Have European citizens become increasingly Eurosceptic over the last two decades, turning their backs on European integration? Though many journalists, politicians and academics argue that they have, this book suggests that reactions to European integration cannot be reduced uniquely to a rise in Euroscepticism, but that indifference and ambivalence need also to be brought into the picture when studying EU legitimacy and its politicisation. Drawing on new evidence from survey data from eight founding member states, and focus groups conducted in francophone Belgium, France and Great Britain, Integrating Indifference explores the various faces of citizens’ indifference, from fatalism, to detachment, via sheer indecision. This book adopts a pioneering mixed-methods approach to analysing the middle-of-the-road attitudes of ordinary citizens who consider themselves neither Europhiles nor Eurosceptics. Complementing existing quantitative and qualitative literature in the field, it opens up new perspectives on attitudes towards European integration.

Pre-financial crisis, EU citizens were 'overlooking' Europe ignoring it in favour of globalisation, economic flows, and crises of political corruption. Innovative focus group methods allow an analysis of citizens' reactions, and demonstrate how euroscepticism is a red herring, instead articulating an indifference to and ambivalence about Europe.

Since the advent of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, a key turning point in terms of the crystallisation of opposition towards the European Union (EU), Euroscepticism has become a transnational phenomenon. The term ‘Euroscepticism’ has become common political language in all EU member states and, with the advent of the Eurozone, refugee and security crises have become increasingly ‘embedded’ within European nation states. Bringing together a collection of essays by established and up-and-coming authors in the field, this handbook paints a fuller, more holistic picture of the extent to which the Eurosceptic debate has influenced the EU and its member states. Crucially, it also focuses on what the consequences of this development are likely to be for the future direction of the European project. By adopting a broad-based, thematic approach, the volume centres on theory and conceptualisation, political parties, public opinion, non-party groups, the role of referendums – and the media – and of scepticism within the EU institutions. It also reflects on the future of Euroscepticism studies following the United Kingdom’s vote to leave the EU. Containing a full range of thematic contributions from eminent scholars in the field, The Routledge Handbook of Euroscepticism is a definitive frame of reference for academics, practitioners and those with an interest in the debate about the EU, and more broadly for students of European Studies, EU and European Politics.

Why do we need European integration in increasingly fragmented and antagonised European societies? How can European integration relate to the national stories we carry about who we are as a nation and where we belong? What to do with the national stories that tell traumatising tales of past loss and sacrifice, and depict others as villains or foes? Can we still claim that our national states are the most legitimate way of organising European political communities today? Engaging with these big questions of European politics, Nevena Nancheva tells a small story from the periphery of Europe. Looking at two post-communist Balkan states – Bulgaria and Macedonia – she explores how their narratives of national identity have changed in the context of Europeanisation and EU membership preparations. In doing so, Nancheva suggests that national identity and European integration might be more relevant than previously thought.

Die gestiegene Bedeutung nationaler Parlamente ist auch Ausdruck der Differenzierungsprozesse in der EU. Habermas' Erwartungen eines größeren Konsenses über politische Normen für gemeinsame Entscheidungen scheinen aktuell widerlegt zu werden. In ihrem auf einer preisgekrönten Dissertation aufbauenden Buch legt Anja Thomas einen wichtigen theoretischen und empirischen Beitrag zum Verständnis der soziologischen Ursachen dieser Entwicklung vor. Ihre Analyse der parlamentarischen Prozesse in EU-Angelegenheiten in der Assemblée nationale und im Bundestag seit 1979 zeigt ein paradoxales Phänomen auf: vermehrte EU-Erfahrung führt zu einer gesteigerten Bedeutung von nationalen Institutionen für den Diskurs von Parlamentariern zur Rolle der Parlamente in der EU. Gestützt auf sozialtheoretische Ansätze, insbesondere den Institutionalismus Max Webers, präsentiert die Autorin hierfür einen neuen theoretischen Erklärungsansatz. Diese Arbeit wurde mit dem Pflimlin-Preis 2017 (Prix Pflimlin) als herausragende Dissertationen ausgezeichnet.

This book examines and investigates the legitimacy of the European Union by acknowledging the importance of variation across actors, institutions, audiences, and context. Case studies reveal how different actors have contributed to the politics of (re)legitimating the European Union in response to multiple recent problems in European integration. The case studies look specifically at stakeholder interests, social groups, officials, judges, the media and other actors external to the Union. With this, the book develops a better understanding of how the politics of legitimating the Union are actor-dependent, context-dependent and problem-dependent. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European integration, as well as those interested in legitimacy and democracy beyond the state from a point of view of political science, political sociology and the social sciences more broadly.

The cutting-edge contributions to this book analyse different facets of the European Union (EU): closer integration among the member states, policymaking within a ‘normal’ political system, and the implications of European integration for its member states. This book also considers whether the challenges currently confronting the EU – the lingering Eurozone debt crises, the migrant/refugee crisis, the British decision to leave the EU, and terrorist attacks in Belgium, France and Germany – mark an inflection point for the Union and for the study of the EU. For the first time, ‘less Europe’, rather than closer integration, has emerged as a serious option in response to crisis. This possibility reignites questions of (dis)integration and calls into question the assumption of the EU as a ‘normal’ political system. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.