EUROPE IN CRISIS—ON 'POLITICAL MESSIANISM', 'LEGITIMACY' AND THE 'RULE OF LAW'

The vocabulary of 'normative legitimacy' is moral, ethical and is informed by political theory. 'Social legitimacy' is empirical -- assessed or measured with the tools of social science. 'Legitimacy', 'normative'or 'social', should not be conflated with 'legality'. Part of the very phenomenology of 'political messianism' is that it always collapses as a mechanism for mobilisation and legitimation. It obviously collapses when the 'messianic' project fails -- when the revolution does not come. But interestingly, and more germane to the narrative of European integration, even when successful it sows the seeds of its own collapse. At one level, the collapse is inevitable, part of the very phenomenology of the 'messianic' project. Reality is always more complicated, challenging, banal and ultimately less satisfying than the dream which preceded it. The result is not only absence of mobilisation and legitimation, but actual rancour.