Transforming the European Nation-State: Dynamics of Internationalization 1412932173, 9781412932172

Table of contents :
Internationalization..............1
Chapter 2 The Dynamics of Internationalization..............24
NationState..............55
a Factual Approach..............74
a PoliticalCultural Approach..............107
a Normative Approach..............126

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Transforming the European Nation-State

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Sage Politics Texts

Series Editor IAN HOLLIDAY City University of Hong Kong

SAGE Politics Texts offer authoritative and accessible analyses of core issues in contemporary political science and international relations. Each text combines a comprehensive overview of key debates and concepts with fresh and original insights. By extending across all main areas of the discipline, SAGE Politics Texts constitute a comprehensive body of contemporary analysis. They are ideal for use on advanced courses and in research. Published titles: The Politics of Central Europe Attila Ágh The New Politics of Welfare Bill Jordan Rethinking Green Politics John Barry Democracy and Democratization John Nagle and Alison Mahr International Political Theory Kimberly Hutchings Politics and Society in South Africa Daryl Glaser Theorizing European Integration Dimitris N. Chryssochoou Local Governance in Western Europe Peter John

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Transforming the European Nation-State

Dynamics of Internationalization

Kjell Goldmann

SAGE Publications London • Thousand Oaks • New Delhi

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© Kjell Goldmann 2001 First published 2001 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. SAGE Publications Ltd 6 Bonhill Street London EC2A 4PU SAGE Publications Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd 32, M-Block Market Greater Kailash – I New Delhi 110 048 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 0 7619 6326 X ISBN 0 7619 6327 8 (pbk) Library of Congress control number available Typeset by Keystroke, Jacaranda Lodge, Wolverhampton. Printed in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, Guildford, Surrey

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Summary of Contents

PART ONE: INTERNATIONALIZATION 1

Internationalization as Object of Study

2

The Dynamics of Internationalization

PART TWO: NATION-STATE 3

Internationalization and the Nation-State: the Issues

4

The Nation-State: a Factual Approach

5

The Nation-State: a Political-Cultural Approach

6

The Nation-State: a Normative Approach

PART THREE: DEMOCRACY 7

Internationalized Democracy

8

Internationalization and the Citizen

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Contents

List of Figures and Tables List of Abbreviations Preface

ix xi xiii

PART ONE: INTERNATIONALIZATION 1 Internationalization as Object of Study Methodological approach The concept of internationalization Synonyms of internationalization The rest of the book: three concerns

1 4 8 17 21

2 The Dynamics of Internationalization The endogenous dynamics of internationalization The exogenous dynamics of internationalization The main issues

24 25 37 49

PART TWO: NATION-STATE 3 Internationalization and the Nation-State: the Issues The nation-state as problem Independence and identity Six issues about internationalization

55 56 61 71

4 The Nation-State: a Factual Approach Internationalization and independence Internationalization and identity construction Identity versus independence?

74 74 98 104

5 The Nation-State: a Political-Cultural Approach The national view of the nation Internationalization and political culture: European examples Similarities, differences, and research tasks

107 108 114 123

6 The Nation-State: a Normative Approach Internationalism: internationalization for peace Nationalism: in defence of the nation-state Nationalism versus internationalism

126 127 134 138

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CONTENTS

PART THREE: DEMOCRACY 7 Internationalized Democracy Internationalization and democracy: threat perceptions The credibility of the threats Counter-strategies and dilemmas Problems, promises, proportions

141 142 154 163 175

8 Internationalization and the Citizen A theory of internationalization: summary Internationalization as prescriptive challenge

178 178 182

References Index

187 201

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List of Figures and Tables

Figures 2.1. A model of internationalization 2.2. Internationalization: five types of dynamics 3.1. Three approaches to the study of internationalization and the nation-state 7.1. A model of accountability 8.1. A revised model of internationalization 8.2. Internationalization as a decision-making problem

25 50 60 146 179 183

Tables 1.1. 1.2. 1.3. 1.4. 1.5. 3.1. 4.1. 4.2. 5.1. 7.1.

Foreign trade quotas of four European countries, 1950–92 13 Foreign investment quotas of four European countries, 1960–95 13 Foreign trade quotas, 1996 14 Foreign share of the film market in four European countries, 1955–92 15 Per cent foreigners in four European countries, 1955–94 15 Internationalization and the nation-state: six issues 71 Difference of opinion between the elite and the public about the EU in the mid-1990s 77 Conceptions of identity, April–May 2000 99 The national view of the nation: framework of analysis 108 Internationalization from three democratic points of view 143

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List of Abbreviations

ASEAN BBC BVerfG CAP CEU CNN COREPER CSCE DSB DUPI EC ECJ ECSC ECTS EDU EEA EEB EEC EFTA EP ERM EU Europol GATT GDP ICO IGO Interpol MCA MDF MLG NAFTA NATO NGO OECD OEEC OK

Association of South East Asian Nations British Broadcasting Corporation Bundesverfassungsgericht Common Agricultural Policy Council of the European Union Cable News Network Committee of Permanent Representatives Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe Dispute Settlement Body Dansk Udenrigspolitisk Institut European Community European Court of Justice European Coal and Steel Community European Credit Transfer System European Drug Unit European Environmental Agency European Environmental Bureau European Economic Community European Free Trade Area European Parliament Exchange Rate Mechanism European Union European Police Office General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Gross Domestic Product international criminal organization intergovernmental organization International Criminal Police Organization monetary compensatory amount Hungarian Democratic Forum multi-level governance North American Free Trade Agreement North Atlantic Treaty Organization nongovernmental organization Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development Organization for European Economic Co-operation organisierte Kriminalität

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OSCE QMV RTE SEAT TEU TREVI UK UN UNEP US USSR WCD WTO WWF

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe qualified majority voting Radio Telefís Éireann European office of the Friends of the Earth Treaty on European Union Terrorisme, radicalisme et violence internationale United Kingdom United Nations United Nations Environment Programme United States Union of Soviet Socialist Republics World Commission on Dams World Trade Organization Worldwide Fund for Nature

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Preface

The transformation this book is concerned with is internationalization, which is widely seen as a fundamental challenge to state, nation, and democracy. The aim of the book is to identify key issues in this regard rather than to argue a particular thesis. This is fitting when we are dealing with a relatively new phenomenon, such as the radical internationalization of what used to be domestic politics. We are uncertain about how to conceptualize it, there is not much systematic evidence to depart from, and, to cite Stanley Hoffmann’s distinction in a 1960s text, the need is for ‘theory as a set of questions’ more than for ‘theory as a set of answers’. Empirically, the focus of the book is on Europe, arguably the most internationalized region of the entire world. No attempt is made to review the process of European integration, the structure of European institutions, or recent events in European politics; there is no lack of books doing this. However, European examples are used throughout to illustrate the argument ranging from the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union and the dissemination of fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear power reactor to Hungarian identity and Irish television. The relation between empirical illustration and conceptual argument is discussed in detail in Chapter 1, as is the notion of theory as questions rather than answers. A German colleague has tried to persuade me to abstain from using the concept of nation-state, since he thinks it leads to hopeless complexity and contradiction. A Danish colleague has advised me to speak about globalization instead of internationalization, because it sells better. My reasons for doing otherwise are given in Chapters 3 and 1, respectively. The focus on defining concepts and unresolved issues rather than on drawing substantial conclusions has provoked contradictory reactions among those commenting on this work while in progress. One cannot avoid being dissatisfied when the only conclusion drawn on the basis of a complex argument is that the matter needs further study, I have been told. I have also been told, however, that the openness of the argument is deceptive and that in fact the book is replete with controversial propositions. True, I have chosen to emphasize what we do not know. This is because I believe that there is presently an insufficient basis for bold generalization about the dynamics and implications of the radical internationalization of politics. Those who would have preferred a bolder approach should ponder what lesson there is to learn from the failure of political scientists at the time to anticipate the imminent, peaceful end of the Cold War; almost all theory,

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PREFACE

in strategic studies as well as in peace research, was to the opposite effect. If one’s object is prescriptive and not only descriptive, which is the case in this book, it is doubly important to avoid making strong claims that cannot be substantiated. It is also true, however, that assertions about what the main issues are imply that other things are not. It is impossible to define key concepts – internationalization, state, nation, etc. – with any degree of precision without excluding some matters from further consideration, just as it is impossible to argue that some relations between them are of especial significance without implying that others are not. Seen in this way, what is offered in this book is more than ‘a set of questions’. Those who think that this is going too far and that more should have been kept open, including the meaning of key concepts, have reason to consider what they think socialscientific research is for. Those kind enough to read the manuscript in whole or in part include Lisbeth Aggestam, Hans Agné, Jens Bartelson, Kjell Engelbrekt, Maria Hellman, Arie Kacowicz, Tommy Möller, Lucas Pettersson, and Jacob Westberg. Their comments invariably proved helpful, as were those of the series editor Ian Holliday. Parts of the argument were tested at a workshop organized by the European Commission in September 1999, at presentations given at Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin, which I had the opportunity to visit in October–November 1999, the Departments of Political Science or equivalents at Göteborg University, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, and Trinity College, Dublin, and the Department of International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where I was a Lady Davis Visiting Professor in March–April 2000. Special thanks are due to participants in a Master’s level course in European Studies given at Stockholm University in the Fall of 2000 for their interest and ideas. Parts of Chapter 2 draw on a paper published in the European Journal of International Relations (vol. 3, no. 3, 1997). An early version of the thoughts leading on to Chapter 3 may be found in Lauri Karvonen and Krister Ståhlberg (eds), Festschrift for Dag Anckar (Åbo Akademi University Press, 2000). Kjell Goldmann Stockholm

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I do not believe in a separate national identity. We are human beings more than anything else, citizens of this planet, our identity is actually formed by interaction with the external world. It is rather for others to recognize the advantages that we may have and to participate in this way in establishing our identity. But a Czech identity, possibly even as a programme, is something I cannot imagine . . . I am convinced that the significance of the nation-state will decline in the long term. Instead the significance of regional and state-like associations will grow. . . . I believe that the nation-state is merely an evolutionary phase – for some earlier, for others later, that is inevitably losing ever more of its importance. In the future the state will rather become an administrative department in the global order and in no way the object of a national cult. President Vaclav Havel, Der Tagesspiegel, 25 October 1999 (author’s translation)

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PART ONE

INTERNATIONALIZATION

1 Internationalization as Object of Study CONTENTS

Methodological approach 4 The concept of internationalization 8 Synonyms of internationalization 17 The rest of the book: three concerns 21

This book is about the interaction between internationalization, state, nation, and democracy in contemporary Europe. The globalization of the economy, the Americanization of the media, world-wide pollution, increasing migration, the supranationality of the European Union and other developments are widely assumed to transform the European nation-state: to subvert its political independence, to undermine the collective identity on which it is based, and to weaken its democracy. The object of the book is to pave the way for the analysis of this transformation. Part One introduces the concept of internationalization and discusses the dynamics of the internationalization process. Part Two considers the implications for national independence and identity. Part Three addresses the problem of making internationalized democracy work. A micro-example of what is going on can be seen through European student exchange; it shows in a nutshell what the process of internationalization is like. The aim of the Socrates Programme of the EU is to increase the number of European students spending time at universities in other European countries.1 It is a basic Socrates principle that each student must be able to include courses taken abroad in his or her domestic study

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programme. ‘The recognition of studies and diplomas’, according to the European Commission, ‘is a prerequisite for the creation of an open European area of education and training where students and teachers can move without obstacles’.2 There is agreement among governments, universities, and students that it is important to create such an area, but they have a problem with the differences between their systems of higher education. How does one determine what a particular course taken or a particular grade obtained at one university is worth in terms of the standards of a university in a different country? How are students and university departments to assess how courses taken in Dublin compare with those in Barcelona? These are significant questions, since there are remarkable differences between the academic traditions and institutions of European countries. In order to solve problems such as these, the European Commission has constructed what is known as ECTS (European Credit Transfer System). The ECTS includes, among other things, a standardized points system for measuring the scope of a university course (full-time study during an entire academic year equals 60 ECTS points). It also includes a six-point ECTS Grading Scale, which is a compromise between highly differentiated grading systems like those in Belgium, France, Italy, and the Netherlands, and a nearly undifferentiated system such as that of Sweden. It is not mandatory to apply the ECTS, but a university department wanting to participate fully in European student exchange has good reason to use it. In other words: a form of internationalization favoured by all gives rise to the international co-ordination of what is seen everywhere as a national matter with roots in a national tradition. The ECTS, moreover, may not be the final step. An ‘open European area of education and training where students and teachers can move without obstacles’ may necessitate more than just a manual for the translation of credits from one national system to another, perhaps even a Europe-wide system of academic degrees. The example illustrates what the dynamics of internationalization are generally like: a particular societal change that few oppose and many favour (more study abroad) leads to problems for national authorities (the evaluation of courses taken abroad) and this in turn becomes an incentive for problem-solving at the international level (ECTS) designed to facilitate and hence to encourage further internationalization, and so on. Conceptual tools for the analysis of such problems and processes will be suggested in this book. The significance of the challenge is both descriptive and prescriptive. The key descriptive issue is about the validity of the distinction between domestic and international politics. Politics within countries and politics between countries have generally been regarded as fundamentally different from each other, as political systems of different kinds, with different dynamics, posing different problems (democracy within countries, peace and security between them) and in need of different theory and different specialists. Political science has mainly been about politics

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inside countries, almost as if it had been a matter of the study of closed systems without external relations. International relations has been seen as a separate field of study or even a separate academic discipline. This bifurcated view of politics and political science is unquestionably becoming obsolete. It is increasingly misleading to conceive of international relations as an activity with special rules of its own and in which domestic politics is but an occasional disturbance. It is becoming equally questionable to conceive of democracy as if it were a matter of organizing politics for a system in which external relations are the exception. To explore the particulars and implications of this change is a challenge for the student of politics. The prescriptive issue raised by internationalization is no less fundamental. Internationalism may be defined as a programme for peace and security by international institution building and exchange; there will be more about this in what follows. It has long been taken for granted by mainstream internationalists that it is unrealistic, undesirable, and even counterproductive to set out to rid humanity of the state. The task has been defined instead as one of enmeshing states in a tightening network of institutions and co-operative structures while retaining them as independent units (Goldmann 1994: 2–5). Democracy inside states, moreover, has traditionally been seen as a condition for successful internationalism, and democracy has in turn been seen as being based on national community, and hence on the conjunction of state and nation often referred to as the nation-state (this controversial term is further discussed in Chapter 3). Thus moderate internationalism, moderate support of the nation-state, and the promotion of democracy have been thought to go hand in hand. Now a case can be made that moderate internationalism has proven insufficient to do much for peace and security, that more radical internationalization is needed, and that contemporary European experience proves radical internationalism to be a realistic objective at the regional level. This complicates the equation, since far-reaching internationalization may have problematic implications for the nation-state as well as for democracy, which arguably represent values on a par with peace and security. What the implications of internationalization are like and whether they do in fact compel us to choose between basic values such as these are among the most important questions with which democratic citizens have reason to concern themselves in the years ahead. It bears repeating that these issues, descriptive as well as prescriptive, are brought to a head in contemporary Europe, where innovative institution building goes hand in hand with unprecedented integration across borders. Europe is an obvious object of study for anyone concerned with the empirical examination of radical internationalization and with exploring its normative implications.3

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Methodological approach Theory as a set of questions Three kinds of theory Stanley Hoffmann, in a text published in 1960 entitled Contemporary Theory in International Relations, made a distinction between ‘theory as a set of answers’ and ‘theory as a set of questions’. By the former Hoffmann meant ‘a set of explanatory hypotheses which purport to reveal the rules of the game of international politics’. By the latter he meant ‘efforts to devise a right way of studying the phenomena of world affairs’ by focusing on ‘the most important variables, even though no attempt is made at the outset to present any laws governing the behavior of those variables’; the claim is merely ‘to put into the hands of the researchers an adequate tool for their studies’ (Hoffmann, 1960: 29). A third possibility is ‘theory as a set of approaches’ in the sense of a survey of alternative conceptualizations and methods. To offer well-confirmed propositions, to define crucial issues, to juxtapose perspectives – these are three different ambitions theorists may have. There are elements of all three in this book, but the main object is to suggest ‘theory as a set of questions’. The point of departure of the book is that the dynamics and implications of radical internationalization are insufficiently known because the phenomenon is recent. The emphasis in what follows, therefore, is on the definition of problematic issues, that is, descriptive questions lacking obvious answers and prescriptive problems lacking obvious solutions. I shall focus, for example, on the difficulty of determining to what extent the process of internationalization is selfreinforcing, on the contradictory effects internationalization may have on national independence, and on the way in which one’s position with regard to the internationalization of democracy hinges on one’s conceptions of democracy and nationality. Whereas the object of ‘theory as a set of answers’ is to explain what things are like, the purpose of ‘theory as a set of questions’ is to specify what we do not know and to suggest ways of studying it. Concept formation, an essential part of such an effort, is seen in this book as merely a matter of the construction of analytical tools. Concepts, on this view, do not say anything about anything; they are instruments that may be used to say something about something. Defining a concept such as internationalization is akin to specifying one’s object of study; it has nothing to do with what the object is like in fact. The latter is to be studied; the former is a prerequisite of study. The test to be applied to a proposed concept is not whether it is correct but whether it is useful for the purpose of specifying unsolved problems. Concept formation, a prerequisite of ‘theory as a set of questions’, must not be taken for ‘theory as a set of answers’. It may be argued that if contested concepts are given a particular meaning and particular issues are asserted to be in need of exploration,

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other meanings and issues are ruled out, and hence one’s approach is less open-minded than the idea of ‘theory as a set of questions’ may seem to suggest. This is true insofar as the purpose is not to survey approaches but to propose a particular approach. One should not exaggerate, however. Proposing ‘theory as a set of questions’ is like opening a door leading in a particular direction and suggesting how to move on from there. Doing this is not to lock other doors. Those who want to go in other directions are as free to do this as they were before. Theory and data This book is not only about concepts but also about the transformation of European politics. Then, how does empirical data about Europe relate to the theoretical argument? This would have been evident if it had been a matter of ‘theory as a set of answers’: then the function of empirical data would obviously have been to test the validity of the theory. The matter is less straightforward in the case of ‘theory as a set of questions’. One relation between theory in the sense of ‘a set of questions’ and empirical data is the one between a general checklist and an enquiry into something specific. The focus is on the specific, in this case contemporary Europe; the function of the theory is to serve as an aid in selecting and organizing data about it. It is not my purpose to review the way in which European institutions, governments and citizens are meeting the challenge of internationalization in a comprehensive way, but it is part of the object of the book to consider this matter, and what will be said about it is selected and organized on the basis of the theory to be presented in what follows. Another relation between ‘theory as a set of questions’ and empirical data is the one between abstraction and illustration. The focus in this case is on the general instead of the specific, and the function of empirical evidence is to serve as examples. This is another function performed by references to contemporary Europe in the present book. A European perspective on internationalization is justified because the phenomenon itself is more advanced in Europe than elsewhere, and European examples may help to make the conceptual argument more accessible and may be useful in illustrating the kinds of investigations to which the conceptual framework is meant to invite. A third function of notes about contemporary Europe in what follows is to serve as plausibility probes in the sense of ‘establish[ing] that a theoretical construct is worth considering at all, i.e., that an apparent empirical instance of it can be found’ (Eckstein, 1975: 109) – a form of empirical test, albeit a weak one. This makes it obvious that the difference between ‘theory as a set of answers’ and ‘theory as a set of questions’ is one of degree. Even a ‘set of questions’ needs to be based on assumptions that can be substantiated, and even a mere illustration of an abstraction may help to substantiate its plausibility. The main ambition in what follows remains to define questions rather than to suggest answers, however.

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Description and prescription The issues to be raised in what follows are both descriptive and prescriptive, both empirical and normative. Hence a comment is justified on the way in which description is taken to relate to prescription. This old issue has been raised in a new way in recent years. From what may be called a constructivist point of view, the very distinction between description and prescription is misleading, since description is contingent on socially constructed values. Every theoretical statement, indeed, every definition of every concept, is inherently prescriptive on this view, however descriptive its intention and form. Description is prescription. It is inherently impossible to distinguish between the descriptive and the prescriptive analysis of the transformation with which this book is concerned. The assumption made in this book is more conventional. It is taken for granted in what follows that it is meaningful to distinguish between questions of fact and questions of value. It is one thing to inquire into the nature, causes, and consequences of the transformation of the nation-state, it will be assumed; it is another to consider whether the transformation should be promoted or opposed. True, the descriptive theory to be outlined is not devoid of prescriptive implications; even my choice of subject matter – internationalization, nation-state, and democracy – is prescriptive in both intent and implication insofar as it signals, and is meant to signal, that these are important concerns. True also that prescriptive analyses such as those to be made in this book are contingent on descriptive assumptions. However, this does not suffice to invalidate the distinction between descriptive and prescriptive issues. Our prescriptive views may cause us to pose descriptive questions, and descriptive answers may make us draw prescriptive conclusions, but the relation between description and prescription is one of interaction and not of sameness. Descriptive and prescriptive questions are interdependent, and both are legitimate matters for scholarly concern, but they are not one and the same. In what follows, Chapters 2, 4, and 5 are intended to be descriptive and to contribute to the development of empirical theory about internationalization in relation to the nation-state. In Chapter 6, in contrast, the issue is the prescriptive one of whether internationalization ought to be opposed for the sake of the nation-state, and in Chapter 7 it is whether internationalization ought to be opposed for the sake of democracy. In this latter case, the task of the scholar is not to improve our understanding of what things are like but of choices that we will have to make as democratic citizens – a useful distinction, in my view. This way of combining descriptive and prescriptive perspectives carries an inherent problem that is as classical in the social sciences as the very distinction between description and prescription. What I have in mind is the tension between deterministic theory and a voluntaristic notion of social choice. We cannot go into the philosophical issue of the freedom of the will here. Suffice it to remind ourselves of the role that deterministic

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or near-deterministic theory has played in the analysis of matters such as those with which this book is concerned. So-called realist theory of international relations and Marxist theory of society have in common the assumption that certain basic factors, not amenable to human influence, determine matters to such an extent that our freedom of choice is strictly limited. Contemporary constructivists sometimes appear to take the opposite view and to assume that everything is open to human reconstruction. It is amusing to see how different recent works about globalization and similar phenomena are from each other on this score: James Rosenau’s perspective in Along the Domestic-Foreign Frontier (1997) is largely that of deterministic social theory, while David Held’s Democracy and the Global Order (1995) is permeated by the voluntaristic question of what to do, and Michael Zürn strikes a balance in Regieren jenseits des Nationalstaates [Governance Beyond the Nation-State] (1998). The approach of this book is to see the balance between determinism and voluntarism as an empirical question. To what extent the process is technologically determined and self-reinforcing, and to what extent it is a matter of political will is a key question to be discussed in Chapter 2. Another key question, it will be argued in Chapter 7, is whether existing national identities must be taken for granted and political institutions devised accordingly, or whether identities will adapt to those institutions that we may choose to set up. Both questions are meant to be empirical and not to be matters of one’s Weltanschauung.

Defining Europe One of the winged words of former French President Charles de Gaulle is his reference to Europe ‘from the Atlantic to the Urals’. This was more than a reminder of what we had been taught in school: de Gaulle wanted his audience to keep in mind that true Europe comprised more than Europe west of the Iron Curtain but did not include the United States of America. A different Europe extends from Vancouver to Vladivostok, as the saying goes: Europe of the Helsinki Process, as it was known during the Cold War, and now of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). A third Europe is the one between Sligo and Saima, one might say, that is, between Western Ireland and Eastern Finland: Europe of the European Union. A fourth Europe stretches from Vancouver to Wellington and comprises the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), set up in 1948 as the Organization for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC). There are more Europes. The Europe of this book is not precisely defined; it is about Europe ‘from one end to the other’, to cite another of de Gaulle’s pronouncements. It is unavoidable that a book about the contemporary transformation of the nation-state focuses on the EU and its members, however. This is where the phenomenon to be explored is particularly evident. West European

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integration is historically unique with regard to both societal intertwining and political institution-building, and hence the challenges to nation-state and democracy are particularly profound in this part of Europe. East Central Europe will also be considered, however, especially when it is a matter of the dynamics of internationalization in Chapter 2,4 and the Russian conception of international role will be compared with those of West European countries in Chapter 5. The rest of the former USSR and the Balkans will be mentioned more in passing, as arenas for the politics of others, or not at all – not as a matter of principle but because they are less affected by radical internationalization, while also calling for a competence this author cannot claim to have. The main way in which this book is about contemporary Europe lies in its overall perspective, however. The idea is to approach the transformation of the nation-state from the point of view of a contemporary European, so to speak. The author’s perspective is that of a North European, but this need not be a disadvantage insofar as internationalization, the problem to be explored, is especially pronounced in North and Northwest Europe; this will be shown in a moment.

The concept of internationalization There are several series of terms such as modern/modernization/ modernism, liberal/liberalization/liberalism, and social/socialization/ socialism. The first term (modern, liberal, social) generally refers to a quality, the second term (-ization) to a process of change (something is becoming more modern, liberal, social), and the third (-ism) to an ideology or a programme (the view that one should promote the modern, the liberal, the social). The terms international/internationalization/internationalism are used in an analogous fashion in this book. Hence ‘international’ is taken to be a quality that objects may possess to varying degrees. Matters are ‘international’ in the degree to which they pertain to more than one country; ‘international’ matters, according to The Concise Oxford Dictionary, ‘exist, involve or are carried on between two or more nations’ (1990: 620). The threat to the ozone layer is an ‘international’ issue. ‘International’ negotiations may be conducted about how to avert it. An ‘international’ organization may be set up for this purpose. I shall follow most others in using the term international to refer to the quality of pertaining to nation-states rather than nations in a broader sense (the meaning of ‘nation-state’ is considered in Chapter 3). By this usage, relations between London and Madrid are ‘international’, but not relations between London and Edinburgh or between Madrid and Barcelona. ‘Internationalization’ denotes a process whereby an object is becoming more international than previously: the economy, the media, higher education, political decision-making are all more international than they

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used to be, which is the reason for writing this book. The precise meaning of ‘becoming more international’ varies from one field to another and is more obvious in some fields than in others. I shall take it for granted in what follows that it is sufficiently clear what is meant by economic internationalization, whereas I shall devote attention to specifying what is usefully meant by the notion that the making of political decisions is becoming increasingly international. ‘Internationalism’ is different: a programme for the increase of international exchange and communication and the strengthening of international law and institutions – a programme for internationalization, if you wish. The term internationalism is sometimes used to denote what is here called internationalization in the sense of a process, and sometimes to refer to the analysis of what is here called international in the sense of a quality. That is not the usage of this book. Thus in the present usage, ‘international’ politics, ‘internationalized’ politics, and ‘internationalist’ politics are different things and, importantly, do not stand in fixed relations to each other. On the contrary, to problematize their interrelations is the reason for distinguishing between them. It is important, first of all, to retain the distinction between traditional international politics, which has existed at least since the Peace of Westphalia, and newly internationalized policy areas: it is an important question, I shall suggest, whether the conduct of recently internationalized politics will prove to be similar to or different from the making of traditional foreign policy. It is also important to keep internationalization and internationalism apart: internationalization results in part from nationalism rather than from internationalism, it will be shown in what follows. This way of defining internationalization entails a paradox in the sense of a seeming contradiction: it assumes the existence of nation-states in the sense of territorial units that are politically independent while referring to the transgression of borders and the weakening of independence. The nation-state is taken to be both constant and variable, as it were. This is just as when unification is defined as the merger of separate units into one, and integration as the amalgamation of parts into a whole. It is a matter in all three cases of exploring a process defined in terms of distinctive units but consisting in their losing this distinctiveness. Obviously, if there were no longer any nation-states, the concept of internationalization would have lost its applicability; indeed, the very concept of international as conventionally defined would no longer be meaningful. Concepts like internationalization, unification, and integration, paradoxically, help to focus attention on the possibility of the disappearance of the units in terms of which they are defined. It is useful to distinguish between the internationalization of problems on political agendas, of societies for which politics is made, and of the making of political decisions. This will prove to be important for the descriptive analysis of the dynamics of internationalization (Chapter 2) as well as for the prescriptive analysis of whether to oppose internationalization for the sake

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of nation-state and democracy (Chapters 6–7). Each of the three dimensions will now be discussed and exemplified.

The internationalization of problems One dimension of the internationalization of the politics of a country is that its political problems increasingly come from abroad. More of its political agenda is defined by conditions or events outside its borders and is forced upon it by factors and actors beyond its control. Its freedom to choose what to be concerned with is increasingly circumscribed by outside factors – this is what is meant here by the internationalization of problems. The threat to the natural environment is everybody’s first example. The damage done to Scandinavian lakes by air emission blowing in from the UK is mentioned in the literature as a typical case (Scharpf, 1999: 108; Zürn, 1998: 26) but the dissemination across Europe of fallout from the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident on 26 April 1986 is a more dramatic illustration. Most affected were Bulgaria, Austria, Greece, and Romania with a first-year effective dose exceeding 0.5 millisieverts. Fallout in Finland, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia amounted to 0.3–0.5 millisieverts, and there was significant fallout also in other countries, including, in order of magnitude, Italy, Switzerland, Poland, Hungary, Norway, East Germany, Turkey, West Germany, Sweden, Ireland, and Luxembourg (Jensen, 1994).5 Devising measures for the protection of the population was a difficult problem for the governments of these countries: estimates of acceptable radiation levels varied greatly between the authorities in various countries, as did the precautions populations were advised to take (iodine tablets were distributed in one country but not in another, parents were advised to keep their children indoors in one country but not in another). The differences were reported in the media, and the ensuing credibility gap between publics and authorities about the management of the crisis also became an internationalized problem of sorts (Stern, 1999: 138–42). Environmental examples abound, however. The European Environmental Agency (EEA) in 1995 published a comprehensive report on the state of Europe’s environment, compiled on the initiative of the first panEuropean Conference of environment ministers held outside Prague in June 1991. The final part of this report of more than 650 pages was devoted to a detailed analysis of ‘the 12 most significant environmental problems of concern to Europe’. They were: • climate change and attending sea-level rise, change in hydrological cycles, risks to ecosystems, and land degradation • stratospheric ozone depletion and its effects on human health and ecosystems • loss of biodiversity • major accidents

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• acidification of lakes, soil, and forests • changes with regard to tropospheric ozone and other photo-chemical oxidants, with implications for human health and plants • the management of freshwater • forest degradation • coastal zone threats, including erosion and contamination • waste production and management • urban stress • chemical risk (Stanners and Bourdeau, 1995: 512–95) Seen from the point of view of an individual country, most of these threats result, in whole or in part, from processes, events, or actions abroad. The EEA report is an inventory of internationalized environmental problems with which European and other countries have to cope. Another oft-cited example of an internationalized problem is crime. Organized international crime is becoming one of the most alarming challenges confronting the international community, according to a background report for a UN conference in 1994 (Williams and Savona, 1996: 1).6 Four trends are reported to characterize contemporary organized crime: brutality, professionalism, corruption, and international interconnection (Sieber, 1998: 98). This development is seen in the UN report as a concomitant of the growth in international trade, the evolution of global financial networks, the spread of consumption patterns, the ease of international communication, and increasing migration. Several transnational criminal organizations have a European origin or are active in Europe, including Italian Mafia, Russian organized crime, Chinese Triads, and Colombian cartels. Russia is reported to have hosted some 200 organized crime groups operating in about 30 countries by the mid-1990s (Williams and Savona, 1996: 7–21). The seriousness of the threat is sometimes expressed in strong terms. Organized crime has existed for centuries but now, it is argued, we are dealing with criminal organizations capable of conducting ‘global operations on the order of a major multinational corporation’ and of creating ‘a new threat to the stability and security of the international system’. ‘New international criminals’, according to a report to the United States Senate, represent a threat to international security that no single country can control alone (Godson and Olson, 1995: 19, 22). Similar concerns have been voiced in Germany: a remarkably large proportion of German crime is committed by foreign criminal organizations (Zachert, 1995: 4). One author goes so far as to question whether the citizens and institutions of democracies are capable of standing up against the power of organized crime: ‘[i]s this at all possible, or are we moving in the direction of a world that will be ruled by a band of mafias?’ (Jamieson, 1997: 32). It has been argued that what has become international is not crime itself but the conception of the problem: authorities simply decided at some point to define their problem as one of organized international crime instead of,

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say, drug abuse (Ahnfelt and From, 1996: 23–30). This must imply that the very concept of the internationalization of problems is mistaken, since problems have no existence unless perceived as such. Data about crime or pollution are irrelevant; what should be studied are the perceptions of politicians and maybe publics. It is a matter of the internationalization of conceptions, not of problems. The error made here is to confound the subjective conception of something as problematic and the objective features of what is conceived as problematic. True, political problems do not exist in an objective sense. The assertion that, say, threats to public safety form a political problem is prescriptive, not descriptive. However, the features of crime or pollution can be examined regardless of the perceptions of politicians and publics and found to be more or less relevant for public safety and to be more or less internationalized. Similarly with the economy: assuming that unemployment is defined as a problem in a country, the question to be asked is about the extent to which the rate of unemployment is contingent on factors abroad and not what governments and publics think about this. The assertion that political problems are getting internationalized, in other words, is here taken to mean that matters subjectively defined as problems are objectively affected by conditions or events abroad to an increasing extent.

The internationalization of societies The internationalization of societies, or societal internationalization as it will also be called, comprises the intensification of all kinds of human relations across nation-state borders: an increasing exchange of goods, services, and people and, importantly, of information and ideas. The archetypal example is post-1945 market economy. The term globalization is often used with reference to this phenomenon; it will be explained later in this chapter why the term internationalization is preferred in the present book. A German research team headed by Michael Zürn has made an attempt to map contemporary societal internationalization by applying a variety of quantitative indicators to the external relations of the G-7 countries (Beisheim et al., 1999; Zürn, 1998). The term they use is neither internationalization nor globalization but Denationalisierung (‘denationalization’) which they divide into societal and political. I shall return to their concept of Denationalisierung when, later in the chapter, I compare my terminology to that of others. Here it suffices to point out that their concept of gesellschaftliche Denationalisierung is wider than my concept of societal internationalization and includes some of what I see as the internationalization of problems rather than of societies.7 My concept of internationalization, in other words, is three-dimensional, while their concept of Denationalisierung is two-dimensional.

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So far as the economy is concerned, the data reported by the German group amplify the common impression of radical change in the last few decades. Foreign trade as a proportion of Gross Domestic Product increased radically between the 1950s and 1990s in France, Germany, and Italy and also, albeit more moderately, in the UK, where it was already substantial by 1950. All of the change occurred in the 1970s and early 1980s, whereas in the 1990s foreign trade quotas decreased slightly in three of the four countries (Table 1.1). There took place instead a radical increase in foreign direct investment, beginning at about the time when the increase in foreign trade abated (Table 1.2). Zürn, surveying a broader set of data, concludes that societal internationalization began in the 1960s and became more general in the 1970s but that the decisive shift took place in the late-1980s (Zürn, 1998: 93). Tables 1.1 and 1.2 also indicate differences between the four largest EU countries. These data, together with others, show that on the whole, the UK and Germany were more internationalized than France by the 1990s, and France more internationalized than Italy (cf. Zürn, 1998: 93). If the rest TABLE 1.1 Foreign trade quotas of four European countries, 1950–92 (export + import/GDP) (%) 1950 1955 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1992

France

Germany

Italy

UK

28.2 26.5 26.9 25.8 31.1 36.9 44.3 47.2 45.2 44.9

18.7 29.0 35.2 35.6 40.4 46.5 53.3 61.5 58.0 60.0

18.6 20.2 25.8 27.2 32.8 41.1 46.5 46.1 41.5 39.6

46.6 44.9 43.5 39.5 45.2 53.6 52.3 56.9 51.5 48.9

Source: Beisheim et al., 1999: 273

TABLE 1.2 Foreign investment quotas of four European countries, 1960–95 (investment abroad/total domestic investment) France 1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 a

0.4 1.3 1.1 1.7 2.0 2.2 10.9 6.3

average 1975–80 1992 Source: Beisheim et al., 1999: 312–13 b

Germany 0.8 1.1 1.8 2.3 2.1 3.9 7.3 8.5

Italy

UK

0.6a 2.1 3.4 2.5b

8.7 7.3 7.2 6.4 11.7 14.0 11.1 22.5

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of Europe is taken into account, the picture proves to be even more varied (Table 1.3). Note that foreign trade quotas vary greatly between the Western democracies as well as between countries that were formerly parts of the Soviet empire and of the Yugoslav federation. Judging from data on trade, if Germany and the UK were highly internationalized by the mid1990s, then the Benelux and Nordic countries together with Ireland, Switzerland, and Austria were even more internationalized, as were some formerly Communist countries including nonmembers of the former USSR such as Slovakia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. TABLE 1.3 Foreign trade quotas, 1996 (export+import/GDP) (%) Trade quota Belgium and Luxembourg Estonia Ireland Moldavia Slovakia Netherlands Bulgaria Lithuania Slovenia Byelorussia Switzerland Czech Republic Sweden Denmark Norway Hungary Finland Austria

138.6 120.5 118.3 111.8 105.9 104.3 102.0 101.3 93.7 92.6 88.6 87.8 85.2 78.4 78.0 75.4 73.9 72.6

Trade quota Latvia Ukraine Macedonia Croatia Iceland Germany Romania UK France Poland Portugal Albania Italy Spain Yugoslavia Russia Greece Turkey

72.5 72.5 69.2 62.4 61.9 56.6 55.6 49.6 46.9 45.7 44.0 40.7 39.9 38.4 36.9 30.4 30.2 17.4

Source:

There is little question that the economies of most if not all European countries were more intertwined with that of other countries at the end of the twentieth century than they had been before the 1970s. The same appears to be true with regard to areas where quantitative measurements are more difficult to take, such as communication, culture, and migration (for examples see Tables 1.4 and 1.5). The overall impression from data such as these remains one of a broad process of internationalization but to a varying degree and at varying times in different countries and in different respects. A point often made is that societal internationalization is nothing new and that the period between the world wars was unusual in its nationalism. It is also argued that the common impression of radical internationalization is exaggerated: outside of finance, one author maintains, ‘a compelling case for a globalization tendency has not been established’ (Weiss, 1999: 63). Zürn, on the other hand, argues on the basis of his data that the level of societal internationalization in the years before 1914 was attained and

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TABLE 1.4 Foreign share of the film market in four European countries, 1955–92 (%) 1955 1965 1975 1980 1985 1990 1992

France

Germany

Italy

UK

51.1 45.3 47.6 52.3 55.3 62.5 65.1

52.7 71.2 87.1 90.7 77.3 90.3 90.5

65.2 54.9 40.7 56.5 68.2 79.0 75.7

69.9 n.d. 70.0 79.0 90.3 93.0 96.4

Source: Beisheim et al., 1999: 87

TABLE 1.5 Per cent foreigners in four European countries, 1955–94 France 1955 1960 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1993

Germany

Italy

UK

1.2 4.9 6.6 7.2 7.1 8.9 11.5

0.4 0.7 1.4 1.7

3.1 3.0 3.0 3.2 3.5

4.1

6.5 6.8 7.4 6.4

Source: Beisheim et al., 1999: 117

surpassed by the late 1970s if not earlier. What has happened since then he thinks is entirely new in view of the emergence of a global financial market and revolutionary information technology in addition to global environmental change and international crime (Zürn, 1998: 93–4). Held similarly maintains that even if ‘there is nothing new about global interconnections’ and ‘[d]omestic and international politics are interwoven throughout the modern era’, there has never before been a conjuncture of a dense network of economic relations beyond the control of any single state, extensive webs of transnational relations, instantaneous communications, ‘a vast array of international regimes and organizations’, and the ‘development of a global military order’ (Held, 1995:18–20). Zürn thus emphasizes the combination of the internationalization of problems and societies, while Held focuses on the uniqueness of the conjunction of societal internationalization and the internationalization of decision-making. Let us turn now to this last type of internationalization, in regard to which the novelty of contemporary Europe is especially obvious. The internationalization of decisions The expression ‘internationalization of decisions’ is used here to refer to two changes in the way political decisions are made: an increase in the degree of ‘internationality’ of decision-making, and the proliferation of international decision-making to new policy areas – an increase in the intensity and scope of internationalized decision-making, if you wish.

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So far as intensity is concerned, four steps in the direction of increasingly advanced internationalization may be conceived, even if all four are practised side by side in contemporary world politics: 1 2 3 4

consultation with others before national decisions are made, negotiated agreements, decision-making by intergovernmental organization, and supranational decision-making.

In case (1) decisions remain national but are internationalized in the limited, but significant, sense that the experiences, ideas, and concerns of others are increasingly taken into account; one function of international organization is to facilitate and stimulate the exchange of information and ideas between governments. Two has been standard procedure in international politics for centuries; a further function of international organizations is to provide an environment conducive to such negotiation. The most important task of international organizations from the point of view of the internationalization of politics, however, is to take the decisions themselves; a major shift from (2) in the direction of (3) took place in the second half of the twentieth century and is an essential dimension of the transformation with which the present book is concerned. The fourth step represents a further, radical development that will be detailed below. Exponential growth in international organization was a main feature of world politics after the Second World War. The Rhine Commission, established in 1815, is often mentioned as the first modern international organization, and this form of international politics had its definite breakthrough after the First World War, but international organization did not become a dominant feature of world politics until the post-1945 period, when the number of intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) grew to more than 300. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Council of Europe, and the European Union were the most prominent parts of the network of European organizations at the end of the twentieth century, but they were joined by many smaller organizations such as the Nordic Council and the South-East European Co-operation Initiative. The structure of international governmental organizations, even though varying, has some characteristic features. The supreme authority is generally an assembly of member state delegates. There is often a smaller council or executive committee; the United Nations (UN) is unusual insofar as the Security Council has been endowed with supreme authority instead of the General Assembly. There is in most cases a Secretary-General or equivalent heading an international secretariat. This is how multilateral intergovernmental decision-making is typically institutionalized. Some European organizations, such as the Council of Europe and the Nordic Council, differ by having assemblies of parliamentarians. The main innovative feature of post-1945 European international organization, however, is the supranationality of the European Union (EU). The concept

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of supranationality has various meanings but is used here in the sense of the authority of an international organization to take decisions that are binding even on member states opposing them. The authority afforded to the UN Security Council under Chapter VII of the Charter was path-breaking when it was introduced in 1945 but has played a limited role in practice. The authority given in 1995 to the World Trade Organization (WTO) to engage in the binding resolution of conflict between the members promised to become more important in practice and almost immediately came to play a part in the recurrent trade irritations between the EU and the US (Chapter 4). However, the main example of advanced internationalization in the form of supranationality is the EU. This is not the place to review the institutional structure of the EU. Suffice to recall four of its innovative features as a political institution: 1 Binding decisions can be taken by the Council of Ministers by means of qualified majority voting (QMV) in many areas. 2 The European Commission, a supranational body, is empowered to issue binding directives in some areas. 3 The European Parliament, which is directly elected by the citizens of member countries and hence does not represent member states, plays an important part in EU decision-making: its concurrence is necessary for the taking of many decisions by the Council, it is authorized to vote the Commission out of power, and it must concur in the appointment of a new Commission. 4 The decisions of the European Court of Justice are binding on EU governments and citizens and have proven important for the constitutional development of the EU. It is difficult to conceive of even more radical internationalization than this, since the next major step would be akin to the formation of a federal state, and then the term international would lose its relevance. Add to this another way in which decisions are getting internationalized: the increasing scope of internationalized decision-making, that is, the increasing tendency for decisions to be taken internationally in policy areas that used to be domestic. International decision-making is as old as states and diplomats but was formerly limited to matters such as trade and international security. In contemporary European politics, the scope of international decision-making has widened dramatically. There is now little that is not taken up for consideration at the international level in one form or another, and much that is considered ill-advised to decide nationally without international consultation or co-ordination.

Synonyms of internationalization The concept of internationalization as outlined above will now be compared to four synonyms: globalization, Europeanization, denationalization,

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and transnationalization. All five can be used interchangeably in many cases but do not refer to precisely the same thing. The differences need to be made clear and my choice of the term internationalization to denote my present object of study needs to be justified. Globalization Globalization, a faddish term of the 1990s, is used in several ways in academic literature.8 In one usage it refers to the latest phase of capitalism in which corporate transnational activities have made national economies increasingly integrated or amalgamated with each other (Clark, 1997: 21; Gill, 1997: 1–6). Whether resulting from market dynamics or from political will, globalization is an economic phenomenon in this usage. The central fault line, as it has been put, comes between those who emphasize macroeconomic benefits and those who focus on social adjustment costs (Morrison, 1998: 14). Globalization is also used in the sense of cultural equalization by the diffusion of particular cultural products, lifestyles, and consumption patterns across the entire world in conjunction with the dissemination of rationalism, instrumentalism, and a concomitant way of organizing society (Meyer et al., 1997). In another use, which I believe is different from the previous two, globalization is pictured as an individual level, everyday phenomenon. It refers ‘neither to values nor to structures’ but: to processes, to sequences that unfold either in the mind or in behavior, to interactions that evolve as people and organizations go about their daily tasks and seek to realize their particular goals. (Rosenau, 1997: 80)

There is a fourth approach, according to which globalization is a broad process within which economic penetration, cultural assimilation, and sequences of interaction are special instances. I take David Held to exemplify this approach, when he defines globalization as: the stretching and deepening of social relations and institutions across space and time such that, on the one hand, day-to-day activities are increasingly influenced by events happening on the other side of the globe and, on the other, the practices and decisions of local groups or communities can have significant global reverberations. (1995: 20)

Held adds that politics today unfolds: against the background of a world permeated by the movement of goods and capital, the flow of communication, the interchange of cultures and the passage of people. (1995: 21)9

Globalization in the first three senses are aspects, but only aspects, of what is called internationalization in this book. Globalization in the fourth sense is essentially the same as internationalization. Nonetheless, there are three reasons related to language why I prefer the term internationalization.

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First, the two terms would seem to be suitable for different levels of analysis: while globalization is mainly used with reference to international relations, internationalization more naturally pertains to single nations. Social relations are getting globalized while single societies are getting internationalized, so to speak. Globalization suggests that we are dealing with the entire international system, or with a network or system of social relations without spatial limits, while internationalization refers to single nation-states. It is semantically peculiar to say that Spain or Switzerland are getting globalized but not to say that they are getting internationalized. Since this book is about transformation pertaining to nation-states, it has seemed preferable to use a term suitable for seeing the change from the inside or below rather than from the outside or above, that is from the point of view of a nation-state and its citizens rather than in a global macro perspective. Second, globalization is an obvious term to use only if one wants to denote what has global scope. That is not the case in the present book. Internationalizing change may have significant, indeed revolutionary implications for individual nation-states even if its scope is less than global. The society and politics of EU member countries are getting radically internationalized because of a process that is regional rather than global. The geographic scope of the process does not decide its implications for nation-state and democracy, which are the main concerns of this book. Hence it is better to use a term which is neutral so far as geographic scope is concerned. This problem, which admittedly is not of great significance (terminological questions never are), is not solved by stipulating that a process of globalization is one that is ‘conceived as only capable of being worldwide in scale’ and as having ‘the potential of an unlimited spread’ (Rosenau, 1997: 81, emphasis in original). Apart from the difficulty of operationalizing concepts defined in terms of potentials, it is simply not relevant for our present concerns whether internationalizing change is potentially limited or potentially unlimited in terms of geography. Third, globalization in day-to-day language as well as in much academic literature is most often used in an economic sense. The economy, it has been pointed out, forms the core of the globalization debate (Kreile, 1999: 605–6). A term without economic bias is to be preferred in a book about politics. Therefore, even though much of this book is about matters often considered under the heading of globalization, this term will mostly be avoided. It will be used occasionally with reference to wide-ranging trends in the economy, however, just as in day-to-day language. Europeanization Europeanization would seem to have less currency as a scholarly concept than globalization. It is used here and there in the book to denote change that is European in scope, no more no less. This is meaningful especially when it is a matter of the internationalization of decision-making. In the terminology used in what follows, if decisions

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about issues which used to be domestic are increasingly taken at the European level, the politics of a country are becoming increasingly Europeanized. Denationalization The term Denationalisierung has been proposed in opposition to the term globalization, which its authors have rejected for reasons similar to the above. Much social action across national borders is not even potentially global, they point out. New configurations are regional rather than global. The limits of the OECD world are of particular significance, they argue, while most international trade takes place within three major blocs in Europe (EU/EFTA), North America (NAFTA), and Asia (ASEAN). This makes it misleading to speak of globalization (Zürn, 1998: 65–7). The disadvantage of the term denationalization from the point of view of this book is that it has been proposed to refer not only to relations across nation-state borders but also to the internal constitution of nation-states. Political denationalization has been defined as a process whereby institutions at the level of the nation-state are losing ground not only to international institutions but also to institutions at the subnational level. Thus denationalization is proposed to refer to fragmentation as well as to integration (Beisheim et al., 1999: 22–3). It is a common thought that integration and fragmentation go hand in hand in contemporary politics. This is the main theme of Rosenau’s theory of ‘governance in a turbulent world’ (Rosenau, 1997, esp. the diagram on p. 46). A political geographer points out that while the traditional barrier functions of international borders have greatly diminished, there will likely be more new states and more new boundaries in the early decades of the twenty-first century (Blake, 2000) The German group just cited conceives of political denationalization, seen to comprise both integration and fragmentation, as a result not only of societal denationalization but also of individualism (Beisheim et al., 1999: 23–4). The object of this book is limited to the integration aspect. I want to keep open whether internationalization has anything to do with individualism and whether internationalization and intra-state decentralization are interconnected. I therefore prefer a terminology that does not imply any particular connection. Transnationalization Keohane and Nye’s Power and Interdependence (1977) made the concept of transnational relations common property among political scientists. Keohane and Nye distinguished between inter-state, transgovernmental, and transnational relations. The last term referred to non-governmental relations and actions across borders – to international relations involving the private sector, as it were. Some writers in the field of globalization focus on the increase in transnational relations that has taken place and could have used the term transnationalization. Rosenau introduces the term transnationalism to refer to one of several ‘worldviews’ (Rosenau, 1997: 47–52).

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It is evident that growth in transnational relations is part of what is called here societal internationalization, indeed, that transnationalization and societal internationalization are largely the same thing. Internationalization is the broader concept, however, since it also includes the internationalization of political problems and political decision-making.

