European Integration and the Problem of the State

A Critique of the Bordering of Europe

By: Stefan Borg

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eText | 7 April 2015

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European integration has in many ways been an important attempt to institute a form of political organization that moves beyond the state. For many of the early proponents of European integration, the nation state had become associated with militarism, jingoism and the many devastating wars on the European continent. Drawing on post-structuralist theoretical advances, this book compares practices of European integration with practices of statecraft and argues that far from transcending the modern state form, the practices of European integration in many ways reproduce it. Borg asserts that the project of European integration is plagued by similar ethico-political dilemmas as the modern state, and is ultimately animated by a similar desire to either expel or interiorize difference. In critically examining the practices of European integration, Borg questions whether they may be said to go beyond modern statecraft and what is at stake in such attempts.

Industry Reviews

"This book is an important and essential contribution to understandings of identity, the state and alternative political, economic and social orders, of which the European Union is offered as the primary contemporary example. Borg's timely and critical reflection on the nature of European integration and the processes by which the EU's identity has been created highlights the state-like nature of this entity including the exclusions and violences. In doing so, important questions are raised about the novelty of the EU as mode of organising political and economic life and about its capacity to escape the ethical contradictions that plague the nation-state form." - Professor Roxanne Lynn Doty, School of Politics and Global Studies, Arizona State University, USA "The EU has long been seen as a major challenge to the modern territorial society of states. In this masterful volume, Stefan Borg develops an overdue antidote to the prevailing discourse. His argument that the EU is engaging in statecraft makes a prime contribution to the debate about the EU as a normative power in world politics. Future theorising of the EU's international role cannot ignore Borg's forceful reasoning." - Professor Thomas Diez, Department of Political Science, University of Tuebingen, Germany