Conclusion: The Making of a Transnational, Capitalist Policy Member State

The European state contains too many contradictions to take its persistence for granted. The challenges facing the restructured European state in 2016 are among the most basic associated with the minimal Weberian features: maintaining a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, protecting individual rights against violence and aggression, enforcing the rule of law, and defending state territorial boundaries. Almost all the chapters in this volume show the dilution of these Weberian tasks, as the state’s internal and external relations and institutional structures reconfigure under the weight of a systematic diffusion of neoliberal market mechanisms; and the rapid institutionalization of the European Union and its agencies, policies, regulations, and laws as defining components of member states. Despite crisis and challenge the European state’s resilience—both nationally and at the EU level—stand out. This chapter identifies the state-making and state-destroying mechanisms effecting the major reconfiguration of European states