Clash of Cultures: Transnational Governance in Post-War Europe

One of these governance traditions is called ‘technocratic internationalism’: the idea that governance was exerted by transnational experts who worked in the interest of all. Jean Monnet, a French political economist and diplomat who is considered to be one of the founding fathers of the European Union, once described this approach as “an understanding of integration that still informs the European Commission attitudes and practices in particular”. A second tradition is called neo-corporatist or consociational cooperation which is geared towards achieving broad consensus on policy-making. This tradition especially reflects the heterogeneous character of the European Union and also the nationally informed preferences of many governmental and societal actors. The last tradition is the vision of the EU as a supranational parliamentary democracy, which has put the parliamentarisation of the EU at its heart. 

Wolfram Kaiser argues and illustrates in this lecture, that these three governance traditions have in some ways created tensions, and in some ways undermined each other. As such, they have become an easier target for so-called Europopulists who are attacking each of these post-war traditions and their peculiar mix as expressed within the present-day EU.