States Europe Research Articles

EU Citizenship for a European Republic of the Free and Equals or of States

ABSTRACT This article provides a critical comment on chapter five of Richard Bellamy’s A Republican Europe of States. The chapter focuses on EU citizenship as a status conferring to EU citizens certain entitlements to social and political rights when they reside in a member state other than their own. The chapter rejects the view that EU citizenship should entail equal access to social and political rights and provides an argument as to why EU citizenship cannot but consist of a more restricted bundle of social and political rights than national citizenship. I question both the scope and necessity of these restrictions on EU citizens’ equal access to social and political rights, as well as whether this picture of EU citizenship is consistent with the earlier theoretical chapters of the book.

The European Union and diminished state sovereignty

ABSTRACT In A Republican Europe of States, Richard Bellamy embraces neither the anti-internationalism of the sovereign statist, not the unbounded trust in international institutions of the European federalists. He proposes instead a model for the European union he calls ‘republican intergovernmentalism.’ This model seeks to preserve internal state sovereignty while arguing that mutually agreed rules for regulating external sovereignty are necessary and beneficial. I argue instead that creating a supranational structure like the European Union cannot be accomplished without a reduction in the internal sovereign authority of member states. This a potentially legitimate reduction of sovereign authority for states, but a reduction nonetheless. The most important consequence of the conceptual claim that state sovereignty is diminished is that the delegation of authority to supranational institutions which has this cost ought to be publicly discussed and negotiated at the national level in member states to avoid misunderstandings and backlash against the legitimate authority of the EU.

A Republican Europe of States: synopsis and introduction to the symposium

ABSTRACT This introduction offers a synopsis of the book, A Republican Europe of States, outlining its main arguments, followed by an overview of the symposium.

Demoicracy and domination in a G2 world

ABSTRACT Richard Bellamy’s new book A Republican Europe of States represents one of the strongest recent defenses of the so-called demoicratic approach to the European Union. This paper situates Bellamy’s argument in the broader normative architecture of European Studies. It then raises some skeptical objections about the viability of a European demoicracy in a G2 world – a world where the United States and China are the dominant powers. Lurking behind these skeptical objections is the worry that the EU in its current form lacks the power to protect its own political and economic interests, and Bellamy’s demoicratic reforms would simply make this situation worse.

Republicanism, EU democracy and differentiated (dis-)integration

Few debates in political theory are challenged as much by the constant change of their empirical subject as those about democracy in the European Union (EU). With A Republican Europe of States, Richard Bellamy responds to the EU’s post-Lisbon era, which has been characterized by the euro crisis, conflicts over migration, the rise of Euroscepticism and Brexit. Keeping an eye on these contextual conditions and the related legal and political transformations, he has developed a general theory of international democracy aimed at securing non-domination between peoples and between citizens and their representatives at the international level, and elaborated its implications for the EU. The result is a distinctive version of demoi-cracy, whose firm centring on the nation-state as the natural locus of democracy is likely to be controversially discussed. In this article, I raise some critical considerations regarding the design of demoi-cratic institutions, the adequate understanding of EU citizenship and the normative credentials of differentiated (dis-)integration.

La crisis del Estado-Nación en el malestar de Europa

En este trabajo se abordan algunos de los problemas a los que hoy día se enfrenta la democracia en Europa, especialmente aquellos relacionados con el uso del concepto Estado- nación. Es cierto que este concepto se usó a fin de fundamentar la emergencia de los Estados europeos modernos. Sin embargo, el mismo concepto ha permitido ahora que se adopte un camino diferente hasta el extremo de reclamar una Europa distinta, la Europa de las naciones, que trata de ocupar el lugar de la antigua Europa de los Estados. Ambas alternativas, tanto la de los tradicionales Estados-nación, como la nueva de las naciones que reclaman su propio Estado, poseen el mismo fundamento filosófico-político, el concepto de Estado-nación. En este texto se reflexiona sobre ese concepto con el fin de descubrir la razón de su ambigüedad. A fin de conseguirlo, habremos de entender el mecanismo de su funcionamiento, lo que nos permitirá subrayar que el concepto de Estado-nación se basa en una doble universalidad.

