European Disintegration?

Although the Journal of Democracy, during its more than two decades of publication, has focused principally on the struggle to establish and maintain democracy in developing and postcommunist countries, we have also occasionally assessed the status of democracy in the countries of Western Europe and North America. The situation in which Europe currently finds itself seemed to present a particularly compelling case for coverage in our pages. That, at any rate, was the consensual judgment of our Editorial Board at its annual meeting in September 2011. As one of our Board members stressed, this is a function not just of the importance of Europe and the severity of the difficulties that it has been experiencing, but also of the extent to which the world’s newer democracies (many of which have complicated relationships with the United States) have looked to Europe as the exemplar of the political condition that they were seeking to attain. During the subsequent year, Europe’s trajectory has had its ups and downs, but its troubles have certainly not gone away. If anything, they have become more acute.

We decided that the best way to address the issue would be to organize a symposium featuring short essays by a range of experts on Europe. In extending invitations to our authors, we sought to frame the discussion by presenting them with the statement and set of questions below:

For many of the world’s new or aspiring democracies, Europe has long represented a model of peace, prosperity, and liberty. Of late, however, Europe’s economic travails, political disarray, and declining military and diplomatic clout have not only diminished its attractiveness as a model but also raised serious questions about its own future.

Since 2010, the euro and the eurozone have plainly been in crisis, though there is disagreement about the nature of that crisis. Some see it as primarily financial, not unlike the 2008 threat to the world economy following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Others maintain that the crisis has deep structural roots—that it is a consequence of the mismatch between the unified monetary policy of the eurozone and the disparate fiscal policies of its member states. The latter analysis leads some observers to conclude that not only the euro but the European Union itself is in danger of unraveling. The EU has hitherto maintained its forward momentum by steadily if haltingly moving toward “ever closer union.” While a further strengthening of federalism might resolve the current eurozone crisis, public support for such a policy direction appears very thin within the eurozone, not to mention among EU member states outside it. And if the eurozone were to break apart, it is not clear that the EU could simply return to the status quo that preceded the adoption of the euro.

Moreover, for the first time in decades one hears mainstream voices suggesting not only that the euro and the EU are in peril, but that democracy as such may now be vulnerable in Europe. The alleged signs of this vulnerability include the rise of populism and anti-immigrant sentiments, increasing distrust and cynicism toward mainstream political parties, the pressure put on the welfare state by low birthrates and aging populations, the region’s anemic economic growth, slackening public support for European integration, and the seeming inability of the EU to forestall democratic backsliding in its member states—Hungary providing the most salient recent example.

We invite you to write a short essay of about three-thousand words elaborating your views on the European predicament. How deep is the current crisis, and what are its sources? Will the eurozone survive intact? Is there reason to fear a potential unraveling of the European Union? Might democracy itself face a serious threat in Europe in the coming years? And if so, how can this danger best be avoided?

The seven responses that we received appear in the pages that follow. As might have been expected from a group of contributors who are quite diverse in their political viewpoints and national origins, they are far from being in full agreement on the sources of the crisis or the best way of responding to it...