This book analyses how domestic and European structures impact on national actors’ identities, interests and foreign policy practices. Employing Norway as the case study area, the author uses this nation as an example to assess Europeanization and identity politics across the European Union (EU). Utilising an original and innovative approach called ‘social constructivist fusion perspective’, the author addresses Europeanization across several key factors. The author assesses the influence of the EU on ‘half-way member countries’, and the impact of identity politics and domestic structures, which factors contribute to or hinder Europeanization, and attempts to empirically measure Europeanization at the actor level. It analyses the impact of domestic and European structures on the identities, interests, attitudes and foreign policy practices of the Norwegian policy-makers. Whilst contributing to knowledge and literature on how constructivist approaches can be utilized in empirical studies of political elites, this book goes beyond theory to demonstrate that Europeanization is not only institutional, and provides evidence of the influence of identity politics. Europeanization, Integration and Identitywill be or interest to students, scholars and policy-makers in the field of European Union politics, international relations, social constructivism and Scandinavian politics.

Discusses how a distinctive 'European' identity has grown over the centuries, especially with the EU.

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

In A Community of Europeans?, a thoughtful observer of the ongoing project of European integration evaluates the state of the art about European identity and European public spheres. Thomas Risse argues that integration has had profound and long-term effects on the citizens of EU countries, most of whom now have at least a secondary "European identity" to complement their national identities. Risse also claims that we can see the gradual emergence of transnational European communities of communication. Exploring the outlines of this European identity and of the communicative spaces, Risse sheds light on some pressing questions: What do "Europe" and "the EU" mean in the various public debates? How do European identities and transnational public spheres affect policymaking in the EU? And how do they matter in discussions about enlargement, particularly Turkish accession to the EU? What will be the consequences of the growing contestation and politicization of European affairs for European democracy? This focus on identity allows Risse to address the "democratic deficit" of the EU, the disparity between the level of decision making over increasingly relevant issues for peoples' lives (at the EU) and the level where politics plays itself out—in the member states. He argues that the EU's democratic deficit can only be tackled through politicization and that "debating Europe" might prove the only way to defend modern and cosmopolitan Europe against the increasingly forceful voices of Euroskepticism.

This book analyses how domestic and European structures impact on national actors’ identities, interests and foreign policy practices. Employing Norway as the case study area, the author uses this nation as an example to assess Europeanization and identity politics across the European Union (EU). Utilising an original and innovative approach called ‘social constructivist fusion perspective’, the author addresses Europeanization across several key factors. The author assesses the influence of the EU on ‘half-way member countries’, and the impact of identity politics and domestic structures, which factors contribute to or hinder Europeanization, and attempts to empirically measure Europeanization at the actor level. It analyses the impact of domestic and European structures on the identities, interests, attitudes and foreign policy practices of the Norwegian policy-makers. Whilst contributing to knowledge and literature on how constructivist approaches can be utilized in empirical studies of political elites, this book goes beyond theory to demonstrate that Europeanization is not only institutional, and provides evidence of the influence of identity politics. Europeanization, Integration and Identity will be or interest to students, scholars and policy-makers in the field of European Union politics, international relations, social constructivism and Scandinavian politics.

The theme of Europeanization has, in recent years, come to figure prominently in a wide range of social science analyses concerning both the process of European integration and broader patterns of change in contemporary Europe. Yet, though increasingly a staple of academic discourse, no widely accepted definition of the term has emerged. This volume of the European Studies represents one of the first interdisciplinary attempts to examine the manifold uses and possibilities of a Europeanization problematic. An international team of contributors drawn from the disciplines of Politics, Sociology, History, Anthropology, and Law explore processes of institution-building and identity formation through the optic of Europeanization. Their work offers new insights as regards the development of European integration, pointing particularly to the need for a genuinely interdisciplinary European Studies which encompasses, but is not limited to, the study of the European Union.

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.