Europe

My research on the EU and Europe began in the late 1980s, when it became necessary to adapt my perspective on national capital-labor relations to their interdependence within the European Union. My original focus in this area was on the so-called “social dimension of Europe” and its collapse. This probably explains why I have never been able to feel that I belong to the mainstream of research on “European integration”, even though my first publication in the field was coauthored with Philippe Schmitter, one of its founding fathers. Very soon, I turned to the more general topic of the dynamics of European two-level politics between nationalism and supranationalism and the institutional architecture emerging from it. In this context, I became embroiled in an extensive public debate with Jürgen Habermas, who viewed the EU as a refuge of European democracy, whereas for me, in its current form, it is undermining the democratic nation-state.