The rest of the book: three concerns Three main questions about the transformation of the nation-state will be raised in this book. I hope I have succeeded in alerting the reader to what important concerns they are for a political scientist as well as a contemporary European citizen. The dynamics of internationalization A key issue is whether the transformation is to be seen as a matter of impersonal forces or of human agency. Internationalization, in one view, is largely driven by technological and social dynamics; the best we can do in politics is to adapt rationally to what is going on. Internationalization, in another view, is largely contingent on political choice. Since this issue is vital we need to go into the question of the extent to which internationalization is indeed contingent on political will. A further bone of contention is what kind of political will is involved: pragmatic self-interest or principled internationalism? To explore these matters is a main object of Chapter 2. The undermining of the nation-state Intuitions vary about the contemporary nation-state. Some find it self-evident that internationalization entails the demise of the nation-state. Others find it obvious that national identity is such a powerful force in the minds of man and that the nation-state is such a strong political institution that there are strict limits to internationalization. Some, furthermore, conceive of the nation-state as an obstacle to progress, others as a condition for human well-being. The fact that intuitions and ideologies collide makes it especially appealing to consider questions pertaining to nation-state independence and national identity under contemporary conditions. The most obvious question of this kind is what is in fact happening to the nation-state. To what extent is it true that nation-states are getting less and less independent on account of internationalization? Do national identities keep being reconstructed as before? If the answer is ‘yes’ to both questions, how can one be reconciled with the other? These matters are considered in Chapter 4. A different question is how internationalization relates to the political culture of each nation-state. Prevailing views about the identity of one’s country in the sense of its special features and about the way in which one’s country should relate to its environment may be seen as a dimension

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of its political culture. Such views may be taken to interact with internationalization: they tend to adapt, presumably, to what is in fact happening to a country while at the same time affecting the response. This is why the study of the political cultures of nation-states is integral to the exploration of the relation between nation-state and internationalization. The political–cultural approach is elaborated on in Chapter 5, and is amplified with notes about the conceptions of the international role held in four major European powers (France, Germany, the UK, Russia) and the views about how to deal with internationalization predominating in five smaller European countries (Austria, Belgium, Ireland, Sweden, Hungary). Finally, internationalization poses a normative problem: should it be applauded in the name of internationalism or arrested for the sake of the nation-state? The arguments are sorted out in Chapter 6, in which we will be concerned, among other things, with the validity of neo-nationalism, as it may be called – an ideology very different from classical nationalism and lacking in overtones of national superiority and expansionism. If it is true that to a large extent internationalization is a matter of political will (this is considered in Chapter 2), if internationalization does have significant implications for the independence and identity of nation-states (Chapter 4), and if views about this matter are integral to political cultures (Chapter 5), then this makes the proper response to internationalization an urgent question for political philosophers and democratic citizens alike. The future of democracy There is agreement that internationalization is making democracy an increasingly complex matter, but there is disagreement about its precise implications and especially about the feasibility of making democracy work at the international level. There is an inevitable choice, according to one opinion, between internationalization and democracy; this is part of the neo-nationalist view considered in Chapter 6. The task, according to another opinion, is to set up democratic institutions adapted to new conditions. Contemporary Europeans have reason to reconsider their ideas about democracy in view of the threats and promises of radical internationalization. This issue, largely neglected in political theory until recently, forms the topic of Chapter 7. The questions raised are whether the threat perceptions, held by democrats of various kinds, are credible, what we do not know about these matters, and whether intergovernmentalism, supranationalism, or renationalism is approapriate from the point of view of democracy. The three concerns now outlined, symbolized by the concepts of internationalization, nation-state, and democracy, respectively, are separate but interrelated. The interrelations, barely suggested in the preceding paragraphs, will become clearer by degrees, but the various parts of the argument will only be brought together in a systematic fashion in Chapter 8. In that concluding chapter the descriptive theory of internationalization emerging from the book is summarized. Perhaps more importantly, the

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various threads of the theoretical argument are put to use for defining the prescriptive issue the transformation of the nation-state raises for the citizens of contemporary Europe.

Notes

1

2 3 4 5 6

7

8

9

The European Union (EU) strictly speaking did not exist until the Treaty on European Union (TEU), better known as the Maastricht Treaty, came into force in 1994, but the expression will be used more broadly in this book. When it is a matter merely of pre-TEU incarnations of the EU, however, reference will be made to the European Community (EC) or the European Economic Community (EEC) as appropriate. European Credit Transfer System: ECTS Users’ Guide

See Wiseman (1998) for a consideration of Australia in a similar perspective. See Ágh (1998: 1–3) for a comment on the use of the concepts of ‘Central Europe’, ‘East Central Europe’ and ‘East Europe’. I am indebted to Tom Bryder for making me aware of this data and for making the source available to me. It is pointed out in the literature that concepts like international criminal organizations (ICOs) and organisierte Kriminalität (OK) are indistinct (Godson and Olson, 1995; Sieber, 1998: 98; Zachert, 1995), but nevertheless there appears to be a broad consensus about them in the literature. Zürn and associates include trans-border pollution in what they see as gesellschaftliche Denationalisierung, since it represents a relation between nations. My concept of societal internationalization is meant to be more in line with traditional notions of integration or, put differently, with the objectives of internationalists – the idea of societies’ growing together by an increase in the socpe and intensity of positive relations between peoples. The word ‘human’ has been added to the above definition of societal internationalization in an attempt to indicate this. See Axtmann (1998), Kellner (1998) and Therborn (2000) about various ways of using the term globalization. See Bartelson (2000) for a conceptual–historical analysis. The literature on globalization is growing rapidly at the time of writing and cannot be given anything like a comprehensive consideration in this book. Held refers to Kegley and Wittkopf (1989: 511).

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2 The Dynamics of Internationalization CONTENTS

The endogenous dynamics of internationalization 25 The exogenous dynamics of internationalization 37 The main issues 49

Why internationalization? Is the nation-state being transformed because of impersonal forces or human design? If the former, what forces? If the latter, for what purposes? These questions are especially pertinent because of their political implications. If internationalization is independent of political choice, it is something to which we must adapt. If it is subject to political choice, we must consider whether it ought to be hastened or arrested. The relation between internationalization and political design is the main thread in the analysis of the dynamics of internationalization which follows. A model of internationalization is outlined in Figure 2.1. The model purports to explain why internationalization takes place but is weakly specified, and its main function is to serve as a set of questions in the sense outlined in Chapter 1, that is, as an aid in defining issues for further consideration. Central to the model is the distinction between the endogenous and the exogenous dynamics of internationalization. Its endogenous dynamics are represented by the arrows inside the rectangle to the right, and exogenous factors are summarized in the form of the two concepts to the left; each will be defined and exemplified. Then issues for more profound consideration will be discussed further, including the balance between structural and ideational propellants of internationalization, that is, between impersonal forces and political choice. It is obvious that the dynamics of internationalization are more pronounced in some countries than in others. Radical and rapid internationalization is a concomitant of market economy and democracy. This need not be

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Technological change

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Internationalization of problems

Internationalization of decisions Political will

Internationalization of societies

FIGURE 2.1 A model of internationalization

laboured. The book, focusing as it does on post-Cold War Europe, does not deal with the internationalization of countries whose external relations are sparse. The model is intended to be applicable also in such cases, however.

The endogenous dynamics of internationalization Six types of self-reinforcement It is common to conceive of social interaction as self-reinforcing, and it is obvious that this tends to be the case with some forms of societal internationalization: trade begets trade, student exchange begets student exchange. Furthermore, institutions may take on a life of their own and widen their scope and functions regardless of the original purpose: what is known as the ‘new’ NATO illustrates how an organization, set up for a particular purpose in a particular situation, expands its activities and membership in spite of the fact that the situation giving rise to it no longer exists.1 It is a truism that some features of the internationalization of societies as well as of decisions tend to reinforce themselves. The dynamics outlined in Figure 2.1 are more comprehensive. The suggestion made in the figure is that the internationalization of problems, societies, and decisions may reinforce each other. To focus attention on this possibility is the main reason for distinguishing between the three. The arrows in the right hand part of the figure thus represent proposed causal relationships now to be defined and exemplified. The examples are meant to demonstrate the existence of the various relationships and to indicate the relevance of more detailed and systematic research for the further development of a theory of internationalization.

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PROBLEMS → DECISIONS If the political agenda of a country is increasingly contingent on conditions, actions, or events abroad, the propensity for seeking solutions at the international level tends to increase – this is the proposition represented by the uppermost arrow in the figure. The development of an environmental policy at the global and European levels is a most obvious example. Another is the build-up of international police co-operation. Environmental pollution and organized crime were considered in Chapter 1 as examples of internationalized problems. The task now is to show how the appearance of an internationalized problem may internationalize the making of decisions. The environment By the early 1970s the long-term effects of environmental pollution were widely seen as an international issue. The 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment has been characterized as ‘the watershed for the introduction of environmental concerns into international law’ (London and Llamas, 1995: 3). One result was the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). A subsequent step was the report of the Brundtland Commission with its emphasis on sustainable development, which was incorporated into Agenda 21, an action programme adopted in 1992 at the UN Conference on Environment and Development. Treaties that have been negotiated include the Vienna Convention on the protection of the ozone layer and the Basel Convention on the control and disposal of hazardous wastes. UNEP, furthermore, has developed a vast programme in a variety of fields.2 Other organizations concerned with environmental questions include WTO, OECD, NATO, and OSCE. The Stockholm Conference was also effective in putting the environment on the agenda of the EEC.3 The first of a series of Environmental Action Programmes was adopted in 1972 at an EEC summit in Paris.4 There was no express reference to environment policy in the Treaty of Rome, and Council action, based on Articles 100 or 235 of the Treaty, was taken to presume unanimity among the member states. The directives adopted on this basis were considered legally binding, however, and the Commission brought several cases before the European Court of Justice (ECJ) claiming that member states had failed to fulfil their obligations. The Single European Act of 1986 gave environmental policy a stronger legal standing in the EC. It now became an explicit objective of the Community to ‘preserve, protect and improve the quality of the environment’. Majority voting on environmental questions was introduced insofar as the new Article 100A, pertaining to harmonization for the sake of the internal market, could be applied to some such questions. The Maastricht Treaty of 1992 made the wording stronger (‘Community policy on the environment shall aim at a high level of protection’), while increasing the scope of majority voting and strengthening the role of the European Parliament in this area. The Amsterdam Treaty of 1997 went

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further in both respects by making sustainable development an explicit objective of the EU and by rendering the co-decision procedure applicable with regard to almost all environment issues. It may be debatable whether this fairly rapid and radical Europeanization of policy-making on environmental issues is appropriate in view of the nature and scope of the problem. A contentious issue has been whether member states should be allowed to take more stringent measures than those decided by the Community: a tension has been seen between the maintenance of a common market and the protection of the environment. Appropriateness is not our present topic, however. What is important here is the way in which the growing evidence of an internationalized problem has led to the internationalization of decision-making in this area. The police The consideration of international police co-operation in response to the growth of organized international crime must begin with Interpol (the International Criminal Police Organization), which was founded as early as 1923 and had about 150 members by the 1990s.5 Even though recognized by the UN as intergovernmental, Interpol is an organization of police forces rather than of governments. It is professional rather than political and is active in voluntary mutual assistance, mainly in the form of information exchange. Its field of activity is limited to ‘ordinary law crimes’, as they are called in Article 2 of the Interpol constitution. A guiding principle is to base all Interpol work on action by national police forces within their respective countries; this serves to emphasize the limited extent to which the maintenance of law and order has been internationalized at the global level. Organized European co-operation in the area of crime began in 1976 on an intergovernmental basis, when TREVI (Terrorisme, radicalisme et violence internationale) was set up by the members of the EC. TREVI was an organization for political consultation with a view to police co-operation. Biannual meetings were held at ministerial level, while work groups were set up concerning terrorism, equipment and training, and drugs and organized crime. The Schengen Agreement, fully implemented since 1995, took European police co-operation a step further by being more detailed in this regard. The most radical innovation was the introduction of hot pursuit by the police of one country into the territory of another, which was a sensitive issue, since the treaty was based on intergovernmental cooperation between sovereign states. The radicalism of the innovation was ameliorated by the fact that hot pursuit, in order to be legitimate, must be based on a bilateral treaty to this effect. ‘Justice and home affairs’ became a major area of EU co-operation by being included in the Maastricht Treaty, albeit as a separate, intergovernmental ‘third pillar’ (the Schengen Treaty was not included in the EU structure before the Amsterdam Treaty). More importantly, TREVI ministers decided in 1993 to organize a European Drug Unit (EDU). This was a forerunner of Europol, set up by a convention concluded in 1995

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that came into force in 1998. Europol was the spearhead of European co-operation in the police area by the end of the 1990s. The aim of Europol, specified in detail in the convention, is to improve the effectiveness of, and co-operation among, the authorities of EU member states in preventing and combating ‘terrorism, unlawful drug-trafficking, and other serious forms of international crime’ (Article 1). This is to be achieved by the exchange of information and by co-operation with regard to analysis, training, and advice (Article 3). Much of the convention is devoted to Europol’s computerized information system; the controversy surrounding the convention has largely been about the implications of this system for individual integrity. Europol is led by a board consisting of one representative of each member state; it appears from Article 28 that majority voting is to be applied only on operational details. The ability to decide about the competence of the organization resides with the member states acting in unison (Article 43), and Europol thus remains essentially inter-state. However, further changes in the framework of European police co-operation were made in the Amsterdam Treaty. It became clear during the preceding intergovernmental conference that there was widespread dissatisfaction with the effectiveness of the intergovernmental framework of the Maastricht Treaty in the area of ‘justice and home affairs’. The objectives of the EU in the area of police co-operation, accordingly, were expanded in the Amsterdam Treaty. A possibility was introduced for the Council to authorize the operation of police from one member state inside another. The Commission was given a general right of initiative in the area, and the ECJ, the EU Ombudsman, and the European Parliament were given significant functions. Even majority voting was introduced for some decisions (Nergelius, 1998: 134–6). Thus the build-up of European intergovernmental co-operation in the police area, started in the mid-1970s, took a supranational turn by the mid-1990s. International police co-operation came about because similar problems were faced in different countries, which made the sharing of experience and information a common interest. Its further acceleration in Europe was a response to the growing internationalization of the problem of crime prevention. As this problem became increasingly serious, nation-state governments went so far as to introduce a measure of supranationality in an area traditionally seen as more closely associated with national sovereignty than environmental protection and most other matters. DECISIONS → PROBLEMS Participation in international decision-making tends to make the concerns of others into one’s own. Membership in an international organization makes it necessary to devise a policy on issues that could otherwise have been side-stepped. This may largely be an insignificant matter: all members of the UN are expected to form a position on an array of questions that are

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peripheral from their respective points of view, but it would be an exaggeration to suggest that items on the UN agenda are ipso facto issues in the politics of each member country. For a more significant example we may turn instead to the EU. By the late-1990s, agricultural policy and regional development in East Central and East Europe were becoming an issue in all member state capitals by virtue of their being EU members, a problem that would not have been theirs if they had not been members. What made this unavoidable was the prospective Eastern enlargement of the EU. The European Council decided in December 1997 to begin negotiations about membership with Hungary, Poland, Estonia, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia, a decision extended in December 1999 to Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Slovakia (see pp. 46–9). It was obvious that enlargement would entail difficult trade-offs for EU-governments, that the very ratification of the accession treaties about to be negotiated was at stake, and that the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and Structural Funds were critical from this point of view. CAP and the Structural Funds, it should be noted, comprised about 80 per cent of the budget of the EU by the mid-1990s (Ardy, 1999: 121) CAP, a highly regulated system set up to facilitate the modernization of European agriculture while protecting it against threats thought to emanate from industrial society and from the United States, had led to overproduction and exploding costs. The way in which decisions on CAP were made and the position of agrarian interests in this process had made it ‘extremely difficult to control CAP expenditure or to limit its more perverse distributional effects’ (Rieger 1996: 100–1, 105, 110–12). What it would mean to extend CAP to the applicant states in East and East Central Europe was suggested by the fact that the agricultural land of the ‘first five’ represented 23 per cent of the land of the EU member states, while their population comprised 17 per cent of that of the EU; all ten Eastern applicants taken together represented as much as 44 per cent of the agricultural land of the EU as against 28 per cent of the EU’s population. Extending CAP to the ‘first five’ was estimated to increase the annual cost of the system by 20 per cent. It appeared this increase had to be accepted, or CAP revised, or enlargement postponed – a major policy choice for each of the EU member states. Especially, it can be added, for the main net contributors to the EU budget relative to GDP (Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Austria in 1995) and the main net receivers from it (Ireland, Portugal, Greece, and Spain) (Ardy, 1999: 116, 119, 122). The Structural Funds were introduced in the 1970s for the professed purpose of increasing the cohesion of the European Community by transferring resources from comparatively rich to comparatively poor regions. Their real function, it has been argued, has been as side-payments to facilitate agreement on policy packages, especially in the context of negotiating the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty (Allen, 1996). What made them an issue in relation to enlargement was the relative poverty of the applicant countries: GDP per capita in the EU was about six

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times that of the first group of applicants and more than 12 times that of the second group (Ardy, 1999: 108). The choice was between an increase in member state contributions to the EU budget, reduced transfers between member states, and no enlargement. This should suffice to indicate what was at stake for each of the members of the EU. The stakes, which were very significant, were financial as well as political. The choice was imposed on them, or rather on their citizens, by virtue of their being EU members. The parallel process of NATO enlargement, which also necessitated difficult choices, was not on the agendas of non-aligned Austria, Finland, Ireland, and Sweden, but EU enlargement was. SOCIETIES → PROBLEMS The internationalization of markets is the paradigmatic example of the way in which transnational relations contribute to the internationalization of national agendas. Increasing international exchange makes the international economy an increasingly important condition for the economic, social, and industrial policy of each country. An example, if one is needed, is the European currency crisis in the autumn of 1992. A seemingly stable exchange rate regime had been established in Europe with the ERM system at its core. In the summer of 1992, however, the rejection of the Maastricht Treaty by Danish voters and an increase in the German rate of interest to counter the effects of reunification caused uneasiness in the international economy. In September the Italian Lire was devalued, and the Finnish Mark, left to float, fell by 14 per cent. Only two days later, the UK followed Finland’s example. Then Spain, Portugal, and Ireland devalued their currencies. Sweden went to extremes in its efforts to defend the Crown – the single most spectacular event of the crisis was an increase in the Swedish discount rate to 500 per cent by mid-September – but had to give in after a few weeks. The final result was a loss of about 20 per cent in relation to the German Mark for Italy, Spain, Portugal, Finland, and Sweden, and about 10 per cent for the UK, Ireland, and Norway (Lundgren and Söderström, 1995). This is an illustration of the way in which tight economic relations can make a referendum in Denmark and a change of the rate of interest in Germany major economic–political problems for a number of other countries. The literature on globalization, as pointed out in Chapter 1, is largely about the extent to which the conditions for national policy are now set by economic forces beyond national control. This need not be detailed further. It should be added, however, that there is no lack of non-economic examples: relatively small matters such as the way in which increasing student exchange makes foreign grading a problem for universities in various countries; relatively large matters such as the way in which the increasing movement of people, goods, and capital makes organized international crime a problem in one country after another.

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The link between the internationalization of societies and of problems is so close that the very distinction may seem to be questionable. In the globalization literature, as a matter of fact, it is often difficult to determine whether the subject of discussion is an increase in economic relations or an increase in the proliferation of problems of economic policy across borders. The internationalization of criminals and the appearance of international crime on political agendas may seem to be equally difficult to keep apart from each other. However, there is a difference between the intertwining of societies and the structure of political agendas. It is obvious that political problems are not a necessary concomitant of societal internationalization, just as it is obvious that problems may be internationalized for other reasons than increasing international exchange. It is better, therefore, to consider the impact of societal internationalization on nation-state agendas as an empirical question rather than to make them one and the same by definition. PROBLEMS → SOCIETIES We now turn to the possibility that the widespread recognition of something as an internationalized problem leads to transnational co-operation – between interest organizations, churches, environmentalists, university departments, and so on. I shall use as my first example one of the most remarkable incidents of the Cold War: the mobilization of an international opinion against nuclear weapons in the early 1980s. Arguably this was an epoch different from the present and an issue area that is inherently international rather than one that is presently internationalizing. Therefore a note about transnational co-operation between environmentalists will be added. The anti-nuclear weapons movement6 In the post-Hiroshima era, nuclear weapons were increasingly seen to create a problem qualitatively different from armaments in general, since the nuclear arms race posed a threat to mankind in its entirety. This view was fairly consensual in the West, but there were differences about what was the right response. In 1976, the Soviet Union began to deploy SS-20s, a new generation of land-based intermediate-range missiles targeted on Western Europe. NATO began to study the deployment of land-based missiles of its own capable of reaching Soviet territory from Western Europe; this was considered essential for the credibility of the US commitment to the defence of Europe, a major concern at the time. The famous ‘two-track decision’ NATO took in December 1979 was to prepare for the deployment of intermediate-range missiles within four years in the UK, Germany, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands, while negotiating with the USSR about a mutual limitation of such missiles. The two-track decision sparked a major movement of public protest, especially in Western Europe. Established institutions such as churches and unions played a leading part, but hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in major cities in many countries, the rallies in Bonn perhaps

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being the most spectacular. The structure, demands, methods, and impact of the protest movement varied between countries; there were differences in all of these respects between Germany and the UK (Robertson, 1992). Still this was more than a coincidence of national events. Foreign participants were a standard feature of the rallies (36 groups from 11 foreign countries participated in the Bonn demonstrations of October 1981). Peace movement documents included a myriad of references to peace campaigners abroad. Many peace groups belonged to international organizations or networks and participated in international activist conferences. The churches, important both as participants in the movement and as arenas for the movement’s activities, had their own international networks. There is no question that transnational communication and contact increased dramatically during this event, especially the transnational exchange of information and ideas. The environmentalists The anti-nuclear weapons movement in the first half of the 1980s was an ad hoc response to a specific international problem. For an example of a more institutionalized kind we may turn to its sibling, the environmental movement. Grassroot activism at the local level – ‘think globally, act locally!’ – has remained the predominant answer of environmentalists to the growing perception of internationalized problems in this area, but transnational co-operation has also increased. To cite a student of this process, ‘[g]iven the transnational nature of many environmental problems, an approach which moves from their symptoms to the causes must inevitably shift its attention to a supranational level’, and hence transnational co-operation emerges ‘from the inner nature of the problem’. What this means in practice is learning from each others’ experiences, sharing resources, supporting sister groups, preventing the transfer of environmental problems from one place to another, and joining forces to confront decision-makers with the effects of their decisions. On the last point, it has been suggested, environmental groups can learn from farmer mobilization in the EU (Rucht, 1993: 77–8). Transantional co-operation of environmental groups began already in the nineteenth century. It has mostly been ad hoc and hence similar in this regard to the anti-nuclear weapons movement of the 1980s. Ad hoc co-operation remains essential: to cite just one example, when the World Commission on Dams (WCD) held its first forum in Prague in March 1999, 20 environmental organizations were present and took the opportunity of holding strategy meetings about their common focus in relation to the WCD.7 In the 1970s, however, the institutionalization of transnational environmental co-operation became a significant feature of international relations. By the 1990s, four major organizations, joined by a number of lesser groups and specialized networks, had established a significant presence in Brussels: the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), the European office of the Friends of the Earth (SEAT), the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF), and Greenpeace (Marks and McAdam, 1996: 114).

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The WWF, founded in 1961, has operated as a professional enterprise rather than a protest organization; its Brussels bureau was established in 1989. Greenpeace, founded in 1971, set up an office in Brussels in 1988. In contrast to both of these, the Friends of the Earth, first organized in the United States in 1969, was set up as an association of national chapters; the largest chapters by the mid-1990s were those in the USA, the UK, the Netherlands, and Germany. The EBB was formed in 1974 in response to the first Environmental Action Programme of the EEC and by 1999 had grown to comprise 130 member organizations in 24 countries (Rucht, 1993: 83–6).8 An example as good as any of the way in which the perception of an internationalized problem may lead to institutionalized transnational co-operation is Coalition Clean Baltic, a network formed in 1990 on the initiative of Finnish and Swedish environment organizations. By the late1990s there were projects and other activities in Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Sweden.9 An example of a network organized for a more specific purpose is ‘Right Prices for Air Travel’, a campaign launched in 1997 by the Friends of the Earth Europe on the initiative of Vereinigung Milieudefensie in the Netherlands. The purpose was to introduce taxes and environmental charges on aviation in Europe. At the first World-Wide Action Days on Aviation and Environment, 5–6 December 1997, activities took place in cities such as Vienna, Athens, Madrid, Stockholm, Skopje, Ljubljana, Larnaca, and Warsaw plus 20 places in Germany, five in Belgium, six in the Netherlands, and at a number of airports and train stations in the UK.10 An initiative taken at about the same time was ‘Eco Vision’, a network of environmental NGOs formed in Bonn in connection with a symposium organized by Deutscher Naturschutzring in November 1997.11 SOCIETIES → DECISIONS We will now consider the idea that the integration of national societies with each other tends to increase the likelihood of their taking political decisions jointly: according to this thought societal integration begets political co-operation, whether it is a matter of solving problems generated by this very integration or otherwise. Some of the most obvious examples in contemporary Europe have been mentioned already: an increasing exchange of goods and services strengthens the incentives for the making of joint economic policy, the free movement of people facilitates international crime which is an incentive for the making of joint criminal policy, increasing student exchange makes joint decisions about higher education more likely. In all these cases it is a matter of internationalized decisionmaking about problems generated by societal internationalization; the internationalization of problems is an intervening variable between the internationalization of societies and of decisions, so to speak. This is an obvious phenomenon, which is crucial for the endogenous dynamics of

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the process of internationalization. Is it possible to conceive of a more direct relation between the internationalization of societies and of decisions, that is, of an integration-generated general propensity for taking decisions together with others? It is difficult to isolate the independent influence of a broad, political– cultural factor such as the conception that it is natural and obvious to co-operate with others about upcoming problems. Nordic co-operation may be a case in point, however. Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden have pursued different foreign policies in the period since 1945. Denmark, Iceland, and Norway are members of NATO, while Finland and Sweden are non-aligned. Denmark joined the EU in the 1970s, Finland and Sweden did not become members until the 1990s, and Iceland and Norway have remained non-members. The five countries then have come to engage in international decision-making about crucial matters in quite different ways, a fact that is easily explained in geopolitical and historical terms. What is not so obvious is the enduring tradition of co-operation in spite of this. The Nordic Council, an organization set up to promote political consultation and co-operation in many fields, may have lost some of its significance but remains in existence and there is a tradition of joint consultation in international organizations, not to mention, the symbolic joint venture of building a common embassy compound in the new Berlin. All this is difficult to explain other than by reference to the integration of Nordic societies, facilitated by geographic closeness and linguistic similarity as well as by more practical features such as a passport union and a common labour market. The fact of Nordic political co-operation, therefore, may help to substantiate the suggestion that societal internationalization plays an independent role in encouraging internationalized decision-making. It is likely that something similar is going on in the EU and hence that the growing together of European societies is increasing the general inclination of decision-makers to consult with each other and take each other’s experiences and concerns into account. DECISIONS → SOCIETIES Increased political co-operation leads to more contact at the societal level – this is the final proposition to be considered here. An indicator, superficial as it may be, is the impact of EU membership on travel to Brussels, which is not a leading hub in international air traffic. In 1998, passenger traffic at Brussels international airport was larger than traffic in Copenhagen and Stockholm, on a par with traffic in Zurich, and not much less than in Paris (Charles de Gaulle), Amsterdam, and Madrid. There was a particularly large increase in traffic to and from Scandinavia in the 1990s, which is noteworthy since Finland and Sweden joined the EU in 1995. By the same token, Scandinavian Airlines passenger numbers increased to and from Brussels more than any other major non-Belgian European airline in this period, an increase that was particularly large in 1995.12 Passenger traffic

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between Stockholm and Brussels in 1995 was more than twice that of 1994 and had more than trebled by 1998.13 It goes without saying that airline traffic is an imperfect indicator of societal internationalization. A more direct example of the link between the internationalization of decisions and of societies is the way in which transnational co-operation between special interests is encouraged by international decision-making. The European Environmental Bureau, as mentioned, was set up in 1974 in response to the first EEC Environmental Action Programme. It presents itself as consisting of organizations ‘convinced of the importance of the policies of the European Union with regard to environment and nature conservation’.14 To cite a representative of an EEB member, the UK Green Alliance: ‘As the EU has developed more power and influence in the environmental field, our involvement with the EU and NGOs abroad has increased. So many issues are dealt with on a European level that we have to work in a pan-European way’.15 The European Commission, as a matter of fact, has been actively promoting the formation of EU-level interest organizations in a variety of fields by offering them not only institutionalized participation in policy-making but even funding (Greenwood, 1997: 261–2). Such societal effects of the internationalization of decisions may be inadvertent rather than intended. The activities of the OECD, such as its regular reviews of the economies of the member countries and its role as an organizer of international conferences, are reported to have increased contacts and links across borders, just as the efforts of the EU in the area of research and development have played a part in promoting industrial co-operation (Mörth, 1996: 102–3, 107).

Spillover and path dependency The essence of the endogenous dynamics of internationalization as outlined here is that the internationalization of problems, societies, and decisions are mutually reinforcing – not always and everywhere, obviously, but generally and on the whole. This is more likely to underestimate than to overestimate the self-reinforcing potential of the process, since the internationalization of societies and of decisions may each have a tendency to reinforce itself; this was pointed out at the beginning of the chapter. The extent to which such processes work, and the way in which they work, need to be researched, but the assumption that the process of internationalization is self-reinforcing to a significant extent does not seem farfetched. It must now be pointed out that it has long been debated in the literature about European integration whether this is in fact the case. The core concept in this controversy is ‘spillover’, debated since Ernst Haas published The Uniting of Europe in 1958. Haas used ‘spillover’, which he placed within quotation marks, to denote what he called the ‘expansive logic of sector

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integration’, that is, a tendency for elite attitudes to become increasingly favourable to integration as a result of previous integration; hence – this is the point of the concept of spillover – integration might accelerate even in the absence of any long-term objective to bring this about (Haas, 1958: 283–317). In another early work about European integration, spillover was defined as ‘a situation in which a given action, related to a specific goal, creates a situation in which the original goal can be assured only by taking further actions, which in turn create a further condition and a need for more action, and so forth’ (Lindberg, 1963: 10). A similar thought became known in the jargon of the 1990s as ‘path dependency’: a decision made at a critical juncture changes the parameters of future decision situations so as to make subsequent decisions likely to follow the same ‘path’. The three definitions are not quite compatible with each other, but the basic idea is the same: if one has said A, one is more likely to say B at a later point than one would have been if one had not said A. At issue is whether this is academic construction or political reality. Schmitter concludes from a study he has made that European integration until 1992 was, to a certain extent, a matter of spillover from old to new areas of co-operation but that the growing significance of EU institutions was more important, as were factors such as global energy crises and changes in the world economy (Schmitter, 1996: 9–14). Other authors take the position that the process of integration has been entirely a matter of what governments have found to be in their interest at each specific juncture and that past integration has proven to lack significance for decisions about its future course (Milward, 1992). Moravcsik, after having examined what he calls the most salient negotiations in the history of the European Community – those leading to the Treaty of Rome, the Common Agricultural Policy, the European Monetary System, the Single European Act, and the Maastricht Treaty – maintains that the evidence disconfirms the view that European integration is self-reinforcing. Supranational institutions have wielded little influence over intergovernmental decisions, the transfer of authority to EC institutions has not been an unintended consequence of previous decisions but their primary purpose, and government preferences have proven to be about the same since the 1950s, he argues (Moravcsik, 1998: 489–93). This argument is less clear-cut than it seems. Moravcsik writes that ‘integration [has proven to] have politically significant consequences, notably shifts in the preferences and institutional environment in which future decisions are made’ and that ‘intended . . . “lock in” effects [are] a secondary force behind regional integration’. He even accepts for a fact the occurrence of such a paradoxical phenomenon as shifts in preferences that have been ‘foreseen, intended, even desired’ (Moravcsik, 1998: 494). What remains is his insistence that the main steps toward deeper integration have been neither unforeseen nor unwanted. The question then is whether lack of intention is a necessary condition for what is to be regarded as self-reinforcement. No such assumption

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is made in this book. Interaction between the internationalization of problems, societies, and decisions is seen here as self-reinforcement regardless of whether reinforcement has been intended (as for example by internationalists) or unintended (as maybe by nationalists; see pp. 39–49). The role of spillover and path dependency, therefore, remains at issue in spite of Moravcsik’s investigation. The crucial question is not whether the process is self-reinforcing to some extent, which I take to be obvious, but the significance of this tendency. Everybody realizes that economic and monetary union may create a need for a common economic policy; it may even encourage, as has been argued, the further development of a common foreign and security policy (Czempiel, 1999). Also everybody realizes that the government of every EU member can veto such developments. The issue is about the balance between the two, and we do not know enough about this matter. To this must be added the possibility that the process of internationalization may have an in-built tendency not just to strengthen but also to weaken itself. Some forms of internationalization, such as the influx of large numbers of foreigners and ongoing Americanization of the media, have provoked a backlash that could be called nationalist. A paradoxical result of radical internationalization in the EU, furthermore, has been an increased demand for the definition of national positions on all sorts of questions (Jacobsson, 1999). In some ways, evidently, internationalization has strengthened rather than weakened the inclination to think in national terms. The possibility of developments such as these adds to the difficulty of determining the extent to which internationalization is self-reinforcing. The conditions for co-operative action to be self-reinforcing have long been an object of social research (e.g. Axelrod, 1984). The student of internationalization has good reason to go deeper into questions of this kind. The bottom line is that there is little basis for a general conclusion about the endogenous dynamics of the process of internationalization, a fundamentally important question from the point both of scholarly theory and European politics. To what degree and in what way this process is selfreinforcing needs to be studied further. The conceptual framework suggested here – the idea of seeing internationalization as interaction between problems, societies, and decisions – may be helpful in this endeavour.

The exogenous dynamics of internationalization Technology and political will Even a strong believer in spillover or path dependency would hesitate to argue that internationalization is entirely a function of itself. Its dynamics

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must be taken to be not only endogenous but also exogenous. Common notions about its endogenous dynamics are summarized to the left in Figure 2.1 in the form of two concepts: technological change and political will. The role of technology is mostly taken for granted by those reflecting on the factors propelling internationalization. The exploitation of new industrial technology has led to results ranging from the pollution of air and water to the growth of markets and firms, and hence indirectly to the internationalization of political problems. The development of communications technology, similarly, is a main factor behind the radical internationalization of national societies.16 Technological determinism is insufficient as a theory of internationalization, however. Few object to the assertion that this process is also contingent on political will. Internationalization is not merely an irresistible result of technological change, or of self-reinforcing processes set in motion by technological change, but is also a matter of political choice. The interplay between the two is illustrated by the way in which ‘the territorial state [has] lost control over its economic boundaries’ since about 1970, to cite Fritz Scharpf. By Scharpf’s account, the breakdown of the Bretton Woods exchange rate regime combined with oil-price crises, the explosive growth of financial markets beyond the control of major central banks, technological innovations, and the increasing importance of multinational firms to make financial assets mobile around the globe, while markets were progressively liberalized by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and WTO negotiations, neoliberal policies spread from the USA and the UK across the OECD world, and the EU completed its internal market (Scharpf, 1999: 38–9). This is a major example of the way in which internationalization is contingent in part on political will. The reduction of the exogenous dynamics of internationalization to two concepts is meant to focus attention on two issues: the role of political will as a propellant of internationalization alongside technology, and the kinds of political will that are effective in this regard. Technology is seen in Figure 2.1 as a matter not only of material tools but also of knowledge, and technological change is seen to comprise not only hardware but also software, for example, not only better ships but also insights into the utility of seafaring. By the same token, the concept of political will is taken to comprise not only a wish for internationalization but also the historical, geographic, economic, or political argument on which it is based. It goes without saying that a comprehensive theory of internationalization (theory in the sense of a ‘set of answers’) would have to be more detailed and differentiated. The aim here is limited to specifying certain issues in need of further study (‘theory as a set of questions’, as this is called in Chapter 1). The insight that internationalization is in part a matter of political choice, crucial as it is, must be qualified insofar as the internationalization of problems, of societies, and of decisions are contingent on political will to varying degrees.

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Some problems, first of all, come from abroad whatever the authorities of a country decide about the matter. Trans-border pollution may be a result of human decision and action, but from the perspective of a receiving country it is a fact of life. Provided that threats to the environment are seen to form a political problem, pollution from abroad forms part of the national political agenda. It is the same with unemployment, drug abuse, crime, Aids, and much else: it can be discussed whether matters like these are to be considered political problems, but if they are, there is no way of escaping the internationalization of the political agenda of one’s country. Societal internationalization can be avoided in principle, but in most places openness has nonetheless been preferred to closedness. Two ideas have been widely accepted: economic exchange is a means to prosperity, and individual freedom is a condition for democracy. There are exceptions: for example, limitations are put on immigration nearly everywhere. It is also true that openness is politically controversial here and there, including, for example, the utility of free trade. On the whole, however, most people in most countries appear to be convinced that societal internationalization is mainly to their advantage in spite of the fact that it also causes problems. There remains the internationalization of decision-making. This is essentially an open question for each country. We can choose between trying to solve our internationalized problems on our own and participating in international efforts for a solution. We can choose, moreover, between being content with intergovernmental methods and seeking to develop more radical forms of international decision-making. These are not matters of technological necessity or implications of a taken-for-granted preference for openness but open political choices. It is a task of a student of the exogenous dynamics of internationalization to explore the political will dictating them.

The role of internationalism In a trivial sense political will is a condition for everything in politics, including internationalization. Before organized international crime resulted in the setting up of Europol its existence had to be taken note of; Europol must be found to offer a solution, and the choice of this solution must be willed. New communications technology does not contribute to internationalization unless its use is encouraged or at least permitted. Perception and intention are intervening variables in most theorizing about politics and society. When their role is left implicit, it is not because they are assumed not to be there but because they are thought to make an insignificant addition to the explanation of what is to be explained. In such cases the autonomous role of political will is presumed to be limited enough for it to be left out of the argument. When political will is suggested to be an exogenous explanatory variable in its own right, as in Figure 2.1, this is a different matter. A will to

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internationalize is then suggested to play a significant autonomous role in promoting the internationalization of societies and decision-making, a role that is not a mere reflection of new technology or previous internationalization. This role is sometimes difficult to separate from other influences, as illustrated by Scharpf’s (1999) account of the internationalization of the economy. In other cases it is entirely obvious that technology and selfreinforcement do not explain what has happened; the autonomous role of political will in the formation of the Council of Europe to support democracy in the face of an emerging cold war with the East is very evident.17 The most obvious question to be posed about the role of political ideas in promoting internationalization is about internationalism. Internationalism, it may be recalled, is seen in this book as a programme for peace and security by international institution building and exchange (Chapter 1), a programme, in other words, for peace and security by the internationalization of decision-making and societies. The internationalist programme will be considered in more detail in Chapter 6, in which the prescriptive question whether we ought to be internationalists is raised. The question posed in the present chapter is descriptive: to what extent can the process of internationalization be explained by reference to internationalism on the part of governments and publics? To what extent is the radical internationalization of contemporary Europe a result of internationalism? The emphasis here, as elsewhere in the book, is on posing questions rather than on providing answers. Evidence will be offered for purposes of illustration and preliminary exploration, but the main object, here as elsewhere, is to pave the way for more profound consideration later on. The three cases to be considered in a tentative way are the onset of European integration, the formation of the European Union, and its prospective widening. The question in each case is about the role of internationalism in propelling European integration. This question, it may appear, has already been answered by Moravcsik in his examination of five crucial negotiations cited earlier in this chapter. All five cases, Moravcsik argues, confirm that ‘the most persistent and powerful source of varying national preferences concerning integration . . . has been economic, in particular commercial, interest’. What Moravcsik calls ‘geopolitical interests and ideas’ have had a significant impact, but their role has been ‘clearly secondary’; ‘[r]epeatedly we see leaders privileging economic over geopolitical concerns’ (Moravcsik, 1998: 473–7). There are three problems with this analysis from the point of view of the present study. First there is the methodological difficulty of establishing the hierarchy of motives behind complex social events, a problem Moravcsik cannot escape but does not discuss. Second, Moravcsik’s concern with the documented ideas of political leaders such as Helmut Kohl, François Mitterrand, and Margaret Thatcher may make him neglect the concerns of constituencies they needed to satisfy in order to mobilize support for the agreements they made and may cause him to overlook

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matters considered by political leaders to be too obvious to be rehearsed; even if ‘economic, in particular commercial, interest’ dominates day-to-day policy-making, and hence maybe the available documentation, a principled view may be essential for guiding the process as a whole. Third, Moravcsik’s concept of ‘geopolitical interests and ideas’ encompasses everything from power–political realism to internationalist peace-building and is not useful from the point of view of investigating the role of the latter instead of the former. I am not arguing that Moravcsik is wrong but that his work does not decide the issue of the role of internationalism for European integration. The early European Community It has been common in European politics to describe European integration as successful peace-building on internationalist lines: the Community, according to the Belgian government, has ‘shown an example of reconciliation and prosperity to the whole continent’ (Laursen and Vanhoonacker, 1992: 269). It is overly cynical to dismiss statements such as these as mere rhetoric. It was widely felt in post1945 Europe that the mistakes of 1919 must not be repeated and that reconciliation in the form of integration would prevent major war from breaking out anew among European powers. However, the precise role of internationalist ideas in the early history of European integration is not easy to assess. One reason is the extent to which peace-building mixed with other considerations when the objectives of the undertaking were officially proclaimed. The preamble of the Treaty of Rome, signed on 25 March 1957 to establish the European Economic Community, illustrates this. The six governments:

Determined to lay the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe, Resolved to ensure the economic and social progress of their countries by common action to eliminate the barriers which divide Europe, Affirming as the essential objective of their efforts the constant improvement of the living and working conditions of their peoples, Recognising that the removal of existing obstacles calls for concerted action in order to guarantee steady expansion, balanced trade and fair competition, Anxious to strengthen the unity of their economies and to ensure their harmonious development by reducing the differences existing between the various regions and the backwardness of the less favoured regions, Desiring to contribute, by means of a common commercial policy, to the progressive abolition of restrictions on international trade,

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Intending to confirm the solidarity which binds Europe and the overseas countries and desiring to ensure the development of their prosperity, in accordance with the principles of the Charter of the United Nations, Resolved by thus pooling their resources to preserve and strengthen peace and liberty, and calling upon the other peoples of Europe who share their ideal to join in their efforts, Have decided to create a European Economic Community . . .

A variety of economic objectives were thus combined with the striving for an ‘ever closer union’, the elimination of ‘barriers which divide’, and the pooling of resources to ‘preserve and strengthen peace and liberty’. Historians dismiss the latter and claim to have found a ‘more prosaic subtext’ in governmental archives: ‘far from an heroic, visionary quest for a better future, they recount the story of an entrenched defence of perceived national interest’ (Griffiths, 1995: 3); integration ‘was not the supersession of the nation-state by another form of governance as the nation-state became incapable, but was the creation of the European nation-states themselves for their own purposes’ (Milward, 1992: 18). The two versions need not be irreconcilable, however (Griffiths, 1995: 3). Defending a ‘perceived national interest’ is not incompatible with the pursuit of internationalism. It is important, first of all, to distinguish between the pursuit of internationalism and the supersession of the nation-state. It will be made clear in Chapter 6 that the kind of internationalism that has been politically influential has taken the nation-state for granted. Its object has been to safeguard international peace and security by embedding nation-states in a network of exchanges and institutions and not by abolishing them. The fact that measures are taken in defence of the nation-state does not suffice to prove that they are devoid of internationalist concerns. It should be kept in mind, moreover, that the first steps toward the EU were taken against the background of wartime thinking about post-war order influenced by the failure of the League of Nations in the face of fascism and nazism, and of beggar-thy-neighbour policies during the Great Depression. This sentiment was represented in particular by the several ‘European movements’ emerging after the war, the most famous of which was the United Europe Movement inspired by Winston Churchill’s speech in Zurich in 1946 about the need for a United States of Europe (Griffiths, 1995: 15–16). The immediate task, from this point of view, was to integrate Germany with Western Europe to such an extent that history would be prevented from repeating itself – an internationalist objective considered dominant even by such a sceptic observer as Milward (1992: 44–5, 325). Thus internationalist considerations did play a part. They may even have been taken for granted to such an extent that their role risks becoming underestimated by observers basing themselves on the perusal

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of documentary evidence. Other considerations were also important, however. Much in European integration has resulted from considerations that are best called pragmatic: governments have taken one step after another toward ‘ever closer union’ because this has seemed to be the best way of solving one specific problem or another. This may be called inadvertent internationalism. Milward argues that the EEC and its predecessor the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) resulted from the efforts of governments to establish and maintain a modern welfare state (Milward, 1992). Moravcsik contrasts this analysis with his own emphasis on commercial interests (Moravcsik, 1998: 88). In either case this is what I mean by inadvertent internationalism. There is reason to believe that the process of radical internationalization, on which a group of European countries embarked in the 1950s, represented inadvertent as much as deliberate internationalism. It is useful to distinguish the obvious and not very intriguing phenomenon of internationalization for the purpose of pragmatic problem-solving from the paradoxical occurrence of internationalization for the sake of the nation itself – nationalist internationalism, as this may be called. Attention will be devoted to the concept of nationalism in Chapter 6. Suffice here to point out that nationalism, as defined in this book, is a political principle, doctrine, or programme aimed at the promotion of the identity, independence, and influence of one’s nation. These objectives – identity, independence, influence – may be advocated on behalf of anything construed as a nation, but the nationalism relevant for the present argument is pursued on behalf of existing nation-states. National identity, national independence, and national influence have in common that they pertain to a nation as such rather than to its individual members. They relate to the viability of a nation and its position in relation to other nations rather than to the welfare enjoyed by individuals and subgroups within it. Nationalists, on the above definition, attach especial importance to these matters; non-nationalists do not. Note the difference between nationalism in this sense and the prudent pursuit of the national interest. The difference needs to be emphasized because of an ambiguity in the concept of national interest. If, in Morgenthau’s famous phrase, statesmen ‘think and act in terms of interest defined as power’ (1985: 5), the pursuit of the national interest is the same, more or less, as nationalism in the above sense, and the distinction I am suggesting between the pragmatic and the nationalist pursuit of internationalization is difficult if not impossible to maintain. To suggest that governments are pursuing the national interest in this sense is akin to arguing that governments are nationalists, a thesis with which Morgenthau would have found it easy to agree. This conception of national interest is not the only one, however, and that is why the matter calls for our attention. Many authors conceive of the national interest as comprising whatever governments decide to strive for in international relations (for just one example, see Moravcsik, 1993: 481,

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483). To suggest that governments are pursuing the national interest in this latter sense is a truism if not a tautology. The national interest in this sense – the goals of governments – may comprise objectives here called nationalist but may also comprise other things, indeed anything. Milward does not distinguish between nationalism and the pragmatic pursuit of the national interest, even though his emphasis is on the latter. His theory is that all states have domestic agendas, that they choose on this basis between pursuing their objectives by ‘interdependence’ or by ‘integration’, that they can often pursue them by ‘expanding . . . the inherited framework of interdependence, traditional intergovernmental cooperation among states’, but that they sometimes find their fundamental objectives to be better advanced through integration, by which Milward means supranationality. The choice depends on domestic politics (Milward and Sørensen, 1993: 12, 20–1). However, Milward also suggests that principled nationalism has played a part: his main characterization of the evolution of the EC is as ‘an integral part of the reassertion of the nationstate as an organizational concept’ (Milward, 1992: 2–3), and he pointedly calls his major work The European Rescue of the Nation-State (1992). Milward’s thesis thus is that internationalist ideas were dwarfed not only by pragmatic considerations but also by nationalist concerns in the early years of European integration. Neither Milward nor anybody else has been precise about the balance between deliberate, inadvertent, and nationalist internationalism. The case of the early history of European integration illustrates the need to consider this balance in an effort to explore the political will to internationalize. The formation of the European Union The political process resulting in the Treaty on European Union, known as the Maastricht Treaty, was different from and yet similar to those resulting in the ECSC and the EEC. The main difference was that, in the late-1980s, the process did not start from scratch but took place on the basis of experiences that had been made and positions that had evolved during three decades of economic community. It was not a matter of taking off in a new direction but of continuing what was already going on. The negotiations, accordingly, were about specific matters; to elaborate on ultimate objectives was not necessary (see Middlemas, 1995: 156–204 for an account of the negotiations). However, and this was the similarity with the 1950s, Germany’s position in Europe reappeared as a major concern as a result of its unexpected reunification in 1990. Just as in the 1950s, West Europeans negotiated about a variety of specific matters on the basis of a variety of national interests against the background of a common concern with the German question and a widespread view to the effect that measures of an internationalist kind – the neutralizing of German power by its integration in a supranational framework – was the answer. This was Germany’s policy more than anybody else’s. The German position on post-Cold War Europe was close to the internationalist programme (Gutjahr, 1994; Rühl, 1992). The spread of multilateralism and

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the strengthening of supranational institutions was a primary German goal. This was in order to counter nationalist tendencies in Germany and elsewhere, and to strengthen the commitment to democracy, seen as a pillar of a new European order (Müller, 1992: 158–62). German policy comprised a substantial measure of self-entanglement – a remarkably non-nationalist stance for a great power (see Chapter 5). The French position was more ambivalent insofar as the French objective was to retain the independence and identity of France while at the same time containing Germany in supranational institutions and hence to ‘embrac[e] Germany in order to control her and us[e] her strength in order to strengthen France’ (McCarthy, 1993: 51), which was la quadrature du cercle, according to Hoffmann (1990: 504). The tone of the negotiations leading to the Maastricht Treaty was set by Franco-German agreement on the parallel pursuit of monetary and political union: the French wanted the former, the Germans wanted the latter. This, arguably, was an internationalist compromise – an agreement to continue together towards ‘ever closer union’ for the purpose of guaranteeing that serious conflict would never again break out between Germany and its neighbours. In this case too, however, indications of ‘nationalist internationalism’ – the pursuit of the internationalist programme for the sake of the identity, independence, and influence of one’s nation – were at least as prominent as those of deliberate internationalism. It is not peculiar that arguments of a nationalist type were put forward against far-reaching integration: the UK, for example, rejected any change in the ‘nature’ of the Community that would lead it toward an ‘unacceptable dominance over our national life’ and added that ‘we cannot allow the search for joint action to inhibit our right to take separate national decisions essential for the pursuit of our foreign policy’ (Laursen and Vanhoonacker, 1992: 423–4). When the Danes surprised everybody in European politics by voting ‘no’ to the Maastricht treaty, this similarly was for fear of loss of sovereignty and concern with identity (Mouritzen, 1993: 379; Siune and Svensson, 1993: 103, 110; Worre 1993: 222–6). What is less obvious is the role of nationalism in justifying approval of the treaty. Thus the British Prime Minister emphasized the way in which membership in the European Community had enhanced Britain’s world influence: the collective strength of the EC vis-à-vis the United States and Japan had made it possible to ‘negotiate a good deal for Britain in international trade negotiations’, and on most issues ‘we carry more clout collectively’ (Laursen and Vanhoonacker, 1992: 420, 424).18 This was an expression of nationalist internationalism, a characterization that fitted the French position even better. To ‘maintain a will to independence’ was an imperative of French diplomacy, and France was even more inclined than other countries to regard Europe as a means to pursue its own national interests (Hoffmann, 1993: 128–9; Martial 1992: 116). The French objective was to organize the EU ‘in such a way that France kept as much of its identity as possible and nevertheless obtained the necessary scope for cooperative

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action’ (Schmidt, 1993: 338). France needed the EU to ‘enhance its presence on the international stage’ (Vernet, 1992: 658). Concern with the international position of one’s nation was equally pronounced on the part of more integrationist countries. Anderson and Goodman report that German officials they interviewed maintained Germany was not driven by ‘naive altruism or a blind fealty to international institutions’. Germany had other reasons for promoting European union. One was to advance Europe’s, and hence Germany’s, interests vis-à-vis third parties: Europe had to be strengthened even at the cost of limiting the options available to any one member; sovereignty was worthless if it carried no influence; it had to be pooled in order to be effective (Anderson and Goodman, 1993: 54–7). The last point was also made by the Belgian government: EC member states must strengthen their capability for acting jointly in order to be able to play the political role in the new Europe that was expected from them; ‘[w]e will be taken seriously only insofar as we assert ourselves’ (Laursen and Vanhoonacker, 1992: 269, 273). The Netherlands had a tradition of assuming that Dutch interests were better upheld ‘within a European legal order . . . than under a system that operated mainly on the principle that might is right’ (Wester, 1992: 166). A conclusion drawn in a study of the European policies of the Benelux countries was that the European institutions had given them eine vollständig neue, veränderte Akteursqualität, a Statuszuwachs, a higher position on the Rangskala der internationalen Bedeutung, and a gain in bargaining power vis-à-vis third parties (Woyke, 1985: 373–4). The Italian government, for its part, sought to ‘maintain Italian influence in line with the country’s national interests’ by means of European union (Martial, 1992: 151). What is implied in characterizations such as these goes beyond the pragmatic pursuit of domestic–political interests and is fairly described as internationalism for the sake of the nation, that is, as nationalist internationalism. The European experience, as a matter of fact, is asserted to have shown that nation-states are particularly willing to submit to supranational regulation when it is a matter of defending their national sovereignty (Streeck, 1996: 84). These observations amplify Moravcsik’s conclusion that the Maastricht Treaty is to be explained primarily in terms of ‘slowly evolving economic interests’ rather than German unification and ‘federalist sympathies’ (Moravcsik, 1998: 469). There are indications that both internationalist internationalism and nationalist internationalism played a part, together with the obvious pursuit of pragmatic objectives, but the balance between them is not clear. The enlargement of the European Union19 Westernization was a main goal of the countries freed from Soviet tutelage. All post-communist governments in non-Soviet East Europe had announced their eagerness to join the European Community before the end of 1990 (Nicolaïdis, 1993: 207). It is a

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paradox, it has been argued, that their newly regained sovereignty had to be ‘given up immediately, although partially but voluntarily’ in the form of Europeanization (Ágh, 1998: 81). The initial response of the EC was ‘soft’ (Messerlin, 1993), ‘not . . . very innovative or daring’ (Kramer, 1993: 234) and ‘cautious’ if not ‘ungenerous’ (Redmond, 1993: 220); the EC was ‘extremely reluctant to make any specific commitment to even the principle of Central and East European enlargement’ (Gower, 1999: 3). However, as mentioned already, the European Council decided in December 1997 to ‘launch an accession process’ comprising ten Central and East European applicants together with Cyprus and to begin negotiations with Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovenia. The Commission proposed in October 1999 to begin accession negotiations with Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Romania, and Slovakia as well, while taking ‘full account’ of each candidate’s progress in meeting the criteria for membership previously set by the EU.20 The European Council decided accordingly at its meeting in Helsinki in December 1999. The early reluctance of the EU to admit a large number of new members is easy to explain in economic terms: there were fears of low-wage competition (French agriculture, Portuguese textiles, and Spanish steel are often mentioned) (Nicolaïdis, 1993) and the cost of including the applicant countries in the Common Agricultural Policy and the system of Structural Funds were considered prohibitive (Phinnemore, 1999: 75). The question is whether the accession strategy that nonetheless emerged in the course of the 1990s had anything to do with internationalism. The answer, according to one observer, is essentially ‘no’: EU strategy evolved in response to external demands rather than as a ‘clear vision of the kind of European Union that would meet the needs of the next century’ (Gower, 1999: 3). This need not mean that there was no vision on the part of anybody, however. The Commission, in a report to the European Council in 1992, suggested the existence of some sort of vision when it found that ‘the integration of these new democracies into the European family represents a historic opportunity’ and that the Community ‘cannot now refuse the historic challenge to assume its continental responsibilities and contribute to the development of a political and economic order for the whole of Europe’.21 The report was added to the Conclusions of the European Council at the Lisbon meeting in June 1992. At the Council meeting in Copenhagen a year later, relations with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe were a main topic. The Council ‘welcomed the courageous efforts undertaken by the associated countries to modernize their economies’ and to ensure a transition to a market economy. ‘Peace and security in Europe depend on the success of those efforts’, the Council declared and went on to define what became known as the Copenhagen criteria for admission. Meeting in Essen in December 1994, the Council gave priority to ensuring ‘the lasting peace and stability of the European continent and neighbouring

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regions’ by preparing for the accession of countries in the East. This was essentially repeated in Cannes in June 1995. In Madrid, in December 1995, the Council described enlargement as ‘both a political necessity and a historic opportunity for Europe’; enlargement, it added, would ‘ensure the stability and security of the continent’. Then, when the decision to ‘launch an accession process’ was taken in December 1997, this was said to ‘mark . . . a moment of historic significance for the future of the Union and of Europe as a whole’ and to comprise ‘the dawn of a new era, finally putting an end to the divisions of the past’.22 There is no way of knowing to what extent this phraseology was seriously meant, but there is little question that expressions like ‘historic opportunity’ and ‘putting an end to the divisions of the past’ echoed a sentiment that was widespread in several member countries. In Sweden, sceptical or divided on most issues relating to European integration, there was near-consensus in the Riksdag that enlargement was an historic task, a contribution to economic and political stability and ‘an important step on the road to a lasting peace and security order in Europe’ (Goldmann, 2001). One analyst sees a threefold interest behind EU policy towards Central and East Europe: (1) to maintain the value system on which Western polities and the EU itself are based, (2) to extend the ‘zone of co-operation and integration’ so as to maximize ‘stability and security’ and minimize problems generating ‘disruption and insecurity’, and (3) to encourage the further development of democratic institutions and processes so as to make decisions ‘disruptive in terms of European security’ less likely and foster ‘stability around the EU’s borders’ (Gow, 1999: 29). To assess the relative influence of such an internationalist view poses a challenge for scholars concerned with the ideas propelling European integration; its influence is unlikely to have been zero. So far as the applicants were concerned, Václav Havel’s Czechoslovakia initially pursued a vision of a pan-European security structure built on the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), on the withering away of both military pacts, and on the formation of an Organization of European States (Whipple, 1991: 75, 119–21), thus returning to an orientation in Czechoslovak foreign policy dating back to the days of Masaryk (Skak, 1992: 291). This is one of the few indications of programmatic internationalism in the post-Soviet foreign policy of the Eastern countries. Analysts rather emphasize the role of nationalism in the political culture of the applicant countries (Kreile, 1999a: 803). To examine in a systematic and comparative fashion the ideas underlying the urge to join Western institutions – NATO in addition to the EU – is one more task ahead. To detail the economic advantages believed to follow from membership would be to labour the obvious; the role of pragmatic objectives need not be doubted. However, there are many signs that nationalistic internationalism was also essential for making Eastern governments and publics intent on joining the EU. It is common to point out that joining the EU was taken to affirm the sovereignty of the applicants

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and to fulfil a need to be ‘once more accepted as a full part of Europe’; economic motives were secondary, it has been argued (Grabbe and Hughes, 1999: 185, 189). It was a matter of ‘symbolic behaviour confirming that self-determination and national sovereignty have been established and recognized by the international community’ (Skak, 1992: 280–2). EU membership was also thought to open the way for active participation in European politics instead of remaining mere objects of the power politics of others, as Poland had been in 1939, Czechoslovakia in 1938, and Hungary in 1920 and 1947 (Csaba, 1998: 54–5). According to spokesmen of Hungarian foreign policy, westernization represented Europeanism, bourgeois democracy, and ‘not least the national value of Hungarianism’ (Sitzler, 1992: 112); the sovereignty that would be lost could not be exercised anyway ‘due to the size of the country and the surrounding political and economic situation’ (Maczonkai, 1996: 20). Poland’s early post-Communist rulers were convinced that accelerated westernization was the only way in which Poland could protect its ‘national values’ (Parzymies, 1992: 389) and that EU membership was a key element in the celebrated ‘return to Europe’ (Millard, 1999: 203). In the Baltic countries, joining the EU was seen as ‘a way to bolster national identity, rather than threaten it’ (Lofgren, 1997, cited in Herd, 1999: 261). There were differences between the applicant countries in terms of both political consensus and public support: there was, for example, more political controversy about the EU in Poland than in Hungary (Bingen, 1992; Grabbe and Hughes, 1999; Maczonkai, 1996; Skak, 1992; Szablowski, 1993) while public opinion in Romania and Poland was vastly more favourable to membership than what was the case in the Baltic countries (Grabbe and Hughes, 1999: 187). This serves to emphasize the need for the comparative study of views on internationalization, including the balance between nationalist internationalism and nationalism of a more traditional kind (see Chapter 5).

