 62; structures 133; technology 75; virtual 73 power analysis approach 113 preferences 42 preliminary ruling system 116±18 see also the European Court of Justice principle of enumerated powers (Art. 4) 114 privatization of security 180 see also security problem-making/problem-solving 84 problem-solving theories 51 public health 239, 240 public/private realm 136; spheres 135 public scepticism 226 see also eurosceptics

Quali®ed majority voting (QMV) 227, 237, 241, 243 Raison d'eÃtre 226 Rasmussen, H. 114, 117 Rasmussen, P.N., Prime Minister of Denmark 244 rationalism 35, 139, 283 rationalist 36, 42, 48 75; approach 75; consensus 51; international theory 33; paradigm 49 rationalist/re¯ectivist divide 51 rationalization 156 realism 35, 40, 90, 92, 255, 266, 282±3; critique of 192; idealist 255; imagination 93; legacy 89; material 79; self-prophesying 96; soft 253 Realpolitik 73 re¯ectivism 35±7, 48, 50±1; accounts 49; approaches 3, 37, 48; theories 37 refugees 165 regime theories 211 regimes 210±11; of governance 34 regional integration 59 regulatory authorities 205 relative gains 40, 42 representation 95; of women 137, 143 republicanism 160 Ricouer, P. 65 rights, for women 134±5 risk society 174 Rodchenko, A. 72; constructivism of 82 Rosenau, J. 181 Ross, A. 108±9 Rothschield, J. 230 Ruggie, J.G. 131 rule of law 229, 240 see also law Russia 269, 275 Sadowsky, Y. 63 Salisbury Plain 83, 85±7 Santer Commission 2 Sayad, A. 152 Scandinavian welfare state 142 Scheingold 110 Schengen 172, 183, 196, 240 Schilling, T. 110±11 Schmitt, C. 286 SDI 192 securitization 93, 171, 173±7, 180, 253±4, 278, 285; critique of 194±5, 196; external 171; of migration 164 securitizing actor 251, 253

Index security 11±12, 33±4, 73, 171±6, 181, 188, 190±1, 194, 196, 226, 235, 251, 260±6, 276, 279, 284; actor 11, 250±2, 279; community 250; dilemma 174, 253, 285; discourse 177; external 171, 186, 188, 190, 196; as ®eld of domination 197; idealization of 176; individual 178, 179, 180, 181; integration 279; internal 171±3, 178, 181±8, 190±1, 196; international 279; maximal 193; move 251; order 250±4, 265, 289; professionals 178; representational 96; sector 192, 251; studies 251±2; systems 250, 264 security analyst 251±2, 284 see also academics sedimentation 133 self/other 48, 151, 232, 268, 279 self-interest 40 self-reproducing 90 shadow of the future 42 Shapiro, M. 124 simulacrum 76 simulation 88, 94 Single European Act (SEA) 45±6, 233±4, 241 single market 233, 239, 240 see also common market and internal market SIS 172, 185 social: rights 239, 241; space 196, 207; theory 33; welfare 152; world 34, 36 social acquis 244±5 social construction 48, 49, 93, 277, 278; of threats 174 social constructivism 38 see also constructivism social policy of the European Union 131, 240; of rights 135 societal security 171, 175, 191±4, 253±4 see also security Sonderweg 272 sovereign 27, 45, 59, 74, 255, 264; commander 106; state 25, 27, 59, 118±19, 126, 131 sovereignty 5, 7±9, 16±17, 21±4, 26, 50, 123, 126, 154, 157, 171±3, 192, 250, 254, 271, 282; division of 108± 9; gender 144; integration of 110, 113; national 132; as political space 142; protection of 46; rights 120; territoriality 107 sovereignty/anarchy dichotomy 109

303

space: European 144; horizontal/ territorial 18, 27; political 132, 135±6, 146; relativity of 96; vertical/ hierarchial 18, 27 spatial: distinctions 25; practice 21, 27; solidarity 61 speech 194 speech act 177, 251±3, 286 spillover 46 Staatsvolk 123 stability 250, 265±6, 270, 276 Stability Pact 261 see also Economic and Monetary Union Stalin, J. 72 state 35±6, 42, 44, 46, 157, 173, 186, 212, 270, 278; centrism 47; control 181; levels of 66; negotiations 47; structures 211 state-centric 227±8, 266, 289 state-power 210; theories of 211 state-systems 278 strategy of information to women 133, 139 strategy of representation of women 133 structural anarchy 48 structuration 252, 263 structure: autonomous 113; model 38 subsidiarity 256 Suganami, H. 278 super-state 228 supranational 8; institutions 45; pressures 47 supranational/transnational 143 supremacy of the Community 121 supremacy of the ECJ 107, 112 see also ECJ surveillance 176, 180, 184, 185, 187; of bounderies 172; technologies 179 suzerainty 255 symbolic power 194 Tatlin, V. 81 Taussig, M. 96±7 Taylor, P. 111 technology 73 territorial 171, 180, 190, 228, 257; communities 61; jurisdiction 61; security 188 terrorism 171, 172, 184, 186±7, 190 threats 171, 173 Tidworth Tattoo 86 Tindemans Report 232±3

304

Index

Toulmin, S. 63±8 transgressing bounderies 173 transnational 4, 159±60, 171; banking 215; capital 208; European 161; organized crime 171 transparency 219, 221±2, 242 Treaty of Amsterdam 239, 245 Treaty of European Union 2, 112, 234 Treaty of Rome 107, 111, 114, 117, 133, 227, 232; drafting of 134; preamble 118 Treaty of Westphalia 23 treaty perspective 110 Trevi-areas 172 `twenty-years crisis' 73 UCLAT 190 UN 176 unemployment 239 unipolarity 264 universality 24 USA 189 utilitarianism 160, 232, 239 Van Gend case 115±16, 119±20 Veyne, P. 177 Vigipirate plan 186 violence 73; and identity 93 Virilio, P. 88±9, 95 virtual 72, 97; code 76; condition 73; counter-narrative 89; diplomacy 74; discourse 73; economy 74; future 94; interventions 74; revolution 87; technologies 75, 95; theatricalization 95; theory 72±8, 89; wargames 94; wars 74 virtuality 11 virtualization 74±75 voice opportunities thesis 43±4 voluntary cooperation 45 Wñver, O. 37, 192±4 `Wag the dog' 73, 76

Wallace, H. 5, 227±8, 231, 236, 246 Wallace, W. 227 Waltz, K. 106 war 73, 95, 151, 186, 188, 260; art of 72±97; games 88 Watson, A. 255, 257 Watson's pendulum 255±7 Weber, M. 197 Weiler, J. 107, 113±14, 119, 121, 230 Weingast, B. 110 welfare state, 152±3, 156, 165 Wendt, A. 46, 266 Western Europe 43, 153, 250 Western liberal thoughts 136 Westphalian: law 108; model 107; perspective 113; state system 125 WEU 188, 250, 264 widening 263 Wight, M. 255 Williams, M. 34, 194 Wincott, D. 46±7 Wind, M. 45, 47, 50 Wired magazine 83 Wolfers, A. 253 women 132, 134; community 145; construction of 135, 139; Euro 140; as family- managers 140; interest of 138; issues of 131; relation to sovereignty 142; reluctance of 133; rights 132±3, 144±6 world order 68, 209, 282 world politics 59, 62, 66, 68 World War II 235, 271 WTO 221 Yeats, W.B. 58, 65 Yeltsin, B. 275 Yugoslavia 67 Zahle, H. 108, 123 zones grises 58