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European Identity
Why are hopes fading for a single European identity? Economic integration
has advanced faster and further than predicted, yet the European sense of
“who we are” is fragmenting. Exploiting decades of permissive consensus,
Europe’s elites designed and completed the single market, the euro, the
Schengen passport-free zone, and, most recently, crafted an extraordinarily
successful policy of enlargement. At the same time, these attempts to depoliticize politics, to create Europe by stealth, have produced a political
backlash. This ambitious survey of identity in Europe captures the experiences of the winners and losers, optimists and pessimists, movers and
stayers in a Europe where spatial and cultural borders are becoming ever
more permeable. A full understanding of Europe’s ambivalence, refracted
through its multiple identities, lies at the intersection of competing
European political projects and social processes.
jeffrey t. checkel is Simons Chair in International Law and Human
Security in the School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University,
and Adjunct Research Professor in the Centre for the Study of Civil War,
International Peace Research Institute, Oslo.
peter j. katzenstein is Walter S. Carpenter, Jr. Professor of International
Studies in the Department of Government, Cornell University.
contemporary european politics
Consulting Editor:
Andreas Føllesdal, University of Oslo
Contemporary European Politics presents the latest scholarship on the most
important subjects in European politics. The world’s leading scholars provide
accessible, state-of-the-art surveys of the major issues which face Europe now
and in the future. Examining Europe as a whole, and taking a broad view of its
politics, these volumes will appeal to scholars and to undergraduate and
graduate students of politics and European studies.
European Identity
Edited by
jeffrey t. checkel
AND
peter j. katzenstein
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York
www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521883016
© Cambridge University Press 2009
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the
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may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published in print format 2009
ISBN-13
978-0-511-48096-6
eBook (NetLibrary)
ISBN-13
978-0-521-88301-6
hardback
ISBN-13
978-0-521-70953-8
paperback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy
of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
Contents
List of figures
List of tables
List of contributors
Preface
1
The politicization of European identities
JEFFREY T. CHECKEL AND PETER J. KATZENSTEIN
Part I
2
3
4
Political identity in a community of strangers
DARIO CASTIGLIONE
29
Experimental identities (after Maastricht)
DOUGLAS R. HOLMES
52
The public sphere and the European Union’s
political identity
Part II
Being European: East and West
111
Who are the Europeans and how does this matter
for politics?
NEIL FLIGSTEIN
7
81
European identity as process
HOLLY CASE
6
1
European identity as project
JUAN DÍEZ MEDRANO
5
page vii
viii
ix
xi
132
Immigration, migration, and free movement
in the making of Europe
ADRIAN FAVELL
167
v
vi
Contents
Part III
8
9
European identity in context
Identification with Europe and politicization
of the EU since the 1980s
HARTMUT KAELBLE
193
Conclusion – European identity in context
PETER J. KATZENSTEIN AND JEFFREY T. CHECKEL
213
Bibliography
228
Index
259
Figures
6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4
Europe-wide associations.
page 147
Net positive party attitudes toward the EU, Germany
151
Net positive party attitudes toward the EU, Great Britain
152
Net positive party attitudes toward the EU, France
153
vii
Tables
4.1
4.2
6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4
6.A.1
6.A.2
6.A.3
6.A.4
6.A.5
6.A.6
6.A.7
viii
Descriptive and projected frames about
the European Union, for Europub.com countries,
and for Poland
page 98
Publicized political identity projects in the EU
104
“In the near future, will you think of yourself as a …?”
140
Statistically significant predictors
141
Second language use in Europe overall and by country
143
Distribution of European travel in 1997
144
Means and standard deviations for logit analysis of
determinants of European identity
161
Results of a logit regression analysis predicting
whether or not a respondent ever viewed him/herself
as a European
162
Results of a regression analysis predicting
attitudes toward the EU
163
Means and standard deviations for variables
164
used in data analysis
Logistic regressions predicting language use
164
Means and standard deviations for analysis of
165
European travel data
Logit regression for determinants of European travel
166
Contributors
Holly Case, Department of History, Cornell University
Dario Castiglione, Department of Politics, University of Exeter
Jeffrey T. Checkel, School for International Studies, Simon Fraser
University
Adrian Favell, Department of Sociology, University of California, Los
Angeles
Neil Fligstein, Department of Sociology, University of California,
Berkeley
Douglas R. Holmes, Department of Anthropology, State University of
New York at Binghamton
Hartmut Kaelble, Department of History, Humboldt University
Peter J. Katzenstein, Department of Government, Cornell University
Juan Díez Medrano, Department of Sociology, University of Barcelona
and Institut Barcelona de Estudis Internacionals (IBEI)
ix
Preface
When John Haslam, social sciences editor at Cambridge University
Press, and Andreas Føllesdal, consulting editor for this series, first
approached us to write a book on European identity, our response
was along the lines of “been there, done that, why bother to do it
again?” Yet, as we thought about the possibility, we began to warm
to the idea. We relished the prospect of collaboration. Furthermore,
existing scholarship seemed compartmentalized and missed one central
feature of identity in the new Europe. European Union (EU) specialists,
typically political scientists and often funded by the EU Commission,
focussed overwhelmingly on the Union and the effects its institutions
had in crafting senses of allegiance from the “top down,” as it were. At
the same time and from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, students
of immigration, nationalism, and religion explored how feelings of
community in Europe arose from the “bottom up,” outside of or
around EU institutions. Moreover, almost everyone was taken by surprise at how the return of Eastern Europe was profoundly and irrevocably changing European identity politics.
This book makes a start at addressing these omissions and oversights.
We do not favor either top-down or bottom-up storylines. Instead, we
explore the intersections and interactions between the two, and do so
through the lens of multiple disciplinary perspectives. This approach allows
us to capture the reality of identity in today’s quasi-constitutionalized,
enlarged, and deeply politicized Europe, where senses of “who we are”
are fracturing and multiplying at one and the same time. This book is thus a
statement on how we should be studying European identity rather than an
overview of research on it. Our intent has been to open up rather than close
down opportunities for inquiry.
All chapters have been through numerous rounds of revision.
Chapter 1 started as a brief conceptual memo for a first project workshop, held at Cornell University in October 2006. At this meeting,
contributors, Cornell faculty and graduate students, and some
xi
xii
Preface
colleagues from universities within easy reach of Ithaca responded
critically to our memo and presented short papers of their own. Our
rewritten and expanded memo was discussed at a workshop for PhD
students convened in May 2007 by the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin.
That expanded memo and the short papers of our authors became full
draft chapters, discussed at a second workshop held at the University of
Oslo in October 2007.
We owe thanks to many people and institutions. Our most important intellectual debt goes to our authors. As a self-consciously
designed multidisciplinary project, our enterprise was not free of risk.
Throughout, our contributors actively and enthusiastically engaged in
our conversations about European identity, while graciously responding to endless editorial requests for changes and improvements of their
chapters.
Michael Barnett and Thomas Risse gave indispensable help at a
crucial later stage. At our Oslo meeting, they acted as discussants not
only of individual chapters, but also of the framing chapters. Their
trenchant criticisms and constructive suggestions, made in detailed
written form and during our spirited discussions, have made this a
much better book than it would have become otherwise. We often
agreed with their criticisms; when we did not, their help made us more
aware about our central aim.
During the Cornell workshop, we were helped greatly by the memos
and active workshop participation of Chris Anderson, Mabel Berezin,
Dominic Boyer, Martin de Bruyn, Valerie Bunce, Timothy Byrnes, Alan
Cafruny, Mai’a Cross, Matthew Evangelista, Davydd Greenwood,
Liesbet Hooghe, Gary Marks, Mitchell Orenstein, Hans Peter
Schmitz, Nina Tannenwald, and Hubert Zimmermann. At the Oslo
meeting, we received critical, unfailingly constructive, extensive written
criticism from Svein Andersen, Andreas Føllesdal, Iver Neumann, and
Ulf Sverdrup, both on the framing chapters and on the various contributions of our authors.
Last and certainly not least, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to Sarah
Tarrow, who copyedited and formatted the entire manuscript with
cheerful grace and in record time prior to submission.
In Ithaca, we thank Donna Decker, Tammy Gardner, Pam Kaminsky,
and Elaine Scott for their administrative help, and we acknowledge the
financial support of Cornell’s Carpenter Chair for International
Studies. In Berlin, we thank Jürgen Kocka, Johannes Moses, and
Preface
xiii
Dagmar Simon for offering us the opportunity of presenting our work
and for providing welcome administrative assistance, and to Klaus Eder
and Georg Sørensen for co-directing the dissertation workshop. In
Oslo, the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo
provided financing through its small grants program, and Bjørn
Magne Forsberg helped with innumerable administrative tasks. At
Cambridge University Press, we thank John Haslam for organizing an
efficient review process and Carrie Cheek for overseeing the production
of the book.
Differences in how the two of us confront intellectual problems – brashly
marshalling the attack versus meticulously plotting the advance – are
reflected in some of our other passions as well – competition on squash
courts versus conquest of Swiss mountains. Such differences can make
intellectual collaboration an ordeal to be suffered through or a dream come
true. At the end of our journey, we are happy to report that this book has
cemented a friendship many years in the making.
PJK & JTC
Ithaca and Oslo
February 2008
1
The politicization of
European identities
JEFFREY T. CHECKEL AND
PETER J. KATZENSTEIN
The ship of European identity has entered uncharted waters. Its sails are
flapping in a stiff breeze. Beyond the harbor, whitecaps are signaling
stormy weather ahead. The crew is fully assembled, but some members
are grumbling – loudly. While food and drink are plentiful, maps
and binoculars are missing. Officers are vying for rank and position as
no captain is in sight. Sensing a lack of direction and brooding bad
weather, some passengers are resting in the fading sun on easy chairs
thinking of past accomplishments; others are huddling in an openly
defiant mood close to the lifeboats, anticipating bad times ahead. With
the journey’s destination unknown, the trip ahead seems excruciatingly
difficult to some, positively dangerous to others. Anxiety and uncertainty, not hope and self-confidence, define the moment.
Many European elites, deeply committed to the European Union (EU)
as a political project, might reject the vignette we sketch above. They see
the EU as institutional machinery for the solution of problems that in
the past had shattered peace, destroyed prosperity, and otherwise proven to be intractable for national governments. For them, it is a project
rooted in the European Enlightenment, and an emphatic way of saying
“never again” to the disastrous wars of the twentieth century. While the
Union has not yet succeeded in crafting a common European sense of
“who we are,” time is on its side.
A smaller counter-elite might be more comfortable with our identity
tale. Exploiting growing mass concerns and fears, it has in recent years
begun to define an alternative agenda for European identity politics –
one inspired by multiple currents, including nineteenth-century romanticism. The image of Europe as a shining city perched on the hill of
We thank all of the project participants, and, especially, Michael Barnett, Holly
Case, Adrian Favell, Thomas Risse and Ulf Sverdrup for their insightful comments
on earlier versions of this essay. The remaining shortcomings are due to our
thick-headedness rather than their acts of intellectual generosity.
1
2
Jeffrey T. Checkel and Peter J. Katzenstein
perpetual peace, social welfare, and inalienable human rights is replaced
with the cry of “Europe for Europeans.”
Various forces and claims are thus fragmenting the possibility of one
European identity even as European economic integration has proceeded
faster and farther than anyone expected. Why? Politics, we argue, is the
answer.
European economic and political integration has proceeded in a
technocratic fashion. At least initially, this was an understandable
strategy, given the need to solve the German problem and to cope
with the geopolitics of the Cold War. Exploiting a decades-long permissive consensus, elites designed and completed the single market, the
euro, the Schengen passport-free zone, and, most recently, crafted an
extraordinarily successful policy of enlargement. National political and
economic elites as well as other winners from this project have closed
ranks behind it. At the same time, these attempts to de-politicize politics,
to create Europe by stealth, have produced a political backlash that has
increased over time. In this contentious and expanding political narrative, Europeans need to take back their nation-states and resist the
unnatural imposition of rule from Brussels.
We explore the politics of European identity by adopting a multidisciplinary perspective. While the work of political scientists and the
survey techniques upon which they rely are important, in this book we
largely turn elsewhere – to anthropology, sociology, and history. This
approach allows us to capture the experiences of the winners and losers,
optimists and pessimists, movers and stayers in a Europe where spatial
and cultural borders are becoming ever more permeable. A full understanding of Europe’s ambivalence, refracted through its multiple, nested
identities, lies at the intersection of competing European political projects and social processes.
Politics – specifically, various forms of politicization – are redefining,
remaking, and expanding these intersections. Politicization makes
issues part of politics, and it involves a number of different actors
and processes. Bureaucrats crafting a Europe centered on Brussels,
and intellectuals theorizing and normatively justifying a new kind
of (cosmopolitan) European allegiance, play key roles. Yet, their projects intersect with xenophobic nationalists, anti-globalization Euroskeptics, and a (Western) European public that for decades has been
indifferent to the evolution of a European polity. Beyond elites and
their projects, identities are also being crafted and politicized by
The politicization of European identities
3
ongoing social processes related to the lived experiences of Europeans.
These may include watching Europe’s top-ranked soccer clubs (many
with precious few national players); following the annual Eurovision
Song Contest; meeting in Europe-wide social and business networks;
mobilizing at the grass-roots level across national borders to celebrate
or protest Europe; and shopping in supermarket chains increasingly
organized on a continental scale.
We are self-conscious in the use of project and process here. Sometimes
European identity is a political construction project undertaken by
various national or supranational elites. Talking about the construction
of identity suggests an engineering view of politics – one that emphasizes
purposeful actors and their political choices. At other times, though, we
are dealing with processes along different scales of social mediation and
exchange, including deliberation and communication, social networks,
commodity circulation, and political bargaining. These may occur along
European, national, subnational–regional, as well as transnational–
global lines. From this vantage point, the evolution of European identities
is the result of open-ended processes that give space to actors pursuing
their specific political projects, without assuming either that they will
come to full fruition, or that they will end in total failure.
Despite our focus on Europe, we recognize that its identity dynamics
are not unique – an appreciation driven home when we locate the
continent in a number of different contexts. These include the historical
context of contemporary Europe; the spatial context of other world
regions in which borders are fluctuating and contested; the cultural
context of other civilizational polities seeking to define their coherence
against relevant others; the rapid currents of globalization and internationalization that make all state borders porous; and the context of a
world order defined by an American imperium that combines the
military traits of traditional European empires with commercial characteristics of the novel American emporium.
To deny Europe’s uniqueness, however, does not mean to deny its
distinctiveness. And that distinctiveness has two very different parts.
Europe’s past leads through luminous and dark periods; it encompasses
the good and the bad; it inspires hope and despair. European ambivalence today reflects this legacy. And with Europe once again united, the
store of collective memories has broadened enormously and will make
the emergence of a collective European identity even more problematic
than it had been before enlargement.
4
Jeffrey T. Checkel and Peter J. Katzenstein
In sum, ours is not a state-of-the-art volume on European identities,
but a statement on how we should go about studying them. We are
interested in political and social rather than psychological notions of
self-understanding. Identities refer to shared representations of a collective self as reflected in public debate, political symbols, collective memories, and elite competition for power. They consist also of collective
beliefs about the definition of the group and its membership that are
shared by most group members. We understand identities to be revealed
by social practices as well as by political attitudes, shaped by social and
geographical structures and national contexts.
Different analysts and different academic disciplines disagree on where
to locate and how to measure identity. Is it to be found in European
institutions, with their ability to foster and construct a sense of what it
means to be European? Or should we search for it in a variety of everyday
social practices such as co-ownership, joint political action, and shared
consumption practices? Wherever we look for European identity, its
form varies significantly across different social, geographic, and national
domains. To capture this diversity, we have encouraged pluralism and a
crossing of disciplinary boundaries in this book, with the intent to open
new lines of inquiry and raise novel questions. Research on European
identity – and especially that centered on the EU – could benefit from a
fresh look. Our hope is to make a modest start in that direction.
In the remainder of this opening chapter, we develop our arguments in
three parts. A first section surveys major theoretical approaches to
European integration, assessing what we have learned about identity in
Europe. In the second section, we explore the importance of politicization
for understanding the contemporary construction of European identities
and advocate a multidisciplinary approach to the topic. The last section
previews the main lines of argument in the various chapters that follow.
Theorizing European identity
Over the last five decades, Europe has changed dramatically. A continent
divided by national hatred, ravaged by war, and bereft of a firm psychological basis has evolved into an increasingly peaceful, prosperous, and
confident polity in which various nation-states are experimenting with a
novel kind of international relations. This dramatic change is reflected
in the world of scholarship, which has moved from the discussion
of European integration theory in the 1950s and 1960s to analyses
The politicization of European identities
5
of multilevel governance and Europeanization since the early 1990s.
Below, we briefly survey these literatures, highlighting what they do –
or do not – say about the politics of European identity construction.
European integration theory in the 1960s
A generation ago, one of the most important debates in international
relations focussed on the future of Europe, including the evolution of
European identity. It built on the foundations laid in the interwar
years by David Mitrany and his technocratic vision of functional integration, and on a vibrant nationalism literature developed by Hans
Kohn, Carleton Hayes, and others. The central protagonists were
Ernst W. Haas and Karl W. Deutsch, who articulated two very different
theories of European integration.
Haas’s (1958, 1961) neo-functional theory focussed on the eliteand group-centered politics of a newly emerging European polity,
specifically the various functional imperatives that were propelling the
European integration process forward. In contrast to Mitrany, Haas
deliberately inquired into the political pressures acting on politicians.
Political elites in various nation-states, he hypothesized, would learn
new interests and adopt new policies as they were pushed by the functional dynamics of integration. The political costs of staying outside or
behind in the process of European integration were extraordinarily
high. Like bicycle-riders, elites were condemned to pedal lest they fall
off the bike altogether. Identity played a minor role in Haas’s theory.
What drove the process of integration were functional pressures and the
redefinition of actor interests. Moreover, while Haas allowed for
changes in interests, his rationalist ontology ruled out, or at least
made very unlikely, any deeper changes of identity.
Haas’s theory inspired a cohort of energetic and brilliant younger
scholars to refine and operationalize his seminal work. Two synthetic
statements summarized the progress of a decade of research. Lindberg
and Scheingold (1970a, pp. 24–63) argued that Europe’s would-be polity
was compatible with the reconsolidation of the nation-state after the
horrors of World War II; in terms of public support, it was operating
within a permissive public consensus – one built upon instrumental rather
than emotional ties. Joseph Nye (1987 [1971], pp. 94–5) placed the
European experience with regional integration into a broader comparative perspective, developing a sophisticated version of a dynamic regional
6
Jeffrey T. Checkel and Peter J. Katzenstein
integration process model. The gap between the increasing complexity of
the theoretical models (Lindberg and Scheingold 1970b; Puchala 1972)
and General de Gaulle’s stubborn refusal to let himself be integrated into
integration theory led to a sharp decline in scholarly interest in European
integration even before Haas’s (1975) premature post-mortem on the
obsolescence of regional integration theory.
In contrast, Deutsch and his collaborators developed an approach
to regional integration that focussed on the flow of information and
goods and services as proxies for the level and growth of a European
community (Deutsch et al. 1957; Deutsch, 1953, 1967; Cobb and Elder
1970; Fisher 1969; Caporaso 1971). Informed by a cybernetic theory of
politics and a belief in the absolute limits of all channels processing
communications and transactions, Deutsch insisted on statistical measures that normalized absolute increases in European communications
and transactions against the growth of comparable national figures. In
the voluminous statistical studies that he and his students published, the
growth of European interdependencies of various kinds was found to be
lagging behind that of national interdependencies.
On the question of European identity, Deutsch was arguably both more
explicit and more pessimistic than Haas. Indeed, he remained deeply
skeptical about a possible shift of mass loyalties from the national to the
supranational level. Deutsch and his collaborators recorded some gains in
attitudinal integration of selected mass publics and elites in Europe in the
mid-1960s (Deutsch et al. 1967). But even at the level of elites which, then
as now, tend to be more internationalist than publics, a major empirical
study at the end of the 1960s found the emergence of no more than a
pragmatic transnationally oriented consensus that tolerated the persistence of national diversity (Lerner and Gordon 1969, pp. 241–61).
While the argumentative lines between the neo-functionalist and
communication theories of European integration were clearly drawn,
neither view offered a well-developed perspective on politics or politicization. Neo-functionalism relied on pluralist theory, an ahistorical
and anti-institutional view of politics that made it difficult to incorporate issues of identity. Although Deutsch’s theory of identity was
powerful in terms of both conceptualization and operationalization,
his theory of politics relied for the most part on political metaphor,
couched in the language of cybernetics and Skinnerian behavioral
psychology. Moreover, neither Haas nor Deutsch developed a more
fine-grained understanding of the politicization of identities.
The politicization of European identities
7
In sum, the distinction between elite and mass politics was central to
two different visions of European integration in the 1960s. Since then,
Europe has made strides that to some extent support the expectations
of neo-functionalism, even though European politics is evolving into
something quite different from a federal or confederate union. At
the same time, although these advances in European integration have
proven wrong the skepticism of Deutsch’s cybernetic theory of integration, his insistence on the staying power of nationalism is supported by
its continued vitality and the occasional vigor of national opposition to
the European project. European identities are evolving at a complex
intersection of elite and mass politics.
Europe as an emerging multilevel polity
Since the early 1990s and in response to a relaunched European project,
a vibrant theoretical literature on questions of European integration
and identity has emerged. Here, we highlight several theoretical contributions that might shed light on identity dynamics in Europe, including
research on multilevel governance, historical institutionalism, ideationalconstructivist frameworks, and arguments about deliberation.
Work on multilevel governance explores the complex institutional
structure of the evolving European polity (Marks, Hooghe, and Blank
1996; Kohler-Koch 2003). It has helped us to conceptualize and document empirically how policymaking has spread across supranational,
intergovernmental, transnational, and regional levels in post-Maastricht
Europe (Leibfried and Pierson 1995). However, because of its rationalist
foundations – stressing transaction costs, informational asymmetries, and
principal–agent relations – this scholarship can tell us little about how
European dynamics may be changing identities on the continent.
Research by historical institutionalists has brought a time dimension to
studies of Europe and the EU. While historical institutionalism has always
sat somewhat uneasily between rationalist and sociological understandings of institutions (Hall and Taylor 1996), the theorizing of prominent
Europeanists moves it decisively closer to the former. Consider the work
of Paul Pierson. Within the context of the EU, his discussion of unanticipated consequences, adaptive learning, institutional barriers to reform,
and sunk and exit costs is entirely consistent with – and, in fact, premised
on – a rationalist perspective. EU institutions are all about constraints
and incentives (Pierson 1994, 1996). While Pierson is to be commended
8
Jeffrey T. Checkel and Peter J. Katzenstein
for providing solid microfoundations to a largely descriptive historicalinstitutionalist EU literature, the costs are quite significant. His rationalist
take essentially destroys the bridge that links the analysis of institutions to
sociological insights – a bridge that might make it possible to gauge how
European institutions, over time, affect identity.
One might think that ideational and social constructivist work would be
ideally placed to help us understand identity dynamics in Europe (Adler
2002). Yet, this is not necessarily so. For some, ideas are simply an important variable in helping to explain causal dynamics in the EU’s development
(McNamara 1998; Parsons 2003), but not identity per se. Other scholars
do examine identity, but focus too much on the EU and its institutions
(Risse 2004; Checkel 2007b), thus missing other, perhaps more important
arenas of identity construction. Even more problematic, this scholarship
too often underspecifies or brackets out altogether political dynamics, an
implausible analytic move in today’s Europe (Checkel 2007a).
