ABSTRACT
This conclusion presents some closing thoughts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book argues for an understanding of democracy as the normative horizon of the political in integration processes from below where citizens make Europe, not through consensus, but through contention and conflict. The connection between the European integration and democracy, which has been taken more or less for granted during recent years, and seen as the automatic outcome of market deployment, as in the perspective of Gillingham, must be confronted by perspectives that emphasize social conflict as a driving force. The history of democracy in Europe can be analysed as the long-term history of three major conflicts: about religion, between social classes, and between cultural-ethnic identities. The European cultural discourse taps nicely into the geopolitically oriented scheme of Samuel Huntington and his argument that, with socialism out of the way, the major problem of the present is not conflict between nations but a clash of civilizations.
