*** The Federalist Debate. Papers on Federalism in Europe and the World. Einstein Center for International Studies (26 via Schina, I-10144 Torino. Tel/Fax: (+39-011) 4732843 - Email: info@centroeinstein.it - Internet: http://www.federalist-debate.org ). 2015, No. 3, 64 pp. Annual subscription: €15, $18.
This is not really a time for utopias, even if they carry hope, but is more a time for drawing in around the parish, falling in behind the shelter of new national walls that are supposed to be protective, the rehabilitation of identity States erroneously hidden by the supporters of an ever more ambitious European integration. This is a time therefore for an awakening of nationalisms, or at least the rebellion of ever greater fringes of national political elites against the invasion of the European project that is said to now be revealing to the world its ineffectiveness or even its pointlessness. In all countries of the European Union, populists and other Pharisees of national sovereignty have the wind in their sails; it is even rare to find someone who still dares to oppose and challenge their anachronistic visions of Europe, that is if their discordant ideas can find any vectors in a political and media universe in the pay of national masters, the only masters who count...
Against this distressing backdrop, some still make every effort to fight back, to view the world without national blinkers restricting their field of vision. The artisans of this review are people of this type. They even find in the adversity of the present day further reasons to claim the validity of their federalist credo. Against the stream of the prevailing simplisms and triumphant national pensées uniques, their analysis is unchallengably the work of people on the fringes. But does that make them stupid?
Evidently, many will no doubt mock the editorial that claims that 'migration can save Europe from decline' as the current flow of refugees could help it demographically, economically and politically. In one way, it could be argued that the simplism of some responds to the simplism of others. All the same, was Lucio Levi really wrong when he pointed out that the despair of refugees is huge enough to incite them to run 'the risk of rejection and even of death'? After all, let us not forget that it is women, children and men in flesh and blood that we are talking about here! Above all, is the patron of the review wrong when he accuses the European Union of not acting in the Mediterranean apart from setting up Frontex and, worse, being content in Schengen with no more than 'negative integration,' in other words having dismantled internal borders 'without at the same time constructing an external border placed under the control of a European Union police force'? European leaders admitting this would amount to making amends rather than shamefully dumping migration on the frontline countries of Greece and Italy. In the same spirit, are the various contributors to the 'Debate sans frontieres' column wrong when they write that the torments of the eurozone, and Greece in particular, are due above all to lack of integration? Roberto Palea says, for example, that the Union is nowadays organised 'like a confederation in which political choices are strongly influenced by the strongest country.' But wasn't the European Community invented precisely to ensure that the rule of the fittest would no longer be the best - and no longer lead to war?
The authors of other contributions point out that it is for this reason that the book took on these arguments as a matter of urgency. Andrew Duff explains, for example, that it is out of the question to comply with David Cameron's demand that the concept of an ever closer union that is the 'political end' of the Union should be adulterated, the United Kingdom not having the right to 'subvert the European project for everyone.' On the contrary, argues Josep Borrell, it is important to reinforce the Union's legitimacy by giving it its own resources that would allow it to move from being a 'limited, conditional solidarity among States to a solidarity among citizens.' The objective, explains this former Spanish president of the European Parliament, should be to 'set up the eurozone as a federation similar to the US model.' Jo Leinen gives details about the ideas of the European Parliament's Constitutional Affairs Committee on Europeanising the European electoral system ahead for the next European elections and beyond. Much will depend on national political parties, he explains. Without wanting to be overly pessimistic, is it crazy to argue that unfortunately, national political battles will crystalise out at this level for a long time yet until political parties at the European scale have gained total independence from national formations? Without a shadow of doubt, the Union will become a tangible reality for citizens when, politically, it ceases to be swallowed up by national political parties in line with their exclusively national interests. Stating this is simply an demonstration of realism!
