Political parties have played an ambivalent role in regard to democratic backsliding. On the one hand, the literature has noted how in the EP, the European People's Party (EPP) and (to a lesser extent) the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), backed by some of their constituent domestic parties, have undermined EU efforts by other parties in the EP as well as the European Commission to address democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland (Kelemen, 2017; Kelemen and Pech, 2019; Meijers and van der Veer, 2019; Herman et al, 2021). On the other hand, research has also shown that political parties can exert peer pressure on backsliding parties, and help bring them back into the democratic fold (Sedelmeier, 2014). DI has been viewed by some as having a similarly ambivalent relation to democratic backsliding. We have discussed in Chapter 3 the argument that DI provides backsliding governments with dangerous legal tools to justify their practices. Whereas Daniel Kelemen and Laurent Pech have been strong proponents of this view (Kelemen, 2019; Kelemen and Pech, 2019), we have argued that DI, along with constitutional pluralism, actually supports the values of constitutional democracy under attack by governments engaging in democratic backsliding.

In this chapter, we focus on how political party actors conceive of the EU and DI's role in matters of democratic backsliding, and what factors motivate their views. Complementing our interview material with a survey of 42 party actors (see the questions in Appendix C), we analyse whether they perceive democratic backsliding to be a problematic issue, if they consider DI responsible for it, and how they think the EU should respond to democratic backsliding. The chapter starts by identifying the party political factors that have stood in the way of EU intervention and discussing how they may shape political party actors’ views concerning the relation between the EU, DI, and democratic backsliding. These factors are then explored empirically in the following sections. The conclusion summarizes the findings.

Democratic backsliding and the European Union

Following recent developments in Hungary and Poland, democratic backsliding has emerged as a key concern in European politics. In spite of the issues that democratic backsliding presents for its effectiveness and legitimacy (see Chapter 3), the EU's response has been hesitant, leading scholars to ask why the EU has not intervened more forcefully against backsliding member states (Kelemen, 2017, p 2; Meijers and van der Veer, 2019, p 839). This has led them to highlight the political factors that allow democratic backsliding to go virtually unchallenged.

In 2020 uncertainty became the new normal as the world was gripped by pandemic, financial instability, extreme weather ‘events’ and political polarization, among others. The unpredictability of rapid changes with global impact highlighted the difficulty of decision-making and action in conditions of radical uncertainty. What happens to agency in conditions that are so unpredictable, where conventional wisdom can within a matter of weeks, or even days, be turned on its head in response to a dramatically changing context? This book approaches the problem through an exploration of a very old parallel between quantum physics and Daoism, Buddhism and Hinduism. Over the past one hundred years physicists have drawn on this parallel for a number of different reasons. In revisiting the parallel, I seek to explore what it might tell us about mind, action and strategy in a radically uncertain world. The question is timely in light of the dramatic changes brought about by global upheavals, from climate change to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Change has been a consistent feature of global life, even if this has not always been recognized by those who study it. As Nassim Taleb (2010) notes, people often act from an assumption of certainty, yet history is driven by uncertainty. The upheavals of 2020 were accompanied by an unusual degree of uncertainty. But the pandemic is just the most recent of a series of global changes. As Katzenstein and Seybert (2018: xi) state, the world has been persistently ‘blindsided by the unexpected.’ The end of the Cold War or the attacks on the Twin Towers on 11 September 2001, among others, ushered in significant global changes. Change is arguably the rule rather than the exception.

Earlier debates in international relations revolved around a question of whether change is possible at the international level. The contours of the current conversation look much different, although cut from this earlier cloth. This project is situated at the intersection of two debates that transcend disciplinary boundaries and would seem on the surface to have little to do with one another: the relevance of quantum theory for the social sciences and the importance of moving toward a global IR.

