Page 44 [44]
42 | Tamás Dezső Ziegler
and their governments made choices that enabled further integration, but
also generated opposition and tensions.
At the party politics level, two kinds of parties criticise European
cooperation. 1he first group that of Eurosceptic parties, which are against
EU cooperation, and which would abolish such an empire-like system at
large. The second group of parties are challenger parties: they do not want to
abolish cooperation completely, but to change policy outcomes. Challenger
parties do not make an open assault against the EU, but they develop “an
ambivalent Euroscepticism when in power” (Hodson and Puetter 2019, 1162).
As European cooperation largely depends on governmental negotiations, the
more influence such parties have, the more they can turn integration around.
Another explanation, from a realist perspective, was suggested by Barbara
Kunz. Kunz put European disintegration into the realist framework of countries
cooperating and competing with each other in an anarchic international
system (Kunz 2013). When doing so, she adopts a realist perspective that is first
and foremost characterised by the assumption that states’ behaviour is shaped
by the conditions in their environment. In her opinion, the circumstances that
push European countries towards disintegration could have several reasons.
First, since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been absent
from stabilising intra-European politics. The more the US removes itself
from international politics, the more this tendency will strengthen. This also
means that the lack of a common enemy, like the Soviet Union in the past,
also weakens cooperation, as common enemies can force countries to stand
together and encourage regional cooperation.
Moreover, there are differences in visions of a grand strategy among EU
countries, and there is also a lack of means to put any grand strategy into
practice. The Union’s lame duck situations can be a result of this lack of vision.
Furthermore, competition around influence and diverging incompatible
interests among Member States can also tear countries apart.
Finally, constructivist scholars would focus on people and communities
in European disintegration. If the framework of our social environment is
constructed, then deconstruction can also happen, which could result in
disintegration. A good example of this is Brexit, which had a very important
social backdrop, where the key core driver of the ‘leave’ decision was the
strong presence of post-empire thinking in British society (Beaumont 2017;
Dorling 2019).
Such new deconstructions or reconstructions of cooperation can happen
at all levels of European integration, both in the EU and at the domestic level.
The change of mainstream values can even reach family life and all forms
of collective living. If EU policies and Member States’ foreign policies are
politicised, and they increasingly will be so in the future, identity politics in
Member States will have greater relevance (Borzel and Risse 2018).
If citizens elect far-right leaders, this will have an effect on EU and intra¬
EU politics. Policy changes will greatly reflect this in Member States, and