Articles

Russia’s democratic inertia results from the dominance of private over universal values, writes writes Samuel A. Greene. But what are the factors that could lead to change? While pressure from below is likely to provoke consolidation of the elites, long-term economic decline might encourage greater European integration and reform of the country’s institutions.

Is the monetary union worth preserving if it means the virtual colonization of the weakest member economies? Assessing responses to the euro crisis, John Grahl argues that the real cause – private sector deficits across the periphery – remains unaddressed. Instead, a regime is emerging in which EU creditor authorities override national decision-making in every aspect of public policy.

European leaders’ unwavering commitment to ever closer union is causing more harm than good, argues Stefan Auer. Europe doesn’t need more integration; it needs more democracy to enable its nations to regain control over their destiny. Partial and well-managed disintegration may be preferable to a chaotic implosion.

While democracy evaporates on a national level, it doesn’t reappear anywhere else, least of all in Europe. Maintaining the democratic nature of our societies depends on the rules of the game we impose on ourselves at the European level, argues José Ignacio Torreblanca.

The discrediting of the category of race in post-war European societies did not abolish racism: officially endorsed cultural relativism perpetuated Eurocentricism while dismissing racism as the pathology of the individual. Critique of culturalism is, however, to be distinguished from the new wave of anti-multiculturalism, argues Alana Lentin. Ostensibly aimed at the illiberalism of multiculturalism’s “beneficiaries”, the latter expresses intolerance of “bad diversity”.

“Narrative tolerance” has encouraged an historiographic preference for witness accounts within European cultural institutions. Often, however, narrative authority continues to work beneath a blandly affirmative surface. Questions of reliability aside, is a witness-based history even able to fulfil the necessary task of narrating Europe’s political identity?

The positivist tradition of nineteenth century history, dominated by the idea of the nation and based on the archive, began in the 1970s to give way to a concern with recent history, in which the historical witness became paramount. With the past ceasing to be a body of knowledge and becoming a public issue, a new form of political influence has exerted itself upon historians. In the French case, the subject of colonialism is particularly controversial. Now more than ever it is crucial historians retain critical distance.

Germany’s politicians lack deep European convictions yet are susceptible to calls for a more strident role in Europe; and while the mainstream is unlikely to give up what it sees as the recipe for German success, “constitutional patriotism” could allow for greater Europeanization. Jan-Werner Müller talks to Esprit about German contradictions.

The challenge for a liberal democracy is to remain as such, argues Charles Taylor in conversation with Slawomir Sierakowski. Western democracies suffer two types deterioration: a misperception of really existing problems and a lack of vital tension between the demos and the government.

The claim that Christianity provides the bedrock of Western culture might serve the interests of extremists, but it is a betrayal of a far more complex history, argues Kenan Malik.

In eastern central Europe, the neoliberal “regime architecture” favoured by non-state actors is copied by the public sector, resulting in buildings with no representative function. To counter this trend, architects must serve as ambassadors of architecture and quality space.

Democratic upsurge in North Africa can combine with the renewable energy revolution to inject new life into the European project. Two-way developmental traffic across the Mediterranean would leave new generations in both North and South with fair chances of a good life, Claus Leggewie suggests.

If the politicians can’t find a solution, let the citizens. That’s the call of a group of Belgian intellectuals and activists. They have a detailed proposal: the G1000, a meeting in Brussels on 11 November 2011. One thousand randomly selected Belgian citizens will be given an opportunity to discuss, in all freedom, the future of their country. “Because democracy is so much more than citizens who vote and politicians who negotiate.”

The EU shouldn’t be surprised by the Tymoshenko verdict: its support of anything nominally reformist has been perceived as acceptance of a range of repressions. Tough measures are now needed if another authoritarian regime is to be prevented from forming on the EU’s eastern border, writes Mykola Riabchuk.