The Europeanization of the Nation-State

2011 ◽  
Vol 46 (3) ◽  
pp. 631-657 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Palmowski
Keyword(s):  
Law And Economics ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Transnational Politics ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Political Sciences ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
Asymmetric Impact

This article explores the interrelationship between national and supranational politics in contemporary history. In Europe, the nature of national and transnational politics, law and economics has been completely transformed through the emergence of the European Union (EU) and its predecessor, the European Community (EC). We cannot understand the European nation-state (and its regions) without appreciating the EC’s or EU’s dynamic (and often asymmetric) impact on public law, economics, the environment, social legislation, human rights and culture. This Europeanization of the nation-state has affected in different ways members and non-members of the EC and EU. The interplay between national and transnational politics, while not unique to the contemporary world, presents particular challenges to the contemporary historian. The enmeshing of national and supra- as well as international spheres means that the contemporary state cannot be analysed with the same tools and assumptions about political sovereignty as its nineteenth-century predecessors. Instead, this article calls for a greater readiness to engage in the complexities of national and EC/EU history and engage in a new dialogue with other disciplines, notably the political sciences.

The Political Machine

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam T. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Bronze Age ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Mortuary Ritual ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Organized Violence ◽  
Political Sovereignty ◽  
Political Machine ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
The Bronze Age

This book investigates the essential role that material culture plays in the practices and maintenance of political sovereignty. Through an archaeological exploration of the Bronze Age Caucasus, the book demonstrates that beyond assemblies of people, polities are just as importantly assemblages of things—from ballots and bullets to crowns, regalia, and licenses. The book looks at the ways that these assemblages help to forge cohesive publics, separate sovereigns from a wider social mass, and formalize governance—and it considers how these developments continue to shape politics today. The book shows that the formation of polities is as much about the process of manufacturing assemblages as it is about disciplining subjects, and that these material objects or “machines” sustain communities, orders, and institutions. The sensibilities, senses, and sentiments connecting people to things enabled political authority during the Bronze Age and fortifies political power even in the contemporary world. The book provides a detailed account of the transformation of communities in the Caucasus, from small-scale early Bronze Age villages committed to egalitarianism, to Late Bronze Age polities predicated on radical inequality, organized violence, and a centralized apparatus of rule. From Bronze Age traditions of mortuary ritual and divination to current controversies over flag pins and Predator drones, this book sheds new light on how material goods authorize and defend political order.

Private and Public Law

2020 ◽  
pp. 574-592
Author(s):  
Thomas W. Merrill
Keyword(s):  
Law And Economics ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Private Law ◽  
General Criterion ◽  
The Public ◽  
Private Ordering ◽  
Public Rights ◽  
Private And Public ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Derivatives Of

This chapter explores the relationship between private and public law. In civil law countries, the public-private distinction serves as an organizing principle of the entire legal system. In common law jurisdictions, the distinction is at best an implicit design principle and is used primarily as an informal device for categorizing different fields of law. Even if not explicitly recognized as an organizing principle, however, it is plausible that private and public law perform distinct functions. Private law supplies the tools that make private ordering possible—the discretionary decisions that individuals make in structuring their lives. Public law is concerned with providing public goods—broadly defined—that cannot be adequately supplied by private ordering. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, various schools of thought derived from utilitarianism have assimilated both private and public rights to the same general criterion of aggregate welfare analysis. This has left judges with no clear conception of the distinction between private and public law. Another problematic feature of modern legal thought is a curious inversion in which scholars who focus on fields of private law have turned increasingly to law and economics, one of the derivatives of utilitarianism, whereas scholars who concern themselves with public law are increasingly drawn to new versions of natural rights thinking, in the form of universal human rights.

Corruption and Integration – Does the Expansion of the European Union Represent a Risk Factor?

2004 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 301-320
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Hetzer
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Member States ◽  
Historical Significance ◽  
Success Stories ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Administrative Structures ◽  
Second World

AbstractThe imminent entry of ten countries into the European Union is one of the greatest success stories in the contemporary history of the continent. Following the devastation of the Second World War and the political and economic paralysis during the ‘Cold War’ period the future holds promise of development opportunities of historical significance for twenty-five Member States. It must not be overlooked, however, that, due to the still prevalent differences in living standards, in income ratios and in administrative structures, the process of economic approximation is also not without risks. Among these is the tendency towards corruption. The expansion of the European Union can only succeed economically and politically if the dangers associated with corruption are minimized by far-sighted legislation and consistent implementation measures throughout Europe. This is true not only with respect to the new Member States.

