Kiran Klaus Patel

Provincialising European union: Co-operation and Integration in Europe in a Historical Perspective

This article argues for a less EU-centric form of writing European integration history. More specifically, it scrutinises the ways in which the interconnections with other international organisations have energised, complemented or rivalled the efforts of the European Communities/EU. This approach also allows for a reassessment of the alleged sui generis character of European integration. It demonstrates that it was not the precise competences, its effects or its institutional uniqueness that made the EC stand out, but rather the way in which it self-fashioned and surrounded itself with a great sense of expectancy.

Twisted paths to European integration : comparing agriculture and transport policies in a transnational perspective

Taking the comparison of agricultural and transport policies as an example, this article argues for a new way of writing European integration history. It goes beyond the state-centric confines of the diplomatic history which has dominated the field so far and challenges the teleologies in most accounts. Instead, it argues for the need to take into account long-term perspectives as well as the role of transnational actors with a more contingent narrative. Moreover, it demonstrates that the availability of alternative inter- and transnational regimes can be decisive for the trajectory of integration within EC/EU parameters.

The New Deal: A Global History

The New Deal: A Global History provides a radically new interpretation of a pivotal period in U.S. history. The first comprehensive study of the New Deal in a global context, the book compares American responses to the international crisis of capitalism and democracy during the 1930s to responses by other countries around the globe—not just in Europe but also in Latin America, Asia, and other parts of the world. Work creation, agricultural intervention, state planning, immigration policy, the role of mass media, forms of political leadership, and new ways of ruling America’s colonies—all had parallels elsewhere and unfolded against a backdrop of intense global debates. By avoiding the distortions of American exceptionalism, Kiran Klaus Patel shows how America’s reaction to the Great Depression connected it to the wider world. Among much else, the book explains why the New Deal had enormous repercussions on China; why Franklin D. Roosevelt studied the welfare schemes of Nazi Germany; and why the New Dealers were fascinated by cooperatives in Sweden—but ignored similar schemes in Japan. Ultimately, Patel argues, the New Deal provided the institutional scaffolding for the construction of American global hegemony in the postwar era, making this history essential for understanding both the New Deal and America’s rise to global leadership.

Europeanization in History: An Introduction

Europeanization has turned into a ‘growth industry’. Now a catchword in political as well as academic realms, the term has enjoyed rapidly increasing usage, driven principally by the growing importance of the European Union. Its predominant connotation stems from the process of Europe’s contemporary political integration: since the early 1990s, Europeanization has been most often associated with new forms of European governance and the adaptation of nation-state legal and administrative procedures to the pressures associated with EU membership. Consequently, the term has been used primarily in the fields of law and political science.1 In recent years, however, a few anthropologists have weighed into the debate and begun to analyse the reconstruction of collective and personal identities brought about by processes of European integration.2 In these ways, Europeanization has become one of the central concepts by which social scientists conceptualize the accelerating processes of change that have transformed Europe’s recent past and present, and that will define its near future. However, all of these variations of literature share the same point of reference: the organizational structure and spatial dimension of the European Union. For historians concerned specifically with the EU’s history, this approach might be fruitful - even if few such historians of European integration have so far chosen to enter into this cross-disciplinary debate.3 At the same time, this whole strand of research restricts and scales down ‘Europeanization’ to a process closely linked to recent political and institutional developments.

European integration and the Atlantic community in the 1980s

This book originated from a conference held at the European University Institute in May 2010. Participants at the conference included Graham Avery, Stefano Bartolini, Duccio Basosi, Frederic Bozo, David Buchan, Edwina Campbell, Gabriele D’Ottavio, Ksenia Demidova, Aurelie Gfeller, Mark Gilbert, Friedrich Kratochwil, N. Piers Ludlow, Kiran Klaus Patel, Antonio Costa Pinto, Matthias Schulz, Giles Scott-Smith, Angela Romano, Federico Romero, Nuno Severiano Teixeira, Marten van Heuven, Kenneth Weisbrode, and Christian Wenkel.

The Dark Side of Transnationalism: Social Engineering and Nazism, 1930s-40s

This article introduces the special section on the history of social engineering and Nazism during the 1930s and 1940s. It sketches the object of social engineering, the historiographical debates surrounding it, the place of Nazism in this discussion and the role of transnationality. Moreover, it introduces the contributions and discusses questions for further research.

