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Christian Democracy and the Origins of European Union

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Abstract

Major study of the role of European Christian democratic parties in the making of the European Union. It radically re-conceptualises European integration in long-term historical perspective as the outcome of partisan competition of political ideologies and parties and their guiding ideas for the future of Europe. Wolfram Kaiser takes a comparative approach to political Catholicism in the nineteenth century, Catholic parties in interwar Europe and Christian democratic parties in postwar Europe and studies these parties' cross-border contacts and co-ordination of policy-making. He shows how well networked party elites ensured that the origins of European Union were predominately Christian democratic, with considerable repercussions for the present-day EU. The elites succeeded by intensifying their cross-border communication and coordinating their political tactics and policy making in government. This is a major contribution to the new transnational history of Europe and the history of European integration.

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... This search has ranged widely, but usually neglected one important influence: religion. Although historians have delineated the deep religious roots of the integration project (Kaiser 2007), the social science literature on European identity has either ignored entirely or minimized this contribution. For example, none of the numerous sophisticated analyses of European identity in Kaina et al. (2016) considers religious variables. ...
... They are mostly centrist in ideology and on important political values, perhaps leaning slightly to the left. If one were to connect this pattern to any political tendency, it is tempting to see it reflecting traditional (and modern) Christian Democratic approaches to European integration and identity (Kaiser 2007;Foret 2015). ...
... In addition, the philosophical and socio-political tenets of Catholic social thought were translated into the process of European integration, a process led by Catholic and Christian Democratic politicians, such as Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer, and Alcide De Gasperi (Forlenza 2017;Invernizzi Accetti 2019, pp. 248-79;Kaiser 2007). ...
... The literature on Christian Democracy is extensive. Among many others see (Conway 2003;Gehler and Kaiser 2004;Kaiser 2007;Kosicki and Lukasiewicz 2018;Invernizzi Accetti 2019;Mainwaring and Scully 2003;Forlenza 2017;Driessen 2014). ...
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This article throws light on a crucial, yet overlooked, aspect of global entanglements that significantly came to shape modern politics: the global spread of Catholic ideas that, from the late nineteenth century and through the twentieth century, became translated into various political platforms and, eventually, into Christian Democratic parties. The article will cover three broad periods where such global entanglements took shape: the mid-nineteenth century up until World War I, the interwar period, and the aftermath of World War II. We primarily address developments across the Atlantic in Europe and Latin America, while briefly touching upon Asian developments. The article aims to show the role of non-secular ideologies in political globalization processes and the co-existence of centric and multi-polar tendencies in such processes.
... In a less polemic vein, the view of the EU as the reflection of certain ideological traditions has been explored in literature on how different ideological traditions contributed to shaping the contemporary form of the EU (White, 2020;Ferrera, 2024). In these works, particular attention has been paid to how Christian Democrats shaped the EU (Kalyvas, 1996;Kaiser, 2007;Kalyvas and Van Kersbergen, 2010;Müller, 2013) and how Christian Democratic concepts and categories manifest themselves in the contemporary institutional framework of the EU (Invernizzi Accetti, 2019, 2020). What these works highlight is that certain people and parties from different ideological traditions developed ideas on how the EU should look, and those ideas are, today, part of the make of the European Union. ...
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There is a persistent narrative in European Union politics that presents the EU as 'non-ideological'. A closer look, however, reveals that EU integration has been (and still is) the source of multiple ideological struggles, especially for political parties. However, we still know little about how parties interpret European integration through ideological lenses and how this in turn affects (if at all) their existing ideological commitments. This paper sets itself the task of conceptualising the relationship between political party ideology and the process of European integration. It argues that there are two ways to study this relationship. The first is to focus on the 'ideologisation' of Europe and bring attention to how parties interpret European integration in light of their existing beliefs. The second approach looks at how these adaptations affect parties' existing commitments, leading to a 'Europeanisation' of ideology. Both processes generate tensions parties must navigate and opportunities they can take advantage of.
... In the early 1980s, the Christian democrats still saw themselves more strongly in the tradition of what they then called the 'founding fathers' of European integration -Schuman, Adenauer, and De Gasperifrom their own political family. 9 In other words, the structural conditions for major treaty reform, which would require ratification in all national parliaments, seem to be significantly less propitious now than in the late 1980s. ...
