ABSTRACT
It is not surprising that attempts to provide the European Union with a constitution as an integral step in the polity-building process have generated comparisons and references to the United States (Tagliabue 2003). Constitution-makers and state-builders have borrowed from other experiences throughout history, and commentators have engaged in comparison for just as long. The utility of the comparative approach is that the search for similarity and differences sheds light on possible tensions within an existing or emerging polity. Many of Europe’s architects over the past half-century have fallen into the temptation to hold up a vision of a United States of Europe, with more than a veiled reference to the transatlantic democracy. As Europe struggles to take the broad step of drafting a constitution in its polity-building evolution, there may be lessons learned from the American experience of how to balance the various tensions that may arise in the process. The purpose of this chapter is to use the case of the United States to point out a fundamental tension in European integration and the attempt to constitutionalize its version of post-national democracy. In a word, there is an emerging strain between what we can call ‘economic’ and ‘social’ Europe. Economic Europe here refers to the requisites of building a continental market in Europe on the basis of economic liberalization as exemplified in the completion of the internal market and the single currency. It is based on giving greater space to markets to make decisions about the allocation of resources and governing social relations such as those between capital and labour. Social Europe is concerned with the post-war mode of governing the economy that, rather than giving primacy to market forms of social regulation, seeks to use instruments such as the state to temper the market and regulate social life.