The main issues The main issues in the study of the dynamics of internationalization will now be restated, and the argument on some points will be expanded. The task is to examine why nation-states are getting increasingly internationalized. This is not quite the same as explaining European integration or investigating the dynamics of globalization: the dynamics with which this book is concerned are not those of an evolving international system but of the relationship between single nation-states and their environment. An important implication, not mentioned before, is that there is no in-built assumption to the effect that there is a general pattern to be discovered. The degree to which nation-states are getting internationalized on account of the same factors is an empirical question. The aim of the book, here as elsewhere, is theory as a set of questions rather than of answers.

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Five types of dynamics are outlined in Figure 2.2. In the model of the dynamics of internationalization considered previously (Figure 2.1) the basic distinction is between endogenous and exogenous dynamics. The typology of explanatory factors now to be considered is designed to emphasize the distinction between structural and ideational dynamics. No issue is more crucial in the exploration of the dynamics of internationalization than the balance between structural and ideational factors. To what extent is the process of internationalization structurally determined, and to what extent is it a matter of political choice? How can this issue be approached?

Dynamics of internationalization

Structural

Exogenous

Endogenous

Ideational

Internationalism

Other

Pragmatism

Nationalism

FIGURE 2.2 Internationalization: five types of dynamics

It is necessary to elaborate here on the meaning of the assertion that a political process is structurally ‘determined’. This expression does not refer to causality in the sense of scientific laws but to law-like probabilistic propositions of the kinds that abound in social theory. Such propositions need not rule out human agency. What they often do is assert that particular structural features tend to affect human thought so as to make particular behaviours likely. The issue raised by such propositions is not about the relation between thought and action but about the relation between structure and thought. To suggest that technology drives internationalization or that internationalization is self-reinforcing is not to say that internationalization is automatic or mechanic, as emphasized earlier in this chapter. All examples of self-reinforcing internationalization given in this chapter are about the way in which the thinking of people is affected by what has happened before; this is what path dependency is about. Technology, by the same token, is presumed to bring about internationalization by having an impact on perceptions and preferences. The assumption is not that human thought is of no relevance but that people: (a) are mostly rational, (b) tend to have essentially the same objectives, including for example security and welfare, (c) tend to perceive structural change in a predictable way, and therefore (d) tend to respond predictably to structural change. If the environment is

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increasingly polluted, this will increasingly be defined as a problem, and international co-operation for environmental protection is increasingly likely to be organized. If communication across large distances gets less expensive, people will communicate more. The assumption underlying a structural proposition is that human thought is predictable to such an extent that examining it is superfluous for our understanding of the relation between structure and action. The assumption underlying an ideational proposition is that there is such variation in objectives, perceptions, and ways of thinking, and such an amount of intellectual creativity that action must be seen as emanating in whole or in part from thinking that is autonomous in relation to structure. Thus the difference between structural and ideational dynamics pertains to the significance of autonomous thinking. This, emphatically, is seen here as an empirical question and not as a matter of ‘approach’, ‘perspective’ or Weltanschauung. Whether the EU is a medium of unbridled market forces and uncontrollable compulsion or a way of taking control of an internationalized market is not a matter of the observer’s ‘perspective’ but of empirical observation (Kreile, 1999: 616). The distinction between structural and ideational dynamics, it should be added, does not run parallel to the distinction sometimes made between ‘explanation’ and ‘understanding’ (Hollis and Smith, 1990). I take it for granted that our object is to ‘explain’ internationalization; whether ‘understanding’ in the sense of accounting for peoples’ thoughts is necessary for this purpose is, once more, an empirical question. This is precisely the question of the balance between structural and ideational dynamics that I consider crucial in the study of internationalization – a question to be researched and not to be decided by assumption. Milward uses strong terms in his rejection of the suggestion that West European integration can be explained in structural terms; this, he asserts, is ‘greatly exaggerating the incapacity of the state’ (Milward, 1992: 12); there is ‘no inherent momentum within the nation-state towards the increasing surrender of its national sovereignty to supranational government’ (Milward and Sørensen, 1993: 12). The extent to which this is correct remains at issue, according to the line of thought pursued here. The distinction between the exogenous and endogenous dynamics of internationalization has been discussed in detail in the preceding pages. The literature about globalization tends to focus on the exogenous aspect, whereas the theory of European integration has been more concerned with the endogenous side. The issue of the endogenous dynamics of internationalization – the extent of self-reinforcement and the way in which self-reinforcement works – has been emphasized in this chapter. Several variations on this theme have been mentioned: (1) a tendency for co-operation to increase the likelihood of further co-operation in the same area, (2) a tendency for institutions to enlarge their area of responsibility and their role within this area, (3) a tendency for co-operation in one policy area to ‘spillover’ into other policy areas, and (4) a tendency for

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the internationalization of problems, societies, and decision-making to interact. One and (2) are limited and obvious phenomena, and (3) has long been debated in the literature about European integration; this is why the focus is on (4) in this book. One task of students of internationalization is to explore these matters further. Turning to the ideational aspect, internationalism is singled out as an important possibility in Figure 2.2. To establish the role of internationalism for the process of internationalization is suggested to be a further concern of students of this process. The difficulty of doing it has been illustrated in this chapter: whose ideas count (decision-makers? public opinion?), how widely must an idea have been held in order to be considered to have helped to cause the outcome (is it sufficient if this idea can be shown to have influenced or to have been pursued by one participant in the process even though other participants have been motivated by other concerns?), is it sufficient if an idea has been used to justify the action or is it necessary to show that it has been seriously held by actors? This, of course, is problematic with regard to ideational analysis generally, including for example Moravcsik’s analysis cited above, according to which internationalism has played no role at all. The main task with regard to internationalization as an ideational process, however, is not to specify the role of internationalism but to examine other motives. The task is to seek a pattern in a myriad of detail. It has been suggested in this chapter that it may be useful to depart from the distinction between pragmatism and nationalism. Pragmatism is what is generally set against internationalism in the debate about the ideational sources of internationalization. Internationalization, or at least European integration, is mainly moved by the attempts of nation-state governments to solve problems of economic policy, according to Moravcsik. This reported finding may be taken as the point of departure for a broader study of the reasons actors of various types in various countries and at various times have had for advocating the internationalization of this or that kind. However, the key challenge is to investigate the role of nationalism in propelling internationalization. This presupposes a distinction between acting in the national interest and acting in the interest of the nation as such, that is, in the interest of its identity, independence, and international influence. Just as it is obvious that ‘nationalist nationalism’ helps to inhibit or limit internationalization, it is obvious that ‘nationalist internationalism’ plays a part in pushing it forward. It seems in fact that nationalist internationalism is more important for propelling internationalization than deliberate internationalism. This is a mere impression, however, the forms and significance of nationalist internationalism need further study. Nationalist internationalism carries the peculiar implication that the institution of national independence, far from being carved in stone, has a built-in propensity for self-destruction. This becomes absurd at some point: you cannot retain your independence by eroding it altogether. That,

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however, does not guarantee that erosion will not take place. The logic of the combination of nationalist internationalism and the tendency of internationalization to be self-reinforcing is that accelerating nationalism may lead on to accelerated internationalization. This is a paradox in the sense of a statement that is only seemingly contradictory. I do not mean to suggest that we are inexorably approaching the point where internationalization for the sake of the nation makes the nation disappear as an identifiable entity. What I suggest is that even if radical internationalism is not a major political force, and even if national identity, independence, and influence remain paramount in the minds of governments and peoples, this may be an incentive for internationalization as well as a constraint. Hence international systemic change in the direction advocated, and maybe anticipated, by idealist optimists may result from the premises of realist sceptics. The fact that this is a possibility should encourage the further study of the dynamics of internationalization.

Notes

1

2 3

4 5

6

NATO Leaders, meeting in London in July 1990, agreed on what they called a new Strategic Concept. After having reviewed the ‘strategic context’ they concluded that the ‘new environment does not change the purpose or the security functions of the Alliance’, but it ‘offers new opportunities for the Alliance to frame its strategy within a broad approach to security’; it had now become possible ‘to draw all the consequences from the fact that security and stability have political, economic, social, and environmental elements as well as the indispensable defence dimension. Managing the diversity of challenges facing the Alliance requires a broad approach to security’ The Alliance’s New Strategic Concept See the account of UNEP available on its website

The following summary is primarily based on Johnson and Corcelle (1995: 1–25) and London and Llamas (1995: 3–44). See Krämer (1993) for a perusal of ECJ cases. The Fifth Environment Action Programme was authorized by the European Council in 1993 for the period 1993–2000. What follows is essentially based on Ahnfelt and From (1996) supplemented by information from the websites of Interpol and Europol The following account of the anti-nuclear protest of the 1980s draws on research carried out by the author together with Alexa Robertson. See Robertson (1992), Goldmann (1994: 90–111) and the literature cited in these works.

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18 19 20 21 22

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TRANSFORMING THE EUROPEAN NATION-STATE Internationell kontakt 1999, no. 2, p. 7 (Svenska Naturskyddsföreningen). The data on membership in the EEB is taken from Fakta, no. 22 (Svenska Naturskyddsföreningen, December 1977). Campaign description and newsletters supplied by Vereinigung Milieudefensie.

This is compiled from BRUstats 1998 and BRUtrends 1992–98. Data supplied by Luftfartsverket, Stockholm (fax message, 22 November 1999).

Rebecca Willis, Programme Co-ordinator, Green Alliance, e-mail communication, 3 December 1999. See Thompson (1995: 151–64) for an account of the development of communication technology. The autonomy of political will as an explanatory factor in the model outlined in Figure 2.1 refers to its relation to other factors included in this model (technological change and self-reinforcement) and not to other matters. It goes without saying that political choices are affected by a variety of things, ranging from material resources to historical experiences, which are not identified as separate factors in the model applied here. See George (1993) and Richardson (1993) for an analysis of British policy. See Kreile (1999a) for a survey of the enlargement process. Regular Report from the Commission on Progress towards Accession by each of the candidate countries, 13 October 1999 (IP/99/751). Europe and the Challenge of Enlargement (Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, 1992). The quotes are from the Presidency Conclusions of each meeting of the European Council

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PART TWO

NATION-STATE

3 Internationalization and the Nation-State: the Issues CONTENTS

The nation-state as problem 56 Independence and identity 61 Six issues about internationalization 71

The study of the nation-state in the present era of internationalization has three features which are of consequence for this book: it is multidisciplinary, controversial, and value-loaded. First, matters pertaining to states and nations are being debated in a variety of academic fields such as international relations, political philosophy, law, historical sociology, social anthropology, mass communication research, migration research, and European studies. It is sometimes difficult to see what precisely is at issue in these debates, which range from the origin of nations to the commercialization of television, and it is even more difficult to see how the debates are related to each other. This puts special demands on conceptual groundwork such as will be attempted here. Second, assertions about what is in fact happening to the nation-state are remarkably divergent. Where some see fundamental transformation, others perceive essential stability. One view is that the role of the nation-state as political actor is diminishing, that its independence is increasingly constrained, and that there is a threat to each nation’s identity; this is the main thread in much of the literature about globalization. It is strikingly common to maintain that this impression is superficial, however, and that

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the nation-state is as strong as ever. Many international relationists, it appears, still agree with Morgenthau that the ‘overriding loyalty [of peoples] to the nation’ erects an ‘insurmountable obstacle’ to the establishment of a world state and that ‘the peoples of the world’ are ‘willing and able to sacrifice and die so that national governments may be kept standing’ (Morgenthau, 1961: 511). David Miller, a political philosopher, maintains that ‘the majority of people are too deeply attached to their inherited national identities to make their obliteration an intelligible goal’ (Miller, 1995: 184). Alan Milward, economic historian, characterizes European integration in a book title as The European Rescue of the Nation-State (1992). Linda Weiss, in comparative politics, has published a book called The Myth of the Powerless State (1998). Or, to cite the heading of a columnist’s reflections on an OECD meeting about internationalization and the future of governance: ‘Despite Global Changes, National Sovereignty Remains King’ (Pfaff, 2000). This is as much today’s conventional wisdom as the opposite view. When views collide in this manner there is especial reason for further analysis.1 Third, there is normative disagreement about internationalization as it relates to states and nations, that is, about whether the transformation of the nation-state by internationalization is desirable or undesirable. While we keep being reminded that the de-emphasizing of the special features and rights associated with nations and nationality is what it takes to pave the way for peace and security as envisaged, for example, by Immanuel Kant in Zum ewigen Frieden (1796), we are increasingly admonished by rightand left-wingers alike to stand up in defence of the special identity and political independence of our own nation against threats emanating from globalization and European integration. These observations form the background of the following attempt to specify the points at issue so far as the transformation of the nation-state is concerned.

The nation-state as problem Nation and state It is necessary to begin with the very term nation-state. The nation-state, according to a representative encyclopaedia, is ‘one of the most characteristic European political institutions’ developing over the centuries from the late Middle Ages until the era of the French Revolution, first based on loyalty to a monarch or dynasty and then on a people with a common language and traditions.2 Authors in the field regularly comment on the awkwardness of conflating institution (‘state’) and community (‘nation’) in this way. If this is awkward, it is equally so to use the term ‘international’ relations in the standard sense of relations across inter-state borders – the

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‘relationships between states and their peoples’, to cite a dictionary of political analysis (Roberts and Edwards, 1991: 68) – and indeed, to use the term internationalization to denote a type of change pertaining in part to states in the sense of institutions and not merely to nations in the sense of communities. Nonetheless there are three advantages with letting the term nation-state denote the object of study of this book. First, a term is needed to separate the state as independent entity from the state as a constituent part of a federation. This is important because one of the points at issue is whether internationalization is depriving, or ought to deprive, states of their independence to such an extent that they become akin to the states of the United States of America. Second, the term nation-state is helpful in dramatizing the tension between a type of change – ‘internationalization’ – on the one hand and an established institution – the ‘nation-state’ – on the other. The opposition between the two, the problem with which the book is concerned, becomes very clear, if ‘nation’ is included on both sides of the equation. Third, only part of the present analysis is about the state as such. The internationalization of politics, as pointed out from the outset, has a societal dimension, and the conflagration of state and nation in the term nationstate is an advantage from this point of view. An author rejecting this approach is Oommen, who makes the case for precise distinctions between state, nation, and ethnicity. Oommen shows that there has been a tendency in academic literature not only to conflate state and nation but to define nation by reference to state and state by reference to nation. This is incorrect, he argues, since ‘[t]he co-terminality between nation and state is absent in most cases’. There has been a concomitant tendency to conflate nation and ethnie, Oommen maintains. He cites as an example of what he thinks is the resulting confusion an author who writes that ‘nationalism is . . . the institutionalization of one particular ethnic identity by attaching it to the state’. Oommen then goes on to define nation as ‘a territorial entity to which the people have an emotional attachment and in which they invest a moral meaning’, state as a ‘legally constituted entity’ providing the residents of a territory with protection, and ethnicity as ‘a product of dissociation between territory and culture’. A nation-state, by this terminology, obtains if state and nation coincide, but ‘most states today are multi-national, poly-ethnic, or a combination of the two’ (Oommen, 1997: 13–50, quotes from pp. 17, 21, 33–4). Two objections can be raised against Oommen’s approach. First, Oommen’s concept of ethnicity is unusual in ruling out the possibility of ethnically based national identity by separating ethnicity from nationality by definition. Second, Oommen jumps to conclusions when taking for granted that state citizenship is associated with ‘emotional attachment’ and ‘moral meaning’ only in exceptional cases; this follows from his definition of nation in conjunction with his assertion that few states are nation-states. Both will be seen as subject to empirical enquiry in what follows: the degree to which states are supported by perceptions of national community

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(Chapter 4) as well as the extent to which such perceptions are ‘civic’ or ‘ethnic’ (Chapter 5). My use of the term nation-state is not meant to imply anything about these matters except that the people of a state have a common ‘nationality’ and hence form a ‘nation’ whose features deserve to be investigated. Thus the existence of a Belgian ‘nation’ is assumed in what follows, but the balance between Belgian identity and other collective identities of Belgians that may also be termed national – Flemish, Walloon, German – is an empirical and not a conceptual matter. By the same token, when the existence of an Irish ‘nation’ is assumed, nothing is implied about its particular features, such as for example the balance between ‘civic’ and ‘ethnic’ features in Irish conceptions of national community; this too is seen as an empirical question.

The nation-state and the theory of politics What makes it especially important to explore the implications of internationalization for the nation-state is the key role of the nation-state in the theory of politics. In political science there is a tradition of seeing politics as taking place either within or among independent states and of presuming politics within states to differ in fundamental ways from politics among states. Internationalization poses a challenge to this presumption. The core difference between the study of domestic politics and of international politics as traditionally conceived may be outlined as follows. The object of study so far as domestic politics is concerned is the ‘authoritative allocation of values for a society’, in David Easton’s phrase (1953: 129). The task is to examine the process by which the competition between opposing interests and ideas leads on to ‘authoritative valueallocation’, the way in which this process relates to the ‘demands’ of the public, how the outcome influences the public’s ‘support’ of the ‘authorities’ as well as of the ‘regime’ (Easton’s well-known concepts (1965)), how the process leading to value-allocation is affected by the structure of the political system within which it occurs, and in what way the process is conditioned by economic, social, historical, and other background variables. The normative issue is how best to construct a political system from the point of view of democracy, justice, effectiveness, and maybe other values. Politics between states, in contrast, is about bargaining in a system where no superior body is authorized to engage in the ‘authoritative allocation of values’. The task is to examine the process whereby outcomes of various kinds – agreement or non-agreement, co-operation or conflict – result from inter-state interaction, how the process is affected by the power structure and institutional context within which it occurs, and how it is conditioned by other variables. The main normative issue is neither democracy nor justice but peace and security. This description is brief to the point of being a caricature but may serve as a reminder of the rationale of the division of political science into separate

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fields of interest and expertise, if not separate disciplines.3 The continuing usefulness of the separation hinges on the significance of the nationstate. The nation-state, as pointed out previously, is a defining feature of ‘international’: there is no international politics without independent nation-states (Ferguson and Mansbach, 1989: 2). By the same token, if politics increasingly takes place in a grey area between the domestic and the international or, better, in an area where two systems that used to be mutually exclusive are now radically overlapping, much will have to be rethought, and not only at departments of political science and international relations but also in public administrations, interest organizations, and political parties, not to mention the considerations of democratic citizens. This is why it is crucially important to consider what is in fact happening to the nation-state in an era of internationalization and what the normative implications of what is happening are like. The nation-state may be seen as an institution in the sense of a set of rules, norms, and conventions for what are allowable alternatives and eligible participants (Keohane, 1989: 1; Shepsle, 1989: 135). Institutions may be strong in two senses: by being a powerful influence on actors, and by being invulnerable to pressure for change. One issue raised about the nation-state is whether it remains a powerful influence, that is, whether it remains true that political outcomes essentially result from the autonomous actions of the governments of independent nation-states. Another issue is whether presently existing nation-states are founded on identities ingrained in peoples’ minds to such an extent that they cannot be obliterated. A traditional assumption is that the nation-state is strong on both accounts, indeed, that this particular institution is exceptionally powerful and invulnerable. A common contemporary view is that this is no longer true, especially so far as present-day Europe is concerned. Thus two features of the nation-state are subject to debate: independence and identity. The two are interconnected insofar as the existence of an independent nation-state implies the existence of a community for whose identity it is a political expression, while at the same time political independence is part of what constitutes the identity of this community. Independence and identity should not be seen as one and the same, however. It is best to avoid taking things for granted in this area and to regard political independence and collective identity as separate phenomena.

Three approaches The question what is happening to nation-state independence and identity in an era of internationalization may be approached from three points of view (Figure 3.1). First, there is the distinction between descriptive analysis, which aims at examining the relation between nation-state and internationalization empirically, and normative analysis, which is conducted in order to evaluate nation-state and internationalization prescriptively, that is, from

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Descriptive analysis

Factual description

Normative analysis

Political–cultural description

FIGURE 3.1 Three approaches to the study of internationalization and the

nation-state

the point of view of goals and values that we may have. A further distinction, also indicated in the figure, is important when it is a matter of analysing national identity and independence: between examining factual matters pertaining to nation-states and exploring beliefs prevailing in nation-states. The point of making this distinction is to emphasize that there is reason to study not only what is happening to the nation-state in a time of internationalization but also what national beliefs about nation-state and internationalization are like. It is an obvious idea to conceive of such beliefs – ‘national’ beliefs, as I have just called them – as a matter of political culture, defined by Inglehart as ‘a system of attitudes, values, and knowledge that is widely shared within a society and transmitted from generation to generation’ (1990: 18), by Kavanagh as ‘orientations toward political objects’ and ‘predispositions to political action’ (1972: 10), by Almond and Verba as comprising ‘[t]he sense of national identity, attitudes toward oneself as participant, attitudes toward one’s fellow citizens, attitudes and expectations regarding governmental output and performance, and knowledge about and attitudes toward the political processes of decision-making’ (1963: 27), and by Vertzberger as ‘broad and general attitudes about one’s own nation, about other nations, and about the relationships that actually obtain or should obtain between the self and other actors in the international arena’ (1990: 268). The utility of the concept of political culture has been put into question; this concept has been described both as a ‘baggy monster’ (McDonough, 1994) and as a ‘degenerate research program’ (Laitin, 1995). It is used here, with some hesitation, to denote views about politics that are widely shared and firmly held in a community. If you are concerned with political culture in this sense, you are asking questions about, say, the British view of Britishness rather than about what the British are like, or about the Danish view of national independence rather than about whether Denmark is in fact independent. You are concerned with national identity and independence in a subjective rather than an objective sense, so to speak. Both approaches are taken to be meaningful in this book.

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The distinction between a factual and a cultural approach to the descriptive study of the nation-state, indeed, to the descriptive study of anything, may be questioned on the ground that empirical analysis is itself a matter of cultural interpretation and that the very existence of ‘facts’ is an illusion. True, most things are cultural in some sense, including the study of most things. This, however, does not suffice to invalidate the distinction between posing questions about what things are like and about what prevailing beliefs about things are like. Just as it is meaningful to distinguish between the concerns of a sociologist and those of a cultural anthropologist, it is meaningful to make a distinction between being concerned with the causes and effects of politics, on the one hand, and with political cultures, on the other. Do European nations have ethnic roots going far back in history, or are they modern political creations? This question, which pervades the literature about nations and nationalism, is factual in the present sense. Do national self-conceptions in today’s Europe refer to age-old history and culture or to contemporary society and politics? This is the kind of question we are lead to ask in what I call a political–cultural perspective. ‘Is Denmark losing its sovereignty?’ is one question, ‘what do Danes think about Europeanization?’ is quite another. It bears repeating, however, that the point of making the distinction is not to emphasize the difference but to make clear that both types of question need to be asked in the study of the transformation of the nation-state.

Independence and identity We must now consider the concepts of national independence and identity in more detail. The task is not to determine what independence and identity are like but to construct tools to be used for the factual, political– cultural, and normative analysis of the nation-state.

National independence National independence is used in this book in the broad sense of a nation’s control of its own affairs. This is deliberately ambiguous. I want to keep it an open question whether the issue is ‘sovereignty’, ‘autonomy’, ‘autarky’, or maybe ‘self-determination’. Whether member states have lost, pooled, or retained their ‘sovereignty’ is a prominent issue in writings about the European Union. Judging from the literature about globalization, the actual ‘autonomy’ rather than the formal ‘sovereignty’ of nations is at stake. ‘Autarky’ surfaces here and there as a valuable thing that has been lost to the global market. ‘Self-determination’ is sometimes taken to be a right of ours that is being threatened by internationalization. These concepts

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are not always well defined and tend to be used as synonyms. It is better for our present purposes to distinguish between them. Sovereignty, autonomy, autarky, and self-determination may be seen as separate types or dimensions of national independence, and the rationale of keeping them apart is that the relation between internationalization and national independence may vary between them. The four concepts in fact refer to different units of analysis: what is thought to remain independent, or to be losing its independence, may be the state in the sense of a territorially defined and internationally recognized country, or the state in the sense of a set of institutions separate from civil society within a country, or the nation in the sense of the people living in a country. National sovereignty and national autarky refer to states in the first sense, national autonomy to states in the second sense, and national self-determination to nations in the sense of peoples. These are different things. Sovereignty The concept of sovereignty, as used from now on, refers to a legal right and not to actual independence. This distinction is vital for the analysis of what internationalization implies for the nation-state (cf. Kreile, 1999: 613). The reason why it is not always made is the interdependence between the two: legal authority is a source of actual independence, while actual independence is often seen as a condition, indeed, the condition for the recognition of a state as sovereign. However, interdependence between phenomena does not make them one and the same. It is unsatisfactory to equate sovereignty with ‘the authority or ability of a state to determine its relationship with outside powers’ (Hannum, 1990: 15) because of the need to keep authority and ability apart. Shue has elaborated on this distinction. The fact that modern states cannot fully control their economic fortunes, he writes, is ‘not at all the same thing as their sovereignty over economic matters being limited, since sovereignty is a matter of the proper authority to try to exert power even where the exertions may turn out to be futile’. Shue also points out that there is a difference between the exclusive and the unlimited promotion of the interests of one’s nationals. Sovereignty is a matter of the former and not the latter, he argues: ‘[r]ecognizing that common goods sometimes are attainable only through mutual restraint in no degree qualifies sovereignty’ (Shue, 1997: 347–8, emphasis in original). It is often pointed out that the meaning of ‘sovereignty’ is ambiguous or controversial, in spite of its long history as an organizing concept of international law and politics.4 More than one author has cited Oppenheim’s view that ‘no conception the meaning of which is more controversial than that of sovereignty’ exists and that ‘from the moment it was introduced into political science’ it ‘has never had a meaning which was universally agreed upon’ (Hannum, 1990: 14). No precise definition is needed for the purposes of this book, however, as long as it is kept in mind that the term refers to authority and not to actual control.

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Sovereignty in the sense of authority is conventionally said to have an internal and an external side. Internal sovereignty pertains to the ultimate source of legitimate authority inside a state and is thus a constitutional concept. The external sovereignty of a state is a function of its recognition by other countries as being in legitimate possession of rights such as the right of non-interference by others in its internal affairs, and the right not to be submitted to international norms and decisions to which it has not consented. Submission to customary international law is usually not seen as an infringement on sovereignty, however, since sovereignty in the sense of complete freedom to do whatever a state may wish to do has never existed (Hannum, 1990: 19–23). External sovereignty is our concern in a consideration of nation-state independence. This does not exclude the possibility that internal sovereignty is also affected by the transformation with which we are concerned, that is, that a reduction in external sovereignty goes together with decentralizing constitutional change. The concept of internationalization parts company with the concept of denationalization on this very point, as explained in Chapter 1. Denationalization, often also globalization, refer to a two-sided process of fragmentation and integration. The weakening of internal sovereignty is part of such a process by definition. This is not the case with the concept of internationalization as defined for the purposes of the present book, by which it is left as an empirical question to what extent constitutions are affected by internationalization. The question will be touched upon in Chapter 7 in the context of a consideration of what internationalization does to democracy; it is less relevant for a consideration of the implications for national independence. The present approach may be compared with Stephen Krasner’s in Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (1999). Krasner distinguishes between four types of sovereignty: (1) ‘international legal sovereignty’, which is based on the rule that recognition should be extended to ‘territorial entities that have formal juridical independence’; (2) ‘Westphalian sovereignty’, which is governed by the rule of the ‘exclusion of external actors, whether de facto or de jure, from the territory of a state’; (3) ‘domestic sovereignty’, which involves both the specification of legitimate authority within a polity and the extent to which this authority can be effectively exercised; and (4) ‘interdependence sovereignty’, which is a matter of the capacity of the state to control movements across its borders (Krasner 1999: 4). In this book, the term sovereignty essentially refers to Krasner’s ‘Westphalian sovereignty’. ‘International legal sovereignty’ will be seen as a criterion for the application of ‘Westphalian sovereignty’ to particular cases such as Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia. What Krasner appears to have in mind with ‘interdependence sovereignty’ is seen in what follows as a dimension of autonomy, not of sovereignty, while ‘domestic sovereignty’ in Krasner’s sense will not be considered.

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Autonomy If sovereignty is formal authority, autonomy is actual control, the real thing (cf. Carlsnaes, 1993: 73–4). Then, what is ‘actual control’? What is at issue, I shall assume, is the impact of internationalization on the possibilities for effective action by nation-states, that is, on the menu of options available to their governments and citizens. It is difficult to see what the controversy over the strength of the nation-state is about other than about what can and cannot be done under contemporary conditions. A feature of this interpretation of the concept of autonomy is that the autonomy of an organization is taken to hinge on its menu of options in general rather than on the extent to which options are unconstrained by others. By this terminology, a nation-state, or any organization, is more or less autonomous not only in relation to other states or organizations but also in relation to nature (in the sense of ‘nature’ in game theory). The autonomy of an organization is a matter not only of a lack of constraints inherent in social relations but also of its own problem-solving capacity. Other things being equal, by this terminology, a resourceful organization is more autonomous than a less resourceful organization. Also by this terminology an organization can increase its autonomy not only by revising its external relations but also by increasing its internal resourcefulness. Interpreting the concept of autonomy in this sense – as freedom of choice, rather than as freedom to choose uninhibited by others – is essential for understanding the contradictory implications of internationalization for nation-states. This, as we shall see, is what makes the relation between internationalization and nation-state autonomy a challenging object of study. Since this concept of autonomy may appear unusual, it is useful to compare it with a different approach. Keohane makes a point of the need to distinguish between ‘operational sovereignty’, ‘autonomy’, and ‘effectiveness’. He defines operational sovereignty as ‘legal freedom of action’ in the sense of ‘formal’ sovereignty (his term) unconstrained by international agreements; in the 1980s, he argues, the United States had less operational sovereignty than Switzerland, China, and Burma. He then defines autonomy by citing Kenneth Waltz’s definition of sovereignty: an autonomous state, according to Keohane, ‘decides for itself how it will cope with its internal and external problems, including whether or not to seek assistance from others and in doing so limit its freedom by making commitments to them’. He contrasts autonomy in this sense with effectiveness, defined as one’s ability ‘to achieve one’s purposes’, and emphasizes, again referring to Waltz, that the effectiveness of autonomous entities is always limited by external constraints (Keohane, 1993: 92–3). The focus of his subsequent analysis is on trade-offs between what he calls operational sovereignty and effectiveness. It is debatable whether it is useful to characterize the sum of the worldwide commitments of the United States as a lack of ‘sovereignty’. However, my main quarrel with a terminology such as Keohane’s pertains to the assumed contrast between autonomy and effectiveness. I do not see what

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it would mean to ‘decide for oneself’ how to ‘cope with one’s problems’ if one lacks the ability to ‘achieve one’s purposes’. It is meaningful to suggest that a state can be fully sovereign in a normative sense and yet be incapable of achieving its purposes; this is the point made by Shue, cited above, and this is a typical feature of international politics. Autonomy without effectiveness, on the other hand, is either the same as sovereignty, more or less, or a contradiction in terms. This is why I prefer to define autonomy in terms of action possibilities, and hence implicitly of effectiveness. As we shall see the trade-off between commitments and effectiveness, with which Keohane is preoccupied, is but one of the contradictions in the way in which internationalization affects the autonomy of nation-states. Another conceptual issue is more intriguing. Given a definition of the autonomy of an actor in terms of action possibilities, the choice is between assessing the autonomy of a particular actor in terms of the objectives of this actor or in terms of plausible, assumed objectives of actors in general. Does an increase in income entail an increase in autonomy, if accompanied by more expensive tastes? Does the acquiring of more expensive tastes imply a decrease in autonomy, if income is constant? The government revenue of European nation-states increased manifold during the twentieth century; should this in itself be seen as an increase in their freedom of action, or should we also take into account the fact that people nowadays expect more from the state than they did in previous times? Is the hermit in his cave autonomous because of wanting nothing, or is he non-autonomous because of being unable to do most of the things that human beings might want to do? Does economic globalization reduce the autonomy of a nation-state only if it prevents its government from the effective pursuit of a policy it wants to pursue, or regardless of what policies it may be interested in pursuing? Is freedom of action best defined in subjective or objective terms, that is, in terms of the actual goals of specific actors or independently thereof? We are faced with a dilemma on this point. The subjectivist approach shifts the focus from capabilities in the sense of action possibilities to objectives and intentions – from the exploration of what is happening to the nation-state to the investigation of the preferences of governments and citizens. The objectivist approach, on the other hand, departs from unsubstantiated assumptions about possible preferences. Now whatever is at issue about internationalization and nation-state independence, it is not the subjective preferences of governments and citizens. The debate about what is happening to the nation-state is about the extent of change in what nation-state governments can and cannot do; it is not about their ambitions. It would not solve the problem of the autonomy of a nation-state, as mostly conceived in the globalization literature, if its citizens were to decide not to want a welfare society. A subjectivist definition of autonomy makes the concept unsuitable for the analytical usage for which it is needed. Therefore in spite of its disadvantages I have decided to depart from an objectivistic concept of autonomy.

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Autarky Autarky, when referring to nation-states, generally means selfsufficiency in the sense of a country’s ability to produce what it needs for its survival. Even though it is obvious that autarky refers to the ability of a country to produce basic foodstuff, energy, weapons, and maybe computers rather than snacks, toys, and movies, the line between what is and is not essential for survival can be drawn in different ways. What is more, it is debatable whether autarky refers to the current domestic production of a country relative to its needs, or to its physical ability to substitute domestic production for current imports, or to the cost of import substitution, or maybe to the length of time it can survive after imports have been cut off. Production, substitutability, cost, and time may all go into the concept of autarky, which means that precise measurement is difficult. This is not a serious problem in the analysis of the implications of internationalism, however, since autarky is not the issue, as will be shown in Chapter 4. The four types or dimensions of national independence considered here are not to be seen as indicators of the same underlying phenomenon. This is especially obvious when it comes to autarky in relation to autonomy. Lack of autarky in the sense of a lack of self-sufficiency is a result of specialization, which is apt to increase autonomy in the sense of action possibilities. There is no better way than this to demonstrate the need to disaggregate the concept of national independence in the study of internationalization. Self-determination Self-determination here, like sovereignty, refers to a normative principle rather than a factual condition. The right of selfdetermination, it has been argued, has been more vigorously promoted than any other contemporary principle of international law, and yet it has remained as vague and imprecise as when it was enunciated at Versailles after the First World War (Hannum, 1990: 27). Its essence may be taken to be the right of a nation to determine its own allegiance, but it is also used in the sense of the right of a people to choose its governors. Selfdetermination in the former sense is a right to secession and, presumably, a right to accession. Self-determination in the latter sense is not unlike a right to democracy. How self-determination in the former sense relates to self-determination in the latter sense is a matter to which we will return: independence has been seen as the natural or normal result of a nation’s exercise of its right of self-determination (Hannum, 1990: 40) but there may be instances to the opposite effect, possibly including the decision to join a supranational organization such as the European Union. It is becoming a pertinent question, especially in Europe, whether internationalization is causing nations to use their right of self-determination to relinquish this very right. There are three reasons to be concerned with the contemporary independence of nation-states in all of these senses. First, the extent of nation-state independence is essential for explaining political outcomes: the less independent nation-states are, the smaller the

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explanatory power of the independent action of nation-state governments, and the greater the need to look elsewhere in search of explanatory factors. The extent then to which nation-states are in fact independent is crucial for the theory of politics. At issue is the position of the nation-state as the main unit of analysis in political science. Second, the way in which actors perceive and evaluate national independence may be important for understanding political action. It is taken for granted in most of the theory of international politics that the retention of national independence is a major concern of all governments in all nation-states. The significance afforded to this concern relative to others may vary, however, as may views about what to protect in the name of independence: sovereignty? autonomy? autarky? self-determination? and how to go about protecting whatever is to be protected. Differences in political culture pertaining to national independence may help explain, say, the different approaches of the UK and Germany to European integration, or the differences in this regard between Benelux and Scandinavia. Third, national independence may be seen as a value, positive or negative, the meaning and utility of which needs to be considered by means of political–philosophical analysis. What is the case for supporting internationalization on this score, and what is the case for opposing it?

National identity A nation is a perceived political community with a unifying feeling of nationality – this, according to Østerud, a leading student of nationalism, is the common denominator of most definitions. Emotional attachment, seen by Østerd as a definitional feature of the concept of nation, is not inextricably connected to any specific objective criterion but benefits from factors such as language, religion, and common history (Østerud, 1997: 169). It is customary, in other words, to conceive of the concept of nation in terms of a combination of political and cultural–affective elements. A different approach is to distinguish between nationality in two senses or of two types, as Friedrich Meinecke did long ago with the concepts of Staatsnation and Kulturnation (1908). The failure to distinguish between Staatsnation and Kulturnation, that is, between common nationality in a political or civic sense and in a cultural or ethnic sense, has brought confusion in normative debate.5 The validity of the nationalist defence of the nation-state hinges in part on whether we are talking about civic or ethnic identity (Chapter 6), and the controversial question about the relation between common nationality and democracy cannot be meaningfully discussed unless a distinction is made between civic and ethnic (Chapter 7). So far as the empirical analysis of nations and nationality is concerned (Chapters 4–5), it is an advantage to avoid specifying in advance, in the very definition of the concept of nation, that each nation is characterized by a commonality of this or that kind. An alternative

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is to delimit one’s objects of study in some other way and then go on to examine their attributes empirically. That is the approach to be pursued here. The objects of study in what follows are nations in the special sense of nation-states, and national identity in the special sense of nation-state identity. It is not claimed that nationstates are the only bearers of national identity; nation-states are simply our present concern. Nor is it assumed that each nation-state is based on strong feelings of commonality; that is to be investigated, not to be assumed. The question to be raised, if you wish, is to what extent nation-states are in fact based on nations in Østerud’s sense, to what extent they are not, and how this is linked to internationalization. The concept of collective identity, including national identity, is used in two different ways in both day-to-day language and academic literature: in the sense of the individuality of an object in relation to other objects, and with reference to its particular characteristics regardless of its degree of individuality.6 Both uses are relevant for the analysis of internationalization in relation to the nation-state. Identity as the perception of individuality Identity is the fact of being separate and different in relation to the environment. Every collective possesses identity in this sense, otherwise it would not be recognizable by its members as a separate entity. This is also true about nations. National identity in this sense is the same as the perception of similarity among ‘us’ and of difference in relation to ‘them’. The strength of this perception may vary, and variation in this regard is one of the matters at issue with regard to the nation-state in a time of internationalization. A collective identity may be strong both in the sense of being widely shared in the collective and in the sense of being afforded more significance than competing identities by its members. The strength of the identity of a nation is at its maximum if all nationals share the view that they have something special in common and if they see this commonality to be more significant than other commonalities, whether sub-, trans-, or supranational. National identity in this sense is a dimension of national cohesion. It is common to assume national identities to be strong in both of these ways and hence to be of great importance for both individuals and politics. Thus there is considered to be a well-established tendency among men and women to think of themselves as members of a nation with a special identity that is different from that of other nations, a tendency to seek to ensure ‘the preservation of [their] nation as a vital and active community’ (Tamir, 1993: 73–5), and a tendency to afford special significance to the expression and protection of their identity. The ubiquity of concern with national identity is explained in both psychological and political terms in the literature – in terms of its mental necessity as well as its political utility. National identity is the ‘currently dominant variant’ of mankind’s ‘tribalism’, which is rooted in ‘our need to create something coherent out of ourselves and our own lives’ (Glover, 1997: 14–16; see also Bloom 1990;

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Miller, 1995: 184); this is the psychological aspect. National identity, from a political point of view, is ‘any given set of language practices, myths, stories, and beliefs propagated to justify a dominant group in maintaining power, or to justify a competing group in replacing them or shifting power among them’ (Price, 1995: 15). It is common to emphasize the remarkable power of national identity: its ‘commitment to a social abstraction which is historically unique’, its implication of a ‘willingness to kill – or to die – for the good of a plainly artificial collective form’ (Appadurai, 2000: 129). Whether nation-state identities in the sense of perceived individuality remain as strong as they may once have been, and whether they retain the power over men and women they once may have had, are among the questions to be asked about the nation-state in a time of internationalization. Identity as the possession of characteristics Writings about national identities are not always about the strength of the we/they distinction but may also be about their substantive content, that is, the specific features believed to characterize this or that nation. One’s concern in this case is not with the strength of the feeling of being British, Danish, or Dutch but with beliefs about what is particular about the British, what is special with Danishness, what it means to be Dutch. If collective identity in the sense of individuality is important for the cohesion of a community, collective identity in the sense of substantive content is essential, presumably, for guiding not only its internal life but also its external relations. This assumption, old and obvious as it may appear, became embellished in the 1990s as the centrepiece of so-called constructivism, presented as a new approach to the analysis of international relations (e.g. Banchoff, 1999). Now whereas there is much in the theoretical literature about the ubiquity and significance of national identity, there is less about the substantive content of the phenomenon presumed to perform such significant functions. Parekh is unusual among theorists in going into detail about this matter. ‘National’ identity is a misleading term, he suggests. What we ought to be concerned with might more properly be called the ‘collective identity of a polity’ (Parekh, 1995: 255–6). He distinguishes accordingly between the political and the cultural identity of a community. The former, which he thinks is the one relevant for the student of politics, refers to: the way [the] political life [of the community] is constituted, and includes the manner in which it conceptualises and demarcates its political life, organises and manages its collective affairs, structures its legal and political institutions and conducts its political discourse. It also includes the values to which the polity is collectively committed, and the qualities of temperament and character it admires and on which it relies . . . [and] refers to its deepest fears, ambitions, anxieties, tendencies, dominant myths, traumatic historical experiences and collective memories. (Parekh, 1995: 260–1)

Identity in the sense of individuality logically implies the existence of an Other. It is common to conceive of the construction of the Other as crucial

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for the formation of identity in the sense of individuality, and it is even assumed that the Other is necessarily perceived as threatening or unpleasant: ‘reification and demonification of “the other” is business as usual in international relations’ (Neumann, 1996: 159). The concept of identity in the sense of characteristics has no such implication. Parekh in fact rejects the inclination of equating identity with the presumption of an Other: ‘Identity is logically and ontologically prior to difference . . . If others were to become like us . . . that would not in the least affect our identity’ (Parekh, 1995: 256). Hence whereas individuality presumes difference, the possession of particular characteristics does not. It can be left as an empirical question what role Others play in perceptions of national identity in the sense of characteristics. The distinction between identity as individuality and identity as characteristics helps to clarify a problematic feature in Parekh’s argument, namely, his distinction between politics and non-politics. Parekh is not alone in arguing that national identity is most properly equated with political identity. A number of things, Miller writes, are ‘typically English’, such as ‘drinking good tea and patronising fish and chip shops, an enthusiasm for gardening, a love of the countryside’, but national identity is different from this and is ‘a public phenomenon, not a private set of cultural values’ and is expressed in political institutions and in governmental policies (Miller, 1995a: 161–2). The rationale of an approach such as this is that, if we are concerned with explaining why one political action is taken instead of another, political culture rather than social custom is what counts. The rationale of the alternative approach is that anything may form part of what holds a political community together, and therefore even a political scientist’s study of national identity should be concerned with matters such as tea-drinking and gardening. The latter approach is appropriate if our interest is in examining identity in the sense of individuality, since anything, not just politics, may play a part in constructing the separate identity of a community such as a nation. If, on the other hand, our interest is in explaining the politics rather than the separate existence of a community, it is reasonable to focus on political matters. It should be added that it is not always easy to determine where to draw the line between politics and non-politics, when it comes to the substantive content of national identitites. We may readily distinguish between teadrinking and parliamentary government, but there is a problem with rules for behaviour that are applicable to political as well as non-political life, such as ‘the cult of the gentleman’ suggested to prevail in England (Crick, 1995: 176–7) and the preference for conflict avoidance said to be typically Swedish (Arnstberg, 1989: 72–7). No precise line between political and cultural identity can be drawn in such cases. Both the strength and the substantive content of national identities are seen as empirical questions in this book, as repeatedly pointed out. Both are likely to be important from the point of view of both psychology and

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politics; that is why they deserve to be explored. The issue raised here is how they relate to internationalization. Questions worth asking about this matter abound. Are inherited national identities being substituted by identities at other levels as a result of internationalization, or do they continue to be reconstructed, thus perhaps inhibiting further internationalization? What is the substantive content of existing national identities, and what does this imply for the plausibility of further internationalization? Should internationalization be opposed with a view to the psychological and political functions performed by national identities? Is it possible for a European identity to emerge capable of performing psychological and political functions currently performed by national identities?

