Nicolas Jabko. Playing the Market: A Political Strategy for Uniting Europe, 1985-2005. Cornell Studies in Political Economy Series. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006. 296 pp. $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8014-4463-0.
Reviewed by Ronald J. Granieri (Department of History, University of Pennsylvania)
Published on H-German (January, 2009)
Commissioned by Susan R. Boettcher
Selling Europe, but Who's Buying?
The creation of the European Union is one of the most dramatic and important developments in modern world history, a triumph of peaceful political cooperation and integration after centuries of enmity and violence. Ironically, however, that basic positive message rarely reaches the general public. When Europeans think of the European Union at all these days, it appears either as a distant, corrupt, and inefficient bureaucratic monster, or as a looming threat to their national identities and futures, if not both at the same time. Rarely do the concrete advantages of a single currency, free movement in labor, or study opportunities translate into anything approaching enthusiasm. Even Europeans who have profited immensely from integration (such as, most recently, the Irish) are quick to denounce the European Union as an institution when given the opportunity. A cynic would say that the greatest success of the European Union has been to rally both the Left (which opposes its alleged neoliberalism) and Right (which opposes its alleged centralization) against it. The resulting euro-skeptical unity, however, does not offer much hope for Europe's future.
This apparently insoluble paradox of practical success and public failure continues to bedevil European politicians, and they get little help from academic studies of the European Union. Most literature focuses on the workings of the Union's organs, offering all of the distance and elitism of traditional institutional scholarship about high politics with none of the human drama that makes the high politics of other times and places appealing to the broader public. Nicholas Jabko's work has its roots within that political science tradition, although he also offers a refreshing awareness of the limitations of the institutional perspective. Although this brief but dense analysis devotes a great deal of time and space to wrestling with existing theories of European politics, Jabko's goal is to figure out how the European Union has managed to reach the level of integration that it has accomplished, and he finds it within the paradoxical role of the market as a political strategy to appeal to various constituencies at different times.
Jabko outlines quite well how the European Community emerged from the "Eurosclerosis" of the 1970s and early 1980s to gain a new momentum after 1985, leading to such important breakthroughs as the Single European Act, the Maastricht Treaty, and the euro. This was no small accomplishment, and he rightfully credits the skillful work of politicians at both the European and national level, especially Jacques Delors, the European Commission President, who advocated and shepherded the most important decisions.
Jabko's basic argument is that the successful relaunch of the European project was the result of the manipulation of the concept of the market, although "the momentum of that process can be adequately explained neither by an imperative need to adapt to global economic trends nor by a wholesale shift to a neoliberal paradigm. Market reforms at the European level are a genuine conundrum" (p. 10). It is the market as metaphor rather than reality that interests Jabko as he attempts to analyze this conundrum. He is not arguing, as some do, that the specific power of market mechanisms as associated with neoliberalism and globalization made union possible. Indeed, he discusses quite clearly how specific aspects of the European Union, such as the continuation of structural assistance to less developed regions of Europe, reflected resistance to simple laissez-faire neoliberalism and required a quite active regulatory regime at the European level. Citing works such as Karl Polanyi's The Great Transformation (1944), Jabko notes that "it takes political power to build a market," but that very power can then impede the functioning of free markets. "In sum," he writes, " the challenge is to explain not only why liberalization occurred but also why it did not entail a triumph of the market, that is, why the glass is both half full and half empty" (pp. 24-25).
This clever, nuanced argument displays a familiarity both with the technical literature and with the political decisions and debates of the period. Jabko's case studies on topics such as electrical regulation and structural aid offer excellent opportunities to see how the market could mean different things to different constituencies at different times. Although it can be heavy going at times, reading it will be a valuable experience for anyone who wants to appreciate the current state of the European Union.
In the end, however, one puts this book aside with a combination of puzzlement and disappointment. This is not Jabko's failing, however, but results from the paradoxical story he tells so well. As much as Jabko emphasizes the success of this market strategy, he is also painfully aware of its shortcomings, completing the book in the aftermath of the 2005 defeat of the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands. Sometimes a strategy can be too smart for its own good. Integration through the elite manipulation of market images has not brought the European Union any closer to obtaining the public support it needs to take the next steps necessary to reach political coherence. In a way this has been a continuation of the technocratic strategy originally adopted by Jean Monnet and kindred spirits in Brussels in the 1950s. They had hoped that practical progress would make Europe appear inevitable, by passing any need to engage in serious political discussions about Europe's political future.[1] Jabko notes as a final irony that "for strategic reasons, Delors contributed to these much-criticized aspects of European integration, whereas his ideal vision of Europe was neither economically liberal nor technocratic." Thus, paradoxically, "the remarkable success of the integrationist strategy of the 1980s and 1990s could become a liability for future political integration" (p. 186).
This is the problem. No one feels natural loyalty to a common market, however well regulated, even if they enjoy it at vacation time. If that is all the European Union is destined to be, it represents enormous progress from the fragmented and violent Europe of earlier centuries. Nevertheless, it is not clear how such an entity can expect to maintain itself into the future, without either collapsing under the weight of its "democracy deficit" or being swallowed up in a globalized and decentralized neoliberal world order. Some scholars embrace the idea of an apolitical Europe, and reject arguments in favor of a "European Superstate."[2] Whether that is the best vision for the future is a subject for another debate at another time. What is clear, however, is that the European Union will never be more than what it is--unless and until it becomes possible for the elites who shape EU policy to convince the European public not only that European integration is inevitable, but rather that it is desirable.
Notes
[1]. See for example Giandomenico Majone, Dilemmas of European Integration: The Ambiguities and Pitfalls of Integration by Stealth (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005).
[2]. See Werner Lippert, review of Glyn Morgan, The Idea of a European Superstate: Public Justification and European Integration (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), H-German, June 5, 2008 http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14650 (accessed November 8, 2008).
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Citation:
Ronald J. Granieri. Review of Jabko, Nicolas, Playing the Market: A Political Strategy for Uniting Europe, 1985-2005.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
January, 2009.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=15533
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