*** BEN WELLINGS: English Nationalism and Euroscepticism. Losing the Peace. Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, Postfach 350, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). British Identities Since 1707 series, No. 1. 2012, 285 pp, €41-10. ISBN 978-3-0343-0204-3.
In a commentary in Issue 10548 of this newsletter (8 February 2012), Ferdinando Riccardi quoted French federalist Jean-Guy Giraud's comments that one must not confuse a country's historic views with the ideas of the leaders who hold the reins of power sfor a while, 'except perhaps in the case of the United Kingdom.' This remarkable book by Ben Wellings, an Australian scientist, tends to confirm Giraud's comments because he points out that the United Kingdom, or England at least, is definitely in a category of its own on the European stage!
After studying at the Universities of Sussex, Nantes and Edinburgh, Ben Wellings is now head of European studies at the Australia National University in Canberra. Throughout his career and his natural proximity to the United Kingdom, which makes him a citizen of the Commonwealth, he has acquired exactly what he needed to dissect British society without being accused of bias. His overall picture is edifying! In seven enlightening chapters, he shows how 'an English nationalism (which was and is) populist, conservative and opposed to European integration' developed. He starts by knocking on the head the idea that there is no such thing as English nationalism because nobody in the English political world acts like a nationalist (unlike the Scottish nationalists and their constant demand for independence). English nationalism was able to be hidden for many a long year because both London and the English held a dominant role in the United Kingdom and the Empire. Three elements, however, have combined to force it out into the open - all three elements connected with Europe. The first were the calls in the 1960s to join the European Economic Community, which 'occasioned a profound break with the Commonwealth,' relegating it to second-class citizenship and depriving the English of their imperial advantages. Secondly, the debates about joining Europe awakened a debate about British sovereignty and Westminster's prerogatives. Paradoxically, it was 'to save Parliament's sovereignty' that sorcerer's apprentices like Enoch Powell decided in the mid-1970s to have 'recourse to popular sovereignty' in the form of a referendum, thus giving the impression that the very future of the United Kingdom was at stake in the face of a threat called 'Europe' and therefore 'only “the People” should decide.' 'This was a vital foundation of contemporary English nationalism since it set the populist tone of debate about European integration,' comments the author, and nobody on the continental side of the English Channel would disagree with him. The third element was Maggie Thatcher coming to power and her ultra-liberal ideas, which clashed in the 1980s with the idea of a 'Social Europe' heralded by European Commission president Jacques Delors, along with the apparently unstoppable move towards 'ever closer union.' On top of this, there were declarations of love for Europe by Scottish and Welsh nationalists, which all goes to make a cup overflowing with bitterness that would encourage English nationalists to reveal themselves through their deep aversion to the European Union.
Over time, these elements encouraged ever more English people and politicians to believe that Britain was “in Europe, but not of it,” a feeling rooted in a very different interpretation of history than on the other side of the Channel. Most people on the Continent believe that World War Two was a tragic catastrophe caused by nationalist trends and feel that 'a united Europe had somehow transcended conflict itself.' There are no such ideas on the other side of the Channel, where 'the post-war period was seen as a time of victory and decline.' Clearly, Ben Wellings explains, justifying the above-mentioned reservations of Jean-Guy Giraud, many of the English believe that 'European integration became a symbol of national decline and diminished sovereignty, and produced a resentful nationalism in due course.' One wonders whether such a diagnosis could be made by a scientist from a European scientist without being shouted down in England. The answer is probably not and therefore one should be extremely grateful to Ben Wellings for calling a spade a scientific spade. We thoroughly recommend this book to anyone likely to have connections in the coming months with the country that likes to describe itself as the EU's best enemy. May they draw the right conclusions!
Michel Theys
*** JORIS GIJSENBERGH, SASKIA HOLLANDER, TIM HOUWEN, WIM DE JONG (Eds.): Creative Crises of Democracy. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (1 av. Maurice, B-1050 Brussels. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). Philosophy & Politics" series, No. 23. 2012, 444 pp, €48-50. ISBN 978-90-5201-797-6.
Bringing together no fewer than twenty Dutch, British, Austrian and Swedish historians, philosophers and political scientists, this book invites readers to consider the positive side of the crises that have hit democracy at various times since its creation back in Ancient Greece. During the crises of democracy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, what areas of creativity arose in a bid to get over the difficult times? How does democracy adapt itself in periods of crisis? 'How does the notion of a democratic crisis affect political reality and vice versa?' These questions run throughout the book. After proving that 'crisis is an inherent characteristic of democracy,' the authors examine how populists and others take advantage of 'crisis discourses,' whether genuine or simply claimed, before going on to study examples of 'democratic creativity' from the recent past of Sweden, the Netherlands and Belgium, and also through the phenomenon that would be called citizen politics today. The final part of the book examines the creativity being expressed in the current crisis. Peter Bal of Radboud University looks at the 'the consequences of globalization for the democratic public sphere in terms of legitimacy and efficacy,' while Stijn van Kessel of Sussex University looks at Dutch and Polish case studies to examine the way 'forms and perceptions of populism vary widely among the old and new polities of the European Union. Saskia Hollander and Monique Leyenaar, both of Radboud University, show that there is not a trend at EU level to make use of direct democracy, despite the fact that there is much talk of referendums in political and societal debate. Finally, David Hugh-Jones of Essex University examines what motivates politicians when they institutionalise forms of direct democracy - like the European Citizens' Initiative - which could and should act against them.
(PBo)
*** TAUEL HARPER: Democracy in the Age of New Media. The Politics of the Spectacle. Peter Lang (see above). 2011, 179 pp, €22-55. ISBN 978-1-4331-0910-2.
