Event Highlights: Reconfiguring European States in Crisis – A Lunch Talk by Patrick Le Gales
Patrick Le Galès, a CNRS Research Professor of Sociology and Politics at Sciences Po Paris, spoke at the Center for the Study of Europe on Wednesday April 5th, about his recently co-edited book. “Reconfiguring European States in Crisis” offers a ground-breaking analysis by some of Europe’s leading political scientists, examining how the European national state and the European Union state have dealt with two sorts of changes in the last two decades. The central argument of the book is that the processes of Europeanization and globalization have been the main factors undermining state capacity to exercise authority, to control their economics, and to defend their territories.
As European states become primary policy states, Le Galès explained that internal reforms have occurred as a direct result of democratic pressures and the interdependence within globalizing financial capitalism. He emphasized how Europe has been the continent where states have mattered the most and for the longest time, noting the Treaty of Westphalia in the 17th century as the critical juncture for the emergence of states as the dominant form of political organization. Addressing the multidimensionality of the state, Le Galès spoke about the duality of the European political system and highlighted the hierarchal authority struggle in the management of challenges and crises. Since the early 1990s, Europeans have experienced the state in two forms – within their nation-state and as members of the greater European Union. He noted that the question of state capacity has been brought to the forefront of conversation in Europe, as EU institutions continue to gain authority while Member States fight to retain sovereign control over domestic policy and governance.
After a brief evaluation of the debate surrounding the epistemology of “the state”, Le Galès turned the discussion toward the issue of governmentalization in European states and argued that public policies are major drivers of state reconfigurations because “not only do policies make politics, but policies also help to make or transform institutions and states.” He described the internal and external contemporary challenges facing European countries, and discussed the blurring of state identities resulting from migratory trends in the EU and the role of mobility in shaping both states and policies. Le Galès then discussed how the book interprets how European states have been reconfigured through five processes: globalization, new public–private relationships, policy crises (and the subsequent reform and expansion of institutional authority), the changing scale and number of regulatory agencies, and shifting internal security concerns. He ended by acknowledging how the current crises in fiscal policy, Brexit, security and terrorism, and migration through a borderless European Union have had dramatic effects on European states and offered several “futures” which may emerge in the near future given the rise of nationalistic populist movements across the continent.
This event was organized as part of EU Futures, a series of conversations exploring the emerging future in Europe. The EU Futures project is supported by a Getting to Know Europe Grant from the European Commission Delegation in Washington, DC to the Center for the Study of Europe at Boston University.