Methodological Reflections on Long-Term History and Political Grammar in Europe

This research is an attempt to discover the appropriate methodological tool to account for the universality of contemporary politics and the peculiarity of European history. This enormous research agenda can begin with a reflection on European long-term history and the formation of her political order. The conventional understanding of European political order departs from ancient Greek and Roman experiences. But how to apprehend several millenia of history from the classical period to the European Union of the 21st century? This article firstly underlines the need to identify a limited number of types in European political order. I tentatively propose 6 historical types; the Greek Polis, the Roman Res Publica/Imperium, the Christendom and the Kingdom of Middle Ages, the modern Nation and the contemporary Cosmopolis. I secondly analyze three conceptual tools to deal with these historical types, namely the Foulcauldian discourse, the Kuhnian paradigm, and the Dawkinsian meme. After discussing the pros and cons of these tools, I finally propose the concept of Braudelian grammar to designate both the historical types and the general European political order.