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The Question of a European Union ‘Beyond the State’

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European Integration and the Problem of the State

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Abstract

Countless academics, intellectuals, journalists, and politicians of all ideological stripes have celebrated European integration as something novel, innovative, and progressive. In its ‘Fourth Lesson about the European Union,’ the EU’s website rehearses this familiar refrain: ‘The European Union is more than just a confederation of countries, but it is not a federal state. It is, in fact, a new type of structure that does not fall into any traditional legal category.’1 What is more, this ‘new type of structure’ that the reader learns about in their Fourth Lesson about the EU has been widely celebrated from almost all quarters and ideological persuasions. Cosmopolitan theorist David Held laments that the EU suffers from ‘something of an identity cri-sis’ despite ‘all its extraordinary innovation and progress.’2 If the EU could somehow find a remedy to its ‘identity crisis’ and ‘find its true self,’ the reader may infer, the future prospects for global life would rapidly start to look much brighter. Neo-Gramscian Robert W. Cox, contrasting the EU to bête-noire US hyperpuissance, approvingly claims that the EU, by a skillful blend of realpolitik and moral preference, ‘tend[s] to envisage a world political order … as the search for consensus and the elaboration of international law.’3

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Notes

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Sweden

    Stefan Borg (Research Fellow)

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  1. Stefan Borg
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© 2015 Stefan Borg

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Borg, S. (2015). The Question of a European Union ‘Beyond the State’. In: European Integration and the Problem of the State. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137409331_2

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