Multiple Connections in European Co-operation: International Organizations, Policy Ideas, Practices and Transfers, 1967–92

Abstract International organizations are ubiquitous in contemporary Europe and the wider world. This special issue takes a historical approach to exploring their relations with each other in Western Europe between 1967 and 1992. The authors seek to ‘provincialize’ and ‘de-centre’ the European Union’s role, exploring the interactions of its predecessors with other organizations like NATO, the OECD and the Council of Europe. This article develops the new historical-research agenda of co-operation and competition among IOs and their role in European co-operation. The first section discusses the limited existing work on such questions among historians and in adjacent disciplines. The second section introduces the five articles and their main arguments. The third section goes on to elaborate common findings, especially regarding what the authors call the vectors for the development of policy ideas and practices and their transfer across different institutional platforms.

Zeitgeschichte im digitalen Zeitalter. Neue und alte Herausforderungen

Vorspann Wer archiviert die SMS von Angela Merkel? Was geschieht mit dem E-Mail-Verkehr großer Unternehmen? Die Zeitgeschichte steht im digitalen Zeitalter vor vielen solchen Fragen und Herausforderungen. Die Quellen und nicht zuletzt ihre Verfügbarkeit ändern sich, neue methodische Zugriffe sind unabweisbar, ohne dass alte ihre Bedeutung verlieren. Die Zeitgeschichte steht vor einer Zeitenwende – und merkt es nicht, so der in Maastricht lehrende Historiker Kiran Klaus Patel in seinem Plädoyer für eine umfassende Debatte über die Grundlagen der Zeitgeschichte. Abstract Writing about contemporary history is facing new challenges in the digital age. The article sheds light on the practical implications for research resulting from the changes in source materials and the access to them. In view of technological innovations, changing cultural practices and new legal frameworks, it proposes that the current practice of contemporary history to advance by decades is outdated for the 21st century and also does not meet the necessary historiographical standards. While wittily written syntheses will be among the winners of the digital revolution, there has to be a rethink regarding the requirements of monographs written close to the sources. With its trenchant and provocative considerations, the article calls for a debate on a subject ignored by contemporary history for far too long.

The Role of International Organizations in Europeanization: The Case of the League of Nations and the European Economic Community

Europeanization is a given of twentieth-century European history. At the level of social and economic history in particular, many studies emphasize an increased level of intra-European exchange, transfer and in some fields even convergence when compared to that of other centuries.1 Very few published accounts, however, explore the role of international organizations in this process. This chapter will argue that some of these institutions have served both as agents and semi-public playgrounds for several forms and processes of Europeanization. The focus will not be on the economic, social or political impact on European societies of the various international agree-ments struck in these institutions. Rather, it concentrates on the organizations themselves as sites where knowledge was produced and as places where policies were developed. We argue that these organizations served as clearing-houses for intelligence, expertise and experience, and as hubs that generated, contained, stabilized and modified specific ‘European’ positions and mindsets, networks and policy outcomes.

The true ‘EURESCO’? The Council of Europe, transnational networking and the emergence of European Community cultural policies, 1970–90

Abstract The roots of EU action in the field of culture lie in the 1970s. At the time, the Council of Europe (CoE), the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and other organizations were already established players in the field. This article analyses the incremental and often haphazard process in which the European Community (EC) became the key organization at the European level by the end of the Cold War. It stresses the role of the EC’s specific governance structure, its considerable financial resources, and its objectives of market integration and expanding powers as drivers of this process, along with selective forms of adaptation of practices first tried out in other forums. Besides scrutinizing general tendencies of inter-organizational exchange during the 1970s and 1980s, the article zooms in on two concrete case studies. For the 1970s, it highlights the debates about cultural heritage and the European Architectural Heritage Year (EAHY) project: although initiated by the CoE, the EAHY became one of the first cases of EC policy import, strongly facilitated by transnational networks. The second case study, for the 1980s, deals with the development of a European audio-visual policy. Here again the CoE took the lead and worked as a laboratory for schemes later adapted by the EC.