One Europe or several? Reflections inspired by an ESRC research programme

Citation

Ryser, J. (2003), "One Europe or several? Reflections inspired by an ESRC research programme", European Business Review, Vol. 15 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.2003.05415eab.004

One Europe or several? Reflections inspired by an ESRC research programme

Judith RyserJudith Ryser is the Director of CityScope Europe, London, UK.

Keywords: Political sociology, Europe, Economics research

AbstractJudith Ryser reflects on the issues raised by a recent research programme undertaken by the Economic and Social Research Council in London. The programme explores in detail the dynamics of social and economic, as well as political change in an enlarged European Union. It looks as well at the relationship of both overlap and contradiction between European integration and a wider "globalising" process.

Considering the UK's reluctance as regards Europe, spending £4 million on finding out how the dynamics of political and social change across Europe is affecting economic convergence and its contradictory moves towards inclusion and exclusion may appear enlightened if not extravagant. Analysing the social and economic repercussions of a relentlessly integrating pan-European market and its interplay with globalisation, or focusing on both internal and external security in Europe – especially after 11 September – may make sense for the government-funded Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Yet, why should it encourage researchers to study unruly European governance with its divergence and dual trend of centralisation and fragmentation, or deal with emerging European identities at the supra-national, national and local levels despite presumed immutable UK-US rapprochement?

The uptake of this ESRC programme[1] launched in 1998, resulting in 26 projects may owe much to the precarious conditions of researchers in the UK who far outnumber those eventually hired, notwithstanding their PhD tag. They have to compete for proposed themes: Europe in this round, social inclusion, cities and many others before, which feed academic social science research while responding to policy issues of the day. This enables intellectuals to push their knowledge into the policy arena, hoping to redress their low status in the UK. However, confined to books, academically-led exchanges and the vagaries of the Internet, their findings fail to enter the public debate. Very few of the well over 200 strong audience of the public dissemination event last March were without an academic title. This is regrettable as the research makes fascinating reading and could counteract the flabbergasting lack of, mis- and dis-information on the European Union (EU) peddled in the UK mass media.

Now let us turn to the concept of democratic Europe. It often occurs that representative democracy does not coincide with public opinion. The latest evidence is the popular stance against the war in Iraq. This does not mean that the EU suffers from democratic deficit, as constantly claimed by UK politicians. Far from it, it is restricted in other ways. According to Andrew Moravcsik of Harvard University (London School of Economics debate on the Convention on the Future of Europe, 20 February 2003), there are merits in the EU's limited government practice:

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  without leader;

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  constrained by national governments;

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  hemmed in by constitutional checks and balances; and

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  nearly devoid of taxation powers.

While his views may coincide with a North American perspective, the very question of this ESRC programme represents a UK idea of continental Europe, as opposed to how continental member states or the applicant countries perceive EU membership.

By definition, Europe is diverse, multi-cultural, multi-confessional, multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, so the idea of "one Europe" amounts to fiction. Yet, "several types of Europe" does not necessarily mean a fragmented, multiple tier or concentric Europe with decreasing amount of cohesion towards its outer reaches. The UK's reluctance to deal with the EU as such appears in the research themes which often reach "beyond the EU", encompassing EU applicant states, Russia, NATO, the wider Mediterranean and globalisation, which is by definition at the world scale. Granted that an inward looking "Fortress Europe" is undesirable, it makes sense nonetheless to examine the EU itself in its efforts to adopt a constitution and to enlarge its monetary union. These internal changes have an impact on both its links with the outside world and the relationship between existing EU member states.

The ESRC research focuses more on intergovernmental than European community cooperation, in other words on Europeanisation rather than "EU-isation". Yet, some projects address the EU "is-state". Based on quantitative empirical data, "How MEPs vote" finds little difference between national competitive parliaments and the workings of the European Parliament; thus the enlarged powers envisaged in the new EU constitution would increase its democratic accountability. Relying on subjective opinion research "A democratic audit of the institutions of the European Union" developed a survey methodology, which breaks down democratic deficiency and achievement into discrete attributes. "Legitimising regulation in the EU" argues that co-regulation and regulatory agencies should be confined to non-political issues and deal solely with technical standards and specialist information, thereby assuming political neutrality of technology. In a less utilitarian mode, the project on the internal evolution of the concept of Europe, "Rethinking nation-dtate identities in the new Europe: a cross-national study of school curricula and textbooks", finds that Europe is used to convey civic ideals and obligations while diversity ascertains cooperation between different peoples.

Accepting the primacy of economics, some projects on single market development and wider European economic integration acknowledge their social and political implications. For example the free movement of labour brings about problems of (im-) migration and equality and, in turn, of identity and discrimination. The project on "Borders, Migration and Labour Market Dynamics in a Changing Europe" proposes that legal and illegal migrants, similarly motivated, enhance employability both in the host and the home region. However, Eco (2002) reflects on the link between (im)migration and (in)tolerance, which becomes a moral issue when worldwide mobility blurs the boundaries between immigration subject to political containment and uncontrollable migration, which leads eventually to cultural fusion. Such reflections establish the intrinsic link between the objective study of economic questions and social-psychological consequences with implications for security, justice and home affairs which, in turn, raise issues of collective responsibility, accountability, governance and democracy. However, the research programme relegated critical speculative thought to philosophy and excluded it from the study of Europeanisation of relations between the state and society.

These examples show that the UK's historic position lies in the contradiction between the pursuit of constraint-free trade and the request of greater political control over the EU institutions, demanding subsidiarity and co-decision for national institutions. Its own subsidiarity deficit is rooted in the ultra vires principle of UK governance, reflected in the conflict with increasingly agitated regions and local communities which claim more say in both national and supra-national matters. There are two actions which could have brought even more valuable insights from this research: one to use findings on fellow European countries and citizens as a mirror function for critical introspection on UK institutions and their democratic deficit; the other to step out of the confrontational mode and examine alternative behavioural strategies towards acquiring respect by consensus building. Letting researchers from the continent provide their knowledge of these issues according to their own methodologies would have facilitated these actions and cross-culturally enriched such Europeanised knowledge.

Note1 ESRC "One Europe or Several" Programme, Web site: www.one-europe.ac.uk Palgrave publications One Europe or Several? Series, available at: www.palgrave.com

ReferenceEco, U. (2002), Five Moral Pieces, Vintage, London.