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The supranational structure of the European Union and its related institutions was developed to counter the existential crisis caused by the drastic fragmentation of Europe into multiple nation states and their empires at the time; a crisis that had unleashed two World Wars and a Cold War.
At the end of the Cold War, it had seemed that Europe was on the winning trajectory. Futurists like Jeremy Rifkin proclaimed a “European Dream” that could end up more powerful than the American Dream. Both NATO and the EU welcomed as new members former enemy countries that used to be members of the Warsaw Pact, just as the original European Coal and Steel Community used to forge a bond between former antagonists. The end of the Cold War also saw the presumed confirmation of the Hegelian “end of history” as the victory of democratic free market societies over autocratic models, with the United States as the uncontested leader not just of the “West” but of the world. United since the defeat of National Socialism, both the United States and the European Union had seen the collapse of the Soviet Communist system — and were safe in the assumption of the greatness of their own systems of governance and economy, which included a wider supranational frame-work of international cooperation and development.
Yet nowadays, in the West, there are calls to “Make America Great Again,” to stress State Sovereignty, to question Federal authority or withdraw from the European Union, to end efforts for wider supranational trade agreements, to couch policy issues in mainly national terms, and to limit border-crossing efforts. Be it the Trump movement, the French Front National, UKIP, the Alternative for Germany, Fidesz and Jobbik in Hungary, PIS in Poland, the Finns Party, Golden Dawn in Greece, the Brexit movement, the Right Sector in Ukraine, United Russia, or many others — a resurgent and unapologetic nationalism is back on the table, ironically as an apparently international movement, fueled by a common canon of anti-refugee, anti-immigration, anti-government, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, anti-American (in Europe and Russia), anti-European (in the US), and anti-global sentiments. At the same time, the nationalist movement claims to be truly democratic, and to speak for the true representatives of the people.
This may point to a redefinition of what is understood as democracy, and can also be attested for the Occupy movement, Democracy Now, Bernie Sanders’ campaign, and others who combine a nationalist protectionist narrative with an internationally cooperative outlook. In both cases — “left” or “right” — traditional institutions, treaties, parties, the transatlantic cooperation, and representative democracy itself seem to be under serious review at a time where the triumphalist moment of the 1990s seems like a distant memory.
What does this mean for the capacity of modern democracy to be resilient to such challenges? Is a United Europe at an end?
As part of the 15th Transatlantic Student Symposium in cooperation with Oregon State University and the University Warsaw the course will take a group of selected HU stu-dents together with American and Polish students to a field trip to Rome, Warsaw and Berlin culminating in an academic student conference at the University of Warsaw in March 2017.
Course requirements include active class participation, class presentations, independent project work and a symposium presentation.
Please register for the course via AGNES. |
