The Multilateral Hub: Brussels as the EU’s Hidden Center

Global politics is happening to a large extent in multilateral hubs or political global cities such as Geneva, New York, and Brussels. This article theorizes about the hub as a political center by putting it in a historical sociological perspective. I map the dynastic court and the capital city as ideal typical centers and contrast them with the multilateral hub as a real type. I argue that the court and the capital used to be conspicuous centers where the political authority of kings and governments became manifest, staged, and symbolically affirmed. The modern multilateral hub, in contrast, can be understood as a hidden center in which the political authority of professionals has moved to the background world of policy-making that is outside of the public gaze and devoid of symbolic representations. The article illustrates the professionalized politics of the multilateral hub with a case study on Brussels as the center of the European Union (EU).