Six issues about internationalization A distinction has been made in this chapter between national independence and national identity as separate objects of study and concern. A further distinction has been made between three different approaches to each: factual, political–cultural, normative. If they are combined with each other, as in Table 3.1, six issues about internationalization and the nation-state are defined. TABLE 3.1 Internationalization and the nation-state: six issues National independence

National identity

Factual

i

ii

Political–cultural

iii

iv

Normative

v

vi

The main topics to be discussed in what follows, accordingly, are these: (i) What is in fact happening to the independence of nation-states? This, the most disputed question about the political implications of radical internationalization, forms the topic of the first part of Chapter 4. (ii) Are national identities being eroded, or do they form an enduring constraint on internationalization? This is considered in the second part of Chapter 4. (iii+iv) What views predominate in various countries about their special features and about the meaning and significance of their independence? This political–cultural topic is considered in Chapter 5. Whether the distinction between independence and identity is

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made in actually existing political cultures is an empirical question. One possibility is that they are considered to be inseparable and hence that the distinction between (iii) and (iv) cannot be made, another that they are thought to be independent of each other. (v+vi) What is the case for opposing the internationalization of the nationstate, and what is the case for favouring it? This normative issue is the topic of Chapter 6, in which nationalism is set against internationalism. The distinction between identity and independence is at issue in this debate: there is controversy about whether you can have one without the other or whether they are inexorably linked to each other. In the former case, national independence and national identity form separate normative issues to be considered individually. In the latter case it is a matter of a single, integrated normative question. There is obviously more than this to the transformation of the nationstate. State institutions, for example, are changing in response to the internationalization of decision-making, just as the formation of opinions and interests are affected by societal internationalization. The focus here, however, is on the challenge to the nation-state as such – its very independence and identity – rather than on its structure and functioning. One issue may still appear conspicuous by its absence from the present agenda: the impact of internationalization on nation-state power. We need to be concerned, it may be argued, not only with national independence and identity but also with national influence, especially since identity, independence, and influence have been defined as the three objects of nationalism (Chapter 2). However, the relation between internationalization and nation-state power has long been the subject of a large literature; a pioneering work being Keohane and Nye’s Power and Interdependence (1977); there already exists an abundance of writings about the conceptual problems involved in the analysis of international power;7 this book is meant to be about new matters rather than old. What is more, questions pertaining to nation-state power in an internationalizing world are in fact taken up in the book, albeit under other headings, particularly in the consideration of national autonomy in Chapter 4 and the discussion of foreign policy objectives in Chapter 5.

Notes

1

See W. Wallace (1999) for an account of the ambiguity of the situation so far as Europe is concerned.

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6 7

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This is cited from the article about ‘Europe, history of, I’ in the Grolier Multimedia Encyclopaedia (1997). The limited integration of the study of international relations with the rest of political science is substantiated by Goodin and Klingemann (1996: 38–9). See Bartelson (1995) for a study of the way in which the meaning of the concept has shifted. Political and civic are not precisely the same, nor are cultural and ethnic, but political/cultural and civic/ethnic are often used interchangeably in the literature, and the difference between the two dichotomies is not important for the purposes of this book. See Chapter 7. This distinction is suggested but not systematically applied by Risse et al. (1999: 154–5). For just one example see the contributions to Goldmann and Sjöstedt (1979).

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Internationalization and independence 74 Internationalization and identity construction 98 Identity versus independence? 104

We will now go from concepts to substance and approach the question with which many are preoccupied: what is in fact happening to the nation-state? Two different pressures for change – two different threats, if you wish – are taken into consideration in the literature: one to national independence, the other to national identity. The threat to the independence of nation-states is thought to derive from matters as varied as the globalization of the economy, the supranationality of European institutions, and the position of individual human rights in international law. The threat to the identity of nations is often considered to derive from homogenizing Americanization. But is national independence being eroded, and are national identities being undermined? In fact how profound is the transformation of the European nation-state in this regard?

Internationalization and independence Our point of departure is a European nation-state exposed to internationalization. The question is whether internationalization reduces its independence. The answer depends on the type or dimension of independence with which we are concerned. These are entirely different things, as shown in the previous chapter. In what follows I shall go from the most

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to the least obvious: from an observation about the irrelevance of autarky in contemporary Europe to the difficulty of assessing the autonomy of a contemporary European nation-state. Autarky Autarky has been defined in Chapter 3 as self-sufficiency with regard to what is needed for survival. This is a complex idea, as pointed out previously. I would venture to suggest, however, that the difficulty of specifying the concept of autarky does not matter much, because the implications of internationalization are obvious in any event. Whatever is at issue about the relation between nation-state and internationalization in contemporary Europe, it is not whether European nation-states have or have not retained their self-sufficiency with regard to what is needed for what could plausibly be defined as their survival. There is no question that their autarky is approaching zero. The Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union has been characterized as ‘strongly autarchic’ (Rieger, 1996: 113), but that is with reference to the EU as a whole and not to individual countries. Furthermore, more than food is needed for what can reasonably be called the survival of a contemporary nation-state. Even in the absence of systematic empirical study, and even bearing in mind the complexity of the very concept of autarky, we are justified in taking for granted that internationalization is making significant autarky irrelevant for almost all countries (the United States and China may be among the few exceptions). An impression of what the situation is like may be gained from the wrestling of major European countries with the problem of so-called economic security (what follows is based on a study of France, Germany, and the UK by Sjöstedt, 1997). The rationale for the defensive conduct of economic security policy is a perceived lack of autarky, and the objective is to restore or compensate what has been lost. France is of especial interest here insofar as economic security is a wellestablished concept in French politics and particular institutions and legal instruments have been set up for this purpose. French economic security policy has been designed to perform two tasks: to meet the threat of an international crisis causing a scarcity of goods and raw materials, and to maintain the ability of the country to develop high technology products needed for national security. French economic security in the former sense is to be achieved by a combination of the ‘prevention’ of the occurrence of critical situations, the ‘maintenance’ of crucial trade relations in such situations, the ‘reestablishment’ of relations that have been lost, and the ‘replacement’ of lost products. The perceived need to safeguard the supply of goods considered strategic is of great importance for the conduct of French foreign and defence policy and is even a rationale of the French nuclear weapons programme. This, if anything, suggests that France considers itself to lack self-sufficiency in what is needed for survival.

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French rhetoric concerning economic security in the latter sense – industrial development in high technology areas – has not been lacking in military overtones either: international exchange is pictured as economic warfare, especially on the part of the United States. The situation in the field of electronics and information technology has been considered especially alarming, and vast programmes have been set up to meet the threat. This too indicates that self-sufficiency in what is needed for survival is not considered to be at hand. Germany and the UK have pursued economic security policies reminiscent to that of France, albeit less explicitly and systematically. The conclusion of the study cited here pertains to all three countries and is relevant in the present context: what are perceived to be significant if not alarming problems of economic security have proven impossible to solve on a national basis. In the 1990s, French economic security policy remained as preoccupied as before with the necessity for industrial development in the high-tech sector, but the problem was redefined as European instead of national. At stake was the survival of Europe’s high-tech industry, according to French strategists. It was necessary to continue to pursue the French strategy of protectionism combined with resource mobilization in the form of large programmes and infrastructure improvement, but this, in order to be effective, had to be done at the level of the EU. The irrelevance of the idea of nation-state autarky in contemporary Europe could not have been more evident.

Self-determination The ‘self-determination of peoples’, a right expressed in Article 1 of the UN Charter, is as pertinent as ever in principle and as difficult as ever to apply in practice. I am not aware of anybody who has argued that the right of self-determination has been strengthened, weakened, or modified as a result of internationalization, but it is worth considering whether the European Union may be an instance to the contrary. The argument might go like this. Supranationality implies that EU members have relinquished their right of self-determination in the sense of the right of a people to choose its governors. The increasing authority of the European Parliament (EP) does not change this fact: even if elected directly by the citizens of the member states, the EP does not represent the nations whose self-determination we are in the process of considering. The loss of self-determination is made even clearer by the lack of a clause about the cancellation of membership in the EU treaties. What is more, it may be argued, the loss of national self-determination deriving from EU membership is not itself the result of the exercise of the right of self-determination on the part of member state citizens, since key decisions have been taken by elites without the well-informed consent of those whose self-determination is at issue. It was in fact becoming

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apparent by the mid-1990s that there was a cleavage about the EU between elites and publics in more than one country. A survey of about 3,800 ‘top decision-makers’ in the member countries, conducted for the European Commission in the spring of 1996, comprised several items included in public opinion polls taken at about the same time, that is, at the launching of the Inter-Governmental Conference leading on to the Amsterdam Treaty. A comparison between elite and public views is made in Table 4.1. The balance of opinion (per cent favourable minus per cent unfavourable) with regard to a number of items has been computed separately for elites and publics and the opinion balance in the elite has then been subtracted from that in public opinion (zero on the resulting index means that the balance between favourable and unfavourable views is the same in the elite and the public; a positive figure means that the public is more favourable towards the EU and EU supranationality than the elite; a negative figure means that the elite is more favourable to the EU and EU supranationality than the public). It can be seen in Table 4.1 that elites were more supportive of the EU and EU supranationality than the public in all fifteen countries and that the gap was wide, indeed remarkably wide, in Scandinavian- and German-speaking Europe. Other studies confirm that voters are consistently less integrationist than party elites (Thomassen and Schmitt, 1999: 206), even though the difference pertains more to particular EU policies than to European integration generally (Schmitt and Thomassen, 2000). This is the case for the two-step proposition that citizens of EU member countries have lost their right of self-determination and that the loss is not a result of their exercise of this right. My contention is that neither step in the argument is valid. Let me begin with the last part of the argument: that EU supranationality does not result from the exercise of self-determination. It is open to debate to what extent the peoples of Europe were manipulated into acceptance of progressive European integration. This is not the point, however. Even if they were unduly influenced by scheming politicians and well-financed TABLE 4.1 Difference of opinion between the elite and the public about the EU in the mid-1990s Difference between opinion balances Ireland Luxembourg Italy Netherlands Greece Portugal France Belgium

–30 –39 –41 –46 –47 –50 –55 –56

Spain UK Denmark Finland Austria Sweden Germany

–58 –60 –68 –69 –72 –83 –85

Balance between per cent positive and per cent negative views among top-level decision-makers minus the balance on the same items in public opinion. Source: . Details are reported in Goldmann (1997)

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propagandists, this would not indicate that they were deprived of their right to self-determination. What has been considered a legitimate exercise of this right has for the most part had a weaker basis than this, such as victory in a civil war or a referendum held under conditions to which the democratic procedures of the EU member states compare very favourably. If, say, the ratification of the Treaty on European Union by the 12 in 1993 and of the accession treaties by the three (Austria, Finland, Sweden) in 1994 should be considered to violate the right of nations to decide their allegiances, it is difficult to see how this right could ever be properly exercised. Assuming that the participation of the 15 in radical European integration results from their exercise of the right to self-determination, there remains the question whether the ensuing situation can be validly characterized as a relinquishing of this right. I think it cannot. The traditional interpretation of self-determination is as a right of secession, and it is difficult to see why, say, the Danish should be seen as having relinquished this right. The legal situation – the absence of an opting out clause in the Treaty on European Union – is hardly decisive: it is typical for secession to be considered illegitimate by the majority. Nor has the practical difficulty of seceding been considered in the past to invalidate the right to secede: it would be costly for Denmark to secede from the EU, and the cost is increasing every year, but this does not affect the right of the Danish people to leave the EU should they so desire, any more than the Québecois have been deprived of their right of self-determination by Québec’s factual integration in Canada. The conclusion, therefore, is that the principle of self-determination remains as well established and as difficult to apply as it has always been and that it is not much affected by internationalization in general and European integration in particular. It may be argued that the implications of Europeanization for selfdetermination are in fact positive instead of negative. The EU is offering a new option for European peoples in the form of ‘Europe of the regions’. German Länder, Spanish autonomías, and other regions across Europe have gained independent action possibilities thanks to the EU, and their new status is institutionalized in the form of the Region Committee. This if anything means that the right of self-determination has been strengthened rather than weakened. Since this book is limited to the implications of internationalization for presently existing nation-states, however, we can be content with the observation that their right of self-determination remains pretty much as before.1 Sovereignty National sovereignty, it may be recalled, is defined in this book as a right of nation-states to enjoy independece of others (Chapter 3). The question now to be considered is whether this right has been weakened by internationalization.

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It is useful to distinguish here between seeing the sovereignty of states as an absolute or a relative matter. The former is the classical view: a country is either sovereign or not. However, it has also appeared obvious that states relinquish a ‘measure’ of sovereignty when they join an international organization (Nergelius, 1998: 220). Both conceptions of sovereignty – as a fixed quality and as a matter of degree – are justifiable, but they lead in different directions so far as the impact of internationalization is concerned. The issue in the former case is whether recognition as a sovereign state remains as salient a question in international relations as it used to be. The issue in the latter case is about the way in which the substantive implications of national sovereignty may have changed. If the practice of recognition were to die out, or if the implications of recognition were to be reduced to mere formalities, there would be reason to question the continuing relevance of the concept of ‘international’ and hence of ‘internationalization’, since these concepts are defined in terms of independent nation-states (Chapter 1). This is not quite what has happened, as the examples below will show. The implications of internationalization for the idea of national sovereignty are more limited than this. That is not to say that they are insignificant, nor that there is an international consensus about them. Sovereignty as quality and the breakdown of Yugoslavia If national sovereignty is seen as an indivisible quality, the matter is fairly obvious: nothing much has changed. The principle of ‘sovereign’ equality, laid down in Article 1:1 of the UN Charter, continues to be seen as very meaningful, and recognition as sovereign by others continues to be regarded as very important. The members of the EU, highly integrated with each other as they may be, remain recognized as sovereign by the international community. A number of ambiguous cases emerged from the ruins of the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, but each such case was decided one way or the other. There is little to suggest that it is nowadays considered unimportant who is sovereign and who is not. The significance still afforded to sovereignty in a qualitative sense can be substantiated with an example: the wrestling of European governments with the breakdown of the Yugoslav federation in the early 1990s.2 The constitutional crisis culminated on 25 June 1991, when Slovenia and Croatia declared themselves independent. A war ensued in which control of the Serb-populated Croatian province of Krajina and its large population were at stake, and ethnic cleansing became an established concept. The question for other countries was what to do in the face of an escalating crisis in the Balkans. The issue was defined as a choice between the preservation of the Yugoslav federation and the non-recognition of parties to a civil war, on the one hand, and the recognition of republics demanding independence in the name of the principle of self-determination, on the other (Crawford, 1996: 490–1). Western Europe and the United States were at first united in

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their support of the federation. Two days before Slovenia and Croatia declared themselves independent the president of the EC made clear that the member states had decided not to recognize Slovenian and Croatian sovereignty. As fighting continued and the Serb side took control of what remained of federal authority, however, the international consensus crumbled. The German government began to press for EC recognition of Slovenia and Croatia: recognition, from the German view, would help to end the hostilities since turning a civil war within the Yugoslav federation into an international conflict would facilitate international intervention. Other EC members, notably France and the UK, opposed recognition before a ceasefire had become effective and the Croatian leadership had proven able to control their territory and respect human rights. On 8 December 1991, Federal Chancellor Kohl made clear that Germany was going to recognize the two republics and that the German example would be followed not only by neighbouring Italy, Austria, and Hungary but also by Sweden. EC governments sought to close ranks by agreeing on a compromise: all Yugoslav republics were offered the opportunity to apply for recognition on the same conditions; a judicial committee would decide whether applicants fulfilled the requirements; if they did, they would automatically be granted recognition as sovereign states. EC requirements included not only territorial control and the acknowledgement of borders but also the formal acceptance of human rights, democracy, and the protection of minorities. Germany, however, went ahead anyway and recognized Slovenia and Croatia on 23 December 1991. Faced with this action on the part of Germany the rest of the EC decided to rest content with President Tudjman’s assurance that the Croatian constitution would be changed and recognized Croatia and Slovenia on 15 January 1992. In spite of unresolved disagreements between Muslims, Croats, and Serbs, the EC recognized Bosnia-Herzegovina on 6 April 1992, followed immediately by the US. Thus the door was opened to a new phase in the ‘libanization’ of ex-Yugoslavia (Krulic, 1992: 226): the Serb Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina was immediately proclaimed in Banja Luka, and the Bosnian civil war began. The entire sequence of events – from the declaration of independence by Slovenia and Croatia via the international controversy unleashed by German pressure for recognition to the outbreak of civil war in Bosnia – illustrates the remaining power of such a formal idea as national sovereignty 350 years after the peace of Westphalia. Sovereignty as a matter of degree: humanitarian intervention If sovereignty is taken to be a matter of degree instead of a fixed quality, a different picture emerges. We then have to take into account certain developments pertaining to internationalization and impacting on nation-state sovereignty. One such development is global: the increasing propensity of the international society to intervene in other countries for humanitarian purposes even in

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the absence of consent from any authority in that country. This can be seen as an instance of the internationalization of problems reflecting in part the increasing exchange of information between societies. Another development, considered later in this chapter, is primarily European: increasing supranationality in international organization. So far as humanitarian intervention is concerned, it is common to argue that there has been change since 1945 in what is considered to be the exclusive domestic jurisdiction of sovereign states. The international community, in the words of one author, is now ‘legally entitled to pass judgment and take action on matters that used to be deemed as purely internal’ (Tesón, 1997: 139). The change is ‘dramatic’, according to another author (Österdahl, 1998: 32). Thus it is ‘indisputable’ that human rights are no longer a matter of exclusive domestic jurisdiction, and even political systems are now considered a matter of lawful international concern insofar as ‘a principle of democracy is today part of international law’ (Tesón, 1997: 139, 145; also Österdahl, 1998: 33–5). Forcible intervention for the purpose of remedying serious human rights violations has become UN practice; international society has accepted collective humanitarian intervention in response to serious human rights abuses; this it is argued, is evidenced by cases such as those of the Iraqi Kurds in 1991, Somalia in 1992–93, Haiti in 1994, and Rwanda in 1994. A decisive precedent was UN Security Council resolution 688 about Iraqi repression of civilians, adopted on 5 April 1991, prompting the UN Secretary-General to report that it is: increasingly felt that the principle of noninterference within the essential domestic jurisdiction of states cannot be regarded as a protective barrier behind which human rights could be massively or systematically violated with impunity. (Ramsbotham and Woodhouse, 1996: 84)

There is even an emerging acceptance of the legitimacy of unilateral forcible intervention in support of human rights, it has been asserted; viz. the cases of the Indian intervention in East Pakistan in 1971, the Tanzanian intervention in Uganda in 1979, the French intervention in the Central African Republic in 1979, and the US intervention in Grenada in 1983 (Tesón, 1997: 175–224).3 This development has mostly taken part outside Europe, as indicated by the cases cited. However, some important steps have been European. One was the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 which was a major document of the East–West détente of the 1970s. It included Guiding Principle VII about ‘respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief’. This principle was special in being concerned with the domestic affairs of the parties to a document otherwise devoted to the relations between them. It resulted from the fact that the West made Soviet commitment to human rights a condition for their accepting the status quo in post-1945 Europe. The point of Guiding Principle VII was to make human rights a proper object of East–West

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negotiation and to rule out the principle of non-intervention in the human rights area (Schütz, 1977: 170). Its political implications proved to be more significant than many had expected: this feature of the Helsinki Final Act contributed to undermining the Soviet system and paving the way for its collapse. Then came the events in the former Yugoslavia. The UN Security Council, in resolution 770, called on member states to take, ‘nationally or through regional agencies or arrangements’, all measures necessary to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian assistance in Bosnia; the resolution and the preceding debate showed that the commission of atrocities was a prime motivation of the decision (Tesón, 1997: 264). Subsequent military intervention by NATO, which included bombing operations, served as further indication that state practice had changed with regard to humanitarian intervention, as did the decision of the Security Council to set up an International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (Österdahl, 1998: 47–52). It is not that forcible intervention has become standard practice – cf. the non-intervention in Chechnya in 1994 – but that intervention is no longer considered to be a priori incompatible with the ‘sovereign equality’ of states. Whether this change is to be characterized as a weakening, an undermining, or an erosion of nation-state sovereignty is debatable; that it has taken place seems undeniable. This was the situation before NATO launched Operation Allied Force in March 1999 and engaged in sustained air-strikes against Serb targets for the purpose of solving a humanitarian problem considered to exist in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. The Kosovo intervention was a major event in post-Cold War European history and moved the issue of the proper balance between state sovereignty and individual human rights to the top of the agenda of world politics. There is reason to devote special attention to this event in a book about the contemporary European nation-state. Sovereignty as a matter of degree: Kosovo 1999 The Kosovo province, with its ethnic Albanian majority, enjoined a measure of self-government in the former Yugoslavia but was brought under the direct control of the Yugoslav government in 1989. By 1998, the ensuing tension had escalated to virtual war between Serb and Albanian forces, with severe implications for the civilian population. Concern over the humanitarian situation was voiced at the highest international level many months before NATO decided to intervene. The UN Secretary-General reported to the Security Council in September 1998 that only in the last few months hundreds of civilians had been killed and that the number of displaced persons amounted to over 230,000. ‘Deserted towns and villages, as well as destroyed houses, slaughtered livestock and burned fields, bear witness to the scale of displacement and destruction in Kosovo’, the Secretary-General wrote, and ‘thousands of civilians are constantly in flight to escape attacks by government forces’ (UN S/1998/834). The Security Council demanded a

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ceasefire and the withdrawal of Serb ‘security units used for civilian repression’. The situation continued to deteriorate, however, and two rounds of peace talks in Paris failed to produce an agreed solution. The peace plan presented to the parties would have deprived the Yugoslav government of most of its jurisdiction over Kosovo, but the immediate issue was about the deployment of an international peace-keeping force in the province. This the Yugoslav government refused to accept and on 24 March 1999 Operation Allied Force was launched. This was done without the explicit authorization of the UN Security Council since it was obvious that authorization would have been vetoed by China and maybe Russia. On 3 June, the Yugoslav government accepted an agreement that ended hostilities on what were essentially the conditions imposed by NATO. NATO’s air offensive became the occasion for escalating Serb violence and the exodus of most of the ethnic Albanian population, but the offensive was considered justified in view of what had been going on for a long time in the province. Overwhelming humanitarian necessity was the gist of the justification put forward by NATO governments (Roberts, 1999: 106), as for example by the North Atlantic Council on 12 April 1999: The unrestrained assault by Yugoslav military, police and paramilitary forces . . . on Kosovar civilians has created a massive humanitarian catastrophe . . . Hundreds of thousands of people have been expelled ruthlessly from Kosovo . . . We condemn these appalling violations of human rights and the indiscriminate use of force by the Yugoslav government. These extreme and criminally irresponsible policies . . . have made necessary and justify the military action by NATO.

The ensuing controversy over the Kosovo operation was in part about the way it was conducted and in part about its humanitarian effectiveness. The issue of concern to us, however, is what the operation implied for the principle of national sovereignty. The view of the UN Secretary-General is significant in this regard. Secretary-General Kofi Annan made a statement early in the bombing campaign in which he pointedly abstained from criticizing the bombings, and instead urged the Yugoslav authorities to ‘end immediately the campaign of intimidation and expulsion of the civilian population’, to withdraw all forces from Kosovo, and to accept the deployment of an international force. NATO was asked to cease air bombardment only after these conditions had been met (UN S/1999/402). In an article published in September in The Economist, Annan argued that ‘this developing international norm in favour of intervention to protect civilians from wholesale slaughter’ should be welcomed. There was a dilemma: ‘[j]ust as we have learnt that the world cannot stand aside when gross and systematic violations of human rights are taking place, we have also learnt that, if it is to enjoy the sustained support of the world’s peoples, intervention must be based on legitimate and universal principles.’ Nothing in the UN Charter,

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however, precluded a ‘recognition that there are rights beyond borders’. What the Charter did say was that ‘armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest.’ But who shall define and defend that common interest, Annan asked. His answer was that the Security Council ‘must be able to rise to the challenge’ and see to it that the choice would not be one between Council unity and inaction (Annan, 1999). Much the same position was taken by a number of European governments in the general debate of the UN General Assembly held in September 1999, the first major opportunity for international stock-taking after the conclusion of Operation Allied Force. The precedence of individual human rights over national sovereignty and the legitimacy of armed humanitarian intervention was proclaimed by several speakers. The last few years had ‘disproved the notion that people and human freedoms take second place to State sovereignty’, the Italian Foreign Minister said; legitimacy ‘demands the redefinition of relations between States and the international community’ and of the principle of non-interference, ‘which has sometimes allowed States to neglect their duties towards their citizens’ (UN A/54/PV.8: 19–21). According to the German Foreign Minister, ‘the role of the nation State has been considerably relativized by the increased importance of human rights and the globalization of the economy and society’; the question of peacekeeping ‘arises more and more in an area of tension between traditional State sovereignty and protection of human rights’. He went on to pose a series of questions, apparently meant to be rhetorical: What is to be done when entire States collapse and the civilian population is massacred in never-ending civil wars from all sides? What if ethnic tensions in a State are partly provoked by criminal Governments, which then respond with pogroms, mass expulsions and mass murders, even genocide? Should the United Nations then regard State sovereignty as more important than protection of individuals and their rights? (UN A/54/PV.8: 11)

The British Foreign Secretary referred to a ‘shared responsibility to act when confronted with genocide, mass displacement of people or major breaches of international humanitarian law’. Not to act against such atrocities ‘is to make us complicit in them’.4 Acting without Security Council authorization was widely seen as problematic, however. The French Prime Minister stated that there had been circumstances ‘when an urgent humanitarian situation dictated we should act immediately’, but such an approach must remain exceptional: ‘[o]ur fundamental rule is that it is for the Security Council to resolve crisis situations’ (UN A/54/PV.4: 27). The German Foreign Minister saw it as a ‘very problematic development’ if a practice of humanitarian interventions were to evolve outside the UN; the Kosovo intervention ‘must not set a precedent for weakening the United Nations Security Council’s monopoly on authorizing the use of legal international force’ (UN A/54/PV.8: 12). This was echoed by several speakers in the debate, even though few

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solutions were suggested for the problem of specifying the conditions that would justify exceptional measures.5 Hopes were expressed instead for the Security Council to be able to function more effectively in future situations. To gain a perspective on the views expressed by European speakers it is useful to cite the concluding summary of the Assembly President, Mr Gurirab of Namibia. Some speakers, Gurirab said, had asserted that respect for human rights is now more important than state sovereignty. Others had expressed the view that the notion of humanitarian intervention might destroy the UN Charter, undermine state sovereignty and overthrow legitimate governments. Still others had emphasized that action against violations of human rights must not be taken unilaterally, creating faits accomplis that would set bad precedents. There was wide agreement, Mr Gurirab added, that the subject needed to be discussed in depth (UN Press Release GA/SM/105). The Kosovo crisis confirmed that it is a widespread view in the international community that ‘there are things that the government of a country simply cannot do against its own population’,6 and hence that the notion of national sovereignty has been modified to a degree. There is no consensus about the implications, however. It is a widely held view, not least in Europe, that humanitarian intervention by force in what used to be seen as internal affairs may nowadays be legitimate. It remains at issue, however, whether Security Council authorization is categorically necessary in order for such intervention to be legitimate, or whether a regional organization such as NATO or maybe OSCE or the EU may act legitimately without such authorization in extreme circumstances. Sovereignty as a matter of degree: supranational organization Supranationality, like sovereignty, is used in various senses. In the main usage of the concept, an international organization is considered supranational if it is authorized to take decisions that are binding on all member states even without the consent of each of them. Supranationality is also used to refer to the authority of an international organization to take decisions that are directly binding on individual citizens without being mediated by national authorities. An early example of supranationality in the former sense is the United Nations. The Security Council is authorized not only to ‘make recommendations’ but also to ‘decide’ what measures to take in the event of a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression (UN Charter, Article 39). Such decisions are considered binding on each UN member state by virtue of Article 24(1). Decisions about such measures can be taken by a qualified majority of the Security Council, that is, by a tiny minority of UN members. The only member states that do not risk being legally compelled to take measures they would prefer not to take are the permanent members of the Council (United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China), since each of them can prevent a decision from being taken by voting against it.

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This was the 1945 compromise between the determination to set up an organization capable of acting where the League of Nations had failed, on the one hand, and the necessity of seeing to it that all major powers joined the organization, on the other. The compromise was assessed differently by similar countries: while the Swedish government hesitated before the dramatic authorization given to the Security Council and felt that Sweden could join the UN only because the veto power of the Great Powers would prevent the Council from compelling Sweden to join a conflict between them (Håstad, 1956: 39–40), the Belgian government was convinced that the Great Powers must not be able to impose their will on the small and was so critical of the veto that Belgian ratification of the Charter was delayed (Helmreich, 1976: 380–1). Swedish hopes, which were Belgian fears, proved to be justified: the supranational power of the UN has been more important in theory than in practice. A degree of supranational authority has also been given to other global organizations. An example is the dispute settlement process of the WTO, regulated in detail in a 25 page document annexed to the WTO Treaty.7 If no solution to a dispute can be found by consultation or mediation within 60 days, a panel of experts is appointed in consultation with the parties or, if they cannot agree, by the WTO Director-General. The panel is to report on the case within six months to the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), which is effectively the same as the WTO General Council. The key point is that the DSB can reject the report of the panel only by consensus. Appeals can be made and are heard by three members of a permanent seven-member Appellate Body set up by the DSB, which must accept or reject the appeals report within 30 days; the report can be rejected only by a consensus decision. The report, unless rejected by the DSB, is binding on the parties. Failing compliance the DSB can authorize limited trade sanctions. The European Union, or more properly in this case the European Community, has been party to a number of disputes before the WTO. The best known cases have set the EU against the US with regard to bananas and hormone-treated meat. The ‘Banana war’ began in 1993 when the EU imposed limitations on banana imports from Central America to protect smaller-scale producers in former colonial territories in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific. The US lodged a complaint to the WTO together with Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico. After an extended process of consultation and arbitration, the DSB in April 1999 authorized the US to suspend concessions to the EC equivalent to $191.4 million, thereby compelling the EU to change its banana policy so as to make it acceptable to the WTO or else suffer sanctions. The conflict over hormone-treated meat followed a similar pattern. The US and Canada claimed in 1996 that measures taken by the EC under the Council Directive Prohibiting the Use in Livestock Farming of Certain Substances Having a Hormonal Action restricted or prohibited imports of meat and meat products in violation of GATT rules. WTO panels ruled against the EC, and in July 1999 the DSB authorized the suspension of

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concessions to the EC by the US and Canada, again compelling the EU to choose between reconsidering its policy and suffering sanctions.8 The main instance of sovereignty-reducing supranationality is the European Union itself, however. The EU is innovative, indeed historically unique, because of both the form and the scope of its supranational features. One such feature, it may be recalled, is the taking of binding decisions by qualified majority voting (QMV) in the intergovernmental Council of Ministers. QMV, introduced in the Rome Treaty of 1957, was extended to new policy areas in the Maastricht Treaty of 1993 and the Amsterdam Treaty of 1998. Binding decisions can be taken, moreover, by the European Commission, a supranational body; some such decisions are directly binding on EU citizens. The European Parliament (EP), elected by the citizens of EU member countries and hence independent of national authorities, plays an increasingly important role in EU policy-making; the Amsterdam Treaty reinforced the role of the EP in a way characterized as ‘fairly dramatic’ by a specialist (Nergelius, 1998: 57). On top of this there is the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which has come to play a crucial part in promoting integration; the Court at an early stage established the principle of the priority of EU law in relation to national law. The strengthening of the supranational features ever since the EEC was set up in the 1950s has gone hand in hand with an increase in the scope of European co-operation from an economic community with a common market to a European Union concerned with most things in politics. The ensuing situation is not easy to characterize in terms of national sovereignty. According to the ECJ, member states have transferred sovereignty to the EU, albeit within limited fields (Nergelius, 1998: 220). Among expressions that have been used are ‘shared sovereignty’, ‘pooled sovereignty’, and ‘the joint exercise of sovereignty’ – an idea whose implications have been contested for more than a century (Oeter, 1995). A much-discussed attempt to specify the issue was made in 1993 by the German Bundesverfassungsgericht (BVerfG).9 Manfred Brenner, lawyer and former employee of the EC, appealed against the ratification of the Maastricht Treaty by the Bundestag on the ground that the treaty violated his constitutional right to be represented by his own democratically elected representatives. The issue thus was democracy and constitutionality rather than sovereignty, but the analysis of the BVerfG also has relevance for the analysis of the tension between supranational organization and nationstate sovereignty. The BVerfG found ratification of the Maastricht Treaty to be compatible with the constitution of the Federal Republic essentially because three conditions were met (cf. Winkelmann, 1994: 35). First, the European Union, even though more than a mere confederation of states (Staatenbund), was not a federation (Bundesstaat) but something in between: a ‘compound of states’ or a ‘confederation of allied states’, translations that have been proposed from the innovative term Staatenverbund.10 The object of the Maastricht Treaty was ‘ever closer union’, but this was to

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be a union of the peoples of Europe ‘organized as states’ and ‘not a state based on the people of one European nation’ (kein sich auf ein europäisches Staatsvolk stützenden Staat). The acts of the Union could have binding effect in Germany only by virtue of the German legal sanction, and Germany, like the other ‘Masters of the Treaties’, retained the right of ultimately revoking its adherence. Second, the distinction made in the Maastricht Treaty between ‘the exercise of a conferred limited sovereign power’ and ‘the amendment of the Treaty’ was crucial. The competence given to the EU under the treaty was predictable, since it remained within strictly defined limits that could be expanded only by treaty amendment and hence only with the consent of all members; the Kompetenz-Kompetenz remained with the member states. Germany was not ‘subjecting itself to an unsupervisable, unstearable automatic pilot’: the Maastricht Treaty opened the way to integration by stages, during which every step would be subject either to foreseeable conditions or to the further assent of all members. The EU, notably, was not empowered to ‘provide itself by its own authority with the financial means and other resources it considers necessary’. If EU institutions were to venture beyond their competence as laid down in the Maastricht Treaty, their decisions would no longer be binding under the German constitution, and German state organs would be constitutionally prohibited from applying them. Third, in order for membership in a Staatenverbund to be compatible with the German constitution, ‘functions and power of substantial importance’ must remain with the Bundestag. This, in the view of the BVerfG, remained the case under the Maastricht Treaty. Thus the BverfG, whose intricate legal argument has been greatly simplified here, suggested three criteria for the assessment of the sovereignty of nation-states involved in radical internationalization: the transfer of power must be revocable, predictable, and limited. This is helpful in making it easier to define the ambiguities of the contemporary situation. The first criterion – the revocability of membership in a Staatenverbund – raises the issue of the precise implications of membership in this intermediate-type organization between Staatenbund and Bundesstaat, including the issue of the authority to revoke membership. It is a matter of dispute whether unilateral withdrawal from the EU is legitimate or not (Winkelmann, 1994: 60) and hence what membership implies for sovereignty in this respect. The second criterion – predictability – hinges on the distinction between competences already in the treaties and competences presuming treaty amendment. The BVerfG makes much of this distinction. There is no strict specification of competences in the EU treaties, however, and the EU has in fact been increasing its scope of action with mere tacit member state consent. A key issue on this point is the relationship between EU law and member state constitutions, and specifically whether the authority of EU law is ultimately based on the union treaties or on member state constitutions.

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The BVerfG has maintained that it is exercizing jurisdiction over the applicability of secondary EU legislation in a ‘co-operative relationship’ with the ECJ and has reserved the right to decide for itself whether EU law is compatible with the German constitution and is binding on German subjects. The ECJ, on the other hand, has maintained since the 1960s that EU law takes precedence in any event. There has been talk of a cold war between the ECJ and the BVerfG, and the position taken by the BVerfG has influenced those of the French Conseil Constitutionnel, the Danish Høysteret, and the Swedish government (Nergelius, 1998: 197–206). Thus the matter of the location of the Kompetenz-Kompetenz is not clear-cut. The third criterion – the retention of substantial authority at the national level – is even more obviously a matter of degree. Where to draw the line is not evident. If not Maastricht, when? The decision of the BVerfG on the Manfred Brenner case illustrates the difficulty of drawing a definite conclusion about the sovereignty of EU member states. The problem is not about the criteria of the BVerfG but about the ambiguity of contemporary Europe. Internationalization and sovereignty: conclusion The conclusion I suggest is (a) that nation-state sovereignty remains a basic principle of international relations, (b) that contemporary developments – humanitarian intervention, supranational organization – are making its meaning more circumscribed and complex, (c) that there is uncertainty or disagreement about the implications of these developments, but (d) that a framework exists for the consideration of this matter and hence that it is relatively clear wherein the problem lies. This last point cannot be made about national autonomy, which is the most underanalysed and arguably the most important dimension of the problem of national independence in an era of internationalization.

Autonomy If autonomy had been defined as the opposite of interdependence, it would have been self-evident that internationalization reduces nation-state autonomy. Internationalization by definition implies that national decisionmakers must increasingly take external factors and actors into account when defining problems and searching for solutions. It would not have been obvious how to measure the loss of autonomy, but the direction of change would have been implied in the very definition of autonomy and the concept itself would have been redundant. Defining the concept of national autonomy in terms of the action possibilities available to citizens and governments, on the other hand, makes the implications of internationalization problematic and hence worthy of consideration. It has been suggested already that autonomy in this latter sense is the main issue in the debate over the fate of the

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nation-state (Chapter 3). This is not peculiar. It is an old insight that internationalization has a two-sided impact on the independence of nationstates, as made clear, for example, in the following quote from Discourse on the Rise, Progress, Peculiar Objects and Importance of Political Economy, published in 1824 by John R. McCulloch: The individual who prefers swimming across the river, is, of course, independent of the bridges, in the same way that the nation, who should prefer poverty and barbarism to wealth and refinement, would be independent of foreign commerce. But this is the independence of the savage. To be truly independent in the enlarged, and, if we may so speak, civilized sense of the term, that is, to have the greatest command of necessaries and conveniences, a nation must avail itself of the productive energies of every other people, and deal with all the world on fair and liberal principles. (cited in Silberner, 1946: 55)

Interdependence means weakness, but it also means strength. Internationalization takes, but it also gives. You lose some options, but you gain others. There is less you can do without concerning yourselves with others, but there is more you can do together with others. Specialization makes you dependent, but it also makes you resourceful. You are getting more dependent on others, but you are getting less dependent on nature. Interdependence reduces the capacity of nation-state authorities to govern, but it also increases the range of national policy (Kreile, 1999: 614–15). Some economic policies are becoming less effective, but others more effective (Lindbeck, 1989). The relation between nation-state autonomy and internationalization is not zero-sum (Weiss, 1999: 60). The most obvious example is not free trade but the importation of arms. If you need weapons in order to retain your independence in the face of threats from others, it is problematic to make yourself dependent on foreign suppliers; you are more independent if you are self-supporting. On the other hand, few countries can produce all modern weapons that they think they need; imports are not only likely to be less expensive but may be the only way of getting access to what is needed; hence imports are a condition for independence. In general terms: international exchange provides capabilities and hence action possibilities while generating dependencies on others and hence on externally imposed problems. This, moreover, is a matter not only of economic relations but also of political institutions. If you join an organization, you undertake to implement what the organization decides, and this reduces your autonomy. If you do not join, you lose an opportunity to influence what is important to yourself, which is also negative from the point of view of your action possibilities. Whereas the imposition of internationalized problems is unambiguously detrimental to the autonomy of a country, participation in common efforts at problem-solving may be a way to regain what has been lost. People engage in societal internationalization in order to expand the material and spiritual options available to them; this places their nation-

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states before externally imposed problems; joining with others in strong political institutions, that is, the radical internationalization of decisionmaking, is a way in which nation-states may regain options lost from societal internationalization (this is the perspective in Zürn, 1998). Interdependence in political institutions ‘does not mean that states trade in their objectives, but that they advance them through power sharing’ (Weiss, 1999: 70). Hence it is not easy to generalize about the implications of internationalization for the autonomy of a nation-state. This is a complex matter deserving study, an assertion different from the standard view that the nation-state is losing its position as a viable entity, and also from the opposite view that the nation-state has never been stronger. The implications of trade-induced interdependence need not be elaborated further to illustrate the point: this is the chief example of the way in which the internationalization of a country can decrease and increase the action possibilities of its government. It is equally obvious that cultural exchange has made the life of nations dependent on foreign influences, whether French, German, or Anglo-Saxon, while at the same time increasing the richness of the ideas and information available to their members and hence widening the scope and plurality of their capacity for thought and action. The four examples of the relation between internationalization and autonomy to be outlined here are of a different character as they reflect on the implications of international organization. The point of departure in all four cases is an increasing disjuncture between the problems of nation-states and their problem-solving capacity. The disjuncture represents a threat to the autonomy of nation-states in the sense of the scope of their action possibilities. Joining forces with others in an international organization is a way for them to regain some of what has been lost but may at the same time entail a further limitation of their freedom of action. The stronger the organization is the more there is to gain and the more to lose. Going from this general observation to empirical cases is a way of gaining insights into some of the intricacies of the relation between internationalization and nation-state autonomy. The fate of the European welfare state, the Common Agricultural Policy of the EU, the internationalization of environmental protection, and the efforts to prevent organized international crime illustrate four different difficulties that may have to be faced in attempts to assess what is gained from joining forces with others. Maintaining the welfare state Fritz Scharpf’s analysis of the implications of internationalization begins with the observation that developments ‘have significantly reduced the problem-solving capacity of national political systems’ in key areas such as the prevention of mass unemployment and extreme poverty and the ‘fair sharing of benefits and tax burdens’ (Scharpf, 1999: 121). This is for two reasons: economic globalization is reducing the capacity of national governments to regulate and tax capital, firms, production processes, and products; increasing mobility is compelling them

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to engage in regulatory competition against each other in order to attract or retain mobile production factors. At the same time the EU is challenging the existence of public service functions in the member states, especially because of the extent to which the Commission and the ECJ have been able to expand the scope of European competition law. Hence the action possibilities of European nation-states are constrained both economically and legally. The question is whether they have been regained at the European level. Scharpf ’s answer is that essentially they have not. Whereas ‘negative’ integration – the removal of obstacles – has been a success in the EU, ‘positive’ integration – economic regulation at the European level – has met with more difficulty. Three factors make it difficult for the EU to decide about regulatory measures, according to Scharpf: ideological disagreement about the proper role of public policy in relation to the market, conflicts between self-interests derived from differences in economic development, and the fact that the welfare systems of EU member states are set up in different ways. Although as Scharpf argues this is not true in all policy areas, for example with regard to agricultural and environmental policy, both of which are about to be considered here, it is true so far as social policy, industrial relations, macroeconomic employment policy, and taxes are concerned (see diagram in Scharpf, 1999: 117). Hence ‘European integration has greatly reduced the range of national policy options for the governing of capitalist economies without being able to recreate a commensurate governing capacity at the European level’ (Scharpf, 1999: 193). Scharpf’s analysis of what has been lost at the national level because of economic internationalization is rather more pessimistic than that of other observers (Lindbeck, 1989: 181; Weiss 1998: 190–1). Here, however, our concern is with his assessment of the impossibility of regaining at the EU level what has been lost at the national. Scharpf’s argument about ideological conflict and diverging interests implies that the possibility of mobilizing political support should go into an assessment of action possibilities. This leads on to the question whether it is meaningful to consider the opportunity to work with others as an action possibility only if others can be expected to agree with one’s policies. If yes, the same principle arguably applies to the assessment of intra-state action possibilities. It is not inconceivable that the internationalization of decision-making shifts the balance of power to the detriment of domestic opponents of this or that policy and hence makes some actions possible that were previously impossible for domestic–political reasons. Whether to follow Scharpf in taking the balance between ideologies and interests into account when assessing action possibilities at the national and international levels needs further thought. The Common Agricultural Policy CAP is known as a field in which policy making in the EU has reached ‘proportions resembling those of a federal government’ (Rieger, 1996: 99). It is often pointed out that CAP takes half

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of the EU budget. The implications for member state autonomy are not obvious, however. The main reason for CAP was neither internationalist idealism nor a wish to promote economic union but the determination to retain the ‘moral economy’ of the welfare state in the agricultural sector. It was a matter of modernizing this sector while protecting it against threats emanating from a free market. The objectives of CAP, according to the Treaty of Rome, were to increase production, to ensure a fair standard of living for the agricultural community, to stabilize markets, to assure supplies and to ensure reasonable prices for consumers. The sum, in Gunnar Myrdal’s words, is an illustration of the importance afforded to the welfare state (Rieger, 1996: 105). A reason for doing this jointly in a group of European countries has been the determination to stand up against US pressure to open up European markets for American exports. This entails a dilemma. Member states need a strong supranational CAP to insulate their agriculture from international competition and from challenges to the welfare function of their agricultural policy. The object is also to defend national interests, however. The role of national interests is strong in this the most Europeanized of policy areas. Key decision-making is retained by the Council. Implementation is delegated to the Commission but is carried out by a system of committees ensuring that national interests are taken into account. The introduction of so-called monetary compensatory amounts (MCAs) in the 1970s ‘in effect renationalized the common market with regard to agriculture’ (Rieger, 1996) since they were designed to eliminate trade movements not resulting from shifts in agricultural markets; the system can be used in different ways by different governments to strengthen part-time farmers in one country and weaken them in another. The CAP, then, is indeed very common but is at the same time a political instrument that EU member states use in defence of the distinctive agricultural structure of each of them. ‘This sort of supranational politics means an increase in the autonomy of member states rather than a decrease’ (Rieger, 1996: 107–8, 119). CAP may appear to be a clear example of the way in which the action possibilities of a country may benefit from very significant limitations of these same action possibilities. There is a complication, however. CAP, in a common view, is inherently suboptimal from the point of view of efficiency, and hence resources are wasted that could have been put to other uses, thus depriving EU members of some of their action possibilities. If autonomy is defined in terms of action possibilities, it is indeed relevant to take economic efficiency into account in an analysis of the implications of international organization. This does not make the task of assessing the implications easier. Protecting the environment An analysis of ‘the 12 most significant environmental problems of concern to Europe’, published by the European Environmental Agency in 1995, has been cited in Chapter 1. Several items

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on the list are international in the sense of being essentially imposed on countries from abroad, and the sum of the 12 items represents a significant, unwanted challenge to all European nation-states and hence a reduction of their autonomy in the sense of their action possibilities. Efforts have been made to take environmental action at the international level. The present issue is to what extent environmental problem-solving by international organization has succeeded in increasing the menu for choice available to nation-states. The UN, WTO, OECD, NATO, and OSCE are all active in the environmental area, and all offer action possibilities for governments intent on alleviating environmental hazards to which their countries are exposed. It is obvious that major success is not to be expected soon. As long as the context is intergovernmental, no government can be compelled to do what it does not accept. The burdens to be shared will be shared unevenly, and this does not provide for easy consensus. Both negotiation and implementation will be hampered by free-rider problems. A major initiative such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is limited to the ‘advocacy of environmental concerns within the international system’.11 Some efforts have been effective nonetheless, since information and rational argument do influence governments (Zürn, 1998: 182–8). Yet the option of negotiating with other governments has limited utility for a country plagued with externally imposed environmental problems. The other side of the coin is that there is little to lose in terms of autonomy by getting involved in such efforts. Just as it is a disadvantage that others cannot be compelled to do what you want them to do in an intergovernmental framework, it is an advantage that you yourself cannot be compelled to accept what you do not want to accept. Matters are different in the EU where there is more to gain and more to lose. The first Environmental Action Programme of the EEC was decided in 1972, as we have seen in Chapter 2; the Single European Act added caring for the environment to the objectives of the Community; the Maastricht Treaty increased the scope of majority voting in the area of environmental policy; the Amsterdam Treaty made the co-decision procedure applicable to most of this area. The institutional framework of the EU is better suited for effective environmental policy-making than that of other international organizations. EU efforts in the area of environment policy have been characterized as an undeniable success in comparison with areas such as transport policy and consumer policy (Johnson and Corcelle, 1995: 2). A problem from the point of view of autonomy in the sense of action possibilities is whether this success has been bought at the cost of preventing individual nation-states from taking more far-reaching environmental measures on their own. The Amsterdam Treaty makes clear that member states have a right to do this; harmonization ‘downwards’ is not the objective of EU environmental policy. This right, however, may be difficult to reconcile with the obligation of harmonization for the sake of the internal market.

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The tension was made clear in what is known as the Danish Bottle Case, brought before the European Court of Justice by the European Commission and seen as a landmark case in the development of Community law. The Commission argued Danish legislation about a deposit and return system for beer and soft drink containers was a trade obstacle for nonDanish producers; Denmark had gone too far in prioritizing environmental protection over the free movement of goods. The ECJ agreed that the restrictions imposed on importers were disproportionate and that Denmark had failed to fulfil its obligations under the EEC Treaty. The ECJ also stated, however, that the protection of the environment was a mandatory requirement that might justify an obstacle to the free movement of goods, provided that the obstacle was proportionate to the objective (Krämer, 1993: 91–105; London and Llamas, 1995: 51–3). This example illustrates the subtlety of efforts to increase the scope of possible action by joining a strong organization. On the one hand, the EU has proven capable of taking effective measures, partly because of the possibility of majority decision. It thus offers a meaningful alternative for countries seeking a way of doing something about externally imposed environmental problems. On the other hand, these same countries run the risk of being compelled to pursue an environmental policy not of their choice. If a member state could take strong measures on its own after having failed to persuade the requisite majority of member state governments, it would have had the best of both worlds. This it can do but not to the extent that it pleases, as is evident from the Danish Bottle Case. This equation, moreover, is not the whole story. EU policy in the environmental area has proven to be strongly influenced by the Commission, the European Parliament, and the ECJ, that is, by institutions in which governments are not represented. Transnational action, on top of this, has proven to be important in this area: it has been pointed out that the environmental movement has been quite successful in influencing EU policy (Greenwood, 1997: 185–92; Marks and McAdam, 1996: 113–15). This indicates the need to distinguish between the action possibilities of governments and those of citizens: the balance between lost and won may differ between the two cases. Environmental policy in Europe, to some degree, is being taken out of the hands of nation-state governments and handed over to other citizen representatives such as the European Parliament they are electing, the European Commission that is increasingly controlled and influenced by the Parliament they are electing, and transnational organizations lobbying on their behalf before the Parliament and the Commission. By considering how the autonomy of nation-states is affected by the internationalization of environmental policy we are sensitized to the possibility, indeed the fact, that citizens gain some of what nation-state governments lose. Preventing transnational crime Organized transnational crime, according to a background paper for a UN conference, poses a threat to national

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sovereignty. States ‘retain sovereignty in a formal sense, but if they are unable to control the trafficking of arms, people and drugs into their territory, then sovereignty loses much of its real – as opposed to its symbolic – significance’, and hence transnational crime is ‘a challenge to state authority and sovereignty’ (Williams and Savona, 1996: 32–3). The nationstate has lost the possibility of conducting an effective policy for crime prevention on its own, it is argued in the literature (Sieber, 1998: 99). In terms of the conceptual framework of the present study: transnational crime, by imposing itself on countries, reduces the ability of their citizens to decide for themselves what kind of society they are going to have, thus diminishing their autonomy. Governments have responded to this development by means of international police co-operation, as outlined in Chapter 2. This, so far as Europe is concerned, includes in particular the Europol convention and the introduction of supranationality in the area of ‘justice and home affairs’ in the Amsterdam Treaty. The question is whether nation-states have succeeded to regain in this way some of their lost ability to prevent crime within their borders. The general answer is the same as with regard to environment policy. A major problem is imposed on nation-states from abroad. Co-operative action is organized at the European level in response. Co-operation is getting increasingly supranational for the sake of effectiveness and efficiency. This makes the European option increasingly valuable and at the same time increasingly costly from the point of view of nation-state autonomy. There is however a difference between the two cases bringing out a further subtlety in the assessment of the relation between internationalization and autonomy. The paramount need in the case of the environment is to organize a common policy. What is needed in the case of organized transnational crime is less a common policy than a common police. The European Environmental Agency is different from Europol: whereas the EEA is preparing policy, Europol is assisting policemen. This is analogous to the difference between politics and public administration, decision-making and implementation, political issues and technical matters. Assuming an internationalized problem, one countermeasure is to organize an arena for joint decision-making about the issue, while another is to set up a common agency for problem management. These are different ways in which nationstates may attempt to restore by joint action some of the autonomy they have lost because of the emergence of externally imposed problems. International co-operation against organized crime illustrates a further subtlety in the idea of jointly solving problems that can no longer be solved nationally. Papers were being published in the late-1990s about the complexity of the international network that had emerged in this policy area, about a ‘regulated chaos’ driving people in crime prevention to desperation, and about the urgent need for co-ordination (Krause, 1998; Wolters, 1997). It is worth posing the question whether attempts to substitute action possibilities at the international level for those lost at the national level are

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likely to be frustrated because of that organizational complexity which is a concomitant of doing things internationally.

