Towards a Post-National Polity: The Emergence of the Network Society in Europe

Abstract

This chapter explores the prospects for a postnational polity in Europe where the territorial base of power is replaced by a system of networks and flows in which the principal resource is knowledge. The argument depicts a united Europe as a space of flows rather than as a super- or supra-statist entity. Tensions that arise between a Europe of networks and spaces and a Europe of places are examined, partly through a study of the burgeoning European Information Society Project which attempts to harness these developing networks in the service of European integration. Issues relating to the democratic nature of governance without government in the network polity are highlighted to exemplify the difficulties of re-imagining Europe. The rhetoric surrounding the European Information Society expresses the ambivalence within a programme that foresees Europe as a web of discursive spaces while continuing to acknowledge the power of the old imagined communities based upon territory and ethnicity.