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As it was a century ago, Europeans today are living at a moment when paralyzing uncertainty captures a society’s imagination. It is a moment when political leaders and ordinary citizens alike are torn between hectic activity and fatalistic passivity, a moment when what was until now unthinkable— the disintegration of the union— begins to be perceived as inevitable. And it is a moment when the narratives and assumptions that only yesterday guided our actions begin to seem not only outdated but nearly unintelligible. In this provocative book, renowned public intellectual Ivan Krastev reflects on the future of the European Union—and its potential lack of a future. With far-right nationalist parties on the rise across the continent and the United Kingdom planning for Brexit, the European Union is in disarray and plagued by doubts as never before. Krastev believes that if the Union falls apart, the logic of its fragmentation will be the same as that of „banking panic“, not that of the revolution. The only way to control the risk of disintegration is to recognize that it is rooted in the refugee crisis, which has dramatically changed the nature of national democratic policies across Europe. The ambition of this book is neither to save the EU nor to mourn it. It is not another tract on the etiology of the European crisis or a pamphlet against the corruption and impotence of European elites. And it is by no means the book of a Euroskeptic. It is simply a meditation on something that will now likely come to pass and an analysis of how our personal experiences of radical historical change shape our present actions.
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„Krastev is one of Europe's most interesting public intellectuals. In what is essentially a long essay he argues that the refugee crisis threatens to widen the gap between elites and voters in ways that threaten the future of the entire European project.“
Gideon Rachman, Financial Times
„Psychologically insightful, morally profound and at times even poetic, this book is indispensable for understanding the fate of Europe in the 21st century. Krastev is the Tocqueville of our time: he discovers the internal dynamics of political events and gives wise advice on how to preserve democracy in difficult circumstances.“
Jan-Werner Müller, author of the book What is populism?
„Ivan Krastev is one of the most interesting thinkers of our time. A juggler of paradoxes, an assailer of conventional wisdoms—you may not always agree but you will never be bored. At once an antidote to foolish optimism and to resigned pessimism, this fascinating meditation on the collapse of Europe as we know it is classic Krastev.“
Robert Kagan, Brookings Institution
„To read this book is to be in the company of one of the great European minds of today. With his characteristic combination of perceptiveness and sympathy, Ivan Krastev gives us in this learned essay just what we need to understand Europe's crisis—and to contemplate our own.“
Timothy Snyder, Yale University
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Ivan Krastev (Lukovit, Bulgaria 1965), is a political scientist, the chairman of the Bulgarian Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and a permanent fellow at the IWM (Institute of Human Sciences) in Vienna. He is a founding board member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the board of trustees of the International Crisis Group and is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. From 2004 to 2006 Krastev was an executive director of the International Commission on the Balkans chaired by the former Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato. He was Editor-in-chief of the Bulgarian edition of Foreign Policy and was a member of the Council of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, London (2005–2011). Some of his notable books are Shifting Obsessions: Three Essays on the Politics of Anticorruption(2004), In Mistrust We Trust: Can Democracy Survive When We Don't Trust Our Leaders(2013) and After Europe (2017).
- ISBN: 978-953-8075-6-50
- Dimensions: 138x195 mm
- Number of pages: 152
- Cover: hard cover
- Year of the edition: 2019
- Original title: After Europe
- Original language: English
- Translation: Višeslav Raos