European Integration as Regional Variant of Globalization: The Challenges to National Democracy

Abstract

Globalization has often been characterized as generating tremendous change for the nation-state, both economically and institutionally. On this score, European integration, as a regional variant of globalization, has produced much more dramatic change for members of the European Union than globalization has for any advanced industrialized nations, including EU member-states. This is not only because the EU has created a liberalized regional economic zone that rivals any other globalized regional or national economies but also because the development of the European Union as a supranational set of institutions far outdistances any found at the global level. With the economic liberalization attendant upon European integration, EU member-states’ governments have given up much more national autonomy in decision-making than countries subject only to the forces of globalization. In exchange, however, they have also gained a kind of shared supranational authority that goes way beyond anything experienced by countries subject to globalization alone. As a regional variant of globalization, therefore, the experience of the EU can tell us much about the potential challenges for advanced industrialized democracies worldwide if and when global institutions reach the level of maturity of EU ones.