Internationalization and independence: summary The most common observation about the contemporary nation-state, especially the European nation-state, probably is that it is losing its independence. Whether this is true depends on what is meant by independence, as has been shown. The thesis about the crumbling nation-state appears entirely correct so far as autarky in the sense of self-sufficiency is concerned. The right of self-determination, on the other hand, is essentially unaffected by internationalization. The principle of sovereign equality remains a basic feature of international relations, but the rights accruing to sovereign states are becoming circumscribed, mainly because of the increasing legitimacy of humanitarian intervention and the growing supranationality of international organization. These developments are important albeit limited, and their meaning is subject to debate albeit within a welldeveloped framework. The main challenge is to investigate nation-state autonomy in the sense of action possibilities. Little can be said with confidence about this matter other than that the implications of internationalization for the action possibilities of nation-states are profound but two-sided. It seems a basic principle of international exchange that it tends to constrain the action possibilities of a nation-state by making it dependent on others while at the same time tending to increase the economic, cultural, and other resources available to it, thus providing it with action possibilities it would otherwise have lacked. Several further complications have been suggested in this chapter on the basis of empirical examples: 1 Policy-making at the international level, even when formally provided for, may be inhibited by the difficulty of reaching agreement among those whose consent is necessary, as for example in the case of the political regulation of the market. 2 International policy-making, even when successful in providing national governments with alternatives they would otherwise have lacked, may lead to suboptimal structures and hence to the diversion of resources that could have been put to use at the national or international levels. The Common Agricultural Policy of the EU is arguably a case in point. 3 The action possibilities of governments and citizens may be inversely related, as suggested by European co-operation in the area of environmental policy. 4 A distinction may need to be made between internationalized decisionmaking and internationalized implementation, as shown by a comparison of European policy on the environment with that on organized international crime.

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5 The implications of complexity may need to be taken into account when assessing what is gained from international problem-solving, as illustrated by the ‘regulated chaos’ reported to obtain in the area of crime prevention. This, it should be repeated, is a mere introduction to a field in need of further study for those who seek to understand the contemporary transformation of the European nation-state.

Internationalization and identity construction The general issue We turn now from the independence of a nation-state as state to its existence as nation. Much has been said about the revival of nationalism in the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia as well as in the form of regionalism in the West. Russia and Serbia are taken to epitomize the former, Scotland and Catalonia may epitomize the latter. The issue to be raised here is different. We are concerned in this chapter with nation-states that are well established and long-existing rather than emerging or potential, and the issue is about the strength of the identities underlying such states in a time of internationalization – strength in the dual sense of extent of consensus and relative significance (Chapter 3). Eurobarometer data provide a glimpse of what the situation was like in the EU at the beginning of the new millennium. A standard Eurobarometer item is: ‘In the near future do you see yourself as’ (nationality) only, (nationality) and European, European and (nationality), or European only. By 2000, citizens of EU member countries overwhelmingly continued to think of themselves in national rather than European terms: 41 per cent saw themselves as nationals of their country and not as Europeans, and an additional 45 per cent as primarily nationals; only 12 per cent regarded themselves as Europeans, entirely or primarily. There was considerable variation between countries, with the British and the Italians as extremes, but even among the most Europe-minded populations the proportion of those identifying themselves as primarily Europeans was 21 per cent or less (Table 4.2). European national identities do not appear to be getting radically subverted by Europeanization. The issue is about the possibility of more subtle change with dramatic implications only in the long term. The literature about nationalism and nation-building is of limited relevance here, dominated as it is by the opposition between ‘modernists’ and ‘primordialists’. Contemporary nations, in one view, are modernist constructions: ‘[i]t is nationalism which engenders nations, and not the other way round’; the ‘cultural shreds and patches used by nationalism are often arbitrary historical inventions’ (Gellner, 1983: 55–6). Contemporary

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TABLE 4.2 Conceptions of identity, April–May 2000 (%)

United Kingdom Sweden Ireland Greece Finland Austria Denmark Portugal Germany Belgium Netherlands Spain France Luxembourg Italy

National

Mainly national

European/ mainly European

Don’t know

SUM

64 60 56 55 55 53 46 46 45 40 38 27 27 27 25

27 34 37 40 41 34 44 48 39 39 53 58 53 47 60

6 6 6 5 4 11 8 5 12 19 8 13 16 21 14

3 1 2 0 1 3 2 2 3 2 1 3 5 5 1

100 101 101 100 101 101 100 101 99 100 100 101 101 100 100

Source: Eurobarometer, no. 53, 2000, Table 6.3a

nations, in a contrary view, have ethnic roots that are premodern if not prehistorical (Smith, 1986). Primordialism implies that nations and national identities are extremely resistant to change. What modernism implies is less clear: even in modernist analysis it often appears to be taken for granted that nations, even though constructed ex nihilo in the modern era, have become Durkheimian social facts and ‘will remain the basic form and elements of modern society’ (Smith, 1995: 4, 8). The controversy about the origin of nations, therefore, need not imply much difference with regard to their present-day immutability. Whether presently existing nations are in fact here to stay is the question to which we will now devote ourselves. It is a concomitant of being a nation-state that the inhabitants believe that they have a something in common that makes their collective different from others. The collective identity of theirs has been constructed, we may assume, by the use of building materials from history, geography, biology, religion or other things (Chapter 3 above). Castells (1997) distinguishes between three ‘forms and origins of identity building’: (1) legitimizing identity ‘introduced by the dominant institutions of society to extend and rationalize their domination’, thus generating a civil society; (2) resistance identity, building ‘trenches of resistance and survival on the basis of principles different from, or opposed to, those permeating the institutions of society’, thus giving rise to identity politics; and (3) project identity, built to redefine the position of social actors in society, thus seeking to transform overall social structure, as is the case for example with feminism (Castells, 1997: 7–8). Here we are concerned with legitimizing identity. The issue is how such identities are affected by internationalization. The durability of collective identitites, seen in this perspective, is a matter of socialization and resocialization – an old thought in the literature on

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nations and nationalism, and an established way of accounting for the stability of political culture. Socialization, in this perspective, is the process by which new generations are adapted to the mores of their society, including views about its special identity. The enduring strength of national identities has commonly been explained by reference to two socialization agents: the school system (Gellner, 1994: 56–8) and the mass media (Anderson, 1991: 34–6). Schools, presumably, teach the young the mores of the old; the media, presumably, reconfirm and reinforce what was learnt at an early age – socialization and re-socialization. Presently existing nationstates have a stable identity basis, on assumptions such as these. Schools and media reinforce primary group socialization, give it an explicit national orientation, and serve as national–conservative safeguards in times of internationalization. Recent European history shows that the safeguards are not always effective. The collapse of the Soviet Union may be seen as an instance of socialization failure. In the USSR, schools and media, indeed the concentrated resources of an entire society, were set to work on the construction and reconstruction of a collective identity which proved to be virtually nonexistent after more than 70 years of sustained effort (Castells, 1997: 33–42). This is a reminder that one cannot assume a multinational empire to be kept together by a common identity nurtured by schools and media. However, the issue when it comes to internationalization is different. It is taken for granted in the literature about nationalism and nation building that schools and media support existing national identities. The issue raised by internationalization is whether they continue to perform such a national–conservative function. If schools and media are themselves internationalizing, their role in the construction and reconstruction of collective identities may be getting more complex and varied than formerly. A concomitant of internationalization may be that national identities increasingly have to compete with global, regional, and maybe transnational identities. This may be especially pronounced in a region such as Europe. The function of traditional socialization agents in a situation of radical internationalization needs to be examined. The implications of school internationalization for the construction of collective identity appears to be underresearched,12 whereas the contemporary link between the mass media and the nation-state is the subject of a growing literature. A note about the latter field of study may be useful for illustrating the problem of the impact of internationalization on the construction and reconstruction of national identities.

The internationalization of the media In mass communication literature relating to internationalization and identity, attention is mainly devoted to radio and television, presumably because electronic media are believed to have special impact and to have

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changed most radically in recent times. Radio and television, we are told in the literature, used to be closely associated with the European nation-state, but now technology in conjunction with politics is transforming this association. The transformation, variously referred to as globalization, commercialization, and Americanization, is a dimension of societal internationalization as defined in this book. It is a matter of media ownership and programme distribution as well as of programme content. The issue to be raised here is not whether the internationalization of ownership, distribution, and content are interrelated (undoubtedly a worthwhile topic) but how each may affect the reconstruction of national identities. A standard account of the relation between the European nation-state, on the one hand, and radio and television, on the other, begins with the observation that, even though radio waves did not respect national boundaries, European governments did what they could to contain radio within national borders. This was especially the case during the Second World War, when radio became instrumental for patriotism, mobilization, and morale. Then, in the post-1945 period, television joined radio as a pronouncedly national medium. An enormous amount of the BBC’s work, in the words of a former BBC director, is ‘social cement of one form or another’ (Sir Michael Swann, cited in Cardiff and Scannell, 1987: 172; see also Schlesinger, 1978; 14–46). Matters started to change in the 1960s, when commercial radio stations such as Radio Luxembourg and ‘pirate’ stations broadcasting from international waters became forerunners of what was to come with satellite transmission and cable television. Since the 1970s, national broadcasters in European countries have been exposed to competition from non- and transnational stations, and this has been followed by deregulation in many countries – a sea change presumed to have affected the functions of European radio and television in fundamental ways (Price, 1995: 12–18). Judging from the literature the change is twofold: towards depoliticization threatening the public sphere, and towards denationalization reducing the role of radio and television as guardians of nationality. The market ‘does not necessarily cultivate diversity and pluralism in the sphere of communication’, and the framework of the nation-state is no longer relevant ‘when global communication conglomerates are key actors in the production and distribution of symbolic goods’ (Thompson, 1995: 240). The latter thought is self-explanatory: it is an obvious hypothesis that internationalization is apt to affect the media in their reconstruction of national identity. The former thought is more intriguing. The public sphere, an influential, Habermas-inspired concept often used in the media literature (Dahlgren, 1995; Hoffmann-Riem, 1987; Thompson, 1995; Price, 1995), is considered in detail in Chapter 7, where we will go into the problems and possibilities of internationalized democracy. What needs to be mentioned apropos the reconstruction of identity is the suggestion that public sphere and national identity may interact. It is argued not only that national community is a

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condition for the public sphere to function properly (Price, 1995: 237) but also, paradoxically, that programming aimed at ensuring a diversity of issues, contents, persons, and geography ‘inevitably takes into account the cultural values accepted by a particular society or struggling for acceptance within the society’, thus making clear whether this society possesses what it takes to ‘develop its own identity’ (Hoffmann-Riem, 1987: 61). Media internationalization is seen in the literature as a threat to the diversity of the public sphere and to national identity alike. Three questions that may be posed about this argument are these: (1) Are the media becoming radically internationalized? (2) Does media internationalization imply a threat to the public sphere and hence, indirectly, to national identity? (3) Does media internationalization entail the denationalization of audience identity? A note about each must suffice. The extent of media internationalization Is television becoming radically internationalized? The Europeanization of television has been an objective of the European Union. The media policy of the EU has aimed at extending the project of identity building from the national to the European level, while protecting European identities against Americanization and creating a common market for television programmes. A directive called ‘Television without Frontiers’ was adopted in 1989, by which European television across borders would help create a common European cultural identity. In the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations, a serious dispute arose between the EU and the US about audio-visual goods (Hoffmann-Riem, 1987; Machill, 1998; Robertson, 1999: 140–1; Schlesinger, 1994; 1997: 371). It was never a matter of substituting a European identity for national identities, however; the slogan was ‘diversity in unity’. What is more, by the mid1990s, the emphasis shifted in the direction of the Europeanization of a fragmented audio-visual industry by means of market mechanisms, and this was apt to ‘play into existing [national] differences rather than provide a basis for the building of commonality’ (Schlesinger, 1997: 377–8, 384). The notion of profound change in media output has also been challenged on empirical grounds. According to Curran (1998) public service broadcasts retained the vast majority of television viewers by the mid-1990s in the UK, Germany, Italy, and Scandinavia. They also continued to give due prominence to public affairs, and thus the ‘disenfranchisement of the public’ remained ‘an American rather than a European phenomenon’. Furthermore, leading television channels across Europe continued to import less than a third of their programmes. Strong influences have supported television as a national medium, Curran argues, including both viewers’ preferences and government policy. The ‘dual system’ taking shape comprises public service systems, which are mostly successful, and systems dependent on cheap imports and operating on a global market; even the latter systems are subdividing into language areas rather than solidifying into homogeneity. National identity, according to Curran, ‘is not on the critical causality list because its communications life support

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machine is about to be switched off’ (1998: 176–80). European television continues to function as a nationally significant force, not least because of the language factor. Media institutions remain nationally specific, and ‘nation-states remain the most significant spaces for political communication’ (Schlesinger, 1994; see also Schlesinger, 1993; 1997: 384; Stevenson, 1995: 206). In a nutshell: the internationalization of television has not changed programme content in a way significantly affecting the reconstruction of national identity in European countries. A media-based European public sphere may be emerging at the elite level, however. Schlesinger takes note, first of all, of the existence of printed media addressing a European (and global) elite audience of political and economic decision-makers, in particular the Financial Times, the Economist, the European Voice, and the International Herald Tribune. So far as television is concerned, pan-European broadcasters include CNN, Euronews, and BBC World in this order of reach. Schlesinger’s conclusion is that ‘the core of the emergent European political class and business elite’ do have media that they use intensively and that English now functions as their lingua franca (Schlesinger, 1999). The further development of a media-based, European-wide elite public sphere and hence maybe European identity is an important issue for the future of the European nation-state. Of particular importance is its possible dissemination to a wider public. National identity versus the public sphere Internationalization need not mean that depoliticized Americanization is substituted for a pluralistic public sphere. Irish broadcasting is a case in point. The striving for cultural autonomy had been integral to the struggle against the British, and Radio Éireann was set up in part to preserve the traditional rural culture of Ireland. This amounted not only to protectionism against foreign media but also to the exclusion of voices challenging the nationalist consensus and especially the Catholic Church. Even when Radio Éireann was transformed into Radio Telefís Éireann (RTE) in 1960, its task remained to fulfil ‘the national aims of restoring the Irish language and preserving and developing the national culture’. RTE, however, increasingly ran imported programmes and became increasingly commercialized. The cultural nationalism of Irish broadcasting diminished gradually and had been abandoned by 1990. This, according to one observer, meant that media policy was finally ‘justified in terms of democratic rights, not national self-determination’, that ‘the freedom of communications has replaced the struggle for national cultural identity’, and that ‘the rights of Irish citizens will take precedence over the creation of a nation-state for Ireland’ (Barbrook, 1992). In this case at least, the weakening of the link between media and nation-state would seem to have been to the benefit rather than the detriment of a variegated public sphere. The case of Ireland demonstrates the utility of seeing national identity and public sphere as separate matters. It can even be argued that the diversity, from which the public sphere is generally considered to benefit, is a

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challenge to any dominating identity rather than an expression of it, and hence that the relation between public sphere and common identity is negative rather than positive. It is a question worth posing whether it is the case more generally in Europe that media internationalization weakens national identities while at the same time strengthening the diversity of public spheres (cf. Stevenson, 1995: 203–4). This is discussed further in Chapter 7. The fallacy of distribution ‘The fallacy of distribution’ is Schlesinger’s expression. It denotes the fallacy of assuming that sameness in programme distribution implies sameness in audience interpretation. Audiences of different nationalities may interpret the same programme in different ways (Schlesinger, 1993: 11–13). This implies that even if media content were to be similar across borders, audience reception might be differentiated along national lines. The subordination of thinking to discourse was a prevalent idea in the intellectual climate of the 1990s. The assumption of media content as a powerful determinant of collective identity may be seen against this background. Schlesinger’s expression is a reminder that internationalization is making it an increasingly significant question how media content in reality affects the identity conceptions of audiences. Posing sceptical questions is not to deny the plausibility of the assumption that media internationalization affects the reconstruction of national identities and hence plays a part in transforming the European nation-state. Posing questions is to indicate issues for further consideration. There is reason, for example, for going deeper into the question of the internationalization of media content. Even if national public service channels remain dominant, it does not follow that radio and television will continue to provide nation-states with ‘social cement’. Two factors are cause for expecting a shift in programme content to the benefit of supra- and transnational identities: news technology, which is dramatically increasing the possibility of providing instant information from anywhere, and the internationalization of politics and society, which may affect what is considered relevant and the perspective from which it is seen (Robertson and Hellman, 1997). Whether something like this is in fact occurring needs to be studied. Those concerned with the transformation of the nation-state have reason to hope that people in mass communication research will be interested in the further exploration of the interaction between programme contents and audiences’ conceptions of collective identity.

Identity versus independence? It is not an unreasonable hypothesis that internationalization is in the process of depriving nation-states of some of their independence, that it

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does not significantly affect the reconfirmation of inherited national identities except perhaps in the long term, that there is therefore a growing tension between independence and identity, and that the tension is especially pronounced in contemporary Europe. The tension, if it exists, is apt to be politically explosive. The thrust of this chapter has been to emphasize how little can be said with confidence about these matters at the present time. National independence is a multidimensional concept and is inherently difficult to measure, especially since it is obvious that internationalization tends to decrease the action possibilities of nation-states in some respects while increasing them in others. Identity construction is a less difficult matter to conceptualize but is insufficiently studied empirically: against the view, common in the literature on nations and nationalism, that national identities keep being reconfirmed by socialization agents such as schools and media can be set a widespread view in mass communication research to the effect that the relation between media and nation-states is changing because of internationalization. Thus there is more reason for detailed study than for sweeping generalization when it comes to the implications of internationalization for national independence, national identity, and the balance between independence and identity. Maybe nation-state independence will remain significant while national identities are getting weaker instead of the other way around – a scenario as conducive to tensions as its opposite, but to tensions of a different kind.

Notes

1 2

3 4 5

Regionalism in the EU is considered from a different point of view in Chapter 7. What follows is compiled from Crawford (1996), Glenny (1993), Gow (1991), Krulic (1992), Magnusson (1993; 1997), Malcolm (1994), Ramet (1991), and Sturesjö (1992) together with comments and documents in Europa-Archiv, vol. 46 (1991), no. 21, pp. D525–50, Keesing’s Record of World Events, vol. 36 (1990) and 37 (1991) and newspaper reports. For a comprehensive analysis of contemporary humanitarian intervention see Ramsbotham and Woodhouse (1996).

The UK is reported to have circulated a document to its NATO allies in October 1998, according to which the use of force without Security Council authorization would be justified if (a) there were continuing evidence, ‘generally accepted by

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the international community as a whole’, of extreme humanitarian distress on a large scale requiring immediate and urgent relief, (b) it was ‘objectively clear’ that there was ‘no practicable alternative’ to the use of force, and (c) the proposed use of force would be necessary and proportional to the aim (Roberts, 1999: 106). 6 This phrase, a variation on a common theme in post-Kosovo debates, is cited from a newspaper article by British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh (Sydsvenska Dagbladet, 3 October 1999). 7 8 The notes about the banana and hormone disputes are based on a review compiled by the WTO Secretariat

9 Winkelmann (1994) includes the decision of the BVerfG in four languages, a detailed documentation of the entire case, and an introductory survey and analysis of the decision. For a summary of the decision see Bundesverefassungsgericht, Pressemitteilung 33/98, 2 April 1998, Appendix 2

10 The former translation is from Breitenmoser (1995: 992) and the latter from Winkelmann (1994: 752). 11 This is cited from the text under the heading ‘From the Executive Director’ at UNEP’s website 12 See however Pöggeler (1995) for a study of adult education in relation to nationalism.

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5 The Nation-State: a Political–Cultural Approach CONTENTS

The national view of the nation 108 Internationalization and political culture: European examples 114 Similarities, differences, and research tasks 123

We turn now from the ‘factual’ to the ‘cultural’, that is, from the consideration of what is happening to the independence of the nation-state and to the collective identity on which it is based to the exploration of prevailing views about independence and identity. It is common, as we have seen, to consider views prevailing in a country about the country to be a dimension of its political culture. Such views may be about national identity in the sense of the country’s essential features and proper role, and they may be about the kind of national independence to be sought and the strategy to be pursued in order to maintain it. Then, what precisely is considered worth defending, or especially important to defend, in the name of the nation? What is considered to constitute a threat to that which is worth defending? How is the defence of what is worth defending to be conducted? Are views about these matters consensual, controversial, or maybe non-existent in the politics of this or that country? What is the substantive content of consensual views, what are cleavages about? What are the similarities and differences between countries with regard to their views about national identity and independence? These are the questions now to be raised. The reason for raising them is the interaction that may be assumed between internationalization and political culture. The way in which a country responds to the challenge of internationalization is likely to be affected by its political culture; since national political cultures may differ from each other, national responses to pressure for internationalization may not be uniform; the study of political cultures, therefore, is apt to amplify

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general reasoning about the dynamics of internationalization of the kind proposed in Chapter 2. At the same time, the process of internationalization may affect political cultures, perhaps making them more inclusive and open to further internationalization, or possibly more exclusive and hence more constraining than before. These matters deserve study. The first step is to pose descriptive questions such as those in the preceding paragraph.

The national view of the nation The object of study that has been outlined may be called the national view of the nation: the view held by a nation of itself as nation. Expressing the matter in this way helps to focus attention on two conceptual questions that must be addressed. What precisely is a view of a nation about? When is it justified to ascribe a particular view to an entire nation?

Views about what? The framework of analysis outlined in Table 5.1 is but a list of questions to be asked in the descriptive analysis of political cultures. The point of departing from such a framework is twofold: to reduce the risk of inadvertently ignoring relevant matters, and to facilitate comparison in time and space. It goes without saying that the framework, like many things in this book, is meant to be refined by further analysis. TABLE 5.1 The national view of the nation: framework of analysis 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

National identity Existence or non-existence? Basic features: ethnic or civic? View of foreign influences: impoverishment or enrichment? Conception of international role: going it alone or joining with others, self-esteem or modesty?

2 2.1 2.2 2.3

National independence Meaning: sovereignty, autonomy, autarky, self-determination? Internationalization: threat or opportunity? Strategy: renationalism, intergovernmentalism, supranationalism?

National identity Existence or non-existence? The first question to ask about conceptions of national identity is whether reasonably elaborate and consensual conceptions exist at all in contemporary nation-states. That they do is often taken for granted in reasoning about the nation-state. It has however been a recurrent theme in recent writings about European national identities that it is questionable whether a common identity exists in this or that country.

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Thus British identity has been pictured as being in a state of crisis (Schnapper, 1994: 131) and in ‘a very poor shape’ (Miller, 1995a: 164) and as characterized by ‘a vacuum of language reflecting a vacuum of feeling’ (Marquand, 1995: 189); the traditional view of Britishness had come to seem ‘outmoded and unenlightened’ (Miller, 1995a: 161) and there is in fact a competition between opposing discourses of British identity (Doty, 1996). So far as Germany is concerned, reunification is said to have caused an identity crisis (Schnapper, 1994: 137); there is a Vakuum unserer nationalen Identität (Gaus, cited in Hedetoft, 1993: 289); the ‘perennial game of the German political classes, “What does it mean to be German?”, [has] entered a new round’ (Fulbrook, 1999: 3). Russia is similarly wrestling with an ‘identity vacuum’ (Uhlig, 1997: 1191). Even France is reported to be characterized by rival conceptions of national identity (Safran, 1991); the French ‘no longer believe in the exceptional character of their country’ (Schnapper, 1994: 132–3); there are indications of ‘a new crisis of national identity’ (Jenkins and Copsey, 1996: 110). A Gemeinschaft and a Gesellschaft paradigm are said to be competing in post-Communist Hungary (Csepeli, 1991). Sweden is ‘strangely devoid of identity’ (Johansson, 1997: 183). Crisis, vacuum, controversy – it is an important question whether observations such as these, which are sometimes based on impressionistic evidence, can be corroborated by systematic study. If they can, there is reason to pose the further question what this implies for the relation between conceptions of national identity and internationalization. It may be a plausible hypothesis that internationalization goes hand in hand with the impoverishment of national self-images and that this contributes to the tendency of internationalization to be self-reinforcing (Chapter 2). Ethnic or civic? Next there is reason to ask the question whether the identity perceptions that we do find are essentially ‘ethnic’ or essentially ‘civic’. This dichotomy has been mentioned in Chapter 3. The opposition between ethnic and civic identity is a dominating theme in the literature on nations and nationalism.1 The question raised here is not whether the origin or basis of this or that nation is ethnic or civic; the explanatory value of this much-discussed distinction is open to question. The question with which we will concern ourselves is the simpler one of whether the special features ascribed to a nation by the people themselves are essentially ethnic or cultural or whether they are essentially political or social. Ethnic identity, in the present usage of the term, encompasses the perception of community based on a common culture, a common language, a common religion, or a common age-long history. Civic identity, in contrast, is about one’s way of organizing one’s society. There is no reason to assume European countries to be similar as regards the balance between ethnic and civic selfconceptions. It is, on the contrary, a standard assertion in the literature that they differ from each other on this dimension (the classic contrast is between Germany and France, between das Volk and la patrie). The reason why it is important to examine contemporary conceptions of national identity from this point of view lies in their probable relevance for

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national responses to internationalization. There is likely to be more reason to stand up in defence of what is seen as a unique culture and age-old heritage than to protect the particulars of a contemporary political or social construction. This makes it an important question whether the national identity conceptions of contemporary Europeans are of the former or the latter kind. Impoverishment or enrichment? Related to this is how national identities are thought to be affected by internationalization. The identity of one’s country may be perceived to be threatened with impoverishment by the intrusion of foreign elements or, on the contrary, to be enriched by foreign influences. Fears of immigration and Americanized commercialization exemplify the former. The latter has been the view of elites who, throughout European history, have thought it vital to import views and skills from abroad. Whether external influences are seen as threats or as opportunities adds to our insight into the political–cultural dimension of the transformation of the European nation-state. The national role? Conceptions of national identity may include views about the proper role of one’s country in world politics – the degree and kind of influence to which it is entitled and which it should seek, how it should go about seeking and retaining this influence, and for what purposes it should use its influence. The concept of national role has a fairly long history: Holsti paved the way with an article published in 1970, and Jönsson’s work on the role of superpower illustrates the utility of the concept (Jönsson, 1984). One may think of one’s country as having an independent role to play or a special mission to accomplish, or one may think it more appropriate for one’s country to join others in common ventures. The role conception included in the prevailing view of one’s nation, moreover, may be characterized by self-esteem, taking the form, perhaps, of seeing one’s country as a bulwark of good against evil or as a superior model for others. Or it may be modest, regardless of whether one’s limited contribution is to be made jointly with others or independently. Seeking an influential role for one’s country in international affairs is a dimension of nationalism as defined in Chapter 2 and as further considered in Chapter 6. National independence Three interrelated questions are of especial interest when it comes to the political–cultural study of national independence. The meaning of independence. The first question to be raised is about the preferred mix of sovereignty, autonomy, autarky, and self-determination, and how they are prioritized in relation to each other. French concern with economic security may be an indication that autarky is afforded especial significance in French political culture (Chapter 4). Russia joined China during the Kosovo crisis in 1999 in defence of the concept of national sovereignty. One would expect EU member states to be more concerned with autonomy in the sense of action possibilities than with formal sovereignty. Differences such as these need to be examined more closely.

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Threats or opportunities? A related question pertains to what, if anything, is considered to threaten one’s national independence in one’s preferred sense or senses. Economic globalization and supranational organization have joined military attack as plausible threats in the post-Cold War world. Both, however, may also be seen to offer opportunities, as pointed out in Chapter 3. What views are like about this matter in the politics of various countries is one of the matters that need to be studied. Preferred strategy. A final question to be asked in relation to national independence is about the preferred strategy for protecting what is to be protected in its name. There are three principal ways in which a nationstate may protect what it considers to be essential for its independence in an era of internationalization: (a) by reducing its participation in international relations, that is, by renationalizing its affairs, (b) by striving to conduct its international relations in an essentially intergovernmental fashion, and (c) by joining supranational institutions and setting out to make them even stronger. Prevailing views about this matter is for the empirical student of political culture to explore, whereas the normative issue will be considered in Chapter 7. It goes without saying that the distinctions between the type of independence that is prioritized, the view one has about threats and opportunities, and the strategy with which one sets out to meet the challenges may be difficult to maintain in empirical analysis. In particular, one’s appraisal of the implications of internationalization and one’s preferred strategy for dealing with them should logically depend on the type of independence with which one is concerned, and ultimately on one’s choice between being independent of others and having opportunities together with others – between the independence of a hermit and the interdependence of a social being, as it were. Neither individuals nor nations should be assumed to follow this logic, however. It is important for the student of political culture to keep open the possibility of seemingly illogical findings. There should be room for the view that sovereignty is a core national value that is being threatened but that a degree of supranationality is one’s best hope for rescuing what can be rescued nonetheless. There should also be room for the view that autonomy is what counts and that internationalization is depriving us of the possibility of acting alone but that limited intergovernmental co-operation is to be preferred in spite of this. It is especially important to take note of both interand intra-nation cleavages in this regard, in view of a tendency in the theory of international politics to assume that governments as well as peoples tend to be concerned with essentially the same things and to draw essentially the same policy conclusions from this ubiquitous concern. What views are ‘national’? Anybody embarking on the investigation of the political culture of a country must consider four questions that are answered variously or not at all in writings about national views of nations.

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Generality versus specificity. Political cultures consist of ideas. Ideas about politics may be specific and be concerned, for example, with the appropriateness of qualified majority voting in EU decision-making within a particular policy area, or they may be general and be about the principle of supranationality. By the same token, they may be about the position one’s country ought to take on a particular international issue, or they may be about the general role one’s country ought to play in world politics. It is taken for granted in the literature that the concept of political culture refers to general, even very general, views. General views may have to be inferred from specific ones, however: even if principled views are rarely expressed about supranationality in a particular country, positions taken on a number of specific questions may be a basis for inferring a principled view. The methodological issue is when such inferences are legitimate. It is debatable whether a principled view that is never made explicit by anybody can legitimately be ascribed to an entire country. However, it may also be debatable if not superficial to limit oneself to what can be directly substantiated. There is no easy solution to this problem. Assertions about political cultures should be taken with a pinch of salt if based on bold inference rather than on direct evidence, however, and the validity of the method used for making inferences about the general from evidence pertaining to the specific should be sceptically scrutinized. Elite views versus public opinion. Conclusions about political cultures have been drawn in the literature on the basis of elite pronouncements and actions as well as on the basis of public opinion surveys. Political culture thus has been variously conceived as a matter of views held among the most active or prominent members of a polity and of shared views in the community at large. The distinction between elite and popular culture has not always been made, however. There has rather been an inclination to assume that there is a tendency for elite and popular views about matters such as national identity and independence to converge, and hence that it is unimportant to distinguish between them. This assumption does not lack justification when it is a matter of democracies, as in contemporary Europe. We know, however, that convergence between elite views and public opinion has been limited so far as European integration is concerned: in all 15 EU member countries the elite has proven to be more supportive of far-reaching integration than the public (Chapter 4). The choice, therefore, is between seeing political culture as a matter of public opinion, which may or may not be reflected among the elite, or of views among the political elite, which may or may not be reflected in public opinion. It may seem obvious that the ‘culture’ of a country, including its political culture, is by definition widely shared among the members of the general public and that views prevailing in the political elite are not ‘cultural’ unless that is the case. This approach is impractical, however, since views about matters such as those of concern in this book may simply not be widely held or expressed by the public at large. If we insist that an idea must be widely

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shared in public opinion in order to be part of the political culture of a country, political cultures may prove to be too poor in content to be worth studying from the point of view of the transformation of the nation-state. Elite culture, on the other hand, may have an impact on policy and political action even when not shared by a vast popular majority. It is better, therefore, to prioritize the study of elite culture when it is a matter of answering questions such as those raised in this book.2 It goes without saying that it remains an important question whether a particular elite culture has public support. Consensus, conflict, or indifference? Regardless of whether we are dealing with elites or publics, in order for an idea to be part of the culture of an entire nation the idea must be widely held; some such assumption is evidently made by those concerned with the substantive content of political cultures. It is obvious that ideas need not be shared by everybody in order to be seen as part of the political culture of a country; few ideas are. They must not be highly controversial or polarizing either, however. Unanimity in the House of Commons cannot be a prerequisite for an idea to be considered ‘British’, nor would a narrow majority suffice. The majority at some point is large enough to make it reasonable to regard the idea in question as a feature of the UK, but there is no rule of thumb that can be applied to this assessment. The same goes for political culture in the sense of public opinion: unanimity is unthinkable, a bare majority is not enough, and there is no way of drawing the line between culture and non-culture other than using one’s judgement ad hoc. Or, better, the matter is one of degree: the more widely an idea is shared in a country, the more institutionalized the idea is as part of its political culture. In the case of the UK it might be reasonable to accept as ‘British’ an idea supported by both of the main parties regardless of whether there is backbencher opposition, but the less such opposition, the more institutionalized the idea as a feature of British political culture. As mentioned already a further distinction is essential. An idea may fail to be part of the political culture of a country for two reasons: because views are divided, and because views are lacking. In Swedish politics at the end of the 1990s, the political parties were divided about the proper balance between supranationalism and intergovernmentalism in the EU, while rarely expressing any views about European regionalism, potentially as significant a challenge to the European nation-state as EU supranationality. This difference is important; it may be seen as a feature of Swedish political culture that supranationality forms part of the ideological divide between left and right, while regionalism is seen to be an insignificant question. Thus when investigating political cultures there are not two but three possibilities to take into account: not only consensus and controversy but also indifference. Stability versus change. Culture is not transient but enduring, but where to draw the line is not obvious. There is a tendency in the literature to conceive of political culture as an extremely stable phenomenon – ‘transmitted

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from generation to generation’ (Inglehart, 1990: 18) – but there is also a tendency to be concerned with change taken to be effected in less than a generation. The latter usage of the concept must be chosen if, as in this book, one’s concern is with the political–cultural implications of internationalization: the possibility of fairly rapid cultural change must be kept an empirical question rather than ruled out by definition. The traditional Irish self-image has given way to a different understanding of Irishness in the last few decades (Gilland, 2001; see also Barbrook, 1992; Holmes, 1994); this, I shall assume, means that Irish political culture has changed and not that it has disappeared. The tension between stability and change is inherent in the concept of culture, however.

Internationalization and political culture: European examples When it comes to the political–cultural approach, even more than in the case of the factual, it is a matter of preparing the ground for study. We are dealing here with a field of inquiry in which conceptual and methodological problems such as those just discussed have sometimes been ignored and in which systematic research has been relatively uncommon. Some recent comparative work will be cited to make the conceptual argument more concrete, however. Comparison is essential: ‘one of the best ways to see what nations mean to us is by comparison’, as pointed out in a study of national identity formation in the United States and Australia (Spillman, 1997: 6). We will first take note of the differences in conceptions of international role between the four major powers in contemporary Europe: France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Russia. Some results will then be reported from a study of views about nationality and internationalization in contemporary Austrian, Belgian, Irish, and Swedish politics; the views held in these four EU member countries will be set against views prevailing in Hungary, a European country of a similar size finding itself in a different situation. The function of what follows is threefold, as pointed out in Chapter 1. First, the conceptual argument is rendered less abstract by being applied to empirical cases. Second, empirical application serves as a test of the utility of the concept of the national view of the nation. Third, the specific observations about the national views of some nations about to be reported add to our understanding of politics in contemporary Europe.

The international role conceptions of major European powers Three Western powers It is a standard observation that France, Germany, and the UK differ in their approach to European politics because of differences in political tradition and historical experience. Even their very conceptions of nationality are said to be different from each other. In the

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literature France and Germany are pictured as opposites, as pointed out previously: la patrie is regularly set against das Volk. Thus, while being French has been seen as a matter of citizenship and French citizenship has been inclusive and non-ethnic, German identity has been ‘resolutely ethnic and exclusive in character’; the British approach has been fluid, and the issue of whether to define an exclusive or an inclusive national identity has remained unresolved (Cesarani and Fulbrook, 1996: 7–8). The argument has also been given a constitutional turn. Views differ between the three countries about matters such as state, nation, sovereignty, and national independence because of differences in constitutional experience and conviction, it has been argued. In France, the sovereignty of the people is what traditionally legitimizes state power; French is given the role of the language of the republic in the constitution; nation has been fused with state since 1789; national independence is to be guaranteed by the President according to the constitution. In Germany, on the other hand, the relation between nation and state has always been problematic, as has the locus of sovereignty; national independence has been less than selfevident for long periods; sovereignty is constitutionally divided between federation, Länder and international institutions. The special feature of the UK is uncontested parliamentary sovereignty since the seventeenth century: there has not been a federal structure or constitutional court; there is a long tradition of asserting British independence and influence (Schauer, 1997). According to an identity-oriented study comparing the same three countries, the ‘social construction of “Englishness”’ comprises meanings attached to institutions such as Parliament and the Crown and to historical memory and symbols, meanings which represent a peculiar understanding of sovereignty that can only be reconciled with an intergovernmental Europe. In Germany, Euro-patriotism dominates among the elites; the idea of self-binding has resulted from ‘a collective construction of historical memory, a shared perception of Germany’s place in Europe, and . . . visions of European order’. In France a shift has occurred among the majority of the political elite from grandeur and indépendence to a ‘European interpretation of French distinctiveness’ (Risse et al., 1999: 162–74). To what extent political–cultural differences such as these are reflected in the foreign policy role conceptions of the three countries is important for Europe’s political future. In order to suggest what the situation is like, I shall cite from a study of role conceptions pertaining to the common foreign and security policy of the EU (Aggestam et al., 2000: 38–86).3 The study is primarily based on official speeches made in the 1990s but also on interviews and other types of source material. A distinction is made between four roles a country may seek to play: as ‘leader’, ‘partner’, ‘bridgebuilder’, and ‘independent’. All three countries define a role as leader for themselves, but they do it in different ways. French leadership is taken to be necessary for the further development of the European Union as a political project; to exercise

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leadership in this regard is seen as a political responsibility that France has taken upon herself. The leadership role to which the UK aspires in European politics is less precise and derived in a more general way from a perceived position as a political and military power. Germany has rejected US encouragement to play a leading role in Europe, but there is at the same time a belief to the effect that Germany has a special Friedensantwortung and hence a particular historical obligation to serve as an engine of European integration. The notion of being each other’s partners is central for both French and German role conceptions. The perceived partnership role of the UK is different and pertains to the presumed special relationship with the US; an emerging conception of partnership with France and Germany by comparison is weak. There is a well-known tension in German foreign policy between the French–German partnership and the desire to be close to the United States; it is as if Germany attempts to play the partnership roles of France and the UK at the same time. At least three conceptions of bridge-building surface among the three countries: the UK sees itself as a bridge between the United States and Europe, Germany between the United States and France, and France between Europe and the Mediterranean region. The conception of the UK as a power whose independence must not be compromised by supranationality is essentially common to Labour and the Conservatives. Indépendence, a characteristic feature of French thinking at least since the days of Charles de Gaulle, has been de-emphasized in recent years: there is a tendency to move the role of independent actor from the level of an individual country such as France to the level of the European Union (cf. the fate of French economic security policy outlined in Chapter 4). Germany rejects Realpolitik and balance of power altogether; the role of an independent Great Power is one to which Germany does not aspire. It is suggestive to compare contemporary West European role conceptions with the traditional view of what the role of Great Power entails. Three features of contemporary British, French, and German role conceptions are notable from this point of view. First, the leadership roles defined by the three powers are lacking in overtones of dominance over others, spheres of special influence, etc.; that is not what leadership is thought to be about in contemporary Europe. Second, the perceived special partnerships – France–Germany, UK–US – cannot reasonably be seen as primarily directed against common adversaries but have a different, more positive basis. Third, whereas the UK defines its role as independent actor in a relatively traditional fashion, French concern with national indépendence coexists with an interest in making the EU rather than France an independent actor in world politics, while Germany tends to reject the very idea of playing an independent role. This last point is the most dramatic deviation from a traditional conception of Great Powership in contemporary Europe. The study of Bundestag debates from the 1950s to the 1990s is reported to have shown a

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persistent, consensual view of Germany as irrevocably bound by supranational European community. Germany is not seen as an independent actor among sovereign states but as a partner within a deepening union. European co-operation is said to have put an end to century-old rivalries and to have transformed nationalist outlooks into empathy with partners and neighbours (Banchoff, 1999: 271–6). Russia The role conceptions of the three EU countries can be placed in perspective by comparison with those of contemporary Russia. The identity crisis of post-Soviet Russia results in part from internationalization. It has been a matter not only of having lost an empire but also of having been suddenly exposed to the entire spectre of societal internationalization that had developed more gradually in the West. The leaders of post-Soviet Russia at first emphasized their commitment to universal or Western values such as ‘civilization’, ‘democracy’, ‘human rights’, and ‘modernity’ which, it was argued, could be reconciled with what was uniquely Russian (Wagnsson, 2000: 97). Among Russian philosophers and academics, however, the ‘Russian idea’ was set against Western theories of modernization and economy (Uhlig, 1997), and in Russian politics there began to emerge what has been called a ‘patriotic consensus’, comprising most of the political class and most political groupings and connected with beliefs among the narod (Simon, 1997: 1172). Key features of the ‘patriotic consensus’ were the distinctiveness of Russian civilization, the obviousness of Russia’s claim to be a world power, and the uniqueness of Russia’s multinational character. This in a nutshell was the Russian selfconception by the turn of the century.4 Russia was pictured in official pronouncements as the guardian of a spiritual tradition of hundreds of years and as having a distinctive identity that was incompatible with Western institutions and culture. Russian mentality was set against Western individualism, liberalism, and rationalism; the spiritual was set against the material. The Russian self-image was one of community, of striving for what is right, of patience and sacrifice in the service of spiritual values. Russia must seek to organize its economy in its own way; the Russian is ‘a person to whom the market is foreign’ (Simon, 1997: 1175). Individual freedom and the individual pursuit of welfare were seen as compatible with this view of Russian identity, but this was considered less obvious when it came to democratic institutions: a plurality of interests and ideas were regarded as not quite compatible with Russian tradition, in which strong leaders were important, not institutions (see also Flenley, 1996: 224–5).5 Russia comprised ‘a unique world’ with ‘its own interests and logic of development’. It was not Western but formed a ‘bridge’ between the continents (Wagnsson, 2000: 97). A second feature of the ‘patriotic consensus’ was the perception of Russia as ‘doomed to greatness’ in spite of her present weakness (Simon, 1997: 1172). Russia was described not only as a bridge between continents but as a ‘global centre’ with a unique strategic position, vast natural resources,

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and a large economic and scientific-technical potential (Wagnsson, 2000: 115). This justified a claim to the role of a world power. The dissolution of the Soviet Union was unhistorical and unnatural. The loss of status as a world power was not to be accepted and was temporary. It was to be regained by rejecting Atlanticism and strengthening Russia’s independent weight in all directions (Simon, 1997a: 247–8). The zone of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was an especially vital Russian interest: it would be natural if most of the countries in this area became increasingly integrated with each other under Russian leadership and then established a federation with Russia at its centre. Russia in effect was a divided country that ought to be reunited. A third feature of the ‘patriotic consensus’ may seem difficult to reconcile with the first: the insistence that Russia was multicultural, a unity of many ethnicities, religions, and traditions. Only by being European in Europe, Asian in Asia, Ugro-Finnish in relation to Finland, and Turkish in relation to Turkey could the distinctive character of the entire country be retained (Wagnsson, 2000: 101). The different ethnic groups were expected to integrate with the Eurasian ‘supra-nation’, however: it was taken for granted that language, culture, and political leadership were to be Russian and that there was a Russian ‘superethnos’ (Simon, 1997a: 251). Judging from the literature, views such as these were widely shared, even if not consensual, both in political life and among the public at large by the late 1990s. The similarity with nineteenth-century views of the difference between Russia and the West and of Russia’s spiritual mission is often pointed out (Flenley, 1996; Simon, 1997: 1174). No wonder that the Russian approach to the challenge of internationalization has been different from that of other major European countries. The politics of a country whose political culture is dominated by a view of itself as different, collectivistic, spiritually superior, entitled to the domination of its ‘near abroad’, and to the role of a world power cannot but differ from the politics of one in which far-reaching internationalization is regarded as a good thing, and political relations are seen as supranational co-operation for the common good rather than as the pursuit of rivalry for the sake of world power. There can be no greater contrast than the one between the role conceptions of Russia and Germany at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The approach to internationalization of small European countries What follows now is primarily based on a comparative study of elite political culture in Austria, Belgium, Ireland, and Sweden in the late-1990s (Goldmann and Gilland, 2001). The study comprises views expressed in programme-type party documents and parliamentary debates pertaining to national independence and identity. Just as observations about Russia have helped to put findings about the role-conception of major West European countries in perspective, a note about Hungary will serve a similar purpose below.

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There are indications that not only Austria, Belgium, Ireland, and Sweden but also Hungary are more internationalized than any of the big four just considered. In terms of foreign trade quotas, Belgium and Ireland are at the top among European countries, Sweden not much behind, and Hungary and Austria about average. Germany, by comparison, lags considerably behind Hungary and Austria on this score, the UK and France are even less internationalized than Germany, and Russia is one of the least internationalized countries of Europe (see Table 1.3). This justifies a shift in focus from conceptions of international role to some of the more basic questions that internationalization poses for the nation-state. Four EU countries: nationality versus ideology The study of four EU countries departed from obvious differences in approach to the European project, as it may be called. Sweden, on the basis of a combination of government policy and opinion polls, could be characterized as ‘traditional’ in contrast to Belgium, which was ‘Europeanized’, while Ireland (‘pragmatic’) and Austria (‘contradictory’) took intermediate positions. The study was designed to examine whether the differences in European approach reflected more profound differences between the national views of the nation prevailing in the four countries. One such difference pertains to the degree of obviousness of the nation in question. The relevant ‘we’ is crystal clear only in the case of Sweden, in which the coincidence of state and nation has long been taken for granted; Sweden, if you wish, is a near-perfect nation-state. In the other three countries it is less self-evident whose identity it is a matter of defining. The ambiguity so far as Ireland is concerned has to do with the Protestants in the North: the ‘we’ of the Irish has come to encompass ‘all the people of this island’ only recently.6 In Austria it is traditionally at issue whether Austrian identity is Austrian or German: the ‘building of an Austrian nation’ did not begin until the 1950s (Bluhm, 1973). Belgium has been getting increasingly fragmented: ‘is there a Belgium?’, one author asks (Judt, 1999). It is noteworthy against this background that relatively little is said about the substantive features of the relevant ‘we’ in the politics of all four countries. This, on one interpretation, is a methodological artefact: since conceptions of national identity are essentially implicit and taken for granted, the straightforward study of political texts is insufficient and a more interpretative reading and the use of oral information, generated perhaps by in-depth interviewing, are needed. This point, if valid, pertains in equal measure to other writings cited in this chapter to the effect that elaborate and consensual conceptions of national identity are lacking in a number of countries in contemporary Europe. An alternative interpretation is that conceptions of national identity are weakly institutionalized in the politics of Austria, Belgium, Ireland, and Sweden alike, that there is evidence to suggest that this is a common pattern in contemporary Europe, and that the pattern represents a significant political fact rather than an error of method.

