The End of the West: The Once and Future Europe

The Public Square

by David Marquand

Why Europe is on the decline—and what can be done about itHas Europe's extraordinary postwar recovery limped to an end? It would seem so. The United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Italy, and former Soviet Bloc countries have experienced ethnic or religious disturbances, sometimes violent. Greece, Ireland, and Spain are menaced by financial crises. And the euro is in trouble. In The End of the West, David Marquand, a former member of the British Parliament, argues that Europe's problems stem from outdated perceptions of global power, and calls for a drastic change in European governance to halt the continent's slide into irrelevance. Taking a searching look at the continent's governing institutions, history, and current challenges, Marquand offers a disturbing diagnosis of Europe's ills to point the way toward a better future.Exploring the baffling contrast between postwar success and current failures, Marquand examines the rebirth of ethnic communities from Catalonia to Flanders, the rise of xenophobic populism, the democratic deficit that stymies EU governance, and the thorny questions of where Europe's borders end and what it means to be European. Marquand contends that as China, India, and other nations rise, Europe must abandon ancient notions of an enlightened West and a backward East. He calls for Europe's leaders and citizens to confront the painful issues of ethnicity, integration, and economic cohesion, and to build a democratic and federal structure.A wake-up call to those who cling to ideas of a triumphalist Europe, The End of the West shows that the continent must draw on all its reserves of intellectual and political creativity to thrive in an increasingly turbulent world, where the very language of "East" and "West" has been emptied of meaning. In a new preface, Marquand analyzes the current Eurozone crisis—arguing that it was inevitable due to the absurdity of combining monetary union with fiscal disunion—and raises some of the questions Europe will have to face in its recovery.

Genres: Politics, History, Political Science, Nonfiction

233 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 21, 2011

About the author

David Ian Marquand, FBA, FRHistS, FRSA, was a British academic and former Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP). Educated at Emanuel School, Magdalen College, Oxford, St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and at the University of California, Berkeley, his writings focused on issues surrounding British politics and social democracy.

Reviews

[Mike Clinton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I reviewed this book for the European Union Studies Association Review, published in its Spring 2013 issue. Here are the first and last paragraphs from my review:

Since the global financial crisis of 2008, Europeans have had to confront a number of difficult questions about the future of the EU. According to David Marquand, those questions that have most occupied Europeans have been fundamentally the wrong ones – the same type of wrong questions, moreover, that have distracted Europeans for decades. The End of the West offers Marquand’s critical assessment of what Europeans have done – and haven’t done – as the project of integration has drifted from its moorings. The result is a thought-provoking reflection on those existential questions – What is Europe? What does it mean to be European? What purpose a European Union? – that made the European project a vision and a movement rather than simply the set of paradoxical and absurd institutions and administrative practices that Marquand claims it has become. In his “Preface to the Paperback Edition”, Marquand suggests an answer to the questions that Europeans have lately failed to ask; noting that such crises as the acute one that struck the Eurozone in late 2011 “create opportunities”, he advocates a “European New Deal” that “would entail fiscal union, governed and legitimized by democratic institutions in place of the current technocratic ones.” (xvi) This can only be possible, however, once Europeans have sorted out the thornier issues of identity and purpose. While frequently striking a bitter and disillusioned tone, Marquand also shows that he really hasn’t given up on Europe.

Marquand admits early on to offering no “ready-made blueprint for the future, still less a toolbox of institutional quick fixes” (25), but he does call attention to important questions linked to a grander vision – and engages them in a compelling way. His book is a passionate meditation written by one who appears critical only because he still believes so much in a movement that has become disoriented. It should be required reading for all who care about the European project, the challenges it faces, and the direction it’s headed.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just finished David Marquand's The End of the West: The Once and Future Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011). Looking at the current economic situation in Europe the book is a collection of essays examining how a united Europe came to be. While there are not many answers for such a complicated political world Marquand understands the labrythine world of European politics and bureaucracy having once been a member of the EU parliament. The book looks at not only politics but ethnicity, culture, identity and economics. It is an important primer for anyone interested in the European situation.