The European Identity

An ambitious volume which asks why hopes are fading for a single European identity, despite decades of European integration.

What—if anything—do the twenty-eight member states of the European Union have in common? Amidst all the variety, can one even speak of a European identity? In this timely book, Stephen Green explores these questions and argues for the necessity of the European voice in the international community. Green points out that Europeans can readily define the differences that separate them from others around the globe, but they have yet to clearly define their own similarities across member states. He argues that Europe has something distinctive and vitally important to offer: the experience of a unique journey through centuries of exploration and conflict, errors and lessons, soul-searching and rebuilding—an evolution of universal significance. Coming at a time when the divisions in European culture have been laid bare by recent financial crises and calls for independence, The European Identity identifies one of the biggest challenges for all of the member states of the European Union.

What makes people identify with Europe? To answer this question, this book analyzes the development and determinants of a common European identity among EU citizens from the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 to the recent financial and economic crisis. The author examines citizens’ identification with Europe for all EU member states, and systematically explores the theoretical and empirical implications of two turning points in the recent history of EU integration, namely the EU’s enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe in 2004/2007 and the financial and economic crisis that started in 2008. The book integrates theoretical approaches to European identity in sociology, social-psychology and EU public opinion research in a comprehensive model for explaining individual identification with Europe. The empirical analysis employs a multilevel framework to systematically assess the influence of individual characteristics and the political, economic, and social context on citizens’ feelings of identity. The long analysis period spanning from 1992 to the present allows inferences to be drawn about the long-term developments in the sources of European identification as well as the immediate impact of EU enlargement and the crisis on the determinants of European identification.

The European Union officially acquired international legal personality with the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty. Since then, the constitutional foundations of EU external relations have received an ever-greater amount of scholarly attention. So far however, the body of knowledge has remained limited with regard to how the Union is actually being perceived on the global scene. Moreover, its dealings with other international organizations constitute a similar, still underexplored topic. The European Union's Emerging International Identity breaks new ground by addressing both these themes in combination. The resulting volume offers an innovative inquiry into the EU’s image and status, based on a select number of studies of its position and functioning within the framework of eight international organizations.

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.

This book combines media studies and linguistics with theories of national and supranational identity to offer an interdisciplinary approach to the study of European identity/ies and news discourses. Taking representations of ‘Islamist terrorism’ and Turkey’s accession to the European Union as case studies, it analyses the discursive construction of supranational European identity through the discursive distinction of ‘Us’ and ‘Them’. Moreover, it compares the media’s representations of the ‘Other’ in different socio-political moments in Europe- from times of European integration (2004-5) to the European dystopia (2015-16) through the discourse analysis of specific Greek, British and French newspapers. This timely work synthesizes classic argumentative approaches and Gramscian thought in the study of media discourses by focusing on the Aristotelian concept of topos and introducing the concept of ‘hegemonic knowledge’. This pioneering work will appeal to scholars across the fields of linguistics, social anthropology, European politics, and media studies.

Heikki Mikkeli charts the history of the idea of Europe and European identity. The first part introduces the various attempts to unify Europe from antiquity to the European Union. In the second part the relationship of Europe with America and Russia is considered, as well as the ambivalent role of Central Europe.