Must European unity come at the expense of national diversity? Both proponents and opponents of European integration often believe so. Many supranationally minded pro-Europeans consider the European Union's (EU) historical goals of peace and prosperity as requiring and promoting the overcoming of national differences through greater economic and political integration and the creation of a common European identity alongside the single market and monetary union (Haas, 1958, p 16). By contrast, many more intergovernmentally disposed pro-Europeans (Moravcsik, 1993, p 480), as well as outright Eurosceptics (Streeck, 2019), criticize such moves for failing to take account of the important social and economic disparities between the member states that they believe make common, supranational, ‘one size fits all’ policies inappropriate. They contend these differences both reflect and give rise to divergent political preferences that can only be adequately recognized by retaining national sovereignty and the capacity for self-determination of the various peoples of Europe. This book explores the attractions and drawbacks of differentiated integration (DI) as a way of reconciling these two camps. A mechanism increasingly adopted from the 1990s, it allows some member states to be exempted or excluded from participating in certain existing EU policies, and other member states to cooperate in new policy areas and integrate further than some may be willing or able to, with the result that not all policies and standards apply uniformly across the EU (Schimmelfennig and Winzen, 2020). As such, it offers the prospect of a more flexible Europe, capable of combining the demand for unity advocated by supporters of greater integration with the ongoing claims for the recognition of diversity insisted on by its critics.

The issues provoking these competing visions of European integration and driving the move to DI have become ever more urgent (Bellamy and Castiglione, 2019, pp 1– 2). The enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe from 2004, the Eurozone crisis of 2009 and the migration crisis of 2015/16 have heightened the tension between unity and diversity within the EU. The widening of Europe to include a number of poorer and less developed states that had only recently emerged from authoritarian rule greatly increased the socio-economic and political heterogeneity of the EU. The Eurozone crisis not only highlighted the continuing economic disparities among the euro states but also led many to argue that without a further deepening of integration and the creation of a fiscal union the Eurozone would remain unstable.

