Identity Interests And Attitudes To European Integration

With growing levels of Euroscepticism across EU member states, grasping the roots of opposition to European integration has become more important than ever. This book charts public perceptions of the European Union in both the EU-15 and the new member states and introduces an identity-based model to explain mass Euroscepticism.

This book provides a broad overview of the main trends in mass attitudes towards domestic politics and European integration from the 1970s until today. Particularly in the last two decades, the "end of the permissive consensus" around European integration has forced analysts to place public opinion at the centre of their concerns. The book faces this challenge head on, and the overview it provides goes well beyond the most commonly used indicators. On the one hand, it shows how integration's deepening and enlargement involved polities and societies whose fundamental traits in terms of political culture - regime support, political engagement, ideological polarization - have remained anything but static or homogeneous. On the other hand, it addresses systematically what Scharpf (1999) has long identified as the main sources of the democratic deficits of the EU: the lack of a sense of collective identity, the lack of a Europe-wide structure for political accountability, and the lack of recognition of the EU as a legitimate political authority. In other words, it focuses on the fundamental dimensions of how Europeans relate to the EU: identity (the sense of an "European political community"; representation (the perception that European elites and institutions articulate citizens' interests and are responsive to them); and policy scope (the legitimacy awarded to the EU as a proper locus of policy-making). It does so by employing a cohesive theoretical framework derived from the entire IntUne project, survey and macro-social data encompassing all EU member countries, and state-of-the-art methods. The IntUne series is edited by Maurizio Cotta and Pierangelo Isernia In a moment in which the EU is facing an important number of social, economic, political and cultural challenges, and its legitimacy and democratic capacities are increasingly questioned, it seems particularly important to address the issue of if and how EU citizenship is taking shape. This series intends to address this complex issue. It reports the main results of a quadrennial Europe-wide research project, financed under the 6th Framework Programme of the EU. That programme has studied the changes in the scope, nature and characteristics of citizenship presently underway as a result of the process of deepening and enlargement of the European Union. The INTUNE Project - Integrated and United: A Quest for Citizenship in an Ever Closer Europe - is one of the most recent and ambitious research attempts to empirically study how citizenship is changing in Europe. The Project lasted four years (2005-2009) and it involved 30 of the most distinguished European universities and research centres, with more than 100 senior and junior scholars as well as several dozen graduate students working on it. It had as its main focus an examination of how integration and decentralization processes, at both the national and European level, are affecting three major dimensions of citizenship: identity, representation, and scope of governance. It looked, in particular, at the relationships between political, social and economic elites, the general public, policy experts and the media, whose interactions nurture the dynamics of collective political identity, political legitimacy, representation, and standards of performance. In order to address empirically these issues, the INTUNE Project carried out two waves of mass and political, social and economic elite surveys in 18 countries, in 2007 and 2009; in-depth interviews with experts in five policy areas; extensive media analysis in four countries; and a documentary analysis of attitudes toward European integration, identity and citizenship. The book series presents and discusses in a coherent way the results coming out of this extensive set of new data.

The accelerated pace of European integration since the early 1990s has been accompanied by the emergence of increasingly prominent and multiform oppositions to the process. The term Euroscepticism has appeared with growing frequency in a range of political, media, and academic discourses. Yet, the label is applied to a wide range of different, and occasionally contradictory, phenomena. Although originally associated with an English exceptionalism relative to a Continental project of political and economic integration, the term Euroscepticism is now also identified with a more general questioning of European Union institutions and policies which finds diverse expressions across the entire continent. This volume of European Studies brings together an interdisciplinary team of contributors to provide one of the first major, multinational surveys of the growth of these Eurosceptic tendencies. Individual chapters provide detailed examinations of developments in France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Switzerland. Overall, the volume draws a distinctive portrait of contemporary Euroscepticism, situating the phenomenon not only relative to the progress of European integration, but also in relation to broader questions concerned with the evolution of party politics and the reshaping of national identities.

This original work explores the increasingly important phenomenon of the formation of transnational identity. Considering the ongoing relevance of the European Union, the contributors ask a series of intriguing questions: Is a European identity possible? How are the various types of European identity formed and maintained? How are these identities linked to the process of European integration? Examining the psychological, institutional, and political mechanisms that encourage or impede identification with transnational groups, the book considers these theoretical questions in light of new evidence drawn from a rich body of primary research, including field experiments, in-depth interviews with elites, and public opinion surveys. Brought together for the first time, social psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, and ethnographers share their theoretical and methodological perspectives in tackling the common issues surrounding the emergence of "European" as a political identity. Paying special attention to the role of the institutions of the EU, the authors investigate the impact of neo-functionalist strategies and find that the processes of identity formation are far more complicated than can be explained by material and institutional factors alone. The authors engage in a fruitful dialogue about how much a European identity exists and how much it matters as they delve into the sources of disagreement and their implications.