Michel Theys
*** JAROSLAW SZYMANEK: Theory of Political Representation. Editions Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, P.O. Box 350, CH-2540 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - Email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Studies in Politics, Security and Society," No. 2. 2015, 221 pp, €47.95. ISBN 978-3-631-65714-0.
Representative democracy is not in the best of shape anywhere in the world. Why not? Is it possible that at the end of the day, in politics representation is nothing but an 'abstract idea' which 'finds its embodiment in the will of the representative rather than in the will of the represented' since the former would be nothing without the latter? And what is the 'representative' anyway: a body identified in some way - the people, the nation, citizens, the electorate - an individual, a conceptualised community (constituency or ethnical, professional, social, economic or regional group), a State or, these days, an supranational body? Moreover, 'to what extent is the representative bound by the will of the represented, and to what extent, if at all, does he have a free margin for action?' Another question touching on the very essence of representation, 'the will voiced via the representative body is formed only by aggregating the wills of the individual represented persons' or, on the contrary, is it a new sublimated or phantasized interpretation of what the represented might desire? And what is 'the general will or the will of the general public' anyway, or the will of the nation or the people for that matter? Aren't these simply 'rhetorical figure, a legal fiction aimed at dressing the system in the clothes of democracy' in order to legitimize it? So many major and intellectually disturbing questions are raised in these very rich pages. Professor at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Warsaw, Jaroslaw Szymanek provides scientifically chiselled answers and great rigour without claiming to have exhausted the subject, which he sees as fundamentally inexhaustible. His aim was simply to clarify the progress of research on this issue for more than two hundred years now, which leads him to demonstrate that representation is not the exclusive property of a political idea alone, but can fit into government systems in a number of different ways. The author also demonstrates that political parties are the necessary components of political representation, going on to explain that 'the multiplication of claims to representation' that is mostly the basis of the crisis affecting political representation these days, this mushrooming of demands also being, paradoxically, 'a sagacious riposte to the malfunction of the classical (parliamentary) mechanisms of representation'. The author writes that another way of getting out of the current representation crisis would be by implementing an 'ambitious project of supra-national representation which may in a way reinstate the genuine or original.' The fact that this is written by a Pole is significant in the current situation!
(MT)
*** Futuribles. L'anticipation au service de l'action. Futuribles Sarl (47 rue de Babylone, F-75007 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 53633770 - Fax 42226554 - Email: revue@futuribles.com - Internet: http://www.futuribles.com ). January-February 2016, No. 410, 135 pp, €22. Annual subscription: €115. ISBN 978-2-84387-423-9.
In this issue's editorial, the owner of this authoritative French future prospects review denounces the 'political vacuum' that characterises European countries and their Union. which seems more threatened than ever' in the current 'general climate of defiance of the institutions and their representatives,' with only far-right parties taking advantage of the contradictions and not very coherent action of the current leaders. 'Rehabilitating politics in its most noble functions could well be one of the most urgent tasks in years to come,' observes Hugues de Jouvenel, while Jean-François Drevet makes a severe judgment in his European notes on the refugee question, where 'the management of a common area in inter-governmentality is' yet again 'leading to impotence.' This former high-ranking European official bitterly rejects the expulsion of 'thousands of harmless sans-papiers' where States are proving incapable of 'taking action against potential terrorists'…
(MT)
*** YANNIS BALABANIDIS: Eurocommunisme. De la gauche communiste à la gauche radicale européenne. Editions Polis (33 rue Eolou, GR-10551 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3643382 - Fax: 3636501 - Email: info@polis-ed.gr - Internet: http://www.polis-ed.gr ). 2015, 618 pp, €22. ISBN 978-960-435-493-1.
