Hagen Schulz-Forberg – författare

The Maastricht Treaty in 1992 was based on neoliberal ideas of a market-driven European economy and democracy, and continues to be seen as a step towards a new stage of unification: towards a more federal Europe based on market integration. The authors demonstrate that European integration as a federal project actually came to an end around 1970. The European Economic Community (EEC) - the precursor of EU - was never thought of as a democracy. The authors locate a shift in thinking about legitimacy and further integration in the 1980s when the idea of a European democracy was connected with a plan for the internal market: the market would pave the way for democracy. Since then, there has been a growing tension between the official line about a democratic EU and the institutional capacity to carry it through. This tension undermined integration. The book suggests that, instead of democracy-through-market, there are signs of increasing social disintegration, political extremism and populism in the wake of economic integration. Providing a more realistic historical understanding of European integration, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, history and European studies.

The Maastricht Treaty in 1992 was based on neoliberal ideas of a market-driven European economy and democracy, and continues to be seen as a step towards a new stage of unification: towards a more federal Europe based on market integration. The authors demonstrate that European integration as a federal project actually came to an end around 1970. The European Economic Community (EEC) - the precursor of EU - was never thought of as a democracy. The authors locate a shift in thinking about legitimacy and further integration in the 1980s when the idea of a European democracy was connected with a plan for the internal market: the market would pave the way for democracy. Since then, there has been a growing tension between the official line about a democratic EU and the institutional capacity to carry it through. This tension undermined integration. The book suggests that, instead of democracy-through-market, there are signs of increasing social disintegration, political extremism and populism in the wake of economic integration. Providing a more realistic historical understanding of European integration, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, history and European studies.

Contributors to this volume explore the changing concepts of the social and the economic during a period of fundamental change across Asia. They challenge accepted explanations of how Western knowledge spread through Asia and show how versatile Asian intellectuals were in introducing European concepts and in blending them with local traditions.

The Maastricht Treaty in 1992 was based on neoliberal ideas of a market-driven European economy and democracy, and continues to be seen as a step towards a new stage of unification: towards a more federal Europe based on market integration. The authors demonstrate that European integration as a federal project actually came to an end around 1970. The European Economic Community (EEC) - the precursor of EU - was never thought of as a democracy. The authors locate a shift in thinking about legitimacy and further integration in the 1980s when the idea of a European democracy was connected with a plan for the internal market: the market would pave the way for democracy. Since then, there has been a growing tension between the official line about a democratic EU and the institutional capacity to carry it through. This tension undermined integration. The book suggests that, instead of democracy-through-market, there are signs of increasing social disintegration, political extremism and populism in the wake of economic integration. Providing a more realistic historical understanding of European integration, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, history and European studies.

The Maastricht Treaty in 1992 was based on neoliberal ideas of a market-driven European economy and democracy, and continues to be seen as a step towards a new stage of unification: towards a more federal Europe based on market integration. The authors demonstrate that European integration as a federal project actually came to an end around 1970. The European Economic Community (EEC) - the precursor of EU - was never thought of as a democracy. The authors locate a shift in thinking about legitimacy and further integration in the 1980s when the idea of a European democracy was connected with a plan for the internal market: the market would pave the way for democracy. Since then, there has been a growing tension between the official line about a democratic EU and the institutional capacity to carry it through. This tension undermined integration. The book suggests that, instead of democracy-through-market, there are signs of increasing social disintegration, political extremism and populism in the wake of economic integration. Providing a more realistic historical understanding of European integration, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of political science, history and European studies.

Contributors to this volume explore the changing concepts of the social and the economic during a period of fundamental change across Asia. They challenge accepted explanations of how Western knowledge spread through Asia and show how versatile Asian intellectuals were in introducing European concepts and in blending them with local traditions.

Contributors to this volume explore the changing concepts of the social and the economic during a period of fundamental change across Asia. They challenge accepted explanations of how Western knowledge spread through Asia and show how versatile Asian intellectuals were in introducing European concepts and in blending them with local traditions.

Contributors to this volume explore the changing concepts of the social and the economic during a period of fundamental change across Asia. They challenge accepted explanations of how Western knowledge spread through Asia and show how versatile Asian intellectuals were in introducing European concepts and in blending them with local traditions.

To cut off time and seal away the past, to proclaim a new beginning in the present and project a better future onto tomorrow – and thus to make history – is a key signature of modern social, political and cultural discourses. In this book, this practice is represented through the metaphor of the Zero Hour, which alludes to the wish to rebuild the past in the face of a crisis-ridden present characterised by growing conceptual insecurity, hoping for a more stable future. Indeed, the ever-new construction of our past, sequenced and ordered in explanatory narratives, bears witness to a future that ‘ought to be’. As the case studies in this volume show, this is a global phenomenon. Against the backdrop of a confluence of experiences which unsettled conceptual norms after the First World War, this volume presents a novel approach to global history as it examines ways of breaking with the past and the way in which societies, as well as transnational historical actors, employ key concepts to compose arguments for a better tomorrow.

Estonians for Europe provides a unique insight into nearly eighty years of the history surrounding European unification. Concentrating on Estonian aspirations for an integrative organization in international relations, the book illustrates a number of parallels and differences between commonly held narratives of twentieth-century European history.

An accepted narrative within European integration history is that the issue in which city to locate European Community headquarters was decided on the intergovernmental level between the member states. In the present volume, this view is expanded with the example of Strasbourg by arguing that activity at the local level is an important factor as well.A set of highly active political and associational local agents used different strategies to consolidate the city’s position against competing cities and the European Communities. This study finds that a highly specialised group of municipal politicians and civil servants were an important factor for bringing the European institutions to the city.