Peter Van Ham - European Integration and the Postmodern Condition: Governance, Democracy, Identity

This is the first book combining the debates about postmodernity and postmodernism in International Relations Theory on the one hand, and the transformation of Europe's political organization on the other. Peter van Ham's European Integration and the Postmodern Condition comes at the right time many colleagues who teach European Studies will be eager to find a volume taking up this theme.

This is a lively and stimulating book and the first text which deals so explicitly with the implications of postmodernism for European politics/integration.

This is the first book to look at the process of European integration by drawing on both established and novel trends in postmodern thinking and analysis. The book asks how we can study the process of European integration in the current period of paradigm shift, and maps out the central elements of the academic debate dealing with the future of integration and Europe in general.

Peter van Ham argues that the European Union may develop into a postmodern entity characterized by decentered, complex policy formation based on a multi-level European identity, a new notion of democracy, legitimacy and authority; and related in an open way to its Other, in the form of anarchy (embodied by Russia), cultural alterity (Islam) as well as a juxtaposition with the USA. Given that the state is now only one source of authority amongst several, this book explores the idea that the state, like other traditional spatial modes of representation, may gradually be paralleled by other forms of organization, which will have important implications for democratic theory and practice, as well as the place and role of the West in the world at large.

The process of European integration is shaped by a globalizing world order. Peter van Ham persuasively concludes that, in order to understand the qualitatively new nature of the emerging Euro-polity a multi-faceted postmodern approach is required, and this book offers the first elements of such an approach. This book stimulates fresh readings of the European project, and encourages open thinking space for developing new analytical horizons. It will be a significant cutting-edge contribution to debates in international relations, comparative politics and European studies.

Peter van Ham is Professor of West European Politics at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany. He recently co-edited Mapping European Security after Kosovo and co-authored A Critical Approach to European Security. He is the author of The EC, Eastern Europe and European Unity; Managing Non-Proliferation Regimes in the 1990s, and Western Doctrines on EastWest Trade.

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Peter J.S. Duncan

European Integration and the Postmodern Condition
Governance, democracy, identity
Peter van Ham

First published 2001
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

Transferred to Digital Printing 2005

2001 Peter van Ham

Typeset in Baskerville by Taylor & Francis Books Ltd

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Ham, Peter van, 1963
European integration and the postmodern condition: governance,
democracy, identity
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. European Union. 2. PostmodernismPolitical aspects. 3. Globalization.
4. Democracy I. Title. II. Series.
JN30.H35 2001
341.242'2dc21 00062728

ISBN 0415246997

The ideas which this book presents on European integration and, more specifically, the new theoretical approach to understanding the nature of European politics, have been some time in the making. All scholars that want to make some sense of how the European Union (EU) is changing and shaping the economic, political, cultural and security landscape of the continent have to ask which perspectives are more useful than others, which metaphors may give us better insight in the complexity of integration, and which reading of the European political text is dominant.

Over the years, I have looked at (and through) a number of the conceptual lenses that are available in the academic literature and found most of them too constricted or simply out of focus. It struck me that, although the process of European integration is unique and the developing Euro-polity without its equal, most theoretical approaches remain embedded within a pattern of traditional, state-centric concepts of politics and continue to take the classical inside/outside divide of domestic/international politics for granted. I am, however, convinced that the study of European politics requires a different, more open, eclectic and decentered approach. Such a postmodern perspective of European politics has been developed in this book, and I hope that it will serve as an intellectual springboard for those that are beginning to come to terms with the rapidly changing and expanding agenda of European political studies. Certainly I expect to work along these lines of enquiry myself during the foreseeable future.

I would like to express my thanks to all those who have contributed to my thinking on the study of European integration. Most of my colleagues and students (who must have heard more about this book than they would ever have chosen to) have persisted in pointing out the vague and imprecise aspects of the postmodern reading of European politics; I owe them all a large debt of gratitude, since they have helped me to escape from (at least some of) the pitfalls and hazards of postmodern analysis and made me formulate my arguments in a more lucid way. Although the book itself was written alone and in the relative solitude of the George G. Marshall Center's splendid isolation in a small-town Kurort in the Bavarian Alps, I want to offer my particular thanks to those who have helped in the different phases of transforming my ideas and work on European integration in this final book. I have presented different chapters (as sometimes rough drafts) during a number of conferences and seminars and have benefited from the comments and discussions that were provoked. I thank all those who offered many good suggestions, and ask their forbearance for the ones I ignored. My wife Margriet has done more than anyone else to help me over the inevitable rough spots on the always demanding road of writing a book, which is why I have dedicated it to her as well as our children.