Consistent with a central theme in this volume, multidisciplinary
work by a smaller group of constructivists has come closest to capturing
the true face of identity in contemporary Europe. Ted Hopf (2002),
for example, integrates linguistic theory with political science in a way
that drives home what many others miss: that identity in Europe starts at
home. Bridging anthropology and political science, Iver Neumann (1996,
1999) helps us see that identities do not simply nest in the positive-sum
way seen by all too many EU scholars (Laffan 2004). Identity construction often begets a process of “othering” rather than “nesting.” Identities
can be sharply conflictual rather than snugly complementary.
Finally and most recently, some scholars have developed deliberative arguments that address Europe’s identity politics. More normative
than empirical in orientation (Eriksen 2006; Pensky 2008), these arguments draw heavily upon the social theory of Jürgen Habermas, specifically his argument about constitutional patriotism, to sketch a European
identity that is both post-national and non-malignant. Yet, they miss
conceptual problems in Habermas’s argumentation (Castiglione, this
volume). Too often, these arguments fail to connect their social theory
to politics, where contestation, conflict, and power play central roles
(Hyde-Price 2006) and where a de facto constitution has long existed
in the form of the frequently amended Treaty of Rome (Moravcsik 2006).
Closely related to this deliberative school of thought, another group
of Europeanists seeks to find the EU’s identity in its status as a civilian or
normative power (Manners 2002). The close relation between these two
The politicization of European identities
9
lines of arguments blurs the distinction between normative ideal and
empirical reality. If one actually tests for a correspondence between
what the EU says and what it does, normative power as a basis for
European identity comes up short (Erickson 2007).
While making important starts in theorizing European identity, these
various literatures consistently underplay the importance of politics and
processes of politicization. In some cases, the reason for this omission is
an exclusive focus on institutions; in others, it is the theorist’s penchant
for neglecting the complexities of domestic politics; in still others, it is
the adoption of a benign view of politics that, while normatively appealing, is simply out of touch with European and world politics.
Europeanization
Last but certainly not least, there is work on Europeanization, which
in many senses provides the state of the art on how Europe might be
reshaping deeply held senses of community – national, local, regional,
and otherwise. The concept describes a set of interrelated processes
that go well beyond the traditional focus of scholars interested in how
state bargaining and elite identification affect the evolution of the EU
(Olsen 2002, 2007; Graziano and Vink 2006). It shifts our attention
to an examination of the effects Europe has on the contemporary state –
its policies, institutions, links to society, and patterns of individual–
collective identification (Caporaso, Cowles, and Risse 2001; Knill
2001; Börzel 2002; Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005).
Europeanization portrays a complex dynamic through which Europe
and the nation-state interact. It is not a story that can be told relying on
binary distinctions. The EU does not dominate over its members by
steadily wearing down the barriers of the nation-state. And nationstates do not succeed in fending off attacks on their untrammeled
sovereignty. Rather, both the EU and the nation-state play crucial roles.
Work on Europeanization has generated important new empirical
findings on European identity.1 Perhaps most intriguing is the argument
about its positive-sum nature. That is, one can be French – say – and, at
the same time, European; identities, European or national, do not wax
1
We stress empirical because, until the mid-1990s, work on European identity
tended to stress the normative – the kind of identity Europe ought to have (Delanty
1995, pp. 2–3).
10
Jeffrey T. Checkel and Peter J. Katzenstein
or wane at each other’s expense. Instead, they are often nested in
complex and variegated patterns for different individuals and groups,
and are triggered in specific situations leading to different kinds of
politics (Herrmann et al. 2004, pp. 248–53; see also Risse and Maier
2003; Soysal 2002; Caporaso and Kim 2007).
Yet, several analytic biasses limit the ability of this scholarship to fully
capture identity dynamics in contemporary Europe. Substantively, it
focusses too much on EU institutions. Methodologically, it is hindered
by excessive reliance on survey instruments such as the Eurobarometer
polls. To be sure, cross-national surveys and refinements to them are
useful for helping to understand basic distinctions in the political orientations of mass publics in Europe and toward the EU (Moravcsik 2006;
Bruter 2005). But polls risk imposing a conceptual unity on extremely
diverse sets of political processes that mean different things in different
contexts. Indeed, survey questions may create the attitudes they report,
since people wish to provide answers to questions that are posed (Zaller
1992; see also Meinhof 2004, pp. 218–19; Favell 2005, p. 1112; and
Hopf 2006).2
In addition, Europeanization is nearly always portrayed as a topdown process, with the causal arrows pointing from EU institutions and
policies to the nation-state. This focus on the EU level leads to an
emphasis on elites and institutions. On the specific question of a possible Europeanization of identities, there thus exists a strong tendency to
privilege EU institutions or political-bureaucratic elites (Hooghe 2005).
Finally, many important political elements are left unexamined. With
its strong institutional focus (Fligstein, Sandholtz, and Sweet 2001),
Europeanization research misses the politics and conflict that often
accompany transformational dynamics. In a recent conversation, a
specialist on the Middle East decried the way in which Europeanists
study identity. “For you folks, identity is something nice; it’s all about
institutions, deliberation and elites. Where I study identity, people die
for it!” Although it is true that European identity politics are today
typically not a matter of life or death, they do incite strong political
reactions. And as those living in London and Madrid have learned
2
Survey research in particular insists on agreed-upon working definitions of the
concept of identity as well as unambiguous and explicit operational indicators, in
full awareness that the concept “takes on different meanings to different people in
different contexts, under different historical, social, economic and political
conditions” (Anderson 2006, p. 1).
The politicization of European identities
11
firsthand, such politics can easily become a matter of life and death even
in contemporary Europe.
Politicization of European identities
Our conception of the politicization of European identities broadens
conventional understandings focussing on Western Europe and on the
interplay of political institutions and practices in the European Union.
The 2004 and 2007 enlargements, the EU’s ongoing constitutional
process, and the resurgence of religion have politicized European
identities in significant ways. Building upon but moving beyond the
contributions of political science, this book thus seeks out other social
science disciplines and their fresh perspectives on the dynamic evolution of European identities.
Politicization is a process that makes issues part of politics (de Wilde
2007). Apart from working its effects through national and EU institutions, it may be found in dynamics of exclusion and boundary drawing;
in structural effects of mobility and migration; or in reactions to various
lived experiences and daily practices. This complexity makes the analysis of European identity contingent upon many factors that resist easy
categorization by any one academic discipline.
Politicization of “who we are”
European identity has become intensely politicized in recent years.
Consider the debates over the EU constitution in France and the
Netherlands during the first half of 2005. These revealed two very
different European identity projects. One was an outward-looking and
cosmopolitan European identity project captured by the spirit and text
of the EU’s then constitutional treaty (Fossum and Menendez 2005).
A second was an inward-looking, national-populist European identity
project that focussed on the economic and cultural threats posed
by the infamous Polish plumbers and Islamic headscarves (Thomas,
forthcoming; Berezin and Schain 2003; Kastoryano 2002; Cederman
2001; Neumann 1999).
These cosmopolitan and populist conceptions of identity differ in both
the form and the content of politicization. Cosmopolitan conceptions
appeal to and are motivated by elite-level politics. Populist conceptions
reflect and respond to mass politics. Cosmopolitan conceptions focus on
12
Jeffrey T. Checkel and Peter J. Katzenstein
political citizenship and rights. Populist conceptions center on issues of
social citizenship and cultural authenticity.
Cosmopolitan European identities are shaped in part by the liberalization of national markets in the wake of the Single European Act
(1987) and the process of market opening in an era of globalization.
Identity change in response to market developments reflects shifting
economic self-interests. As Neil Fligstein argues in chapter 6, European
professionals, drawn largely from the upper social strata, tend to identify more with and be more supportive of Europe. In comparison, the
new sources of oppositional politics that Douglas Holmes examines
in chapter 3 are clear losers in the liberalization of national markets.
Identities rooted largely in interests will wax and wane with market
developments. Lacking other sources of identification, they can be
likened to party hats that we put on and take off with relative impunity.
Beyond these economic sources of cosmopolitan and populist identities, however, Europe also shapes enduring senses of loyalty and
obligation, linking individual to community. In contrast to the nation,
dying for Europe is not a political litmus test; not killing Europeans is.
One of the most surprising developments in Europe has been the rapid
growth of a European security community (Deutsch 1957; Adler and
Barnett 1998), based on a relatively thin conception of collective
identity that is lacking in emotional strength. Europeans have made
peace in what Dario Castiglione calls in chapter 2 a community of
strangers.
Populist conceptions of European identities have cultural and ethnic
rather than political content. In Douglas Holmes’s analysis in chapter 3,
Europeans are experimenting now with multiracial, multicultural, and
other novel forms of identity. Many of Europe’s young, in particular,
are exploring alternative lifestyles that take an apolitical or anti-political
form today, but that conceal a reservoir of oppositional politics ready to
be tapped by political leaders. With holes in the welfare net growing at
the same time that the size of socially marginalized and politically vulnerable populations increases, the appeal of “integralism” (Holmes 2000) is
now firmly embedded in European politics. The political and social integration of ethnic and cultural minorities is a task that populist conceptions
of European identities regard as a threat. “Europe for Europeans” rallies
the supporters of an illiberal political project.
In its original eighteenth-century meaning, cosmopolitanism referred
to tolerance toward strangers. Today, it is grounded in the principle
The politicization of European identities
13
of humanity.3 These are not the meanings of the term in the political
vocabulary of contemporary Europe. European cosmopolitanism often
refers to a growing acceptance of cross-border exchanges, not only of
goods and services but also of Europeans. But what is Europe and who are
the Europeans? Recent EU enlargement has close to doubled the number
of member states and increased greatly Europe’s social heterogeneity.
And Europe is not an island in a globalizing world. Old stereotypes are
reappearing and new ones are being forged – as Holly Case illustrates in
chapter 5.
Populist European politics draw boundaries between “Europe” and
the “other,” a fact illustrated by the highly charged debate over Turkish
accession to the EU and, more generally, the difficult relations between
Europe and Islam. “Europe for Europeans” is a slogan that captures
more than nationalist backlash, as Doug Holmes argues in chapter 3. It
incorporates broader European elements appealing to deeply felt political
sensibilities. Hungary is a good example. Traditional chauvinistic nationalism in Hungary is now donning a European mantle, recognizing
the political cover Europe offers for the pursuit of political influence in
neighboring countries with significant Hungarian ethnic minorities.
Cosmopolitan and populist forms of European identity politics have
varied in their salience. In the 1980s and 1990s, cosmopolitanism
appeared to be winning out over populism. During the last decade,
however, debates concerning a possible European constitution and
controversies surrounding the process of enlargement have created a
deeply politicized environment where the future of European identity
looks anything but settled. Today, neither identity project can avoid
the inescapable social fact of a growing number of migrants who are
attracted by the vision of a social, prosperous, and peaceful Europe.
These contrasting identities draw on different layers of memories and
political practices, which are activated politically in the context of a
relevant, or threatening, “other.”
The liberal and illiberal tendencies in contemporary Europe thus are
yielding a novel politics of immigration that differs sharply from the
forced migrations that Stalin, Hitler, and World War II and its aftermath
had created. The Iron Curtain and Cold War politics prevented comparable massive demographic shifts from occurring in the second half of
the twentieth century. However, since 1990, as Adrian Favell argues in
3
We thank Michael Barnett for discussions on these points.
14
Jeffrey T. Checkel and Peter J. Katzenstein
chapter 7, legal and illegal immigration is leading to an unforeseen
and largely unwelcome Americanization of Europe. Different kinds of
migrants create less (as in the case of ethnic Germans migrating from
Eastern Europe and Russia after 1990) or more (as in the case of illegal
immigrants from Africa at the outset of the twenty-first century)
political backlash. “Europe for Europeans” as a political project and
the growth of multiracial and a multicultural Europe as a social
process thus feed on each other.
Politicization of religion
In a Europe of changing borders, religion and religious identities
are taking on new and deeply politicized roles. Toward the east,
Christianity, or Catholicism, defines a civilizational boundary that is
intuitively plausible to many Europeans. However, just as plausible is a
non-confessional, secular European identity that, for many elites, offers
a welcome contrast to a United States that is an unfathomable religious
manifestation of the extreme west. Whether we focus on cosmopolitanism or populism, religion or secularism, Europe’s multiple and often
contradictory identities are readily apparent.4
Students of religion remind us that the politicization of European
identities is affected profoundly by confessional dynamics. European
Protestants have embraced a secular universalism, marking a transformation of their religion into one that can be substantially freed from
individual faith or faith-based churches. Yet the historical foundations
of the European Union are undeniably Christian-Democratic, a capacious political tradition that accommodates temperate offshoots of
conservative political Catholicism as well as a social Catholicism that
has proven in the past to be remarkably progressive in outlook and
practice.
European enlargement has given renewed political importance to
the connexion between religion and European identity (Byrnes and
Katzenstein 2006). Pope John Paul III, for example, wanted Poland
not simply to rejoin Europe, but to rejuvenate a Christian Europe.
Poland and the other Central and Eastern European countries, in the
Pope’s vision, were not mere supplicants to Brussels, but had every right
4
A similar point can be made by looking at Europe’s multiple language regime
as an indicator of the multiplicity of identities. See Laitin 1997.
The politicization of European identities
15
to bring their own understandings of Europe and their own distinctive
European identity to the entire apparatus of the European Union.
Indeed, before the European constitution was shelved by French and
Dutch voters, EU member states found themselves in a bitter political
debate about how to balance their different views on the secular and
Christian roots of European identity.
Religion is relevant not only for how Europe relates to its new
members, but to the outside world as well. The continental European
welfare state has broad, bipartisan support among Left and Right. Its
ideological foundation is firmly rooted in Christian Democratic doctrine and political practice. American and British neoliberal policies
and economic globalization have posed a great challenge to this
welfare state. European anti-Americanism is thus tied not only to the
divisive personality of President Bush and his policies, but also to a
value conflict between two different types of societies (Katzenstein and
Keohane 2007).
In addition, there are the complicated and delicate relations between
the Catholic Church and Islam in contemporary Europe. Pope Benedict’s
repeated attempts to apologize for offending many Muslims at his
address in the fall of 2006 might be seen as an attempt by “purportedly
secular Europeans grasping for ways to resist what they see as Muslim
encroachment on compacts that lay at the heart of what it means to be
European” (Byrnes 2006, p. 2).
Politicization of national politics
In national elections, mainstream political parties have smartly avoided
simplifying the multiplicity we describe above into zero-sum pro- or
anti-European slogans or platforms. Such a politicization strategy
most likely would divide support for any major party. The layering
of European and national identities makes between 15 and 65 percent
of the population Europeans, either by holding to an exclusively
European identity or, more typically, by grafting a European identity
onto a national one. Instead, political parties focus their energies on
politicizing which kind of Europe they would like to bring about – social,
green, democratic, liberal-capitalist, xenophobic, cosmopolitan, lawabiding, civilian, or military. The politics concerning Europe have thus
become more contested. What once was a “permissive consensus” has
become a “constraining dissensus” (Hooghe and Marks, forthcoming).
16
Jeffrey T. Checkel and Peter J. Katzenstein
A persistent elite–mass gap, an increased scope of EU policies, and
populist right-wing counter-mobilization have made Europe and
European identities politically more salient than in earlier periods.
In making identity a subject of political contestation, parties have
been responding to the politicization of Europe in elite and mass politics
over the past fifteen years. Starting with the Maastricht Treaty of 1991
and ending with the signing of the Treaty of Lisbon in December 2007,5
elites have focussed on the deepening and broadening of Europe, and
on an increase in the EU’s decision-making capacity. In the intervening
years, elite concerns shifted from containing unified Germany as a
putative hegemon to enhancing the political legitimacy and efficacy of
an enlarged Europe. Mass publics, meanwhile, had very different concerns left largely unaddressed: Europe’s economic downturn in the early
and mid-1990s, the putative erosion of the welfare state under the
impact of an aging society and international competition, and increases
in immigration in the wake of enlargement.
Put differently, since the early 1990s, European politics has been
marked by a growing political disjuncture. Elite politics has centered on
a strategy of depoliticizing Europe, most clearly through the creation of
the euro zone and a European Central Bank. At the same time, mass
publics have experienced the effects of an EU that was beginning to
regulate in policy domains – border controls, currency, citizenship, fundamental rights – that hit home in new and personal ways. This disjuncture has been heightened by the growing sense of a shift of power away
from national parliaments to an unaccountable bureaucracy in Brussels.
Europe, the EU, and European identity have become focal points of
contestation and politicization; they are no longer topics reserved for
experts. Democratic politics has prevailed over technocratic politics,
with the latter shown to be nothing more than a special kind of politics –
trafficking, often disingenuously, in the appearance of neutrality. Politicization and contestation in contemporary Europe are an indication
of normal rather than crisis politics. They indicate powerfully that,
while falling short of a federation and confederation, Europe is nonetheless a polity-in-the-making. Novelty and volatility are its political
hallmarks.
5
This treaty resulted from the negative responses to French and Dutch referenda on
the European constitution in 2005.
The politicization of European identities
17
Multidisciplinary perspectives
It would appear, then, that the politicization of European identities
invites more and different forms of analysis than political scientists
focussing on the EU have provided. We adopt here a conceptualization
of politicization that encompasses approaches from various disciplinary
traditions. They enrich our understanding of the politics of European
identity construction. For sure, the actions of strategically calculating
elites, partisan competition, and bureaucratic infighting – all proper
subjects for conventional political science analysis – play central roles.
However, other important perspectives highlight deliberation (normative political theory), everyday practice (anthropology), lived experience (sociology), and contingency (history).
Deliberative and normative political theories have used the topic of
the politicization of European identity as a provocation to inquire into
questions of citizenship and the European public sphere. Scholars interrogate both the contents and the challenges to European solidarities as
they are affected by principles of voluntarism, the effects of migration,
constitution-making practices, the resurgence of religious politics, and
the global impact of the rights revolution (Pensky 2008). More recently,
these normative concerns have been analyzed empirically, through
detailed investigations into the emergence of European-wide public
spheres and their influence on pre-existing senses of community and
belonging (Koopmans 2004b; Trenz 2004, 2006; “The Great Debate
Begins” 2005; Beiler, Fischer, and Machill 2006).
Anthropologists explore the politicization of identity construction by
asking ordinary people whether they think at all of their identities in
European terms. Their ethnographic research reports the results of
observing and listening to people directly. It has the virtue of being
able to specify the substantive content of identity as well as the relevant
individual or group that holds a particular identity. It thus captures
variability in meanings, as well as avoiding or minimizing the often
large inferential leaps of conventional survey research.6
The work of Douglas Holmes attests to the value of such an anthropological approach. His field research recovers the various romantic,
fascist, and national manifestations of oppositional practices, activated
6
Our argument here should not be read as favoring either research tradition over
the other. Indeed, the best research on identity utilizes both ethnography and
survey research. See Symposium 2006.
18
Jeffrey T. Checkel and Peter J. Katzenstein
by a ruptured sense of belonging that opposes a cosmopolitan European
identity. The political foundations for protesting European integration
and enlargement are linked to a sense of political alienation rooted
primarily in cultural rather than socioeconomic forms of estrangement.
At stake in these modern rather than atavistic oppositional political
movements is resistance against a multicultural and multiracial Europe,
as well as against the flattening of existing social frameworks brought
about by globalization’s “fast capitalism” (Holmes 2000). Holmes
traces these anti-materialist, authoritarian oppositional movements in
various research sites, including the rural districts of Friuli in Italy, the
bureaucratic and political precincts of the European Parliament, and the
urban wards of London’s East End.7
Sociologists offer slightly different, but equally revealing insights into
the politicization of European identity. For example, Adrian Favell’s
inquiry into the lives of well-paid professionals in Amsterdam, London,
and Brussels looks at the politicization of identity from the privileged
vantage point of “Eurostars.” He tracks the lives of more than sixty
young and mobile Europeans, exploring what happens to this group as
its members exploit their European citizenship rights to move under the
most favorable economic and political conditions. The short-term benefits of mobility, Favell reports, soon run up against longer-term social
barriers and identity issues that crop up as the Eurostars must choose
whom to marry, where to settle, how to raise their children, and when
and where to start laying the foundations for their eventual retirements.
The politicization of identity in this case occurs at the intersection of a
market with free labor movement and a deep-seated resistance in
European society to free labor mobility (Favell 2008a).8
When exploring the politicization of identity, historians remind us of
long-term trends in the development of European commonalities that
have to date failed in shaping a distinctive social identity (Kaelble 2004,
p. 278). They also point to the important effects of historical contingency
and memory. The European enlargements of 2004 and 2007 could
have happened in other ways. They have brought into play very different
historical memories from those shared by West Europeans. The encounter
7
8
For another important ethnographic study – in this case, of EU institutions – see
Shore 2000.
Medrano 2003 and Fligstein 2008a offer additional state-of-the-art sociological
studies whose findings bear critically on issues of European identity.
The politicization of European identities
19
with Islam, the experience of delayed modernization, occupation by Nazi
Germany, and the Soviet Union have created a vast storehouse of potentially differentiating memories. Contingency – in the form of individual
leaders (De Gaulle, Thatcher, Kohl, Blair, Merkel, or Sarkozy) or unexpected epochal events (the 1973 energy crisis, the 1983 French U-turn, the
end of the Cold War, the Balkan wars, 9/11) must also be given their due
in any analysis of the politicization of European identities.
Summary
At a moment when Europe is being transformed dramatically by the
process of enlargement and the resurfacing of religious and civilizational
issues, students of European identity need to capture more adequately
such facts in their accounts. Yes, the European Union plays a central role
and, yes, increasingly sophisticated surveys and similar techniques can
provide important insight. However, if the purpose is to understand fully
the dynamics of European identity construction and its politicization, we
should cast our net more widely and probe more deeply. This volume
thus relies on multiple disciplinary traditions to offer fresh perspectives,
raise new questions, and develop unexpected insights on “who we are” in
today’s Europe.
Project, process, and European identities
The two sections above reviewed the terrain on which this book explores
European identities; this one describes how we and our collaborators
advance new perspectives on them. We organize the contributions in
three parts: identity as project, identity as process, and European identity
in context.
Identity as project
Dario Castiglione argues in chapter 2 that the construction of European
political identity does not need to rest on a definite conception of what it
means to be European. This is so for two reasons: one has to do with the
transformation of the very nature of political identification with one’s
community in modern societies, the other with the mixed nature of the
European Union as a multilevel polity comprising both intergovernmental and supranational levels of governance. Any normative discourse
20
Jeffrey T. Checkel and Peter J. Katzenstein
about political identity in Europe, he argues, will have to accommodate
these facts.
Castiglione develops this argument in several stages. He begins by
showing how the debate on European identity is intrinsically connected
to that on the nature of the European Union as a political project, and
that it therefore suffers from the same ambiguities and uncertainties. In
this debate, a key role has been played by the German social theorist
Jürgen Habermas and his notion of constitutional patriotism.
Castiglione’s reading of Habermas is both sympathetic and highly
critical. While it is true that constitutional patriotism offers a more
sensitive understanding of how we identify with political community
and of the basis for political allegiance in the contemporary world,
Habermas’s post-national position fails to come to terms with the
mixed nature of the European Union and with the profound differences
that exist within the European polity. In such conditions, European
political identity cannot be constructed based on putative European
values – as Habermas suggests – but needs to be supported by the
more conflictual mechanisms of democratic politics. Building on this
critique, Castiglione then suggests a different way of conceptualizing
European political identity, one more attuned to living with persisting
conflicts and politicization.
In chapter 3, Douglas Holmes explores the genesis, articulation, and
political salience of an identity project that differs dramatically from
that of Habermas and other public intellectuals. As an anthropologist,
Holmes sees identity mediating the struggles by which emergent
configurations of European society gain political articulation – thus
becoming politicized – as moral frameworks, analytical constructs,
and empirical facts.
