Secularism is usually thought to contain the project of self-deification, in which humans attack God’s authority in order to take his place, freed from all constraints. Julie E. Cooper overturns this conception through an incisive analysis of the early modern justifications for secular politics. While she agrees that secularism is a means of empowerment, she argues that we have misunderstood the sources of secular empowerment and the kinds of strength to which it aspires. Contemporary understandings of secularism, Cooper contends, have (...) been shaped by a limited understanding of it as a shift from vulnerability to power. But the works of the foundational thinkers of secularism tell a different story. Analyzing the writings of Hobbes, Spinoza, and Rousseau at the moment of secularity’s inception, she shows that all three understood that acknowledging one’s limitations was a condition of successful self-rule. And while all three invited humans to collectively build and sustain a political world, their invitations did not amount to self-deification. Cooper establishes that secular politics as originally conceived does not require a choice between power and vulnerability. Rather, it challenges us—today as then—to reconcile them both as essential components of our humanity. (shrink)

In 1924, not quite two years after receiving his doctorate from the University of Vienna, Eric Voegelin was named a Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fellow and thus given the opportunity to pursue postdoctoral studies in the United States. For the next twenty-four months, Voegelin worked with some of the most creative scholars in America and at several of the country's great universities, an experience that undoubtedly influenced his scholarly and personal perspectives throughout his life. A more immediate result was the (...) publication in 1928 of _On the Form of the American Mind,_ the young philosopher's first major work, in which his acute perceptions and analyses combine with a conceptual vocabulary struggling to find its own coherence and form. Voegelin begins his inquiry into the form of the American mind with a complex discussion of the concepts of time and existence in European and American philosophy and continues with an extended interpretation of George Santayana, a study of the Puritan mystic Jonathan Edwards, a presentation on Anglo-American jurisprudence, and a consideration of the historian, economist, and political scientist John R. Commons. Although admitting that this diversity of themes seems only loosely connected," Voegelin demonstrates the actual overall unity of these various subjects: each concerns linguistic expressions of a theoretical nature. Analysis of _On the Form of the American Mind_ indicates that Voegelin integrated the approaches of _Lebensphilosophie_ into what Georg Misch called the "philosophical combination of anthropology and history," which characterized contemporary trends within the discourse of the _Geisteswissenschaften_ and finally resulted in a theoretical paradigm of philosophical anthropology. Jürgen Gebhardt and Barry Cooper provide access to this brilliant study with their two-part introduction. The first part considers _On the Form of the American Mind_ in the context of methodological debates ongoing in Germany at the time Voegelin was writing the book; the second describes Voegelin's American experience and compares his work with similar studies written during the post-World War I period. (shrink)

In 1924, not quite two years after receiving his doctorate from the University of Vienna, Eric Voegelin was named a Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Fellow and thus given the opportunity to pursue postdoctoral studies in the United States. For the next twenty-four months, Voegelin worked with some of the most creative scholars in America and at several of the country's great universities, an experience that undoubtedly influenced his scholarly and personal perspectives throughout his life. A more immediate result was the (...) publication in 1928 of _On the Form of the American Mind,_ the young philosopher's first major work, in which his acute perceptions and analyses combine with a conceptual vocabulary struggling to find its own coherence and form. Voegelin begins his inquiry into the form of the American mind with a complex discussion of the concepts of time and existence in European and American philosophy and continues with an extended interpretation of George Santayana, a study of the Puritan mystic Jonathan Edwards, a presentation on Anglo-American jurisprudence, and a consideration of the historian, economist, and political scientist John R. Commons. Although admitting that this diversity of themes seems only loosely connected," Voegelin demonstrates the actual overall unity of these various subjects: each concerns linguistic expressions of a theoretical nature. Analysis of _On the Form of the American Mind_ indicates that Voegelin integrated the approaches of _Lebensphilosophie_ into what Georg Misch called the "philosophical combination of anthropology and history," which characterized contemporary trends within the discourse of the _Geisteswissenschaften_ and finally resulted in a theoretical paradigm of philosophical anthropology. Jürgen Gebhardt and Barry Cooper provide access to this brilliant study with their two-part introduction. The first part considers _On the Form of the American Mind_ in the context of methodological debates ongoing in Germany at the time Voegelin was writing the book; the second describes Voegelin's American experience and compares his work with similar studies written during the post-World War I period. (shrink)

*Introduction by Joseph R. Strayer\n(ix-x) Not that Bloch was the greatest French historian of his generation, though he would certainly rank high in any list. Not even that he was the most widely read—others excelled in that art of combining exact knowledge with readability which has distinguished French scholarship for many years. Others have talked about the narrowness of purely political history, the evils of excessive specialization, and the unreality of the conventional periodization of history—without ever leaving their own (...) limited fields. Bloch not only said that history was a whole, that no period and no topic could be understood except in relation to other periods and topics, but he constantly taught [p.x] and wrote in accordance with this belief. …He worked constantly for a “wider, more human history,” for a history which described how and why people live and work together. He saw life as a whole, as a complicated interplay of ideals and realities, of conscious innovation and unconscious conservation. … Throughout the two volumes he sought, above everything else, to understand and explain the state of mind and the habits of life which could produce and support feudal organization.\n(32-33) It is very like the illusion of certain old etymologiests who thought they had said all when they set down the oldest known meaning of a word opposite its present sense, having shown… As if the main problem were not to understand how and why the transition had taken place. As if, above all, the meaning of any word were influenced more by its own past than by the contemporary state of the vocabulary which, in its turn, is determined by the social conditions of the moment. [Y: think about this when I give the meanings of sirhak]\n(64-65) …every historical research supposes that the inquiry has a direction at the very first step. In the beginning, there must be the guiding spirit. Mere passive observation, even supposing such a thing were possible, has never contributed anything productive to any science. \n(71) Every historical book worthy of the name oought to include a chapter, or if one prefers, a series of paragraphs inserted at turning points in the development, which might almost entitled: “How can I know what I am about to say?” I am persuaded that even the lay reader would experience an actual intellectual pleasure in examining these “confessions.”. (shrink)

