Jared Sonnicksen (RWTH Aachen University) argues that supranational democratization of the EU remains possible. He reflects on the parallels between the federal democracy of the United States, which includes a popularly elected president, and the EU-Polity, which still lacks a commensurate democratic anchorage at EU-level.
Shree Agnihotri (University of Nottingham) argues that Europe should look less to the constitutional ingenuity of Philadelphia than the continuing political work required to sustain the constitutional order.
Boris Vormann (Bard College Berlin) argues that since the 1950s, Europe has built half of Alexander Hamilton’s vision of a strong, central, federal government concerned with both market integration and collective security guarantees, while leaving the other half, security, conspicuously and dangerously unfinished. Today, the external pressure that might finally force Europe to complete that vision is arriving not gradually but all at once.
Berit Ebert (Bard College Berlin) argues that while the founding narratives of the USA and the EU differ, a European foundational norm, in the sense of what Hans Kelsen called a basic norm (Grundnorm), has developed in parallel to national ones since 1951. The debate about a more coherent Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) displays that it is time to decide which norm, national or European-federal, truly has priority.
Nicholas Fellows argues that while issuing common debts can strengthen the EU’s political integration, the US experience demonstrates that creating durable fiscal union in large scale democracies requires corresponding mechanisms of solidarity, investment, and democratic legitimacy.
Eva Marlene Hausteiner (University of Erlangen-Nürnberg) argues that far from serving as a historical safeguard against empire, U.S. federalism has been entangled with colonial and imperial practices since the nation’s founding—a finding that should give pause to those who assume federal structures, including a prospective European framework, are inherently immune to imperial drift.