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When it comes to the ethnic/civic balance in what is said about what sort of nation one’s nation is, there is more difference. Austria and Sweden are opposites: the Austrian conception of national identity is comparatively ethnic and the Swedish conception essentially civic. Thus two of Austria’s three main political parties, the People’s Party and the Freedom Party, conceive of Austrian identity as a matter of culture, history, tradition, and way of life; the Social Democratic view is mixed and tends towards the civic but includes the notion of an Austrian identity as a matter of history, language, and culture. This can be contrasted with the Swedish view of Sweden: insofar as explicit self-description is what counts, no people can have a less ethnic conception of themselves than the Swedes. Contemporary Sweden stands out as the prototype of a country with a civic identity, focused as its self-conceptions are on its welfare system first of all, and secondarily on its form of democracy, its technology, and its internationalism. Ireland, for its part, has moved fairly recently from an essentially ethnic, exclusive self-conception focused on history and religion to a more inclusive view: today, in contrast to yesterday, ‘there is no exclusive definition of what it means to be Irish, nor should there be’.7 One way of interpreting the situation in Belgium is that there is not much of a Belgian view of the Belgian nation beyond the one of a country that is vulnerable and divided. Regional identities are significant in Belgian politics, however, and in this regard there is variation from the civic view of Social Democrats and Greens to the ethnicity of the Vlaams Blok. The prevailing conception of international role is essentially the same in the four countries and is contributing to joint efforts rather than playing an independent role. Both Austria and Sweden had more ambitious selfimages during the Cold War, and this tradition remains upheld by a minority in each country – a leftist minority in Sweden, a rightist minority in Austria. However, the dominant pattern is small-state modesty rather than self-confident assertiveness. It is difficult to relate these observations systematically to differences in approach to the European project. It appears that conceptions of national identity have rather limited explanatory power in this regard – an observation that is interesting because of contradicting an obvious and widely held assumption. So far as national independence is concerned, the view prevailing in all four countries is in effect that action possibilities are more important than legal forms in a time of internationalization. Autonomy, in other words, is considered everywhere more important than sovereignty, which is an obvious view to take for a country joining an organization as strong as the EU. The difference between the four pertains to the hesitant Swedish view of supranationality: while it is a dominant view in the other three countries that supranational governance is essential for coping with globalization, safeguarding peace and democracy, and not least for giving small states leverage against larger powers, the dominant Swedish view is that intergovernmentalism should remain the principal strategy and that

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supranationality should be applied selectively when necessary for specific goal-attainment in areas such as environmental policy and crime prevention. Moreover, while the radical idea of redistribution by international organization is widely accepted in Belgium, Ireland, and Austria alike, the redistributive schemes of the EU are generally disliked in Sweden. By the same token, while the Common Agricultural Policy has wide support in Belgium and Ireland, in Austria views are mixed and in Swedish politics almost everybody is opposed. The main cleavages are ideological and hence transnational rather than national, however, and this is an important observation about the nature of politics in contemporary Europe. Liberal parties mostly take an optimistic view of internationalization and emphasize the opportunities that they think are opening up for increasing numbers of people. Social and Christian democrats mostly conceive of internationalization as offering both opportunities and risks and tend to advocate political integration – still more internationalization – to reduce the risks. Nationalists such as the Vlaams Blok in Belgium, Sinn Fein in Ireland, and the Freedom Party in Austria, tend to see internationalization as a threat and to advocate a degree of renationalization. This reflects a general pattern in contemporary Europe. The Greens and the extreme left, in contrast, tend to be divided along national lines; one of the most striking contrasts in European politics at the beginning of the twenty-first century was between the federalism of German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, leading member of die Grünen,8 and the virtual rejection of European Union by the Swedish Greens. Nonetheless European integration remains a matter of transnational political ideology quite as much as of nationality (cf. Ray, 1999). The chief difference between Austria, Belgium, Ireland, and Sweden does not pertain to the national view of the nation but to domestic politics. There is opposition to the European project in all four countries, but the differences in the degree of controversy over matters pertaining to national independence are extraordinary: near-consensus about the EU in Ireland and large majority support of the European project in Belgium can be set against controversy in Austria and left–right politicization in Sweden. What is more, radical opposition comes from remarkably different directions: from the nationalist right in Austria (the Freedom Party) and Belgium (Vlaams Blok), from the nationalist left in Ireland (Sinn Fein), and from the socialist left and the Greens in Sweden. If we want to account for national differences in approach to internationalization, the domestic–political strength and political ideology of the sceptics appear to explain more than the national view of the nation. As long as we stay among the members of the European Union, that is. Hungarian ethnicity Judging from the literature (Csepeli, 1997; Körmendy et al., 1999; Krause, 1997; Reinprecht, 1996) the Hungarian self-image differs in important ways from those of the four EU countries just considered, in spite of the fact that Hungary has long aspired to join the others as a member

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of the EU. Strict comparison is not possible because of differences in method and source material, but it seems clear nonetheless that in Hungary national identity is more pronounced, more ethnic, and related to EU membership in a more complex way than in any of the four. It is argued in the literature that Hungarian national consciousness is strong and based on a positive self-image, in contrast to what is the case in neighbouring Slovakia, Romania, and Poland (Krause, 1997: 104–5). Hungary may also be contrasted with the Czech Republic on this score: Czechs do not feel a need to recall their Czechness all the time, it is argued, and even appear to prefer cosmopolitanism to maintaining their uniqueness (Jiru et al., 1999). It is common, furthermore, to make observations to the effect that Hungarian identity is ethnic rather than civic. A ‘political element’ is said to be lacking (Krause, 1997: 105). Hungarian identity is reported to be strongly linked to history, in spite of the fact that official history has been revised with each political transformation (Körmendy et al., 1999: 221). History for Hungarians is the story of a thousand-year-old nation suffering defeats and injustices, the Trianon treaty more than anything else (Reinprecht, 1996: 179–80). Against political defeats are set cultural achievements symbolized by Ady, Petöfy, Bártok, and Károly . Cultural superiority is reported to be part of the Hungarian self-image. If history is not a source of pride, culture is. Hungarian identity differs from Polish and especially Czech identity on this score: in the latter two perceived identity is less ethnic and perceived threats to the nation less apocalyptic (Krause, 1997: 106, 132–3, 304–5). A further element mentioned by more than one author is the perception of Hungarianness as a way of life with family, friends, and workplace at the core rather than society and politics. This tendency, it is often pointed out, prevailed throughout the Kadar period, characterized by passivity, depoliticization, and paternalism and a focus on consumption and family life (Körmendy et al., 1999: 224; Krause, 1997: 106, 177–82). The first post-communist election, which took place in 1990, was won by the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) on the basis of an ethnic– nationalist campaign. The policy of the new government, led by historian József Antall, was based on the idea of the nation as an ethnic community rather than as a community of free citizens; democracy was not seen as a way of managing diverging interests but as a method for realizing the interests of an organic nation (Krause, 1997: 270–1). The government was ‘heavily influenced by the Gemeinschaft type of national idiom’ and ‘tried to orient popular attention toward the issues of national symbols, the Hungarian national minorities abroad, and generally they tended to perceive themselves in terms of tradition and national continuity which they believed had been interrupted by the international ideology of statesocialist system’ (Csepeli, 1997: 243). Traditional Hungarian identity was thereby confirmed and its stability proven to be very considerable, it may appear. Observers suggest, however, that this identity perception is far from consensual and that the balance

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between civic and ethnic identity is undecided (Körmendy et al., 1999: 226). Csepeli, who stresses the competition between Gesellschaft and Gemeinschaft in his writings, emphasizes the fact that the MDF-led coalition lost the election of 1994 and believes that ‘cultural nationalism is in retreat in the post-socialist political landscape’ and that we ‘are witnessing the emergence of political nationalism aiming at building “Gesellschaft” type political communities’ in East Europe generally (Csepeli, 1997: 256–7). The contrast is striking nonetheless between Hungarian identity as outlined in the literature and the conceptions of national identity prevailing in the politics of the four EU countries considered previously. Ethnicallybased national pride, a dominant feature of Hungarian political culture, appears to be a weaker phenomenon in Austria and Belgium, is becoming weak in Ireland, and hardly exists in Swedish politics; Hungary and Sweden are opposites in this respect. It is a good question how widespread ethnically-based national pride in a country that has recently regained its independence goes along with joining the EU. Maybe conceptions of national identity and views about national independence are less tied to each other than one would expect. Sweden, after all, combines a virtual lack of ethnicity with caution about supranationality. Maybe the issue of national independence will be politicized in Hungary along the same lines as in the West. Or maybe popular sentiment will turn against an elite policy of EU membership: after the defeat of Communism, it has been suggested, Hungarians wanted material and moral reconstruction on a national basis and viewed political and economic elites with suspicion, and therefore it is not unproblematic to revise the myth of a culturally superior people victimized by Great Power machinations (Körmendy et al., 1999: 226–7). The issue of the relation between national identity and internationalization, pertinent inside the EU, has especial significance so far as the applicant countries of East and East Central Europe are concerned.

Similarities, differences, and research tasks A number of questions about national independence and identity were posed at the beginning of this chapter and then given the form of a framework for the analysis of political cultures. There is a tension between the scope of the questions asked in the first part of the chapter and the empirical notes in the second part. This is unavoidable: here, as often in this book, the questions raised have not yet been answered by systematic empirical research to more than a limited extent. Some conclusions may be drawn, however. First, contemporary conceptions of national identity in Europe are often sketchy, at least insofar as we are concerned with institutionalized features of political cultures. This may be a result of internationalization

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and may at the same time make such conceptions unlikely to inhibit further internationalization. Second, there is great variation between countries on the civic/ethnic dimension. The identity of a country like Sweden is essentially conceived in civic terms while the identity conception of a country like Hungary is predominantly ethnic, in spite of the fact that both societies are highly internationalized and Hungary is eager to join Sweden in the EU. This casts doubt on an assumption made in the early part of the chapter to the effect that perceived ethnic identity is more likely to inhibit internationalization than perceived civic identity. Third, views pertaining to national independence – the implications of internationalization, the appropriateness of supranational institutions – are largely a matter of political ideology rather than of nationality and hence in part a matter of forces that are transnational rather than national (liberalism, Christian democracy, social democracy). Variation between countries is due in part to differences in domestic balances of power. The interaction between internationalization and domestic politics is a major topic for future research about the transformation of the European nation-state. Fourth, whereas most European countries may be moving in the direction of a common small-state conception of international role, there are remarkable differences between the role conceptions of the Great Powers, and especially between internationalist Germany and traditionalist Russia. This asymmetry is a key feature of contemporary Europe.

Notes

1

2 3 4 5

Standard references to authors emphasizing the civic aspect include Breuilly (1993), Gellner (1983), and Hobsbawm (1992). The standard reference for the ethnic view is Smith (1986); see also Hroch (1993). See Risse et al. (1999) for a study of British, French, and German identity conceptions entirely based on elite statements. Aggestam is completing a major study of which the text cited here is a forerunner. What follows is primarily based on Simon, 1997: 1172–8; Simon, 1997a: 245–53; Wagnsson, 2000: 75–133. Return to Leninism was not part of the ‘patriotic consensus’, however. Human rights and freedoms and especially the striving for individual welfare were given a high priority (Simon, 1997a: 252), a fact that may seem difficult to reconcile with the view that Russia differs from the West in terms of liberalism and rationalism.

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THE NATION-STATE: A POLITICAL–CULTURAL APPROACH 125 6 7 8

Presidential address to the Fine Gael Ard Fheis, 13 February 1999, cited from Gilland (2001). Speech by An Taoiseach, Mr Bertie Ahern on 14 May 1998, cited from Gilland (2001). See Fischer’s much-discussed speech at Humboldt-Universität in Berlin on 12 May 2000

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6 The Nation-State: a Normative Approach CONTENTS

Internationalism: internationalization for peace 127 Nationalism: in defence of the nation-state 134 Nationalism versus internationalism 138

The issue to be raised now is whether the transformation of the nationstate ought to be supported or opposed. I take it for granted (a) that internationalization poses a challenge to the identity and independence of contemporary nation-states, even though the scope and nature of the challenge needs to be investigated, (b) that this is one of the main issues facing today’s Europeans, (c) that the choice between supporting or opposing internationalization must be made by each of us on the basis of our own convictions, but (d) that it is useful nonetheless to work out a general framework for the consideration of the issue. The object of this chapter is to outline such a framework. The framework departs from the insight that some internationalized problems are unavoidable from the point of view of single countries: European countries are polluted by British emissions and are threatened by East European nuclear power reactors whether their citizens like it or not. Furthermore, far-reaching societal internationalization can be taken for granted since few advocate isolationism, and this adds to the burden of internationalized problems with which countries and citizens must deal. The issue is whether to support or oppose internationalization, given the existence of such problems. This amounts to more than the pragmatic consideration of the utility of this or that international agreement or arrangement for the solution of this or that specific problem. The nation-state is traditionally evaluated on principled or even moral grounds. It has been seen by some as an inherited burden from which mankind must liberate itself and by others as an

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invaluable asset that must be protected and nurtured. The former tradition may be called internationalist, the latter nationalist. In what follows, the internationalist case for internationalization and the nationalist case for the nation-state will be outlined first. Then the tension between them will be discussed. Both internationalism and nationalism are defined here as doctrines, ideologies, or programmes for action. They are not seen as inherently opposed to each other: the internationalist programme need not imply the destruction of the nation-state, and the nationalist programme need not imply die-hard opposition to internationalization. On the contrary, nationalism and internationalism, as they are about to be defined, can go hand in hand and be pursued at the same time. Only to a degree, however: a choice must be made at some point, as will be shown later on. The issue to be considered thus is the case for and against the defence of nation-state independence and identity against threats emanating from internationalization. Keeping national independence and national identity apart is not easy in normative debate. They are different in principle: it is meaningful to advocate the defence of national identity against the threat of internationalization while questioning the indispensability of its political expression, independent statehood. This in effect is Yael Tamir’s position in Liberal Internationalism (1993), in which she emphasizes how important it is for individuals to belong to a national community but also that the nurturing of national community does not presuppose state sovereignty; more about this below. Many participants in the debate fail to make the distinction or do not find it to be normatively significant, however. Internationalists appear to take it for granted that national independence and national identity are two sides of the same coin or inseparable dimensions of the same problem. Nationalists seem inclined to argue the case for national identity in terms of national independence and the case for national independence in terms of national identity. Strict separation thus is difficult to reconcile with the way in which the matter is often discussed and will not be attempted in what follows.

Internationalism: internationalization for peace The term internationalism is sometimes used to denote a general attitude such as openness to persons and things foreign, or maybe the conviction that the common interest of mankind ought to be given priority over the separate interests of individual nations. Its use in politics has historically been more specific, however. Internationalism, in one such usage, is a programme for peace and security. The core of the internationalist programme is the idea of ensuring peace and security by the strengthening of international institutions and the nurturing of exchange, contact, and communication across borders. Since such developments will make war an

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increasingly unlikely occurrence, those concerned with peace and security must prioritize these matters, internationalists maintain (see Goldmann, 1994: 1–60, for a detailed consideration). This is not the only way in which the term internationalization has been used with reference to politics. In United States foreign policy internationalism has come to denote the opposite of isolationism, which may or may not be the same as internationalism in the sense of a peace programme. In Marxist ideology internationalism has referred to the struggle of the proletariat against capitalism, which is different from international institution building and exchange for the sake of peace. This last definition dominates in the history of political ideas, however. It accords with common usage to define internationalism as a programme for peace and security by the internationalization of societies and political decisions. Internationalism in the sense of a peace programme has deep historical roots. Proposals for new bodies to maintain peace – what we now call international organizations – were published in the Middle Ages, and the genre has continued to develop since then. Proposals sometimes have comprised supranational features such as majority voting and military enforcement. They have often made provision for the performance of both diplomatic and judicial functions. They sometimes have included specific measures such as disarmament and anti-aggression treaties. Since the mid1800s, the role of public opinion in bringing about compliance has been particularly emphasized. The most remarkable philosophical work in this tradition is Immanuel Kant’s Zum ewigen Frieden, which was published in its first version in 1795 (Kant, 1796). Much in modern internationalism can also be traced back to the early British free traders. For a Richard Cobden, peace was as essential a reason for free trade as economic development: the principle of free trade would ‘act on the moral world as the principle of gravitation in the universe – drawing men together, thrusting aside antagonism of race, and creed, and language, and uniting us in the bonds of eternal peace’ (cited from Silberner, 1946: 61). The two strands – international organization and free trade – were originally seen as opposed to each other. By the early twentieth century, however, they had been combined into a peace programme having wide appeal and gaining much political influence in the wake of the First World War.1 Internationalism, far from remaining an expression of an unworldly idealism, became one of the most successful political ideas of the century. It was the basis for setting up the League of Nations in the wake of the First World War and the United Nations in the wake of the Second. It helped justify free trade treaties, foreign aid programmes, and cultural exchanges. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the tenets of internationalism were widely taken for granted in Western politics and public opinion. Their most radical embodiment, European integration, was inspired by the conviction that it was a matter of replacing centuries

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of conflict and war with a security community in Karl Deutsch’s sense – a community, that is, in which war has ceased to be possible and in which deterrence and defence are no longer needed (Deutsch et al., 1957). A distinction may be made between more or less radical internationalism in terms of one’s view of nation-state independence. The aim of a radical internationalist is to replace the present system of independent states with supranational governance and the abolishment of borders. A moderate internationalist rests content with enmeshing nation-states in a tightening network of institutions and co-operation while retaining their essential independence. Whereas few advocate radical internationalism on a global scale – world federalism has always been marginal – the European Union represents internationalism of a radical kind, albeit limited to a particular region. Even though no European federation has yet been established in lieu of Europe’s mosaic of nation-states, a remarkable degree of integration between their societies is emerging together with common institutions of innovative strength. This radical development has made the validity of the internationalist case, always put into question by academic ‘realists’ but mostly taken for granted in political debate, an immediate issue in contemporary European politics. The case for internationalism rests on the assumption of the sanctity of human life and thus is one of virtue rather than merely of politics. There is a millennial tradition of debating peace and security in moral terms (Teichman, 1986). Internationalism can be seen as a programme for saving life on a grand scale by promoting the internationalization of society and politics regardless of other concerns, thus setting universal peace and security before other interests. Moral conviction is part of the internationalist tradition. It has been common to regard internationalist reform as morally compelling rather than merely expedient (M.J. Smith, 1992). This is evident not only in Richard Cobden’s rhetoric and Immanuel Kant’s philosophy but also in the writings of contemporary international relations scholars. Stanley Hoffmann, for one, argues in Duties beyond Borders (1981) that the ethics of the statesman ‘ought to be guided by the imperative of moving the international arena from the state of a jungle to that of a society’ (Hoffmann, 1981: 35). Joseph Nye, for another, outlines in Nuclear Ethics a number of ‘ethical maxims’ that include the reduction of ‘reliance on nuclear weapons over time’; his long-term programme to this end is not unlike Hoffmann’s movement from jungle to society (Nye, 1986: 99, 130). The contemporary case against internationalism is not directed against this ethical imperative per se but is based on other considerations. Three questions may be raised about the compelling nature of radical internationalism as practised in contemporary Europe: (1) Is the radical implementation of the internationalist programme a necessary condition for peace and security? (2) Is it sufficient? (3) Is regional internationalism compatible with global internationalism?2

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Is internationalism necessary? The necessity of on-going internationalization for the maintenance of peace and security has been increasingly questioned in recent times. A common view about contemporary Europe is that democracy is a sufficient condition for peace and that radical internationalization is secondary or even unnecessary for this purpose. History has proven that democracies do not go to war against each other – this is the argument – and therefore the problem of peace and security is already solved in Western Europe and is about to be solved in Europe at large. International institutions and co-operative exchanges are helpful insofar as they contribute to the successful transition to democracy, but democracy, once established, suffices for the maintenance of peace and security. The fact that democratic states do not fight each other, in the words of one scholar, is ‘one of the strongest nontrivial or nontautological generalizations that can be made about international relations’ (Russett, 1990: 123). The absence of war between democratic states, in the words of another, ‘comes as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations’ (Levy, 1989: 270). What lies behind the correlation is not clear, however. Why the ‘democratic peace’? The traditional view is that democracies are peaceful because peace is in the interest of the majority. This is how Kant put it 200 years ago: If . . . the consent of the citizens is required to decide whether or not war should be declared, it is very natural that they will have a great hesitation in embarking on so dangerous an enterprise. For this would mean calling down on themselves all the miseries of war . . . But under a constitution where the subject is not a citizen . . . it is the simplest thing in the world to go to war. For the head of state is not a fellow citizen, but the owner of the state, and war will not force him to make the slightest sacrifice so far as his banquets, hunts, pleasure palaces and court festivals are concerned. (cited in Doyle, 1986: 1160)

When democracy was afforded a crucial role in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century pacifism, the basic idea remained that peace was in the interest of the people more than in that of the rulers, and therefore a ‘greater popular voice in the conduct of foreign affairs would prevent governments from making commitments likely to lead the country into war’ (Beloff, 1955: 20). Democracy, as it was characteristically put in 1915, is anti-militarist: because the people as a whole do not believe any advantage, moral or material can be gained by war. . . . A State will become militarist in proportion to the degree in which it can succeed in eliminating the democratic element. (Ponsonby, 1915: 115–16)

The argument in its present-day version is made in terms of institutional constraints rather than the will of the majority: the division of powers, the

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presence of checks and balances, and the need for public debate ‘make it difficult for democratic leaders to move their countries into war’ (Ember et al., 1992: 576). This view is open to two objections. Democracies on the whole do not seem to pursue less violent foreign policies than non-democracies, and they have waged war about as frequently as other states. This, it has been argued, ‘cannot simply . . . [be] blame[d] on the authoritarians or totalitarians’; ‘aggression by the liberal state has . . . characterized a large number of wars’ (Doyle, 1986: 1157). What is special is the lack of violence between democratic states. Secondly, it is common for democracies to make foreign policy in a way that differs from their policy-making in other issue areas: the difference between democracy and non-democracy is smaller so far as foreign policy-making is concerned than in other issue areas (Goldmann et al., 1986). An explanation of the fact that democracies behave peacefully toward each other but not always toward others has been proposed in terms of the democratic ethos. Politics within democracies, according to this line of thought, are characterized by norms of mutual respect, tolerance, and moderation. Democratic peoples expect such norms to prevail between their own state and the states of other peoples sharing the same ideals: Within a transnational democratic culture, as within a democratic nation, others are seen as possessing rights and exercising those rights in a spirit of enlightened self-interest. Acknowledgement of those rights both prevents us from wishing to dominate them and allows us to mitigate our fears that they will try to dominate us. (Russett, 1990: 127)

It has been suggested this same factor is a source of tension vis-à-vis nondemocracies. Just as democrats trust fellow democrats to be intent on resolving conflicts of interest in a spirit of mutual respect, tolerance, and moderation, they regard the rulers of non-democracies with distrust: ‘fellow liberals benefit from a presumption of amity; nonliberals suffer from a presumption of enmity’ (Doyle, 1986: 1161). Even on this second argument the democratic form of government is the determining factor and not international peace-building. Peace-building is assumed to take place domestically rather than internationally, so to speak. There remains a third possibility, and that is that the network of inter-state and transnational relations is decisive, just as internationalists presume, but that this network is difficult to twine and unlikely to be effective for inhibiting war except in the case of democracies. What matters, according to this argument, is the ability of impulses from abroad to penetrate national borders and gain a foothold within societies. There is empirical evidence pointing in this direction (Holsti and Sullivan, 1969). Democracy, even though essential, is not a sufficient condition for international peace and security, on this argument. It is difficult to determine on the basis of the historical record whether mutual democracy is in fact sufficient to inhibit war or whether close

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co-operative relations and strong common institutions are necessary. The reason for the difficulty is that democracy, peace, and close relations have tended to go together. Furthermore, since it is not clear what it is about democracy that affects the inclination of democracies to go to war – whether it is a constitution giving the public a decisive role or an ethos penetrating its entire thinking about politics – it is difficult to assess whether the introduction of democratic constitutions across Europe will be sufficient for peace and security or whether a profound, long-term shift in political culture is necessary.3 In the latter case the fact of democratization does not invalidate the need for internationalism, except perhaps in the very long term. Is internationalism sufficient? So much for the view that the further pursuit of the internationalist programme is unnecessary, since the problem of European peace and security is about to be permanently solved by democratization. This is not the traditional objection to internationalism. Those who have put the validity of the internationalist programme in question have mostly done it by reference to its insufficiency rather than to its redundancy. The internationalist programme derives its persuasiveness from the premise that it is appropriate as a means to an end that must be prioritized on moral grounds. This makes it a decisive question whether internationalist assumptions about means–ends relations are in fact valid. It is an illusion, sceptics have maintained, that institutions and co-operation suffice to construct security communities à la Karl Deutsch. What do we know about the extent to which such measures are effective in creating stable peace among adversaries? I have shown elsewhere that the theory of internationalism can be characterized as neither implausible nor definitive. The belief that international exchange and institution building are conducive to long-term peace and security between adversaries is plausible in some ways, but it also carries weaknesses. One follows from the fact that the theory of internationalism is general and structural, taking neither contextual detail nor the autonomous thinking of actors into account; this is inevitably a feature of a theory for large-scale, long-term societal change. Another weakness of the theory of internationalism is indeterminateness; propositions about plausible effects may be derived from such theory, but this is not good enough if we need to know whether the effects are strong or weak, whether they are highly probable or only moderately likely, and whether they are to be expected within a short period or only in the very long run. A third weakness of internationalist theory is its relatively poor basis in systematic empirical research. This theory is better seen as a research programme than as a programme for action and shares with much of the theory of politics, including the theory outlined in this book, the fact of being more helpful as a set of questions than as a set of answers (Goldmann, 1994: 196–201).

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To point out that a theory suffers from weaknesses is different from showing that it has been refuted and is useless as a guide to action. My contention, after having considered the weaknesses of the theory of internationalism in detail, is that the internationalist programme is unlikely to be effective on a global scale but that conditions are favourable in Europe. Moderate internationalism, such as is realistic on a global scale, is insufficient for the task of safeguarding peace and security insofar as it cannot be counted on to solve a variety of problems, for example (a) the inhibition of civil strife and not merely of inter-state war, (b) the maintenance of the credibility of deterrence in conditions of increasing co-operation, (c) the avoidance of the self-propelling dynamics of conflict escalation, and (d) the effective mobilization of international opinions against norm-breakers. In contemporary Europe, in contrast, co-operation is intense and multidimensional rather than sparse or unidimensional, common institutions have been given unique strength, and it is almost entirely a matter of relations between democracies. Under such conditions, the distinction between domestic and international matters is decreasingly important, deterrence is decreasingly relevant, self-propelling escalation is increasingly unlikely, and the mobilization of an effective international opinion is increasingly plausible. Therefore, what is a distant eventuality on a global scale is an immediate possibility when it comes to contemporary Europe (see further Goldmann, 1994: 61–161). Hence the internationalist assumption that the radical internationalization of societies and decision-making among a group of countries will suffice to establish and permanently maintain a security community among them is far from groundless. The underlying theory could be more precise, however, and the supporting empirical evidence could be stronger.4 It is not easy to determine, for example, whether what has been achieved in the European Union is sufficient or whether further steps are necessary to make it certain that history will never repeat itself on the European continent.

Is there a contradiction between regional and global internationalism? Internationalism has traditionally been conceived as a programme for world peace. I have suggested above that the degree of internationalization that can be expected realistically on a global scale is unlikely to be effective in bringing this about. That is not to say that a stronger UN or intensified economic globalization are inconsequential for peace and security. It does mean that internationalization is unlikely to lead to a global security community even in the distant future. Matters are different in Europe, as I have argued. This leads on to the question of the implications of regional internationalism for global peace and security, a problem swept under the carpet in the internationalist tradition. The issue is familiar from contemporary European debate. One position is that the emergence of a European security community is bought at the

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cost of increasing global conflict. The EU, while safeguarding peace between its members, is an increasingly potent participant in traditional Great Power politics vis-à-vis other major actors in world politics as well as against small countries on the periphery. The reverse position is that the EU, with its innovative features, is setting an example for the rest of the world. The issue therefore is whether regional change along internationalist lines is likely to be seen by others as a threat to be met or as an example to be followed. One cannot speak of a well-founded answer to this question.

The internationalist case: summary The internationalist case for internationalization is not to be taken lightly. It departs from what is commonly seen as a moral obligation: to save human life. It is based, moreover, on plausible theory insofar as the internationalist programme is likely to be effective when it is a matter of intense and multidimensional co-operation, strong common institutions, and democracies, as is the case in contemporary Europe. The basis for normative choice would be improved, however, if we had more profound insight into the role of democracy, more detailed knowledge about the effectiveness of internationalist measures, and a better understanding of the relation between internationalism on a global and a regional scale.

Nationalism: in defence of the nation-state An oft-cited definition of nationalism is Gellner’s, according to which nationalism is a doctrine or principle holding that ‘the political and the national unit should be congruent’ (Gellner, 1983: 1) and hence that each nation should form a state of its own. Some advocate more and others less than independent statehood in the name of the nation, however. Rather than taking a stand on what is and is not to be labelled nationalism I shall depart from the assumption of nationalism as a principle to the effect that the fact of being a nation entails political rights. A distinction between more or less radical nationalism can then be made in terms of the political rights that nationhood is assumed to encompass. As suggested already these need not be limited to independent statehood. Nationalism, according to one authority, is ‘a political doctrine about independence and self-assertion for a national community’ (Østerud, 1997: 170). It includes, according to another authority, the assertion of a right to let the ‘interests and values [of one’s nation] take priority over all other interests and values’ (Breuilly, 1993: 2). Thus, nationalism in a radical version is not merely a matter of safeguarding the political independence of one’s nation but also of asserting its influence vis-à-vis other nations.

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Against this can be set nationalism in the sense of concern limited to one’s national identity. According to Tamir, what is here called the nationalist principle – nations have political rights – need not be taken to imply a right to sovereign statehood. She argues the appropriate way of granting a nation the right to protect its separate identity varies from case to case (Tamir, 1993; see also Nathanson, 1997). There is a considerable difference between moderate nationalism such as this and the nationalist extremism of a Hitler intent on conquering Lebensraum for Germany. Nationalism thus is seen in this book as a programme for the promotion of the identity, political independence, and international influence of one’s nation. The degree of radicalism of this programme is seen as a function of the relative significance afforded to these three objectives. A moderate internationalist emphasizes national identity and is not too concerned with the other two. A radical internationalist is intent on promoting the international influence of his country while taking identity and independence for granted. The traditional nationalist emphasis on political independence occupies an intermediate position. Nationalism is mostly seen in the literature as either a revolutionary force from below or as authoritative state building from above. It has often been one first and then the other (Jenkins and Sofos, 1996: 18–22). The function of nationalism in the context of internationalization differs from both. It is defensive rather than offensive, as it may be put: a matter neither of mobilizing a people in support of national revolution, nor of consolidating a nation-state once this has been achieved, but of defending what has been achieved against internationalization. The matter to be considered then is the case for standing up in defence of national independence and identity against the threat of obliteration presumed to emanate from internationalization, that is, the persuasiveness of what I propose to call neo-nationalism. Nationalists in the past have referred to communities with a common history since time immemorial, often with golden ages lost and injustices suffered. Such accounts have proven to be powerful aids in mobilizing support and have continued to play this role, as evidenced in the former Soviet Union and Yugoslavia. The prevailing view in academic literature is that this is perennialist mythology. Be that as it may, the defence of the contemporary European nation-state against excessive internationalization is mostly justified on less obscure grounds. European integration has given rise to a literature about the virtues of nationality and nation-state that is usefully called neo-nationalist to make it clear that we are talking about something other than perennialist rhetoric. To label a view ‘nationalist’, it must be stressed, is not to insinuate that it is reactionary, dangerous, or immoral. Nationalism has historically been associated not only with authoritarianism and expansionism but also with liberalism and democracy (Østerud, 1994). The views here called neonationalist have little in common with those of an Adolf Hitler or a Slobodan Milosevic.

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Neo-nationalist arguments Before outlining the neo-nationalist case it must be emphasized that there is no unified body of neo-nationalist text and nothing that could be called a neo-nationalist programme. Even the term neo-nationalism is uncommon; I have seen it used only once or twice. What follows is an attempt to summarize the gist of a variety of arguments put forward by a number of authors questioning internationalization from various viewpoints – occasionally with intensity, as if it were a matter of campaigning against membership in the EU, mostly though in a more detached fashion, as is to be expected from academic analysts. The neo-nationalist case, pieced together in this way, is partly psychological, partly cultural, and partly political. The psychological argument The psychological argument is that national identity satisfies a psychological need or performs a psychological function. Nationality provides meaning and context; it promotes fraternity across generations; it gives protection against alienation and anonymity; it is a source of self-respect and pride if not immortality (Tamir, 1995: 432–7). National belonging gives us a ‘social home’, a shield against ‘existential aloneness’ (Weiler, 2000: 183–4). Man is characterized by ‘tribalism’ in the sense of ‘our need to create something coherent out of ourselves and our own lives’, a need going ‘very deep in our psychology’, and nationalism is now its dominant form (Glover, 1997: 16–19). This has been termed the Flourishing Argument: the belief that human beings, in order to flourish, need to identify with a group beyond their family (Lichtenberg, 1997: 160). Every individual may not need to have a national identity in order to flourish, but it is sufficient if a majority regard nation-related activity as constituting an important part of their lives: ‘[i]f there are enough such people, then the existence of a minority of loners will not upset the argument’ (Nathanson, 1997: 182). The implication, so far as I can see, is that far-reaching internationalization poses a threat to human well-being. If the special features of my nation are increasingly diluted, if relations across its borders are increasingly intense and complex, if decisions about the life of my national community are increasingly taken abroad, if, in short, the borderline between us and them tends to disappear, this will make my life and the lives of my compatriots that much more lonely and pointless. The idea of national community as a source of personal satisfaction and security may rarely be put in such strong terms in political debate, but it deserves to be taken very seriously. The cultural argument The cultural argument is that each nation possesses a unique culture that must be protected not only in its own interest but in the interest of mankind. The plurality of cultures is a resource for all human beings. By borrowing from one another ‘we make ourselves better without being the same’ (Walzer, cited in Tamir, 1993: 32). Language is at the core

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of this argument, since language is traditionally associated with nationality while being central to culture. Irreversible extinction threatens a majority of presently existing languages, hence the case for linguistic self-defence (Fletcher, 1997). This is an argument in favour of caution with regard to some forms of societal internationalization in the first instance. It pertains to satellite television, the international film industry, and the Internet but also, for example, to business relations, student exchange, and not least to the internationalization of the social sciences that is making the English language virtually the sole medium of advanced social thought. It has wider indirect relevance, however. Since only a few languages are available for multilateral intergovernmental communication, and since even the EU may have to relinquish the principle that every member state language should be an official language of the EU, the cultural argument pertains to the internationalization not only of societies but also of decision-making. The political argument The political argument is that the nation-state is a necessary condition for the democratic welfare state. Several authors argue that supranational democracy cannot work and that the so-called democratic deficit of the EU is inherent in supranationality and not merely a matter of the precise way in which European institutions are constructed. There must be sufficient community and mutual loyalty in order for democratic institutions to work properly and for rational debate to be meaningful. This cannot be obtained other than at the level of the nationstate: demos is a prerequisite of democracy (Kielmansegg, 1996; Miller, 1995; Østerud, 1994; see Zürn, 1998: 232–55, for a review of the arguments). What is more, it is argued, solidarity-based politics is impossible except on the basis of common national identity. Regardless of whether partiality toward nationals can be justified on universalist grounds (Tamir, 1993) or whether universalist ethics is based on an unrealistic assumption about what people are like (Miller, 1995), the neo-nationalist conclusion is the same: the nation-state needs to be defended because it is a condition not only for democracy but also for solidarity. Specifically, the European welfare state can be maintained only at the national level, since common nationality is a necessary condition for a society in which people take care of each other (Scharpf, 1999; Streeck, 1996).

The validity of neo-nationalism It is obvious that there is reason to question some of the causal assumptions integral to neo-nationalist reasoning. Not only the psychological but also the political arguments rest on psychological claims that are difficult to make precise and for which there is a lack of hard evidence (Lichtenberg, 1997: 162) – claims about human needs as well as about the basis of solidarity. It can be discussed, furthermore, whether the link between language and

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culture is strong enough to make the safeguarding of one a condition for the retention of the other (Fletcher, 1997: 328–33). The validity of the presumption of a necessary link between nation-state and democracy, a key neo-nationalist thought, is especially pertinent to this book; it will be shown in the next chapter that the necessity of this link, far from being self-evident, is a bone of contention in contemporary political science and European politics. The neo-nationalist case for the defence of the nation-state is therefore as open to sceptical questioning as the internationalist case for internationalization. The theory of neo-nationalism shares with the theory of internationalism the fact of being plausible but weakly substantiated and of being a programme for research as much as a programme for action. It is difficult to be more precise than this, since neo-nationalist goals are complex, including as they do such different matters as individual wellbeing, cultural manifoldness, and political democracy, which presumably are related to different aspects of internationalization in different ways. A variety of complex means–ends assumptions would need to be discussed, and that will have to be the object of another book. However, the important question about the relation between nationality and democracy is considered in detail in Chapter 7.

Nationalism versus internationalism Suppose now that we have found both the nationalist and the internationalist cases to be reasonably persuasive, such as they are, and hence that we favour both the retention of the nation-state for the sake of human flourishing, cultural pluralism, or democracy, and far-reaching internationalization for the sake of peace and security. This position, which is not unusual in contemporary Europe, raises the question how far it is possible to combine nationalism and internationalism. Radical nationalism must be deemed incompatible even with very moderate internationalism. One cannot be an imperialist and an internationalist at the same time. If these are the alternatives, a choice must be made. Otherwise the matter is less clear. The case for combining moderate nationalism with radical internationalism has been argued by Tamir. She defends nationalism in terms of the psychological argument: membership in a nation is ‘a constitutive factor of personal identity’, and therefore it is justified to grant individuals rights aimed at protecting this interest. A ‘shared public space’, furthermore, is a condition for ensuring the preservation of a nation ‘as a vital and active community’; hence there is a need for ‘political arrangements enabling members of the nation to develop their national life with as little external inference as possible’. However, she continues, whether this necessitates the creation or retention of an independent nation-state must be determined

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on the basis of the particular conditions of each case (Tamir, 1993: 73–5). She celebrates the EU (Tamir, 1993: 151–2) and goes so far as to argue the case for a world state (Tamir, 2000), while remaining a nationalist of sorts. Those who favour the ‘deepening’ of the EU mostly have the same vision: the object is to retain or even augment the multiplicity of nations and national identities, but to do it within the framework of ever stronger common institutions. If this is a valid thought, a degree of nationalism can be combined even with relatively radical internationalism. Such moderate nationalism may not suffice to satisfy a neo-nationalist, however. The political argument, at least, would seem to necessitate political independence. Now it is obvious that even nationalism of a less moderate kind than Tamir’s – focused not merely on the identity of one’s nation but also on the independence of one’s nation-state – is compatible with a significant degree of internationalism. The best example of this combination is the UN system which is a prime expression of internationalism while retaining the sovereignty and inviolability of the member states as a foundational principle. This, if anything, is nationalism and internationalism at the same time. The idea of embedding nation-states in a tightening network of international institutions and interdependencies while retaining their independence has played a very prominent part in twentieth-century world politics. If more than this is needed to satisfy a concerned internationalist, this leads on to the question whether integration going as far as in the EU can be reconciled with a neo-nationalist view. The answer is not as selfevident as it may seem. A paradoxical combination of nationalism and internationalism can be derived from the two-sidedness of the concept of autonomy, discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 – a paradox which is becoming increasingly visible as internationalization proceeds. Concern with autonomy is a reason for avoiding membership in strong institutions and for keeping out of overly intensive exchange relations; this is what independence-seeking is about, from one point of view. From another point of view, internationalization offers a way of safeguarding what contemporary nation-states need in order to maintain their action possibilities: in an era of the far-reaching internationalization of problems and societies, further-going internationalization is needed to retain the essentials of one’s national autonomy. The latter line of action is what is called ‘nationalist internationalism’ in Chapter 2: favouring the kind of measures internationalists favour but doing it for one’s nation rather than for the sake of international peace and security. Several variants of ‘nationalist internationalism’ were mentioned in Chapter 2, mainly with reference to the formation of the EU. The paradoxical implication is that there is nationalism on both sides of the normative equation. It is not obvious whether concern with one’s nation should translate into a negative or a positive attitude to internationalization. Thus it is possible and even common to stand up for one’s nation and contribute to internationalist peace-building at the same time. Nationalists

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need not relinquish peace-building, and internationalists need not relinquish nations. The combination becomes untenable at some point, however. There is a limit to the compatibility of continuing internationalization with the retention of national identity and independence. If it is true, or at least plausible, that radical internationalization helps to maintain international peace and security, and if it is also true, or at least likely, that the retention of the nation-state is essential for individual flourishing, cultural richness, and the democratic welfare state, a choice must be made at some point. Those who put European peace-building before other considerations have special reason to concern themselves with the problem of internationalized democracy, to which the next chapter is devoted.

Notes

1

2

3 4

See Christian Lange’s introduction to Histoire de l’internationalisme, a major work which the Norwegian Nobel Foundation began to publish in 1919 (Lange, 1919). The compelling nature of internationalism may be discussed from other points of view. As I have argued elsewhere, there is a built-in tension in the internationalist programme between the obligation to uphold the rule of law by coercion and the obligation to solve conflicts by mutual understanding and accommodation – between ostracism and empathy, as it may be put. The tension, which I have proposed to call the Internationalists’ Dilemma, becomes acute when internationalists are faced with a government violating or threatening to violate institutions that are vital to their conception of peacebuilding. This was the case, for example, when Iraq occupied and annexed Kuwait in 1990 and, arguably, when Serb forces escalated their activities against the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo in 1998. The difficulty of finding a solution in principle to the Internationalists’ Dilemma cannot but weaken the moral persuasiveness of internationalism (Goldmann 1994: 59–60, 165–71, 188–91). The literature about the so-called democratic peace, which is often sceptical, became extensive in the 1990s. For examples see Gowa, 1999; Ray, 1995. A main problem with the internationalist assumption of close relations as being conducive to peace has been to reconcile it with the fact of strife between communities inside states in contemporary Europe and elsewhere. This interpretation of the evidence has recently been shown to be mistaken, however, and hence a key internationalist thought stands on firmer ground than has often been believed (Holsti, 2000).

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PART THREE

DEMOCRACY

7 Internationalized Democracy CONTENTS

Internationalization and democracy: threat perceptions 142 The credibility of the threats 154 Counter-strategies and dilemmas 163 Problems, promises, proportions 175

It has become the standard view that economic globalization poses a challenge to democracy, that the European Union, an ambitious attempt to meet the challenge, is itself characterized by a ‘democratic deficit’, and that problems such as these have not been taken into account in the theory of democracy until recently. This chapter departs from the assumption that internationalization does increase the urgency of several problems inherent in democracy, such as the tension between procedure and effectiveness,1 the link between democracy and collective identity, and the relation between responsibility and power. It has become evident in debates about globalization and the EU that there is disagreement not only about what internationalization entails but also about what democratic governance means. What you think about the transformation of the nation-state depends in part on your view of democracy. There are two ways to proceed, therefore. One is to make a comprehensive survey of Models of Democracy, to cite the title of a book in which twelve such models are outlined (Held, 1996), and then discuss internationalization from the point of view of each such model. This would devote disproportionate attention to the theory of democracy in a book meant to be about

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the theory of internationalization. An alternative selected by some writers in the field is to limit the discussion to what is relevant from the point of view of a single model of democracy, for example, liberal democracy as interpreted by Robert Dahl (1989). What makes this unsatisfactory is the fact that the controversy over internationalization is in part about democracy rather than internationalization: if a single view of democracy is assumed, much of the controversy is passed over. The compromise chosen here is to depart from Habermas’s distinction between liberal, deliberative, and republican democracy (Habermas, 1995: 75–92).2 These perspectives are not mutually exclusive but represent differences in emphasis and can even be seen as conditions of each other. The implications of internationalization differ depending upon whether you focus on one, the other, or the third, however. The question to be addressed in this chapter is how internationalization affects democracy seen from each of these perspectives. This will be done in three steps. First, the essential idea of each view of democracy will be outlined and plausible implications of internationalization suggested. This is akin to making a survey of common or obvious threat perceptions. Second, the plausibility of the various perceptions of threat will be scrutinized. Note will be taken of unconfirmed suppositions and countervailing tendencies – an obvious thing to do in a book devoted in part to the specification of unsolved problems. Third, the question will be raised whether the various threats can be averted by each of the strategies of intergovernmentalism, supranationalism, and renationalism. This will help to specify the dilemmas of contemporary European democracy.

Internationalization and democracy: threat perceptions What are here taken to be the essential ideas of liberal, deliberative, and republican democracy are summarized to the left in Table 7.1. The core concepts are accountability, rational debate, and active participation. The ways in which internationalization may constitute a threat to each of these are indicated to the right. This way of defining the problem is controversial insofar as it relates democracy to effectiveness: the perceived threat to democracy first mentioned in the table is a growing disjuncture3 between preferred societal outcomes and available policy options, that is, between what is wanted and what is achievable – diminishing policy effectiveness. This perception of threat is common. The globalization literature is pervaded with the assumption that nation-state governments are losing their ability of goalattainment (e.g. Held and McGrew, 1993). The loss can take two forms: policies that are adopted increasingly fail to produce intended effects, and the menu for policy choice is getting increasingly constrained. These are essentially the same, since policy-makers in the latter case are anticipating

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TABLE 7.1 Internationalization from three democratic points of view Liberal democracy

Essential idea

Perceived threats

Policy-making consists in the aggregation of individual preferences by governors held accountable before the citizens in regular free and fair elections.

There is a growing disjunction between available policy options and preferred societal outcomes. There is a growing disjunction between those affected by the decisions of governors and those in a position to hold them accountable. There is a growing disjunction between citizens’ need to determine what actions have been taken on their behalf and the actual transparency of policy-making.

Deliberative democracy

Policy is made by means of consensus-seeking on the basis of free and rational debate.

Mutual understanding and responsiveness are getting undermined. The public sphere is deteriorating.

Republican democracy

Policy-making is an expression of common identity. Active participation in the life of one’s community has intrinsic value.

Active citizen participation is increasingly difficult.

failures that are actually occurring in the former case. The issue at this point is not whether there is in fact a growing disjuncture between preferred outcomes and available options but whether the disjuncture, if it exists, is relevant from the point of view of democracy. It is a widespread view among theorists of democracy that democracy is not a matter of substantive goal-attainment but only of process or procedure: ‘substantive democracy’ can be ‘a descriptive label for what is in fact a dictatorship’, according to Dahl (1989: 163). Effectiveness is contrasted with democracy rather than defined as one of its features: ‘a person appreciating effectiveness . . . has reason to prefer dictatorship to democracy’ (Ross, 1948: 239). Scharpf, to be sure, maintains that there are ‘two dimensions of democratic self-determination, input-oriented authenticity (government by the people) and output-oriented effectiveness (government for the people)’ (Scharpf, 1999: 2, emphasis in original).4 This is not the prevailing view in the theory of democracy, however. All three perspectives outlined in Table 7.1 emphasize process rather than outcome; democracy is seen as a matter of ‘input-oriented authenticity’ rather than ‘output-oriented

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effectiveness’ in all three cases. And yet it is a recurrent consideration in on-going debates about the future of democracy whether internationalization is depriving nation-state governments of effective possibilities for action. How can this be justified? It is useful to distinguish here between substantive and effective democracy. The concept of substantive democracy as used, for example, in Dahl’s phrase quoted above, assumes that policy outcomes can be democratic regardless of procedure; they are democratic, presumably, to the extent that they can be shown to be in the interest of the majority, which is similar to Scharpf’s ‘output-oriented effectiveness’. The concept of effective democracy, on the other hand, takes democratic procedure (‘input-oriented authenticity’) for granted but adds the assumption that democratic procedure must not be unduly constrained by a lack of action possibilities. Denmark under German occupation in the Second World War was an extreme example of ineffective democracy in this sense: Danish democratic institutions continued to function, but they did so within a framework imposed by an occupying power. Economic globalization, some argue, is rendering nation-state democracy ineffective by making it impossible or overly costly to pursue a distinctive economic and social policy, however democratic decision-making procedures continue to be. Effectiveness in this latter sense is in fact taken for granted by leading theorists of liberal democracy. Dahl discusses in detail how ‘binding’ decisions ought to be taken (Dahl, 1989: 105–15). He also makes a point of the fact that the move of democratic government from city-state to nationstate enhanced ‘the capacity of citizens to govern themselves’ (Dahl, 1989: 30). Neither assertion is meaningful other than on the assumption that democracy benefits from effectiveness. By the same token, Held’s notion of the democratic significance of congruence between citizen-voters and ‘recipients of political decisions’ is meaningful only if the ‘recipients’ receive not just decisions but outcomes. The traditional conception of democracy, according to Held, is that ‘the fate of a national community’ is in its own hands; this is not a meaningful statement unless ‘fate’ is taken to mean outcomes and not merely decisions (Held, 1995: 244–5). We are in good company if we assume that effectiveness in this sense – but not in the sense of substantive democracy – is part and parcel of liberal democracy. Is it also part and parcel of deliberative and republican democracy? This is a difficult question. Procedure – active citizen participation – is intrinsically valuable from the point of view of republican democracy, as interpreted in Table 7.1 and as discussed further below. Outcome is just not the issue in a republican perspective. From a deliberative point of view, similarly, democracy consists in rational debate rather than in the production of outcomes. It may be argued, however, that neither active participation nor rational debate is meaningful unless capable of producing societal effects and hence that effectiveness is as much a feature of republican and deliberative democracy as of liberal democracy. The issue of effectiveness, which plays such an important part in the debate over

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internationalization, is seen as a matter of liberal democracy in Table 7.1 but may have a wider relevance.

Democracy as accountability Essential idea The core of the liberal conception of democracy is the idea of democracy as a method for linking governmental decisions to citizens’ preferences or interests.5 Democracy in this perspective is a procedure for ensuring rule in the interest of the many rather than the few, or a method for aggregating individual preferences or interests to public policy commensurate with the interests of the entire body of citizens. Such a system can be set up in various ways: democracies differ from each other in their mix of direct and indirect rule, in their emphasis on checks and balances, in their election systems and party systems, in the degree to which they are consensus-seeking, in the role they afford organized interests, and in the balance between central and local government. These, from the point of view of liberal democracy, are different methods for achieving the key objective of a linkage between individual preferences or interests and public policy. Since direct democracy can play only a limited part in modern society, the focus of liberal democracy is on representative institutions. It is common in contemporary Europe to criticize such institutions for being unrepresentative in terms of social background variables such as income, sex, and national origin in addition to policy preference; it seems widely thought to be an objective of liberal democracy that elected assemblies are representative in a variety of senses. The focus of liberal–democratic texts has been on accountability rather than on representativeness, however. More importantly in the present context, whereas representation has been a marginal question in the debate about internationalization, accountability has been a major issue. Accountability in fact stands out as a centrepiece of liberal democracy. Governors, in the liberal view, ‘must be held accountable to the governed through political mechanisms (the secret ballot, regular voting, and competition between political representatives, among other things) which give citizens satisfactory means for choosing, authorizing and controlling political decisions’ (Held, 1995: 88–9). The idea of democracy as accountability may be outlined as in Figure 7.1 which resembles David Easton’s model of the political system (Easton, 1965). Voters are presumed to elect their governors on the basis of their policy preferences: they are presumed to take their preferred policy outputs and outcomes into account. If policy outputs or outcomes are at variance with what voters want, they can hold their governors to account at the next election; feedback from policy and outcome to voters’ preferences plays a key role in the working of the liberal–democratic system. Hence the crucial role afforded to regular free and fair elections in the liberal model of democracy.