Following on from a doctoral thesis, this book looks at challenges to democracy of the type so far symbolically incarnated most extensively by Silvio Berlusconi. Lecturer in communication studies at the University of Western Australia, the author starts by describing theories used to understand and criticise the attacks on modern democracy, which is 'failing in its duty to cater to the sovereignty of individuals,' theories ranging from Hannah Arendt to Jurgen Habermas. In the second part of the book, Tauel Harper shows how changes in the public arena and new types of communication in the digital age have created 'a new type of individual, homo spectaculum,' and hence a new type of public engagement as our contemporaries themselves become actors in a spectacle. The author shows that 'what is assumed to be public in the age of the spectacle is actually private space operating as public space.' Entitled 'Spectacular Revolution,' in the final part of the book, the author describes how homo spectaculum interacts with representative democracy, illustrating some of the potential consequences of this. He points out that the 'expressive power' of contemporary citizens is wholly incompatible with a political system based on representative democracy. He argues that this incompatibility cam be seen in 'systemic crises such as terrorism and economic collapse.' The book ends with suggestions of how the worst case scenario can be averted.
(MT)
*** ANA MAR FERNÁNDEZ PASARÍN, MICHEL MANGENOT (Eds.): Présider l'Union européenne. Présidence(s) du Conseil et système de gouvernement. L'Harmattan (5-7 rue de l'Ecole-Polytechnique, F-75005 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 40467914 - Fax: 43298620 - email: diffusion.harmattan@wanadoo.fr - Internet: http://www.librairieharmattan.com ). "Politique européenne" series, No. 35. 2011, 216 pp, €22. Annual subscription: €36-50 (France), €41-20 (outside France). ISBN 978-2-296-56794-8.
This issue of a review created by a European Studies Centre at a politics faculty in Paris, chaired by a scientific readers' committee, is wholly devoted to the presidents and presidencies of Europe, be it the presidency of the Council of Ministers/'Council de ministres' (as it used to be called in the days of the European Coal and Steel Community (Michel Mangenot explains that the people who drew up the Paris Treaty devised the term in order to avoid over-nationalist, over-State-like wording), the presidency of the 'Council des ministres' as it has been called since the Rome Treaties, and the European Council (term used to denote the meeting of EU heads of state). In the opening essay on the sociology of an EU institution, Michel Mangenot, senior lecturer in politics at Strasbourg University and member of the 'Groupe de Sociologie Politique Européenne,' considers the presidency as an institution in and of itself and invites readers to view it as a political system or mode of governance. He examines the presidency in the light of the system of rotation (where he shows that a presidency's success or failure is not correlated to thes political size of the country exercising the presidency, as the Belgian and Luxembourg presidencies demonstrate so well), the time during which the presidency falls (presidencies face the challenge of getting their pawns in place so that an issue it wants to deal with comes up during its six-month term of office), the incarnation of power, the delegation of power and, above all, delegation of the role of chairing meetings since this 'scissiparity' has multiplied in recent years with the chairing of the European Council, the Foreign Affairs Council, the eurozone summits and Eurogroup meetings. He puts forward and argues his second key idea, that the current phenomenon of demultiplying the presidency tends to corroborate the hypothesis of the denationalisation of the presidency and, consequently, it being rendered more European. He shows that from this viewpoint, it is for the General Secretariat of the Council, which has formally become the main department of Herman Van Rompuy, to ensure the coherence of the whole, which means it needs to find itself in the new centre of gravity of European power. Using the Christian metaphor of the Trinity, if the European Council is the Father, explains Mangenot very neatly, then the Council of the European Union is the Son and the General Secretariat of the Council is the Holy Ghost. Other essays explain how EU governance in the form of the presidency operates. For example, Ana Mar Fernández Pasarín of the Autonomous University of Barcelona explains that the gradual Europeanising of the presidency is part of a logical of institutional cooperation with the European Commission, while Véronique Charléty of the 'Ecole Nationale d'Administration in Paris opens the toolbox needed to prepare for a 'good' presidency.
(MT)
*** LOUIS LE HARDY DE BEAULIEU: L'Union européenne. Introduction à l'étude de l'ordre juridique et des institutions de l'Union. Presses universitaires de Namur (13 Rempart de la Vierge, B-5000 Namur. Tel: (32-81) 724884 - Fax: 724912 - email: pun@fundp.ac.be - Internet: http://www.pun.be ). 'Travaux de la Faculté de droit de Namur' series, No. 22. 2011, 302 pp, €25. ISBN 978-2-87037-722-2.
The revised and augmented third edition of this introduction to the European Union's legal system provides a structured, pedagogical approach to the legal system and the EU institutions, ranging from its origins to the salient points of the institutional environment as fine-tuned by the Lisbon Treaty. Running throughout this book, which will be very useful for students, is the question of how the best of the European construction can be retained while correcting its weaknesses. A highly topical subject!
(PBo)
*** MARIANNE DONY: Droit de l'Union européenne. Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles (26 av. Paul Héger, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 6503799 - Fax: 6503794 - email: editions@ulb.ac.be - Internet: http://www.editions-universite-bruxelles.be/ ). "UBlire" series, No. 2. 2012, 792 pp, €13-50. ISBN 978-2-8004-1517-8.
This highly educational, clear and synthesising book is in its fourth edition and has been revised and added to in order to take account of the most recent developments in EU law. It allows readers to understand the salient facts about the European Union's institutional set-up and its legal system. Professor at the 'Université Libre de Bruxelles' and head of its European Studies Institute, Marianne Dony of course describes the main EU policies in a highly reliable and scientific manner.
(MT)