Read Online The European Dream by Jeremy Rifkin - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jeremy Rifkin
Ads: Link
the Pope and (in Germany and Italy) the Holy Roman Emperor above.” 15 Bull noted that “all authority in mediaeval Christendom was thought to derive ultimately from God.” 16 He suggested that
if modern states were to come to share their authority over their citizens, and their ability to command their loyalties, on the one hand with regional and world authorities, and on the other hand with substate or sub-national authorities, to such an extent that the concept of sovereignty ceased to be applicable, then a neo-mediaeval form of universal political order might be said to have emerged. 17
Bull used his own country as a model. He wondered what would happen if the United Kingdom had to share its authority with the authority of Wales, Wessex, and Scotland at a subnational level, as well as with authority in Brussels and world bodies such as the United Nations in New York “to such an extent that the notion of its supremacy over the territory and people of the United Kingdom had no force.” 18 Bull believed that reconfiguring the political world into “a structure of overlapping authorities and crisscrossing loyalties that hold all peoples together in a universal society” 19 would be far superior either to the existing system of competing sovereign states with their propensity to war or to the prospect of a single world government whose monopoly over the means of coercion and violence would heighten repression and oppression on a grand scale. 20 Bull’s thesis proved to be remarkably prescient.
What, then, is the EU? Sociologist Ulrich Beck says it is a “negotiation state, which arranges stages and conversations and directs the show.” 21 The EU, then, is less a place than a process. While it maintains many of the fixed physical trappings of a state—an EU passport, a flag, a head-quarters—its genius is its indeterminacy. Unlike the traditional nation-state, whose purpose is to integrate, assimilate, and unify the diverse interests inside its borders, the EU has no such mission. To the contrary, its role is just the opposite of what nation-states do. The EU’s political cachet is bound up in facilitating and regulating a competing flow of divergent activities and interests.
The EU may appear to some as weak and vacillating and without sufficient coercive authority—the ability to tax and police. To others, however, it is the very model of a new kind of governing institution, suited to processing the multiple interests that proliferate and interconnect across every imaginable boundary in a globalized environment. Political scientist Tim Luke views the EU as
a more dynamic, more interconnected, yet more fragmented and fluid milieu for enacting authority and managing flows of influence from multiple sources, than can be contained by the Euclidean geometry and identity spaces of territorialized or super-territorialized modernity. 22
Despite its ephemeral nature, the EU packs a wallop. Its statutes and directives have untold impacts on its member countries. The U.K., for example, estimates that over 80 percent of the environmental legislation governing its citizenry comes from directives issued by the European Environmental Agency. 23 Other EU statutes and directives governing such things as consumer product safety, drug testing, medical protocols, financial services, and competition, all flow from Brussels to the states. But the important thing to remember is that the regulatory decisions made in Brussels are themselves the result of a polycentric process of negotiation, compromise, and consensus, involving many parties at the regional, national, transnational, and global levels.
The whole process ultimately works because the people of Europe want “problems without frontiers” to be addressed by the whole European community. The questions of whether or not to introduce genetically modified (GM) food crops and label GM food products, develop guidelines for quarantining cattle to prevent the transmission of
if modern states were to come to share their authority over their citizens, and their ability to command their loyalties, on the one hand with regional and world authorities, and on the other hand with substate or sub-national authorities, to such an extent that the concept of sovereignty ceased to be applicable, then a neo-mediaeval form of universal political order might be said to have emerged. 17
Bull used his own country as a model. He wondered what would happen if the United Kingdom had to share its authority with the authority of Wales, Wessex, and Scotland at a subnational level, as well as with authority in Brussels and world bodies such as the United Nations in New York “to such an extent that the notion of its supremacy over the territory and people of the United Kingdom had no force.” 18 Bull believed that reconfiguring the political world into “a structure of overlapping authorities and crisscrossing loyalties that hold all peoples together in a universal society” 19 would be far superior either to the existing system of competing sovereign states with their propensity to war or to the prospect of a single world government whose monopoly over the means of coercion and violence would heighten repression and oppression on a grand scale. 20 Bull’s thesis proved to be remarkably prescient.
What, then, is the EU? Sociologist Ulrich Beck says it is a “negotiation state, which arranges stages and conversations and directs the show.” 21 The EU, then, is less a place than a process. While it maintains many of the fixed physical trappings of a state—an EU passport, a flag, a head-quarters—its genius is its indeterminacy. Unlike the traditional nation-state, whose purpose is to integrate, assimilate, and unify the diverse interests inside its borders, the EU has no such mission. To the contrary, its role is just the opposite of what nation-states do. The EU’s political cachet is bound up in facilitating and regulating a competing flow of divergent activities and interests.
The EU may appear to some as weak and vacillating and without sufficient coercive authority—the ability to tax and police. To others, however, it is the very model of a new kind of governing institution, suited to processing the multiple interests that proliferate and interconnect across every imaginable boundary in a globalized environment. Political scientist Tim Luke views the EU as
a more dynamic, more interconnected, yet more fragmented and fluid milieu for enacting authority and managing flows of influence from multiple sources, than can be contained by the Euclidean geometry and identity spaces of territorialized or super-territorialized modernity. 22
Despite its ephemeral nature, the EU packs a wallop. Its statutes and directives have untold impacts on its member countries. The U.K., for example, estimates that over 80 percent of the environmental legislation governing its citizenry comes from directives issued by the European Environmental Agency. 23 Other EU statutes and directives governing such things as consumer product safety, drug testing, medical protocols, financial services, and competition, all flow from Brussels to the states. But the important thing to remember is that the regulatory decisions made in Brussels are themselves the result of a polycentric process of negotiation, compromise, and consensus, involving many parties at the regional, national, transnational, and global levels.
The whole process ultimately works because the people of Europe want “problems without frontiers” to be addressed by the whole European community. The questions of whether or not to introduce genetically modified (GM) food crops and label GM food products, develop guidelines for quarantining cattle to prevent the transmission of
Similar Books