... This applies particularly to the English-language literature. Luckily, in recent years an emerging scholarship in English has recognized the need to understand Christian Democracy and Catholic politics in a deeper vein (Pombeni, 2000;Gehler et al., 2001;Caciagli, 2003;Conway, 2003;Kaiser, 2007;Müller, 2011Müller, , 132-8, 2013Mitchell, 2012;Chappel, 2018;Kosicki, 2018;Invernizzi Accetti, 2019; see also review article by Forlenza 2019a; Taylor, 2020;Driessen, 2021Driessen, , 2014. While this article remains indebted to this emerging literature, it wishes to add a stress on an experiential, existential, and spiritual dimension that was a decisive factor in the shaping of Christian democratic politics. ...
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This article deals with the transformation of Catholic politics in Italy between 1942 and 1945 and the emergence of Christian Democracy as the dominant political party in the postwar years. It analyzes how Catholic politicians turned from reactionary critics of democracy to its champion. The article foregrounds a dimension that has not been given sufficient attention in scholarly works on political Catholicism and Christian Democracy, namely the religious content of thought. In the experiences of politicians and thinkers living through Fascism and war, transcendence and spirituality emerged as new markers of certainty that came to re-direct and ground democracy. Our conceptual argument is that Christian Democracy can be understood as a distinct form of “political spirituality,” pace Foucault. The article further shows how this political spirituality became “applied” in a series of ways in the immediate postwar period.
... 41 A fourth strand explores European integration from the perspective of transnational actors, from political parties to technical experts. 42 Somewhat counter-intuitively, the national perspective has often emphasised transnational connections, whereas transnational approaches have tended to highlight national specificities amongst the regional actors working for a common regional goal. 43 In contrast to these well-established fields, global perspectives on European cooperation and integration are still emerging. ...
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This collectively authored article argues for a regional turn in the historical study of transnational activism. By considering not only pan-regional movements but also examples of borderland contexts, transregional connections and diasporic understandings of ‘region’, our discussion identifies fresh possibilities for investigating the evolution and functioning of transnational activism. Based on a Royal Historical Society-funded workshop held at and supported by Northumbria University, the article brings together insights from diverse locations and arenas of contestation. The first part considers literatures on three macro-regional settings – South Asia, Western Europe and Latin America – to illustrate the importance of distinctive regional contexts and constructs in shaping transnational activism and its goals. The second part turns to case studies of transnational activism in and beyond Eastern Europe, West Africa, the Caribbean and East Asia. In doing so, it explores very different notions of the regional to identify how transnational activism has both shaped and been shaped by these ideas. Taken together, the two parts highlight the role of regional identities and projects in challenging inequalities and external domination. Our analysis and examples indicate the possibilities of a regionally rooted approach for writing histories of transnational activism.
... To be an outspoken member of a minority faith community is likely to be a strong identity marker. From another angle, to introduce oneself as Catholic (more so than Protestant) is still a way to draw on the founding Christian Democratic heritage of the EU (Kaiser 2007), while to claim to be an Orthodox Christian does not carry the same political added value (Raiu 2020;Ramet 2006). Religion creates fewer cleavages through denominational differences than through the various ways to refer to it according to national sociopolitical heritages. ...
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This overview presents some outcomes of the survey ‘Religion in the European Parliament and in European multilevel governance’ (RelEP2) pursued during the term 2019–2024. It focuses on the way politicisation may occur in two capacities: politicisation through religion by its effects on the functioning of the European Parliament (EP) as an institution and on political belongings and cleavages; politicisation of religion as an issue or a set of actors likely to increase the conflictualisation of European politics. Politicisation is defined along three usual dimensions customised for the purpose of our research: the salience of religion in MEPs’ work, attitudes, and practices; its effects on polarisation (understood as a hardening of belongings and cleavages); its contribution to the expansion of actors and audiences involved in debating or shaping European integration. Our findings show that religion has limited salience in the functioning of the EP and in the practices of its members. Religion may work as a symbolic marker of distinction between and within existing belongings, and leads to a fragmentation rather than to the polarisation of clear-cut coalitions shaped by religious beliefs or issues. The capacity of religious actors or issues to expand the debate about European integration is not demonstrated.