What principles of political justice ought to apply to the European Union? This question is particularly relevant considering the deepening integration process that resulted from the crises of the past decade. Habermas’s conception of a transnational democracy allows identification of the methodological components of transnational political justice: to unite in a transnational polity, people belonging to different national communities need a common purpose, principles governing the distribution of constitutional and legislative power and a common political infrastructure (...) that allows them to form democratic will as free and equal citizens. This article attempts to further expand these points through a public goods approach. European policies generate European public goods. These must be produced and accessed based on a fair cooperation scheme. Identifying these specific fairness conditions allows further clarification on how legislative and constitutional power ought to be distributed within the European polity. (shrink)

The Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) objectives are an integral part of the overall objectives of the European Union and the policy area has developed from a purely intergovernmental form of cooperation in the days of the European political cooperation to an area in which the member states have increasingly accepted new forms of institutionalization. CFSP decisions are taken by the General Affairs Council, consisting of the ministers for foreign affairs of the member states. (...) In spite of the growing pains in the development of Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), the European Union has made significant strides in deploying crisis management operations. However, the issue of defining success of the CSDP is no longer measured in terms of merely launching missions, ensuring mission output, and gathering operational experience. Whenever a common policy does not prove possible, member states are free to pursue their own national foreign policies. (shrink)

In the postmodern era, European political philosophy has introduced several concepts. These concepts have ideologically prepared Western countries for decentralization reform. Being still “in process”, reflection on the proper structure of postmodern society is marked by ambiguous and often contradictory ideas. The very view on the state as a de-hierarchical, rhizomorphic and horizontal phenomenon presupposes numerous ways of reforming it. Throughout their histories, European countries have shifted from confrontations, hostilities and rivalries towards new mechanisms of fruitful relationships (...) between civil society and state institutions. Nowadays, many aspects are influencing the elaboration and implementation of strategies on civil society development in different countries. These aspects include the following: different starting conditions; the presence or absence of basic principles of public space development; the possibility of fulfilling civic practices’ potential; the level of political participation. West European countries have managed to create a viable structure to support the development of civil society, as well as maintain a stable dialogue between it and the state. However, the process is still on: effective practices of interaction between them are being developed; conditions for more effective cooperation are being improved; new financial instruments are being created and implemented. All Central and East European countries have a common understanding of civil society as one of the most important actors in developing cooperation with the government. At the same time, they should be able to solve existing essential problems, such as low awareness about global development problems and the population’s unreadiness to meet the immediate objectives of civil society development. (shrink)

In the concept of European citizenship, public and international law intersect. The unity of the European polity results from the interplay between national and European loyalties. Citizens’ allegiance to the European polity depends on how much they see the polity’s identity as theirs. Foundational ideals that shaped the European project’s identity included social reconciliation and peaceful coexistence, economic reconstruction and widespread prosperity, and the creation of supranational structures to rein in nationalism. A broad cultural consensus (...) underlay the first impulse for integration. Europeans had little trouble giving explicit or tacit allegiance to such a project, which resulted in an unparalleled success. However, roughly 60 years and 20 Member States later, social integration is being challenged as immigrants with diverse cultural backgrounds arrive, while far-right political parties surge in reaction; economic integration is confronted with a faltering euro and countries struggling to meet financial commitments; and political integration weakens as the EU seems to fail the democratic test. Cultural assumptions are no longer shared by all. Allegiance to today’s EU is problematic for the ordinary European citizen. This paper submits that careful attention to the spirit of the foundational ideals sheds light on how the present problems as well as future integration could and should be approached. (shrink)

Anna Julia Cooper has gained wider recognition in philosophy, thanks to the work of black feminist scholars, generating increased interest in Cooper’s ideas on race, gender, education, and social problems in the United States. However, the global scope of Cooper’s political theory has not yet received sufficient attention. Cooper’s 1925 dissertation is an analysis of slavery and the Haitian revolution, which demonstrates the fundamental contradictions within French enlightenment discourses of liberty. Cooper shows how European discourses of liberty were (...) hampered by the realities of enslavement, predating arguments that would become more widely known in later works, such as C.L.R. James’s The Black Jacobins (written in 1938) and Eric Williams’s Columbus to Castro (written in 1970). As Cooper demonstrates how ideologies of racial inequality undermined the stated ideals of the French revolution, she argues from a natural law position to not only maintain that slavery is “a supreme crime against humanity,” in her words, but also that “it is natural and just that it contains its punishment within itself.”. (shrink)

It is commonplace that the modern world is more international than at any point in human history. Yet the sheer profusion of terms for describing political orders above the nation-state-including "international," "global," "transnational," and "cosmopolitan," among others-is but one indication of how conceptually complex this topic actually is. Taking a wide view of international projects in Europe since the eighteenth century, Nationalism and Internationalism Intertwined explores discourses and practices to challenge nation-centered histories and trace the entanglements that arise from (...) international cooperation. In this volume, a multidisciplinary group of scholars in history, political science, philosophy, computer science, and other fields ask how internationalism and adjacent concepts have been experienced, understood, constructed, debated, and redefined across different European political cultures. (shrink)

This article summarizes some of the results of the BIOMED II project “Basic Ethical Principles in European Bioethics and Biolaw” connected to a research project of the Danish Research Councils “Bioethics and Law”. The BIOMED project was based on cooperation between 22 partners in most EU countries. The aim of the project was to identify the ethical principles of respect for autonomy, dignity, integrity and vulnerability as four important ideas or values for a European bioethics and biolaw. (...) The research concluded that the basic ethical principles cannot be understood as universal everlasting ideas or transcendental truths but they rather function reflective guidelines and important values in European culture. The method of the research was conceptual, philosophical analysis of the cultural background of the four values or normative ideas that people use and find important in their existence. Moreover, this was combined with analysis of empirical legal material and policy documents. Also, a number of qualitative interviews with relevant experts were carried out. Another important result of the BIOMED project was the partner's Policy Proposals to the European Commission, the Barcelona Declaration, unique as a philosophical and political agreement between experts in bioethics and biolaw from many different countries. The Policy Proposals are reprinted here at the end of the article. (shrink)

Increasing European co-operation must take place in many areas, including medical ethics. Against the background of common cultural norms and pluralistic variation within political traditions, religion and lifestyles, Europe will have to converge towards unity within the field of medical ethics. This article examines how such convergence might develop with respect to four major areas: European research ethics committees, democratic health systems, the human genome project and rules for stopping futile treatments.

