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My EUtopia:: Empathy in a Union of Others
... These, we believe, can be captured through the nexus between empathy, solidarity and recognition. Empathy can be considered as one of the most universal of human traits, a trait at least as powerful as the will to power and the yearning for freedom, consisting in the ability and even the desire to imagine oneself, as separate as one may be, in the skin of another (Nicolaïdis 2016). But how does it translate into the political reality of institutions and policies? ...
... So in the domain of external boundary crossings, and especially in relation to refugees, demoicrats will recognise a duty of assistance to other political communities up to a point where they can realise minimal non-domination and equal recognition, and crucially, will be concerned with the danger that their demoicratic polity potentially dominates and demeans individuals seeking to enter its territory. Whilst the correct label for this last desideratum of the values that the demoicrat cherishes may not yield a version of fully impartial cosmopolitan concern (i.e. the demoicrat is not in the business of creating a global demoicracy), it does indicate that to be consistent, our demoicrat at least aims to transform sheer empathy with those who arrive vulnerable at its current borders into something more stable, perhaps a form of cosmopolitan solidarity (Nicolaïdis 2016;Viehoff and Nicolaidis 2015). ...
... Reliance on private sponsorship programmes for refugees in countries like Canada and Australia have been shown to provide the best guarantee for successful integration albeit with obvious limitations (Kumin 2015). In the EU context, and given the issue of cross border movement of refugees, integrating refugees Downloaded by [the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford] at 12:28 18 August 2017 becomes part of the broader political project of 'institutionalized empathy' (Nicolaïdis 2016). The final source of solidarity is perhaps the most trite, but it may nonetheless be the most important one: optimism. ...
This article asks what features should characterise the boundaries between the EU and the outside world from the standpoint of demoicracy. Section one summarises the normative core of that view and grounds it in the values of autonomy, equal recognition and non-domination. Section two categorises the issues that arise for the demoicrat when it comes to the consequences of political borders. We demonstrate – through the example of intra-demoicracy border crossing – why demoicrats will seek to follow the three desiderata of procedural fairness, just outcomes, and overall consistency in designing political solutions. Section three defends a set of principles that would ideally govern large-scale arrival of refugees. Section four addresses questions of non-ideal theory, reflecting on how demoïcratic theorists should think about current EU policies. Though we do not offer a comprehensive solution to the tensions we identify, the conclusion offers some proposals of how demoicrats may alleviate them.
... 22 Such empathy means not only understanding the other side but also bringing this understanding back to our own action, meaning that recognition starts with empathy but also entails translating this affect into actual positions and actions. 23 In effect, human agency follows inter alia from a continuous and dynamic process of mutual recognition between persons and groups. If recognition is denied, or social feedback is too negative or one-sided, persons will have difficulties to 'embrace themselves and their projects as valuable'. ...
This opening chapter introduces the object of the book’s empirical enquiry, referred to somewhat playfully as ‘the Greco-German affair’ during the Greek debt crisis. The authors discuss their methodology and the relevant literature and explain the import of the concept of mutual recognition for their study. Even after the devastating impact of the Euro crisis, they argue, the EU’s transnational set-up remains distinctive in its tentative move towards a demoicracy, which entails an ongoing experimentation with the promise and limits of mutual recognition, and with the challenge of building binding trust among the European peoples.
The paper offers a defence of ambivalence as a response to the political polarisation of our era using multiple languages to present its case from psychology to sociology, political science, philosophy and critical theory. It suggests that the Brexit story can be told in a different key, whereby the politics that have led to entrenching ‘leave’ and ‘remain’ identities overlay a harder to assess ambivalence about the EU both in the UK and in the EU, a dynamic referred to as the ‘Machiavelli Trap.’ Accordingly, we ought to ground the future relationship in the recognition of the ‘Brexit paradox’ (you can leave and therefore you shouldn't), and its implications for the core principles that have shaped the Brexit debate and negotiations. In the end, the paper offers a plea for a politics that allows citizens to tune into their constructive ambivalence about the fundamental tension between control and cooperation which pervades both Brexit, EU and global politics at large.
This book focuses on one of the most highly charged relationships of the Euro crisis, that between Greece and Germany, from 2009 to 2015. Through a systematic and broad-ranging media analysis, it explores the many ways in which Greeks and Germans represented and often insulted one another in print, how their self-understanding shifted in the process, and how this in turn affected their respective appraisal of the EU and of what divides us or keeps us together as Europeans. These stories illustrate the book’s broader argument about mutual recognition, an idea and norm at the very heart of the European project. The book is constructed around a normative pivot. On one hand, the authors suggest that the tumultuous affair between Greeks and Germans can be read as “mutual recognition lost”. On the other, they argue that the relationship has only bent rather than broken down, opening the potential for a renewed promise of mutual recognition and an ethos of “fair play” that may even re-ignite the EU as a whole. The book’s engaging story and original argument may appeal not only to experts of European politics and democracy, but also to interested or emotionally invested citizens, of any nationality.
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