... Christian Democratic parties had been considered the historical driving force of the nascent European communities, which were labelled 'Vatican's Europe' (Chamedes 2019;Chenaux 2007). Their erosion as electoral forces and their divergences regarding the path taken by a market-oriented Europe (Kaiser 2007) weakened their stronghold. The influence of Christian Democracy became increasingly contested regarding its shaping of the European Union (EU) as a 'constrained democracy' where popular sovereignty and the principle of 'government of the people by the people' are limited by legal and technocratic safeguards (Müller 2011, 148-149). ...
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This contribution introduces a collection that presents selected findings of the second wave of the project ‘Religion in the European Parliament and in European multilevel governance’ (RelEP2) pursued during the term 2019–2024, after a first wave in 2009–2014 (RelEP1). This new research was necessary for at least two reasons leading to an apparent paradox: first, the ongoing secularisation of European societies which has increasingly questioned the relevance of religion as a political factor; and, second, the politicisation of religion as a discursive resource in a polycrisis Europe, both at national and supranational levels. The contribution first frames the objectives and modalities of the project survey, which investigates what members of the European Parliament (MEPs) believe and what they do with these beliefs. It then compares the contexts and outcomes of the two waves of the survey. The next sections relate together the two dimensions of the collective research: religion within the European Parliament (EP) on the one hand; and religion at the juncture of nation and Europe on the other hand. They summarise how this collection contributes to our understanding of religion in European politics, and the future research avenues it identifies.
... The postwar European integration efforts were largely the project of devout Catholic Christian Democratic political leaders and strongly supported by the Vatican and Catholic hierarchy. Protestant political leaders-and Protestant churcheswere much less enthusiastic, fearing integration's threats to national sovereignty (Kaiser 2007;Minkenberg 2009;Leustean 2014;Mudrov 2015;Kratochvíl and Doležal 2015;Nelsen and Guth 2015). Indeed, the Christian Democratic founders saw themselves as "national identity constructors" and sought common symbols for the budding European polity, often grounding them in Christian or Carolingian iconography. ...
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Proponents of greater European political unity through the development of the European Union (EU) have long sought to foster a "European" identity among citizens as a way of advancing their cause. And there is now a substantial body of scholarship devoted to understanding the social, economic, and demographic factors contributing to the development of such an identity. Recently, there has been a growing interest in cultural influences, but the possible impact of religion has been largely ignored. Using Eurobarometer 65.2 (2006), we show that religious groups differ systematically in their propensity to take "European" identity markers. Using multivariate analysis, we demonstrate that Catholics are most likely to be cognitive "Europeans", while Protestants and other Christians are less likely to take such perspectives. Religiosity tends to reinforce the dominant propensity of each tradition. These religious differences persist even under statistical controls for other demonstrated influences, although their effects are strongest in the old Western European "core" of the EU. The long-term decline of Catholic religiosity thus has important implications for the future of "European" identities: their growth will depend increasingly on less "diffuse" and more variable influences, such as successful economic management by EU and national governments.
... EU integration was initiated by the centre-right, and the Christian Democrats have played a key role in pushing the European project forward (e.g. Kaiser 2007). The European People's Party has been the largest group in the European Parliament and has shaped EU policies for decades. ...
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... Por esos años, la consolidación del fascismo italiano y el ascenso del nazismo en Alemania, sumados al giro antiliberal en diversos países europeos y latinoamericanos, pusieron en el centro de la discusión la cuestión del "corporativismo católico". Sus alcances, sus límites, sus especificidades (Kaiser, 2007;Conway, 2019;Mauro, 2020ª;Mauro-Vicente, 2016;Martín, 2020). Si bien el tema se debatía al menos desde mediados del siglo XIX entre los católicos sin una resolución clara (Filoramo-Menozzi, 2009), el convulsionado contexto europeo exigía definiciones y tomas de posición. ...
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Para los nacionalistas católicos y los sectores integristas de la Iglesia el parlamento era una institución perimida, indiscutiblemente unida al liberalismo que era preciso enterrar en el pasado. Por el contrario, entre los demócratas cristianos las posturas eran más variadas y, por lo general, moderadamente optimistas sobre las posibilidades de reformarlo para adecuarlo a las necesidades de la reforma social católica. En este artículo nos ocuparemos precisamente de cómo estos sectores –especialmente el Partido Popular de Buenos Aires– concibieron al parlamento y sus posibles articulaciones con el corporativismo católico durante la década de 1930.
