‘European Politeia’: how does this normative conception accommodate the concurrent demands for ‘unity in diversity’? What of its claims to ‘demos-formation’? Also, what kind of theorizing can grasp the larger picture of integration in the late 2010s? In addressing these questions, the presentation revisits the concept of ‘organized synarchy’, draws from republican political theory and argues that present-day Europe has managed to preserve a balance between unity and plurality through an advanced system of codetermination which, at this stage of its polity evolution, is reflective of a general view of the whole: a state of collective ordered symbiosis among coevolving polities, which is not about their subordination to a superior centre, but rather about their preservation as distinctive but constituent units: distinctive, in retaining their constitutional qualities; constituent, in reaching higher levels of shared rule; it is about a common association which retains its character as an ordered plurality.

Dimitris N. Chryssochoou is Professor of Theory and Institutions of European Integration at Panteion University, Greece, and Honorary University Fellow at the College of Social Sciences and International Studies of the University of Exeter. He has been Associate Professor of International Organization at the University of Crete, Reader in European Integration at the University of Exeter, Visiting Professor at the Universities of Athens and Catania, Visiting Fellow at the Centre of International Studies at the University of Cambridge and the LSE European Institute, Associate Scholar at Pembroke College, Cambridge, Visiting Scholar at the Institute on Western Europe at Columbia University, Visiting Researcher at the Global Studies Institute at the University of Geneva, Research Associate at the Centre of International Studies at the University of Oxford, Visiting Research Fellow at the ARENA Centre for European Studies at the University of Oslo, the Laboratory of Social and Political Institutions at the University of the Aegean and the Centre for European Constitutional Law in Athens, Senior Research Fellow at the Hellenic Centre for European Studies, Scientific Director of the Defence Analysis Institute in Athens, National Co-ordinator of the Council of Europe’s programme ‘Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education’ at the Hellenic Ministry of National Education and Religious Affairs, Member of the Governing Board of the Hellenic Foundation for Culture. His research interests focus on European integration, international theory and social science epistemology. His books include Theorizing European Integration, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2009) and A Republic of Europeans: Civic Potential in a Liberal Milieu (Edward Elgar, 2011, with K. A. Lavdas).

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