Kostas A. Lavdas and Dimitris N. Chryssochoou, "Republican Europe in a Liberal Milieu" (JMWP no. 05/09)
Dear friends of the Jean Monnet Center,
We are pleased to announce the online publication of the fifth paper in the 2009 Jean Monnet Working Paper series. We include the abstract of this paper below:
Kostas A. Lavdas and Dimitris N. Chryssochoou, "Republican Europe in a Liberal Milieu"
(JMWP no. 05/09)
With republican theory emerging as a form of scholarly inquiry on Europe's puzzling transformations, a variety of civic conceptions of the European Union (EU) bring into focus the uses of normative theory. This paper, drawing from a rich intellectual tradition, argues that a challenge central to EU constitutionalism is to utilize Europe's republican tradition for its emerging polity. But we also need a new way of theorizing European diversity, as the latter transcends national differences by embracing a variety of cultural and spatial dimensions. But how are we to combine a robust (republican) grounding for constitutionalism and a celebratory affirmation of differences? We suggest that, by tackling the question of democracy in the EU from a liberal republican angle that endorses a new form of civic polyculturalism, one can assign meaning to Europe's envisaged transformation into a res publica composita. The theoretical challenge is thus set: to go beyond what is evident in Europe's novel experimentations with democracy so as to embrace latent but crucial potentialities.
We invite you to access this Working Paper on the Jean Monnet Center website at www.jeanmonnetprogram.org.
Say What??? How do these people learn to speak this jibberish?
ReplyDeleteThus is an example of how they discuss their intentions without anyone paying any attention.
ReplyDeleteThey are simply recognizing the huge gulf between genuine "constitutionalism" and a "celebratory affirmation of differences", and justifying the imposed contradictions in order to realize a "new form of civic polyculturalism" which we know as Communitarianism. They created the contradictions by merging the formerly independent countries into an amalgamated E.U., so they cannot adopt a real solution to the problems they produced, because that would be counter productive to their goals. They cannot pretent that the contradictions don't exist, therefore they must be justified somehow. That is everyone concerned must be fitted for a pair of blindfolds (reality synthesizers) to be worn along with their shackles and leg irons.
The "variety of civic conceptions" must be normalized. That is a single perception needs to be adopted by everyone. That's high brow lingo for unity, oneness, group, collective, communitarianism.
It's a little late to be learning their language now, but perhaps not too late. They obviously understand it and so can we if we want to make the effort.
The best news we can glean from this is that the "envisaged transformation" has not yet been achieved. To realize it they must "go beyond what is evident", that is the obvious.