... Interwar federalists like Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi appealed to nineteenth-century romantic narratives of Europe's common cultural roots in medieval Western Christendom (Orluc 2000: 130;Smith 1992: 74; de Bruin in this volume). The powerful post-war pro-integration narrative of Christian Democracy, grounded in Catholicism, linked broadly federalist integration with Christian cultural unity (Kaiser 2007). EU identity promotion strategies since the 1970s also reference a common European culture (Stråth 2013;McDonald 2012;Littoz-Monnet and Richard 2013, 225). ...
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After the 2016 Brexit referendum, European populist radical right (PRR) parties shifted towards what I call an alt-European policy programme. Alt-Europe is a conservative, xenophobic intergovernmental vision of a European ‘community of sovereign states’, ‘strong nations’ or ‘fatherlands’, that abhors the EU’s ‘centralised’ United States of Europe. Whereas most work on the PRR examines its national impact and plots party programmes on a spectrum from soft to hard Euroscepticism, this article instead contributes to cutting edge transnational research on PRR narratives. I use qualitative content analysis to identify narratives that support or undermine alt-Europe, and tropes that refer to them, in the thirteen parliamentary, presidential and European election manifestoes since 2012 of four major PRR parties, AfD (Germany), PiS (Poland), Lega (Italy) and FN (France). Contesting the hard-soft dichotomy in Euroscepticism studies, the article identifies enduring alt-European master narratives across Europe. These stories of geopolitics, democracy, money and especially ethnic understandings of Christian civilisational identity offer important shared narrative resources for programmes of both reforming and replacing the EU. Common narratives also support the PRR unity needed to implement an alt-European programme. However, PRR parties’ extreme nationalism and different interpretations of these narratives strongly impede this cooperation.
... A similar and parallel debate in the United States focused on the rise of multinational companies, the 'outsourcing' of manufacturing to Pacific Rim countries and the middlemanagement 'shake-out' of executives. 9 Kaiser, W. (2007). Christian Democracy and the Origins of European Union. ...
... Few connections existed with strongly federalist socialist parties like those in Belgium and Italy. The Conservative Party had no links with continental European Christian Democrats, who were the main driving force behind the formation of the of the ECSC and the EEC (Kaiser, 2007). It was only in the mid-1960s that the Conservatives' International Office slowly began to forge relations with the German Christian Democrats in the first instance (Kaiser, 2013), and it only joined a European party organisation, the European Democratic Union, when it was created in 1978 (Gehler et al. 2018). ...
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... Zugleich legen die stark gewachsene Rolle des Europäischen Parlaments (EP) im Gesetzgebungsprozess der EU und der intensive europäische und globale in-stitutionelle Wettbewerb nahe, sich stärker mit den Funktionen transnationaler Parteienkooperation für die europäische Integration und für den Transfer von politischen Modellen und Praktiken zu beschäftigen. 5 Wie Gilbert Trausch mit Recht betont hat, war die CSV dabei als Regierungspartei eines Kleinstaates inmitten Westeuropas "nicht nur fremdem Einfluss ausgesetzt, sondern regelrecht ausgeliefert". In einer "longue durée"-Perspektive wird deutlich, dass sie viele politische Ideen vor allem aus Frankreich und politische Organisationsmodelle aus Deutschland importiert und an lokale Zustände angepasst hat. ...
... However, until the Lisbon Treaty, the EPP Group exercised consistent political leadership in the process of EU constitutionalisation (Kaiser 2020(Kaiser , 2018Van Hecke 2012;Johansson 2002). Support for a federal Europe of sorts was, and still is up to a point, a core tenet of its political programme and narrative, including routine references to Christian Democratic 'founding fathers' (Kaiser 2007). ...
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This article discusses the contribution of European political parties to democratic backsliding. It focuses on the European People’s Party’s efforts to protect the Hungarian government, and the European Conservatives and Reformists party’s permissive acceptance of the Polish government’s attacks on democracy and the rule of law, analysing these patterns of behaviour as a form of complicity in democratic backsliding. In a second step, the article examines the existing possibilities and normative justification for sanctioning European political parties that make a complicit contribution to democratic backsliding.