At the outset of the twenty-first century, Holmes argues, the people of
Europe are continually negotiating among liberal and illiberal registers
of identity; these shifting configurations of consciousness typically do
not succumb to a single, stable, and unambiguous expression. There are
now countless experiments with identity unfolding across Europe.
Almost all of them are in some way related to European integration,
though not necessarily the outcome of any EU policy initiative per se or,
for that matter, under EU institutional control or supervision.
Holmes then explores in some detail one – increasingly important –
identity project in today’s Europe. It covers wider-ranging experiments
with identity aimed at defining a fully elaborated, supranational political
The politicization of European identities
21
agenda, and is circumscribed by what Holmes terms integralism.
Particularly as constructed by Jean-Marie Le Pen, integralism draws
authority from a diverse range of collective idioms encompassing family,
town and country, ethnic and linguistic assemblages, religious communities, occupational statuses, and social classes. The insurgency inspired
by Le Pen reveals paradigmatically how identity mediates the struggles by
which emergent configurations of European society gain political articulation. For Holmes, identity in Europe has become increasingly disconnected from the stabilizing influence and control of the nation-state. In
these circumstances, it has assumed a volatile dynamic able to impel a
supranational politics that speaks powerfully to the predicaments of a
new generation of Europeans.
Analyzing European identities from the perspective of the public
sphere, Juan Díez Medrano examines in chapter 4 the broad contours
of the Europe that elites and citizens imagine, the degree of consensus on
such a Europe, and its advocates. Medrano’s chapter holds the middle
ground between the cosmopolitan and nationalist alternatives that
Castiglione and Holmes discuss, respectively, in chapters 2 and 3. He
begins with a synthetic overview of the parameters of the 2005 EU
constitutional referendum outcomes and the political confusion that
followed. This discussion challenges prevalent views and proposes an
alternative interpretation that stresses the role played by elites.
The core of the chapter is a rigorous public-sphere analysis, one with
implications for identity dynamics at both the elite and mass levels. For
elites, Medrano documents divisions over further transfers of sovereignty
to the EU. In the post-Enlargement era, there is also evidence that elite
consensus on the civic/republican conception of European identity may be
breaking apart and giving way to conflict with ethnic conceptions. At the
mass level, Medrano argues that an open debate on Europe’s political
identity that would engage and enlighten the citizens is not taking place,
with representatives of civil society conspicuously absent from public discussions. These features of the public sphere are consistent with the citizens’
growing propensity to contest elite proposals for further integration.
These competing conceptions of Europe offer a complex set of alternatives that belie the notion of a simple choice between supranationalism
and nationalism. Medrano’s empirical study thus dovetails with and
supports Castiglione’s normative and Holmes’s anthropological analysis.
Binary distinctions get little traction in the muddy fields of European
identity politics.
22
Jeffrey T. Checkel and Peter J. Katzenstein
Identity as process
Moving beyond the focus on a European project by Castiglione, Holmes,
and Medrano, three additional chapters explore different intersections of
political identity in various spheres of European social and political life.
Elites still matter, but they are now more fully embedded in ongoing
historical, social, political, and even personal dynamics and processes.
In chapter 5, Holly Case adopts a historical perspective to demonstrate that East and West Europeans often understand European identity in different terms. These perspectives stem from the different ways
in which groups of people have experienced revolution and supranational entities, as well as how they remember and position themselves
in Europe, past and present. From the many axes along which these
distinctive experiences can be drawn – North and South, big states and
little states, rich states and poor states – Case chooses to explore that
between East and West.
This axis may seem ephemeral to some, the product of a forty-year
detour from centuries of common experience, and one that can easily
be erased by mutual investment in the European project. From this
perspective, the European Union allows for dissonant perspectives to
coexist without creating major conflict. In essence, it serves as a great
shock absorber for contentious politics, especially around old boundary
disputes and minority issues. Nevertheless, and especially after the recent
enlargements, competing political visions now emerge of what it means
to be European, of what Europe is and what it does or should do – visions
that are on a collision course with the technocratically devised structures
of European unity.
These differences mean that, while certain shared concepts remain
central to understandings of “Europeanness” in both East and West,
they carry radically different meanings, informed by regional experience and politicized memory. Revolution, supranationalism, and
revised or centrally manipulated historical memory form a nexus
around which European identity projects have been built, rebuilt,
and dismantled with awe-inspiring frequency in the modern era.
From this historical perspective, Case argues that European identity
is largely rooted in national experience and is likely to become more
explicitly so in the future, even if the institutions of the European
Union were to remain relatively unaffected by the exigencies of nationalist activism.
The politicization of European identities
23
The identity-as-historical-process perspective so nicely sketched by Holly
Case is then followed by two chapters – both written by sociologists – that
give it analytic grounding. In chapter 6, Neil Fligstein asks why,
after half a century of European integration, political support for a more
united Europe remains so tepid. The reason, he argues, is that integration
has acted very unevenly in bringing individuals together. The main beneficiaries of European integration have been the managers, professionals,
and white-collar workers who have had the opportunity to travel, speak
second languages, and interact with their counterparts across Europe.
One consequence of this social change is Europe’s rich associational life.
Fligstein shows that professional, scientific, and trade associations have
created a European civil society in which educated citizens from different
countries meet to discuss issues of common interest.
The political consequences of this development have been complex
and play themselves out in very different ways across the partisan
spectrum and in European associations. While center-right and centerleft parties are largely supportive of the European project, parties of the
Left and of the Right oppose Europe, if on different grounds. The Left
sees Europe as a capitalist plot that seeks to eliminate the welfare state,
the Right sees Europe as a frontal attack on the nation-state.
Such complexities in party and interest group politics can cut both
ways, creating common European positions – for example, in the opposition to Austria’s Jörg Haider and his populist xenophobia – or undermining European solidarity, as in the reaction to BSE Creutzfeldt-Jacob
mad cow disease. Grounded in a provocative and rich sociological framing, the chapter concludes by drawing out some alternative European
futures, with the suggestion that we may be at the limit of European
identity. The European project in the image of the national state may
never be realized.
Adrian Favell examines in chapter 7 the crucial impact of migration
on European identity. After sketching the role of population movements
in the making and unmaking of Europe historically, he explores in
depth the three kinds of migration/mobility that are most salient to
the continent today and its structural transformation: the ongoing,
traditional “ethnic” immigration of non-Europeans into European
nation-states; the small but symbolically important emergence of new
intra-European “elite” migrations; and the politically ambiguous flows
of East–West migrants – which fall somewhere between the other two
forms – that have been connected to the EU enlargement process.
24
Jeffrey T. Checkel and Peter J. Katzenstein
Since the enlargements of 2004 and 2007, many East Europeans have
become EU citizens. But their ambivalent status is shared by migrants
from all candidate countries and associate members of the EU. Are they
free movers, like the privileged West Europeans, or just immigrants, like
the rest? Is their presence helping to construct an integrated Europe or
rebuild a Europe of nation-states? Even though they are (mostly) white,
Christian and hold EU passports, they often encounter the prejudices
and exclusionary practices traditionally faced by immigrants coming
from outside the EU.
Favell’s analysis thus points to a complex set of effects that migration has on European identities – effects that are equally far removed
from the simple economic and social models that motivated the Single
European Act or from Habermasian–cosmopolitan notions of constitutional patriotism.
European identity in context
In chapter 8, Hartmut Kaelble analyzes from a historical perspective the
cross currents between politicization and depoliticization that define
European identity as both project and process, and that have shaped
European politics since the early 1980s. Kaelble unravels five different
strands of identification with Europe. Identification with a Europe superior to all other civilizations is perhaps the oldest of these. Second,
identification with Europe’s internal heterogeneity as a sign of vitality
and strength may well be the harbinger of a new form of Euro-centrism.
Third, identification with a distinctive European lifestyle and European
values is at times so much taken for granted that Europeans are not even
aware of it. A fourth characteristic is the caution and restraint of identification with Europe: Europe has no resemblance to a traditional nationstate (where the formation of a national consciousness precedes the
process of state formation) and only a faint resemblance to a state-nation
(where the temporal sequence processes of state and nation creation are
reversed). Finally, identification with Europe is no longer grounded either
in violence and death or in strong political hierarchies. Remarkably,
Kaelble argues, in comparison with the nation-state, identification with
Europe shows, a stronger sense of trust in European institutions and
policies. Here lies the promise for a future evolution of European identity.
In chapter 9, Peter Katzenstein and Jeff Checkel briefly review the
book’s main findings before placing European identity in a broader,
The politicization of European identities
25
comparative framework. Domains of identity construction can be
found in the projects of political entrepreneurs and in social processes
such as discourses, institutions, and European daily practices. This
book supports the conclusion that European identities are shaped
by factors that are too inchoate to replicate processes of nation-state
identity formation. Instead of one strong European identity, we encounter a multiplicity of European identities. Far from being unique or
unusual, this multiplicity is in fact the hallmark of civilizational identities in other world regions such as Asia and the Americas. Those
civilizational polities also develop self-conscious ideas in their encounters with other such polities. While in comparison to other civilizations,
the EU as an expressly political arrangement makes Europe distinctive,
it does not make it unique. Far from narrowing our focus only to
Europe, the analysis of European identities thus opens a window on a
broader set of political phenomena in world politics.
PART I
European identity as project
2
Political identity in a
community of strangers
DARIO CASTIGLIONE
In this chapter I argue that the construction of European political
identity does not necessarily rest on a definite conception of what it is
to be European. This is so for two reasons – one related to the transformation of the very conception of political identification with one’s own
community in modern societies, and the other to the mixed nature
of the European Union as a multilevel polity comprising both intergovernmental and supranational levels of governance. Any normative
discourse about political identity in Europe must accommodate these
two realities.
Political identity is both a social and a historical construct. As a social
construct, it reflects the institutional nature of the political community
As a historical construct, its emergence and consolidation is bound up
with historical contingencies and with the way in which competing
narratives and ideologies shape the self-perceptions of the members of
the community. As suggested in the introductory essay to this volume,
Europe’s identities exist in the plural; and so it is for the more specific
sense of political identities.
But there is an important functional element to political identity,
insofar as this plays an important role in sustaining citizens’ allegiance
and loyalty to their political community. In this respect, the different
kinds of motivations and cultural and psychological constructions that
make different people identify with a political community may be irrelevant, as long as political identity helps to bring the members of a community together. On the other hand, the content of political identity may
This piece would have never been written but for the encouragement, good
advice, and infinite patience of the editors of this volume. I also wish to acknowledge
the input provided by all participants in the Oslo meeting, when the first drafts of the
chapters of this volume were discussed; and in particular by Andreas Føllesdal and
Thomas Risse, who gave me extremely valuable written comments. The usual caveat
about my exclusive responsibility for the shortcomings of this piece applies.
29
30
Dario Castiglione
matter a great deal in determining the character and self-understanding of
a political community.
The purpose of this chapter is to examine the state of the debate about
European political identity, concentrating on its more normative
aspects. In the first section, I show how this debate is intrinsically
connected to that of the nature of the European political community,
therefore suffering from the same ambiguities and uncertainties. The
following two sections present two different conceptions of European
political identity, reflecting nation-based and post-national understandings of politics in the European Union. As I argue throughout, the
nation-based conception fails to appreciate the changing nature of
political identity in a more globalized and internationalized world – the
first “reality” mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. In this respect,
the kind of “constitutional patriotism” propounded by Jürgen Habermas
offers a more sensitive understanding of how we identify with our political community and what is the basis for political allegiance in the
contemporary world. However, as I discuss in the essay’s fourth section,
Habermas’s post-national position fails to come to terms with the second
“reality”: the mixed nature of the European Union and the profound
differences that exist within the European polity. Under such conditions,
European political identity cannot be constructed on the basis of putative
European values but must be supported by the more conflictual mechanisms of democratic politics and inter-institutional balance.
The concluding part of the chapter builds upon the critical analysis
of constitutional patriotism by suggesting a different way of conceptualizing European political identity, one more attuned to living with
persisting conflicts. This is partly due to the diminished role that force
(both internal and external) plays in the self-understanding of modern
political communities, making it easier to reconcile the demands of
different nested political identities despite their occasional tendency to
conflict with one another.
Political identity and political community
The idea of political identity is a complex one. It contains two distinct
forms which for good reasons are often conflated, but whose analytical distinction is nonetheless important. One refers to the way in which
political action and institutions contribute to processes of individual
and collective identification and differentiation; the other to how
Political identity in a community of strangers
31
this process of identification provides the grounds for political allegiance in a political community.
Different forms of political identification do not need to clash. As an
individual, one can simultaneously play different political roles, in the
same way as one has different social and personal roles in life. There is
no contradiction in feeling a sense of belonging to functionally different
organizations. In some respects, certain political roles – for instance,
being a political activist, a member of a trade union or of a pressure
group, a partisan voter, and a citizen of a political community – can
even support each other insofar as they all contribute to determining the
way in which one makes sense of one’s political identity. The case is not
dissimilar when we consider identification with territorially, rather than
functionally different entities: with the city, the region, and the nation; or
even, though sometimes more problematically, with the different levels of
either a federal or a composite political system (Katzenstein 2005, p. 81).
In fact, in the latter cases, dissonance may be due to cultural rather than
strictly political aspects of personal or group identification.
When we take political identity in the specific sense of allegiance,
however, it is a different story. This is because political communities –
communities that claim the legitimate use of force over their members –
require some form of allegiance and loyalty, which has a somewhat
exclusive nature both in its claims over our solidarity with our fellow
citizens (that is, internally) and in its demands for defending our own
community against external threats (Taylor 1998).
Differentiating between these two senses of political identity has some
relevance when we come to the European case. European political
identification is in itself unproblematic. It has rightly been argued that
it does not need to be in direct opposition to either national or regional
identities, since they can all easily cohabit in a nested structure causing
neither psychological nor cognitive dissonance (Risse 2004, pp. 248–9).
This represents what in the introduction to this volume is called the
“positive-sum nature” of European identity; and although the development of a particular attachment to Europe, or more specifically to the
EU as a political entity, may impact on the way in which we perceive
other forms of institutional and territorial identification, the latter need
not be either abandoned or subordinated to the European level. It is,
after all, possible to be and feel both British and English (or Spanish and
Catalan; or Italian and Sicilian) at the same time, although these are
complex historical constructions that conjure up various kinds of
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Dario Castiglione
meanings and associations, resting on political and cultural experiences
that have on occasion taken divergent or even opposite directions (on
the relationship between Britishness and Englishness, cf. Colley 1992;
Pocock 1995; Aughey 2007, among many).
As one would expect, the issues are somewhat more complex with
regard to European identity in the sense of political allegiance to the EU.
In modern democratic societies, this sense of political identity is bound
up with the practices of citizenship and has a recognizably “projectual”
nature resulting from elites’ attempts to ensure the popular support
for a political system or project. Moreover, the projects and narratives
of political identity have been adapted and made functional to the
requirements of sovereignty and territoriality, and therefore conceived
as exclusive to either a particular state or a particular nation. The
emergence of a distinctive European political identity thus necessarily
enters into some kind of collision with the more historically and politically sedimented allegiances toward the nation-state.
Such a conflict and its resolution can be conceptualized in two ways.
The first, and most obvious one, is a conflict of content, so to speak. From
this perspective, European citizens are asked to change the priority of their
political allegiances by identifying with a different territory and expressing
loyalty toward different sovereign institutions. Hence, the EU and its
institutions come to take the place of the nation and the nation-state.
The second is a more radical conceptualization in which the EU, as a
transnational entity, does not simply take the place of the nation-state, but
effectively undermines the very principles of territoriality and sovereignty.
This changes both the form and the function of political identity, as the
latter would seem to play a different role within the political system.
From a more theoretical and normative perspective, the current
debate about European political identity oscillates between these two
positions: a more traditional statist and nation-like conception of identity, which sees the European Union as a nation writ large; and a postnational conception that sees the EU as a new form of state. Indeed, since
Maastricht (though not just because of Maastricht), the question of the
political form of the European Union has become part of a Europe-wide
debate. Even though it remains true that the “quasi-constitutional”
structure and institutional organization of the European Union have
been stable for some time, its political form – between an international
organization and a full-grown political community – remains both controversial and largely unresolved (Castiglione and Schönlau 2006).
Political identity in a community of strangers
33
As became even more evident in the course of the ratification
debate about the now abandoned Constitutional Treaty, there are
many reasons why such stabilization appears either unsatisfactory, or
threatening, or illusory, depending on the point of view. For many, the
Constitutional Treaty was meant to bring some kind of closure to the
protracted phase of economic and political integration and to establish
the limits of geopolitical enlargement, processes that had proceeded
piecemeal and “functionally” since the 1950s but accelerated dramatically with German unification and the collapse of the Soviet sphere of
influence at the end of the 1980s. It could be argued that the supremacy
of the member states as the “masters of the Treaty” was re-established
with the failure of the Constitutional Treaty and with the retreat into the
more traditional territory of intergovernmentalism during the preparation of the Treaty of Lisbon. But this is more likely to be a temporary
swing of the pendulum. Intergovernmentalism and supranationalism
remain poised in an uneasy equilibrium within the institutional structure of the European Union, and, from this perspective, the Treaty of
Lisbon (even if approved) does not change the status quo.
The debate about European identity is part and parcel of this conundrum of the political nature of the European Union. Indeed, it is one
aspect both of the debate on how to interpret the nature of the EU, and
of the political attempt to influence what the EU will become. For, if the
European Union is or is becoming a political community of sorts, its
stability and sustainability require that its members share some sense of
being part of it. But if the nature of such a community is unclear,
people’s sense of belonging may be equally confused. Hence the present
sense of anxiety and uncertainty of which the introduction to this book
speaks. The image that is evoked in the introduction, of a ship losing
direction, is not unfamiliar in the European debate, conjuring up similar
images of journeys, crossroads, and destinations that have been part of
the discourse of European finalité. Nonetheless, when these images, or
the very discourse of finalité, are applied to political identity, they tend
to become somewhat paradoxical, or at least circular (Walker 2002;
Castiglione 2004).
In the European case, this circularity takes two forms. On the one
hand, it is unclear what comes first, a European political identity or
the consolidation of the European Union as a political community – the
well-known discussion about the European demos (Weiler 1999). On
the other hand, as remarked in the introduction to this volume, there
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Dario Castiglione
appears to be a double movement of politicization and de-politicization
involving political identity. European identity is increasingly becoming
an issue of deep political controversy both across Europe and within
individual member states. At the same time, the search for a European
identity is intended to be a way of establishing a common ground for
overcoming political differences. Thus, European identity becomes politicized at the very same time as it is invoked as the de-politicized ground
on which Europeans should recognize each other. This paradox of
politicization and de-politicization is not peculiar to European political
integration. It was already present in the process of nation-state formation, but there it was often solved (or perhaps obscured) by appeals to
the more cultural aspects of national identities as the substratum of
political identities, something that, as we shall see, is more problematic
in the European case.
Nation-like conceptions of European political identity
The difficulty of matching cultural and political identity in Europe is
particularly evident when we examine those positions that look at
European political integration as a process of scaling up the dimension
of the political community. The implication here is that the European
integration process poses the question of the scale of politics but does
not change the fundamental categories of sovereignty and nationhood,
which remain dominant in European politics, inscribed as they are
within the more general context of the international system of states
and of international law (Grimm 1995b).
These positions are important because they remain extremely influential at a political and popular level. Indeed, from a strictly political
perspective, the debate about political identity has been dominated by
the simple alternative between national and European identity – the
former favored by the Euro-skeptics, the latter by the Euro-federalists.
In spite of their political division, both Euro-skeptic and strongly federal
conceptions of the EU tend to agree on the nature of the issue at stake:
whether or not the center of political gravity, and therefore of primary
allegiance, should be moved from the national to the European level.
They disagree, of course, on the advisability of such a move. This way of
looking at the EU as a direct challenge to national identity is a zero-sum
game between European and more local political identities. It reproduces an older discussion about dual citizenship (see Aron 1974) that
Political identity in a community of strangers
35
applies to federal as well as to multinational systems of state governance, where the component parts are strong or distinctive enough, in
terms of language or other historical and cultural features, that their
existence poses a more acute problem of political allegiance.
In terms of the conception of political identity, Euro-skeptics and
enthusiastic Euro-federalists share a similar belief in the dominance of
traditional conceptions of (national) statehood and sovereignty, according to which politics (and democratic politics at that) needs a “thick”
conception of political identity, necessary to guarantee both political
allegiance and social solidarity. This belief can either take a more culturalist (even ethnic, and narrowly nationalistic) turn, or be articulated in a
more liberal or civic-democratic language (Thibaud 1992; Tamir 1993;
Millar 1995, 2000).
Of course, for the Euro-skeptics and for those who set great store by
a historical conception of nationality as the cement of the political community, a European political identity is out of the question. If anything,
this kind of deep-seated Euro-skepticism, based on an “integralist”
agenda (see Holmes in this volume), has developed a kind of European
anti-identity, arising from a vision of Europe as a centralizing bureaucratic empire. But the possibility of a European political identity in
its traditional sense is at the core of a federal vision of the European
Union, what is sometimes referred to by its opponents as Europe as a
superstate. This position predicates a fully sovereign EU with an independent foreign policy on the grounds that this arrangement, in contrast
to a loose confederation, would be capable of delivering security and
welfare to all European citizens in a way in which the member states no
longer can (Morgan 2005). This position is sometimes identified with a
vision of “Fortress Europe” that replicates at the EU level some of the
nation- and state-based categories such as sovereignty and the congruence between territory and culture, in order to preserve Europe as an area
of political influence and prosperity within the context of twenty-firstcentury international politics.
“Fortress Europe,” or Europe as a “superstate,” would seem to require
a positive sense of political identity not dissimilar to the one that has
traditionally operated at the nation-state level. The debate about the
cultural and religious origins of Europe that was sparked by the drafting
of the Preamble of the Constitutional Treatise (Castiglione et al. 2007,
ch. 10), and by the question of Turkey’s membership in the European
Union, highlights a conception of political identity as fundamentally
36
Dario Castiglione
rooted in a shared and largely homogeneous cultural background, offering positive motives for identification as a strong basis for political
allegiance. What is important in this context is that this conception
makes no distinction between the process of identification and that of
securing political allegiance, so that loyalty toward a community is
possible only if there is some strong element of identification that holds
people together, beyond the mere fact of belonging to the same political
community. In this sense, political identification is always, to a certain
degree, based on cultural aspects of mutual recognition, and therefore
European political identity is hardly distinguishable from a more general
idea of European identity.
Naturally, the idea of a common European identity can be presented
as either the result of the historical uncovering of a common past
(Christian Europe, Enlightened Europe, and so on), or as a more constructivist operation identifying the European roots in a narrative
whose starting point is Europe’s present. Indeed, the latter process is
often presented in the guise of the former. Whether rooted in its historical and cultural past or “imagined” (Anderson 1991), the political
identity of a European superstate seems nonetheless to require not
only strong positive identification, but also a certain sense that such
an identity is distinct from that of others. Recent events have provided
interesting opportunities for the formation of an oppositional political
identity, where anti-Americanism and anti-Islamism can easily form the
content for a political identity mainly conceived in opposition to an
“other.” Yet, it is evident that deep divisions in Europe may undermine
both projects. From this perspective, Enlargement provides a telling
paradox for Europe as a superstate (see Case in this volume). On the
one hand, it has offered a vision of Europe as a definite geopolitical
entity, finally reunited within its “cultural” and “historical” confines;
on the other, it has introduced in the EU very different self-understandings
of Europe, of its history and of its mission. In this respect, the relationship
with the US is a crucial one, and one that divides European countries
(against each other) and European society (within each country) more
than it may unite them. The same is true of religion, an issue that has
become even more complex since Enlargement.
