The European Union in search of political identity and legitimacy: Is more Politics the Answer? (original) (raw)
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The Juridification of European Identity, its Limitations and the Search of EU Democratic Politics
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The idea of building a European democratic polity has been a part of the European integration process from the beginning. Advocates and critics of further integration agree that the process increasingly depends on the existence of European political identity as both a project and a legitimation of the "ever closer Union." Prosperity and peace in Europe have become inseparable from ever more cultural and "civilizational" reflections on European integration.
Comparative European Politics, 2019
The article investigates the forms that political identities have assumed in the EU through the functioning of its institutions. On the basis of the analytical distinction between supranational and intergovernmental institutional settings, the article shows that such a dual decision-making system has generated a contradictory logic with regard to the construction of political identity. If the supranational institutions have aimed to construct a European political identity with state-like features, the intergovernmental institutions have instead operated to de-construct that identity in order to preserve the national identities of the member states. With the multiple post-Lisbon Treaty crises, not only has the contrast between the two concepts increased, but the competition among national identities within the intergovernmental setting has triggered their transformation into nationalist claims.
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2018
A new mechanism of pre-input legitimation can be added to the process of integration that takes place in the European Union, based on the premise of citizen legitimacy, defined from a social point of view, instead of political or normative. This "popular" legitimacy was raised as a precondition for the institutional legitimacy that demands integration and that allows a more effective participation of citizens, with an active role of the states and defends the European Union if it has a deficit of legitimacy that it can be improved through solutions and exposed ideas.
The Politification and Politicisation of the EU
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In this article, we suggest a novel conceptual framework for understanding and analysing EU politicisation. Recent studies on EU politicisation argue that the post-Maastricht era led to the politicisation of EU integration via an increasing citizens' dissatisfaction. Contrary to this account, we argue that European integration has been from the beginning linked to politicisation, but in an unusual way. To capture its uniqueness we introduce the concepts of politisation as a precondition of politicisation and of politification as a depoliticised modality of politicisation. Politicisation is then not something new to EU integration but rather it is constitutive of EU integration itself. We further claim that under- standing politicisation requires taking a closer look at its relationship to "politics" or "political", as the interpretation of what is considered as politicisation depends on the interpretation of what is politics/political. It is thus essential to spell out the respective understanding of this key concept – Grundbegriff in Reinhart Koselleck's sense. We aim at an understanding of EU politicisation that is at once broader than what is currently discussed, more historically based, and related to an actor-oriented perspective on the political. On this basis we discuss the main conceptual weaknesses of current studies on EU politicisation and conclude by illustrating our alternative conception.
What's So European About the European Union?: Legitimacy Between Institution and Identity
European Journal of Social Theory, 2002
This article explores the tension between an understanding of Europe as purveyor of a certain kind of cultural, spiritual or religious identity and the more or less bureaucratic project of European construction undertaken in its name. The central axis of this tension is the theoretical relationship between identity and legitimacy. The classical modern problem of nation-state building involves integrating the legitimating force of collective identity into the institutions of the state. How does the project of European construction respond to an analogous challenge? This article develops this theoretical question by turning to two canonical positions concerning the relation between institutional legitimacy and its cultural, spiritual or religious underpinnings -Montesquieu and Weber. It then returns to the founding documents of the EU in order to interrogate the legitimacy of the EU in light of the concept of European identity.
JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 2009
Officials who toil for the European Union (EU), looking outwards from their base in Brussels, would be justified in feeling a little like Harry Potter: 'No one understands me'. Of course, the EU has now been the subject of sustained, serious academic attention, commensurate with its role in European political and economic life, for more than 30 years (in English, and longer than that in French and German). The EU studies community has shed considerable, even impressive light on how this 'unidentified political object', in the words of Jacques Delors, works in practice. Yet, turnout in the European Parliament election fell again in 2009. Eurosceptic parties, again, made gains. Every once in a while, someone in the quality press makes a game attempt to explain why the EU exists and what it does. 1 Yet, le grand public in Europe seems not to know or care. Ordinary citizens beyond Europe even less: there has never been an opinion poll, to this reviewer's knowledge, that has ever shown that a majority of Americans has even heard of the European Union. These three books, each in different ways, try to satisfy our 'primordial need to get a handle on the EU' in such a way that might enlighten curious non-specialists but also add to our acquis académique. 2 Two of these volumes-by Hix and Menonseek to reach audiences beyond the EU studies community. The other-edited by * I am grateful to Elizabeth Bomberg, Christopher Hill, Susan Orr and Helen Wallace for comments on earlier drafts. I am, of course, alone responsible for the final product. 1 The EU's 50th anniversary in 2007 prompted a number of such analyses. See '50 reasons to love the European Union', The Independent,
A Political Entity Needs a Common Identity? The Case of the European Union
2019
Strengthening European Union (EU) citizens' identification with the process of European integration, particularly EU institutions and policies has become one of the major challenges facing the policy maker within the Union. The creation of a common and unify European identity in which European citizens consider the EU that is identical to their social, cultural, political, economic norms and values is critical for the long-term integration of the EU. The increases in the diversities of European societies because of migration and globalization made policy maker and political actors in various levels both on- local, national, regional and the EU- to come in conclusion that there is need to address the issues of common identity and citizenship as one of the means to prevent social conflict and disintegrated societies with the Europe. The need to create identity politics which means that there is an attempt to form a collective identity by redefinition of attachments and loyalties w...
Identity‐politics in the European Union
Journal of European Integration, 2001
The purpose of this article is to explore the question of European identity. The EU consists of Member States whose national identities are well entrenched. The question of a European identity must therefore be seen in relation to entrenched national identities. Does a European identity have to supplant the national ones? Can it supplement or transform these? How much of a transformation is necessary? Will a European identity be a novel, post-national type of identity? The article explores the question of a European identity by drawing on the analytical categories associated with the politics of recognition and by applying these to different conceptions of the EU qua polity. Four different options are explored and the conclusion is that -although the picture is complex -the EU appears to be in the process of developing a post-national type of identity.