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Después de años de ausencia en el terreno de la política en México, en 1911 los católicos reaparecieron en un partido que tomó el nombre de católico. En algunos estados, obtuvo éxitos contundentes que avivaron el recelo de los partidos liberales. Desde su nombre tuvo la impronta clerical y, en sus acciones, algunas veces no se distinguía si quienes lo integraban eran realmente independientes de la jerarquía o una extensión suya para actuar en política. En este artículo se analizará si en su breve trayectoria, esta organización, consiguió sus objetivos de impregnar la administración pública y el orden legal con los principios cristianos, o se vio limitada en sus intentos al no distinguir el límite de lo que pertenecía a la religión y lo que era propio de la política. También se profundizará en los efectos positivos o negativos que puede tener, a la hora de hacer política, una interdependencia de los laicos de una religión con sus jerarcas.
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The notion of ‘Christian Europe’ has returned with a vengeance in recent times. It figures prominently in the political rhetoric of conservative nationalists, who link appeals to Europe's Christian heritage and identity to avowedly illiberal political projects. This article examines this revived idea of Christian Europe by contrasting it with the meanings that prominent Christian Democratic leaders ascribed to the term in the post‐war era. This contrast is insightful because it reveals what is distinctive about present understandings of Christian Europe, and it is politically relevant because some of the most committed contemporary proponents of Christian Europe claim to be ‘true’ Christian Democrats. Using Ernst‐Wolfgang Böckenförde's work on the emergence of the modern state as a broad analytical frame, I show that today's visions of Christian Europe are more modern, statist and secular than their post‐war counterparts.
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U radu se objašnjavaju poveznice konsocijacijske demokracije i demokršćanstva koje postoje na teorijskoj i praktičnoj razini. U prvom poglavlju rada prikazana su načela i praksa konsocijacijske demokracije. Drugo poglavlje donosi pregled dosadašnjih spoznaja o poveznicama konsocijacijske demokracije i demokršćanskih stranaka s naglaskom na korporativizmu. U trećem poglavlju podrobno je objašnjena demokršćanska koncepcija demokracije i njezina povezanost s modelom konsocijacijske demokracije. U zaključnom dijelu rada utvrđene su i obrazložene teorijske i praktične spone konsocijacijske demokracije i demokršćanstva.
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The article deals with some crucial topics as Europeanism, the ‘European question’, and the process of European integration interpreted and elaborated by the Italian Christian Democracy during the Eighties. The main issues are: (1) The crisis of Europeanism as a consequence of a strong return of nationalism and the weakening of its idealism (with a responsibility of the Christian Democratic parties); (2) The revamping of Europeanism considered both as a Christian democrat historical mission and ‘national politics’ strongly connected to the idea of European homeland in a dynamic international framework; and (3) Europeanism as a qualified feature of the Christian Democratic identity, considered in its idealistic and strategic dimension, with reference to the evolution of the international context up to the end of the Cold War and the overall rethinking of the Democrazia cristiana at the Italian and European level.
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Based on a large range of newly accessible archival sources, this study explores the European Parliament's policies on the institutional reform of the European Communities between 1979 and 1989. It demonstrates how the Parliament fulfilled key functions in the process of constitutionalization of the present-day European Union. These functions included defining a set of criteria for effective and democratic governance, developing legal concepts such as subsidiarity, and pressurising the Member States into accepting greater institutional deepening and more powers for the Parliament in the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty.
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This article focuses on the Italian Catholic press’s reactions to John Paul II’s pastoral work concerning Europe’s future. We explore the effects of Wojtyla’s proposal for a continent united by Christianity through an examination of representative publications from major cultural and political currents. The research focuses on the second half of the 1980s and the intertwining of the Pontiff’s public discourse with Gorbachev’s project for a ‘Common European Home’. The goal of this article is to frame the debate within the auspices of Ostpolitik, the European integration process and, more generally, thinking at the time on the political function of religions in a period of post-secularist theories. In particular, we examine the clash on the issue of the continent’s Christian roots, pitting democratic Catholics against Comunione e Liberazione within the framework of the Italian Church’s transformation, leading up to Card. Camillo Ruini becoming President of the Italian Episcopal Conference (I.E.C.).
