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Brexit, the migrant crisis, the rise of authoritarian regimes, and the eurozone’s calamities have called into question the EU’s very existence. Thinking about the EU in comparative historical terms, however, shows that such challenges are nothing new when governing power is centralized. Examining the role of war, markets, and culture in the rise of nation-states provides a useful, and surprising, analysis for teasing out the key factors that might determine the EU's future.

 

 

Kathleen R. McNamara is Professor of Government and Vice Dean of Faculty & Graduate Affairs in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.  Her work focuses on markets, culture, and politics in the European Union and the United States, and her books include The Politics of Everyday Europe: Constructing Authority in the European Union, and The Currency of Ideas: Monetary Politics in the European Union. McNamara has served as Director of the Mortara Center for International Studies at Georgetown, and taught at Princeton University and Sciences Po (Paris).  She has been a visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation, a German Marshall Fund Fellow, a Fulbright Fellow, and is the International Studies Association’s 2018 Distinguished Scholar in International Political Economy. Her public engagement includes work with the National Intelligence Council, writing for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, appearances on a variety of media outlets, and on Twitter @ProfKMcNamara. McNamara received her PhD from Columbia University and her BA from McGill University.