Europe, Authority, and Symbolic Technologies: The EU as the Vision of Good?

In her work titled “Constructing Authority in the European Union”, Kathleen McNamara makes a strong and compelling argument for the role of “symbolic power” and “political technologies” within the international system.  These technologies, she argues, have helped lend the European Union its legitimacy and within the context of this module, really seem to allude to the existence (and importance) of the global public sphere.  That said, I actually disagree with the use of the European Union as an effective example and contend that today in Europe, there actual exists a trend away from the sorts of identities McNamara discusses. 

As one of the core points in her argument, McNamara contends that legitimate authority is essentially socialized into the governed and defines it as “the ability to induce deference in others” and to “achieve a significant level acceptance without coercion” (p. 153).  The EU, therefore, has become incredibly influential and plays a considerable role within each of its member-states domestic affairs “precisely in its distinctive nonmilitary and noncoercive character”  (p. 156).  This is the first point of contention for me in this piece.  The European Union exists due to a series of binding agreements, which are designed to penalize member-states who refuse to comply with mandates.  Indeed, there is a long list of infringement procedures to be used when states fail to properly or fully implement EU law.  These procedures could easily be regarded as a form of coercion.  Though they may not be “military” in nature, one could certainly argue that the combined force of Europe’s military powers combined is certainly taken into account when actors choose how they wish to deal with mandates coming out of Brussels.

On page 161, McNamara goes on to argue that, “Governance implies self-regulation, rather than direct control, and therefore involves subjective identification and compliance” (p. 161).   She speaks of using what are essentially ‘symbolic technologies’ (as discussed by Laffey and Weldes) to “control” state actors.  Citing Bordieu, she says that “symbolic power” yields bodies like the EU “the power to construct or ‘constitute the given’” (ibid).

This is also an area in which I disagree.  While I certainly accept the notion that the European Union can easily be regarded as a symbolic technology that acts as a form of “identity” for Europeans to buy into (and that brings certain sets of rules and norms along with it), I do not believe that all or most of its member states behave the way they do because of this association.  Examples across Europe, from Britain to Romania to Bulgaria, can be found of large protests where the European Union flag is burned and where the state flag is held up in its place.  Many states reject the notion that the European Union should trump or supersede the authority of its sovereign state and this is one of the significant factors that eventually led to Brexit (and could potentially lead other states to follow suit).

That so many across Europe reject the notion that a “European” identity is superior to their national identities seems to fly in the face of McNamara’s principle of “banal nationalism”, which the author states, “are reproduced on a daily basis through banal and mundane ways, and it is those habits of mind and practice that underpin national identity” (pp. 163-164).  This banal nationalism certainly might explain why many EU states (such as Luxembourg, Belgium, and Slovakia) feel very “European”, but fails to explain why so many other states, such as Greece and UK and Ireland feel the same.  In a survey conducted by the EU, 70% of those surveyed from Luxembourg identified as “European”, as did 67% and 66% for Belgium and Slovakia respectively (European Commission, n.d.).  Meanwhile, only 33% of British interviewees identified in kind (ibid).  This large disparity suggests that perhaps there are other factors driving this self-representation of “European” and perhaps it existed long before the European Union was chartered.

European Commission (n.d.), Retrieved from: http://ec.europa.eu/commfrontoffice/publicopinion/topics/fs5_citizen_40_en.pdf

Kathleen McNamara, “Constructing Authority in the European Union,” in Who Governs the Globe?, ed. Deborah Avant, Martha Finnemore, and Susan Sell (2010)