Portrait of a union : redrawing a sketch of the whole

Abstract

This chapter looks into the current polity shape of the European Union (EU), and how it accommodates the concurrent demands for unity of the whole and diversity of the parts. In raising the question of what kind of theorizing can best capture a general image of the whole, it revisits the concept of ‘organized synarchy’ and makes the case that, despite integration’s currently unfolding crises and uncertainties, the EU ‘polity’ has managed to bring about an advanced system of collective ordered symbiosis among highly codetermined polities. It also argues that, at this stage of EU polity evolution, such a condition is not about the subordination of the parts to a superior, let alone federal, or even federalising, political centre, but rather about their preservation as distinctive, and at the same time constituent units; as partners in a late-modern ‘syspondia’ which retains its essential character as an ordered plurality of co-evolving polities.