But, from the point of view of the construction of a European political
identity, one should not dismiss the role that negative elements play
alongside more positive ones. Despite being articulated in entirely negative and oppositional terms, the influence of Euro-skepticism as part of a
Political identity in a community of strangers
37
discourse on European identity should not be underestimated. It is plausible to imagine Euroskepticism as a permanent feature of EU politics,
one articulating in a populist language, or in the form of anti-politics, a
strong resistance against some of the centralizing and bureaucratic tendencies of the European integration process. Issues such as migration and
how to deal with a multicultural society provide the integralist position
with ammunition for their defense of traditional conceptions of national
sovereignty, territorial integrity, and cultural nativism, thus making discourses of a dominant European identity rather vulnerable for the foreseeable future.
In this perspective, it is interesting to note two particular phenomena linked to the recent process of Enlargement. From the point of
view of many of the “old” member states (those comprising the area
traditionally described as “Western Europe”), the issue of internal
mobility – so central to the ideological construction of a “common
market” – has recently become much more controversial as large
numbers of skilled and unskilled workers from new East European
member states have started making use of the freedom of movement
allowed them by the integration process (see Favell in this volume).
Thus, integration has paradoxically contributed to reactivating a
number of “national” reflexes in the attempt to provide social protection for local populations.
Enlargement has also produced paradoxical results in Central and
Eastern Europe. The rather protracted process of integration, and the
emergence of deep divisions in international affairs between what have
come to be know as “New” and “Old” Europe, have contributed to the
emergence of Euro-skepticism in some of the new member states. This
has partly undermined the prevalent conviction in those countries soon
after 1989 that there were no tensions between the rediscovery of their
national sovereignty and their joining the European “family,” in the
form of the EU. In fact, for many of these countries, joining the EU was
meant as an assertion of national sovereignty, something that they may
not be prepared to relinquish too readily by diluting it within the larger
confines of the European Union.
This discussion of the contradictory ways in which Enlargement and
integration seem to have affected the construction of a European political identity and a sense of belonging to the European Union shows
how difficult it is for a European identity conceived in a nation-like
fashion to displace more traditional national identities and allegiances.
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Dario Castiglione
This is probably a reflection of the fact that, whether conceived as an
intergovernmental or as a supranational organization, Europe is not a
nation writ large. From a normative perspective, a post-national conception of European political identity looks more promising.
Constitutional patriotism as European political identity
The main exponent of a post-national conception of European political
identity is probably Jürgen Habermas, who has deployed the idea of
constitutional patriotism – an idea originally developed in the context of
German constitutional culture (Müller 2007, ch. 1) – as the centerpiece
for a normative conception of political identity adapted to post-national
conditions. This section will explore the analytical and normative elements of Habermas’s position. However, his position does not stand in
isolation; it is part of a longer history of positions that, contrary to what
we have seen in the previous section, maintained that the European
process of integration undermined a purely national and state-based
view of politics (Haas 1958). The neo-functionalist literature, in particular, offered a reading of the integration process that tried to capture
the piecemeal way in which postwar (Western) Europe was being
created as a single economic and political space. As part of this process,
it was suggested that the emergence of the European Communities, and
later of the Union, weakened territoriality and sovereignty as the unifying principles of both internal and external political action.
As noted in this volume’s introduction, the gradual construction of
a European identity – not in opposition to national and local identities
but as the natural reflection of the emergence of new supranational
political structures and practices to which people grew increasingly
accustomed, and which they supported more on the basis of rational
calculations than emotive attachments – was part of this vision of functional integration (Haas 2000, pp. 322–52; Marks 1999, pp. 69–71).
Such a vision of political identity does not deny that national borders
matter in the reality of politics and in people’s own self-understanding as
political agents; but, in the words of Robert Schuman, it suggests that the
importance of borders and of nation-states was “de-emphasized” in the
new architecture of political space and political action (Haas 2000,
p. 322). The conception of political identity that follows from this vision
is the reverse of the one we saw in the previous section. Whereas a nationbased conception collapses identification and allegiance together, the
Political identity in a community of strangers
39
post-national conception separates the two, conceiving allegiance and
loyalty in a more rationalistic and abstract, rather than an emotive way –
somewhat detached from the cultural and psychological processes of
identification (Benhabib 2004).
This position gives very little importance to political identity as an
“exclusionary” identity. The allegiance we may have to the system of
laws and rights developed by the EU (even against our own government/
country) comes from the universality of the principles upheld by that
system, or by the efficiency-driven imperatives of the market and of
bureaucratic administration. According to such a perspective, all we
need to do in order to sustain social and political obligations at the
European level is to cultivate a kind of universal citizenship attuned to
the rights of others; or to disregard altogether the discourses of democratic citizenship and political identity, while relying entirely on other
mechanisms of formal and substantive legitimacy.
But there is a different and more “republican” conception of postnational politics, which does not devalue the importance of identification as part of the political integration process, and does not completely
separate identification from allegiance. It insists instead on the importance of a politics of identity as part of a new normative framing for
democratic politics at a supra- and post-national level. Habermas
(1996, 1997, 1998) has developed such a version by proposing “constitutional patriotism” as the basis for political identity at a European
level. This is a kind of patriotism (hence a particular attachment to the
European polity), but one that in Habermas’s view should be based on a
“civic” (and cosmopolitan) understanding of the principles underlying
the European polity. It should therefore be open to the inclusion of
the “other” but remain rooted in a self-understanding of the European
perspective, thus combining both universalist and particularist instances.
This is what it makes it both attractive and distinctive as a normative
reading of European identity.
In a recent treatment of the issue, Habermas (2006, ch. 6) distinguishes two elements of his argument. He first addresses the question
of whether European identity is “necessary,” and second, whether it is
“possible.” The first part of the argument is implicitly directed against
the kind of liberal and functional conceptions of post-national citizenship that, as already argued, put little emphasis on the emotional
attachments that ground citizens’ loyalty toward the community and
the political system. The second part is an answer to those who believe
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Dario Castiglione
that national attachments are still the only viable basis for political
identity.
Habermas’s demonstration of the need for a European political identity starts from the observation that both the explanatory value and the
political force of the once influential neo-functional theory of European
integration as self-propelling process are now exhausted. He identifies
the three main challenges facing the European Union as governing
Enlargement; managing the political consequences of increasing economic unification; and redefining the role of Europe within the new
geopolitical situation created by 9/11 and the Bush administration’s foreign policy (particularly in the Middle East). While the spillover character
of economic and social integration as envisaged by the neo-functionalist
model did not require a “common European consciousness” (2006,
p. 68), each of these challenges requires a definite awareness on the
part of citizens, who are increasingly asked to recognize the discipline
of majorities and minorities within a much enlarged community and
to accept the redistributive effects of more “positive” forms of integration. Moreover, a common foreign and security policy needs more
overt forms of opinion- and will-formation, and therefore the development of a European public sphere.
For Habermas, the decision taken at Laeken in 2001 to start a more
overt discussion about writing a European constitution was therefore
a timely way of addressing the shortcomings of the neo-functionalist
narrative of, and approach to, European integration. A Constitution (or
a Constitutional Treaty, as it emerged from the Convention on the
Future of Europe) offered a moment of closure to the debate about
finalité, providing the basis for a new form of statehood at a supranational level and for fixing the structure of internal power in the EU.
But Habermas stresses another aspect to the overt process of constitution making that has relevance to our discussion of why Europe needs
political identity. According to him, a normative conception of constitutional politics needs a constitutional moment, something that breaks
the routine of normal politics and introduces an important aspect of
symbolism in constitutional politics (Castiglione et al. 2007, ch. 2). “As
a political collectivity” – Habermas writes – “Europe cannot take hold
in the consciousness of its citizens simply in the shape of a common
currency. The intergovernmental arrangement at Maastricht lacks that
power of symbolic crystallization which only a political act of foundation can give” (Habermas 2001, p. 6). In this sense, the Constitution
Political identity in a community of strangers
41
represented a catalytic point in the creation of Europe as a political
community, coming at the end of an already advanced process of social,
economic, and political integration and helping to put in motion the
construction of a European-wide civil society, a common public sphere,
and a shared political culture (Habermas 2001, pp. 16–21).
As we know, that opportunity was not seized; but this does not
necessarily contradict the first part of Habermas’s argument about
political identity: that Europe needs to activate citizens’ consciousness
in the process of political integration, requiring an explicit form of
political identity. However, it does pose a problem for the second part
of his case: that such a political identity is possible.
Habermas’s argument on the feasibility of European political identity
moves in three stages. The first concerns the post-national nature of the
political identity itself. The second stage engages with the substance of a
European political identity, and the final one with the political forces
most likely to generate it. I shall try to briefly summarize these three
parts in the remainder of this section, and I shall address what I take to
be its shortcomings and a possible alternative conception in the following two sections.
Regarding the post-national nature of European political identity,
there is a sense in which this is not very different from national forms of
political identity. Against those who stress the more culturalist and communitarian aspects of national political identity, Habermas remarks that,
historically, national consciousness emerged as a form of “solidarity
amongst strangers,” of a fairly abstract nature with strong legal mediations (2006, pp. 76–7). From such a perspective, the real issue about the
feasibility of a European political identity is not whether it exists already,
but what are the conditions for it to exist.
There are, however, as Habermas admits, important ways in which
the nature of a European political identity may depart from its
national counterparts. Such an identity may need to be more overtly
“constructed” and more “cosmopolitan” in nature. The former aspect is
largely due to changed historical and political conditions. Whereas
national political identity has often emerged in situations of revolutionary
struggle and through processes of democratization that conferred on it an
important element of pathos, this is not so in the case of the construction
of European political identity, which needs to emerge more mundanely
from the everyday dealings of the European citizens, in conditions that
are already governed by democratic principles and practices.
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Dario Castiglione
The second departure of European political identity from its national
counterpart follows, according to Habermas, from a series of developments that can already be observed in the nation-states, particularly
since the second half of the twentieth century. This is its more universalistic character, due mainly to the “internal dynamic” of the democratic
process, which contributes to shaping the references for public discourse in terms of issues of justice, rather than simply of national
interests (Habermas 2006a, p. 77). Habermas also detects a “peculiar
switch in emotional fixation from the state to the constitution” (p. 78),
which corresponds to the way in which civic solidarity grows not
so much out of identification with a national community, but out
of membership in a democratic polity – in other words, a shift from
processes of identification that see the state and the community in
relation to the outside, to processes that emphasize the preservation of
a particular liberal and democratic order within the community. In sum,
Habermas believes that European political identity is feasible insofar as
it is an extension of national forms of consciousness.
The second stage in Habermas’s argument is concerned with the more
substantive values that make Europe distinctive in the present historical
and geopolitical conditions. This is an important point, since it engages
directly with the question of how the more cosmopolitan kind of
political identity that Habermas believes Europe is developing relates
to its historical roots, and how these are identified. The nearest that
Habermas has come to defining such roots is in his “manifesto” on
“what binds Europeans together,” which he co-signed with Jacques
Derrida at the height of the European debate on the war in Iraq
(Habermas 2006a, ch. 3).1 Here (pp. 46–8) Habermas highlights a
number of European achievements and values as part of Europe’s
distinctive historical legacy: a secular politics; politics and the state as
correctives to market outcomes; a diffuse awareness of the paradoxes of
progress, instilling ideological competition among political parties;
social solidarity emerging from a history of class struggle; rejection of
capital punishment; domestication of state power through international
1
The context is important, since at the time Habermas maintained that the diffuse
European popular opposition to the invasion of Iraq was perhaps the first real
manifestation of a European public opinion, and of the possibility of the formation
of a pan-European public sphere. Moreover, in spite of the divisions among the
European governments, the expression of the European voice in the form of
popular protest seemed to be a moment of both self-assertion and self-confidence.
Political identity in a community of strangers
43
organizations; and a capacity for self-reflexivity in the face of global
decline.
The third and final stage in Habermas’s argumentation for the feasibility of a European political identity is of a more immediate political
nature and seems to be based on the conviction that the political core of
European integration remains firmly in the Franco-German axis. As he
responds to a question about the role that different countries (particularly the Eastern European ones) may play in the EU, “the changing
tempo of European unification has always been determined by the
agreement between France and Germany to keep the process moving
forward … as the Eurozone demonstrates, there is already a Europe of
different speeds” (Habermas 2006a, p. 52). This is both an observation
on the internal political dynamics of the European Union and a fairly
realistic assessment of where the power engine of the Union still lies.
The place of conflict and consensus in European
political identity
There is much that is attractive in the Habermasian position on
European political identity. As we have seen, he rightly outlines the
limits of those positions that underestimate the role that a shared sense
of belonging may need to play at this stage of the integration process.
Although not original, his argument for the necessity of a certain
political identity in a community whose functions are increasingly
political is compelling.2 Such political identity cannot simply reflect
unmediated and unreflective processes of identification. This is not so
in the context of the nation-state, and, as Habermas suggests, it is even
less likely to be so in a supranational context, where political identity
will have to be more artificially constructed and mediated by legal and
political experiences and institutions. But Habermas recognizes that
political allegiance needs some kind of socio-psychological basis and
cannot be just an abstract kind of attachment. In this respect, his
position is much closer to the one defended by those who believe in
Europe as a superstate, with the difference that Habermas is convinced
that the kind of constitutional patriotism he advocates for Europe is a
2
Habermas’s argument here is part of a more general turn toward a normative
discussion of the extent and rationale of European integration; for a list of works
arguing along similar lines, see Bellamy and Castiglione 2003, fn. 2.
44
Dario Castiglione
particularist reading of more universal principles and that, as we have
seen, the “identification with the state mutates into an orientation to
the constitution” (2006, p. 78). This, for Habermas, is the post-national
core of modern political identity.
But there are limits and tensions in the way in which Habermas
tries to reconcile particularism and universalism in his construction of
European constitutional patriotism. There are two main objections
against it:3 First, there is the issue of the role and identification of the
substantive values on which Europeans converge; and second, there is
the question of the way in which the construction of political identity
is related to the nature and conditions of the European polity. I shall
discuss these two issues in this section and readdress the more general
question of what lies at the core of a post-national conception of
political identity in the concluding section of this chapter.
Political identity and European values
The position holding that European constitutional patriotism is founded
on universal values is not an easy one to maintain with coherence. It
requires a difficult balance between a justification of cosmopolitan values
(universal in nature) and a more communitarian explanation (linked to
particular features of the community) of how they have emerged,
how they have become our own, and how they ultimately contribute to
distinguishing us from others. There is no doubt that moral justification
of attachments to particular communities, or of the ethics of citizenship in
general, may require precisely such a reconciliation between these two
tendencies (Appiah 2005; Bellamy and Castiglione 1998; Taylor 1989).
But the Habermasian position seems still uneasily poised between a
defense of universal values that is too “thin” to mobilize people’s allegiance and loyalty, and a reconstruction of European values that may
become too “thick” in the way in which Europeans use it as a form of
identification.4
Habermas’s position can sometimes be interpreted as purely cosmopolitan, so that adherence to liberal democratic principles on its own is
sufficient to generate a patriotic allegiance to any just society. In other
3
4
For criticisms of the Habermasian position along similar lines, see Balibar 2004,
ch. 4; and particularly Laborde 2002.
The following paragraph is indebted to Bellamy and Castiglione 2004.
Political identity in a community of strangers
45
instances, however, his attempt to present his argument as a distinctively “European” account risks transforming it into a form of supranationalism. In his reconstruction of the historical roots of European
values, Habermas greatly exaggerates both the degree of system and
value convergence within the EU, and the extent to which political and
national values can be separated.
In fact, Europe is far more diverse, and the sense of Europeanness
among its peoples far shallower than Habermas allows. He also underestimates both the elements of negative identification discussed in the
chapter’s second part, and the eclectic (and sometimes contradictory)
way in which collective identities emerge. As a consequence, his vision
of European values and value convergence is both overoptimistic and
overconfident, despite his own reference to the reflexive and self-critical
way in which Europeans deal with their unmastered past. Moreover,
his political insistence on the need for a “core” Europe to force the
pace of political unification and identity construction underestimates
the tendencies toward administrative centralization implicit in the
European project as it has developed so far, while underplaying the
dangers of the exercise of hegemonic power by a small number of elites
or the possibility of domination of certain territorial coalitions.
Habermas seems strangely uninterested in the multiplicity of cleavages
that traverse the European Union. His construction of constitutional
patriotism fails to confront the more contingent aspects from which
political identity emerges. In this respect, his is an overly idealized picture
of Europe’s geopolitical role, one that fails to perceive the importance
that both the post-Maastricht developments and Enlargement have
played in forming the still confused self-understanding of the European
polity (see Case and Kaelble in this volume).
Habermas also seems oblivious to the potential difficulties presented
by the project of constructing a value-based identity that is not exclusionary. To the extent that the European values are presented as “our”
values, there is always a tendency to construct them in opposition to those
of others and therefore to exclude the others. In the reality of an increasingly multicultural and diverse Europe – where mobility and immigration play a much larger role than in the near past – such an insistence on
values, even on universal values, risks being socially and culturally divisive rather than unifying. Moreover, in some cases, it is difficult to see
what makes certain values specifically our own, if not a selective reconstruction of the historical evidence.
46
Dario Castiglione
Take, for instance, Habermas’s explicit reference to the “social privatization of faith” as something that divides Europe from the United
States: “a president who begins his official functions every day with a
public prayer and connects his momentous political decisions with a
divine mission is difficult to imagine” (2006, p. 46). Although the public
show of religious zeal may be alien to most political cultures in Europe,
religion’s public role is probably as much a matter of contention in
the United States as across Europe, and crucially, within each of the
European countries. Arguably, the role of religion within European
public cultures has recently become, if anything, more prominent, not
least as a result of Enlargement (cf. Byrnes and Katzenstein 2006).
The tendency in Habermas’s analysis of value convergence to show a
common European political culture tends to constrain the diversity of
Europe. Unwittingly, his proposal promotes the very talk of an ethnic
Europe he seeks to avoid, offering the idea of Europe as a superstate, or
Fortress Europe, a spurious legitimacy in order to retain an allegiance to
putatively common constitutional values. In other words, Habermas
fails to see both the inevitable dangers (i.e. the exclusionary side) of any
construction of political identity, and the deeply ingrained divisions of
European political culture, which cannot easily be reconciled by a broad
Enlightenment view of European identity.
The constructive role of democratic conflict
The failure, in my view, of Habermas’s attempt to construct European
political identity mainly on abstract values is that his conception of
democratic politics is over-reliant on the idea of consensus, downplaying the important role of political conflict. Although he views value
convergence and the rights that follow from it as the result of communicative processes within the public sphere, the difficulty with his theory
is that beyond the most abstract level, and sometimes even there, there is
considerable disagreement about how values translate into particular
policies and institutional arrangements, and on the foundations and
character of rights and their application to particular issues. Debates
and conflicts over values and rights not only provide the substance of
many political debates, they also produce different accounts of the
nature of the political (Bellamy and Castiglione 2008). The same goes
for political identity and its effect on the practice of citizenship. Neither
is simply constructed on a set of political values and political rights.
Political identity in a community of strangers
47
Rather, political identity is partly expressed in how we, as citizens, go
about claiming rights or participating in politics at different institutional levels.
A different way to see the formation of political identity in Europe, one
more attuned to the issue of democratic disagreement and conflict rather
than consensus, is to emphasize the structural as opposed to the value and
legal mechanisms as the key factor of European constitutionalism – most
particularly, the balance and separation of powers produced by the
EU’s unique mix of intergovernmental, supranational, and transnational
decision-making mechanisms. Hence, European political identity needs
to be adapted to the plurality of political and legal systems that have both
legitimated and fostered European integration. The involvement of different peoples and nations is also an important factor in ensuring a flexibility of approach that takes into account the very different economic and
social circumstances of the member states – a factor that has become all
the more important with Enlargement. From this perspective, the appeal
to constitutional patriotism risks being a purely rhetorical exercise and
may occasionally stifle the ongoing constitutional dialogue that has so far
led to an increasing sense of mutual respect and recognition, combining
both diversity and an ever closer Union of peoples rather than a nationalistic creation of a European people.
Although multilevel governance undermines the sense of unity and
purpose that characterizes traditional forms of democratic power, it
does not necessarily exclude the introduction of other forms of more
diffuse democratic participation and deliberation, thereby giving the
citizens input on what matters in their lives. In the practice of common
deliberation on common problems, European citizens can develop a
sense of sharing a common identity and of solidarity. In terms of
democratic participation, Europe offers gains as well as apparent losses.
European politics is undeniably often characterized by log-rolling and
horse-trading between national governments in defense of sectoral
interests of various degrees of legitimacy. However, it also offers fora
for a more deliberative style of politics – one that is partly detached from
the constraints imposed by modern-day party politics and sometimes
better able to combine individual and democratic perspectives with
those advanced by expert bodies. But the reverse also holds true: intergovernmentalism has also allowed particular interests to be successfully defended against the force of simple majoritarianism within a
given national community. It is arguably the very diversity and mutually
48
Dario Castiglione
balancing character of the various policy-making polities and regimes
comprising the European Union that places it in a better position to
represent the variety of rights, interests, and identities that characterize
citizenship in modern societies. In this respect, European political identity needs to reflect the institutional plurality that characterizes political
Europe.
Conclusion: the ties that bind a community of strangers
The more conflictual and divided image of political identity that I have
suggested here takes us back to the question from which this chapter
started. Has the relationship between political identification and political allegiance changed as a result of the growing internationalization
of politics, of which the European integration process is part? Part of the
answer, as Habermas correctly identifies, is already inscribed in the
experience of the nation-state.
The ties that bind a political community can be seen as a form of
“social cement” but also as a form of “political allegiance,” a distinction
that runs along similar lines to Ulrich Preuss’s “Transaktions-Wir” (wetransactions) and “Solidaritäts-Wir” (we-solidarity) (2005). Although
these elements are often confused because the historical experience of
the nation-state has linked them in an inextricable knot, they are separate
and are somewhat captured by the paradox expressed by the idea of
a “community of strangers.” Such an idea is somewhat counterintuitive, if we adhere to Tönnies’s famous distinction between “community” (Gemeinschaft) and “society” (Gesellschaft): “all kinds of social
co-existence that are familiar, comfortable and exclusive are to be
understood as belonging to Gemeinschaft … In Gemeinschaft we are
united from the moment of our birth with our own folk for better or
for worse. We go into Gesellschaft as if into a foreign land” (Tönnies
2001, p. 18).
When we speak of a “political community,” we do not mean the
cozy and intimate relationships that exist in small groups. Our life in a
political community is mostly conducted as a series of relationships in
a Gesellschaft, in the sense meant by Tönnies. But we do not treat
our political community as a “foreign land,” nor do we view the other
members as “strangers.” Modern political and sociological discourse
has therefore been careful to suggest that, although our life in large
modern societies is a life among strangers – characterized by anonymous
Political identity in a community of strangers
49
relationships in the public sphere, mediated by the market, the law,
institutions of public and private administration, and various forms of
associations – our destiny as members of a political community remains
linked to that of others, with whom we live in an inclusive relationship
of relative familiarity and identity and on whose solidarity we rely. The
question then becomes, in what sense can the European Union be a
society of strangers (even more so than a nation-state would be) and at
the same time a “political community”? And how is this possible without
entering into direct conflict with nation-states’ claim to a very similar
status and loyalty from its citizens?
