Kostas A. Lavdas

Normative Evolution in Europe: Small States and Republican Peace

Understanding today’s EU requires a prism which is attentive to the interactions between the polity-building and world-inhabiting facets of the emerging polity. We cannot separate developing a theory of the EU as a polity from determining its placement in the world. Norms of cooperation become crucial in this endeavour: as they search for credible tools to interpret and master a changing Europe in a changing world, actors distil their experience in close and repeated cooperation with a view to enhancing their knowledge of and influence over complex games of advanced hyper-dependence. The normative underpinnings of today’s European construction can be approached in three steps. First, drawing inspiration from Thucydides, we demonstrate that the norms that count are neither religious in origin nor based primarily on custom and tradition. Next, we point to the significance of small states in norm development by explaining that the norms in question have been influenced by the practices and rationalizations associated with small-states behaviour, adaptability and survival. Finally, we suggest that the norms in question have evolved in interaction with a powerful current in Euro-Atlantic political thought and sensibility: republicanism. The paper identifies two main sets of norms in today’s EU: one stemming from previous experiences within the international system and the other developing with the new polity-in-the-making.

Republican Europe and Multicultural Citizenship

This article explores the possibilities for a normative understanding of the politics of EU development from a republican perspective. It draws on current debates on republicanism, which combine republican, liberal and multicultural themes, and defends an approach to European citizenship and the design of European institutions in which the contemporary republican emphasis on freedom as non-domination is complemented with the multiculturalist concern with group rights that cut across national boundaries. It is argued that the combination of republican institutions and multicultural citizenship can provide a model for European construction.

Contentious Europeanisation and the Public Mind: Greece in Comparative Perspective

This chapter addresses the political aspects of Greece’s EU membership and situates the case of Greece’s contentious Europeanisation in a comparative perspective. It focuses, in particular, on Greek perceptions of European institutions and the country’s changing relations with a changing EU. The chapter seeks to redress the tendency towards viewing Greece’s Europeanisation as a largely failed and/or unproductive project. It draws attention to the comparative impact of the current crisis on the changing attitudes in member states (such as Greece, Spain, Portugal, Latvia, and even France) variously affected by the crisis. The chapter concludes that there is strong evidence to suggest that Greece’s Europeanisation has been an impressively persistent project; however, the extent to which it will be looked upon from a future perspective as a tenacious project or as an obstinate one will depend on the complex interactions between domestic, European, and international developments.

Pragmatism, Not the Market: On the Politico-Economic Division of Labour

Tackling the political and normative dimensions of the ongoing dialogue between supporters of free market liberalism and champions of various versions of a planned economy requires clarifying at the outset two basic points. First, our view of processes and institutions depends on theoreti-cally informed observation, not philosophically grounded concepts. In con-trast to both neo-liberal and Marxist notions of the ontological link be-tween production and distribution, a view based on pragmatist norms aims to negotiate the shifting balance between politics and markets as well as between the social agencies associated with production and distribution. Second, this paper adopts a modified republican approach to political and policy processes and attempts to reconcile this particular version of neo-republicanism with a set of pragmatist norms. In what follows, then, I defend a view on governance which is predi-cated on a set of pragmatist norms of coexistence between politics and markets at the domestic and international levels. Exploring debates on the links between production, distribution and governance, and examining the relative merits of liberal and republican approaches with regard to relations between politics and the market, I suggest that from the neo-republican perspective which I endorse, it is fitting to develop demanding criteria of political morality, while at the same time promoting pragmatist norms of governance. In the chapter’s final section, I draw some conclusions about the role of a ‘new pragmatism’ in regulating change in the politico-economic division of labour.

Construction de l'espace européen de l'enseignement supérieur

Les questions de comparabilite et de compatibilite en matiere de politique de l’enseignement superieur se traduisent au sein de l’Union europeenne par de nouveaux defis. Par ailleurs, le jeu des interets politiques pese de plus en plus sur les mesures et les discours qui modelent le nouvel espace europeen de l’enseignement superieur et ses liens avec d’autres domaines d’action essentiels (politique economique, politique sociale, politique de l’emploi). Nous nous efforcerons dans cet article de proposer une analyse des repercussions de l’action publique, qui portera essentiellement sur : a) le jeu des interets politiques, les principaux acteurs, les interactions entre les grands programmes supranationaux et les reseaux de decision, b) des questions de decentralisation, d’internationalisation et de dereglementation de la politique de l’enseignement superieur, notamment dans le cadre du processus de suivi de Bologne, et c) les processus de reforme de l’education, organises comme autant de « rituels ». Dans cette etude, nous partirons de l’hypothese que les etablissements d’enseignement superieur sont consideres comme des partenaires/prestataires essentiels et que cette perception transforme leur role au regard des interets lies aux partenariats strategiques (aux niveaux des Etats, des regions et des etablissements).