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Voters’ preferences

Public policy

Societal outcome

FIGURE 7.1 A model of accountability

Plausible problems Internationalization may challenge the system of accountability in three ways, thus threatening to divorce public policy from citizens’ preferences or interests. Borrowing from Held (1995) they can be described as disjunctures that are getting increasingly pronounced as internationalization proceeds. The idea of accountability would seem to presume that there is conjunction (a) between the responsibility of a set of governors and their power over outcomes, (b) between the constituency of a set of governors and those affected by their decisions, and (c) between the responsibility of a set of governors and the transparency of their decisions. Because of internationalization there is a growing disjuncture in all three respects, pessimists argue. RESPONSIBILITY VERSUS POWER The idea of accountability, as interpreted here, assumes that responsibility and power go together. Those presumed to take responsibility for outcomes must have the power to bring them about. It is not meaningful, at least not from a democratic point of view, to hold someone to account for an occurrence that he or she could not have prevented, or for the non-occurrence of what he or she could not have brought about. It is a recurring thought in the globalization literature that there is a growing disjuncture in this regard (Held, 1995: 16–17, 224–5) – a growing disjuncture between policy options and preferred societal outcomes, as shown in Table 7.1. Less and less can be influenced by political means, according to this thought. Politics is losing its effectiveness. Those presumed to carry responsibility can do less and less to produce the results expected by their constituencies. Hence it is becoming less and less meaningful for dissatisfied citizens to hold their governors to account. The ‘most basic truth about globalization’, it has been said, is that ‘no one is in charge’. When something goes wrong ‘there’s nobody to call’ (T. L. Friedman, cited in B. M. Friedman, 1999: 42). This observation, to repeat, is less controversial than its relevance for democracy. Those who think that democracy is one thing and policy effectiveness another reject the relevance of the arrow from public policy to societal outcome in Figure 7.1. For them the remaining arrows in the figure represent proper liberal–democratic procedure: governors’ aggregating

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citizens’ preferences or interests to public policies, citizens’ holding governors to account for the policies pursued by governors and for the outcomes of those policies, but not the arrow representing policy effectiveness. A different view is taken in this book, as pointed out previously. Judging from the debate over globalization, the link between policy and outcome is increasingly at risk. Hence there is a growing disjuncture between responsibility and power, which is one way in which internationalization poses a challenge to democracy. The case is mostly made in economic terms: governments are increasingly powerless because of economic globalization. This argument has two parts. First, it is increasingly difficult to exert political control over the market: the operation of market forces and the activities of multinational corporations can no longer be kept in check. Second, given the domination of the market, countries compete with each other so as to make it even more difficult for each of them to conduct the kind of economic and social policy they might prefer, and even more difficult for them to agree on a common policy to this effect. A debate has been conducted along these lines about the future of the European welfare state, a debate to which reference has been made in Chapter 4. A common argument departs from the observation that the conduct of an ambitious social policy is a characteristic feature of post-1945 West European politics, a policy based on a conception of welfare rooted in German conservatism as well as in British and Scandinavian social democracy. The welfare state is widely taken to make European democracy different from democracy in North America and even to define a European identity. Now according to a common line of thought internationalization is depriving nation-state governments of the option to pursue such a policy. Increasing international competition together with increasing mobility of production factors, both human and material, is making it increasingly difficult for a country to maintain a welfare system more expensive than that of others. Regardless of citizens’ preferences, therefore, nation-state social policy is likely to move away from the concept of the welfare state in the direction either of unregulated market or of neo-corporativist national partnership to increase the country’s competitiveness (Streeck, 1996: 87). The idea of replacing the traditional welfare state with European-level welfare policy has proven unrealistic, the argument continues. The distinction between ‘negative’ and ‘positive’ integration is pertinent here: between removing national restraints on trade and competition, on the one hand, and taking steps in common to condition the operation of the market, on the other. Whereas the EU has been successful so far as negative integration is concerned, positive integration has been a more difficult proposition. Furthermore, within the field of positive integration a distinction may be made between product-related and process-related regulation: the former typically concerns the quality and safety of products, while the latter is about environment and welfare; process-related harmonization has proven to be especially difficult to bring about because of diverging national

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interests. Hence, while negative integration renders welfare policy difficult at the level of the nation-state, the difficulty of agreeing on process-related regulation makes the alternative of a European welfare state unrealistic, a German analyst argues (Scharpf, 1996, 1996a, 1999). In the words of another German analyst: ‘How democracy will fare when the loss of its ability to protect society from the vagaries of the marketplace is fully realized by its citizens remains to be seen’ (Streeck, 1996: 89). The least that can be said, if this analysis is valid, is that the idea of democracy as accountability is becoming complicated. ‘Protecting’ society from ‘the vagaries of the marketplace’ is a matter not only of welfare policy in an economic sense. The internationalization of the media is widely thought to have made it difficult for countries to regulate matters in this area (Chapter 4). A further scenario, plausible enough to be worth considering, is about higher education: if the labour market of professionals is becoming Europe-wide, and if study abroad is encouraged everywhere, this may make it increasingly difficult for governments to pursue a higher education policy based on values other than academic excellence; values such as national tradition, humanistic orientation or social equality can no longer be afforded a significant role. It bears repeating that what is perceived to be exposed to threat need not be an actually existing political control of market, media, or higher education but the possibility of exerting such control. Options for effective action are thought to be getting fewer. This, if true, is the same as a loss of autonomy as defined in Chapter 3. If policy effectiveness is relevant for democracy, there is a direct link between democracy and autonomy in the sense of action possibilities. There will be more about this in what follows. THOSE AFFECTED VERSUS THOSE IN THE CONSTITUENCY The assumption just considered is about a tendency for political decisions to be ineffective. Another concomitant of internationalization may be a tendency for those affected by a political decision that has in fact produced effects to be different from those who are empowered to hold the decision-makers to account (Held, 1995: 224–5). Along this line of thought, those who must suffer the consequences of the actions and non-actions of particular governors are increasingly different from those belonging to the constituency of these same governors. The links from public policy and societal outcome to voters’ preferences are getting weaker because of internationalization. The disjuncture between those affected and those in the constituency can take two forms. One occurs when conditions in one country result from the decisions or non-decisions of the governors of another. This largely is a matter of suffering costs exported by others, which is one way in which problems are internationalized, as exemplified not only by unemployment but also by pollution and organized crime. Others decide for themselves, we have to suffer the consequences. Irish industrial policy, British environment policy, and Russian criminal policy are becoming as important for the citizens of some other countries as the policy of their own

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governments. Thus internationalization complicates democracy seen as accountability. The other form of disjuncture between those affected and those in the constituency pertains to internationalized decision-making. Outcomes contingent on bargaining are not under the control of any single actor. Even bilateral intergovernmental negotiation implies that those influencing the outcome are in part different from those that can be held accountable. This is more clearly the case when it is a matter of institutionalized bargaining in a multilateral setting, and it amounts to a serious problem in the case of majority voting in international organization. If we are bound by decisions taken by the Council of the European Union (CEU) even when our own government has voted against them, there is nobody we can hold to account. The European Parliament represents an attempt to reduce this disjuncture. The idea is to make decision-makers at the European level accountable before an elected European assembly. It has been widely argued that this attempt to move democratic accountability from the nation-state to the European level has failed; hence the ‘democratic deficit’. It has sometimes been added that such attempts will necessarily fail because of the inherent impossibility of supranational democracy. The validity of such principled scepticism will be considered later in this chapter. VERSUS TRANSPARENCY The idea of democracy as accountability must be taken to presume that the process of policy-making is transparent, so that citizens can determine what policy their governors pursue on their behalf. Accountability in the form of free, fair, and regular elections is not a meaningful idea unless citizens are informed well enough to know for what their governors are to be held accountable. Theorists of liberal democracy sometimes seem to have taken full citizens’ information for granted. Be that as it may, it is a plausible argument that internationalization threatens to reduce the transparency of the process of policy-making and hence to undermine the idea of holding governors to account. The argument draws on a long-standing idea about the tension between the demands of democratic politics and those of international politics. Even in democracies – so the traditional argument goes – foreign policy differs from domestic politics by being conducted by a small elite and shrouded in secrecy. This is so, according to the traditional argument, because foreign policy is made by bargaining with other states, and effective bargaining cannot be reconciled with transparency (Goldmann et al., 1986: Ch. 1). Hence the in-built tension between the conduct of international politics and the assumption of a well-informed electorate. The electorate is likely to be uncertain about what has been going on and about the extent to which their government is responsible for the result. An observation long made in the literature is that democracies have tended to put foreign policy effectiveness before democratic procedure. ‘The degree of secrecy in foreign policy, the extent of the government’s

RESPONSIBILITY

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superiority in its sources of information and in its control over information, is far greater than in any area of domestic politics’ (W. Wallace, 1971: 48) – this is a typical assertion. The necessity of secrecy in diplomacy, another author maintains, ‘may insulate policy and administration from outside scrutiny’, and this means that ‘it is very difficult for the public to judge such policies’ (Farrell, 1969: 129). Each government, according to a third author, ‘is at least partially able to escape its responsibility to its parliament by pointing to the involvement of other governments and to their shared responsibility for common measures’ (Kaiser, 1971: 713–14). Thus what have traditionally been seen as typical features of foreign policy-making, especially in Europe,6 have made it difficult to hold specific decision-makers to account for specific measures. This has been the case not only with finely tuned diplomacy but also with major divisive issues. It is becoming clear, for example, that the policy pursued by Scandinavian governments vis-à-vis NATO during the Cold War was different from what their electorates were led to believe. Nonaligned Sweden had closer military relations with the West than even well-informed Swedes could imagine: a public commission concluded in 1994 that in the 1950s former Prime Minister Tage Erlander had ‘consciously given [the Riksdag] a misleading picture of what had actually taken place’ (Neutralitetspolitikkommissionen, 1994: 307–8), and later newspaper reports have suggested relations between Sweden and NATO to have been even closer.7 In Denmark, a sensitive issue was the integration of Greenland in US nuclear strategy: Denmark, as it has been put, had ‘two nuclear policies so far as Greenland was concerned, a real but secret policy, and an official policy which one mentioned as little as possible’ (DUPI, 1997: 45). The deployment of nuclear weapons at the Keflavik air base near Reykjavik was a similar case: Icelanders appear to have been about as misled as Swedes and Danes about what was going on in their name. It was disclosed in a 1999 article that US nuclear weapons had been deployed in a large number of countries in Europe and elsewhere – in more countries than had previously been known (Norris et al., 1999).8 It is not misleading to speak of a democratic deficit in cases such as these. A reason for considering internationalization a threat to democracy is the fear that the lack of transparency is proliferating across the entire political field as the political process in formerly domestic–political areas grows similar to what has traditionally been the case in the making of foreign and security policy. It is becoming increasingly difficult, on this assumption, to know in what governors are actually engaged and to what extent they are responsible for outcomes, and hence it is becoming increasingly difficult to hold them accountable. More and more will take place in the confidential privacy of international diplomacy and the Byzantine secrecy of bureaucratic politics, according to this expectation. The much-discussed lack of openness of the Council and Commission of the EU is but an instance of an inevitable general phenomenon on this view.

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Democracy as deliberation Essential idea Deliberative democracy may be defined as collective decisionmaking by those who will be affected by the decision or their representatives ‘by means of arguments offered by and to participants who are committed to the values of rationality and impartiality’ (Elster, 1998: 8, emphasis in original; see also Eriksen, 2000). Legitimacy is derived from ‘a process of generalized deliberation’ (Thompson, 1995: 255). In other words: Agreed judgement about policy and law should ideally follow from public debate and the ‘force of the better argument’ – not from the intrusive outcome of non-discursive elements and forces . . . Further, a legitimate decision . . . is not one that results necessarily from the ‘will of all’, but rather one that results from ‘the deliberation of all’. (Held, 1995: 155)

The ideal of deliberative democracy thus is ‘a political community in which decisions are reached through an open and uncoerced discussion of the issue at stake where the aim of all participants is to arrive at an agreed judgement’. This is taken to be feasible under two conditions: the reasons given in political debate must be sincerely held and assumed by everybody to be so rather than mere attempts to promote sectional interests, and citizens must be willing to moderate their claims in search of common ground and must not see others’ doing this as signs of weakness (Miller, 1995: 96–7). The ideal, accordingly, is consensus-seeking by discussion. Ideally, all relevant and valid arguments should be put forward and be taken into account by everybody, but neither irrelevant nor invalid arguments. It is not the aim of deliberative democracy, as interpreted here, that everything that is put forward should be taken into account, however invalid or irrelevant. The ideal is consensus-seeking by debate that is rational among citizens that are enlightened. Whereas contemporary liberal democracy is based on the principle of effective participation in the sense of an adequate opportunity for every citizen to place questions on the agenda in accordance with his/her interests, and on the principle of voting equality when interests are aggregated (Dahl, 1989: 109–11), the logic of deliberative democracy is elitist insofar as the emphasis is on rational discussion rather than on the expression and aggregation of interests; ‘a deliberative conception of democracy is not necessarily a dialogical conception’ (Thompson, 1995: 256, emphasis in original). This is a difference in degree, however. Habermas’s three perspectives on democracy are not mutually exclusive, as emphasized from the outset in this chapter. Dahl adds to the principles of effective participation and voting equality what he calls the principle of enlightened understanding. Advocates of democracy, he writes, have invariably placed great stress on ‘the means to an enlightened and informed demos, such as education and public discussion’. His rationale is that each citizen should have the

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opportunity of acquiring an understanding of means, ends, interests, and consequences (Dahl, 1989: 111–12). The ideal from a deliberative point of view is not the enlightened understanding of interests but the quality of consensus-seeking discussion, but the practical conclusions are essentially the same in the two cases. The ‘public sphere’ is crucial for deliberative democracy, while also being helpful so far as liberal democracy is concerned. The public sphere is ‘a zone for discourse which serves as the locus for the exploration of ideas and the crystallization of a public view’, a ‘zone in which there is sufficient access to information so that rational discourse and the pursuit of beneficial general norms is made more likely’ and in which ‘pre-existing status attributes – such as wealth, family and ethnicity – lose their sway in the distribution of civic authority’ (Price, 1995: 24). If liberal democracy is reminiscent of a properly conducted annual meeting of an organization, at which every participant can voice her concerns and put forward her proposals, whereupon decisions are taken by majority vote, deliberative democracy is like an academic seminar, at which the validity of arguments is supposed to count instead of interests and votes. Just as the organization and conduct of meetings in accordance with proper procedure is a prerequisite of liberal democracy, deliberative democracy depends on the organizing and conduct of seminars, that is, occasions for rational discussion. This, at the level of the entire society, is the function of the public sphere. If the public sphere fails to work properly, so does deliberative democracy. Plausible problems Mutual understanding and responsiveness are crucial for deliberative democracy. It is difficult to conceive of societal problem-solving by means of rational discussion in search of common ground other than among people who form an epistemological and moral community, that is, who think in similar ways and have similar views of right and wrong. It has been argued that common nationality is necessary from this point of view (Miller, 1995) – a necessary even if not sufficient condition for the kind of community that is a necessary condition for deliberative democracy. The deliberative case for protecting the nation against excessive internationalization may be elaborated as follows. Societal internationalization in some of its forms – the exchange of persons, information, and ideas – tends to undermine national identities: the more communication and contact across borders, the weaker the perception of difference between us and them, and the weaker in consequence the perception of common national identity. Internationalized decision-making may reinforce the effect by shifting peoples’ loyalties away from the national level and, indirectly, by propelling further societal internationalization. Mutual understanding and responsiveness will weaken because of the weakening

THE WEAKENING OF NATIONAL COMMUNITY

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of epistemological and moral communities, and democracy will suffer as a result. The gradual incapacitation of national identities, on which internationalists pin their hopes, is a threat instead of a promise from the point of view of deliberative democracy. A presumed threat to the public sphere plays a part not only in political debate but also in academic writings about television (Chapter 4). The threat is thought to derive in part from commercialization which is seen as a concomitant of internationalization. The argument is especially pertinent to a consideration of contemporary Europe, since it is Eurospecific in large measure. The point of departure is the assumption that the decisive role of television for the functioning of the public sphere was realized from the outset in Europe. Public service broadcasting, accordingly, has a long tradition in Europe’s democracies, and government involvement has been essential for defending the public sphere against trivialization and for keeping it open to a variety of views and interests. However, technologydriven internationalization is now exposing national media systems to competition from well-financed satellite systems that have commercial objectives while not being subject to national regulation. National public service systems, furthermore, apart from losing ground to commercial competitors, have felt compelled to adapt their own broadcasting to the circumstances of internationalized commercialization. Hence, according to this view, internationalization is changing the conditions for public debate from what is required for deliberative democracy to what is dictated by the market (Price, 1995).

IMPOVERISHMENT OF THE PUBLIC SPHERE

Democracy as participation Essential idea Whereas common identity is taken to be a condition for democracy from a deliberative point of view, identity and democracy are inseparable, indeed the same, in what is here called a republican perspective. Active participation in the public life of one’s community has intrinsic value (Miller, 1995: 194). Joint policy-making is an expression of common identity. If the ideal of discursive democracy is an academic seminar, the republican ideal is everybody’s active involvement in doing things together for a common purpose. Neither accountability nor rational debate is important from a republican point of view, that is, not as important as the active participation of everybody in community life. Plausible problems It goes without saying that it is difficult to realize the republican ideal in the modern nation-state. The internationalization of decisions arguably makes the ideal even more difficult to attain. Moving authority to the European level is to make the political process even more remote for someone in Palermo or Rovaniemi, and this is true mentally as

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well as geographically, according to a common line of thought. Local politics can sometimes be organized so as to give citizens the opportunity of realizing the intrinsic value of active participation in the concrete life of their community; this is a more difficult proposition at the nation-state level; it is out of the question when decisions are taken by an international process. When the town hall meeting is substituted by international negotiation, the distance between individual citizens and political decision-making increases to such an extent that incentives and opportunities for active citizen participation are gone, or so one would think. Moving authority from the inter-governmental to the supranational level is arguably to move it even further away. It is bad enough for an Italian or a Finn if their life conditions are decided by bargaining between their own and other governments; it is worse still if the entire decision-making process moves from Rome and Helsinki to far-away Brussels. Then the very idea of expressing common identity by joint participation in community life is lost entirely.

The credibility of the threats A number of ways in which democracy may be threatened by internationalization have now been surveyed. Our next task is to assess the plausibility of the various threats. They are not obviously implausible; if they were, there would have been little reason to write this chapter. Nor are they fully convincing, however. We need to consider to what extent we are dealing with mere assumptions that ought to be tested instead of taken for granted. We also need to consider the possibility that democracy may benefit from internationalization in some ways. The object of this section, I should emphasize, is not to show that perceptions of threat are unjustified and that internationalization is fine for democracy. It is to suggest a framework for a balanced assessment and to pave the way for more sophisticated enquiry into the implications of internationalization, especially with regard to accountability, deliberation, and participation.

Comparison with what? It is important for placing the problem of internationalization in a proper perspective to make meaningful comparisons. It may not be useful for this purpose to compare contemporary political systems with ideals that have never existed in practice. This is most obviously the case with regard to deliberative democracy. Whereas the ideas of liberal democracy have long been put into practice in many states, deliberative democracy as outlined by Habermas, Miller, and others has largely remained an unachieved ideal. This is significant for evaluating the hypothesis that internationalization

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inhibits deliberative democracy. If actually existing democracies have been far from the ideal of policy-making by rational debate among consensusseekers, internationalization may not make that much difference. Some European countries have gained a reputation for being rational and consensus-oriented. The political style of the Netherlands has been described as a ‘consensus democracy’ in which a ‘policy of accommodation’ is pursued and experts are given a crucial role (Andeweg and Irwin, 1993: 37, 49, 232–3). Similarly, the once well-known Swedish Model, has been characterized as ‘compromise politics, social consensus expressed in corporatist interest articulation and interest intermediation, and comprehensive social engineering by means of public policy-making’ (Lane, 1991: 1). Dutch accommodation on the basis of expert advice, and Swedish compromise with a view to social engineering may be seen as instances of actually existing deliberative democracy. They may, with all their shortcomings, form a more relevant point of comparison than an idealized academic seminar. It is worth noting that accommodationist practices have survived in the Netherlands (Andeweg and Irwin, 1993: 49) in spite of the fact that this country is one of the most internationalized in the entire world. The threat emanating from internationalization may appear less dramatic if one’s starting-point is an actually existing democracy rather than an ideal type. So far as republican democracy is concerned, the implicit comparison is often with democracy at the local level. Possibly, a more meaningful comparison is with the extent of citizen participation in the making of national policy in existing nation-states, that is, in the unit undergoing internationalization. It is a relevant question whether contemporary nationstates have succeeded in realizing the ideal of active citizen participation to such an extent that there is a lot to lose from internationalization. A similar point can be made about liberal democracy. The idea of a democratic deficit in the EU is in essence that a well-functioning accountability system has proven impossible to establish, or has not yet been established, at the European level. The question is how the scope of the deficit is to be assessed: in comparison with the liberal–democratic ideal or with democracies that have actually existed and have never been perfect. The point is to caution against exaggeration. We are likely to get a more realistic understanding of the implications of internationalization if we avoid comparing the current situation and projected developments with public spheres that have never existed, active participation that has never been realized, and accountability systems without defects. New action possibilities? A plausible result of internationalization is a growing disjuncture between available options and preferred outcomes, that is, a decrease in the ability of governments to satisfy citizens’ demands. Less and less of what citizens may demand can be achieved by political means, and decisions taken in

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order to satisfy citizens’ demands are increasingly ineffective. The idea of accountability loses relevance as a consequence. This insight needs to be balanced against another: the tendency of internationalization to give as well as to take. This dualism, a characteristic feature of the relation between internationalization and nation-state autonomy, has been considered in detail previously (Chapters 3 and 4). If democracy benefits from effectiveness, it benefits from autonomy in the sense of action possibilities. It is not a foregone conclusion that internationalization implies a loss of autonomy in this sense, since nation-states both gain and lose from internationalization. The democratic problem, if there is one, lies in nation-states’ losing particular options that are valued more highly than those gained. The balance sheet, seen from the point of view of democratic effectiveness, may be said to have policy control on one side and resource control on the other.9 Free trade, presumably, is to the long-term advantage of all concerned by bringing economic growth, thus increasing the resources available for purposes such as the maintenance of a generous welfare system. Free trade, however, also leads to interdependencies that may increase the cost of some options, including egalitarian measures such as European-style welfare. The example, schematic as it is, is familiar in setting accumulation against distribution: internationalization arguably favours accumulation at the cost of distribution. The argument that internationalization inhibits democracy by reducing the scope of available options would seem to assume that peoples value the freedom to redistribute what they have as they see fit more than they value an increase in what is available for redistribution. A similar argument can be made about membership in international organizations, most clearly when it is a matter of one as strong as the EU. If the EU can prevent a member state from pursuing a policy its citizens might want to pursue, it may at the same time provide this same country with the possibility of having the EU enforce some other policy over the objections of other member states. If this is a problem from the point of view of democracy, it is because citizens prefer to avoid the dictates of others to being able to dictate to others. I am not suggesting that internationalization does not reduce policy effectiveness but that the matter is complex. An analysis of the implications for democracy should include two considerations in addition to what is being lost. One is what is being gained, that is, the extent to which internationalization increases the capability of effective action in response to citizens’ demands. Another is how losses and gains relate to citizens’ preferences. To consider neither is to take a simplistic view of the relation between democracy and internationalization. New institutional solutions? The innovative institutions of the EU may be seen as an attempt to solve the problem of effectiveness of internationalized democracy. The idea is to

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reduce the disjuncture between available options and preferred outcomes by providing new possibilities for political action. If nation-states can no longer solve their problems on their own, and if doing it jointly by intergovernmental methods is ineffective, the EU offers them the opportunity of ‘pooling’ their sovereignties in the form of institutions empowered to take decisions that are binding on everybody without everybody’s consent. This arguably helps member states to recover a measure of policy effectiveness essential for democracy. The dilemma is that it risks increasing the disjuncture between those affected by decisions and those capable of holding decision-makers to account. Hence the idea of designing EU institutions so as to move the entire matter of accountability from the national to the European level. The threat perceptions of liberal democrats are exaggerated to the extent that this succeeds. The uniqueness of EU supranationality bears repeating. The European Commission, a supranational body, has long been afforded significant authority. The authority of the Council of Ministers to take decisions by qualified majority, a radical invention when it was introduced, was considerably extended in the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties. The European Parliament, alone among international institutions in being directly elected by member state citizens, was given significant legislative power in the Amsterdam Treaty insofar as the area of co-decision between the Council and the Parliament was expanded. The European Union, in the words of one commentator, was developing in the direction of a bicameral legislature (Nergelius, 1998: 57). Of especial interest from the point of view of accountability is the role given to the European Parliament in the appointment of the Commission and its authority to discharge it. The European Court of Justice, moreover, has come to play an independent role in reinforcing the authority of the EU vis-à-vis the member states and – this is significant from the point of view of democracy – in strengthening the position of individual EU citizens vis-à-vis political and bureaucratic institutions. It is commonplace to point out that from a democratic point of view the EU is not a complete success. This is a paradox: a number of democracies have joined forces for the purpose of increasing their ability to solve problems for their citizens, but they have done so by setting up institutions not quite compatible with the standards of democracy taken for granted within each of them. It is important to take this experience into account, since the EU is an avant-garde experiment with new kinds of democratic institutions. A political theorist such as Held, preoccupied with the relationship between globalization and democracy, outlines a programme for the world-wide introduction of EU-type political institutions (Held, 1995: Ch. 12). This is such an evident idea in view of the growing disjunctures between power and responsibility, and between those affected and those in the constituency, that the significance of assessing how the EU fares in terms of democracy should be obvious. Five features of the institutions of the EU are widely seen as unsatisfactory from the point of view of democracy. A note about each must suffice.

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The unaccountability of the Council The Council of Ministers is not accountable as a body to anybody in spite of its being empowered to take majority decisions binding on all member states – this point is often made apropos the ‘democratic deficit’. The fact that the concurrence of the European Parliament is mostly required by virtue of the Amsterdam Treaty may not suffice to solve this problem. Furthermore, individual members of the Council – national governments – can essentially be held to account only in the context of elections to national parliaments. The limited accountability of the Commission The European Commission, originally almost independent of political control, has increasingly been made accountable to the European Parliament. An important development took place in 1999, reminiscent of the breakthrough of the parliamentary system in European countries in earlier times: the Santer Commission decided to resign in view of a critical report of a five-person auditing committee. It did this in anticipation of a negative vote of confidence in the EP, thus paving the way for its replacement by the Prodi Commission. The authority of the EP vis-à-vis the Commission has nonetheless remained more limited than that of member state parliaments vis-à-vis their respective governments. The malfunctions of the European Parliament The formal authority of the EP, even though extended in the Amsterdam Treaty, is not quite on a par with that of national parliaments. What is more, its democratic legitimacy is limited by several features, in the view of sceptical observers: voter turnout at elections is low and decreasing, European political parties and Europewide political debate are lacking (Pedersen, 1996), and parliamentary procedure is disorderly. This is not a controversial diagnosis. Controversy concerns whether matters can be changed, a question to be addressed later in this chapter. The lack of transparency Openness is essential for accountability, and lack of openness is a persistent complaint with regard to the EU. It is not easy for an EU citizen to gain insight into what is going on in the Council and the Commission (the Parliament appears to be about as open as other democratic assemblies). One author emphasizes bureaucratization as a major negative feature of the EU, in particular because it has encouraged the bureaucratization of the member states. He even suggests that ‘neoabsolutism’ is a better term than democracy so far as the EU is concerned, especially since bureaucratization implies a lack of transparency that is ‘the very antithesis of democracy’ (Curtin, 1997: 46–7). This is going a little far, but the issue is not whether matters are satisfactory, since it is widely agreed that they are not, but whether matters can be changed. We will return to this. Lobbyism Extensive lobbying is a well-known feature of politics in Brussels. Governance in the EU is uncommonly open in this regard, it has been

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pointed out. It is comparatively easy for special interests to gain access, easier than in nation-state capitals. One reason is the limited expertise and capacity of the EU bureaucracy, and hence its interest in information and ideas from the outside. Another reason is the absence of stable patterns of leadership: ‘since the rules are less precise, the system is more open, and easier to penetrate, than bureaucratic, corporatist national systems’ (Mény et al., 1996: 15; see also Andersen and Eliassen, 1996). Ease of access arguably is positive from the point of view of democracy, especially since popular movements such as environmentalists are among the beneficiaries (Greenwood, 1997: 180–92; Marks and McAdam, 1996: 113–15). However, if influence is exerted by special interests out of sight of the public and in lieu of representative institutions, this is not ideal from the point of view of holding governors to account. This is scraping the surface of a major issue in descriptive political science and of an important prescriptive debate about contemporary Europe. It is obvious that the European Union does not fully satisfy the democratic standards of its members; if the EU were to apply for membership in the EU it would not qualify (Zürn, 2000: 183). When assessing the situation, however, it is important to avoid falling into the trap of comparing the EU with ideals that have never been realized anywhere. It is more appropriate to compare the existing EU with what the situation would have been like if EU institutions had been weaker. Note should also be taken of some suggested democratic advantages of the way in which the European Commission works. Independent regulatory agencies such as the Commission may perform democratic functions by insulating some legislative, executive, and administrative activities from the vagaries of domestic politics and public opinion, it has been argued (Majone, 1996: 284–301). Its vast system of committees, it is further pointed out, contributes to giving relevant interests a say in the making of EU policy (Greenwood, 1997). The least one can say is that EU institutions at least do something to reduce the disjunctures associated with the internationalization of politics, in spite of their imperfections.

New processes of policy-making? It is a reasonable argument that democracy operates under special constraints in the area of foreign policy, that we know this by experience, and that the internationalization of politics will widen the area in which such constraints operate. More and more will be ‘foreign politicized’, as it may be put, thus rendering the proper functioning of democracy increasingly difficult. However, it is not a foregone conclusion that this will happen. One reason why foreign policy-making is special is the fact that it takes place in interaction with other countries. Such policy-making is indeed

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proliferating across the entire field of politics. Two further constraints on democracy in foreign policy have often been mentioned in the literature about this matter, however, and they are not quite relevant when it is a matter of newly internationalized policy areas. Traditional foreign policy has been pictured, paradoxically, as both too important and too unimportant for democracy to function properly. It has been argued that foreign policy is special insofar as the supreme common interest in the nation’s existence and integrity is at stake in this area. Foreign policy questions, it has been suggested, are ‘seen as too central to the survival of the state to be left to the same interplay of forces as domestic politics, too closely associated with the basic values of nationhood to be an appropriate subject for partisan debate and factional advantage’ (W. Wallace, 1971: 9). Foreign policy issues, it has been added, are remote from the concerns of individual citizens: ‘every citizen knows something about economic and social questions . . . and almost all citizens care, and many care greatly about them. But all the evidence shows that this is not the case where foreign affairs are concerned: the bulk of the population knows little about them and cares less’ (Vital, 1968: 73). Newly internationalized policy areas typically differ from traditional foreign policy on both accounts: few such issues are widely seen as supremely important in the same sense as key issues in traditional foreign policy, and many such issues have a tradition of popular concern. It is not obvious, therefore, that policy-making with regard to newly internalized issues will resemble traditional foreign policy-making. Nor is it likely to resemble the making of traditional domestic policy. Here is one more topic for empirical study: policy-making in areas that used to be domestic but are now internationalized. Two proposed models of internationalized policy-making may be useful as starting points for such enquiry. One is Robert Putnam’s view of politics as a two-level game (Putnam, 1988). International policy-making on economic matters – a policy area especially affected by internationalization, it is widely assumed – consists in interaction between two different ‘games’, according to this model, one international and one domestic. International decision-making thus does not rule out a domestic political process. On the contrary, both the domestic and the international games are crucial to the outcome. If this is true, elitist participation and reduced transparency need not be concomitants of the internationalization of what used to be domestic. What comes instead may be a combination of the traditional features of domestic politics and the traditional features of foreign policy-making. An illustration as good as any are the negotiations about membership that Austria, Finland, Norway, and Sweden conducted with the EU in the early 1990s. Western European integration, in a common view, did not become a first-rate domestic–political issue until the Danish voted ‘no’ to the Maastricht Treaty in 1993 and the outcome of a French referendum proved to be closer than expected. The negotiations between the EU and the four applicants took place in this context. Complex diplomatic negotiation

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coincided with domestic–political controversy in some of the applicant states, and the outcome – yes to membership in Austria, Finland, and Sweden, no in Norway – was close in more than one country. One might have expected an on-going diplomatic negotiation on matters as crucial as these to constrain the domestic–political process, but this is not quite what happened. The interaction between international negotiation and domestic–political process – the two-level game – proved to be rather more subtle. Whatever this process of policy-making was like precisely, it was not a matter of traditional foreign policy nor of domestic politics as usual. How to assess a two-level game from the point of view of democracy needs further thought. Assuming that an issue cannot be decided domestically, however, a two-level process should be preferable from this point of view to one limited to the intergovernmental level. Another model of policy-making, widely discussed in the literature, is known as multi-level governance, commonly abbreviated MLG. This is presumed to be a characteristic feature of the way in which politics is made in the EU (Marks et al., 1996).10 The main feature of MLG is complexity: a variety of actors at a variety of levels interact with each other throughout the process of policy-making: supranantional, national, subnational, transnational. It is not a matter merely of interaction between a domestic process, by which separate interests are aggregated into a single external policy, and an international process of intergovernmental bargaining. In MLG, subnational actors set out to influence policy not only via their national governments but also transnationally – by interaction with each other, with each others’ governments and with supranational institutions, which in turn play an autonomous role separate from that of nation-state governments. Analysts conceiving of the EU in these terms describe a system for internationalized policy-making different from the elitism and lack of transparency of traditional foreign policy. They find that the EU exhibits ‘a unique, fluid decision-making process, in which the power relations between the key institutions are not yet stabilized . . . [and] “windows of opportunity” can readily be created by a range of diverse actors’. A feature of an emerging European policy style, it is argued, is extreme permeability and openness to pressure group activity. Informal consultation with private interests such as companies, trade unions, and consumer organizations is extensive. As a result, many national groups ‘are often much better informed of EU policy developments at the crucial early stage than are their national representatives in COREPER and their national ministries back home’ (Mazey and Richardson, 1996: 42, 47–8, 50). Add to this the growing importance of the European Parliament with its direct elections and transnational party life, and the result is different from traditional intergovernmental bargaining. This is not to say that MLG is a good solution to the problem of internationalized democracy. If MLG helps to widen participation and increase transparency in comparison with what is traditionally the case in

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intergovernmental bargaining, it also obscures responsibility and makes it difficult to see whom to hold to account. The idea of well-structured accountability, a prominent feature of liberal democracy, does not go along with the post-modern melange of multi-level governance. This needs further thought.

Are mutual understanding and responsiveness getting undermined? It should not be taken for granted that national identities are being undermined as a result of internationalization. I have cited authors as different as Morgenthau and Miller, both of whom emphasize peoples’ unshakeable commitment to the nation-state (see Chapter 3). This assumption gains support from European survey studies made in 2000, as we have seen (Chapter 4): no less than 86 per cent of the citizens of EU member countries saw themselves solely or primarily as nationals of their own country rather than as Europeans. The impact of internationalization on identity construction should be researched rather than taken for granted, as argued in Chapter 4. Nor should it be taken for granted that mutual understanding and responsiveness are concomitants of national identity and hence subject to threat from internationalization. It is better to keep open whether common national identity is in fact necessary, sufficient or even essential for rational, consensus-seeking debate. Habermas thinks it is not and makes a distinction between political culture and national culture, which he presumes to be essentially independent of each other (Habermas, 1995: 140). We will have reason to return to this matter when considering the feasibility of supranational democracy towards the end of this chapter.

Is the public sphere getting impoverished or enriched? A case can be made that the assumption of internationalization as a threat to the public sphere is unconfirmed rather than obvious. Even if internationalization implies the commercialization of television, and even if commercialization weakens the public sphere – but this needs to be proven rather than assumed – there remains the possibility that internationalization also has a positive impact. The dissemination of ideas and information across national borders may enrich intra-nation debate in a way that is desirable from the point of view of deliberative democracy. The free exchange of information and ideas, just as the free trade of goods and services, may weaken national monopolies. Maybe the meeting between the traditions of North and South Europe in the EU has served to broaden national debates in both the North and the South about matters such as unemployment, environmental pollution, and gender inequality. It is a worthwhile field of empirical research how public debate within European

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countries has been affected by the radical internationalization in which they are involved. It should not be taken for granted that it has been impoverished.

Are opportunities for participation decreasing or increasing? It is difficult to quarrel with the republican threat perception, since it is true almost by definition that opportunities for active participation in the life of one’s community will diminish if political life moves to the international level. Yet it is worth keeping in mind that regionalization is a sibling of internationalization. It is even common to define globalization and similar concepts so as to comprise decentralization as well as centralization, fragmentation as well as integration (Chapter 1). If there is a threat to the nation-state, it comes not only from ‘above’ but also from ‘below’. Devolution is going on in several European countries. Scotland, German Länder, Spanish autonomías, the Aaland Islands, are relatively independent actors in European politics and may be gaining strength and not only weakness from the internationalization of their nation-states. The trend is encouraged by the EU and is an essential aspect of multi-level governance. It is institutionalized in Chapter 4 of the Maastricht Treaty in the form of an advisory Committee of the Regions consisting of representatives of ‘regional and local authorities’ which are to be ‘completely independent in the performance of their duties’. This is just one example of the way in which the radical internationalization of decisions may have the paradoxical implication of moving politics not only away from, but also in the direction of local communities, and hence may be a bit closer to the ideal of republican democracy. The implications of internationalization are more paradoxical than they are sometimes made out to be. This paradoxical complexity needs to be studied further.

Counter-strategies and dilemmas A worst case analysis of the implications of internationalization for European democracy includes, among other things: • a decrease in the effectiveness of public policy, • an increasing difficulty for citizens to hold those responsible to account, • an increasing difficulty for citizens to determine what policy is pursued in their name and who is responsible for what, • the weakening of mutual understanding and loyalty, • the deterioration of the public sphere, • decreasing citizen participation in public life. It has been shown that the relevance of each such eventuality varies with one’s view of democracy. This is true in particular with regard to the

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significance afforded to policy effectiveness and active citizen participation. It has also been shown that there is reason to suspect a very pessimistic assessment of what is going on to be ill-founded, exaggerated, or one-sided. The need for empirical study has been emphasized throughout. Suppose, however, that we find some such threats to be sufficiently credible to justify counteraction. Three broad strategies may be discerned – three overall directions in which we may want to move for this purpose from the present status quo: intergovernmentalism, supranationalism, and renationalism. The choice between them places democrats before dilemmas, and one purpose of what follows is to specify what the dilemmas are like. Intergovernmentalism takes societal internationalization for granted and favours internationalized decision-making, but only as long as decision-making remains intergovernmental and adheres to the traditional rules of international politics. The intergovernmentalist approach entails scepticism toward internationalization only insofar as it is a matter of supranationality, however. The supranational features of the EU ought to be modified from an intergovernmentalist point of view: there should be less majority voting in the Council, less power to the Commission, and no power to the Parliament. Otherwise contemporary developments are fine in an intergovernmentalist perspective. The democratic problem is taken to lie in supranationality and not in internationalization generally. The supranationalist strategy departs from the assumption that, since problems and societies are getting radically internationalized, supranational governance is necessary, not least for the sake of democracy. This is why the EU ought to go further in this direction. Supranationalism may have a federal Europe as its long-term objective but may also entail innovative, sui generis-type ideas for international organization among nation-states. The point in either case is to make international policy-making more like domestic and less like international politics, instead of the reverse. The strategy of renationalism aims at making the politics of one’s country less rather than more internationalized. The object is reactionary in the literal sense of a desire to return to a time when nation-states and peoples had less to do with each other and international relations had more narrow scope and less intensity. This implies principled scepticism toward internationalization in general and not merely toward particular forms of internationalized decision-making. Supranationalism, moderate or radical, is widespread in contemporary Europe, supported as it is by mainstream Social and Christian democracy, Europe’s most important political forces. Intergovernmentalism is favoured by groups as diverse as the British right and the Swedish left. Radical renationalism is uncommon in contemporary European politics, but principled opposition to internationalization is represented by right-wing nationalist parties such as the Vlaams Blok in Belgium, the Front National in France, the Freiheitlichen in Austria and the Schweizerische Volkspartei in Switzerland, and also by the opposition of the Swedish Greens not only

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to the EU but also to the ‘irresponsible free trade that prevails today’ (1997 Party Programme, p. 16). Each approach will now be considered in more detail, with a focus on its appropriateness for the task of safeguarding democracy in a time of internationalization.

Intergovernmentalism The essence of the strategy of intergovernmentalism is to ensure that decisions at the international level are taken by agreement between sovereign states and hence that no country is compelled to do anything to which its government has not consented. The institutional framework need not be bilateral bargaining but may be multilateral decision-making in an international organization. This is not important. What is important is to avoid supranational features such as those of the EU, and also the confusing features of multi-level governance. It is not a matter of opposing internationalization in any other sense. Intergovernmentalism differs from renationalism in this regard. The object is to keep internationalized decisionmaking a two-level game: international politics should continue to be conducted in the form of interaction between governments representing sovereign states and accountable to their domestic constituencies. This is the proper method for international governance even when problems and societies are internationalizing, from an intergovernmentalist perspective. The democratic virtue of traditional inter-state diplomacy pertains to formal accountability. Since decisions are not taken unless every single government agrees, the ultimate decision is national rather than international, and those taking it can be held to account in their own countries in accordance with the regular procedures of liberal democracy. The position of a government – its acceptance or rejection of a particular international agreement – is clear, and parliaments as well as citizens can vote governments out of power if they are dissatisfied on this score, just as is the case in domestic politics. Moreover, since intergovernmental processes depend on the formation of national positions and the final results must be ratified by each country, intergovernmentalism has advantages from a deliberative and even a republican point of view: it is an advantage, presumably, if the final decision about what Spain should and should not do is taken on the basis of a discussion among Spaniards, and it is an advantage if the decision is taken locally in Madrid rather than centrally in Brussels. A disadvantage of the intergovernmentalist approach is its implications for policy effectiveness. One plausible result of internationalization, remember, is a growing disjuncture between available options and preferred outcomes. The internationalization of decisions is a way of reducing this disjuncture, but the gain may not be very large if unanimity is a condition for action. It is an advantage from the point of view of democracy if one’s

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nation-state retains its right to veto decisions, but it is a disadvantage that other nation-states retain theirs. As long as action hinges on unanimity many things will be undone, however much they are demanded by some. If national interests diverge, as they do for example in the area of environment policy, decisions reflecting the least common denominator may not change much; such decisions are the only ones that can be taken in an intergovernmental situation, even if a majority of people in a majority of countries believe more radical action to be necessary. If democracy is a matter not only of making decisions in a proper way but also of making decisions capable of having intended effects, this is a reason for supranationalism. Nor is transparency the strong side of intergovernmental politics. This is because of the difficulty of combining democratic openness with successful inter-state bargaining, a difficulty to which allusion has been made previously. It has long been recognized that foreign policy, even in democracies, tends to be conducted by a small elite and shrouded in secrecy because of the necessity of bargaining with other states. In bargaining much can be lost from openness and disunity, and much can be gained from leaving the matters to professionals – to those who know the adversary, and know how to bargain. Distinct policies, moreover, cannot be laid down in advance, since the conditions for policy change in the process of making it, while at the same time broad participation in a process of bargaining is difficult to organize and opposition to the outcome is rarely meaningful. Hence the traditional assumption of a built-in tension between successful bargaining and democratic process. If this is the way in which policy is in fact made, we are dealing with a two-level game in which almost all of the action takes place at the international level. Success is bought at the cost of secrecy and elite rule; substance is bought at the cost of procedure (cf. Dahl, 1989: 5). By the same token, intergovernmental procedure is a guarantee neither of rational debate nor of citizen participation. On the contrary, the secrecy and elitism of traditional foreign policy-making represent the opposite of what is desirable from a deliberative as well as a republican point of view. It has been pointed out previously in this chapter that it cannot be taken for granted that the process of policy-making in newly internationalized areas will be similar to what has traditionally been the case in the making of foreign policy. It is possible, even likely, that intergovernmental policymaking in new areas will take on the features of two-level games with an emphasis on the domestic rather than the international sub-game. This will ameliorate one democratic problem while worsening another. The tension between internal procedure and external effectiveness, both of which are needed for democracy, is inherent in bargaining. Internationalization tends to make this dilemma a concomitant of new policy areas, and the intergovernmentalist approach fails to offer a solution.

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Supranationalism Supranational institutions ideally are designed to overcome the dilemma between effectiveness and procedure by providing for policy effectiveness while introducing democratic procedure at the level where effective policy is made. By the 1990s, the EU was widely thought to have been a partial success at most in this regard. The issue about the democratic deficit was not whether it existed but whether it could be abolished. One proposed strategy was to give the European Parliament the same role in the EU system as that of elected assemblies in nation-state parliamentary democracies – a radically supranationalist view. The authority of the EP was in fact increased during the 1990s, especially by virtue of the Amsterdam Treaty. Supranationalists had reason to want to go further for the sake of democracy by giving the EU a democratic constitution.11 A reason for rejecting the idea of supranational democracy is the conviction that national independence is too important to be sacrificed; this has been discussed in Chapter 6. Another reason has been more prominent in contemporary European discussion: democracy is inherently impossible at the supranational level, whether we like it or not, since strong common identity is a condition for well-functioning liberal–democratic procedure as well as for rational and mutually responsive deliberation. It is argued that this condition, presumed to occur within nation-states, cannot be satisfied at the level of the EU. Even the transition to nation-level democracy in post-Soviet Europe is impeded by the existence of substantial national minorities in many countries; majoritarian rule, it is argued, activates ethnonational minorities and threatens to ‘overwhelm weak democratic institutions’ (Ágh, 1998: 79). A European Union turned federation would face the same problem on a larger scale. It is important to note that this is not taken to be a matter of institutional design; it is not a matter merely of giving the EU the right kind of constitution. Democracy in whatever form presumes a demos, and there is no European demos in sight, nor can there be one – that is what the argument is about. Contemporary national identities are stable and deeply entrenched; it is an illusion that they might be replaced, superseded, or supplemented by something similar at the European level. Hence supranationalism is incapable in principle of solving the problem of the democratic deficit. The validity of this argument, a standard assertion in contemporary debate about European democracy (Dahl, 1999; Kielmansegg, 1996; Østerud, 1997a; Scharpf, 1999), is crucial for the issue of internationalized democracy. We are dealing here with three questions: one about the prerequisites of democracy, a second about national identity as a condition for the realization of the prerequisites of democracy, and a third about the stability of existing national identities. The prerequisites of democracy It is obvious that some sort of collective identity is a prerequisite of democracy. In order for a political community

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to function, indeed, in order for it to be recognizable as a community, those concerned must identify with it and with each other. What precisely they need to have in common is not much discussed in the theory of democracy. The conjunction of democracy and the nation-state has mostly been assumed rather than analysed. There has been a tendency to take it for granted that whatever is needed for democracy exists in the nation-state by virtue of its being a nation-state. The conditions for democratic political community have not been an issue until the radical internationalization of the politics of the European democracies has made them one. The issue is whether national community is a prerequisite of that political community which is a prerequisite of democracy. This hinges on what precisely democracy needs by way of collective identity, and that is the very question with which few have been concerned until recently. A number of things are pictured as lacking at the European level in the literature about the EU, but their necessity for democracy is implicitly assumed rather than explicitly demonstrated. Kielmansegg (1996), for example, argues that a democratic constitution cannot make the EU democratic because conditions are lacking for legitimate majority decisions. It is ‘more than obvious’ that Europeans lack a politically reliable identity as Europeans, he writes. Europe is neither a ‘community of communication’ (Kommunikationsgemeinschaft) nor a ‘community of memory’ (Erinnerungsgemeinschaft), and it is a ‘community of experience’ (Erfahrungsgemeinschaft) only to a very limited extent. It is characterized instead by a plurality of communities of communication, memory, and experience. This carries implications for the infrastructure of democracy. Civil society and the public sphere remain limited to the nation-state and its language. A European discourse transmitted by European media to a European audience ‘may be a vision, reality it is not’ (Kielmansegg, 1996: 55–7). We find here the outline of a theory of political community that needs to be tested rather than assumed: is it true that actually existing democratic countries are communities of communication, memory, and experience, and not only relatively homogenous countries like Denmark, Ireland, and the Netherlands but also more heterogeneous countries such as Belgium, Spain, and Switzerland? Kielmansegg’s view of the prerequisites of democracy may be contrasted with one leading to a more optimistic conclusion about the feasibility of European-level democracy. Fuchs and Klingemann focus on the values and attitudes with regard to politics that people actually hold. Among their indicators are support of democracy and rejection of autocracy, recognition of other citizens as free and equal, adherence to democratic norms of action, and rejection of the use of force as a political means. They show on the basis of survey data from 26 countries that the most democratic communities are to be found in the Anglo-American and Western European countries but that the difference in relation to East and South-East Europe is not very pronounced. Only five of the countries included in the study are lacking in democratic community by their criteria: Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldavia,

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and Albania. Their conclusion is in effect that there is considerable potential for the formation of a Europe-wide demos, since ‘there is little difference [between European countries] in the political values and behaviours that are essential to democracy’ (Fuchs and Klingemann, forthcoming). This is a weaker condition for the functioning of democracy than Kielmansegg’s. Fuchs and Klingemann’s analysis is relevant primarily from a liberal– democratic perspective, in which the focus is on what is necessary for the legitimacy of institutions and majority decisions. The key to democracy from a deliberative point of view is commitment to rational discussion. This last condition arguably prevails already among academics and intellectuals across Europe. It is logical for Habermas, who focuses on deliberative democracy, to suggest that ‘a common political culture might grow out of the various national cultures’ and that a differentiation might ensue between a ‘pan-European political culture’ and ‘national traditions in art and literature, history-writing, philosophy, etc.’ (Habermas 1995: 140, emphasis in original). This view is more optimistic than Kielmansegg’s. These notes may suffice to show that there is disagreement in the literature about what is needed for democracy, especially between those who conceive of the requirements of democracy merely as a matter of values, attitudes, and behaviours and those who assume that more profound community is necessary. The unresolved issue of what are necessary conditions for democracy is obviously crucial for the question of the possibility or impossibility of democracy at the supranational level. The role of ‘national’ community Assuming now that a particular kind of community is needed for democracy – maybe something like Kielmansegg’s community of communication, memory, and experience, maybe something less – we are prepared to address the question of the necessity of common nationality. The concept of nation is ambiguous in a way that is crucial for the question of the relation between nationality and democracy. The reader has been reminded elsewhere (Chapters 3 and 5) of a tendency in the literature on nations and nationalism to conceive of nations as either ‘political’ or ‘ethnic’, ‘subjective’ or ‘objective’, ‘modern’ or ‘primordial’, ‘liberal’ or ‘communitarian’, or as epitomized by la patrie (French citizens’ rising in 1789) or by das Volk (the bearer of an age-old community of German language, culture, and thought). The meaning of the assertion of a necessary conjunction between democracy and common nationality is entirely different, depending upon whether the concept of nation is defined in ‘political’ terms, on the one hand, or in ‘ethnic’ or ‘cultural’ terms, on the other.12 If ‘nation’ is defined as perceived political community, it is a truism if not a tautology that common nationality is a condition for democracy. Democracy is contingent on political community, and if ‘nation’ is the same as political community, then common nationality is indeed a condition for democracy, but only in a trivial, definitional sense. If ‘nation’ is defined instead as an objectively existing ethnic or cultural community, the assertion

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is more substantial but at the same time empirically questionable, since several actually existing democracies are multinational in this sense, including for example Belgium, Spain, and Switzerland; indeed, most democratic countries are becoming multinational in the present era of internationalization. Thus the assumption of common nationality as a prerequisite of democracy appears either empty or invalid. It is instructive to examine John Stuart Mill at this point, since his Considerations on Representative Government has been a source of inspiration for contemporary European neo-nationalists. ‘Free institutions are next to impossible in a country made up of different nationalities’, Mill writes. He supports this assertion with assumptions that have become legion in contemporary debate about the EU. One is the lack of a public sphere in a multinational context: ‘[a]mong a people without fellow-feeling . . . the united public opinion, necessary to the working of representative government, cannot exist’. Another is the absence of solidarity: the mutual antipathies of the various nations ‘are generally much stronger than jealousy of the government’, and this cannot be changed ‘in the present state of civilization’ by ‘keeping different nationalities of anything like equivalent strength, under the same government’. Therefore, ‘it is in general a necessary condition of free institutions, that the boundaries of governments should coincide in the main with those of nationalities’ (Mill, 1991 [1861]: 428–30). The problem with this argument is Mill’s definition of nationality as a ‘portion of mankind . . . united among themselves by common sympathies, which do not exist between them and others – which make them co-operate with each other more willingly than with other people, desire to be under the same government, and desire that it should be government by themselves or a portion of themselves, exclusively’ (Mill, 1991 [1861]: 427). If this is the definition of nationality, it is trivially obvious that common nationality is a condition for democracy. This is not the issue. The issue is about the conditions for the emergence of ‘common sympathies, which do not exist between them and others’. Mill suggests that the ‘feeling of nationality’ may have been generated by causes such as race and descent, language and religion, geography, and history (Mill, 1991 [1861]: 427), but this enumeration of plausible background factors, none of which is taken to be necessary, serves merely to obscure the issue of the feasibility of democracy at a level above presently existing nation-states. The same can be said about contemporary scholars arguing the case for the implausibility if not impossibility of democracy in the EU. Østerud, as we have seen, adds to his definition of ‘nation’ – a perceived political community with a unifying feeling of nationality – the observation that the emergence of such community is promoted by factors such as language, religion, and common history; he also emphasizes that the feeling of nationality is ‘not inextricably tied to specific objective characteristics’ (Østerud, 1997: 169). It is not clear what to conclude from this observation about the feasibility of European-level democracy.

