Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

68 Richard Münch
too restrictively for a long time. If we see the national welfare state as the model for
a mutual balancing of both negative and positive integration at a European level,
our argumentation will obviously finish up a blind alley. We can see that the national
welfare state comes under competitive pressures and has to eliminate some social
security without, however, the European Union being in a position to bring about
an equivalent compensation. To draw up an unbiased analysis which is not tied to
certain values right from the start, the national welfare state can, however, only
represent a limited historical epoch that cannot be extended infinitely. The forms
of linkage of both negative and positive integration discovered in this epoch cannot
be transferred to another epoch without alterations, where the nation-state is
attributed but a restricted role in a multi-level system of local community, region,
nation, Europe and the world. This model of the national welfare state, which
is frequently contrasted to the American model of economic liberalism as the
‘European social model’ is too much bound to the past. Durkheim’s classic contribution,
featuring an almost identical conceptual framework of negative and
positive solidarity, which is included in his modernisation theory, should be
accounted for in this debate (Durkheim 1964: 111–32). The new solidarity network
should be particularly recognised. It is unfolding through ‘negative integration’
alone in a cross-border way as a result of free movement of economic factors and
as a result of the further-reaching, more differentiated division of labour.
What Scharpf calls ‘negative integration’ is part of the ‘positive solidarity’ for
Durkheim. At the same time, Scharpf understands ‘positive integration’ very much
as mechanical solidarity which, however, has no more room within the European
and – beyond this – the global multi-level network society. That ‘positive integration’
assumes a different character in such a network than in a nationally closed welfare
association has to be accounted for sufficiently. Also, the accompanying change
in the understanding of justice has to be interpreted appropriately. The need for
structural adequacy of solidarity, legal and domination logic and the homology
pressure exercised by the single market’s integration on solidarity, law and politics
should be adequately recognised. If ‘positive integration’ is normatively synchronised
with the national welfare state’s integration achievements, it is becoming
utopian in the face of the new structural realities.
The same questions can be raised with regard to other common interpretation
patterns such as ‘disorganised capitalism’ or ‘neo-voluntarism’ (Lash and Urry 1987;
Streeck 1996). They are concepts that establish the dissolution of the social
integration of the welfare state. They should, however, also offer a perspective
for the new forms of sociation whose first contours begin to loom on the horizon.
The theory of the welfare state seems so closely linked with the latter’s ideology and
politics that its supporters have not found a workable model so far that would be
appropriate for the formation of the structural change and represent a realistic
alternative to neo-liberalism. This is why its protagonists are in a difficult position
in competition with neo-liberalism. The newly invented ‘Third Way’ indeed
presents such an alternative (Giddens 1998).
The term ‘disorganised capitalism’ was used by Lash and Urry to describe the
decreasing organisation of capitalist production through legislation and agreements