1. Advisor, National Liberal Party (PNL), Romania, June 2020

2. Co-chair, Politics Can Be Different (LMP), Hungary, March 2020

3. Elected official, Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik), Hungary, March 2020

4. International Secretary, Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), Hungary, March 2020

5. Elected official, Democratic Coalition (DK), Hungary, March 2020

6. Advisor, Democratic Coalition (DK), Hungary, March 2020

7. Elected Official, Conservative People's Party (K), Denmark, March 2020

8. Elected Official, Movement for a Better Hungary (Jobbik), Hungary, March 2020

9. Elected Official, Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Germany, March 2020

10. Advisor, The Left (DIE LINKE), Germany, March 2020

11. Elected Official, Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Germany, March 2020

12. Advisor, Red-Green Alliance (EL), Denmark, March 2020

13. Elected Official, Left, Denmark's Liberal Party (V), Denmark, March 2020

14. Advisor, Socialist People's Party (SF), Denmark, March 2020

15. Advisor, Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), Germany, April 2020

16. Elected Official, Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPO), Austria, April 2020

17. Elected Official, Austrian People's Party (OVP), Austria, April 2020

18. Elected Official, Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR), Romania, April 2020

19. Elected Official, Social Democrats (SD), Denmark, April 2020

20. Advisor, Left Bloc (BE), Portugal, April 2020

21. Elected Official, Save Romania Union (USR), Romania, April 2020

22. Elected Official, Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), Greece, April 2020

23. Elected Official, New Democracy (ND), Greece, April 2020

24. Elected Official, Danish Social Liberal Party (RV), Denmark, April 2020

25. Elected Official, Freedom, Unity and Solidarity Party (PLUS), Romania, April 2020

26. Elected Official, Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA), Greece, May 2020

27. Elected Official, Alternative for Germany (AfD), Germany, May 2020

28. Elected Official, Socialist Party (PS), Portugal, May 2020

29. Elected Official, Left Bloc (BE), Portugal, May 2020

30. Elected Official, The Left (DIE LINKE), Germany, May 2020

31. Advisor, National Liberal Party (PNL), Romania, June 2020

32. Advisor, Danish Social Liberal Party (RV), Denmark, June 2020

33. Advisor, Austrian People's Party (OVP), Austria, June 2020

34. Advisor, Left, Denmark's Liberal Party (V), Denmark, June 2020

35. Elected Official, Social Democratic Party (PSD), Portugal, June 2020

What do political party actors think about the questions we have tackled so far? How do they conceive of the substantive fairness of DI, its democratic credentials, and do they link DI to democratic backsliding? Before we delve into these issues, this chapter provides a general overview of political parties’ views on DI. Whereas recent research has emerged on how governments and citizens approach DI (de Blok and de Vries, 2020; Leuffen et al, 2020; Winzen, 2020), political parties’ views of DI have received limited attention so far. We address this gap in the literature by focusing on how political parties perceive of DI and which factors shape their assessments. We start by discussing the literature on political parties, European integration, and DI and present how we analysed our interviews. We then present party views on DI and relate them to the key cleavages that shaped their views. The conclusion summarizes the findings.

Political parties, European integration, and differentiated integration

Existing research on the views of political parties on the EU has focused extensively on why political parties support or oppose European integration. Ideology occupies a prominent place in these accounts because while parties may shift their approach due to strategic considerations (Meijers, 2017), their ability to do so is constrained by their voters and activists, decision-making structures, and their programmatic reputation (Hooghe and Marks, 2018, p 112). Two ideological cleavages are considered as particularly important in explaining party views on European integration: the socio-economic left‒right cleavage, and the socio-cultural libertarian/cosmopolitan‒authoritarian/nationalist cleavage (Prosser, 2015; Hooghe and Marks, 2018; Schafer et al, 2021).However, whereas extensive research exists on political parties’ positions on European integration, we still know little about how political parties approach DI and what motivates their positions in that regard (for exceptions, see Leruth et al, 2020; Kroger et al, 2021).

How might one expect political parties to approach DI? Expectations are difficult to arrive at given not only the two cross-cutting cleavages mentioned earlier, which are further accentuated by differing national contexts, but also the different forms DI can take. For example, some political parties might view sovereignty DI as a positive development since it accommodates domestic preferences and diversity in the EU.

Repositioning the apparatus impacts on what is seen. The rationale for repositioning and the implications for my positionality as researcher were explored in the first part of the introduction. Here we seek to deepen understanding of the apparatus, that is, the parallel between quantum physics and ancient Asian philosophies, as preparation for the snapshots that follow. Nearly a half century ago Fritjof Capra's ([1975] 1991) The Dao of Physics drew a parallel between quantum physics and Eastern mysticism, focusing in particular on Buddhism, Daoism and Hinduism. His book, which was a sustained exploration of the parallel, was both insightful and popular. The argument resonated with the New Age politics of the 1970s. In the context of the argument that follows, Capra's framing of quantum science and Eastern mysticism is problematic in so far as experience within the world is the primary concern here. I argue that an earlier articulation of the parallel, by the Danish physicist and father of the Copenhagen interpretation Niels Bohr (2010), provides a better positioning for exploring the meaning of mind, action and strategy in an uncertain world. Bohr argued that mysticism was not the point of the parallel, and shifted emphasis to our role as spectators and actors. Further, Bohr's concept of complementarity provides a different angle on the relationship between science and mysticism that goes beyond the either/or terms in which it is usually discussed.

The first part of this chapter examines various ways that physicists have articulated the parallel between quantum physics and the Eastern philosophies, elaborating in particular on the contrast between Capra and Bohr. The second part examines the contradiction of real and non-real and unpacks three specific parallels, including impermanence, complementarity and entanglement, as they relate to mind, action and strategy, which provides the apparatus for making ‘cuts’ – to use Barad's terminology – into the various contexts of practice observed in the snapshots. Part three explores how an emphasis on entanglement in language shapes the relationship between the natural and social sciences. The fourth part then revisits the relationship between science and mysticism, demonstrating a conception of the two as intertwined rather than mutually exclusive.

