Market and State in Europe

Abstract

More than 40 years of European integration have led to an habituation of thinking of the European Community as something ideologically neutral, which transcends normal political debate. European issues, it seems, do not fit the structure of the usual right-left ideologicalcontroversy. The only open fault-line in European politics is between advocates of 'more' and those of 'less' integration. The paper explores the potential cognitive and political gains of a change of perspective. It argues that the issue of more or less integration is often not interesting in itself but only to the degree that it influences the content of policies. II further shows that the policies at stake are normally such, that they can be usefully debated in the right-left framework. The decision about the site of policy control - national or European - is often only the guise in which a decision about the redrawing of the boundary between market and state, between the sphere of competitive allocation and the sphere of political coordination, materializes.