La citoyenneté et la construction de l'Europe : discussions théoriques

Res Publica ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 36 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 361-380
Author(s):  
Paul Magnette
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The European Union ◽  
World War ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
European Citizenship ◽  
History Of ◽  
The One ◽  
Second World

This paper examines the evolving ideological content of the concept of citizenship and particularly the challenges it faces as a consequence of the building of the European Union. From an epistemological point of view it is first argued that citizenship may be described as a dual concept: it is both a legal institution composed of the rights of the citizen as they are fixed at a certain moment of its history, and a normative ideal which embodies their political aspirations. As a result of this dual nature, citizenship is an essentially dynamicnotion, which is permanently evolving between a state of balance and change.  The history of this concept in contemporary political thought shows that, from the end of the second World War it had raised a synthesis of democratic, liberal and socialist values on the one hand, and that it was historically and logically bound to the Nation-State on the other hand. This double synthesis now seems to be contested, as the themes of the "crisis of the Nation State" and"crisis of the Welfare state" do indicate. The last part of this paper grapples with recent theoretical proposals of new forms of european citizenship, and argues that the concept of citizenship could be renovated and take its challenges into consideration by insisting on the duties and the procedures it contains.

scholarly journals Constituent power and civil disobedience: Beyond the nation-state?

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E Scheuerman
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Conscientious Objection ◽  
Radical Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Constitutional Politics ◽  
Proper Interpretation

Radical democratic political theorists have used the concept of constituent power to sketch ambitious models of radical democracy, while many legal scholars deploy it to make sense of the political and legal dynamics of constitutional politics. Its growing popularity notwithstanding, I argue that the concept tends to impede a proper interpretation of civil disobedience, conceived as nonviolent, politically motivated lawbreaking evincing basic respect for law. Contemporary theorists who employ it cannot distinguish between civil disobedience and other related, yet ultimately different, modes of political illegality (e.g. conscientious objection, resistance, revolution). The essay also examines Jürgen Habermas’ recent contributions to a theory of mixed or dualistic (postnational) constituent power, conceding that Habermas avoids many theoretical and political ills plaguing competing radical democratic theoretical retrievals. Nonetheless, Habermas’ attempt to salvage the idea of constituent power as part of his reformist agenda for the European Union not only breaks with his earlier understandable skepticism about the idea but also risks trimming the admirably ambitious sails of his radical democratic interpretation of civil disobedience.

scholarly journals Between intergovernmental relations and paradiplomacy: Wales and the Brexit of the regions

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 647-662 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jo Hunt ◽  
Rachel Minto
Keyword(s):  
Northern Ireland ◽  
Intergovernmental Relations ◽  
State Sovereignty ◽  
Nation State ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Awareness Raising ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Regional Interests ◽  
Domestic Level

The United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the European Union (EU) is an assertion of UK nation-state sovereignty. Notwithstanding this state-centrism, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have distinct interests to protect as part of the Brexit negotiations. This article explores how the interests of one regional case, Wales, were accommodated in the pre-negotiation phase, at a domestic level—through intergovernmental structures—and an EU level through paradiplomacy. We explore the structures for sub-state influence, Wales’ engagement with these structures and what has informed its approach. We argue that Wales’ behaviour reflects its positioning as a ‘Good Unionist’ and a ‘Good European’. Despite the weakness of intra-UK structures, Wales has preferred to pursue policy influence at a UK (not an EU) level. In Brussels, regional interests inform the context for Brexit. Here, Wales has focused on awareness-raising, highlighting that the UK Government does not command the ‘monopoly on perspectives’ towards Brexit in the United Kingdom.

scholarly journals The Necessity of Regional Economic Integration: a Lesson for South Asia?

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 136
Author(s):  
Md. Rajin Makhdum Khan ◽  
Faizah Imam
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Economic Integration ◽  
Regional Cooperation ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Regional Economic Integration ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The South ◽  
Regional Economic ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Domestic Economies

ASEAN and the European Union have showed this world the privileges regional economic integration provides the states. Although Greece and Italy might be the torchbearers of criticism against regional cooperation and integration, these two organizations tend to be some prime examples of necessity of regional economic integration. This dissertation thus focuses on the privileges and advantages that regional economic integration system and organizations deliver to the states aligned within. With the possible and crucial criticisms on mind, the discussion moves forward analyzing if this system is making the countries perform better economically and advance towards domestic development. The dissertation further intends to find out why the South Asian nations might need similar kind of cooperation and why these countries should act more sensible to make the economic integration possible. While remarking the recommendations, the discussion also draws the barriers and the problems that this region might face in order to integrate their economies or enhance their trades. The core argument of this dissertation therefore lies in analyzing the importance of regional economic integration and liberal economics in this modern world and if the South Asian countries need economic integration to develop their domestic economies. The recommendations are to provide the possible ways to run the process and the drawbacks portion mentions the difficulties and barriers to be faced whilst all of these countries’ ongoing strict policies. The argument tries to find out the significance of liberal economics and tribulation of realism in the contemporary world.

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