The Introduction revealed how DI has pragmatic and normative virtues: it helps European integration to proceed through widening and deepening, and facilitates the accommodation of divergent national capacities and preferences. However, allowing such institutional diversity raises the question of whether DI will yield a form of EU cooperation all participants could find mutually acceptable. This chapter argues that DI plays a role in fairly combining three levels of cooperation within the EU: national cooperation between citizens within each of the member states, international cooperation between member states, and supra-and trans-national cooperation among EU citizens (Sangiovanni, 2013, p 217). DI operates most straightforwardly in rendering international cooperation consistent with different forms of national cooperation. Yet, in so doing it may detract from supra-and trans-national cooperation. This chapter explores these tensions and proposes how they might be resolved.

We consider DI from the perspectives of political justice, or procedural fairness, and social justice, or substantive fairness. If procedural fairness concerns fair participation within, and the legitimate exercise of power by, the political institutions of the EU; substantive fairness concerns the just distribution of social and economic goods, such as income and opportunities. Following Rawls (2001, pp 6, 15), we see impartiality and reciprocity as core norms of both kinds of fairness. We shall argue that while DI can be a source of unfairness, it can also facilitate forms of cooperation consistent with these norms by accommodating diversity. However, Rawls distinguishes international cooperation among state peoples from national cooperation among a state's citizens, with fairness in the former case involving far thinner commitments than in the latter. This distinction proves pertinent to the EU, which has been viewed as both an intergovernmental association of member states (Moravcsik, 1993, p 480), in which states remain ‘masters of the treaty’, enjoying preeminent decisionmaking power within the EU and political legitimacy for their citizens, and a supranational polity in the making, providing individuals with a range of supranational and transnational rights as European citizens (Haas, 1958, p 16), and to some degree shares elements of each (Kröger and Friedrich, 2013). That suggests a possible conflict may arise, whereby DI that seems acceptable from a statist and intergovernmental perspective, to support cooperation at the national level, would be unacceptable from a supranational perspective, focused on fair cooperation among all EU citizens, and vice versa.

Chapter 1 looked at how DI can either promote or weaken substantive fairness among both member states and citizens, and might be legitimized and constrained by certain democratic arrangements designed to ensure procedural fairness. Here we explore further how democracy may itself justify and require certain forms of DI. As we noted in the Introduction, one motivation for states to join the EU arises from the challenge globalization poses to democratic decision-making within them. Transnational processes and organizations, such as financial markets and multinational companies, can detract from the democratic control citizens are able to exert from within any single state over the social and economic forces to which they are subject. Likewise, the domestic policies of one state may produce either negative or positive externalities that undercut the contrasting domestic policies of other states. As a result, states become liable to domination by other states or various organizations and networks that operate across them. By cooperating with each other and integrating certain policy areas, states enable their citizens to retain control by placing both their interactions and the operations of various transnational actors under their mutual governance. However, for reasons we shall investigate, these joint arrangements may themselves become a source of domination that DI can alleviate.

Domination consists in the ability of one agent or set of agents, such as a state or group of companies, to exercise power over another agent or agents in an arbitrary manner, without having to consult and respond to their views and interests (Pettit, 2010, pp 73– 5, 77– 9). Those dominated in this way must alter their behaviour so as to anticipate the possibility of such arbitrary acts, say by attempting to avert them by propitiating their dominators. For example, they may seek to appease a multinational company by offering a beneficial tax regime and so alleviate the risk of their moving elsewhere. The capacity to exercise such arbitrary acts of power arises from inequalities in influence and control between the dominator and the dominated, and a degree of dependency of the latter on the former. Domestic democratic systems reduce the prospects of such arbitrariness.