One way of answering this question is perhaps to take a step back and
look at the connexion between the modern conception of political
allegiance and the conception of the modern state. In discussing the
nature of the “modern” form of political community, Weber (1968)
emphasizes three elements characterizing the organization of a collectivity of people: (1) a territorial space; (2) the availability (and virtual
monopoly) of physical force; and (3) the wide scope of the community’s
social action (beyond that of the satisfaction of common economic
needs, or of other specialized functions). The crucial point for our
discussion is the second one. Force is available for external or, more
routinely, for internal use. Such use of force is crucial in defining the
relationship between the community and the individual, since it defines
the extent of the obligations of the member toward the community
itself. With regard to the internal use, physical force is functional to
backing up the member’s obligations, while excluding the private use of
force except in narrowly defined circumstances. With regard to external
use, the community requires that the individual participate in the
defense of its interests. Weber talks of this “common political struggle
of life and death” as the political community’s “particular pathos,”
requiring “enduring emotional foundations.” According to Weber,
such emotional foundations come from the ties of memory, even more
than from those of cultural, linguistic, and ethnic identities (1968).
If Weber is right about the modern form of political community, it is
easy to conclude that the European Union is not a political community,
nor is it likely to become one soon. However, as we have already seen,
our conception of the political community has changed somewhat.
Indeed, Weber himself notes that the type of “discipline” required of
members of a political community finds its roots in more military kinds
of organization, in which citizens are directly involved in the defense of
50
Dario Castiglione
the community. This raises the interesting point of whether, in our
modern political societies where nation-states have largely abandoned the practice of national conscription for professional armies,
the ordinary citizen is indeed required to commit what Weber calls the
“ultimate” sacrifice in defense of the community. Of course, one may
envisage exceptional circumstances in which the entire population may
need mobilizing; but this could indeed be true of natural cataclysms or
other situations where people may need no particular motivation to
participate in rescue operations at the risk of their own lives. There may
still be some important sense in which the political community needs the
allegiance of its members, and we may not like the way in which the
arrangements for war and security have been privatized; but the close
connexion between the idea of a political community and the expectation that its members may “ultimately face death in the group interest”
is not as obvious nowadays as it was in Weber’s time. From this point of
view, the recognized inability of the European Union to inspire such
extreme forms of sacrifice does not exclude it from performing other
functions of a political community, as long as it can mobilize people’s
solidarity in other respects.
But there is more. As Hegel, for one, perceptively noted, it is mistaken
to think of patriotism mainly as a “readiness for exceptional sacrifices
and actions” (1952, p. 164). Hegel describes patriotism as a more
ordinary and banal sentiment about how our own life depends on the
operations of the political community. It is a form of trust, or, as he put
it, “the consciousness that my interest, both substantive and particular,
is contained and preserved in another’s (i.e. in the state) interest and
end.” It is from the daily exertion (and self-conscious realization) of this
form of trust that “arises the readiness for extraordinary exertions.”
The point here is not about the nature of patriotism but about the way in
which the individual may relate to the community – for if a sense of
obligation can be cultivated through more ordinary acts and exertions,
we may have no need to find deep “emotional” roots, but merely a
mixture of rational self-interest, habituation, and cultivation of a sense
of the collective interest.
This point is closely linked with another made by Hegel in his comment to the same passage on patriotism, in which he remarks that
“commonplace thinking often has the impression that force holds
the state together, but in fact its only bond is the fundamental sense of
order which everybody possesses” (1952, p. 282). If this interpretation
Political identity in a community of strangers
51
is convincing, the European Union must cultivate its political identity
neither in the heroic form of the “ultimate sacrifice,” nor in highprincipled forms of constitutional patriotism, but in the more banal
sense of citizens’ growing perception that the Union contributes to a
fundamental (though multilayered) institutional and legal order
within which they can exercise their liberty.
Finally, the internalization of politics, and the form of “open statehood” that increasingly characterizes the relationship among states
(particularly within the European Union), is changing the state of affairs
that Weber seems to presuppose in his analysis of the role of force as a
constitutive element of the modern state. Nowadays, it is indeed less
clear whether the emotional and imaginary rootedness of national
patriotism is what is required to sustain political communities in the
twenty-first century. It is possible to imagine a more variegated pattern,
something that is not unknown in history. In his dialogue On the Laws,
for instance, Cicero (1999) distinguishes one’s affection toward one’s
“fatherland” (based on memories and the idea of custom and tradition)
from one’s feelings toward the “commonwealth” (based more on the
importance of laws and republican institutions): ultimately, the latter
should prevail over the former.
Cicero’s was a more “republican” interpretation (in the classical,
historical sense) of the demands of the political community, and it
may be as inadequate today, if applied to the EU, as the invention (or
rediscovery) of common European memories. But it also suggests that
open statehood may mean more fragmented identities and allegiances
and the possibility that they will enter into conflict with each other.
However, there is no reason to believe that such conflict should be
unmanageable. Of course, there will always be a danger that conflicts
and disagreement may degenerate into a deadlock or even into violence. But the solution may lie more in imagining how an interlocking
political space may need interlocking systems of trust, solidarity, and
allegiances – none of which may need to be absolute – than in the
assumption that we can reproduce the absolute demands of national
citizenship at a European level.
3
Experimental identities
(after Maastricht)
DOUGLAS R. HOLMES
The imperatives of European integration are inciting identity experiments, often involving dissonant and unstable forms of consciousness,
that defy or exceed familiar categories of analysis. Rather than a mere
shift in identity from, say, being German, Irish or Latvian to being
European, a fundamental change in the underlying dynamics of identity
formation is underway. Identities are coalescing on the level of intimate
encounters, expressed in obscure and arcane cultural vernaculars, by
which experience gains highly pluralist articulations posing unusual
analytical challenges. Perhaps the most important challenge is to candidly acknowledge that “identity” has become, to a greater or lesser
degree, an ambiguous and, at times, vexatious issue not just for us as
observers, but also for our subjects (Boyer 2005). The people of Europe
are at the outset of the twenty-first century negotiating among liberal
and illiberal registers of consciousness, and these shifting configurations
typically do not succumb to a single, stable, and unambiguous expression (see introduction to this volume).
I suggest in this chapter that what we awkwardly and imprecisely
term “identity” has acquired a twofold nature. On the one hand, it is
not merely or solely contingent on convention, tradition, and the past,
but has assumed a future-oriented purview and experimental dynamic.
On the other, citizens of the EU as they pursue these experiments are
continually parsing the nature of cultural affinity and difference as they
participate in the creation of a vast, multiracial and multicultural
Europe. Neither of these characteristics is entirely new, but after the
ratification of the Maastricht Treaty the nature and the temporal trajectory of identity projects have shifted decisively. After the completion
of the great identity project of the second half of the twentieth century –
the integration of Germany within Europe – and under the sway of a
comprehensive and far-reaching liberalism, a new and very different project of identity has been delineated (Katzenstein 1997). After Maastricht,
the EU imparts to its citizens the distinctive challenge and the ambiguous
52
Experimental identities (after Maastricht)
53
burden to negotiate continually the cognitive meanings and political exigencies of a pluralist Europe.
I start with a paradigmatic moment – an address delivered by JeanMarie Le Pen to an audience in Budapest – that marks a decisive shift in
the scale and the reach of identity based politics. The event is significant
because of the curious manner in which his message, designed to speak
to a very particular community of French nationalists, resonated with
a Hungarian public. I then turn to two related though very different
intellectual fields – Catholic social doctrine and European Monetary
Union – and examine how they are establishing the communicative
space within which emerging identity projects are articulated and contextualized. This discussion is followed by the examination of a series of
identity experiments drawn from a selection of ethnographic studies of
“communities of practice” among Alpine farmers; “ethical citizenship”
among urban Catholics; the predicaments of identity experienced by
Turkish lobbyists living and working in Brussels; and the stylistic innovations of youth cultures in Croatia and inner London as they inspire
experimentation with incendiary forms of political consciousness. The
final case focusses on a speech by Tony Blair – delivered under duress –
in which he sought to formulate a political and ethical framework that
could speak to the racial and cultural exigencies increasingly defining
Britain and Europe. Each of these experiments is thus aligned with a
very particular problematic of Europe that emerged after Maastricht,
addressing the shifting nature of society as a moral framework, analytical construct, and empirical fact. I begin, however, with a prelude to
the current era of European activism spawned by a fateful American
intercession at the close of World War I.
1919
Woodrow Wilson’s ill-fated interventions in the aftermath of World
War I and in the wake of the collapse of the Romanoff, Turkish, and
Hapsburg empires sanctioned a precarious era of cultural innovation
(see Case in this volume). By inscribing in the Versailles Treaty the right
of “self-determination” and conferring this right on loosely constituted
collectivities – nations, peoples, and minorities – radical experiments
with cultural identities were set in motion. The Treaty legitimized
various collective ideals – enshrined in fraught historical claims of loss
54
Douglas R. Holmes
and injury – inspiring communal aspirations and political activisms that
were played out across new and contested borderlands (Cowan 2003a,
2003b, 2006a, 2007a, 2007b).
The Wilsonian formula – particularly V–VI and IX–XIV of his
fourteen points – was crafted from an admixture of illiberal ideas
drawn from the Romantic tradition, together with liberal notions of
self-determination to establish legally enforceable rights and protections.
The result was a tragic reification of “culture” and “history” by which
peoples and nations could be constituted or reconstituted in relationship
to what were believed to be fundamental affinities and irreconcilable
differences (Berlin 1976, 1979, 1990, 1997; Herzfeld 1987; Holmes
2000; Skowronek 2006). Theorists of fascism and National Socialism
refined these principles of collective belonging during the interwar
years, aligning their respective projects with an ardent orientation to
the future and thereby creating an illiberal modernism (Mazower
1998; Sternhell 1996).
Typically, the disturbing consequences of the Versailles Treaty are
ascribed to tragic errors, miscalculations, parochial disputes, and political intoxication with the idea of reparations. Recent Wilsonian scholarship by Stephen Skowronek, however, suggests deeper resonances.
The American president, raised in the South, brought to Paris his own
fraught liberal and illiberal dispositions forged in the aftermath of the
Civil War and Reconstruction. These compelled him, on the one hand,
to overrule a majority vote that would have “inserted into the preamble
of the League of Nations charter the principle of racial equality” while,
on the other, allowing him to argue for democratic self-determination of
and for nations and peoples (Skowronek 2006, p. 389). Skowronek’s
analysis not only anticipates the dissonant pluralisms that are emerging
in Europe at the opening of the twenty-first century; it also and, perhaps
more importantly, suggests discordant cultural configurations inherent
within and entirely inseparable from liberal projects of globalization.1
As we know too well, the violent enthusiasms spawned by the
Versailles agreements contributed to the most blighted episodes in the
history of twentieth-century Europe. This earlier era of experimentation
with collective aspirations is, however, linked inextricably to the current
1
The study of these dissonant pluralisms and discordant cultural configurations
that imbue liberal projects of globalization can provide a critical area for scholarly
collaborations between political scientists and anthropologists.
Experimental identities (after Maastricht)
55
situation insofar as the project of European integration has sought explicitly and implicitly to extinguish or otherwise circumvent the legacy of
1919. Much as the Treaty of Versailles impelled an era of experimentation, the European Treaties are framing “new” identity projects – projects
that infuse Europe with diverse and at times contradictory political
significance (Judt 2005; Lipgens 1984).
As a young man, Jean Monnet served as Chief of Staff to the General
Secretary of the League of Nations, a position that afforded him an
unusually intimate purview on this ill-fated project of supranationalism
(Monnet 1978). After World War II, he and the other architects of
the European Union designed an institutional practice in which liberal
strategies of technocratic reform were designed to circumvent the
tragic legacies of ethnic and national identity. The overriding historical agenda sought, as we know, to circumvent the traditional antagonisms between and among the nation-states of Europe – notably
those between France and Germany – and substituted, ideally, a pragmatic institutional practice in the service of a particular expression of
liberal governmentality (Ferguson 1990; Haas 1964, 1968).
The history of the EU has of course been punctuated by numerous
episodes in which these old antagonisms reasserted themselves; however,
by the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty in the early 1990s, the main
goal of this agenda had been accomplished. Germany was fully integrated
in Europe, and this was achieved by means of an emphatic constitutionalism inscribed in diplomatic treaties and informed by liberal principles of
political reform and economic restructuring (Moravcsik 1998, 2007;
Weiler 1999). The grasp of a blighted history was renounced as pragmatic technocratic reforms and progressive institutional narratives were
embraced.2
European integralism
In the spring of 2007, Jean-Marie Le Pen placed fourth in the first round
of the French presidential election. Despite this dismal showing, Le Pen
had in a profound way won the election. He had succeeded in reshaping
the political debate in France around a key set of issues that he first
2
Much, if not all, of the analysis that follows in this chapter can and should be
read in productive counterpoint with Neil Fligstein’s contribution in this volume as
well as that of Adrian Favell.
56
Douglas R. Holmes
articulated in the 1970s, issues preeminently concerned with identity.
His opponents had skillfully appropriated these ideas to inform their
discourse and to underwrite their own electoral success (Berezin 2006a,
2007; Bowen 2007).
More significantly, his ardently French cultural agenda had by the
first decade of the new century spawned political movements across
every member state of the EU, led by figures who explicitly or implicitly
modeled themselves on Le Pen’s insurgency. Le Pen, more than any other
figure, “re-functioned” the nature of European identity, imparting to it
an experimental ethos and an illiberal dynamic. I have cast Le Pen as
a “European integralist” – rather than merely a French nationalist – to
emphasize what I believe are his remarkable political innovations.3 Le
Pen is the most conspicuous, but by no means the only agent actively
recasting identity as a subject of political practice (see Castiglione in this
volume). That said, he stands out as the individual who first diagnosed
how fundamental aspects of integration were inseparable from questions
of identity (Le Pen 1984, 1989).
Le Pen conjured a wide-ranging discourse on Europe that was ardently
opposed to the basic assumption of integration and, significantly, he
formulated this agenda while serving as an elected member of the
European Parliament. From his vantage point within a major European
institution, he discovered that his message, designed to address a tiny
conservative, if not reactionary, French public could be re-crafted, giving
it wide currency that could inspire activism beyond the borders of France.
Le Pen distilled a conceptual architecture for integralism around postulates that speak to what he contends are the essence of human nature and
the character of cultural affinity and difference. By so doing, he provided
analytical purchase on the shifting nature of collective life, transformations of the public sphere, and realignments of human intimacy (Betz
2002; Bowen 2007; Hannerz 2006; Gaillard-Starzmann 2006; Banks
and Gingrich 2006; MacDonald 2006).
In my writing on integralism, I increasingly use “Le Pen” figuratively
to stand for a series of innovations that Le Pen, the person, initially
worked out, but which now operate beyond his control in all twentyseven member states of the EU in the hands of other agile and typically
3
For a comprehensive ethnographic overview of European integralism, see
Holmes (2000). For the earliest example of anthropological work on European
integration and its relationship to issues of identity, see Wilson and Smith (1993).
Experimental identities (after Maastricht)
57
younger political actors. The key point here is that “identity” emerges
in the twenty-first century, not as an idiosyncratic psychological reflex
or residual collective sensibility, but as a phenomenon that can (or must)
be framed in reference to contemporary institutional realities after
Maastricht.
By its nature, integralism is an unstable phenomenon that is continually being reinvented, defying easy definitions by blending what appear
to be incompatible elements drawn from the political traditions of
the Left and the Right. That said, Le Pen endowed this field of ideas
and practices with a distinctive political configuration and dynamic
trajectory; thus, I have chosen to personify my conceptualization of
integralism in relation to this mercurial figure, rather than defining it
systematically. Furthermore, my aim here is to demonstrate how by
virtue of “ideological drift,” just about every mainstream political
grouping in Europe has assimilated elements of the “inner truths” that
animate this kind of politics (Skowronek 2006, p. 387). Thus, for the
purposes of this chapter, I am emphasizing the range and spread of these
political innovations as a macro-level phenomenon and, hence, highlighting what Susan Gal (2007) refers to as the “interdiscursivity” of
these ideas – rather than typologizing them within discrete and neatly
circumscribed political groups or grouplets.4
Though the account that follows is notional, it was provoked by an
actual event: the appearance of Le Pen at a public rally in Budapest
earlier in this decade, a rally at which he was enthusiastically greeted
and where the form and content of his message had deep resonances.5
His appearance posed for me a key question: Why would Le Pen’s
message, formulated to appeal to an ardently French audience, have
appeal in Central Europe, to a Hungarian audience organized by the
4
5
Gal comments on this communicative phenomenon as follows:
Let’s elaborate the notion of “interdiscursvity” – a concept meant to capture
“semiosis across encounters” – and one on which there is already important work
in linguistic anthropology. This way, we develop the tools of linguistic
anthropology so that it can provide a better grasp of the communicative and
semiotic aspects of contemporary interconnection … I argue that arenas of action –
culturally created and demarcated – are linked to each other through various
interdiscursive devices. These constitute what is usually called circulation, and
allow us to see how practices seem to spread and with what effect. (2007, pp. 1–2;
emphasis and italics in the original)
I am indebted to Endre Fischer, who attended the rally with a group of friends and
provided a provocative account.
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Hungarian Justice and Life Party (MIÉP)? Or put slightly differently,
how is a political message gaining articulation that can speak directly
to the emerging predicaments of local audiences in a way that
acknowledges the old divisions of East and West and yet can also
transcend them?
Audience
In my earliest observation of Le Pen almost two decades ago, I recognized that his political practice embraced far more than fidelity to the
idea of “nation”; rather, it drew authority from a wide range of collective sensibilities. Specifically, he understood that a dynamic pluralism
could be cast in opposition to the EU’s supranational exigencies, revealing the potential of integralism to join, fuse, merge, and synthesize what
might appear to be incompatible principles of association. Moreover,
simple distinctions between Left and Right no longer served as a reliable
guide within the communicative space defined by Le Pen, in which
“socialism” can be reconstituted in relation to illiberal cultural values.
I begin this discussion with an examination of the audience for this
politics and the perils of reductive and oversimplified representation of
the identities and sensibilities of its members (Holmes 1993, 2006).6
If early in the twenty-first century one were to walk through the crowd
at a public rally for Le Pen in France, or for one of the many political
figures who model themselves on Le Pen elsewhere in Europe, one would
see the embodiment of integralism, particularly its pluralist character.
As one surveyed the audience – whether on the outskirts of Budapest,
Antwerp, Lisbon, Prague, or Rome – one could identify by dress, demeanor, dialect, or other overt characteristics the distinct groups and identities that constitute this notional audience. The remnants of the great
constituencies that animated the era of the modern nation-state seem to
be recruited to this politics of disaffection and loss. Though not wrong
per se, this is an oversimplified and incomplete understanding of the
groups that are drawn to this identity inspired politics.
One would likely find: farmers, conservative Catholics, pensioners
and military veterans, schoolteachers and other low and mid-level
government employees, factory workers, owners of small shops and
businesses, university students and members of other often religiously
6
An earlier version of this account appears in Holmes (2006).
Experimental identities (after Maastricht)
59
sponsored youth organizations, a coterie of skinheads and, at the
margins, the police, who participate alternately as a security contingent and as attentive listeners. The speaker typically acknowledges
these groupings and addresses them on their terms: members of the
audience need not divest themselves of their idiosyncratic identities; on
the contrary, the only way their participation makes sense is from the
standpoint of their own particular sensibilities and consciousness.
Neither are they addressed as abstract subjects of a nation-state or as
citizens of a European Union; and they certainly are not addressed as
“consumers” to be sold a political message.
These groupings are equally hostile to the rule of the market and
to the logic of technocracy. For them, political meaning can only be
socially mediated through idioms of family, town and country, ethnic
and linguistic assemblages, religious communities, occupational statuses, social classes, and so on. Their faith and loyalty reside in experience reconciled through these collective entities, and thus through forms
of solidarity that are simultaneously prosaic and radical. Again, the
keen irony, which Le Pen so carefully configured, is that only from
the perspective of these collective groupings is the “true” meaning of the
new Europe revealed: only from these vantage points can the supranational project be critically appraised and its meaning apprehended.
Members of these groups appear to share a sense of encroachment that
threatens the integrity of their diverse communities, providing the common
thread that weaves their distinctive agendas together. Le Pen observed that
one can experience intense estrangement and alienation, not as a result of
exile per se, but in one’s homeland, in one’s rural parish, urban neighborhood and just about everywhere in between. He recognized that integration
is paradoxically creating new domains of alienation in which discordant
identities can establish the terms of struggle. He mobilized complex emotional sensibilities to animate his insurgency, in which sublime longings and
desires are crosscut by acute fears and anxieties. These are the manifold
human predicaments gaining political articulation as integralism, an integralism that resonates across a supranational Europe. Le Pen substitutes the
authority of “experience,” shared experience, as the basis of legitimacy,
credibility, and truth. He recognizes that a particular kind of message – an
integralist message – can be communicated in ways that are not susceptible
to the forms of rational scrutiny and intellectual mediation that characterized the era of the nation-state, but can enter the lifeworlds of a new
European public and be accepted, as it were, on “faith” (Habermas 1987).
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There is, however, something fundamentally misleading about this
political tableau. There are other incongruities operating within this
audience that are deep and profound, disrupting demarcations between,
for example, emerging and eclipsed groups in contemporary Europe.
The same people – and their children, friends, and relatives – who drift
in and out of these rallies are often the most agile and adroit agents
exploiting new opportunities unfolding across the EU. These figures
avail themselves of the new freedom to traverse Europe (typically
from East to West), establishing perhaps the most important and little
understood axis of contemporary identity formation. They are paradigmatically seen or identified, at least at the moment, as “Polish workerscum-entrepreneurs” who move into Western European cities and quickly
establish themselves socially and economically. These sojourners appear to
have a subtle understanding of the nature of risk and opportunities created
by integration and are equipped to pursue and exploit them with great
speed and shrewdness. One thing is clear: a simple calculus of advantaged
and disadvantaged does not capture the complexities and contradictions of
their experiences and their political aspirations. These people are searching
for a politics that speaks to their experience and captures their inchoate
struggles – a politics that can alternately appear liberal and illiberal.
An experimental ethos becomes plausible only in the wake of a prior
institutional transformation in the nature and scope of communicative
action. I have drawn on the work of David Westbrook (2004) to address
how the project of integration yields a discursive field of supranationalism
as an alternative to the communicative space afforded historically by the
nation-state. Two intellectual traditions give form and structure to this
emerging communicative field: social Catholicism and French technocratic
modernism. Both traditions guided the specific design of a supranational
polity and the daily management of its institutions. The interleaving of these
two traditions creates a discursive field in which a multicultural and multiracial Europe gains expression, if not coherence.
Monetary problematic
In my current research in Frankfurt, I am examining the communicative
imperatives operating within the European Central Bank (ECB), the
main institutional project after Maastricht. On the face of it, the assertion that a central bank might be an agent of identity formation seems
curious. The role of the Deutsche Bundesbank, upon which the ECB is
Experimental identities (after Maastricht)
61
modeled, is instructive. The Bundesbank’s overt commitment to
price stability is not merely an expression of prudential monetary policy
but is informed by the searing historical experience – the interwar
period – when episodes of inflation proved destructive to the social
and the political order, inflaming various extreme identity projects
in Germany – most notably, but by no means exclusively, National
Socialism. The ECB’s commitment to consistent, balanced growth without inflation, inherited from the German Federal Bank, is thus a means
not only for mediating the value of the euro, but also for framing
the contingencies of identity formation (McNamara 1998). Officials
of the ECB must continually address two implicit political challenges:
Can the European project be held together through the operation of a
common currency? Can the euro create the basis of a shared economic fate and hence promote a European identity (Berezin 2006b; Shore
2000)?
Jean-Claude Trichet, President of the ECB, is charged with implementing what is arguably the most radical agenda of integration, the
project of monetary union (EMU). He noted recently, “All in all, the art
of central banking involves finding a fine balance between action and
words” (Trichet 2005, p. 12). When President Trichet speaks, he is not
merely expressing an interpretative account or commentary on financial
matters; he is creating the economy itself as a communicative field and as
an empirical fact. An integrated, European economy is thus being configured and reconfigured discursively in the obscure patois of monetary
theory.