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In this chapter, the first German nomination for the World Heritage List is analyzed: Aachen Cathedral. In 1978, this originally Carolingian church was the first heritage site in Europe to be placed on the World Heritage List. This chapter particularly focuses on the changing meaning of Aachen Cathedral. In the second half of the nineteenth century, during the Wilhelmian period and under the Nazi regime, the cathedral had mainly a national significance. After the Second World War, the image of the German past in general changes, and so did the meaning of Aachen Cathedral. Under the postwar Christian Democrat governments, an international narrative of the German past was created. Charlemagne—the founder of Aachen Cathedral—played an important role in this new narrative as one of the alleged founders of the European ideal. This new view on Germany’s history helped the country to deal with its traumatic national past and to provide the new European ideals with an imaged precedent. In 1978, this denationalization process was symbolically concluded with the inclusion of the cathedral to World Heritage list. The chapter points to the lack of detailed procedural guidelines for the nomination of World Heritage in these early years. The nomination of Aachen Cathedral was an initiative of national and local actors with relative freedom to act. The chapter also shows that local actors made frequent use of the new World Heritage status. Aachen presented itself more and more as a European city and local administrators successfully tried to raise money internationally for the restoration of the church.
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Despite the attempt to create a European Defence Community in the 1950s today security and defence policy cooperation in the EU is only weakly vertically integrated and horizontally differentiated. This chapter will first chart the development of security and defence policy cooperation from the 1950s to the present. The second part of the chapter will apply the different integration theories to account for two important episodes in the security and defence policy field: First, the initial success that led to the signing of the EDC treaty in 1952, followed by the Treaty’s prominent ratification failure in 1954; second, the acceleration of security and defence policy cooperation since the late 1990s, as well as the consequences of Brexit and the Trump Presidency for EU security and defence policy cooperation.
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The chapter describes and explains vertical and horizontal integration and differentiation as related to the Single Market. After sketching out the historical development of this core area of European integration, we test the explanatory power of the four integration theories covered in this book, by applying them to selected steps of market integration. The chapter also addresses the issue of Brexit and thereby disintegration.
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Studies on the democratic backsliding in Central Eastern Europe (CEE) often focus on local dysfunctions and idiosyncrasies, and they tend to overlook how those authoritarian tendencies are deeply influenced by European integration. I argue that the wave of authoritarianism in CEE is exacerbated by a shared political culture based on Christian Democracy (CD), and instead of divergence between Western and CEE, a form of convergence is happening. I point to CD’s role in responding to the ‘polanyian’ tensions between democracy and liberalism. CD played an important role in shaping the present constitutional and ideational order of the European Union. The ‘illiberal’ policies enacted by several member countries—especially in the domains of Christian identity politics, traditional gender roles, and Bismarckian welfare—come out of the Christian-Democratic political toolbox and exemplify a paradoxical regime of authoritarian liberalism (or politics without policies) that does not threaten the (neo)liberal foundations of the EU.
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Based on the analysis of primary sources from party archives and the private papers of politicians in six countries, this article evaluates the influence of Christian Democrat transnationalism on European integration in the crucial formative period from 1947 to 1957. It shows how the Christian Democrats' co-operation in the Nouvelles Equipes Internationales and the Geneva Circle shaped and re-enforced their historical orientations, ideological preferences, and common party interests and played an important role in structuring the concept and the reality of a ‘core Europe’ of continental countries. It is crucial to include ‘soft’ factors such as the growing transnational political networks in the analysis of European integration history to avoid a monocausal explanation that focuses exclusively on inter-state relations and sees the integration process solely as the product of a multilateral bargaining process driven by national (economic) interests.
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Analysing Austria's role in contemporary European history in a comparative perspective, this article explains why Austria's policy towards the process of European integration oscillated between the two poles of neutrality and integration. Perpetual neutrality was initially the price Austria paid in 1955 to safeguard its territorial integrity and regain its sovereignty. However, the European strategy of neutrality and EFTA membership developed crucial secondary functions during the 1960s and 1970s, most importantly to rationalise Austria's non-membership of the EEC and its distance from the Federal Republic of Germany in order to sustain the Austrian nation-building process. It is argued here that Austria's accession to the EU in 1995 marks most of all a shift towards a different political strategy of a small European state to secure its economic interests and enhance its political influence in an ever more interdependent Europe, with considerable domestic repercussions.
