| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
On 1 November 2013, the European Union will celebrate its twentieth birthday. On 12 October 2012, the Nobel Committee announced the Nobel Peace Prize 2012 will be awarded to the European Union "for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe".1 In the following, I will comment on Alec Murphy's paper Trapped in the Logic of the Modern State System? European Integration in the Wake of the Financial Crisis2 and argue that never before in the history of European integration, has the European 'idea' had so little inspiration and appealing visions for the future of integrating/integrated Europe to offer. This constitutes a fundamental
problem as we can currently observe a rise of nationalism and the (re-)constructions of 'us vs. them' binaries in Europe. In my argument, I side with Murphy in that both the lack of vision and such constructions are, at least partially, rooted in what he describes as a metageographical mindset based on the logic of the modern state system. Murphy traces insightfully how essential parts of the European integration processes have been trapped in a way of thinking determined by a "modernist political territorial order",3 despite the challenge European integration presents to that order (p. 3). His argument is framed around the question of why European Monetary Union (EMU) was prioritised as the preferred way to promote European integration as opposed to other possible paths of integration that seem(ed) less trapped in such modern, territorial, state-based logic.
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