In the age of grand recession, nationalism seems to have returned to Europe. In every EU country, many citizens are unhappy with the perceived intrusion of 'Europe' in their way-of-life. Any idea of a genuine pan-European identity seems to be in retreat. This book provides an unprecedented insight into the multiple ways through which citizens of 16 countries connect their own national identity to European identity. The book's theoretical claim is that European identity, as well as national identity, should be empirically assessed taking into account its multi-dimensionality. The volume's contributors suggest that European identity was always unlikely to be a source of political integration and political legitimacy in the way national identities have been in the past and are today. Europeans' primary identity is national rather than supranational. Mutual trust between European peoples exists, but is somewhat fragile. Yet, European identity is intertwined with national identities in manifold ways. The 'imagined communities' at the national and European level show strong similarities - criteria for being a European are strongly associated with the criteria used to define who national belonging. These complex links also manifest themselves in citizen's feelings of interdependence between the nations in the European Union - which, the volume suggests, support the EU in the face of severe crises. The IntUne series is edited by Maurizio Cotta (University of Siena) and Pierangelo Isernia (University of Siena). The INTUNE Project - Integrated and United: A Quest for Citizenship in an Ever Closer Europe - is one of the most recent and ambitious research attempts to empirically study how citizenship is changing in Europe. The book series is organized around the two main axes of the project, to report how the issues of identity, representation and standards of good governance are constructed and reconstructed at the elite and citizen levels, and how mass-elite interactions affect the ability of elites to shape identity, representation and the scope of governance. A first set of four books examines how identity, scope of governance and representation have been changing over time respectively at elites, media and public level. The next two books present cross-level analysis of European and national identity on the one hand and problems of national and European representation and scope of governance on the other, in doing so comparing data at both the mass and elite level. A concluding volume summarizes the main results, framing them in a wider theoretical context.

As a consequence of various rounds of EU enlargements, the degree of cultural diversity in Europe has intensified a phenomenon which is increasingly perceived as problematic by many EU citizens. This fascinating book not only empirically explores the current state of the identity and the legitimacy of the EU as viewed by its citizens, but also evaluates their attitudes towards it. The expert contributors show that the development of a European identity and a common European culture is a prerequisite for European integration; that European identity and a common political culture will not develop rapidly but emerge slowly, and that the beginnings of a European identity and a common European culture are currently emerging. The roles of civil society organizations and political parties are examined within this context, and an explanatory model with subjective predictors of the attitudes towards the EU is tested. The empirical analysis is underpinned by a theoretical framework incorporating operational definitions and conceptual discussion of legitimacy and identity. This intriguing and thought-provoking book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and students focusing on political science and international relations.

In The Background Of New Questions Of Identity, Culture And Community Emerged After Maastricht Treaty This Book Explores The European Integration Process Since It Throws Immanent Challenge To The Existing Theoretical Paradigms Such As Nationalism And Globalization . Drawing Influence From This Intellectual Climate, This Book Tries To Understand The Integration Process Within The Cultural History Of Europe.The Study Structured Itself Along Three Axes: First, It Circled Down On The Problematic Over Defining What Europe Means; Here The Efforts Were On To Highlight The Constant Flux And Contingent Nature Of The Definition Of Europe. Second, How This Contingent Nature Of Europe Has Compelled The European Union To No Longer Skirt Away The Question Of Identity If It Is To Consolidate The Process And Expand Its Boundary Towards East. By Focusing Upon The Cultural Policy Of The Union, The Study Brought Forth The Various Efforts Of The Union, Particularly The European Commission To Transform The Loyalties And Identities Of People From The National Crucible To A Broader European Spectrum. Thirdly, The Study Critically Evaluates These Policy Initiatives And Highlights How They Are Structured Around The Nineteenth Century Colonial Discourse Of Europe.

It has been argued that the emergence of a European collective identity would help overcome growing disparity caused by the increasing diversity of today’s European Union, with 28 member states and more than 500 million people. Research on European integration is facing the pressing question of what holds ‘Europe’ together in times of crisis, growing distributional conflict and instability in its neighbourhood. This book departs from the ideas of group cohesion in the EU, and reflects on the newest dynamics and practices of European identity. Whilst applying innovative qualitative, quantitative and experimental research methods and an interdisciplinary approach, this volume looks at a variety of issues such as European citizenship, mobility of European citizens, space-based identities, dual identities, student identity and value-sharing. In doing so, this volume presents new perspectives on this complex and dynamic subject and points to potential solutions both in the academic discourse and the political practice of the EU. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of European integration, European studies, international relations, citizenship studies, political sociology as well as more broadly in the social sciences.