After Europe by Ivan Krastev

Author:Ivan Krastev
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Intergovernmental Organizations, European, World, Political Science, General, HIS010000 History / Europe / General, Geopolitics, International Relations, Globalization
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2017-06-05T00:45:33.540000+00:00

This is how pro-EU Europeans feel today.

In twentieth-century Europe, nondemocratic empires disintegrated under democratic pressure brought to bear by their own subjects. Democrats were the ones who destroyed empires; liberals sought to save and reform them. In 1848, liberals and nationalists were allies within the Habsburg Empire, united by their shared opposition to the authoritarian (but not ethnically specific) center. By 1918, they had become each other’s sworn enemies. In 1848, both democrats (most of whom were nationalists as well) and liberals insisted that the people should decide. In 1918, liberals were nervous about the prospect of popular democracy while democrats loathed the idea of being governed by unelected liberal elites. The clash between cosmopolitan liberals and national-minded democrats ended with victory for the nationalists and the death of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The European Union, unlike the Habsburg Monarchy, is a “democratic empire,” a voluntary quasi-federation of democratic states in which citizens’ rights and freedoms are guaranteed and that only democracies may join. Despite this difference, the democracy question is once again at the heart of Europe’s troubles. If in the Habsburg case the masses were enchanted with democracy, in today’s EU they are stricken with disillusionment. The general mood in Europe these days can be summed up as follows: “One of the reasons many people are skeptical about democracy is because they’re right to be.” The 2012 “Future of Europe” survey indicated that only a third of Europeans believe their vote counts at the EU level, and a paltry 18 percent of Italians and 15 percent of Greeks believe that their votes count even in their own country.2

According to a recent survey, the paradoxical effect of the global spread of democracy in the last fifty years is that citizens, in a number of supposedly consolidated democracies in North America and western Europe, have grown more critical of their political leaders.3 But that’s not all. They have also become more cynical about the value of democracy as a political system, less hopeful that anything they do might influence public policy, and more willing to express support for authoritarian alternatives. The study also shows that “younger generations are less committed to the importance of democracy” and that they are “less likely to be politically engaged.”4

From today’s uncompromising vantage point, a political union capable of backing the euro with a common fiscal policy cannot be accomplished as long as EU member states remain fully democratic. Their citizens will just not support it. Yet the breakup of the common currency could possibly lead to the fragmentation of the union, with one of the end results being a likely rise of authoritarianism on the EU’s periphery. Unlike in any earlier period, the objectives of an “ever closer union” and “deeper democracy” are at odds with one another.

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