The Lost Future and How to Reclaim It

On February 7th 2023, the European Studies Centre hosted Tony Barber (Financial Times), Gavin Jacobson (New Statesman), and Helen Margetts (Oxford Internet Institute) to launch Jan Zielonka’s new book The Lost Future and How to Reclaim It (Yale University Press, 2023). The panel was chaired by ESC Director Othon Anastasakis.

The panel started with Professor Zielonka, from our college, introducing his main argument: democracy is myopic, no matter who is in charge. In terms of space, democracy is myopic because it is confined to the borders of nation-states although most current problems are local or transnational. In terms of time, democracy is short-sighted because it is a prisoner of current voters and when tough decisions are to be made, the future is being sacrificed. The internet revolution plays an important role here because it changed dramatically the notion of time and space, but democracy hardly took notice. We need to empower public actors that benefited from the digital revolution most or else democracy will falter. In essence, we need to gradually move from the world of states to world of networks, local, national and transnational.

In Jacobson’s interpretation, the book’s argument can be read as a response to the unresolved problems of democracy from the 1990s. Of course, the question of how to solve the problem of time began in the second century at least. Polybius, for example, wrote that all governments seemed to collapse due to an eternal cycle of monarch, kingship, tyranny, aristocracy, oligarchy, democracy, mob rule, Caeserism, and chaos. Then, during the French Revolution, the acceleration of industry, culture, and technology was recognized as the tool to stabilize society and prevent its collapse. Acceleration reached its climax in the 1990s during the Cold War because, here, change was the only part of politics that was permanent and certain. The era created circulations of capitalism, confining life to repetitions in the grocery store, at work, and in other everyday aspects of industrial privilege. Here, time and space conflated together because there was an eternal present moment with no “elsewhere” to seek.

Reparations and the search for justice

The European Studies Centre began the new year with a presentation by Jakob Zollmann (WZB, St Antony’s College, Oxford) with Patrick Cohrs (University of Florence; St Antony’s College, Oxford) acting as discussant and Paul Betts (St Antony’s College, Oxford) as chair. The event on 31st January 2023 was entitled “Reparations and the search for justice: International law and the Anglo-German and Polish-German mixed arbitral tribunals (1919–c.1932).” Zollmann’s insights into WWI reparations form part of a planned book on international law between 1648 and 1940.

The speaker began his presentation by introducing the material and legal impacts of the First World War. Millions of people lost property through both damage and requisitioning, the goods ranging from entire companies to hotel linens and towels. Germany’s case was particularly serious: 40% of the country’s income was generated abroad, and it lost three times as much money from confiscation by the Allied powers than vice versa, with the Allies appropriating two thirds of the country’s capital stock. On the other hand, the war largely took place on Allied territory, and so in its closing months, public pressure grew to make Germany pay.

Allied discourse framed reparations as the basis of a just post-war settlement, generating a novel idea: that wronged individuals should not be left defenceless before their own or another state. The idea completely changed old notions regarding international law. Private individuals could now bring their case before mixed arbitral tribunals, profoundly shocking German leaders and scholars.

Mixed arbitral tribunals (MATs) were set up by peace treaties to determine the sums to be paid out to claimants. A core provision in the peace treaties was that allied governments reserved the right to retain and liquidate rights and interests in their territory belonging to German nationals, claiming them as reparations for the war. At same time, Germany was forced to restore the confiscated property of Allied nationals – as well as its nationals – in its own territory.