Environmental movements in East Central Europe: Between technocracy and the “third way”

Abstract

The “widening” and “deepening” of a pan-European political entity, which proceeded at a startling pace during the 1990s and began the twenty-first century with a common currency (the Euro) and a membership of 27 member-states, has raised a series of both practical and theoretical questions. Initially a response to the tragedies of World War II and a way to limit any possible military aspirations in post-Fascist Germany, the European Union (EU) has become a case study in globalization. Characterized by multiple, often intersecting and overlapping levels of decision-making (see for example Hooghe and Marks 2001), transnational policy networking, and a reconfiguration of Westphalian sovereignty, the EU has been referred to, perhaps erroneously, as the first postmodern state. This “regulation of deregulation” above the nation-state in the EU has not only weakened or modified traditional locations of political authority, it has also coincided with processes of fragmentation, subnational and regional empowerment, and the decline of state-based authority.