Technology and Ethics. A European Quest for Responsible Engineering, edited by B. Heriard Dubreuil and his team (University Lille) is in many regards an innovative publication. It is the first fully European contribution to the field of engineering ethics and the result of an intensive cooperation between ethicists and engineers from all the member countries of the European Union. The basic structure of the book is both the distinction and interaction between three levels of analysis: personal (...) responsibility of engineers, the institutional level (business organisations) and the impact of technology on society and culture. On the personal level, the book deals with problems such as the role of professional codes and the fact that engineers must cope with flexibility, shorter lines of decision and erosion of the boundaries between private and professional life. On the meso level, the book deals with different aspects of decision making in the context of business organizations, such as quality management, technology assessment procedures, business ethics committees etc... On the macro level, the authors focus on the power of technology. Together with the influences from other social, economic and political actors, the decisions of engineers change the world in a way which is of moral significance. (shrink)

The main thesis of my article is that the viability of the European Union does not depend so much on its political structure as on its being anchored in a culture-based public sphere and on the establishment of a cultural European citizenship. The public sphere could be defined as an unique world, characterized by consensus and cooperation, in which only public goods can be sought and acquired, or as an unique world, characterized by rivalry and competition, (...) in which everyone could pursue their private interests, but only if there is a consensus regarding an objective and fair procedure. In any way, we cannot speak of a pluralism of public spheres - like the black public sphere, the LGBT public sphere, etc. - but (at the most) a plurality of interests represented in the public sphere, under the reserve of respecting a fair procedure, which allows the expression of axiological judgments. The EU needs a progressive citizenship, from civil citizenship to cultural citizenship, depending on the acquired skills, behavior and virtues. One deserves cultural citizenship and have the right (or, perhaps the privilege) to manifest - in the public sphere - a way of life and a cultural identity only if promote authentic values: virtues, rationality, free will etc. The problematic aspects of the European media sphere are obstacles on the way to establishing an authentic European cultural citizenship. They can be kept under control by assuming a healthy reactionary attitude and associating every element of change and contingent progress (speed, reductive simplicity, user's solitude, pictoriality, lateralness, data overload, immediacy, segmentation, social amnesia, etc.) with an element of moderation and equilibrium. Only thus can the media contribute in the making of a viable union of the European peoples, grounded on a well articulated European cultural citizenship. (shrink)

The development of post-national democracy in Europe depends on the emergence of an overarching communicative space that functions as a public sphere. But can there be a public sphere when there is no collective identity? Despite the fact that the European Union (EU) is neither a state nor a nation its development as a new kind of polity is closely connected to the formation of a common communicative space. In this article it is argued that European cooperation (...) and problem solving create public spaces but has not (as of yet) produced a single, general European public sphere. Rather what one finds are transnational, segmented publics evolving around policy networks constituted by the common interest in certain policy fields. They are found wanting with regard to political justification intrinsic to the democratic principle that requires a general non-exclusive public sphere. The EU also harbours many legally institutionalized discourses - strong publics - that are specialized on collective will-formation close to the centre of the political system and which have been promoters of democratic reforms. (shrink)

This article explores national dimensions of transnational interaction between the French Socialist Party (SFIO) and the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the 1940s–1950s within a comparative framework. Doing so allows us to uncover why the French and German parties retained intensive transnational contacts with one another despite their disappointments with postwar socialist internationalism. The SFIO and SPD were eager to put a socialist stamp on reconstruction, European integration, and French-German relations. The article shows why transnational engagement with their (...) cross-Rhine colleagues appeared the most promising path to do so. Despite lengthy conflicts on Cold War politics, the international politics of reconstruction, and, later, decolonization and the Algerian and Suez Wars, the SFIO and SPD successfully compartmentalized their differences by establishing an autonomous track for transnational relations in European parliamentary assemblies. French-German cooperation on matters of European integration yielded the period’s greatest transnational successes, including the establishment of the Congress of Socialist Parties of the European Communities. In the early 1960s, the two-track nature of French-German inter-socialist relations endured but structural factors eroded the balance of power between French and Germans needed to sustain the mutual satisfaction with transnational cooperation that had peaked in the mid-1950s. (shrink)

Active labor-market policies have developed significantly over the past two decades across Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries, with substantial cross-national differences in terms of both extent and overall orientation. The objective of this article is to account for cross-national variation in this policy field. It starts by reviewing existing scholarship concerning political, institutional, and ideational determinants of ALMPs. It then argues that ALMP is too broad a category to be used without further specification, and it develops (...) a typology of four different types of ALMPs: incentive reinforcement, employment assistance, occupation, and human capital investment. These are discussed and examined through ALMP expenditure profiles in selected countries. The article uses this typology to analyze ALMP trajectories in six Western European countries and shows that the role of this instrument changes dramatically over time. It concludes that there is little regularity in the political determinants of ALMPs. In contrast, it finds strong institutional and ideational effects, nested in the interaction between the changing economic context and existing labor-market policies. (shrink)