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This article addresses the role of party elites in the setting of European multilevel governance and transnationalization. Emphasis is placed on informal networks, elite socialization and policy coordination. The analysis focuses on the 1985 Intergovernmental Conference, which led to the Single European Act (SEA), and the political family of Christian Democrats, most notably party leaders' meetings. The research material consists of interviews and archival sources. It can be shown that the SEA was to a large extent shaped through transnational party elite socialization. Challenging previous analyses, there is sufficient documentary evidence to claim that political parties, or rather party elites, were centrally involved in the making of this historic treaty. Such involvement of elected political representatives could further the democratic legitimacy of the European Union, but reinforces problems of intra-party democracy.
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Christian Democracy had a formative influence on western Europe after 1945. This article studies the transnational co-operation of European Catholic politicians in exile during the second world war and evaluates how this might have influenced postwar developments. It argues that Catholic transnationalism was not well organized. The analysis of its contacts in the People and Freedom Group and the International Christian Democratic Union also shows that there is no political continuity from the thinking of Catholic politicians in exile on such crucial issues as the future of Britain in Europe or policy towards Germany, to postwar European reconstruction. Postwar Europe was not made in exile.
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Put briefly, the phenomenon that historians need to address is the uniformity and stability of western Europe in the period 1948-73.
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This article demonstrates that constitutionalization has been high on the agenda of political élites since the early days of European integration in the 1950s. The inclusion of representative institutions – parliaments with budgetary, legislative and control powers – was central in the negotiations of the two 'forgotten' Communities: the European Defence Community (EDC) and the European Political Community (EPC). It is argued that it was not federalist ideology which prompted policy-makers at the time to allot a prominent place to a European Parliament in the institutional structures of those Communities; it was the intended transfer of sovereignty to the supranational level which prompted a 'democratic spillover' process whereby political élites came to reflect on the direct repercussion of supranational integration for domestic parliamentary competences. Overlooked by federalists, neofunctionalists and intergovernmentalists alike, this democratic 'self-healing' mechanism of European integration is one of the most remarkable features of the European integration enterprise.
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This article breaks new ground in our understanding of the Maastricht outcome by examining the role of the European People's Party (EPP) and its member parties. Special emphasis is placed on the meetings of Christian Democrat leaders. At the time of the 1991 parallel Intergovernmental Conferences, six out of 12 heads of government met in the EPP. The article argues that the Treaty on European Union was facilitated by the transnational coalition of the Christian Democrats and by the shared ideological identity of this federalist movement. This weakens the intergovernmental approach to European integration.
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The concluding segment of this two-part article explores two key episodes in French foreign policy under President Charles de Gaulle: (1) France's veto of British membership in the European Economic Community (EEC), and (2) de Gaulle's decisions to provoke and then resolve the empty chair crisis of 19651966. These two cases, like the two examined in Part 1 of this article, demonstrate the fundamental importance of economic considerations in de Gaulle's policy toward the EEC. De Gaulle was a democratic politician first and a geopolitical visionary second. His experience tells us a great deal about the limits imposed by modern democratic politics on any leader who might hope to make statecraft serve an idiosyncratic political vision. The article concludes with an analysis of possible counterarguments and a discussion of the proper use of historical evidence.
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Those individuals who seek to apply moral principles to their consideration of the affairs of nations of which they lack direct knowledge may expect to encounter certain difficulties. They may have no means of obtaining indisputable answers to questions even of a factual nature, and they may find it impossible adequately to weigh the contradictory claims of various factions. Moreover, if a religious or other close bond exists with one of the parties to a conflict, it might be tempting to subscribe to the justice of that group's struggle.
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Ignaz Seipel (1876-1932) was Chancellor and Foreign Minister of Austria's first, postwar republic and leader of its conservative party, the Christian Socialists. Born into the old order, a Catholic priest, a scholar and ascetic, Seipel was also a man whose worldly ambitions led him to the center of Austrian politics during the turbulent period of her adjustment from multinational empire to small power.