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I should emphasize that I am not out to criticize Mill’s and Østrerud’s concepts of nation and nationality but to explore the validity of the proposition that common nationality is a condition for democracy. This proposition, I contend, is a truism if not a tautology, if nationality is by definition the same as perceived political community. The question of the feasibility of supranational democracy is begged. It does not help to define the concept of nation in objectivistic, ethnic, or cultural terms, however: this is to seek refuge from the Scylla of tautology at the Charybdis of disconfirmation. A way out is to rest content with a descriptive proposition that is neither tautological nor obviously invalid: within contemporary European nation-states there exist common nationalities on which their political systems rest; the passage of time is the only background factor they have in common; nothing comparable exists at the European level; the contemporary pattern of nationalities is extremely stable; this will prevent a common European identity sufficient for democracy from emerging, except possibly in the very long term. This proposition, debatable and worth debating, leads on to the question whether contemporary national identities are in fact extremely resistant to pressure for change. The changeability of contemporary identities The question of the stability of contemporary national identities in Europe is about the relation between identities and institutions. The assertion that democracy is implausible or even impossible at the supranational level is in effect that since contemporary identities are not subject to change, political institutions must adapt to this reality. National identities may not last forever, but new identities emerge only over long periods of time and ‘are not simply at the disposal of politics’ (Kielmansegg, 1996: 55). Against this may be set the suggestion that institutions and identities interact and hence that institutions play a part in devising identities. This last suggestion is inspired by so-called new institutionalism (March and Olsen, 1989, 1996). It is not only the case that an institution – a government agency, a political party, a university department – reflects the identity of those of whom it is composed or who are running it. It is also the case that their identity is shaped by this very institution. Demos and democracy are mutually reinforcing (Zürn, 2000: 201). The assertion that common identity is a prerequisite of the functioning of an institution begs the question of the extent to which an institution constructs the identity it needs. It should not be taken for granted, therefore, that supranational institution building is bound to be a democratic failure and that the democratic deficit of the EU is inherent in the idea of supranational democracy. It is a possibility worth considering that a supranational institution such as the European Parliament, if provided with sufficient authority and given sufficient time, will be instrumental in bringing about the degree of political community it needs to be well-functioning from the point of view of democracy. Offe, who thinks that common national identity has ceased to

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be a sufficient basis for mutual trust in contemporary Europe, suggests that institutions may perform this function, provided that they are ‘understood, supported, and appreciated as to their meaning’ among the citizenry; the capacity of institutions to ‘make compelling sense’ determines the extent to which they promulgate loyalties, and hence trust (Offe, 1999: 59, 69). Citizens’ thoughts about this matter are not necessarily unchangeable. Interaction between institutions and identities may be the key, rather than the dependence of one on the other. My contention is not that the problem of the democratic deficit will take care of itself. It is that neither position is obviously valid – neither the thought that supranationality must be avoided for the sake of democracy, nor the thought that the growing authority of EU institutions will create the collective identity needed to sustain democracy at the European level. The construction and reconstruction of national identity remains a major issue so far as the relation between nation-state and internationalization is concerned (Chapter 4) and the interaction between collective identities and supranational institutions is of especial relevance for the future of European democracy. Supranational governance in the medium term Whatever the long-term prospects, well-functioning supranational democracy is unlikely to characterize the EU in the short and medium term. There is not sufficient public support for radical supranationalism in contemporary Europe. Attempts to impose it from above might disrupt the union instead of making it democratic. The dilemma of the supranationalist approach, therefore, is that, in the short and medium term at least, policy effectiveness must be bought at the cost of using a decision-making procedure that is not fully satisfactory from a liberal–democratic point of view. The insight that European federation is unachievable if not undesirable except perhaps in the very long term, while at the same time a return to intergovernmentalism is also undesirable if not unrealistic, has led scholars to consider forms of European governance that may be seen as democratic even though they do not resemble nation-based parliamentary or presidential democracy. Schmitter, for example, argues that the process of European integration has ‘irrevocably crossed the threshold of intergovernmentalism’ but is still far from reaching the ‘coincidence of territorial and functional authority’ that is ‘the foundation of stateness’, and even less the ‘common identity that is the foundation of nationhood’. The EU is likely to be neither an intergovernmental confederatio nor a supranational statio/federatio, he argues, but something novel: a consortio or a condominio (Schmitter, 1998: 32–4). Other outlines of what EU democracy may be like tend to be variations on three themes that may be called constitutional patriotism, networking, and disaggregation. Constitutional patriotism (Verfassungspatriotism) is a term that has been used to characterize post-Nazi German national identity. It indicates the possibility of collective identity limited to support for political institutions

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and yet sufficient for democracy. Habermas, as we have seen, argues that it is possible to separate political culture from what he calls the ethnic– cultural form of life and thinks that the former can emerge at the European level even if the latter remains national (Habermas, 1995: 140, 147). This should be seen against the background of Habermas’s preoccupation with deliberative democracy. Such democracy, it has been pointed out, makes no presumption of ethnic community. The need is for a European public sphere and a European civil society, and these are already beginning to emerge and will develop further with the help of modern information technology (Curtin, 1997: 53–61; see Chapter 4 above). ‘Network’ is the term used by Jachtenfuchs to denote democracy of a new kind that he sees to be developing in the EU. A network in Jachtenfuchs’s sense is a bundle of functional and territorial constituencies with overlapping and variable membership and lacking a distinguishable centre and geographic scope. According to this model, far-reaching rights are granted to local and regional levels in policy areas directly relevant for them. The model, according to Jachtenfuchs, has two features: ‘pluralism’ and the ‘preservation of small-scale identities’. It is ‘not very demanding with respect to a common European identity’. Jachtenfuchs insists that a common European identity ‘would run counter to the very idea of organizing the EU as a network’ (Jachtenfuchs, 1998: 55–6). The network model, outlined in this way, appears similar to the complicated business of multi-level governance considered earlier in this chapter. ‘Disaggregation’ of the demos is Zürn’s proposal for supranational democracy in the medium term. The claim that there is no demos beyond national borders must be differentiated, he writes. According to Zürn there are five different ways in which a demos is required for democracy: the members of a demos (1) acknowledge each other as autonomous individuals, each with a right to personal self-fulfilment, (2) accept that an obligation, once entered into, must be complied with and believe that other members share this view, (3) are concerned with the well-being of the collective, (4) have the capacity to communicate publicly, and (5) share a sense of solidarity providing a basis for redistributive processes. Zürn goes on to show that these conditions are fulfilled to a varying extent at the European level. He then suggests ways of making European governance democratic in partial and selective ways (Zürn, 2000). It is debatable if any one of these models does enough to solve the problem of combining democratic procedure and effectiveness. Constitutional patriotism may be insufficient as a basis for a well-functioning accountability system and is irrelevant for the concerns of republican democracy. Networking would seem to represent a step forward from the point of view of republican democracy but may be too complex to be satisfactory from a liberal–democratic point of view. Disaggregation offers only selective improvement. The implications of each need to be considered further. Held, after having reflected on the matter in a global perspective, outlines a radical programme for political institution building at the global level and

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argues that if this sounds like a ‘pipe dream’, it is also a ‘pipe dream’ to imagine that one can advocate democracy today without engaging with such issues. ‘If the new, emerging global order is to be democratic, these issues have to be confronted even if their details are open to further discussion’ (Held, 1995: 277). This is a reminder of the fact that the consideration of ways to combine the further internationalization of decision-making with democratic values is more than an academic exercise. Renationalism The conclusion so far is that internationalization is increasing the tension between democratic procedure and policy effectiveness, that this is true regardless of whether one’s view of democracy is liberal, deliberative, or republican, and that it is open to question whether the problem can be solved by either intergovernmental or supranational means. This is not to say that democracy is threatened with extinction in contemporary Europe. Nor however is it to say that the solution is merely a matter of finding the right way to make decisions in the EU. The tension between procedure and effectiveness is a result of internationalization per se rather than of any particular form of internationalized decision-making. This is the rationale for what may be called renationalism: the idea of returning to a time when accountability was less problematic, the conditions for deliberative democracy less constraining, and republican democracy less unrealistic than they have become since. The cost would be a loss of action possibilities: less material and spiritual resources would be available, and there would be less opportunity for participating in the solution of internationalized problems, some of which are unavoidable even for a country going to the point of isolationism. This, if I may repeat an exaggeration made previously, is the strategy of a hermit intent on retaining his freedom to arrange his cave as he wishes, as opposed to the strategy of a social being, to whom a menu of possibilities is available that can however be exploited only together with others. The dilemma is that democracy benefits both from the freedom of the hermit and from the richness of the menu open to the social being. This tension is increasing because of internationalization, a fact that becomes particularly obvious when the gains and losses of renationalization are considered. The renationalization of decisions should make it possible to improve transparency, which is of great importance from the point of view of liberal democracy. Decisions, furthermore, would be taken at a level where mutual understanding and responsiveness can be taken for granted, which is a prerequisite of deliberative democracy. The active participation of citizens in the management of community affairs, the core of the republican perspective, might also be somewhat less difficult to arrange. All this would be bought at the cost of a further widening of the disjuncture between available policy options and preferred social outcomes, as well as a widening of the disjuncture between those affected by decisions and those

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in a position to hold decision-makers to account. Renationalism thus shares with other strategies the promise of ameliorating some problems of democracy at the cost of worsening others.

Problems, promises, proportions The observations made in this chapter may be summarized thus: 1. The analysis of what internationalization implies for democracy should begin with the very concept of democracy. It makes a difference whether one’s focus is on accountability, rational debate, or citizens’ participation. This, moreover, does not exhaust what democracy may be about: the controversial issue of corporatist interest representation has been passed over in this chapter, as has the idea of bureaucracies as intermediaries between governors and governed. The point is that one’s diagnosis of the problem of internationalization crucially depends on one’s view of democracy, and hence controversy about diagnosis as well as treatment may reflect disagreement over democracy rather than over internationalization. 2. Propositions about the implications of internationalization for democracy in various senses are often speculative rather than well-confirmed. The matter is obvious only from a strictly constitutional point of view: we can easily see wherein the democratic deficit of the EU lies, if formal constitution is what counts. If one’s view of democracy is more complex and includes, for example, policy effectiveness, rational debate, or active participation, the effects of internationalization are less evident and need to be researched. The obvious possibility of positive effects should be taken into account in such research so as to give the challenge of internationalization proper proportions. 3. If one’s concern is with both procedure and effectiveness, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that internationalization inevitably places democracies and democrats before a dilemma. The dilemma is inherent in the internationalization of problems, societies, and decisions. Intergovernmentalism, supranationalism, and renationalism represent different trade-offs between procedure and effectiveness, but they remain trade-offs. One’s preference should logically be a function of one’s conception of democracy, of one’s assessment of the costs and benefits of internationalization from other points of view, and ultimately of one’s view of nationalism and internationalism. The trade-off is discussed further in the next chapter, in which the arguments made in the book are combined into a comprehensive statement of the problem of the democratic citizen in a time of internationalization.

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Notes

1

It is not always clear whether those debating democracy are concerned with effectiveness (effective = having a definite or desired effect) or efficiency (efficient = productive with minimum waste or effort). The debate, as I read it, is more about the ability of nation-state governments to get things done than about their ability to get things done at a low cost, and therefore I shall use the term effectiveness except when it is obviously a matter of productivity. 2 The version of Habermas’s thoughts cited here is a compilation, made with Habermas’s consent, of various texts pertaining to democracy, including Habermas (1994). On the compilation see Habermas (1995: 75, fn. 1). 3 The idea of defining the problems of internationalized democracy in terms of disjunctures comes from David Held; see below. 4 Scharpf’s influential argument is based on a distinction between input- and output-oriented legitimization rather than between two forms of democracy. He seems to consider legitimacy and democracy to be the same, but this view is not the standard one. Power, in a common view, is ‘legitimate’ when it is ‘more or less generally accepted, by those over whom it is exercised, to be in accordance with whatever principles they happen to hold’ (Roberts and Edwards, 1991: 73). Legitimacy thus does not presuppose democratic procedure in any of the three senses considered in Table 7.1. Nor does democratic procedure in any of these senses necessarily produce legitimacy. Democracy may be advocated on other grounds than its ability to produce general acceptance of decisions, and general acceptance may be considered insufficient to make a decision democratic. Thus legitimization, Scharpf’s core concept, is neither necessary nor sufficient for democracy, if a distinction is made between legitimacy and democracy. 5 The literature on liberal democracy is enormous. What follows is based on, among other things, Dahl (1989) and Held (1996: 70–120). 6 The United States stands out as an exception with its long history of domestic–political strife over fundamental matters of foreign policy and the Senate occasionally refusing to ratify treaties to which it objects. The difference between the US and many European democracies on this score can be explained in part by reference to the geopolitical facts of size, power, and protected location. 7 See in particular Svenska Dagbladet 1, 3, 7, 23 August, 23, 30 September, 4 October 1998, and 5, 7, 10, 21 October 1999. 8 It is worth citing a comment on the article by Leslie H. Gelb, a former Director of Political and Security Affairs in the US Department of State. Gelb thought that most senior foreign policy officials had known about US nuclear weapons activities in their territories. ‘Did it go to their Parliaments? No, I doubt it. But responsible officials knew that nuclear weapons were being stored’ (The New York Times, 20 October 1999). 9 I am indebted to Hans Agné for this distinction. 10 It has been suggested that EU policy is made according to five different models, only one of which is MLG (H. Wallace, 1999). 11 See Kohler-Koch (1999) for a review of this issue.

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12 The literature on nations and nationalism tends to be ambiguous with regard to the distinction between culture and ethnicity. It appears that there is an overlap in common usage. ‘Culture’ is typically defined as learned behaviour acquired by individuals as members of a social group. What is said to be the first explicit definition of the concept was given in 1871 by British anthropologist E. B. Tylor, according to whom culture is ‘that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society’. ‘Ethnicity’ is characteristically defined as a feature of a group of people who differ in ‘race or color or in national, religious, or cultural origin’ from other groups (quotes from Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, 1997). The distinction is not important in the present context, since few of those who argue the case for the nation in contemporary debate about democracy are concerned with race or colour.

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8 Internationalization and the Citizen CONTENTS

A theory of internationalization: summary 178 Internationalization as prescriptive challenge 182

Internationalization, the transformation with which this book is concerned, has been seen here as both a descriptive and a prescriptive problem. The descriptive theory of internationalization emerging from the book will be summarized first in this chapter. The argument will then be reviewed from the point of view of a contemporary European intent on forming a wellfounded view of what ought to be done.

A theory of internationalization: summary The theory outlined in this book is about the internationalization of the politics of a nation-state. Four different parts of the argument are brought together in a revised version of Figure 2.1 and shown in Figure 8.1: the investigation of the dynamics of internationalization (Chapter 2), the analysis of national independence and identity (Chapter 4), the consideration of political culture (Chapter 5), and the argument about internationalized democracy (Chapter 7). Basic to the theory is the distinction between three dimensions of internationalization: an increase in the extent to which problems on national political agendas are defined by conditions or events abroad (the internationalization of problems), an intensification of transnational relations across their borders (the internationalization of societies), and an increase in the intensity and scope of their participation in political decision-making at the international level (the internationalization of decisions). These are seen in the theory as interrelated but separate phenomena.

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Technological change

Internationalization of problems

National independence

Internationalization of decisions Political will

Internationalization of societies

179

National identity

Democracy

Political culture

FIGURE 8.1 A revised model of internationalization

The process of internationalization is suggested to be self-reinforcing, because of among other things a tendency for the internationalization of problems, societies, and decisions to interact. For example, the intertwining of societies tends to internationalize political problems in areas such as economic policy and crime prevention; this tends to increase the propensity for taking decisions about such matters at the international level and for doing it by increasingly internationalized methods; this in turn tends to increase societal internationalization further, and so on. By the same token, environmental pollution gives rise to societal internationalization in the form of transnational co-operation between environmentalists as well as to the internationalization of environment policy decision-making; these in turn are likely to reinforce each other. A reason for keeping the internationalization of problems, societies, and decisions conceptually apart is that it makes it easier to take note of this kind of self-reinforcement. What ultimately drives internationalization is traditionally thought to be technology, ranging from shipbuilding in earlier times to information technology today. This assumption is retained in the theory summarized here, but a point is made of seeing the process of internationalization as propelled not only by technological developments in conjunction with its endogenous dynamics but also, and importantly, by a political will to internationalize. A will to internationalize may be derived from principled internationalism in the sense of a programme for peace and security, but it may also be a matter of pragmatic problem-solving (‘inadvertent internationalism’). It may even, paradoxically, be an expression of nationalism in the sense of concern with the identity, independence, and influence of one’s country (‘nationalist internationalism’).

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This is the core of the theory of the internationalization of nation-states outlined in the book. A significant further element pertains to political culture. Prevailing views about the distinguishing features and external relations of a country may be seen to form part of its political culture; this goes along with the way in which the concept of political culture is often used in the literature. Since political cultures differ from each other, nation-states can be expected to approach the problems and possibilities of internationalization in different ways. It may matter, for example, (a) whether the self-image of a country – its self-perceived identity – is primarily ethnic, and hence relatively exclusive in character, or primarily civic, and hence more inclusive, (b) whether internationalization is primarily seen as a threat to the identity and independence of the country or as the promise of new possibilities, (c) whether the country is believed capable of playing an independent, leading role in world affairs or whether its proper role is seen more modestly as one of joining forces with others in common ventures, and, importantly, (d) whether there is consensus, controversy, or indifference about matters such as these, and, if there is controversy, (e) whether cleavages are ideological and hence may be transnational rather than specific to each nation. A possibility, not more than hinted at previously in spite of its obviousness, is that internationalization and views about internationalization interact. They may do it either in a mutually supportive, spiral-type fashion or dialectically: internationalization may affect the political culture of a country so as to further reinforce its propensity to internationalize, or it may lead to an anti-internationalization backlash, or maybe to a growing tension between principled self-conception and practical policy. National political culture is traditionally assumed to exert a national–conservative influence; internationalization may weaken this tendency, or it may on the contrary serve to reinforce the conception of internationalization as a threat to national identity and independence. In either case, interaction between internationalization and political culture should be a significant feature of a theory of the former. Three major implications internationalization may have for the politics of nation-states have been considered in the book: internationalization cannot but be of consequence for nation-state independence; it may affect the strength of the collective identities on which nation-states are based; and it is bound to render democratic governance more complex. Internationalization cannot be assumed to affect the independence of nation-states in an obvious and simple way, however. A distinction needs to be made between different dimensions of the concept of national independence since the implications of internationalization are entirely different in the various cases. Autarky in the sense of self-sufficiency in what is needed for survival has ceased to be a realistic idea. The principle of self-determination in the sense of a right of a nation to determine its own allegiance, or the right of a people to choose their own governors, on the other hand, remains as well established and as difficult to apply in practice as previously. The implications of internationalization for sovereignty in

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the sense of a legal right are limited, and the new issues – humanitarian intervention, supranational organization – are relatively well defined, even though agreed solutions are lacking. The main unresolved issue pertains to the implications of internationalization for autonomy in the sense of action possibilities – ‘actual’ independence or ‘real’ sovereignty, as it is sometimes called: all that is obvious is that the implications are contradictory and that internationalization tends to deprive nation-states of some action possibilities while supplying them with others. A case in point is economic globalization, which tends to reduce the possibilities of governments for effective action in areas such as economic and social policy while at the same time increasing the resources available for such purposes. Another is international organization, which reduces the freedom of action of members to some extent while offering them a corresponding opportunity to influence the policies of others. National identity is traditionally presumed to be maintained by socialization agents such as schools and mass media. Internationalization is likely to be of consequence for the construction and reconstruction of collective identities, however, and hence to weaken some identities while strengthening others. This has mostly been discussed with reference to the internationalization of television. Whether the result will be a weakening of nation-state identities and maybe the strengthening of collective identities at other levels, as some hope and others fear, appears an open question at the present time. Nation-state democracy is presumed in the theory outlined in the book to be challenged in important ways by internationalization, although one’s assessment of the challenge crucially depends on one’s view of what is the essence of democracy: governors’ accountability, rational deliberation, or citizen participation. An implication of internationalization is a growing tension between democratic procedure and policy effectiveness, a problem that can be resolved neither by intergovernmentalism nor by renationalism. Supranationalism offers a solution in principle but only as a long-term possibility; in the short and medium term this approach, like the other two, represents a trade-off between procedure and effectiveness that is ultimately unsatisfactory. The theory now summarized has an empirical base insofar as examples can be found of all relations proposed to exist; many illustrations have been given in previous chapters. Nothing in the theory is entirely speculative or hypothetical, and hence the theory improves our ability to comprehend a major transformation that is especially pronounced in contemporary Europe. However, the theory is weak in important ways: the strength of the various relationships, as least as significant a matter as their mere existence, cannot be specified; indeed, even their very nature is unclear in part. This theory, in other words, is similar to much in the social sciences in merely establishing that some things tend to be related to some other things. It offers ‘a set of answers’ only to a limited extent and is primarily to be seen as ‘a set of questions’, as pointed out in Chapter 1. Among the suggestions for further enquiry made in previous chapters,

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the following themes may be singled out as especially significant in being theoretically central, complex, and insufficiently investigated at the same time: • the degree to which the process of internationalization is selfreinforcing, • the relation between internationalization and nation-state autonomy in the sense of action possibilities, • the construction of collective identity in internationalized countries, • political–cultural views of nationality, • the significance of national community as a condition for democracy. The usefulness of weak theory for addressing normative questions should not be underestimated, however. The specification of concepts and the definition of problematic issues are important for thinking clearly about complex issues. The argument of the book will be reviewed from this point of view in the next section.

Internationalization as prescriptive challenge Assume a citizen in a contemporary European democracy intent on forming a well-informed opinion about significant issues such as those relating to internationalization. Assume further that the citizen is faced with a choice between an option implying more internationalization and another option implying less – between more or less free trade, more or less majority voting in the EU, more or less cultural openness, etc. What the argument pursued in this book implies for this citizen is summarized in Figure 8.2. The first task of our citizen is to determine whether the decision is to be made on principled or pragmatic grounds. A principled decision, in the present context, is one derived from the principled pursuit of internationalization, that is, internationalism, or from the principled defence of the nation-state, that is, nationalism. A pragmatic decision, in the present context, is made on other grounds. A theory about internationalization and its relation to the nation-state is very pertinent in the former case but irrelevant in the latter, in spite of the fact that the choice is between more or less internationalization in both cases.1 It may be difficult to determine whether a proposed measure is worth considering in principled terms. This hinges in part on the tendency of internationalization to be self-reinforcing. The stronger the tendency to selfreinforcement, the stronger the cases of both nationalists and internationalists, and the weaker the case for taking a pragmatic stance on particular matters. Our European citizen, therefore, has reason to begin his/her wrestling with the problem by considering if the measure he/she is considering whether to support or oppose is likely to reinforce the endogenous dynamics of the process of internationalization. The more likely this is, the less justified a pragmatic approach.

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Choice pertaining to internationalization

Principled

Peace

Psychological well-being

Pragmatic

Welfare society

Democracy

Procedure

Accountability

Deliberation

Effectiveness

Participation

FIGURE 8.2 Internationalization as a decision-making problem

Assuming that the matter is one of principle – and remaining within the confines of the framework outlined in this book – the next step is to consider the implications in terms of four objectives: the internationalist goal of peace and security, and neo-nationalist concern with psychological well-being, welfare society, and democracy.

International peace? Even if the implementation of the internationalist programme is unlikely to bring peace and security on a global scale, it is likely to be effective if applied radically rather than moderately and among democracies rather than nondemocracies (Chapter 6). Both conditions exist in Europe, but our European citizen cannot rest content with this observation. He/she needs to consider whether what has been achieved is sufficient or whether more is necessary for the maintenance of peace and security in the long term. There are three alternatives: 1 Radical internationalization is not necessary so far as contemporary Europe is concerned, since war does not occur between democracies; democracy is the decisive factor, not internationalization, and therefore the utility of internationalizing measures can be assessed on other grounds.

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2 What has been achieved is useful but insufficient; European integration needs to progress further so as to ensure that future generations will enjoy peace and security. 3 The status quo is about right and should be maintained, but further internationalization is not necessary for the sake of peace and security. There is room for different views in this regard about the need for the further internationalization of societies as well as of decision-making. The relative significance of each for the maintenance of peace and security is at issue in international relations theory (Snyder, 1990). European integration may be found sufficient in one respect but not in the other, and hence our citizen may have reason to advocate the further strengthening of one – maybe societal internationalization – but not of the other – perhaps political institutions. There is also room for different conclusions with regard to the ‘widening’ and the ‘deepening’ of the EU. One position is that what has been achieved inside the EU is sufficient for the maintenance of peace and security but that the task of widening this security community to encompass the rest of Europe remains to be completed. Another position is that what has been achieved inside the EU remains insufficient from the point of view of peace and security, and therefore the widening of the EU must be combined with deepening or deepening being prioritized, or else the promises of the peacebuilding process begun in the 1950s will remain unfulfilled. Our European citizen will have to consider these matters without the help of strong theory. It will be difficult to arrive at a firm conclusion. I have argued elsewhere that we have an obligation to take the international– systemic implications of proposed measures into serious account in spite of the difficulty of construing a particular position as morally compelling. Internationalism is a moral obligation in this limited sense as I have suggested (Goldmann, 1994: 185–94). Psychological well-being? The widespread view that national belonging is essential for the wellbeing of individuals has been cited previously (Chapter 6). From this point of view, membership in a national community provides an answer to existential questions and is a source of self-respect, pride, even immortality. Our European, if sharing this opinion in spite of the apparent lack of psychological evidence, has reason to consider what particular features of the nation-state need to be protected against internationalization from this point of view. The answer would seem to be national identity in the sense of individuality: what we are presumed to need is the feeling of belonging to a distinct community. Identity in the sense of substantive content should be a less relevant consideration: national belonging per se is what is taken to be essential, rather than belonging to a nation with particular features. The problem of internationalization, from this point of view, is that it may weaken national identity in the sense of the perception of togetherness.

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An intriguing issue in this context is the role of national independence. There are two ways in which political independence may be essential for conceptions of common national identity. One is that political independence may form part of this very conception. Nation-state sovereignty, a mighty symbol, may be more significant from this point of view than autonomy in the complex sense of action possibilities (Chapter 4). If state sovereignty is reduced, it might be suggested, national community will become that much weaker, and therefore legal matters such as the extent of majority voting in the EU may be relevant for the psychological well-being thought to be a concomitant of national identity. Another plausible link between independence and identity is that a nation needs a state in order to protect its individuality. I have cited Tamir’s argument that a ‘shared public space’ is needed to ensure the preservation of a nation ‘as a vital and active community’, and hence ‘political arrangements enabling members of the nation to develop their national life with as little external inference as possible’. But this does not always necessitate sovereign statehood; the political form may be determined in the light of the particular conditions of each case (Tamir, 1993: 73–5; Chapter 6 above). The classical nationalist principle, which is more straightforward, is that ‘the political and national unit should be congruent’ (Gellner, 1983: 1). Arguably, if the perception of national community is contingent on the formal sovereignty of one’s nation, the protection of this community is contingent on the nation’s actual autonomy. Our European citizen, then, should first consider whether national belonging is essential for a person’s well-being. If yes, is national identity in contemporary Europe at risk? If yes again, should some particular forms of societal internationalization be opposed to prevent this from happening, or is political independence more important from the point of view of national identity? In the latter case, independence in the sense of sovereignty, in the sense of autonomy, or in both senses? Welfare solidarity? There is reason for our European citizen to consider the neo-nationalist argument that national community is a condition for European-type welfare society (Chapter 6). This argument runs parallel with the argument about psychological well-being: the essential factor is common national identity, which leads to the same considerations as those just outlined, including the consideration of the significance of political independence. A case can be made, however, that the collective identity sufficient for welfare politics is less profound than what is needed for psychological well-being. The difference, if there is one, is between affective and instrumental identity. National belonging, in order to satisfy psychological needs, must be affective, whereas welfare politics may rest on instrumental reasoning, such as the conviction that it is in everybody’s interest that widespread poverty

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is avoided. Instrumental identity, presumably, is more easily established at the supranational level than affective community. If this argument is valid, the welfare state case against internationalization is weaker than the psychological case. Democracy? An entire chapter of this book has been devoted to the problem of internationalized democracy. Our European citizen must first decide about his/her preferred mix of liberal, deliberative, and republican features of democracy, that is, accountability, rational debate, and active participation. Questions may need to be asked not only about the implications for formal democratic procedure, important as they may be, but also for example about transparency, mutual understanding, the public sphere, and opportunities for citizen participation. The implications of internationalization are not always simple and obvious as argued in detail in Chapter 7. Our European must also take the issue of procedure versus effectiveness into consideration. Intergovernmental decision-making epitomizes this dilemma in its classical form: a degree of tension between internal procedure and external effectiveness is inherent in policy-making by bargaining. Supranational decision-making is apt to improve effectiveness and offers a solution in principle to the dilemma, but whether the solution can be implemented in practice is both debatable and debated. Renationalization restores procedural democracy to what it was like in less internationalized times, but at the cost of depriving citizens of their ability to do something effective about an increasing share of what they perceive to be their problems. It is for our European to wrestle with the problem of finding the appropriate trade-off between democratic procedure and policy effectiveness in a time of radical internationalization of problems and societies. Europeans have long agendas. It would be easier if objectives were less complex and if more could be said with confidence about means-ends relations. However, to sort out the issues is a beginning.

Note

1

It goes without saying that a choice that is pragmatic from the point of view of the relation between internationalization and the nation-state may be principled in another perspective. A person who always selects an option thought to benefit, say, women or say, business may be characterized as principled, but not from the point of view of internationalization and the nation-state.

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Aaland Islands 163 accountability 145–50, 156–9, 162, 165, 173–5, 186 action possibilities 65, 89, 91–7, 139, 144, 148, 155–7, 174, 181 Aggestam, L. 115–16, 124 Ágh, A. 23, 47, 167 Agné, H. 176 Ahern, B. 125 Ahnfelt, E. 12, 53 Albania 169 Allen, D. 29 Almond, G. A, 60 Americanization 1, 37, 74, 101–3, 110 Amsterdam Treaty 26, 28, 77, 87, 94, 96, 157–8, 167 Andersen, S. S. 159 Anderson, B. 100 Anderson, J. J. 46 Anderweg, R. B. 155 Annan, K. 83–4 Antall, J. 122 Appadurai, A. 69 Ardy, B. 29–30 Arnstberg, K.-O. 70 Australia 23 Austria and EU 29–30, 78, 160–1; foreign policy role of 120; Freedom Party 164; identity of 119–20, 123; independence of 120–1; and internationalization 14; and Yugoslavia 80 autarky 61–2, 66, 75–6, 110, 180 autonomy 61–63, 110; definition 64–5, 89; and democracy 148, 156; and internationalization 89–97, 139; 181–2; and nationalism 185 Axelrod, R. 37 Axtmann, R. 23 Banchoff, T. 69, 117 Barbrook, R. 103, 114 Beisheim, M. 12–5, 20 Belarus 168

Belgium 2, 31, 33–4, 86, 168, 170; and EU 41, 46; identity of 58, 119–20, 123; independence of 120–1; and internationalization 119; Vlaams Blok 164 Beloff, M. 130 Benelux countries 14, 46, 67 Bingen, D. 49 Blake, G. 20 Bloom, W. 68 Bluhm, T. 119 Bosnia 63, 80 Bourdeau, P. 11 Breitenmoser, S. 106 Breuilly, J. 124, 134 British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) 101, 103 Brundtland Commission 26 Bryder, T. 23 Bulgaria 10, 14, 29, 47 Bundesverfassungsgericht 87–9 Burma 64 Cable News Network (CNN) 103 Canada 78, 86–7 Cardiff, D. 101 Castells, M. 99–100 Catalonia 98 Central African Republic 81 Cesarani, D. 115 Chechnya 82 Chernobyl accident 10 China 11, 64, 75, 83, 85, 110 Churchill, W. 42 civil society 62, 168, 173 Clark, I. 18 Cobden, R. 128–9 Colombia 11 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) 29, 36, 47, 75, 92–3, 121 concept formation 4, 6 confederation 87–88 Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE) 48

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202

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constitutional patriotism 172–3 constructivism 6–7, 69 Cook, R. 106 Copsey, N. 109 Corcelle, G. 53, 94 Council of Europe 16, 40 Crawford, B. 79 Crick, B. 70, 105 Croatia 63, 79–80 Csaba, L. 49 Csepeli, G. 109, 121–3 Curran, J. 102–3 Curtin, D. M. 158, 173 Cyprus 47 Czech Republic xv, 14, 29, 47, 122 Czechoslovakia 10, 48–9 Dahl, R. A. 142–4, 151–2, 166–7, 176 Dahlgren, P. 101 Danish Bottle Case 95 de Gaulle, C. 7, 116 democracy 2–4, 6, 8, 39–40, 87; and collective identity 141, 168, 172; deliberative 142–3, 151–5, 162, 174, 186; and effectiveness 141–6, 148–9, 156–7, 164–7, 173–5, 176, 181, 186; and EU enlargement 48–9; and foreign policy 149–50, 159–60, 166; and legitimacy 176; liberal 142–50, 155, 165, 169, 174, 186; and national community 67, 137–8, 152–3, 167–71, 182; and peace 130–2, 140; prerequisites of 167–9; republican 142–3, 153–5, 163, 173–4, 186; threats from internationalization 22, 181, 142–54 denationalization 12, 20, 63, 101 Denmark 33–4, 45, 60–1, 69, 78, 89, 95, 144, 150, 160, 168 depoliticization 101, 103 description, relation to prescription 6–7, 59 determinism 6–7, 38 Deutsch, K. W. 129, 132 domestic politics 44, 92, 159, 161; as explanans of approach to EU 121, 124; relation to international politics 2–3, 15, 58, 133, 149–50, 160–1 Doty, R. L. 109 Doyle, M. W. 130–131 Easton, D. 58, 145 Eckstein, H. 5 Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) 37, 45

economic security 75–6, 110, 116 Ecuador 86 Edwards, A. 57, 176 Eliassen, K. A. 159 Elster, J. 151 Ember, C. R. 131 environment policy 26–7, 33, 35, 51, 93–5, 166 environmental movement 32–3, 95, 159 environmental problems 10–11, 15, 38–9, 162 Eriksen, E. O. 151 Erlander, T. 150 Estonia 29, 33, 47 ethnicity 57–8, 61, 177 Europe, definition of 7–8 European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) 44 European Commission 2, 17, 26, 35, 47, 77, 87, 92–3, 95, 150, 157–9, 164 European Community (EC) 23, 26, 29, 36, 44–5, 47, 80, 86–7 European Council 29, 47–8, 53–4 European Court of Justice (ECJ) 17, 26, 28, 53, 87, 89, 92, 95, 157 European Credit Transfer System (ECTS) 2 European Drug Unit (EDU) 27 European Economic Community (EEC) 23, 26, 33, 35, 41–2, 44, 87, 94 European Environmental Agency (EEA) 10–11, 93, 96 European Environmental Bureau (EBB) 32–3, 35, 54 European Free Trade Area (EFTA) 20 European Monetary System (EMS) 36 European Parliament (EP) 17, 87, 95, 157–8, 161, 164, 167, 171 European Union (EU), Council of Ministers of 17, 87, 93, 149–50, 157–8, 164; democratic deficit of 137, 141, 149, 157–9, 167, 171–2, 175; enlargement of 29–30, 46–9, 184; and the environment 26–7, 32–3, 35, 94–5; formation of 44–6; institutions of 16–17, 36, 157, 164; and international crime 27–8; and internationalism 129, 133–4; media policy of 102; as network 173; ombudsman of 28; region committee of 78, 163; and self-determination 76–8; and sovereignty 87–9; and the welfare state 92, 147–8; and WTO 86–7; see also Common Agricultural

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INDEX Policy, Economic and Monetary Union, European Commission, European Council, European Court of Justice, European Parliament, multi-level governance, Structural Funds Europeanization 19–20, 27, 47, 61, 98, 102 Europol 27–8, 39, 53, 96 factual approach 61, 71–2, 74–106 Farrell, R. B. 150 federation 57, 87–8, 129, 164, 167 Ferguson, Y. H. 59 Finland 7, 10, 30, 33–4, 78, 160–1 Fischer, J. 121, 125 Flenley, P. 117–8 Fletcher, G. 137–8 foreign policy role, concept of 110; of Great Powers 116–7; see also Austria, France, Germany, Russia, Sweden, United Kingdom France, economic security of 75–6; and EU 45–7, 160; foreign policy role of 115–7; Front National 164; and humanitarian intervention 84; identity of 109, 115; internationalization of 13, 119; and Yugoslavia 80. Friedman, T. L. 146 Friends of the Earth 32–3 From, J. 12, 53 Fuchs, D. 168–9 Fulbrook, M. 109, 115 Gelb, L. H. 176 Gellner, E. 98, 100, 124, 134, 185 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 38, 86, 102 George, S. 54 Germany and anti-nuclear movement 31–2; economic security of 75–6; and EU 29, 42, 44–6, 77–8, 87–9; foreign policy role of 115–8; and humanitarian intervention 84; identity of 109, 115; and international crime 11; internationalization of 13–14, 119; and 1992 currency crisis 30; and television 102; and Yugoslavia 80 Gill, S. 18 Gilland, K. 114, 118, 125 Glenny, M. 105 globalization 12, 14, 30–1, 51, 56, 91,

203

101, 111, 141–2, 144, 146, 157, 181; definition of 18–19, 63 Glover, J. 68, 136 Godson, R. 11, 23 Goodin, R. E. 73 Goodman, J. B. 46 Gow, J. 48, 105 Gowa, J. S. 140 Gower, J. 47 Grabbe, H. 49 Greece 10, 29 Greenland 150 Greenpeace 32–3 Greenwood, J. 35, 95, 159 Grenada 81 Griffiths, R. T. 42 Guatemala 86 Gutjahr, L. 44 Haas, E. 35–6 Habermas, J. 101, 142, 151, 154, 162, 169, 173, 176 Haiti 81 Hannum, H. 62–3, 66 Havel, V. xv, 48 Hedetoft, U. 109 Held, D. 7, 15, 18, 141–2, 144–6, 148, 151, 157, 173–4, 176 Hellman, M. 104 Helmreich, J. E. 86 Helsinki Final Act 81–82 Herd, G. P. 49 Hitler, A. 135 Hobsbawm, E. J 124 Hoffmann, S. xiii, 4, 45, 129 Hoffmann-Riem, W. 101–2 Hollis, M. 51 Holmes, M. 114 Holsti, K. 140 Holsti, O. 131 Honduras 86 Hroch, M. 124 Hughes, K. 49 humanitarian intervention 80–5 Hungary 10, 14, 22, 29, 47, 49, 80, 119; identity of 109, 121–4 Håstad, E. 86 Iceland 34, 150 identity as characteristics 69–70; civic 58, 67, 73, 109; collective 58–9, 68–9, 98–100, 104, 181–2, 185; cultural 69–70, 102; ethnic 58, 67, 73, 109; European 71, 102–3, 147, 167–8, 171, 173; as individuality

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identity as characteristics continued 68–70; and institutions 7, 171–2; political 69–70; see also democracy, national identity ideology 92, 121, 124 India 81 individualism 20 Inglehart, R. 60, 114 institution 42, 46, 62, 90–1, 132–3, 139, 145, 169; definition of 59; in internationalism 127, 132, 139; selfreinforcement of 25, 51; strength of 59; see also European Union, identity integration, concept of 9; European 3, 35–6, 40–8, 51–2, 128–9, 147–8; negative and positive 92, 147–8 interdependence 44, 63, 72, 90–1, 139 intergovernmentalism 22, 111, 164–6, 181 international, concept of 8–9, 56–7, 79 international crime 11–12, 15, 23, 30–1, 33, 39, 95–7 international police co-operation 26–8 international politics 9, 59, 65; relations to domestic politics 2–3, 15, 58, 133, 149–50 international relations as field of study 3, 55, 59, 69, 73 internationalism 3, 37, 39–49, 52–3, 153, 179, 182–4; case for 129; definition of 9, 40, 127–9; deliberate 43–5, 52; inadvertent 43–4, 179; nationalist 43–6, 48–9, 52–3, 139, 179; necessity of 130–2, 183–4; vs. nationalism 138–40; regional vs. global 133–4; sufficiency of 132–3, 184 internationalization, definition of 8–9, 57; of decisions 9, 15–17, 26–30, 33–5, 37, 39–40, 51, 91, 128, 149, 152, 184; dynamics of 2, 4, 21, 24–53, 178–80, 182; economic 13–14, 30–1, 38, 51; endogenous dynamics of 25–37, 50–1; exogenous dynamics of 37–53; ideational dynamics of 50–3; of problems 9–12, 26–33, 37–9, 51, 90; self-reinforcement of 7, 25–37, 40, 50–1, 53, 109, 179, 182; of societies 9, 12–15, 30–5, 37–40, 51, 57, 90–1, 101, 128, 137, 152, 184; structural dynamics of 50–51 Interpol 27, 53 Iraq 81

Ireland, broadcasting 103; and EU 29–30; identity of 58, 114, 119–120, 123; independence of 120–1; internationalization of 14, 119 Irwin, G. A. 155 isolationism 128, 174 Italy 2, 10–11, 13, 31, 46, 84, 102 Jachtenfuchs, M. 173 Jacobsson, B. 37 Jamieson, A. 11 Japan 45 Jenkins, B. 109, 135 Jensen, P. H. 10 Jiru, R. 122 Johansson, A. W. 109 Johnson, S. P. 53, 94 Judt, T. 119 Kaiser, K. 150 Kant, I. 56, 128, 130 Kavanagh, D. 60 Kegley, C. W. 23 Kellner, D. 23 Keohane, R. O. 20, 59, 64–5, 72 Kielmansegg, P. G. 137, 167–9, 171 Klingemann, H.-D. 73, 168–9 Kohl, H. 40, 80 Kohler-Koch, B. 176 Kompetenz-Kompetenz 88–9 Kosovo 82–5, 110, 140 Kramer, H. 47 Krasner, S. 63 Krause, E. 121–2 Krause, G. 96 Kreile, M. 19, 48, 51, 53, 62, 90 Krulic, J. 80, 105 Krämer, L. 53, 95 Kuwait 140 Körmendy, L. 121–3 Laitin, D. D. 60 Lane, J.-E. 155 Lange, C. 140 Latvia 29, 33, 47 Laursen, F. 41, 45–6 League of Nations 42, 86, 128 Levy, J. S. 130 Lichtenberg, J. 136–7 Lindbeck, A. 90, 92 Lindberg, L. 36 Lindh, A. 106 Lithuania 29, 33, 47 Llamas, M. 26, 53, 95 lobbying 158–9, 161

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INDEX London, C. 26, 53, 95 Lundgren, N. 30 Luxembourg 10 Maastricht Treaty 23, 26–30, 36, 44–6, 87–9, 94, 157, 160, 163 Machill, M. 102 Maczonkai, M. 49 Magnusson, K. 105 Majone, G. 159 majority voting 17, 26, 28, 87, 95, 149, 152, 157, 164, 168–9, 185 Malcolm, N. 105 Malta 47 Mansbach, R. W. 59 March, J. G. 171 Marks, G. 32, 95, 159, 161 Marquand, D. 109 Martial, E. 45–6 Marxism 7, 128 mass communication research 55, 104–1 Mazey, S. 161 McAdam, D. 32, 95, 159 McCarthy, P. 45 McCulloch, J. R. 90 McDonough, P. 60 McGrew, A. 142 media 1, 37, 100–4, 148, 153, 168, 181 Meinecke, F. 67 Mény, Y. 159 Messerlin, P. A. 47 Mexico 86 Meyer, J. 18 Middlemas, K. 44 migration 1, 14–15, 39, 55, 110 Mill, J. S. 170–1 Millard, F. 49 Miller, D. 56, 69–70, 109, 137, 151–4, 162 Milosevic, S. 135 Milward, A. 36, 42–4, 51, 56 Mitterand, F. 40 modernism 98–9 Moldavia 168 Moravcsik, A. 36,40–1, 43, 46, 52 Morgenthau, H. J. 43, 56, 162 Morrison, C. E. 18 Mouritzen, H. 45 multi-level governance (MLG) 161–3, 165, 173 Müller, H. 45 Myrdal, G. 93 Mörth, U. 35

205

Namibia 85 Nathanson, S. 135–6 nation, concept of 56–5, 62, 67, 169–70 nation-state, concept of 56–8; in political theory 58–9, 67 national cohesion 68 national community 57, 59, 152 national identity, changeability of 59, 152–3, 162; civic vs. ethnic 67, 109; concept of 67–71; construction of 98–100; framework of analysis for 108–10; and media 103–4, 181; and national independence 72, 104–5; and nationalism 43, 45, 49, 135, 139; and nation-state 57–9, 68; and political culture 21–2, 107; and psychology 68, 136, 184; see also democracy, identity national independence, concept of 61–2; framework of analysis for 108, 110–1; and internationalization 55–6, 180–1; and national identity 104–5; and nationalism 43, 45, 52–3, 135, 139–40; and theory of politics 58–9; see also autarky, autonomy, self-determination, sovereignty national influence 43, 45, 52–3, 135 national interest 42–5, 52, 93, 166 national view of the nation 108–114 nationalism 61, 67, 98, 100, 105, 109–10, 185; definition of 43, 57, 127, 134–35, 182; vs. internationalism 138–40; and internationalization 44, 48–9, 52–3, 139; see also neo-nationalism nation-state, approaches to the study of 59–61; concept of 56–8; and theory of politics, 58–9 neo-nationalism 22, 139, 185; case for 136–7; validity of 137–8 Nergelius, J. 28, 79, 87, 89, 157 Netherlands 2, 29, 31, 33, 46, 69, 155, 168 network 173 Neumann, I. B. 70 Nicolaïdis, K. 46–7 Nordic Council 16, 34 normative approach 59–60, 71–2, 126–40 Norris, R. S. 150 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 20

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North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 16, 25–6, 30–1, 34, 48, 53, 82–5, 94, 150 Norway 10, 30, 34, 160–1 Nye, J. S. 20, 72, 129

public service 102, 104, 153 public sphere 101–5, 152–3, 162–3, 168, 173, 186 Putnam, R. D. 160 Pöggeler, F. 106

Oeter, S. 87 Offe, C. 171–2 Olsen, J. P. 171 Olson, W. J. 11, 23 Oomen, T. K. 57 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 7, 20, 26, 35, 38, 56 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) 7, 16, 26, 85, 94 Österdahl, I. 81–82 Østerud, Ø. 67–8, 134–5, 137, 167, 170–1

Québec 78

Pakistan 81 Parekh, B. 69–70 participation see democracy, republican Parzymies, S. 49 path dependency 36–7, 50 peace movement 31–2 Peace of Westphalia 9, 80 Pedersen, M. N. 158 Pfaff, W. 56 Phinnemore, D. 47 plausibility probe 5 Poland 10, 29, 33, 47, 49, 122 political choice 24, 38–9, 50, 53; see also political will political community 67, 70, 168, 171 political–cultural approach 61, 71–2, 107–25 political culture 21–2, 34, 48, 61, 67, 70, 100, 107–8, 114–24, 132, 162, 169, 173, 180, 182; concept of 60, 111–14 political parties 59 political philosophy 55, 67 political science 2–3, 58–9, 67, 70, 73 political will 25, 38–40, 44, 53; see also political choice Portugal 29–30 pragmatism 43–4, 46, 48, 52, 182, 186 prescription, relation to description 6–7, 59 Price, M. E. 69, 101–2, 152–3 primordialism 98–9 public opinion 77, 112–3, 128, 133, 159

Radio Telefís Éireann 103 Ramet, S. P. 105 Ramsbotham, O. 81, 105 Ray, J. L. 140 Ray, L. 121 realist theory 7, 41, 129 Redmond, J. 47 regionalization 105, 163 Reinprect, C. 121–2 renationalism 22, 111, 164, 174–5, 181 Rhine Commission 16 Richardson, J. 161 Richardson, L. 54 Rieger, E. 29, 75, 92–3 Risse, T. 73, 115, 124 Roberts, A. 83, 106 Roberts, G. 57, 176 Robertson, A. 32, 53, 102, 104 Romania 10, 29, 47, 49, 122 Rosenau, J. N. 7, 18–20 Ross, A. 143 Rucht, D. 32–3 Russett, B. M. 130–1 Russia 8, 11, 22, 33, 83, 85, 98, 110, 119, 148, 168; foreign policy role of 117–8; identity of 109, 117–8 Rwanda 81 Ryba, J. 122 Rühl, L. 44 Safran, W. 109 Savona, E. U. 11, 96 Scandinavia 34–5, 67, 77, 102, 147, 150 Scannell, P. 101 Scharpf, F. 10, 38, 91–2, 137, 143–4, 148, 167, 176 Schauer, H. 115 Schengen Agreement 27 Schlesinger, P. 101–4 Schmidt, P. 46 Schmitt, H. 77 Schmitter, P. 36, 172 Schnapper, D. 109 Schütz, H.-J. 82 Scotland 98, 163 secession 66, 78

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INDEX security community 129, 132–3 self-determination 49, 61–2, 76–8, 110, 180; concept of 66 Serbia 80, 82, 98 Shepsle, K. A. 59 Shue, H. 62, 65 Sieber, U. 11, 23, 96 Silberner, E. 90, 128 Simon, G. 117–8, 124 Single European Act 26, 29, 36, 94 Sitzler, K. 49 Siune, K. 45 Sjöstedt, G. 73–6 Skak, M. 48–9 Slovakia 14, 29, 47, 122 Slovenia 14, 29, 47, 63, 79–80 Smith, A. D. 99, 124 Smith, M. J. 129 Smith, S. 51 Snyder, J. 184 social anthropology 55, 61 socialization 99–100, 105 sociology 61 Socrates Programme 1–2 Sofos, S. A. 135 Somalia 81 South-East European Co-operation Initiative 16 sovereignty 28, 45–9, 51, 56, 61, 78–89, 96, 110, 139, 180–1, 185; concept of 61–3, 79, 165; formal 64; operational 64 Soviet Union (USSR) 31, 79, 81–2, 98, 100, 118, 135 Spain 29–30, 78, 168, 170 spillover 35–7, 51 Stanners, D. 11 state, concept of 56–8, 62 Stern, E. 10 Stevenson, N. 103–4 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment 26 Streeck, W. 46, 137, 147–8 Structural Funds 29–30, 47 student exchange 1–2, 25, 30, 33, 137, 148 Sturesjö, Ö. 105 Sullivan, J. D. 131 supranationalism 22, 111, 164, 167–174, 181 supranationality 1, 16–17, 28, 36, 44–5, 51, 66, 74, 76–7, 85–9, 93, 96, 111, 157, 161; definition of 85 Svensson, P. 45 Swann, M. 101

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Sweden 2, 33, 86; and EU 29, 48, 78, 89, 113, 160–1, 164; foreign policy role of 120; identity of 70, 109, 119–20, 123–4; independence of 120–1; as model 155; and NATO 34, 150; and 1992 currency crisis 30; and Yugoslavia 80 Switzerland 10, 14, 64, 164, 168, 170 Szablowski, G. J. 49 Söderström, H. T. 30 Sørensen, V. 44, 51 Tamir, Y. 68, 127, 135–9, 185 Tanzania 81 technology 15, 25, 38–40, 50, 75–6, 101, 104, 153, 179 Teichman, J. 129 television 100–4, 137, 153, 162, 181 Terrorisme, radicalisme et violence internationale (TREVI) 27 Téson, F. R. 81–2 Thatcher, M. 40 theory as a set of answers xiii–xiv, 4–5, 38, 132, 181; as a set of approaches 4; as a set of questions xiii–xiv, 4–5, 38, 132, 181; relation to data 5 Therborn, G. 23 Thomassen, J. 77 Thompson, J. B. 54, 101, 151 transnational relations 15, 20–1, 31–3, 35, 95, 161 transparency 146, 149–50, 158, 160–1, 166, 174, 186 Treaty of Rome 26, 36, 41–2, 87, 93 Tudjman, F. 80 Turkey 10 two-level game 160–1, 165–6 Tylor, E. B. 176 Uganda 81 Uhlig, C. 109, 117 Ukraine 168 unification 9 United Europe Movement 42 United Kingdom and anti-nuclear movement 31–2; economic security of 75–6; emission from 10; and EU 29, 45, 67; foreign policy role of 115–7; and humanitarian intervention 84, 105–6; identity of 70, 109, 115; internationalization of 13–15, 119; and 1992 currency crisis 30; and television 102; and Yugoslavia 80

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United Nations (UN) 11, 16–17, 27–9, 76, 79, 81–6, 94–6, 128, 139 United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) 26, 53, 94 United States 7, 11, 33, 38, 45, 55, 64, 75–6, 79–81, 85–7, 93, 128, 150, 176 Vanhoonacker, S. 41, 45–6 Verba, S. 60 Vertzberger, Y. Y. I. 60 Vital, D. 160 voluntarism 6–7 Wagnsson, C. 117–18, 124 Wallace, H. 176 Wallace, W. 72, 150, 160 Waltz, K. N. 64 Walzer, M. 136 Weiler, J. H. H. 136 Weiss, L. 14, 56, 90–2 welfare state 65, 91–3, 137, 140, 147–8, 156, 185–6

Wester, R. 46 Whipple, T. D. 48 Williams, P. 11, 96 Willis, R. 54 Winkelmann, I. 87–8, 106 Wiseman, J. 23 Wittkopf, E. R. 23 Wolters, J. 96 Woodhouse, T. 81, 105 World Commission on Dams (WCD) 32 World Trade Organization (WTO) 17, 26, 38, 86–7, 94 Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) 32–3 Worre, T. 45 Woyke, W. 46 Yugoslavia 10, 79–85, 98, 135 Zachert, H.-L. 11, 23 Zum ewigen Frieden 56, 128 Zürn, M. 7, 10, 12–15, 20, 23, 91, 94, 137, 159, 171, 173