Through empirical investigation of the Eurozone and Greek debt crisis 2010–12, this article demonstrates how a peak organization of financial firms—the Institute of International Finance —was able to mobilize its members transnationally to secure several key political and economic objectives. At the height of the crisis, large European banking firms were threatened by the prospect of a disorderly Greek default, coercive intervention by governments, and, potentially, a regional banking collapse. In this context, representatives from the IIF entered the (...) policymaking process to facilitate concerted private sector action, assisting EU officials with the negotiation of a substantial and orderly creditor writedown, and cooperating with legal action by the Greek government to sideline a minority of financial firms hostile to the deal. The article shows that the IIF’s disproportionate influence over policymaking was a result of their technical expertise, their ability to recruit individuals with long-standing experience of sovereign debt restructuring from the public and private sector, and the operation of elite revolving-door processes. In contrast to recent studies showing that financial actors are able to exercise more power at the national level by remaining collectively inactive, these findings suggest that, at the transnational level, financial actors can be most effective at securing their preferences when they are well organized and when they coordinate politically on the basis of collective interests. (shrink)

Many in the human rights community have expressed concern about the illiberal religious political system found in Iran today. However, Iran is not unique in its illiberal religious nationalism. Some contemporary liberal democracies in the West also have a history of illiberal religious nationalism. The English and later the British discriminated against Catholics in various ways. The Irish also have a history of discrimination against Protestants and inequality towards women which was based on a deep seated illiberal Catholic nationalism. (...) In all of these cases moderation and liberalization occurred over time. An interesting question is whether moderation over time might be repeated outside of Europe, especially in religiously based nations in the Middle East.When looking especially at the evolution of Ireland we notice that: economic prosperity spread throughout the population, the perception of a threat from the United Kingdom declined, European norms were spread within Ireland, and there were scandals within the Catholic Church. All these factors diminished the power of Irish illiberal Catholicism over time. If the external threats to Iran were removed and economic prosperity was to spread, as corruption and scandals came to light, we might expect that Iran may begin to moderate its political system.The goal of this essay is to analyze what conditions are conducive for the gradual transformation from an illiberal, religiously defined nation-state to a more moderate, democratic one by examining Iran and Ireland. This article suggests that the evolution of religiously based political systems can lead to more democratic political systems which are more cooperative with other countries and are less supportive of violence and terrorism. (shrink)

This paper explores food commoning through an ethnographic case study in Catalonia as our primary site while the Norwegian case is juxtaposed as a comparison, two agriculturally and economically different European countries. The ethnography analyses cooperation networks between organic food producers’ and consumers’ involving different nodes of community gardening initiatives, self-employed growers, local farmers and all of them under a unique cooperative integrating a community economy. The result it is a myriad of exchange practices ranging from reciprocity and (...) barter to market exchange without intermediaries through on-line platforms. Along these exchanges different options of currency intervene giving rise to novel social and cooperative relations. Similar initiatives in Norway show less variation and are less experimental regarding forms of payment but share similarities in relation to material articulations, concerns and forms of alternative practice. Although these novel forms do not represent a complete break from the more standardized supply chains, and hence from the oppositions/contradictions of production and consumption, the participants see themselves as contributing to a more general process of de-commodification of food. We explore the extent to which the meaning and moral values are mutually constituted in relation to socioeconomic exchanges and environmental caring that each person experiences based on different forms of cooperation and reciprocity. Food, we suggest, is more than a commodity on the market that we may influence through our role as consumers. It is a significant focal point connecting our lives to those of others that articulates one’s relations to society in a political manner. (shrink)

This paper explores food commoning through an ethnographic case study in Catalonia as our primary site while the Norwegian case is juxtaposed as a comparison, two agriculturally and economically different European countries. The ethnography analyses cooperation networks between organic food producers’ and consumers’ involving different nodes of community gardening initiatives, self-employed growers, local farmers and all of them under a unique cooperative integrating a community economy. The result it is a myriad of exchange practices ranging from reciprocity and (...) barter to market exchange without intermediaries through on-line platforms. Along these exchanges different options of currency intervene giving rise to novel social and cooperative relations. Similar initiatives in Norway show less variation and are less experimental regarding forms of payment but share similarities in relation to material articulations, concerns and forms of alternative practice. Although these novel forms do not represent a complete break from the more standardized supply chains, and hence from the oppositions/contradictions of production and consumption, the participants see themselves as contributing to a more general process of de-commodification of food. We explore the extent to which the meaning and moral values are mutually constituted in relation to socioeconomic exchanges and environmental caring that each person experiences based on different forms of cooperation and reciprocity. Food, we suggest, is more than a commodity on the market that we may influence through our role as consumers. It is a significant focal point connecting our lives to those of others that articulates one’s relations to society in a political manner. (shrink)

Long presented as a universal policy-recipe for social prosperity and economic growth, the promise of innovation seems to be increasingly in question, giving way to a new vision of progress in which society is advanced as a central enabler of technoeconomic development. Frameworks such as “Responsible” or “Mission-oriented” Innovation, for example, have become commonplace parlance and practice in the governance of the innovation–society nexus. In this paper, we study the dynamics by which this “social fix” to technoscience has gained legitimacy (...) in institutions of global governance by investigating recent projects at two international organizations, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the European Commission, to mainstream “Responsible Innovation” frameworks and instruments across countries. Our analysis shows how the turn to societal participation in both organizations relies on a new deficit logic—a democratic deficit of innovation—that frames a lack of societal engagement in innovation governance as a major barrier to the uptake and dissemination of new technologies. These deficit politics enable global governance institutions to present “Responsible Innovation” frameworks as the solution and to claim authority over the coproduction of particular forms of democracy and innovation as intertwined pillars of a market-liberal international order. (shrink)

