"National Political Cultures and European Integration"

Gaffney, John. (1993) "National Political Cultures and European Integration". In: UNSPECIFIED, Washington, DC. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

[From the Introduction]. In the history of the social sciences, and especially over the last hundred and fifty years with the rise of sociology, controversy has surrounded the respective roles and influence of individuals and institutions in both society and politics. At one end of the spectrum are the 'great man' theories of history; their heyday was the late nineteenth century, but they persisted - certainly in the educational system - well into the twentieth century in countries such as the UK, the Soviet Union, France and the United States. These theories of history, describing the life and times of men such as Clemenceau, Abraham Lincoln, the Duke of Wellington, Napoleon, Lenin, or George Washington, are like fables or lives of the saints: exemplary models depicting the individual as influencing affairs, while at the same time reflecting a mythic, moral order. They are doubtless ultimately related to a religious, perhaps exclusively Christian, world view and to the concept of the exemplary life. Today, such voluntarist, individualist interpretations of history and politics have by and large been replaced by theories of institutions; nevertheless, they continue to thrive in political biographies, memoirs, and a myriad of 'inside stories' of political organisations and institutions.

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