by Ferenc Laczó
Here come our five book recommendations on European themes from 2024 that dissect conceptions of democracy, consider original ways to protect it, analyze European integration and disintegration – and show the dark prehistory of the former.
Christina Morina, Tausend Aufbrüche: Die Deutschen und ihre Demokratie seit den 1980er-Jahren (A Thousand New Beginnings: Germans and Their Democracy Since the 1980s). Munich: Siedler, 2023.
If Europe in our times is a unique experiment in trying to build democracies with shared horizons, notwithstanding divergent historical legacies, then the enlarged Federal Republic of Germany is the state where that process, with all its promises, misunderstandings, and disappointments, may be analyzed most captivatingly. In her profound book for which she received the prestigious German Nonfiction Prize in 2024, Christina Morina explores people’s self-understandings and ideas of democracy. She convincingly shows how conceptions of state and politics differed in East and West Germany before and shortly after 1989-90 – and how opportunities to draw on East German conceptions were missed, with consequences that still reverberate in our disturbing present.
Tom Theuns, Protecting Democracy in Europe. Pluralism, Autocracy and the Future of the EU. London: Hurst, 2024.
In his first monograph, Tom Theuns makes a refreshing intervention into debates about European politics. He considers the EU complicit in the worsening trend of de-democratization, dissects EU institutions’ narrow conception of ‘democracy without politics,’ and critiques their inconsistent or even self-contradictory policies to counter what is still too often labelled mere ‘backsliding.’ This theoretically informed and courageous book concludes by calling for a new mechanism through which ‘frankly autocratic states’ could be expelled from the Union. Theuns’ highly original theses are likely to be debated for years to come.
Mathieu Segers and Steven Van Hecke (eds.), The Cambridge History of the European Union. Volume 1, European Integration Outside-In and Volume 2, European Integration Inside-Out. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.
A monumental accomplishment by the late Mathieu Segers and Steven Van Hecke, The Cambridge History of the European Union provides the most comprehensive interpretation of European integration history we possess. This is an imaginatively conceived project whose fifty chapters – of which the author of these lines, I should note, had the chance to contribute one – analyze not only critical historical junctures, specific instruments of integration, or questions of multilateralism and geopolitics, but also the role of ideas, narratives, and memories. In our age when the future direction of European integration appears increasingly uncertain, these essential volumes illuminate where Europeans have arrived today, and why.
Tatjana Tönsmeyer, Unter deutscher Besatzung: Europa 1939-1945 (Europe Under German Occupation, 1939-1945). Munich: C.H. Beck, 2024.
European integration has a dark precursor which it has often been contrasted against: about 230 000 000 Europeans were forced to live under German occupation regimes during the Second World War. It is all the more remarkable that until the release ofTatjana Tönsmeyer’s impressively researched new book, this crucial experience has never been told from the points of view of the occupied themselves across the continent. This major monograph analyses varied questions of collaboration and resistance, forced labour and problems of provisioning, and the expanded roles but also the cruel suffering of women. Tönsmeyer thereby provides us with an essential basis to consider history on a European scale – and how experiences of military occupation have come to shape us all.
Tim Shipman, No Way Out. Brexit: From the Backstop to Boris (London: William Collins, 2024) and Ibid., Out. How Brexit Got Done and Four Prime Ministers Were Undone (London: William Collins, 2024).
Brexit has been called the greatest political folly since Caligula appointed his horse as Consul. A key difference is that the former has actually been documented and Tim Shipman’s quartet – the third and fourth volume of which just got published in 2024 – offers the ultimate insider account of how it happened. Shipman’s account is a propulsively written historical drama with numerous petty intrigues and grandiose miscalculations that exceeds 3 000 pages in total – a singular achievement, especially since Shipman’s prose remains engaging throughout.