Most students of politics are familiar with Carl Schmitt’s definition of politics as a friend–enemy distinction. Yet, only few know of alternative conceptions of politics in interwar Germany that emphasize cooperation and legality over confrontation and decisionism. To unlock such views, this article examines the work of Hermann Heller, a social-democratic constitutional theorist, and takes a close look at his conceptualization of politics as a sphere, activity and discipline. For Heller, ‘the political’ consists in turning human conflict into (...) social cooperation. For him, the political may be conflictual, but is also conditioned by shared norms and agreed rules. By consequence, to act politically means to order the antagonistic social relations that are typical of every human society. In this sense, politics is a purposeful activity, but one which leaves the content of every decision unconfined and the potentialities that follow endless. Like politicians, politics scholars must reflect on ethical and legal principles, while remaining focused on context-specific political problems. The study of politics cannot be disconnected from the study of law, ethics and social reality. Heller’s work showed that the way we conceive of politics is directly related to the way we study politics and vice-versa. (shrink)

This article examines the political and theoretical life of Jane Addams and the women of Hull House, who gave rise to a constellation of new subjects and practices in nineteenth-century Chicago. In particular, the article highlights the importance of women’s relations in the settlement in Halsted Street, which were a fundamental part of the group’s political practice and reflection on democracy, society, and justice: on the one hand, they reconfigured the traditional dichotomy between private and public space, revealing (...) its inherent porosity; on the other, relations of proximity, friendship, and love proved to be transformative forces and an embodied practice of justice that escaped the dynamics of the dual subject/object relationship, becoming an element of social change. Love, considered in the triple sense of romantic and intimate love, affectionate and cooperative love, and love of Humanity, turned out to be a political element that could redefine the norms and spaces of social action for Victorian women. Moreover, it extended the sphere of democracy beyond governmental procedures and institutions and transformed it into a life practice based on acting in concert and being together. (shrink)

John Dewey conceived democracy as a cooperative problem-solving practice in which actors try out provisional solutions by means of social communication. His notion of experimental democracy as a specific form of life and an ethical enterprise rather than simply a form of government implies the constitution of a polity as a practical and complex process of exchanging and sharing experiences. The aim of this paper is to test the feasibility of using a Deweyan theoretical basis for democracy to assess the (...) potential for a European process of political integration. The historical-conceptual presuppositions of the European Union’s institutional project preclude both a narrow local perspective and an illusory globalist scheme. To redirect Europe’s democratic vocation, a process of political and institutional communication must be developed that transcends the existing national paradigm. (shrink)

There is widespread agreement that the European Union is presently suffering from a lack of social justice. Yet there is significant disagreement about what the relevant injustice consists in: Federalists believe the EU can only remedy its justice deficit through the introduction of direct interpersonal transfers between people living in separate states. Intergovernmentalists believe the justice-related purpose of the EU is to enable states to cooperate fairly, and to remain internally just and democratic in the face of increased global (...) pressure on welfare states. I suggest that despite their fundamental differences, many of the most reasonable and prominent philosophical accounts of social justice in the EU nonetheless converge in their institutional prescriptions. In particular, they may each serve as a justificatory basis for introducing the European social minimum, an EU-wide income support scheme. (shrink)

Europe is a melting pot of diverse cultures, civilizations and amalgamation of various ethnicities. It is a land which faced many catastrophes, high intensity conflicts and wars. Two world wars have been fought on this land. Almost all the major nations participated directly or indirectly at massive scale. Franco-German axis is a term to explain the relations of both the countries in the context of their mutual cooperation and their significant role in contemporary political affairs of Europe. Post (...) war era 1945, congenial atmosphere of synchronization between both the countries replaced three century old French- German hostility. This tandem performed active role not only in the politically integrated European nation but also they played a vital role in the formation of single currency euro as well. Comparatively their functioning is becoming slow but they are still necessary for future of Europe. It is a general impression that the FrancoGerman alliance is facing critical phase, or in other words they are no longer being capable to act as the twin motor of European integration but Euro pe do not have an appropriate replacement. As far as the future of Franco-German relationship or leadership is concerned it acted necessary of European Union’s twin motor in the past but in recent years national interest became more supreme than the interest of European Union as a whole. (shrink)

The moral and political philosophy of Wilhelm Röpke is among the finest instances of European classical liberalism in the twentieth century, and in many occasions he stated that only a society which understands the importance of markets can be reconciled with human dignity. Röpke elaborated a political theory that focused on the harmony between moral principles and economic law. In this sense, his liberalism is unique not only because it defends private property and competition as pillars of (...) a thriving economy, but above all that it provides the preconditions of a society that can remain secure from the immorality of despotism and subsequent ethical degeneration. To that end he upheld an economic order based on voluntary cooperation as the basis for a more humane society, emphasizing the role of institutional competition and federalism. Röpke’s cultural conservatism should not therefore be misunderstood, as it is very much connected with his defense of the essential role of property. It is only in this sense that he found in liberal humanism a third way, which is not however situated halfway between the market and socialism, but which represents instead a defense of a competitive society that is aware of its own historical and cultural basis. (shrink)

This paper offers a reinterpretation of Eduard Bernstein’s theory of evolutionary socialism. It does so by examining the leading role that he envisioned for unions of skilled workers in the socialist movement. During his time in London in the 1890s, Bernstein’s engagement with English Fabianism led him to emphasize the proletariat’s differentiated nature. He claimed skilled workers most readily organized and became the first proletarians to develop class consciousness. Unskilled workers, on the other hand, remained largely unorganized and estranged from (...) the socialist movement. Bernstein opposed the socialist political strategy of nationalization because it would subordinate unskilled workers to party revolutionaries rather than realize cooperative self-government in industry. This focus on promoting industrial self-government made Bernstein stress the importance of workers’ further unionization and adoption of skilled unionists’ method of collective bargaining. This would produce socialist cooperation because it facilitated cooperative wage determination. In Bernstein’s view, skilled unionists influenced the socialist party to take political action to organize and elevate more proletarians to class consciousness. In contrast to those who claim Bernstein prioritized the party’s autonomous ethical appeals and legislation, I emphasize his focus on union-party interactions and defense of unions as central for the advance into socialism’s cooperative society. (shrink)

