I introduced the subject of this interview, Wolfgang Streeck, in a 2020 post as:
Streeck is a German economic sociologist and emeritus director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
If you can plow through some of the econo-political rhetoric in this essay to the core ideas you get the sense he may be on to something.
From The Review of Democracy:
In this conversation, sociologist Wolfgang Streeck discusses the history and future of European integration with RevDem editors Laszlo Bruszt and Michal Matlak.
Wolfgang Streeck is a sociologist and the former director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. His main research interest is in the tension between democratic polity and a capitalist economy. He has published a number of works on this topic including Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism (2014) and How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System (2016), Between Globalization and Democracy (2021). He studied Sociology at the Goethe University in Frankfurt and holds a PhD in Sociology from Columbia University. Starting in 1974, he became assistant professor in sociology at the University of Münster, and then acted as professor of sociology and industrial relations at the University of Wisconsin–Madison between 1988 and 1995. Afterwards he joined the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies as Director.
Laszlo Bruszt: You were long well-known for your work on the political economy of modern capitalism and on your work on institutional change, but nowadays you’re known for writings about European integration and the European Union. How did your perspective on European integration and the EU change?
Wolfgang Streeck: This story may come as a surprise to many people. In the 1980s, I was an ardent supporter of European integration. Back then, I took part in many meetings with the German metalworkers’ union in Brussels in order to help define what was then called the “social dimension of Europe”, which included strong, influential trade unions at the European level and social policies aimed at alleviating inequalities in our societies. When the second Delors Commission was set up in the early 1990s, it became clear to me that this project had been abandoned.
Laszlo Bruszt: What would be your diagnosis of the current shape of the European Union?
One peculiarity of this construction is that there is no real center. Neither is there a supreme hegemon. There is this very strange alliance between France and Germany, who are fighting between them over the concept of European integration, its finalité. They have different views about this issue, but they know that they cannot be the hegemon of Europe without the help of the other. There are internal fights, but also attempts to find a common position with the other EU countries, which is very difficult.
It is necessary here to introduce the concept of imperial rent into the debate. There is a certain logic to be observed, and a regularity between different imperial constructs. In order to keep an empire together, the center has to invest in its cohesion. This is what I call “imperial costs”. Sometimes you have to fund armies, while in other instances you send economic subsidies. You also have to educate elites from the periphery, so that they go back to the periphery and believe that now they know how to run a modern state. But I think that it is currently more significant that keeping an empire together requires the presence of an imperial rent which is higher than the cost of the empire.
In Germany, the issue is very clear. It is about European Monetary Union. Without the EMU, Germany would not be as rich as it is. While EMU is the source of Germany’s prosperity, However, Germany also has to share the profits from European integration with France.
At the present moment, it is a very real possibility that the costs of empire will increase, while the imperial rent remains constant, or decreases. Countries that lag behind in economic terms, like Italy, require more and more transfers from the center, while the center begins to feel that it can do without these people. This applies especially to imperial centers which are democracies. (Not all imperial centers are democracies. Remember the Soviet Union, for example.)
My forecast for the European Union is that there comes a point at which this imperial deficit will become increasingly apparent, especially in Germany....
....MUCH MORE
Previously:
Europe: Who's In Charge, NATO Or The EU?
"Wolfgang Streeck Sees An Increasingly Chaotic and Violent System As Inevitable"
At Inference Review (reviewing Mr. V.): Varoufakis: "My Battle with Europe’s Deep Establishment"
