Hobbes and Rawls on European Integration

“In an age of turmoil, with European peace and prosperity under threat and the institutional structures that have been created over the last 80 years facing severe challenges, the temptation is to look for short term fixes, temporary solutions. Dr Rolf’s work challenges us to go deeper, to explore our current problems from the perspective of a deep dive into political theory, taking as our guides, Hobbes, Kant, Rawls, Beitz and Barry.”

-Chris Brown, Emeritus Professor of International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science, UK


This book offers a contractarian reading of the European integration process that corroborates, complements and, on occasion, contests European integration theory. It argues that the social contract theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Rawls provide us with insufficiently exploited clues to the formation and justification of European supranational institutions and redistributive instruments. An advanced understanding of the normative foundations of European integration seems to be all the more important in times of multiple crises, differentiated integration and even disintegration – all accompanied and accelerated by the growth of Euroscepticism and anti-European parties.


Jan Niklas Rolf is a lecturer in the study program of International Relations and a researcher at the Competence Center Societal Transformations at Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences, Germany.