Specialist in comparative politics and researcher at Pantheon University in Athens, Yannis Balabanidis looks in this book at the rise, fall and heritage of Eurocommunism. The study naturally focusses on the Communist Parties in Italy, France and Spain, but the 'homeland' Greek Communist Party is not overlooked. The author reviews the period from May 68 to shortly after the collapse of the Communist system in Eastern Europe. He says this was a key phenomenon for the development of the European left, its basic position being that Eurocommunism was a bold political project to devise a strategic guideline and sustainable coherence for the European Communist movement at the time of the final crisis of the Soviet example. Reconciling the 'party of struggle and the party of government' was the original political aim of the Eurocommunists, who wanted to reconcile aspects of revolutionary radicalism with pragmatic change, social transformation with liberal democracy and a pluralist society, through competitive and symbiotic relations with social democracy and the project of a political project at European level. The author says that Eurocommunism is a knot that connects the European Left's past with the present. Despite its historical defeat, it remains more than ever the symbolic and, of course, controversial identification of the post-Communist heritage inherited by the radical left in Europe today.
(AKa)
*** NIKOS KOTZIAS: Le patriotisme et la gauche. Editions Patakis (38 Panayi Tsaldari, GR-10437 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3650000 - Fax: 3811940 - Email: bookstore@patakis.gr - Internet: http://www.patakis.gr ). 'Sciences sociales et politiques' series. 2015, 208 pp, €9.70. ISBN: 978-960-166066-0.
In this book, the current foreign minister in the Tsipras government compromises with his position as professor of political theory at Piraeus University to define the meaning that he gives to patriotism and consider it from radical rational bases. The subject of patriotism and the left is particularly sensitive in Greece, a country what some describe as a 'debt colony' living under the diktats of Memorandums and international supervision. Patriotism cannot turn into nationalism, explains Nikos Kotzias, as the left see the latter as 'anti-patriotic.' After going back to the roots of the nation and nationalism, he subjects reactionary nationalism to rigorous criticism, seeing it as excluding the weakest from politics and being compulsorily coupled with very strong political allegiance to the West. In reality, nationalism, patriotism, internationalism and cosmopolitism are concepts that reflect a wide range of social studies and meanings, the choice of one or other or these concepts demonstrating how and by whom the content of the dominant values in a society is determined. The way the author sees it, patriotism signifies the political struggle to preserve and strengthen: a) people's social and democratic rights; and b) the country's rights and opportunities in the international system. It is an essential criterion for determining 'national interest' to be defended by foreign policy on behalf of a good understanding of democracy. He voices his conviction that the left has everything to win from fighting on the patriotic front, which will strengthen its chances of being able to draw up alliances and even, if necessary, a government of national unity.
(AKa)
*** YANNIS PAPADOGIANNIS: De la grande fête à la faillite: 2009-2015. La démagogie et les choix fatidiques. Editions Papadopoulos (9 Kapodistriou, GR-14452 Metamorphosi. Tel: (30-210) 2846074 - Fax 2817127 - Email: info@epbooks.gr - Internet: http://www.epbooks.gr ). 2015, 288 pp, €13.99. ISBN 978-960-569-528-6.
For many years, life in Greece seemed to flow peacefully, almost insouciantly. Then, all of a sudden, in 2009, a few years after the triumph of Greece joining the eurozone, the crisis arrived and it was brutal. And it wasn't any old crisis, is wasn't a simple economic crisis, but rather an unprecedented social and economic disaster. Why? What happened exactly? Why did the country find itself out of control? It is to these questions and many others that economist Yannis Papadogiannis, journalist on the economics team of Greek newspaper Kathimerini, provides answers in this book. He reviews and analyses seven years of denial, seven years of blinkered demagogy, instability and uncertainty that have led Greece to the threat of being humiliatingly expelled from monetary Europe. He thus reveals the foundations of the crisis and the blame that falls to political staff, particularly the various holders of leadership positions. From the statement by former prime minister George Papandreou in 2009 that the money is there, to the Memorandums that Alexis Tsipras claimed to have 'torn up' in 2015, the author provides a detailed analysis of the various stages undergone by the country in recent years and the attitudes taken by Greek political leaders.
(AKa)