Between regional community and global society: Europe in the shadow of Schmitt and Kojève
| Date | 01 June 2017 |
| Author | Janis Grzybowski,Walter Rech |
| Published date | 01 June 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1755088216638682 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1755088216638682
Journal of International Political Theory
2017, Vol. 13(2) 143 –161
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1755088216638682
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Between regional community
and global society: Europe in
the shadow of Schmitt and
Kojève
Walter Rech and Janis Grzybowski
University of Helsinki, Finland
Abstract
While celebrated for bringing peace and prosperity to the region, European
integration has been recently challenged by various internal and external crises that
call the progressivist narrative of ever closer—and larger—union into question. Torn
between regional community and global society, particularism and cosmopolitanism,
and politics and technocracy, the European Union appears beset by fundamental
tensions. In search of a different theoretical perspective on “the crisis,” some
commentators have drawn on Carl Schmitt’s political theory to emphasize key issues
concerning political decisions, identities, and boundaries in Europe. Yet, Schmitt
comes with his own blind spots. For the purpose of a critical engagement with
Schmitt’s potential insights and their limits, this article contrasts his approach with
that of his contemporary Alexandre Kojève, who envisioned the integration of world
society through economy, law, technology, and administration, a perspective not
unfamiliar to the original story of European integration. In reconsidering the dialectic
between Schmitt’s and Kojève’s positions, this article goes beyond their apparent
contradictions and discusses attempts by both authors to reconcile the opposition,
from Kojève’s move to Empires to Schmitt’s theory of the union, thereby illuminating
deep-seated dilemmas of contemporary European politics which fundamentally
condition its trajectory between contestation and re-constitution.
Keywords
Alexandre Kojève, Carl Schmitt, Europe, European Union, regionalism, universalism
Corresponding author:
Janis Grzybowski, The Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights, University of Helsinki,
Yliopistonkatu 3, P.O. Box 4, Helsinki 00014, Finland.
Email: Janis.grzybowski@helsinki.fi
638682IPT0010.1177/1755088216638682Journal of International Political TheoryRech and Grzybowski
research-article2016
Article
144 Journal of International Political Theory 13(2)
Regional boundaries and universal integration
Beyond the historical success of securing peace and prosperity after World War II
(WWII), the European Union’s (EU) contemporary purpose and identity have become
issues of political dissent in the early 2000s and are perhaps more contested today than
ever before (Balibar, 2004, 2009; Burgess, 2009; Hooghe and Marks, 2008; Stråth,
2010a, 2010b; White, 2010; Zielonka, 2003). Externally, EU engagement on the Balkans
and the courting of Ukraine and Georgia illustrate an unbroken drive for expanding influ-
ence but postponed negotiations with Turkey and the civil war in Ukraine point to the
current limits of EU enlargement. Internally, the shock waves of the Euro zone crisis still
agitate politicians, functionaries, and experts alike while youth protests against unem-
ployment and austerity and the stunning success of radical nationalist parties in the 2014
European parliamentary elections have put the movement to “ever closer union” into
doubt. Finally, the refugee crisis in 2015 has raised further questions not only about the
distribution of migrants among European states, and thus about European unity and soli-
darity, but also about the nature and role of European borders between providing protec-
tion from war and devastation and regulating which and how many people should be
allowed to cross into Europe’s interior.
Given the sense of emergency and constitutional crisis prevailing in recent EU
debates, several scholars have turned to the political and legal doctrine of Carl Schmitt,
a controversial yet highly topical thinker in what are deemed “exceptional” times
(Joerges, 2014; Jokubaitis, 2014; McCormick, 2003; Marder, 2013; Müller, 1999/2000).
While most Schmitt commentators readily admit that his theory is “contaminated with
religious-cum-authoritarian, ‘substantial’ modes of thought” (Müller, 1999/2000), they
argue that this “does not prevent us from thinking with, beyond, and against Schmitt”
(Müller, 1999/2000) by investigating the contemporary relevance of specific Schmittian
concepts, such as the Großraum (Joerges, 2014), the federal constitution or “Bund”
(Müller, 1999/2000; Schönberger, 2004), and sovereignty, decisionism, and the state of
exception (Jokubaitis, 2014; Marder, 2013), for understanding the EU’s regional stand-
ing and constitutional “crisis.”
This article argues that while Schmitt’s theory can be usefully employed to shed light
on the EU’s existential need for making political “decisions” on constitutional arrange-
ments and regional boundaries, the theory cannot capture the specific universalist aspira-
tions and transnational development of economy, law, and other social domains driving
the integration process. To draw out and problematize precisely this fundamental ten-
sion, this article revisits and expands on a dialogue between Schmitt and one of his
famous acquaintances, the dazzling Hegelian philosopher, idiosyncratic Marxist, and
late French bureaucrat Alexandre Kojève. Kojève has been hailed as one of the intellec-
tual inspirers of the post-war European integration project and emphasized in particular
the autonomous role of economic, legal, and other social developments in driving an
ultimately global integration beyond politics.1 Drawing on the disagreement between the
conservative Schmitt and the socialist Kojève on the fate of the political after the state,
which the unlikely couple also discussed in a personal correspondence, the article exhib-
its the dialectic of their arguments and counter-arguments to explore their various
attempts to come to terms with regional integration between the political and the social.
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