Spanning the River

Crisis of '65–'66, Europe's first constitutional crisis – transition to majority – Hallstein's convictions and comportment – De Gaulle's Europe of States – Commission agricultural package – Debate in the Council 28–30 June 1965 – Hallstein overplays his hand – De Gaulle seeks out a confrontation with the Five – Founding treaty not to be changed – De Gaulle faces farmers – Crisis ends in a draw – Interpretations of outcome – Europe stronger for it – Consecration of founding pact – Disdain for the compromise – Interest, time, authority

"Quo vadis", Europa? Uma pergunta que não quer calar

Dois temas básicos são discutidos e examinados neste trabalho: a incorporação de dez novos membros aos quadros da União Européia e a constitucionalização de sua estrutura jurídico-institucional. Para tanto, proponho-me, de um lado, a reconstituir os passos político-institucionais que cobrem o período que vai de uma Europa do pós-guerra, fragmentada e enfraquecida, a uma Europa pós-Guerra Fria, pronta para se estender a todo o continente, processo que se abre em maio de 2004 com a incorporação de dez Estados vindos do Leste Europeu; de outro, a reproduzir o debate institucional entre uma Europa federal e uma Europa de Estados, o qual levou a que, em junho de 2003, fosse apresentado ao Conselho Europeu reunido em Salônica o projeto do novo Tratado da União e, em dezembro de 2003, fosse discutido, na Cúpula de Chefes de Estado da UE, reunida em Bruxelas, o texto da primeira Constituição para a Europa.

Is the United States Europe's Other? Is Europe the United States' Other? Yes and no

Is the United States Europe's Other? Is Europe the United States' Other? Yes and no

The Shifting Stage of Politics: New Medieval and Postmodern Territorialities?

With intensified globalization, and more specifically European integration, the ground is shifting under established political institutions, practices, and concepts. The European Union (EU), however, is usually conceived in traditional ‘realist’ or ‘functionalist’ terms which obscure the possibility that distinctly new political forms arc emerging; or, alternatively, some self-styled ‘postmodernists’ speculate implausably about a ‘Europe of the regions’ replacing the ‘Europe of states’. In contrast, I argue for ‘new medieval’ and ‘postmodern’ conceptualizations of territoriality and sovereignty, which recognize that geographic space is becoming more complex and ‘relative’: Conventional political concepts based on ‘absolute’ space are increasingly problematic for understanding the political complexities of contemporary globalization. Here ‘postmodernity’ may mean something different from what some postmodernists think it means: not, for instance, a federalized ‘United States of Europe’ where regions and regionalism replace nations and nationalism, nor simply an intergovernmental arrangement of sovereign states, but something quite distinct—‘arrested federalization’ and an ‘intermediate’ arrangement distinct in its own right rather than ‘transitional’. In this paper I sketch transformations of sovereignty from ‘medieval to modern’, and from the ‘modern’ to the allegedly ‘postmodern’. I focus on the ‘unbundling’ of territorial sovereignty, which has reputedly gone furthest in the EU. However, even here the process is partial and selective, with globalization affecting different state activities unevenly. Contemporary configurations of political space are a complex mixture of new and old forms, the latter continuing to exist rather than being tidily removed to clear the ground for new politics. The EU itself is still territorial, and in many respects traditional conceptions of sovereignty remain dominant, whether exercised by the member states or by the EU as a whole. Moreover there are problems both with the elusive notion of postmodern, and with the historical analogies of new medievalism. Nevertheless, despite problems and qualifications, these concepts are useful for exploring the possibility of radical transformations, not just with respect to the ‘actors’ of global and local politics, but to the space–time of the ‘stage’ on which they operate.

A Modest Request for Reforms

‘Europe is made up of individuals, not governments. We have gathered here so that the message of the Europe of writers might be heard, besides that of the Europe of states’