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European political, social, and cultural life. By providing what Mannheim calls ‘fundamental integrative attitudes and formative principles,’ the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School pushed individuals to interpret the events of the interwar years and the Second World War as a historical rupture. 49 Using the theoretical tools provided by Benjamin, Adorno, Marcuse, and Habermas, subsequent generations were more likely to see the events of the early twentieth century as a ‘Benjaminian moment’ of rupture. The resources of collective remembrance Although none of
political authority. In his example we can see how ideas worked in the period. Far from being detached intellectual exercises, the evidence of the composition, circulation and reception of his texts shows that ideas could have serious instrumental purchase in political life. One man and his pen – with the right support in powerful places – really could make a difference. Toland’s affinity with men like Eugene illustrates the role his ideas played in the elite circles of early eighteenth-century European politics. It also indicates how receptive political and intellectual
desire. Thus the popularity of the Triumphs in sixteenth-century England provided a crucial element in the creation of the Elizabethan icon. It offered a vocabulary and a cluster of associations through which Elizabeth could be presented to her own subjects and to other European political figures as the Virgin Queen, but in a context resonant of military victory and masculine
East and to tame the Danube delta for the benefit of global commerce. To tame the Danube required a more powerful international commission with Britain and France, the foremost Europeans powers, at its helm. The broader implication here is that the concept of the international did not develop from internal European politics but arose through European international society's engagement with the periphery and Europe's fears of untamed geographies and the instability such spaces might bring. Hence, early understandings of the Danube delta as
direct western European political engagement with the Muslim world and the Near East. Bonaparte’s Egyptian and Syrian campaign of 1798–99 was the first western invasion of the Levant since Louis IX’s in 1248–50. Although bizarrely portrayed as a war of liberation, an attempt to create a new brotherhood of man on the Nile, the French foray stimulated new fascination not only with the suitably distant and hence apolitical Ancient Egypt, but also in the scenes of the crusades, not least as Bonaparte led his troops to besiege Acre, and in colonisation. While Bonaparte
1951 by founding the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). After attempts to set up a European Defence Community and a European Political Community failed in 1954, negotiations between the ‘Six’ (belonging to the overall successful ECSC) in 1957 led to the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC). However, West European integration projects and Central and Eastern European adaptation to Soviet communism were overshadowed (and intensified) by pronounced East–West tensions, as expressed in the 1950–53 Korean War, the formal division of Germany into two
The well-being of Europe’s citizens depends less on individual consumption and more on their social consumption of essential goods and services – from water and retail banking to schools and care homes – in what we call the foundational economy. Individual consumption depends on market income, while foundational consumption depends on social infrastructure and delivery systems of networks and branches, which are neither created nor renewed automatically, even as incomes increase. This historically created foundational economy has been wrecked in the last generation by privatisation, outsourcing, franchising and the widespread penetration of opportunistic and predatory business models. The distinctive, primary role of public policy should therefore be to secure the supply of basic services for all citizens (not a quantum of economic growth and jobs). Reconstructing the foundational has to start with a vision of citizenship that identifies foundational entitlements as the conditions for dignified human development, and likewise has to depend on treating the business enterprises central to the foundational economy as juridical persons with claims to entitlements but also with responsibilities and duties. If the aim is citizen well-being and flourishing for the many not the few, then European politics at regional, national and EU level needs to be refocused on foundational consumption and securing universal minimum access and quality. If/when government is unresponsive, the impetus for change has to come from engaging citizens locally and regionally in actions which break with the top down politics of ‘vote for us and we will do this for you’.
parties from across the EU also ought to be discussed in more depth by European political scientists. Correctly locating ECR on a ‘Left–Right’ or ‘pro-European–Eurosceptic’ spectrum is important, but recognising the group's influence in parliamentary policymaking is also a central objective of the book. In particular, the way ECR grew after being created in 2009 to overtaking long-standing mid-sized groups like the Greens/European Free Alliance (EFA) and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) in 2014 is impressive. ALDE, for example, was founded in
regarding the Aryan provided a means whereby Indian history could be used to create a fresh historical tradition that expressed specifically European political and ideological interests. What Europeans sought in India was not Indo-European religion, but a reassessment of Judaeo-Christianity. India, What Can It Teach Us? This question, adopted by Max Müller as the title of a collection of essays, addresses the fundamental concern of this chapter, namely, that a fictive India and fictional Aryan ancestors were constructed in the West
states remain the ‘master of the treaties’, their capacity to shape political outcomes might be undermined by the autonomous activity of bureaucratic organisations. Let us begin by examining the early years of European foreign policy: European Political Cooperation. Looking back to the origins: the institutionalisation of EPC The establishment of EPC, launched