Trichet is a legatee of the French technocratic tradition that since
the early nineteenth century designed and managed the operation of the
modern French society and economy. He and his predecessors – notably
Jean Monnet and Jacques Delors – transferred this institutional practice
from Paris to Brussels, from the French nation-state to the supranational
space of Europe. Trichet must in this new century answer the key intellectual preoccupation that has animated the French administrative movement since the 1830s: Can solidarity be orchestrated through technocratic
interventions? More precisely, can money anchor mechanisms of solidarity consistent with an emerging multiculturalism and the multiracial
architecture of Europe (Rabinow 1999; see Castiglione in this volume)?
David Westbrook argues acutely that under the EU’s technocratic
regime, supranational markets serve as constitutional devices – by
which he means that
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to understand the way we now live rests therefore, on a restatement of politics
as it appears in the context of supranational capital, legitimated through our
faith in the institutions of money and property, as opposed to the modern
nation state, legitimized through the familiar mechanisms of the liberal republic. (2004, p. 12)
Restated, if the conditions of social and so political life are undergoing
profound change, then supranational markets are decisive mechanisms
of such change and transformation. With the arrangement of social
affairs through markets, however, comes an attenuation of political
meaning:
The market’s grammar, the dialectic between property and money, does not
express many things important to being human. Capitalism is therefore
radically impoverished as a system of politics. Insofar as we long for community, we necessarily experience life in capitalism as a sort of exile. (Westbrook
2004, p. 164)
The constitution of a polity in this manner will frustrate continually the
articulation of an overt politics that can unambiguously espouse and
align a single configuration of solidarity.
Again, this predicament of meaning was, in the early 1990s, given a
far-reaching interpretation by a very unlikely figure – Le Pen – from the
vantage point of one of Monnet’s supranational institutions. He recognized that the impoverishment of meaning of which the EU is incessantly accused is itself a template of identity. His integralist rejoinder to
the monetary problematic posed implicitly by Trichet is that under the
thrall of liberal supranationalism, diverse expressions of an illiberal
pluralism can attain political articulation, thus addressing the multicultural and multiracial realities of Europe. He understood that within
the expanding communicative space of supranationalism, identity projects can proliferate, independent, if not defiant, of the EU’s regulatory
influence and control.
Catholicism within
The founders of the EU – notably Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer,
and Alcide de Gaspari – were social Catholics and drew on Catholic
doctrine, particularly as expressed in neo-Thomist philosophy, to impart
an intellectual architecture to the project (Amato 1975; Hellman 1981;
Maritain 1950). For them, identity was a key concern on a number of
Experimental identities (after Maastricht)
63
different philosophical and instrumental levels. They designed a framework in which a commitment to pluralist identities was fundamental, a
commitment that went beyond any particular confessional or secular
stance. After Maastricht, Catholic social doctrine was widely embraced –
encompassed by the principle of subsidiarity – to guide intellectually and
regulate institutionally the cognitive meanings and political exigencies of
a pluralist Europe (MacDonald 1996; Millon-Delsol 1992; Ross 1995;
Zorgbibe 1993). The Catholic problematic can be stated in deceptively
simple terms: Can the philosophical ideas that inform the principle of
subsidiarity underwrite constitutionally a European social order predicated on multiple registers of faith and values?
Based on its ability to sustain pluralism and diversity across an integrated Europe, the Catholic configuration of identity has since the 1990s
had broad political appeal (Katzenstein 2006). Yet, as the following
excerpts, drafted in the 1940s, attest, it is plagued with an arcane and
at times cloying philosophical language that frustrates its articulation as a
wide-ranging political rhetoric addressed to a mass audience.
Different “spiritual families,” in a common French phrase – Catholic,
Protestant, Marxists, humanists, or whoever they may be – should … be
permitted and enabled to follow their own way of life, even when they are in
a minority in a nation or group as a whole … [Ideological pluralism] reduces
conflict since it allows everyone, without discrimination … to build up a set
of associations, which fits his own ideals. (Fogarty 1957, p. 42)
By maintaining diversity of ideological perspectives, the terms of political engagement are established within the Catholic framework. And,
though it seems counterintuitive, the doctrine holds that it is precisely in
the clash of these diverse orientations and their vigorous expression that
solidarity is engendered.
Since, in an imperfect world, some conflicts of ideals and loyalties are inevitable, the essential thing is that they should be fought out in a way which lets
the truth eventually emerge and form the basis for a settlement. But this is
likely to happen only if the parties in conflict hold firm, clear, views which
provide a solid basis for argument, and yet are open and sensitive to the views
of others … everyone must sail “under his own flag” … And organizations
have a right and duty to “sail under their own flag” in the same way as
individuals; for association with others is needed even to reach a full understanding of one’s own ideals, let alone to express them effectively in action.
“Tolerance” is hardly the word for this attitude … There is … a warmth of
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common humanity and common responsibility before God. But “the rigor of
the game” is also part of its essence. (Fogarty 1957, pp. 42–3)
Political discourse, under the terms of Catholic social theory, operates
in such a way that issues are contextualized constantly within a wider
interplay of interests and remedies. It is this concern for the “totality”
that creates a shifting consensus that can embrace and transform a
broad spectrum of beliefs and interests. It is an approach that is intended
to restrain partisanship. The aim is to achieve a “common good” in
which shifting and unequal societal interests are linked through ties of
cooperation and mutual aid to achieve social justice. The powerful
sociological consequence of the political practice of “subsidiarity” is
the promotion of a diversely constituted European social order. It
provides an administrative model for aiding diverse collective groups –
with distinctive liberal and illiberal identities – and drawing them into a
common political process. Promoting these collective groupings with
their distinctive cultural aspirations creates a broad political field, outside the ambit of the nation-state, for political innovation (Byrnes 2001;
Katzenstein and Byrnes 2006).
Catholic political influence is manifest in the current composition of
the European Parliament, where the European Peoples Party, the
European wide Christian Democratic organization, has been the largest
parliamentary group since 1999 and currently controls 277 of the 785
seats. The shrewd orchestration of Catholic political affiliations among
diverse identity projects has also been instrumental in underwriting the
project of EU enlargement in East and Central Europe over the last two
decades. Within the parliament, the transnational and the supranational expressions of Catholic political and intellectual practice thus
meet. Despite its electoral power and institutional authority, the
Christian Democratic movement continues to operate as an elite project
in which its theoretical ideas and its philosophical doctrines circulate
primarily within a highly circumscribed community of adherents.
Communities of practice
Cristina Grasseni (2003, 2007) examined ethnographically the consequences of EU directives on the lives of herders in the alpine valleys
of Lombardy. The generation of EU laws and directives has a very
distinctive and often a very disruptive influence that differs in
Experimental identities (after Maastricht)
65
important ways from the administrative practices of state bureaucracies. The regulatory interventions described by Grasseni were simultaneously being applied in literally thousands of upland valleys from
the Pyrenees to the Carpathians by local communities of practice
that interpreted and adapted these laws and directives to their own
local traditions, environmental conditions, and economic needs. The
aim was not to institute a uniform regime that sought to regularize
grazing practices in every rural locale; rather, it was understood that
people within their own communities would gradually embrace the
new institutional incentives and disincentives, complying over time
with the rules on terms that endow them with very particular meanings. These administrative arrangements provide room – substantial
room – for citizens to accommodate, interpret, and adapt this regulatory framework to their own immediate circumstances within a
diversely constituted federal system. By so doing, a European identity
is imparted to the lives of citizens through the operation of their own
communities of practice, articulated in their own cultural idioms and
social vernaculars.
In the classical bureaucratic tradition, laws were propagated in
national capitals and transmitted to various administrative levels and
jurisdictions of the state where they were enforced (more or less) uniformly and (more or less) to the letter. Often, various categories of
officialdom were physically present in local settings to oversee and
insure accountability with these legal standards and administrative
provisions (Crozier 1973). By contrast, the EU interventions are perhaps more ambitious, aimed at recasting incentives and accountabilities
across various social, economic, environmental, political, cultural, and
educational spheres and not merely at compelling conformity to particular rules and regulations.
In this micro-level example, EU regulation disrupts traditional social
practices in an Alpine community, creating what the outside observer
and the people themselves would characterize as “havoc.” I use this
case to demonstrate how this chaotic condition is, in fact, instrumental
insofar as it establishes the terms by which the people themselves
mediate this process of identity formation. The responses of these
people to the disruptions introduced by the EU regulatory regime – its
program of discipline and punishment – become the means by which
these Alpine herders assimilate over time the sentiments and expectations that constitute the basis of a European identity.
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The “chaos” incited by these directives is assumed to be resolved over
time by the citizens themselves as they are recruited to perform the labor
of integration. Rather than being compelled or coerced to follow new
sets of rules and regulations, people will instead embrace the incentives
and disincentives inherent in these directives, adapting them to countless situations and contexts. EU citizens in innumerable settings will
thus accomplish the social and cultural labor of integration themselves;
over the medium term the chaos – as Grasseni points out – will be
mastered in relationship to local practices as a European consciousness
of sorts is ingrained in the lives of these citizens through a gradual and
almost imperceptible process (Ferguson 1990).
Grasseni illustrates how the intricate networks of traditional relations
and tenant payments that govern the movement of herds of cattle each
year from lowland to upland pastures and back were dislocated by new
incentives. The annual cycle of summer grazing, called alpeggio, had
clear advantages for these communities of herders.
Feeding costs drop for as long as a third of the year. Secondly, cheese
produced on the pastures is highly valued and may be sold for a high price.
In the long run, a natural diet and outdoor lifestyle make the cows fit, resilient
to infectious disease and visibly happier. The practice of alpeggio has been
recently reconsidered also as a fire-prevention measure, in that the practice of
grazing avoids bush and grass overgrowth. Self-ignited fires (but also arsons)
are often headline news in the Italian summers, and especially in mountain
areas they contribute to irreversible erosion, putting the territory at risk of
landslides. (Grasseni 2007, p. 442)
EU aid distributed in the summer of 2000 sought to encourage these
practices with bonus payments of up to 40,000 euros.
As a result of these incentives, farmers who never practised alpeggio before
were spurred to take part in tendering competitions (gare d’appalto) for the
high pastures. Likewise, the pasture-owners … were motivated to increase
pasture rents, which were previously almost symbolic. This created havoc
among established patterns of pasture allocation, which in recent decades,
because of massive farmers’ migration, had happened in the virtual absence of
competition. This caused conflicts that revealed how sensitive local contexts
may be to external incentives. (Grasseni 2007, p. 443)
Tensions, conflicts, and litigations ensued between the established herders
and the newcomers, many of whom had never practiced alpeggio before.
Rents were bid up, and herders with traditional claims refused to
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67
relinquish their access to pasturage secured by newcomers under the
reformed tender system. New competition was also stimulated from
sheep- and goat-herders who were further viewed by the cattle herders
as a threat to ecological balance and likely to overgraze the Alpine pastures. Hence, the “introduction of artificial incentives in a very delicately
balanced network of communal rents and local tenders, intensified competition to the point of disrupting the network” (Grasseni 2007, p. 444).
And, as Grasseni argues, “competition and conflict can lead to the
dismantling of the very local networks, the communities of practice of
peers, administrators and technical advisors, who guarantee the survival of the [local] context” (2006). The introduction of EU law and
administrative directives are understood to be antagonistic and may, in
fact, be intentionally antagonistic to pre-existing cultural norms, values,
and social practices. They seem alien to the citizens who are subjected to
them because they operate outside the realm of familiar contextualizing
traditions and histories. This is, as Grasseni notes, a very incomplete
reading of what actually unfolds in this and countless other settings. In
fact, she demonstrates that within a relatively short time – a matter of
two or three years – the community had begun to adapt to these new
incentives, incorporating them within their own local framework of
expectations and sentiments.
My point here is that similar processes are unfolding in communities of
practice encompassing virtually all those industries, professions, government bureaus, and nongovernmental organizations that are in one way
or another subject to EU regulatory standards. These diverse communities of practice serve as the milieus within which identity assumes a
future-oriented purview and experimental dynamic impelled by the evolving regulatory regime of the EU itself. Chaotic conditions like those
described above impel people themselves – operating within their own
variously constituted communities of practice – to resolve the processes of
identity formation. Again, the micro-level disruptions introduced by the
EU regulatory regime become the means by which these varied groups of
people negotiate over time the common sentiments and expectations that
constitute a very broadly based European identity.
Ethical citizenship
Andrea Muehlebach’s ethnographic study of “ethical citizenship” examines experimentation with Catholic identity gaining expression within
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programs of voluntary service in Lombardy and Italy more generally.
These projects seek in part to fill the functions relinquished by the welfare
state with an alternative activism, by which cadres of volunteers operate
in a public service that is imagined to be separate from the influence of
market forces and the conventional (secular) political preoccupations of
the state. Rather, an ethically and spiritually defined duty binding the
individual and society impels this volunteerism. The aim of this activism
is the promotion of a human fulfillment espoused by the Church that can
reanimate Catholic identity.
Muehlebach examines how a “new” ethical framework for Catholic
identity and voluntary practice is institutionalized in Milan through
formal training classes and the contractual instruments that define
volunteerism in relationship to Italian law. She demonstrates how this
identity project realigns human sentiments with social action in a manner that circumvents conventional, secular assumptions, creating a very
distinctive space of a “soulful” and “virtuous” identity that can underpin a new framework of “freedom” and “citizenship.”
Gratuità (translated as “free-gifting” or “free-giving” on the Vatican’s webpage and considered essential to the Biblical revelation) is a theological virtue
often mobilized by members of the Italian public who question the nature of
contemporary capitalism. The late Pope John Paul II was only one particularly
prominent voice in this debate when he insisted during his last years that
“society needs to convert to the idea of unselfish giving.” As he said in a
speech on Ash Wednesday in 2002, “today’s society has a deep need to
rediscover the positive value of free giving (gratuità), especially because in
our world what often prevails is a logic motivated exclusively by the pursuit of
profit and gain at any price.” (Muehlebach 2007, p. 201)
This overtly illiberal identity project defines itself in opposition to
the market’s preoccupations with material values, establishing an alternative ethical foundation for social life. Identity is thus implicated in an
“epochal struggle” that seeks to mobilize a potentially large and idealistic collective following.
The pope had made it one of his priorities to argue that Christianity was the
antidote to free marketeering because it proposed “the idea of free giving,
founded on the intelligent freedom of human beings inspired by authentic
love” … In Catholic theology, the spirit of free giving is instantiated in
activities like charity. Individuals engaging in charitable actions are considered to be directly animated by divine grace, their souls infused with the holy
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spirit. With his promotion of the virtue of free giving, the pope had evoked an
epochal struggle between divine love and the weakness of human beings for
material things. (Muehlebach 2007, pp. 201–2)
This project is contingent on a “hybrid legal-theological context” that
rests on reforms of welfare policies as well as a radical rethinking of
strategies for intervention. The aim is to cultivate emotions that can
mediate between identity and action.
[N]ew legal regimes and state institutions aim to produce the public figure of
“the volunteer,” and to create a symbolic and material infrastructure around
a sphere imagined to be saturated with the sacrality of the gift. As thousands
of members of “the volunteer sector” are schooled in training courses every
year, the state marshals what it imagines as the affective, empathetic, and
“caring” stances of citizens. (Muehlebach 2007, pp. 203–4)
Muehlebach demonstrates how “emotions” are transformed by this
movement into “conventionalized, stabilized, and qualified sensibilities”
that can be put to work within a new framework of citizenship.
[T]he Ministry of Welfare is gearing parts of its organizational architecture
around the soliciting of empathetic responses to social problems within its
citizen-volunteers. In its education of desire, state practice aims to produce a
normative moral citizen-subject propelled not by a rational, but by an affective will, not by reason, but by desire. The summoning of ethical citizens relies
on the dissemination of a standardized account of “the volunteer,” and of
what it means to provide volunteer “service” in the emerging service sector of
which volunteering is a crucial part. (Muehlebach 2007, p. 204)
Most brilliantly, Muehlebach captures how identity projects become
aligned with very specific “inner-truths” and how these projects can
assume an overt institutional reality and political expression.
Through an analysis of several volunteer training classes that I attended,
I explore how ethical citizenship is promoted through multiple registers, all
of which share a particular persuasive form. I show that techniques of citizenmoralization rely on the cultivation of an ethic of self-reflection amongst
trainees. Built around self-knowledge and (depending on the register used,
the feeling of empathy or empowerment) these interior states are said to only
come to full, meaningful fruition once they are translated by citizens into
pragmatic ethical action – action which, in turn, is imagined to produce
public, conspicuous virtue. Through the externalization of a caring self, the
neoliberal public that is emerging here is propelled by moral sentiments; a
public peopled by citizens desiring to become co-responsible for the common
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good by actively contributing to it through empathetic action. Ethical citizenship is built around the metaphysic of care. It not only helps recast modernist
state welfare and the kinds of social citizenship it entailed, but the meaning of
“the human” as such. (Muehlebach 2007, pp. 204–5)
This elaborate identity project described by Muehlebach, rooted in the
metaphysics of caring, informs distinctive configurations of consciousness and very particular ethical configurations of citizenship. Catholic
values become in this case a powerful idiom for negotiating the relationship between ethics and action: articulations of identity thus respond to
the exigencies of European integration, creating spheres of politics that
are reciprocal to these initiatives. In this case, liberal reform of welfare
animates illiberal identity experiments focussed on public service and
the metaphysics of caring.
Bad faith
Bilge Firat is studying the daily interchanges among lobbyists seeking
to influence the terms and conditions of Turkish accession to the EU.
Broadly, she is examining the incremental progress as well as the
impediments and outright obstructions to Turkey’s European aspirations (Firat 2007).
The project illuminates the specific issues of market liberalization,
labor laws, civil and corporation law, environmental standards, transportation, civil and human rights questions, taxation structures, banking and finance, food safety, education, pension benefits, healthcare,
electoral rules, public works, border controls, agricultural subsidies and
so on, that constitute the accession process. Each of these questions is
framed and crosscut on a daily basis by complex issues of history,
religion, secularism, nationalism, and sovereignty from the perspectives
of Turkish lobbyists and EU officials.
Against this formal analysis of the integration process, Firat creates a
parallel ethnographic inquiry, following her Turkish subjects as they
move through a series of ethnographic settings in Brussels. She examines how Turkish diplomats and lobbyists and, crucially, their
families have become and are becoming ineluctably “Europeanized”
by virtue of their residence in Brussels. She examines how these Turkish
expatriates respond to and evaluate critically the complexities of life in a
city in which European identity is an overriding preoccupation, if not an
obsession (Borneman and Fowler 1997).
Experimental identities (after Maastricht)
71
Firat’s subjects representing government and industry groups are
perhaps Adrian Favell’s (contribution in this volume) “Eurostars” in
the making. Their work deals on a daily basis with the acquis communautaire, the technocratic issues at stake in integration; in their
daily lives they confront the intimate realities of European identity.
These figures reside in the prosperous districts of Brussels alongside
EU officialdom. Each morning they drop off their children at a
neighborhood crèche, where French-, Flemish-, and English-speaking
teachers care for their children. During their workdays they meet with
officials of the European Commission, the Council of Ministers,
and the Parliament, arguing from the “outside” the case for Turkish
accession. In the evening they attend embassy receptions where they
meet Turkish representatives fully integrated into the social and
political fabric of NATO, or Bulgarian members of the European
Parliament representing Turkish-speaking communities. On a daily
basis, Firat’s subjects also come into contact with the significant
Turkish community in the city, stimulating interactions with individuals with whom – for various, class, ethnic, and religious reasons –
these lobbyists would in all likelihood not associate in their homeland.
Fully European representatives of these Turkish communities hold elective office in Brussels municipal government and the Belgian state,
and their distinctive outlooks are publicly voiced in the press and
the media.
The routine encounters of these figures thus demonstrate the social
fact of an ongoing process linking Turkish and European identities
that significantly pre-dates the formal process of Turkey’s accession to
the EU, reaching back at least to the mid-twentieth century. Immigrant
and increasingly European-born Turkish populations are present in
major European cities, and each of these communities encompasses
diverse groups of individuals experimenting with secular and Islamic
identities and with differently constituted European identities. As
these lobbyists negotiate daily life in Brussels, the peculiar contradictions of Turkey’s relationship to Europe are exposed. On the one
hand, these actors are constantly reminded of the degree to which
Turkish communities are already fully within Europe. On the other,
they see how the arguments opposing Turkish accession to the EU are
couched in bad faith, incandescent bad faith. They also understand
fully that the identity projects unfolding in Europe reach back to the
politics of their homeland.
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Encrypted identities
In the 1990s I examined in detail a case that demonstrated how
identity – among a tiny group of activists – could oscillate between
fashion and politics, yielding a mass European audience for various
stylistic expressions of a marginal political project. I interviewed members of the British National Party (the BNP) who have experimented
with identity as far back as the 1960s, provoking innovations that were
inadvertent and unanticipated. As one of these figures put it:
I remember skinheads from years ago: burly sort of thugs, shaven heads and
wore swastika badges. They looked fine, didn’t they? … Yes, the early 60s.
I remember, because I had just left school and it was just starting then; 1961 or
1962. Yeah. It’s all over Europe now but it did start in the East End. But, when
it started it wasn’t political at all, it was just a little cult. Now, it’s really
political. You just have to say “skinhead” now you immediately think
“nationalist.” (Holmes 2000, pp. 135–6)
In their view, British nationalists had to act tough because the newspapers ignored them. They tried “to kick their way into the headlines.”
Denied access to networks of the conventional media, their experiments
took on a radically different symbolic form, one that was communicable
over an alternative, perhaps more powerful, global circuitry. The fashion accessories of skinheads, spawned and nurtured in the East End
of London, penetrated taste across Europe. Leather clothing, shaved
heads, pierced body parts, macabre talismans, extravagant alcohol and
drug consumption, football hooliganism, reckless street-fighting, racist
invectives, and assaults came to be associated overtly with a brutal
nationalist politics of the young; yet, re-coded as fashion, much of this
repellant political stance gained a different and far broader currency. In
other words, the “unspeakable” messages contrived in urban Britain
found expression in defiant styles of self-presentation, taste, and appearance. Instilled as fashion, these astringent messages moved – uncensored –
onto the bodies and into the imaginations of a generation (Holmes
2000).
At the opening of the twenty-first century, we also know that these
kinds of local stylistic messages can move easily across various global
retail and electronic circuits. Though they remain largely latent and
relatively harmless as unorthodox or offensive expressions of “taste,”
the prospect that these elusive messages can be read and deciphered
Experimental identities (after Maastricht)
73
politically is disturbing. Croatian rock star Marko Perkovic is a good
example of a current manifestation of this phenomenon.
In the journalistic account by Nicholas Wood (2007), the ease
by which emphatic representations of a distasteful and shameful
politics can gain expression as dissonant style is observed. Wood
also captures the intergenerational slippages and convergences of
these symbolic messages as ratified by the Balkan wars of the
1990s:
On a hot Sunday evening last month, thousands did just that in a packed
soccer stadium here in the Croatian capital. Photographs from the concert
show youths wearing the black caps of the Nazi-backed Ustasha regime
that ruled Croatia, and which was responsible for sending tens of thousands of Serbs, gypsies and Jews to their deaths in concentration camps …
Perkovic’s popularity is nothing new in Croatia. It dates back to the Balkan
wars in which he fought in the Croatian Army. His patriotic and sometimes
violently nationalist songs made him an instant hit. Most Croats know him
better by his stage name, Thompson, which was given to him during the
war, when he carried the vintage British-made submachine gun of the
same name.