One of the more striking, surprising, and optimism-inducing features of the contemporary international system has been the decline of interstate war. The key question for students of international relations and comparative politics is how this happy state of affairs came about. In short, was this a universal phenomenon or did some regions play a more important and pioneering role in bringing about peaceful change? As part of the roundtable “International Institutions and Peaceful Change,” this essay suggests that Western Europe generally (...) and the European Union in particular played pivotal roles in transforming the international system and the behavior of policymakers. This helped to create the material and ideational conditions in which other parts of the world could replicate this experience, making war less likely and peaceful change more feasible. This argument is developed by comparing the experiences of the EU and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and their respective institutional offshoots. The essay uses this comparative historical analysis to assess both regions’ capacity to cope with new security challenges, particularly the declining confidence in institutionalized cooperation. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article contributes to the recent historiography on Enlightenment plans for European peace by shedding light on the political and intellectual work of the neglected Spanish minister and intellectual José Carvajal y Lancaster. The article begins by outlining the intellectual context surrounding the War of Spanish Succession, and proceeds to analyse the ways that Carvajal deployed, both in his texts and in power, Enlightenment ideals to reform the Spanish Empire and achieve perpetual peace in Europe. The ideas of (...) his first work, his Testamento Político, revealed the ways that the logic of joint-stock companies could catalyse the reform of the Spanish Empire. His measures in government, in turn, illustrated how international cooperation could be mutually beneficial, but turned on his fraught relationship with the future Marquis of Pombal. Finally, his text Mis Pensamientos, written in 1753, envisaged a formal commercial and political coalition between the Spanish and the British Empires. Carvajal’s vision for European peace was at once utopian and clear-eyed, and the ideas behind his plan persist as demanding questions for our age. (shrink)

There appear to be striking contradictions between different strands of anarchist thought with respect to violence – anarchism can justify it, or condemn it, can be associated with both violent action and pacifism. The anarchist thinkers studied here saw themselves as facing up to the realities of violence in politics – the violence of state power, and the destructiveness of instrumental uses of physical power as a revolutionary political weapon. Bakunin, Tolstoy and Kropotkin all express ambivalence about violence in (...) relation to political power. Instead of reading this ambivalence as a mark of inconsistency, or of abdication of responsible judgement, we argue that it signals a profound recognition of the dynamics of violence in both repressive and resistant politics. Kropotkin and Bakunin seek a cooperative collective political effort which is negated by individual acts of violence although it cannot be committed to non-violence as such. Tolstoy by contrast in his recognition of the organised violence of political power, turns from politics to morality, from organisation to individual renunciation. Tolstoyan non-violence is the opposite of Kropotkin’s mutual aid, and paradoxically Tolstoyan renunciation has effects only when it is underpinned by violence. Tolstoy leaves violence in its place, in his renunciation of it; and Bakunin and Kropotkin leave violence in its place in their plans for its undoing. (shrink)

This special issue re-evaluates the 1950s as a period of transnationalism in ideas and political practices, offering innovative insights into political history and political ideas. Without setting the national and transnational spheres against each other, the issue argues that the dialectics between the two was a defining element of Europe in this period. The articles explore transnational cooperation and exchanges among intellectuals, politicians and trade unionists, showing how they were changing in their interaction. The editorial sets (...) out from the research on the postwar configuration of Europe based on the retake of the nation state, combining it with new research of transnational history and putting out some methodological innovations. The editorial also highlights some significant themes across the articles: the central role of translation and localisation, the interaction with local interests and disputes, the Cold War, the acceleration of European integration, the rise of the Third World, the tensions between hope and fear or between nihilism and rebirth of Europe, the centrality of science. (shrink)

If people vote rationally for their economic interests, one would expect Democrats to be perennial favorites among working poor and middle class, and especially so in this year of economic downturn. Why then does polling show the election a tossup? A culture's moral compass is not an innate or logical determination, but an underdetermined product of historical contingency and willful choice. Belief in moral "rightness" or "truth" is always a matter of faith rather than reason. Only some professional philosophers, jurists, (...) scientists and academics believe that the principal point of political argument is, or ought to be, truth rather than persuasion, and that an argument's principal appeal should be reason rather than passion. The fundamental social constituent of economic and political culture in the United States was neither the individual nor the state, but the sectarian community. The religious community in the USA was a civic as well as moral community, a combination which infused American economic and political culture with particular dynamism. As Darwin noted, in competition between groups with similar levels of technology and population size, those groups will tend to win out that favor and transmit willingness to sacrifice some self interest for group interests. Religions with morally concerned deities arguably made the rise of civilization and large-scale cooperation between genetic strangers possible. (shrink)

There appear to be striking contradictions between different strands of anarchist thought with respect to violence – anarchism can justify it, or condemn it, can be associated with both violent action and pacifism. The anarchist thinkers studied here saw themselves as facing up to the realities of violence in politics – the violence of state power, and the destructiveness of instrumental uses of physical power as a revolutionary political weapon. Bakunin, Tolstoy and Kropotkin all express ambivalence about violence in (...) relation to political power. Instead of reading this ambivalence as a mark of inconsistency, or of abdication of responsible judgement, we argue that it signals a profound recognition of the dynamics of violence in both repressive and resistant politics. Kropotkin and Bakunin seek a cooperative collective political effort which is negated by individual acts of violence although it cannot be committed to non-violence as such. Tolstoy by contrast in his recognition of the organised violence of... (shrink)

Alex Gourevitch’s From Slavery to the Cooperative Commonwealth is a valuable contribution to republican historiography: in reconstructing the ideas of the 19th century American labour republicans, this work significantly expands and enriches our appreciation of the classical republican tradition. While the labour republicans are convincingly shown to have made important contributions to that tradition, stronger claims that they fundamentally transformed republicanism are less persuasive.

