ABSTRACT
The costs and consequences of an immensely destructive war cast serious doubts after 1945 on the nation state as the source of effective governance and of a stable socioeconomic order. Some contemporary commentators regarded nation states as insular, wasteful and ultimately destructive. A supranationalist school of thought saw the nation state, on the evidence of two world wars, as the least suitable format for reconstructing a devastated continent’s infrastructure or for guaranteeing the regional peace. The supranationalists believed that the nation state was obsolescent and must be transcended, even though they disagreed about the most appropriate arrangements for replacing it. The most positive thing these supranationalists could say about the nation state was that it had fulfilled its historic mission. Europe’s national states had, over two centuries or more, helped to build viable political communities out of culturally or ethnically diverse components. These states had also resolved some momentous integration and legitimacy crises along the road to political development.
