"Nonetheless, we continue to be obsessed with finding or inventing a European nation which, as in the nation state, guarantees homogeneity and thus an appropriate form of democracy and centralized government"
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Ulrich Beck, the German sociologist of the risk society, challenges the reflex to rebuild Europe in the image of the classic nation-state. The line points to a persistent longing for a European nation that would guarantee homogeneity and thereby make possible a familiar package: one people, one democratic will, one centralized government. Beck sees this as a category mistake. Nations are not natural givens but historical constructions, and the attempt to reproduce that construction at the continental level ignores how globalization has already unbound politics from the territorial nation-state.
The word inventing signals how identity is manufactured through myths, symbols, education, and borders. The postwar European project has indeed experimented with these tools: a flag, an anthem, a citizenship, even a constitutional moment. Yet the expectation that democracy requires a homogenous demos sits uneasily with a Europe of multiple languages, histories, and overlapping loyalties. For Beck, diversity is not a deficit to be ironed out but the raw material for a new kind of politics.
The underlying worry is legitimacy. Many assume that only a centralized state can command it, and that legitimacy flows from cultural sameness. Beck argues that this assumption locks Europe into the past, fueling exclusionary nationalism and turning crises such as migration, monetary upheavals, or security threats into tests of purity. It also misreads the nature of contemporary power, where risks like climate change, financial contagion, and pandemics cross borders and demand governance that is flexible, networked, and transnational.
Rather than chasing a singular European people, Beck urges decoupling democracy from homogeneity. Multi-level governance, constitutional pluralism, subsidiarity, and a European public sphere built through cross-border parties, media, and deliberation can ground legitimacy without erasing difference. The task is not to centralize Europe into a nation, but to cosmopolitanize democracy so that overlapping identities and shared risks become a source of political energy rather than a problem to be solved.
The word inventing signals how identity is manufactured through myths, symbols, education, and borders. The postwar European project has indeed experimented with these tools: a flag, an anthem, a citizenship, even a constitutional moment. Yet the expectation that democracy requires a homogenous demos sits uneasily with a Europe of multiple languages, histories, and overlapping loyalties. For Beck, diversity is not a deficit to be ironed out but the raw material for a new kind of politics.
The underlying worry is legitimacy. Many assume that only a centralized state can command it, and that legitimacy flows from cultural sameness. Beck argues that this assumption locks Europe into the past, fueling exclusionary nationalism and turning crises such as migration, monetary upheavals, or security threats into tests of purity. It also misreads the nature of contemporary power, where risks like climate change, financial contagion, and pandemics cross borders and demand governance that is flexible, networked, and transnational.
Rather than chasing a singular European people, Beck urges decoupling democracy from homogeneity. Multi-level governance, constitutional pluralism, subsidiarity, and a European public sphere built through cross-border parties, media, and deliberation can ground legitimacy without erasing difference. The task is not to centralize Europe into a nation, but to cosmopolitanize democracy so that overlapping identities and shared risks become a source of political energy rather than a problem to be solved.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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