The importance of the specifi relationship between the US and the EU is determined by the role they play in solving international problems. The purpose of the article is to study the impact of common and distinctive position in US and EU foreign policy on the development of their relations and ability to effectively solve the world’s problems. At the beginning of the XXI century relations between the US and the EU have been developing in various spheres of foreign policy. (...) The priorities were security cooperation, the fiht against international terrorism and the development of economic relations. US and EU are mutually benefiial and priority partners for each other. This is determined in the foreign policy instruments of the United States and the European Union. However, this does not preclude the existence in the United States and the European Union different approaches to solving international problems and competition between them. The biggest differences between the US and the EU are shown in approaches to the settlement of military conflcts, the fiht against global warming and the greenhouse effect. The largest component of competitive relations is manifested in the development of the Arctic region. The US seeks to engage the EU foreign policy implementation taking into account American interests. However, at the beginning of the XXI century the EU had its own foreign policy program. The EU has an unhappy tendency towards US methods of solving world problems and unilateral actions in the international arena. The bipolar system was dominated by bilateral cooperation between the US and individual states of the European Union, but during the presidency of Barack Obama, the United States prefer relations with European politicians who represent the agreed position of 28 EU member states. The US in implementing its foreign policy should take into account the position of individual states and the European Union as a whole entity. This affects the process of solving international problems. Despite the existence of contradictions in the relations of the United States and the European Union, cooperation will continue to contribute to this long-term relationship, similarities in approaches to building political and economic systems and similarities in mentality. (shrink)

In this article, we argue that a progressive approach to normative political theorizing should incorporate a conception of meaningful political change that is nonutopian (it conceives of advancements as gradual stages), large-scale (it involves the largest possible numbers of organized and unorganized social movements), and democratically emancipatory (it displays a commitment to breaking down the barriers that prevent individuals from feeling responsible for the direction of society). Bearing this in mind, such an approach should be organized around a (...) cooperative effort between theorists and agents of change and should be oriented toward the collective construction of large-scale actionable proposals for social and political change here and now. (shrink)

The Stabilization and Association Agreement with the Republic of Kosovo is a new chapter in the new institutional and social functioning because it has direct impact on the citizens’ life in our country. The effects of the agreement are not only in trading but those are multiple effects, since they do touch the political stability, the rule of law, democratic governance, economic development, trade exchange, regional economic cooperation, etc. and therefore the relevance of this agreement should not be (...) seen from a single viewpoint, but rather from a wider perspective and we should dedicate more attention to the direct legal and trading issues. This agreement in the short term will create perspective and hope, in the middle term, it will create political stability, whereas in the long term, it will bring economic development, and genuinely trading exchange. (shrink)

Only during a brief period in the aftermath of the revolution was a portion of the Soviet intelligentsia eager sincerely to cooperate with the Soviet system. Soon, with Stalin''s repressions, the intelligentsia, and especially its elite — the intellectuals, or those involved in creative activities such as science, literature and the arts, became locked in permanent conflict with the government.Once mass terror disappeared after Stalin''s death in 1953, intellectuals faced the possibility of confronting the regime without fear of instant arrest (...) and eventual death in the Gulag. (shrink)

This article seeks to explain the variable implementation of gender mainstreaming as a `policy frame' over time and across various international organisations (I.O.s). In the years since the U.N. Fourth World Women's Conference in Beijing (1995),mainstreaming has been endorsed and adopted by a wide range of international organisations, and we compare the adoption and implementation of mainstreaming in four specific I.O.s: the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and the (...) class='Hi'>European Union. The rhetorical acceptance of mainstreaming by various international organisations, however, obscures considerable variation in both the timing and the nature of the mainstreaming process within and among organisations. This variation, in turn, can be explained in terms of the categories of political opportunity, mobilising structures and strategic framing, which have been put forward by social movement theorists. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 63.2 (2002) 323-344 [Access article in PDF] Darwinism and Death: Devaluing Human Life in Germany 1859-1920 Richard Weikart The debate over the significance of Social Darwinism in Germany has special importance, because it serves as background to discussions of Hitler's ideology and of the roots of German imperialism and World War I. 1 There is no doubt that Hitler was a Social Darwinist, (...) viewing history as a struggle for existence among unequal races. All Hitler scholars agree on this point, and it is too obvious to deny when one reads Mein Kampf. 2 Whether Social Darwinism contributed to imperialism and militarism is less clear, though some have argued it did, at least as a justification for them. 3 Some Anglo-American writers during and immediately after World War I blamed Social Darwinism for inflaming German militarism. 4 [End Page 323]This discussion over both Social Darwinism in general and its German form in particular has reached something of an impasse lately. While some scholars insist that Darwinism contributed to or at least reinforced a competitive ethos in European political and social thought, others have stressed the varieties of Social Darwinism. 5 The latter remind us that, although some Darwinian social thinkers stressed competition, socialists were also avid Darwinists and saw it as support for their vision of a more cooperative socialist society. 6 Some scholars focus so much on the cooperative and peaceful thrust of Darwinian thinkers that one might think that Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid had carried the day in the late nineteenth century. For example, Paul Crook argues that Darwinism produced pacifist inclinations more than it did militarism. 7Another important debate in Darwin scholarship concerns the compatibility or incompatibility of Darwinism with other world views, especially traditional religion. The warfare thesis, which sees religion and science in perpetual conflict (often with science heroically winning the battle), has largely been abandoned by historians of science, who now see greater complexity in the interactions of science and religion. 8 Reacting against the warfare thesis, some have emphasized accommodation, showing how science and religion often work in harmony. As applied to Darwinism the accommodationist view stresses the receptivity of many Christians, including prominent evangelical pastors and [End Page 324] theologians, to evolutionary theory in the nineteenth century. 9 While the warfare thesis was clearly a crude caricature, an overemphasis on accommo-dationism can render the intensely emotional debates over Darwinism in the nineteenth century unintelligible and ignores the polemical uses of Darwinism by materialists and positivists in their fight against religion. 10This essay will attempt to make a contribution to both these debates by focusing on aspects of Darwinism that have been insufficiently explored to date—not the issues of competition vs. cooperation or capitalism vs. socialism or explicitly on religion, as is usual in the discussion over warfare or accommodation, but how Darwinism impacted thinking about the value of human life and the significance of human death. Indeed Darwinism, in harmony with the growth of materialism and positivism, helped alter many people's views on matters of life and death. Many prominent German Darwinists urged their society to reevaluate its stance on what today is known as biomedical ethics—infanticide, euthanasia, suicide, abortion, etc. By focusing on these issues, we will see that leading Darwinists invoked Darwinian science to undermine traditional Judeo-Christian ethical values; this went far beyond merely dismissing the Genesis creation story or even rejecting the supernatural.The scientists and physicians most important in embracing, developing, and popularizing Darwinism in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Germany vigorously argued that Darwinism did have important implications for religion, ethics, and social thought. Darwinism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries produced a significant shift in the world views of many who embraced it, and leading Darwinists insisted that their newly-found world view undermined traditional ways of thinking, including traditional ideas about religion and ethics. Ernst Haeckel, the most famous German Darwinist of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, believed the most important aspect... (shrink)

