Current European disorders are a regional manifestation of a larger crisis of the international state system, and indeed of statehood generally. In Europe, one of the central issues is uncertainty about the appropriate scale of governance – the proper locus of state sovereignty – in a global economy-cum-society. Subnational “nationalisms” (Scotland, Catalonia, others) and the British decision to exit from the European Union indicate a preference for a decentralized response to global competition. The same holds, for example, for Norway’s non-membership in the European Union, and Denmark’s non-membership in EMU. At the same time separatist movements often desire both independence (from their nation-state) and membership in the European Union. Another facet of the European crisis is the mounting dysfunctions of monetary union in the absence of political union: the misfit between a supranational common currency regime and the insistence of the governments and the electorates of constituent states on national political sovereignty. The ongoing disintegration, and perhaps re-composition, of the European state system is putting an end to the “ever closer union” imaginary of the Maastricht Treaty. The process will continue for some time, with deeply uncertain event.
