The Return of/to Europe and the New Politics of Globalism

This chapter examines the origins after the geopolitical shift of 1989–1991 of a radically new view of politics that emphasized how international openness produced limitations on state action. The mobility of factors of production was combined with heightened awareness of global ethical and moral norms. These developments stood in tension with an older version of a political focus on the nation-state that also seemed to be revived in the aftermath of the collapse of the large supranational project of communist internationalism. The chapter examines some counterfactuals, hypothesizing that if the Soviet Union and its satellite empire had not collapsed, Western politicians would have gone on with their old politics, and that the eventual backlash would not have come in the absence of a global financial crisis. Adopting a monetary union provided a framework to contain the extent of the backlash.