Month / December 2015

by Erik Jones

Lessons from Greece? Individuals Matter

European integration is a process that derives from broad social movements. We look for its origins in the terrifying experience of the twenty years’ crisis, bookended by two cataclysmic world wars. ‘Europe’ is not necessarily a rejection of the nation state, but it is an attempt to rescue the nation state from its inherent limitations and vices. It is a forum within which France and Germany can reconcile their differences; Britain can adapt to its relative decline; Southern Europe can find a bulwark for democracy; and Eastern Europe can emerge from communism.

But Europe is made by people and sometimes individuals can play a decisive role. The events of the past summer are a good example. There are many prominent scholars who have tried to cast the Greek crisis as some kind of clash of economic cultures or institutional path dependence gone wrong. Those arguments have merit. But they do not capture the essence of what happened; they fail to explain how Europe came so close to disaster; and they make it harder to anticipate what could still go wrong.

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by Erik Jones

Europe’s Banking Union: ‘Failing Forward’?

Between the euro crisis, the refugee crisis, tensions within the single market, and anti-European political extremism, the European Union appears on the surface to be failing. This isn’t quite true though. Every time Europe faces a setback, it tends to make progress in response. This progress is usually only partial (or incomplete), but it is enough to lay the foundations for more comprehensive solutions to emerge in the future. What looks like failure is actually ‘failing forward’, a dynamic that Dan Kelemen, Sophie Meunier and I examined in a recent article in Comparative Political Studies. The latest incarnation of this concept is the recent developments – or lack thereof – at the December 2015 European Council summit, which was supposed to shore up European financial markets by pushing ahead with the construction of common institutions to safeguard European banks.

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by Erik Jones

Europe’s Controversial Single Market

When critics want to explain why the European Union (EU) is in crisis, they usually point to the euro or the Schengen Agreement. These are areas of vital national sovereignty, they argue. A government without a currency cannot preserve its national competitiveness and has no status as a lender of last resort. A government that cannot monitor its borders cannot stem the flow of illegal workers, criminals, and terrorists. There is merit to both of these arguments but they miss the deeper point. Europe’s problems do not originate in money or migrants; they stem from the single market.

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by Erik Jones

The Power of Language

Ideas matter in politics and public policy. Sometimes, however, language matters more. To see this, you only need to think about the distinction between the idea you have in your head and the interpretation it gets when you try to explain it to someone else. Now get them to say it to someone else, and so on. The people who hear you first-hand can repeat what you have said almost verbatim and yet the meaning is distorted, if not immediately then quickly as it passes down the line. The simplest idea – simply expressed – is no match for the telephone game. Hence the goal in political communication is to choose language that has predictable reverberations. The power lies not so much in the words themselves as in the underlying pattern they create through repetition. The message is coded in memes.

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