the stubborn paradox of political order
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Book reviewed: Europe in Search of Political Order Johan P. Olsen, (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007), 275pp., references, index, ISBN: 978 0 19 921434 1.
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any readers will already have read some, or even all, of the previously published pieces, now brought together by Johan Olsen within his new book on Europe’s nascent political order (hereafter Political Order). However, even the most fervent and painstaking of Olsen’s readers will find new considerations and insights within this book, which fully justify its purchase. Johan Olsen has always been, and remains one of Europe’s foremost scholars. Aware of the dangers of mindless reproduction, Olsen has deployed his considerable analytical and intellectual powers to update, cross-reference and augment a varied series of articles, in order to produce a consistent and engaging research programme, as well as an ‘implicit’ thesis on the nature and sustainability of European integration. The core purpose of Political Order is made clear with reference to St Peter’s basilica (pp. 112–4): an institutionalist study of the emerging European polity avoids the failings of more normative accounts of European integration, which foolishly assume that a final ‘legitimate’
European polity can be constructed in line with pre-conceived governmental models; instead, institutionalists view the European space as a research opportunity, whereby meticulous enquiry into the multi-causal and contextual processes that act on European institutions (and their national counterparts) will furnish universal lessons on institutional change and the role that it can play in securing political order under conditions of governmental and polity flux. Institutionalist enquiry into European integration is a ‘discovery process’ of enquiry and learning; at the same time, however, it contains its own implicit thesis, or normative message. St Peter’s basilica was constructed piecemeal by a variety of architects, acting at different times, on the orders of very different masters, with varying resources and equally varying resources and aesthetic sensibilities. Nonetheless, the church still stands and, notwithstanding Olsen’s cold realisation and affirmation that European integration is not only ‘on-going, european political science: 6 2007
(367 – 376) & 2007 European Consortium for Political Research. 1680-4333/07 $30 www.palgrave-journals.com/eps
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contested and open-ended’, but also ‘reversible’ (p. 44), institutionalist study would also seem to have its own goal of the identification of the basic and enduring architectural rules, which will ensure the resilience of the temple of political order within Europe. One of Olsen’s greatest insights is thus one that ‘citizens and their helpers often have a multiplicity of inconsistent purposes and limited understanding and control’ (p. 11). Seen in this light, the big-bang creation of a European polity, and the ‘comprehensive’ institutional reform, which seeks to give it form, is, inevitably, ‘a battleground between competing values, interests and wo
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