In recent years, Europe has been in the news more often than it would have liked. The Euro crisis has ensured regular, painful headlines about debt, bail-outs, demonstrations, and maddening summits. Europe's N-word is back as some raise the specter of German continental domination. Only the ignorant would suggest that the crisis will end any time soon.

One minor consolation for Europeans is that headlines from the United States have been depressingly similar. There too, the story has been one of financial crisis exacerbated by political jams. A major difference between Europe and America, however, is that no one has questioned whether the American union will stick together. In Europe, by contrast, the neologism Grexit, which raises the possibility of the departure of Greece from the European Union, is merely one sign of how worried some have become about that body's future. Watching Greek street demonstrations and wincing at Italian debt, it is easy to think that the Union's days must be numbered.

Luuk van Middelaar's book explains why this almost certainly isn't so. Van Middelaar is a Dutch political philosopher who now writes speeches for Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council. His book is an attempt to explain how the politics of the European Union (EU) works. Anyone familiar with the EU will know that he therefore deserves the utmost respect. Few outside the world of European politics would want to be asked many questions on the subject; it would be torture at the village quiz night. The European Union makes the American federal system look like something for second graders.

A historian by training, Van Middelaar is interested less in theory than in what can be learned from the experience of politics. He wants to do for the European Union what Tocqueville did for America: explain its politics through its life. Van Middelaar brings the key issues alive by introducing the dramatis personae and describing the crucial meetings. He also explores popular attitudes toward the EU, which have seldom been terribly warm. In the process, he succeeds in explaining why a tertium quid that is neither a federation nor merely a conglomeration of competing states has stayed together for so long. Middelaar wrote the book before Europe's recent travails, but his analysis, unchanged for the English translation, has weathered the crisis well.

The story begins in the ruins of World War II. France, largely abandoned by Britain and the United States after World War I, needed to contain German strength. West Germany wanted relief from its postwar pariah status through a return to the international stage. America wanted a strong, united Western Europe to counterbalance Soviet power in the East. These were the key ingredients to the deal that saw France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg establish a new supranational authority to control the strategic coal and steel industries in 1950. Eight years later, these six set their sights on a full customs union and became the European Economic Community. The name has changed over the years, but the club's success is manifest in its expansion, both in size (it now has 28 states) and in further integration in areas such as trade, law, and finance. Europe has also been more peaceful and more wealthy than ever.

So how does it work? The tension at the heart of the EU and at the heart of van Middelaar's book is that between the still-independent nation states of Europe and the supranational authority they created. At the outset, some dreamed of a united states of Europe, to use the phrase coined by Victor Hugo, in which national allegiances would be subsumed into a higher, European allegiance. Jean Monnet, one of the founders, said he would burn his French passport. But after a century in which many European governments had worked very hard to instill nationalism in their people, such a sharp turn proved impossible.

The tension works on two levels. One is governmental: when the leaders of the member states gather round the table, they stand for the interests of the European community and those of their countries. Those interests do not always align. Charles de Gaulle and Margaret Thatcher are only the most obvious examples of national leaders who saw in the union threats to their countries' wellbeing. The second is the popular level: most Europeans show greater allegiance to their country than they do to the supranational authority. As Middelaar points out, when people in, say, Portugal disagree with their government, they will talk about "our lousy government." But when they are dissatisfied with decisions made in Brussels, they will complain about what "they" have done to "us."

As national leaders asserted their authority, they tamed the proponents of supranationalism. Ultimate authority came to rest in a council made up of the European heads of state, not the officials in Brussels. But what to do about the disagreements between countries that play out in that council? The critical move was to majority voting. What might sound like recipe for disaster became the backbone of the union. For the result was that member states came to the table willing to do a deal, needing to figure out how they could best defend their own interests through negotiation with others. If Britain (a frequent culprit) huffed and puffed too much, the deal would still be done, but it would be a worse one for them. States can secede at any time, but the enormous economic benefits of the single market focus governments on making the project work. This is the regenerative political core of the European Union, however much it may be obscured by the posturing of the day. And it is why the eu has stayed together in the midst of the harsh economic storms of the past four years.