And, more significantly, the indifference to the political message on
the part of those who recognize fully the nature of its meaning is also
registered:
But now Thompson’s growing success – among a new generation of Croats,
many of them apparently oblivious to the history of the Holocaust – has
prompted concern and condemnation from minority groups in Croatia and
Jewish groups abroad. The concert last month was his biggest to date, with
at least 40,000 people in attendance … What has shocked those groups
more, though, is that in the ensuing debate, many senior politicians and
the members of the media have not seen a problem with the imagery or
salutes.
Experiments like this with localized and highly stylized expressions of
alienation emerge as if awaiting the arrival of a new generation of
young, charismatic leaders who can rearticulate their implicit messages as an emphatic politics, leaders who can exploit the ambiguous
spaces between and among style, fashion, identity, and politics. As
these accounts suggest, the circuitry for this kind of message is in place,
the preliminary labor has been accomplished, and the politics is
imminent.
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Duty to integrate
In a speech entitled, “Our nation’s future: Multiculturalism and integration,” delivered on December 8, 2006, Tony Blair addressed the dilemmas posed by a new British and European pluralism. The speech is a
highly personal statement – though, no doubt, drafted with the aid of
speechwriters and advisors – by a skilled politician as he seeks to come to
terms with the predicaments posed by extremist identity projects operating beyond the institutional reach of the nation-state: predicaments that
can compromise the ethos underwriting newly defined British and
European identities (Stolcke 1995; Modood and Werbner 1997). The
solution he proposes is drawn from a philosophical tradition of shared
values reconciled implicitly by the principle of subsidiarity.
As Blair reminded his audience, the bombings of 7/7/05 followed the
day after the awarding of the bid for the 2012 Olympics to London
(Blair 2006, from which all extracts in this section are taken). London’s
winning of the Olympic bid had been viewed at the time as a ratification
of the successful racial and cultural experimentations that had fundamentally transformed British society over the prior three decades. The
counterpoint of events unfolding within a mere twenty-four hours
revealed the stark vulnerability of a regime of values upon which Blair
had staked his career.
We should begin by celebrating something. When we won the Olympic Bid to
host the 2012 Games, we presented a compelling, modern vision of Britain; a
country at ease with different races, religions and cultures…
We now have more ethnic minority MPs, peers and Ministers though not
enough. We have had the first black Cabinet minister. The media are generally
more sensitive, and include ethnic minority reporters and columnists. Racism
has, for the most part, been kicked out of sport. Offensive remarks and stupid
stereotypes have been driven out of public conversation. The basic courtesies,
in other words, have been extended to all people.
Events intervened that challenged this celebratory view, a challenge
orchestrated by a tiny, murderous group of committed activists:
The day after we won the Olympic bid came the terrorist attacks in London.
These murders were carried out by British-born suicide bombers who had
lived and been brought up in this country, who had received all its many
advantages and yet who ultimately took their own lives and the lives of the
wholly innocent, in the name of an ideology alien to everything this country
stands for. Everything the Olympic bid symbolized was everything they hated.
Experimental identities (after Maastricht)
75
Their emphasis was not on shared values but separate ones, values based on a
warped distortion of the faith of Islam.
Native-born and yet alien protagonists posed a deep affront to the ideals
underwriting Blair’s political philosophy. Most outrageous from his
standpoint is that precisely the diversity and openness that enlivens
this new societal ethos can feed radical aspirations committed to injuring the innocent.
[I]t has thrown into sharp relief, the nature of what we have called, with
approval, “multicultural Britain.” We like our diversity. But how do we react
when that “difference” leads to separation and alienation from the values that
define what we hold common? For the first time in a generation there is an
unease, an anxiety, even at points a resentment that our very openness, our
willingness to welcome difference, our pride in being home to many cultures,
is being used against us; abused, indeed, in order to harm us.
Against this backdrop, Blair sought to resurrect the values of and for
British society as well as the accountabilities its government must
require of its citizens. His remedy is framed in the idiom of “values.”
He alludes to the Westphalian prerogatives of the nation-state to define
and to mediate – coercively if necessary – public values and private
consciousness; yet he acknowledges that contemporary circumstances
make this difficult. Notably, the liberal reforms that he so ardently
pursued during his tenure have freed various domains of “culture”
and “lifestyle,” allowing them to develop increasingly beyond the
reach of governmental surveillance and political control.
Blair – a sophisticated social Catholic – invokes a European solution
in order to address the predicaments of British pluralism. He invokes
subsidiarity as a formula for legitimizing pluralism, but he adds a series
of new and subtle elements to address the current threat:
Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and other faiths have a perfect
right to their own identity and religion, to practise their faith and to
conform to their culture. This is what multicultural, multi-faith Britain is
about. That is what is legitimately distinctive … But when it comes to our
essential values – belief in democracy, the value of law, tolerance, equal
treatment for all, respect for this country and its shared heritage then
that is where we come together, it is what we hold in common; it is what
gives us the right to call ourselves British. At that point no distinctive
culture or religion supersedes our duty to be part of an integrated United
Kingdom.
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Blair concedes that he was counseled to avoid broaching the ethical
distinctions upon which multiculturalism absolutely depends, but he
defied this advice. Indeed, his optimistic analysis draws on familiar
ethical ideas to address circumstances of diversity that are for many
difficult to parse. He reasserts notions of tolerance, duty, dialogue, and
solidarity. And, perhaps most interesting, he recasts the complexities of
British pluralism as a problem of the integration of a particular minority, in fact, a minority of a minority of Muslims.
But actually what should give us optimism in dealing with this issue, is
precisely that point. It is true there are extremists in other communities. But
the reason we are having this debate is not generalized extremism. It is a
new and virulent form of ideology associated with a minority of our Muslim
community. It is not a problem with Britons of Hindu, Afro-Caribbean,
Chinese or Polish origin. Nor is it a problem with the majority of the
Muslim community. Most Muslims are proud to be British and Muslim and
are thoroughly decent law-abiding citizens. But it is a problem with a minority
of that community, particularly originating from certain countries. The reason I say that this is grounds for optimism, is that what the above proves, is
that integrating people whilst preserving their distinctive cultures, is not a
function of a flawed theory of a multicultural society. It is a function of a
particular ideology that arises within one religion at this one time.
Blair contends that it is a theory of society that must be defended;
pluralism is under threat and policy needs to be articulated that acknowledges that reality. This is difficult for Blair, who took the ideals of
solidarity as a matter of faith, and who must now publicly articulate
them as a matter of duty. Blair takes not a secular theory, but a confessional theory with deep European intellectual roots, and he transforms it
in manner that can address contemporary predicaments. He invokes a
formula that sets out principles for negotiating the nature of cultural
affinity and difference, thereby challenging a highly problematic, Islamic
consciousness by recasting it within a broader political discourse:
Yet, because this challenge has arisen in this way, it is necessary to go back to
what a multicultural Britain is all about. The whole point is that multicultural
Britain was never supposed to be a celebration of division; but diversity. The
purpose was to allow people to live harmoniously together, despite their
difference; not to make their difference an encouragement to discord. The
values that nurtured it were those of solidarity, of coming together, of peaceful co-existence. The right to be in a multicultural society was always, always
implicitly balanced by a duty to integrate, to be part of Britain, to be British
Experimental identities (after Maastricht)
77
and Asian, British and black, British and white. Those whites who support the
BNP’s policy of separate races and those Muslims who shun integrations into
British society both contradict the fundamental values that define Britain
today; tolerance, solidarity across the racial and religious divide, equality
for all and between all.
It is only in response to an overt challenge that the largely implicit
assumptions of pluralism achieve public articulation:
So it is not that we need to dispense with multicultural Britain. On the
contrary we should continue celebrating it. But we need – in the face of the
challenge to our values – to re-assert also the duty to integrate, to stress what
we hold in common and to say: these are the shared boundaries within which
we all are obliged to live precisely in order to preserve our right to our own
different faiths, races and creeds … We must respect both our right to differ
and the duty to express any difference in a way fully consistent with the values
that bind us together.
Blair’s political message seeks to persuade the circles of supporters who
may be in one way or another sympathetic to the “Jihadist” sensibilities
of the suicide bombers. They are within reach of his multicultural theory
and his pluralist rhetoric. But he concedes that the 7/7 bombers, like the
BNP activists, operate beyond the reach of this kind of political message.
Blair’s uplifting analysis and energetic prose cannot account for the
motives, the consciousness of those British-born individuals who orchestrated the 7/7 attacks. The identity experiments of these young men are
inaccessible and inscrutable from the standpoint of conventional political analyses. These individuals are engaged in a politics of identity that
operates in an alternative public sphere under a jurisdiction of style, as
communicative action that moves across an alternative circuitry and
enters the lifeworlds of adherents and is accepted emphatically on faith.
Unstated and yet implicit in this remarkable speech is the suspicion
that the political traditions of Britain and the institutional practices and
consensual politics of the EU are poorly adapted or entirely incapable of
addressing the vexatious political issues posed after Maastricht. The
monumental frustration is, of course, that Blair and his cohort of politicians in Europe have played a decisive role in giving life to these proliferating identity projects. He understands how illiberal identity projects
pose implicitly and explicitly an emphatic taunt or challenge. Can liberal
principles that have been so brilliantly deployed instrumentally to achieve
the political aims of the European project now be redeployed to address
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new cultural predicaments? Can liberalism – as a system of values,
beliefs and technocratic practices – orchestrate the solidarity necessary
for its own perpetuation, for retaining or expanding public support for
an evolving and still ill-defined European project? In the interplay
of these taunts and rhetorical questions, Blair’s vision of Europe converges with that of Jean-Marie Le Pen.
After Maastricht
The premise of this chapter is that there are now countless experiments
with identity unfolding across Europe, almost all of them in some way
related to European integration, though not necessarily the outcome of
any EU policy initiative per se. Many of these experiments are idiosyncratic and self-limiting; some are totally irrelevant. That said, my contention here is that a few of these identity projects are absolutely
essential for understanding the future course and political dynamics of
European integration.
I have followed over the last two decades what I believe to be the
most important identity project unfolding in contemporary Europe, a
project that covers wide-ranging experiments aimed at defining a fully
elaborated, supranational political program: an agenda that addresses
the distinctive features of a multiracial and multicultural polity. This
project – encompassed by what I have termed integralism – captures
macro-level configurations of identity coalescing in all twenty-seven
member states of the EU. I have argued that the innovative work of
Jean-Marie Le Pen established integralism as the model for illiberal
experiments gaining expression – not merely in France – but across
the EU as a fully and forcefully articulated politics of Europe.
Thus, in this chapter I have developed analytical perspectives on
European identity rather than providing an exhaustive survey of all
the groups, movements, and parties engaged in this kind of political
activism. Hence, each case that I have discussed frames paradigmatically a very particular problematic of Europe that emerged in the aftermath of Maastricht, configuring specific experiments with the form and
substance of identity. I have been particularly interested in developing
examples that demonstrate how highly localized circumstances can
enliven forms of activism with a broad European reach. The key analytical aim of the piece has been to trace out the links between micro-level
experiments with identity and various path-dependent macro-level
Experimental identities (after Maastricht)
79
politics. Though this yields at times jarring shifts in perspectives, it nonetheless provides glimpses of a volatile and a still rather occult political
landscape taking shape across all of the member states of the EU.
Numerous questions remain. Will identity projects continue to
proliferate, yielding ever more diverse groups, factions, parties, and
movements? Or, as appears to be a tendency at the moment, will these
experiments be stabilized intellectually and mediated politically around
integralist configurations of activism? Or will some other forms of metapolitics, like social Catholicism, assume the role of regulating and managing the accretion of diverse pluralist agendas? The answers to these
questions are, as we have seen repeatedly, dependent on reciprocal questions about the institutional nature of the EU itself and its political agility
in articulating the substance and the meanings of liberalism.
Finally, the reader may have noticed in this piece a peculiar methodological conundrum: the subjects of this study – notably the political
activists themselves – are engaged in intellectual labors that resemble,
approximate, or are entirely indistinguishable from the analytical practices of an ethnographer. To pursue their insurgency, these figures
employ intellectual modalities to inform their politics that continually
draw on what are essentially ethnographic insights. To align their
message with the at times strident experience of their audience, they
must craft ethnographically informed discourses. These activists are
acutely sensitive to cultural idioms, dialects, and patois in defining
the messages by which they seek to mobilize the sensibilities and the
aspirations of an inchoate European public (Holmes and Marcus 2006;
Holmes et al. 2006). In other words, the identity experiments that have
proliferated after Maastricht expose how elements of an ethnographic
“method,” broadly conceived, have been assimilated to enliven a distinctive and, perhaps, decisive politics that speaks to the cultural predicaments of our time. The key predicament, as I have argued in this
chapter, is that in the post-Maastricht era, the EU confers on its citizens
the abiding challenge to negotiate among those liberal and illiberal
imperatives that can inform and underwrite a pluralist Europe.
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank Jeff Checkel and Peter Katzenstein for inviting me
to contribute to this volume, for their meticulous comments on earlier
drafts of this manuscript, and for their skill and generosity in promoting
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at every stage of this project a stimulating interdisciplinary environment. The acute comments of participants in the Ithaca and Oslo workshops provoked me to think about the issues at stake in this chapter in
new and productive ways. Iver B. Neumann, in particular, provided
detailed comments and suggestions that were invaluable in the final
revisions. Sarah Tarrow performed a very careful copyediting that
helped clarify the arguments and insights presented herein. Any errors,
omissions, and failures of interpretation and of analysis are, of course,
entirely my responsibility. The project upon which this chapter is based
was supported by funding from the National Science Foundation and
the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research.
4
The public sphere and the European
Union’s political identity
JUAN DÍEZ MEDRANO
Since the early 1990s, two factors have had a significant impact on the
pace and character of European integration. The first factor is the end of
the permissive consensus that had prevailed until then. The main symptoms of this change have been a steady decline, to historically low levels,
in the level of popular EU support; and episodes such as the rejection of
the European Constitution by a majority of French and Dutch voters.
The second factor is division among European leaders concerning
future institutional developments in a twenty-seven-member Union.
The two factors converged in the 2005 constitutional crisis, not
because cleavages among the elites mimic those among the population,
but rather because popular discontent helped to undo the fragile consensus that had been achieved by European Union elites around the
constitutional project. At stake is disagreement between political elites
and a significant segment of the population on the values that should
sustain the European project (see Hooghe 2003) and also among the
different national elites on the limits of supranationalism. In the context
of the politicization of the European Union in the 1990s, triggered by
the increasingly political character of the EU and signaled among other
things by the repeated organization of referenda on new EU treaties, the
permissive consensus prevailing until then has broken down (see
Katzenstein and Checkel in this volume) and deep disagreement
among elites has surfaced.
With regard to the sensible distinction of the three meanings of
identity (Brubaker and Cooper 2000), I narrow my focus on political
identity as political self-understanding, that is, on the project dimension
of political identity (see Checkel and Katzenstein in this volume). The
concept of political self-understanding, however, is itself multidimensional. There is the political self-understanding reflected in the documents that shape a polity (e.g. treaties, laws, decrees). There is also
the political self-understanding reflected in the actual behavior of those
interpreting and implementing the content of those documents. Finally,
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Juan Díez Medrano
there is the political self-understanding that transpires in public discourse. These three dimensions of political identity as project are
equally real, equally interesting from a scientific point of view. The
latter becomes especially relevant, however, when examining how the
citizens conceive the polity and their attitudes toward it. It is the interface between elites and citizens that interests me, and this is why I focus
on political identity-as-project from a public discourse perspective.
Through content analysis of debates in the public sphere, I argue that
there is currently an unbridgeable mismatch between the national leaders’ conceptions of the EU and those of a significant minority of
citizens and, at the same time, a strong disagreement among the elites
about Europe’s political identity.
The data come from two databases. The first is the Europub.com
database, which includes data on seven European countries for the
1990–2002 period (on the content analysis method, see Koopmans et al.
2005; Koopmans and Statham 1999). The second is a database collected
for Poland for the 2000–2004 period.1 The analysis shows that in the past
decade or so, political elites in Europe have emphasized a republican
rather than a cultural political identity for Europe, and they have
remained relatively silent about the EU’s social dimension. They have
thus triggered resistance to European integration efforts among alienated
segments of the population that are fearful of growing cultural diversity in
Europe and sensitive to the negative impact that globalization may have
on their wages, job prospects, and working conditions. Furthermore, the
analysis demonstrates that while political elites agree on the desirability of
strengthening the EU’s political dimension and on a multilevel distribution
of competences, they disagree on the further transfer of sovereignty to the
1
The source of the Europub.com data are a sample of newspaper articles from Left,
Right, regional, and “yellow” press newspapers from Germany, France, Italy, the
Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland, covering the 1990–2002
period (Vth Framework Programme of the European Commission. Contract
Number HPSE-CT2000-00046). An extra sample of 129 newspaper articles from
the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza was collected and analyzed specifically for
this chapter (for codebooks, see Koopmans 2002). I thank Joanna Jasiewicz for
selecting and coding the newspaper articles. The unit of analysis is the political
claim, defined as an act of strategic communication in the public sphere, entailing
the expression of a political opinion or demand through physical or verbal action,
which may take various forms (verbal statements, judicial rulings, political
decisions, violent or non-violent public demonstrations, and so on) and be made
by various actors (governments, MPs, political parties, interest groups, social
movements, NGOs, and so on) (Koopmans 2002).
The public sphere and the EU’s political identity
83
EU (especially in the areas falling under the second pillar) and on the
division of power among the various EU institutions.
A full understanding of the EU’s loss of legitimacy in the 1990s and of
the constitutional crisis requires more, however, than a systematic
analysis of the public sphere, for the public sphere is only one factor
shaping the citizens’ attitudes toward the European Union. In particular, its role in explaining the EU’s loss of legitimacy and the constitutional crisis becomes clearer if examined in conjunction with the
analysis of the mobilization of an important set of actors, relatively
invisible in public debate about European integration, which has
worked to amplify both the lack of synch between elites and segments
of the citizenry and intra-elite conflict. Far-right political parties and
movements, Euro-skeptic social movements, and anti-globalization
groups, examined by Doug Holmes in this volume, have indeed played
a key role in aligning frames and in strengthening the camp of those who
call for a more organic or a more social Europe, and thus oppose the
dominant model of European integration (see also Berezin, in press).
The chapter begins with a synthetic discussion of the parameters of
the 2005 referendum outcomes and the political confusion that followed. This discussion challenges prevalent views and proposes an
alternative interpretation that stresses the role played by the elites.
The section that follows focusses on the characterization of national
public spheres, where debates on the EU’s political identity take place.
I summarize the state of the art in research on the Europeanization of
national public spheres and justify the analysis of the public sphere to
uncover the EU’s political identity project. The next two sections examine public frames about the European Union. The goal of this analysis is
to examine the public actors’ conceptualizations of what the EU is and
should be. Finally, the last section focusses on the architectural designs
for the EU displayed in the public sphere. This section shows that
competing models form a more complex set of alternatives than seen
in the binary distinction between supranational (“cosmopolitan”) and
nationalist ones often discussed in the media.
The European Union’s constitutional crisis
In the aftermath of the French and Dutch “No” votes, explanations that
emphasized the roles of nationalism and national identity were frequent
(although there were others). For instance, one could read in an editorial
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Juan Díez Medrano
published in the New York Times (“The French Non,” June 1, 2005) that
the “fear of losing the French identity, the fear of ‘Anglo-Saxon’
(read British and American) economic reforms” underlay the French
results. William Pfaff, commenting on the French and Dutch referenda
in the New York Review of Books, conveyed a very similar message:
The rejection surely demonstrated the current gap of comprehension between
European political elites and the European public, but was mainly evidence of the
consistently underestimated forces of national identity and ambition in each of
the twenty-five nations. The French were enthusiastically seconded by another
highly nationalistic and individualistic European society, the Netherlands – also
one of the founding Fathers of the European Union. (“What’s left of the Union,”
July 14, 2005)
North American explanations were echoed on the other side of the
Atlantic. In the Netherlands, for instance, Sophie Vanhoonacker,
Director of the Center for European Studies of the University of
Maastricht, explained the Dutch results as follows: “everything that is
not Dutch is taken as a menace to identity” (English translation from
“Le non à la Constitution reflète la crise identitaire des Néerlandais,”
Agence France Presse, June 1, 2005). Across the Channel, the Daily Mail
rejoiced at the outcome of the French Referendum, which it interpreted as
a reflection of the fact that “there is still no such thing as a common
European identity. The sense of national interest that Europeans have
always had has not been eliminated: and it exploded in France on
Sunday” (Simon Heffer, “Why can’t the arrogant elite see … enough is
enough,” May 31, 2005).
Identity has partly determined the recent twists and turns of the goalless road that is European integration and the constitutional crisis, but it
does not tell the whole story. Growing ethnic diversity resulting from
increased migration since the mid-1980s, and the prospect of yet more
immigration as new states join the European Union, have met with
resistance in host countries by citizens unwilling or unable to cope
with bearers of different cultural traditions. As Favell comments in
this volume, “issues of multiculturalism or inter-ethnic conflict that
were most familiar to former colonial powers like Britain and France
are now raised in every country in Western Europe, and increasingly
East and Central Europe too.” Electoral support for xenophobic farright parties all across Europe testifies to this unrest. For Holmes (this
volume), electoral support for Le Pen in fact represents the most overt
The public sphere and the EU’s political identity
85
political expression of what he defines as the “integralist” macroproject, “a project that covers wide-ranging experiments aimed at
defining a fully elaborated, supranational political program: an agenda
that addresses the distinctive features of a multiracial and multicultural
polity.”
Some commentators’ reduction of the EU crisis to a problem of
identity, or the Daily Mail’s extension of the identity argument to
encompass the population’s weak sense of identification with Europe,
however, considerably simplify the problems faced by the populations
of the enlarged European Union. Furthermore, explanations solely
focussed on the French and Dutch “No” minimize the extent and
complexity of the EU crisis: First, because they do not contextualize it
within the parameters of historically low levels of support for the EU
since the mid-1990s and the crisis of national democracies; second,
because they do not answer the question of why the two referenda
outcomes were sufficient to derail the ratification process; and third,
because they implicitly assume that the themes that motivated a majority of French and Dutch voters to vote “No” on the Constitution are the
same as those that pitted leaders of the EU member states against each
other for two years as they debated how to reform EU institutions.
The identity argument for the constitutional crisis exaggerates the role
of national and European identification in the European integration
process. Europeans have strong national or subnational identities and a
weakly developed sense of being European. This is partly because, as
Fligstein emphasizes in “Deutschian” manner, the development of a
European identity hinges on frequent interaction between nationals of
different EU states (see Fligstein in this volume). They feel comfortable
with membership in the EU, however, and support European integration.
This observation has been repeatedly confirmed by Eurobarometer surveys, even as support waned in the 1990s and never returned to earlier
levels. There is certainly significant variation across countries; but supporters outweigh opponents even in “Euro-skeptic” countries like Sweden,
Finland, Austria, and the United Kingdom. In fact, citizens, including the
French and the Dutch, support integration in the areas of foreign policy
more than the political leaders of their countries do (83% of French citizens
and 82% of Dutch citizens support it, compared to an average of 77% for
the European Union as a whole2) (see also Cerrutti 2006).
2
Source: Eurobarometer 64 (2005).
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Juan Díez Medrano
Thus, European citizens in many ways approach European integration as what Habermas would call constitutional patriots (with a small
“p”). That is, they support the EU because they largely agree with the
goals and principles that it embodies, even though their sense of who
they are remains anchored at the national or local levels. To simply
focus on the small number of integration proposals that a majority of
citizens in some countries have occasionally opposed, including the
constitutional project, risks overlooking all the EU institutional developments that European citizens have accepted in the last fifty years
and the success that the EU has had in enroling new members.
Consequently, relatively low levels of support for the EU, low turnout
in European elections and referenda, and “No” votes in referenda ought
to be interpreted not as a sign of a poorly developed sense of membership in Europe or as a lack of constitutional patriotism, but rather as
normal political outcomes in a democratic polity.