The Twelve Member States agreed in December 1991 in Maastricht on an EconomicMonetary Union, including a single currency and an autonomous European central bank by the turn of the century, and on "an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe". The structure of the European Political Union resembles a temple with three pillars : more powers for the European Parliament on a wider ranger of policy issues, a separate framework for a common foreign and security (...) policy, and intergovernmental cooperation on justice and internal aff airs. The new Treaty wilt replace the Treaty of Rome only after ratification in all twelve member states. White EMU and EPU dominated the public agenda, the internal market programme was drawing to a close with nearly all White paper measures adopted. Emphasis shifted to implementation problems. The prolonged conflict between Commission, Parliament and Council on the 1992 budget gave a taste of increasing tensions on budgetary issues, especially between "northern" and "southern" interests. That divide wilt deepen with or without ratification of the Maastricht Treaty. The budgetary battle of 1991 was partly on external relations. The external activities of the EC were all but successful in 1991: disparate conduct in the Gulf War, failure to contain conflict in Yugoslavia, near-collapse of negotiations with the EFTA countries, deadlock in Gatt-talks and the threat of a trade war between the three trade blocks. Ibe European Common Agricultural Policy remained a major stumblingblock in the Gatt-talks. The Commission proposed a radical reform package for CAP, fiercely opposed by France until the end of the year. (shrink)

The democratic revolutions in Eastern Europe, the speedy unification process of the two Germanies, growing economic disarray in the Soviet Union and the Gulf War put great pressure on the European Community - and raised high expectations throughout 1990. The external challenges initially seemed to slow down the internal integration process. But by the end of 1990 the Twelve committed themselves to further European political union and European economic union culminating into a central bank and a (...) common currency. The two intergovernmental constitutional conferences on EPU and EMU were installed on December 15. The execution of the internal market programme is on schedule with 70% of the directives adopted by late 1990, although the Commission expressed concern about timely transposition of the directives into national law. The EC's record on external relations is mixed : appreciation for its stepped-up cooperation with Eastern Europe, criticism for its tough stand on agriculture at the Gatt-conference, weak diplomatie performance during the Gulf War. (shrink)

The main aim of this political philosophy study is to analyze the two fundamental ideas developed by Jean Monnet, namely, the idea of a federally united Europe and its sovereignty. This analysis is combined with an attempt to capture at least some of the essential assumptions of his philosophical ideas and their evolution. The source materials on which the article is based are primarily Monnet’s Memories, his notes and official memoranda, the correspondence from the war and postwar period and (...) the speeches he gave as the President of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952-1955. They were supplemented with Memorandum of Aristide Briand, the speech of Winston Churchill in Zurich, Convention for European Economic Cooperation and Erinnerungen 1945-1953 by Konrad Adenauer. When it comes to literature, the author referred to the extensive bibliography on the subject contained in Suwerenność by Jacek Czaputowicz. The study uses the method of multidisciplinary analysis of sources and their historical, political and philosophical interpretation. The research conducted allows us to speak of certain philosophical assumptions in Monnet’s thinking about a united Europe and its future. Among the main components of his understanding we can enumerate: necessity, change, specific strength, development in stages and incompleteness which is essentially characteristic to nature. The carried out analysis also allows us to formulate the hypothesis about Monnet’s philosophy of life and action, which can be understood as a certain phenomenology of the community in its becoming, and to situate it, at least partially, within the framework of the phenomenology of Europe as formulated by Erich Przywara in this treatise Idee Europe. (shrink)

This article explores the significance of feminism in transnational activism around LGBTQ protest events, namely equality marches and associated festivals in Kraków, Poznań and Warsaw in Poland. The arguments advanced in this article are based on a multi-method qualitative research project focusing on transnational cooperation in the planning and realization of LGBTQ protest events in Poland, conducted in the years 2008–2009. The authors highlight the decisively coalitional nature of the activist networks around LGBTQ politics in some of the locations (...) studied. They argue that feminists are core actors in these ‘networked solidarities’ around the oppression and marginalization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and transgender people both in local and transnational contexts. Solidarity is a concept used by many research participants to account for their political actions and to rationalize intra- and intergroup dynamics shaped by complex webs of differences. The authors draw on postcolonial feminist discussions on the limits and potentialities of politics of solidarity as a ‘politics of location’ to account for tensions which some activists reported regarding their experience of ‘coalition work’. Some of these tensions related to gender politics and gender relations, always articulated in the conjunction of wider webs of power relations. (shrink)