Popular grumbling against Brussels bureaucrats has proved more intractable. The EU is a gift for the majority of humanity who like to complain about their leaders: Europeans can grouse about their politicians without the burden of feeling that they were responsible for choosing them. Yes, there are elections to the European parliament, but many do not vote and there is the sometimes justified suspicion that the permanent staff of the union have more power. One can always blame Brussels.

Middelaar devotes a third of his book to attempts to create Europeans, citizens who feel they belong to the European Union just as they feel they belong to their nations. He divides these attempts into three categories: the German approach, which harks back to the early German nationalists who emphasized a shared cultural and historical identity; the Roman approach, which stresses the benefits derived from membership, just as Roman citizenship was grounded in the benefits of being able to say civis Romanum sum; and the Greek, which encourages Europeans to see European politics as their concern comparable to the way the citizens of Athens would have seen the affairs of their polis.

The chapter on the German strategy contains some comical episodes. It was all well and good to desire to foster a sense of Europeanness, but the detail was excruciating. One early failure was a history textbook co-authored by representatives of twelve nationalities: the Germans wanted to change the French chapter's "barbarian invasions" to "Germanic invasions," while the British told the Spanish that Sir Francis Drake was not a pirate. One success was the European flag, which has gained much greater visibility over the last twenty years. It is easy to imagine the discussions over who and what should go on the bills and coins for the euro: there weren't enough different denominations for every country to be represented—and even if there had been, wouldn't it have been a snub to be on the five euro bill rather than the five hundred? The generic designs that emerged, with dull architectural motifs on the bills, hardly inspired enthusiasm. Europeans see themselves as European, but tying that sentiment to the EU has proved very difficult.

The Roman strategy fared no better. That the union has delivered benefits—employment, security, and rights chief among them—is beyond question. But helping people connect these to Brussels is hard. For one, they take them for granted. No one worries about a Franco-German war anymore. Sometimes European benefits are measly compared to national ones, for example in welfare provision. There are also occasions when the benefits cause animosity toward the EU—for example, when migrant workers are protected by its labor laws. One positive has been infrastructure. The EU has invested heavily in roads and other projects in poorer regions, with signage making it very clear that this is union money at work. Middelaar sees this as a successful public relations exercise.

The intent of the Greek strategy was to get the people of the member states to see themselves as part of the EU to such a degree that they would see its affairs as their own concern. Again, the results have been mixed. The EU parliament struggles for legitimacy when few vote (fewer still know the names of their representatives) and when it is the meetings of the heads of state that really matter. The union introduced the idea of citizenship to foster a sense of belonging, but success was minimal. The EU Constitution had the same end, but once the people of the Netherlands had said "Nee" and the French "Non" it was dead. Middelaar argues that there is nothing impossible about the idea of an active European citizenship, and astutely notes that after the drama of 1914-45 the dullness of the politics of European integration was a virtue. But he is clear that a shared sense of European citizenship is vital: "Only when members of the chorus, rather than just the actors, individually inhabit their dual role [as members of their nations and of a united Europe] will it be possible to complete the passage to Europe."

Rarely has such a book with so many sterling qualities been such a slog. Middelaar's political nous, historical grasp, and abilities as a writer are first class. But writing about the politics of the EU is the intellectual equivalent of climbing the north face of the Eiger. Middelaar does a masterful job of explaining the politics of Europe's integration, but the sheer difficulty of the endeavor means that it can't always be pretty. Readers might be advised to read sections 2 and 3, on the history of the EU and the struggle to win over the people, before embarking on section 1, which tells the complex story of the development of majority rule among the member states. Anyone wanting to understand the union and by extension modern Europe and its doleful headlines should, however, read every page.

Alister Chapman, associate professor of history at Westmont College, is the author of Godly Ambition: John Stott and the Evangelical Movement (Oxford Univ. Press).

Copyright © 2014 by the author or Christianity Today/Books & Culture magazine.
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