In other words, one should not conclude that when European citizens
oppose an EU initiative, regardless of its scope, they are expressing their
opposition to the European integration project. The EU is already a
polity. New treaties reconstitute this polity or make it evolve. Therefore,
when a new reform treaty is subjected to a popular vote, citizens are not
presented with a plebiscite on the existence of the EU. They are simply
presented with alternative political projects among which to choose.
One need only connect the public lack of enthusiasm toward the EU and
its proposals with parallel developments at the national and regional
levels to draw the logical conclusion that principled opposition to the
EU does not underlie the current crisis. It may well be that similar
processes and structural factors explain why European citizens are less
and less involved in both national and European politics.
European citizens have reasons to be disappointed with their lack of
influence on national and European politics. As Eurobarometer 62.0
(2004) shows, only about 38 percent of the EU-25 respondents believe
that they personally have a voice on European affairs. Analysis of the
2004 Eurobarometer data also shows statistically significant relationships between perceptions of personal efficacy and support of membership in the EU (e.g. Berezin and Díez Medrano, forthcoming). There is, in
fact, plenty of evidence supporting the claim that citizens are offered scant
opportunity to shape the political process, and this applies especially to
the EU. The Europub.com project on the European public sphere, for
instance, demonstrates that state and party elites monopolize public
The public sphere and the EU’s political identity
87
debate on the EU (see Koopmans 2004a). Reports on the Convention
proceedings also reveal that despite the talk of openness to citizen
participation, this was more marketing than reality (Cerrutti 2006).
More generally, in the last decade, Europe’s political elites have often
pursued major policies against their constituencies’ wishes: they introduced the euro despite deep-seated opposition in countries like Germany,
and they proceeded with Enlargement from fifteen to twenty-seven
members despite the opposition of about two-thirds of the population
in many EU member states. Interestingly, one of these countries was
France, where in 2004 only 31 percent of the population supported
Enlargement. The referendum on the European Constitution in May
2005 offered the French population a unique opportunity to express
this rejection indirectly.
Efforts to understand the two moments of the constitutional crisis of
the EU must thus take into account that the majority of the population
supports the integration process despite identifying primarily as members of their nation-states. Furthermore, these efforts must consider that
the citizens have been largely excluded from the European integration
process and consequently come to resent the technocratic character of
decision-making in the EU. The “No” votes in the French and Dutch
referenda certainly involved a national identity component but had little
to do with an insufficiently developed sense of membership in a
European political community. In fact, the absence of a strong identification with Europe among French and Dutch citizens removed the
possibility of some political elites’ “Euro-nationalist” appeals confounding the citizens’ electoral choices, allowing for national identity,
social, and political concerns to be the decisive factors. The French and
Dutch referenda provided large segments of the French and Dutch
citizenry a rare opportunity to vent their frustrations on a variety of
issues, including past EU decisions (i.e. the euro and Enlargement) that
exacerbated their fears of ethnic diversity and declining living standards. The pre-referendum televised question-and-answer debate
between Chirac and a group of young French citizens, where an impatient Chirac complained that the questions and comments addressed to
him had nothing to do with the content of the Constitution, clearly
supports this view.
The constitutional crisis, however, did not begin and end with the
outcomes of the French and Dutch referenda. It also included the long
period of post-referenda uncertainty in the EU, as European political
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Juan Díez Medrano
leaders debated how to proceed after these negative outcomes. EU
leaders certainly saw through nationalist discourse to read what the
referenda outcomes said about the citizens’ wishes. Within a year, they
watered down the Bolkenstein directive on services, to reduce fears of
social dumping among French and German workers, and they made
clear that despite the beginning of accession negotiations, Turkey’s
membership would not happen anytime soon (provided, of course,
that no other international development – i.e. Russia’s rediscovered
military assertiveness – led to reassessment of the costs and benefits of
having Turkey in the EU). Their response to the citizens’ fears ended
here, however. Enlargement from twenty-five to twenty-seven proceeded as planned, and the proposal that emerged from the June 2007
European Council Summit showed instead that the outcome of the
referenda had increased the assertiveness of the intergovernmental
and neoliberal camps (e.g. the United Kingdom, Poland). Thus confronted, the majority of the EU governments appeared to prioritize the
efficient functioning of the EU over citizens’ rights in the EU (e.g. the
Charter of Fundamental Rights).
The description and interpretation of the EU crisis above leaves only
limited room for national identity and certainly no room at all for weak
levels of identification with Europe among the population. Yet, when
one reviews the recent literature on European integration, one is surprised by the scholarly community’s interest in these topics. For many
years, intellectuals have predicted that further European integration is
unthinkable beyond a certain stage, unless Europeans do not develop a
strong sense of identification with Europe (e.g., unless they come to
consider people born in EU countries other than their own as belonging
to the same community that they themselves feel part of [see Hoffman
1966; Checkel and Katzenstein in this volume; Herrmann et al. 2004;
Habermas 2006b]). The rejection of Turkey is, in turn, interpreted as
revealing of an ethnic conception of what it means to be European.
These interpretations of the constitutional crisis have fed the growth
of an already existing industry of research on the so-called European
identity deficit (Cerutti 2006; Habermas 2006b; Herrmann et al. 2004;
Risse 2003; Viehoff and Segers 1999). This industry has dealt with a
myriad of questions: How developed is the sense of identification with
Europe? Is there a need for a European identity? How far can European
integration proceed without a well-developed sense of European identity? What is the nature – civic or ethnic – of European identity? What
The public sphere and the EU’s political identity
89
needs to be done in order to develop a sense of community among
Europeans? The most ambitious scholars even offer advice to the
European Commission on the nature of the symbols to promote a
collective European identity: Do we go for the Holocaust (Giesen
2003), or do we leave it to marketing professionals who work with
images and sounds rather than with words? (Eder 1999). Here I am not
concerned with judging the value of this discussion – “De gustibus non
est disputandum.” I take issue, however, with those who – aligning
themselves with the political elites – emphasize identity factors when
explaining the last decade’s relatively low levels of support for the
European Union and the French and Dutch referenda outcomes.
Instead of focussing on the citizens’ degree of identification with
Europe, in this chapter I follow the argument developed above to
explain the constitutional crisis. This argument stresses the lack of fit
between the political elites’ European identity project and the diversity
of citizens’ current political, social, and cultural concerns, and divisions
over Europe’s political project among the elites themselves. The
European public sphere is a key setting for the examination of the elites’
European political identity projects and for the development of an
interpretation of the EU’s current hesitations.
The European public sphere
The public sphere is well suited for the examination of political identity
projects because, contrary to treaties like the European Constitution, it
offers access to the diversity of elite viewpoints on which these treaties rest.
In addition, contrary to the information that one would obtain through
interviews with the elites, discourse in the public sphere is the actual interface between elite views and citizen reactions to these views, thus allowing
for a better interpretation of phenomena such as the French and Dutch
“No” votes to the European Constitution and the crisis that followed.
The emergence and characteristics of a European public sphere have
concentrated scholars’ attention in the last fifteen years almost as much
as the topic of Europe’s identity. In fact, for authors like Habermas
(1991 [1962]), Eder (1999), and Risse (2003), the public sphere is not
only a prerequisite in an EU that wants to be democratic, but also a key
institution for the development, through communication, of a shared
sense of belonging to a European community. Most research efforts
until now have been geared toward determining the existence or even
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Juan Díez Medrano
the possibility of a European public sphere. Some authors have given
a negative or pessimistic diagnosis (Schlesinger 1999; Pérez-Díaz 1998).
Authors like Grimm (1995a), Kielmansegg (1996), and Calhoun (2003)
invoke linguistic heterogeneity when accounting for this presumed
absence of a European public sphere. Other authors refer to the
absence of media with a European scope (Calhoun 2003; Scharpf
1998). Meanwhile, Gerhards uses empirical data to conclude that, in
Germany, the presence of European themes in the quality press between
1951 and 1995 represents a much smaller percentage of news content
than that of national or international, non-European themes (2000). He
also notes that newspapers lack a European perspective when reporting
on the EU (see also Jochen and De Vreese 2003; Schlesinger 1999).
As of late, a consensus is emerging that the EU’s problem is not the
lack of a European public sphere but rather its small scale. Most authors
accept Gerhards’s distinction between a pan-European public sphere,
for which they see few prospects, and the Europeanization of national
public spheres (1993), which they deem a reality. Authors disagree,
however, with respect to the criteria to define a public sphere as
Europeanized (e.g. Sifft et al. 2007; Trenz 2004; Steeg 2004; Dereje
et al. 2003; Kantner 2002; Díez Medrano 2001; Eder and Kantner
2000; Gerhards 2000, 1993; Schlesinger 1999). Empirical research
aimed at determining whether the national public spheres are
Europeanized concludes that information on the EU is infrequent compared to coverage of national news (Machill et al. 2006; Trenz 2002;
Díaz Nosty 1997). Furthermore, authors often note the irregular character of the coverage of EU affairs and make the criticism that the EU is
generally faceless (Machill et al. 2006; Le Torrec et al. 2001). Even more
relevant for this chapter’s content, because of its potential contribution
to explain the citizens’ disengagement, is the fact that the European
public sphere is closed to civil society actors (Marx Ferree et al. 2002).
Although rich pools of information are slowly becoming available,
the theoretical and analytical debate on the European public sphere is
getting increasingly confusing. Authors develop ad hoc criteria to define
the Europeanization of public spheres; the term “European” tends to be
used in a rather loose way; data seem to dictate how one analyzes the
public sphere, and there is a tendency to attach the same weight to
empirical studies with different geographic and temporal scopes. In
order to refocus this research tradition, it is worth going back to the
reasons that motivated studying the public sphere in the first place.
The public sphere and the EU’s political identity
91
The public sphere is a deliberative political space in which both
government and civil society participate. It provides political information to the citizens and a channel of communication that citizens can use
to influence government. In contemporary societies, a public sphere
exists when a minimum of free speech allows for political debate
through the media. The geographic scope of this public sphere corresponds to the space covered by political or government institutions, be
they municipal, regional, national, European, and so on. The EU is a
peculiar form of polity, with multiple levels of governance and encompassing the citizens of twenty-seven democratic states. Therefore, political debate at any level of governance should be seen as constitutive of
the European public sphere, and research should simply determine
whether the relative presence of the local, the national, and the
European correspond to the role each level of governance plays in the
lives of individuals.3
There is a normative aspect of the public sphere that deserves elaboration in our search for an interpretation of the constitutional crisis
and of the relatively low levels of support for the EU in the last decade:
the degree to which the EU’s public sphere meets basic democratic
requirements. The main requirements are (1) transparency at all levels
of governance and in all policy areas, and (2) access to all groups in
society. The latter, in particular, is emphasized in the Habermasian
(Marx Ferree et al. 2002; Habermas 1991), liberal participatory
(Curran 1991; Barber 1984), and constructionist traditions (Fraser
1997; Young 1996; Benhabib 1992). The enrichment of the deliberative
process, the empowerment of participants, and the assertion of nonhegemonic identities are some of the justifications that authors in these
3
The literature discusses other criteria that one should take into account when
examining the European public sphere. These discussions approach the public
sphere normatively, focussing on traits that public spheres should ideally have.
These criteria include the requirement that EU topics be discussed under the same
criteria of relevance (Steeg 2006), through a common European – rather than
domestic – perspective (Schlesinger 1999; Gerhards 1993), in a way that would
serve to singularize it with respect to public spheres beyond the EU (Steeg 2004).
Treating nationals and non-nationals as legitimate debating partners (Risse 2003)
falls in the former category. Empirically examining the European public sphere
from these perspectives is legitimate, for it provides us with valuable information
on the degree of homogeneity of the EU’s political culture and on whether a
European collective identity exists; but it is not necessary when determining
whether or not there is a European public sphere.
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Juan Díez Medrano
traditions provide for an inclusive public sphere. In contrast, the liberal
representation tradition does not make social inclusion a prerequisite
for a democratic public sphere (Mill 1991 [1861]; Burke 1993 [1790];
Schumpeter 1942; Downs 1957; Kornhauser 1960). For this tradition,
the citizens’ role is to elect representatives among contending political
parties, and a democratic public sphere is one where the voices of the
various contenders for power can be heard and understood by the
citizenry. The Europub.com project, coordinated by Ruud Koopmans,
has demonstrated that the actual European public sphere conforms
more to this liberal representative view of the public sphere than to
the liberal participatory, the Habermasian, and the constructionist
perspectives: Non-political actors are virtually absent in this public
sphere, even when one goes beyond print media into new media such
as the Internet. Further, when non-political actors are present, they are
usually interest groups such as trade unions or employers’ associations
(Europub.com 2004; see Koopmans 2004a).
Identity is another aspect that could underlie the 2005 constitutional
crisis and that is relevant in the study of the public sphere. Research on
the public sphere has very frequently revealed a preoccupation with the
emergence of a European culture and identity. Niedhardt et al. (2000)
even go as far as to assert that a European public sphere requires that
participants display a minimum level of identification with Europe.
Many of the criteria authors focus on when analyzing the European
public sphere are also indirect indicators of the degree of homogeneity
of the EU’s political culture and the degree of collective identification
with Europe. To share values, beliefs, cognitive frames across national
public spheres is a sign of sharing the same political culture. Meanwhile,
to treat political actors in other countries as legitimate partners, the use
of a European perspective when reporting or evaluating a particular
topic, and the amount of information on EU countries other than one’s
own are signs of a sense of membership in a European community.
In what follows, I examine the content of political debates in the
European public sphere with the restrictive goal of revealing the political project for the EU underlying these debates. This analysis affords
us a unique opportunity to assess to what extent public actors are driven
by short-term or long-term political goals, to map the range of projects
that are debated, and to measure the degree of consensus and main
cleavages characterizing this debate. This examination is relevant
because future developments in the EU depend on the views of actors
The public sphere and the EU’s political identity
93
in the public sphere, because citizens’ social representations of the
stakes in the European integration process are shaped by debate in the
public sphere, and because the European Union’s degree of legitimacy
depends to some extent on agreement between the political elites’ goals
and those given priority by the citizens. As the sections below show,
political elites are currently divided over further transfers of sovereignty, and their discourse deviates from the political, social, and cultural concerns of a significant segment of the European citizenry.
Is there a European project?
We take for granted that European leaders are driven by long-term
political identity projects for Europe. Judging from what one finds in
the public sphere, however, this is not the case. After almost sixty years of
institutionalization, most public debate about the EU concerns “mundane” policy-related issues and bargaining between states, where it is
uncommon for claimants to express their subjectively held images of the
EU and coherent political identity projects. Thus, only one-third of the
subset of claims in the Europub.com database that deal directly with
European integration or have a European scope contain statements concerned with questions such as what the EU is or should be, and where the
EU leads or should lead. In Poland, the percentage is slightly higher
(39%); but this reflects the fact that the Polish sample only includes
articles directly related to European integration, whereas the Europub.
com sample also includes articles with a European scope (issue, main
actor raising the claim, or addressee of a claim) in seven policy fields.
Also, only about 19% and 14% of all Europub.com and Polish claims,
respectively, directly related to European integration address the EU’s
architectural design. If one adds to the claims in the Europub.com
sample the 17% concerned with Enlargement, one is left with about
two-thirds addressing day-to-day politics in the EU. This is of course
not the case in Poland, where almost three out of four claims in the
2000–2004 period dealt with entry negotiations. There was thus no
room in Poland for public discussion of either routine politics or a welldefined project for Europe. Meanwhile, examples of routine politics in
the Europub.com countries were the relative power of different EU
members, the Haider affair, or proclamations about the need to
“strengthen” the EU. As the former figures demonstrate, however, public
debate on the architecture of Europe has generally been shallow, with
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Juan Díez Medrano
more posturing than substance. If one wants to determine what
Europe’s political elites want, one might do better to read and interpret
the project for a European Constitution than to listen to the “empty”
words and posturing expressed in public. The European Constitution,
however, like any other European Treaty, reflects a bargain between
different approaches rather than a unified political vision for Europe.
Furthermore, it is the projects outlined in the public sphere, if any, that
reach the citizens, which is one good reason to examine them.
The self-presentation of the European Union in everyday life
The findings above have implications for political actors’ ability to sell
previous EU accomplishments and reform packages to the population.
Not knowing what their leaders are up to when it comes to further
European integration, the population is hardly in a position to develop a
firm commitment to the EU. In the worst case scenario, they can become
easy prey for social movements that manipulate frames to align citizen
grievances with EU policies. This is partly what transpired from prereferendum debates in France and the Netherlands, as citizens linked the
constitutional draft to issues that had little to do with the document on
which they had to vote (e.g. Turkey’s “imminent” entry into the EU).
Political elites fail not only to discuss an identity project for Europe, but
even more to provide information on the EU’s political contours. This
section focusses on the ways in which social and political actors characterize the EU when making claims in the public sphere. Intentionally or
not, these descriptive and evaluative characterizations frame the claims
and thus shape their meaning to the audience. The analysis below shows
that the elites’ project, sketchy as it may be, emphasizes values that can
alienate a significant segment of the population. The Europub.com project coded up to three frames per claim. The quantitative content analysis
of these frames reveals an identity that is more economic and politicocultural than political proper (see Table 4.1). A focus on the seven
Europub.com countries shows that one in five claims containing at least
one frame, or 20 percent of these, portrays the EU as a big market, needed
for competition in a global economy and consequential for economic
growth, inflation, and unemployment. The EU is portrayed in cultural
terms too, but much less frequently. When it is, a republican rather than
an ethnic cultural identity emerges, with democracy trumping religious or
ethnic images.
The public sphere and the EU’s political identity
95
Thirteen percent of claims refer to democracy or citizenship in some
way. Occasionally, the EU’s values or institutions, or those of the
member states, are invoked. This was particularly the case during the
well-known and thoroughly analyzed Haider Affair, which prompted
many European politicians to justify EU interference in Austrian politics
by invoking the need to insure that the resulting government would be
democratic. At other times, especially during the drafting or reforming
of EU treaties or during the Enlargement negotiations, the EU has been
criticized for its democratic deficit. Members of the European
Parliament, for instance, made repeated calls for democratization
before Enlargement (for example, Jo Leinen in Süddeutsche Zeitung,
February 12, 2000; Elizabeth Guigou and Elmar Brok in Le Figaro,
June 5, 1995). Generally, however, positive democracy frames are four
times more frequent than are negative frames. On the whole, these
results mean that public actors situate democratic values and institutions at the center of current thinking about the EU. At least in the
1990–2002 period considered in the Europub.com project, ethnic cultural traits failed to gain as much visibility in the public sphere as
democracy did. Furthermore, while 6 percent of claims display an
ethno-cultural conception of the EU articulated around the concept of
a “community of values,” there is no elite consensus on what those
values are. Often, public actors simply refer to this community of values
without further specifying what it consists of. In many other instances,
however, public actors refer to either Enlightenment or Christian
values. During the Convention debates, for instance, Christian
Democrats and leading Church representatives backed the inclusion
of a reference to Christian values in the Constitution’s preamble, by
stressing with Pope John Paul II that “Christendom’s decisive contribution to the history and culture of the different countries is part of a
common treasure and it would thus make sense to inscribe this in the
constitutional project” (Le Monde, November 8, 2002). Meanwhile,
other political actors emphasized shared human rights, democratic and
tolerance values, and attached priority to the inclusion of the Charter of
Fundamental Rights in a future EU Constitution (for example, Walter
Schwimmer in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, September 25, 2000;
Eduardo Ferro Rodrigues in Le Temps, February 12, 2000).
The de-ethnicized view of the EU described above is certainly welcome from a normative viewpoint, but it does not speak to segments of
the population who have proven unable to cope with the ethnic
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Juan Díez Medrano
diversity that surrounds them; this may undermine the EU’s legitimacy
among these segments. A shift in public discourse toward a more ethnic
cultural identity in the public sphere may be taking place, however, as a
result of 9/11, EU-enlargement from fifteen to twenty-seven members
(see Favell in this volume), and the debate over Turkey’s accession.
Byrnes and Katzenstein, for instance, discuss the increasing salience of
Europe’s religious definition (2006). Although the Europub.com data
stop in 2002 and do not allow the possibility of examining changes in
some of the old EU member-states, Poland’s data for the 2002–2004
period support this impression. In pre-accession Poland, economic
frames are certainly dominant, just as they are in the Europub.com
countries between 1990 and 2002. Contrary to what happens in the
latter, however, public debate in Poland hardly ever refers to the
European Union’s democratic values. Only 6 percent of the claims use
a democracy or citizenship frame. Ethno-cultural frames, on the other
hand, are much more frequent in Poland than in the Europub.com
countries (14.4% versus 6.1%). Indeed, the 2000–2004 Polish public
debate contains abundant references to Europe’s Christian roots, especially during the early stages of the constitutional debate. What predominates then in Poland is an ethno-religious instead of a republican
conception of Europe.
Economic and cultural conceptualizations of the EU predominate in
public debates. In addition to this, however, content analysis of claims
in the European public sphere reveals that the EU is also conceived as a
polity with specific structural and functional characteristics over which
public actors often disagree. The surrender of sovereignty, the transfer
of competences to supranational levels of government, and the subsidiarity principle are the three major traits of this polity about which
public actors seem most concerned. One in ten claims in the Europub.
com countries and 16 percent of them in Poland depict the EU in terms
of its impact on its members’ sovereignty. In Poland, ethno-cultural
conceptions of Europe often converge with concerns over sovereignty,
as when Poland’s Bishop Piotr Libera, Secretary of the Polish
Episcopate, criticized the European Parliament for pronouncing itself
on abortion, thus “interfering” with national prerogatives on the
“defense of unborn children” (Gazeta Wyborcza, March 7, 2002).
Detailed statistical analysis of the frames discussed above shows that
one can safely generalize to all actors and countries in the European
public sphere. There are certainly subtle contrasts among types of
The public sphere and the EU’s political identity
97
actors. For instance, civil society actors emphasize the political and
cultural aspects of the EU less frequently than do political actors;
British public actors perceive the EU as an economic and political club
slightly more frequently than do other European actors, thus neglecting
to discuss commonly shared values. These particular contrasts are very
small, however, and pale in comparison with the commonly shared
characterization of the EU as a market, a democracy, and a polity.
The European Union as political identity project
The data collected by the Europub.com project allow us to shift the analysis
from a global consideration of how people conceive of the EU to an
examination of the subset of frames regarding what the EU should be
and where it should lead (see Table 4.1). These conceptions most clearly
convey the broad contours of the elites’ political identity projects for
Europe and prevailing elite–civil society cleavages. A comparison between
the two columns of Table 4.1 reveals that this project, sketchy as it is,
coincides to a very large extent with the political elites’ general representations of the EU. The predominance of themes such as economic prosperity
and democracy over institutional issues like the transfer of sovereignty
reveal again that the elites’ project evolves more around economic goals
and broad politico-cultural values than around a particular political architecture for Europe, which is the subject of the EU’s paralysis. This is not the
case in Poland, however, where few frames contain normative prescriptions
regarding the future of the EU, and where most of these deal with the future
of national sovereignty and cultural diversity in Europe (five and three
frames respectively, of a total of only nine frames concerned with what the
EU should or should not be and where the EU should and should not lead).
Most relevant for this chapter’s interpretation of the EU’s crisis is the
finding that the achievement of social equality and cohesion is the
fourth most salient identity project among the Europub.com countries,
but one that is given greater priority by trade unions than by politicians.
Among the statements that enter this category of frames are references
to the structural funds, to European social rights, and to the fight
against unemployment. We heard the UK’s Minister for Europe say
that “at a time when the Left has suffered defeats in Europe, we will
continue to press for a social Europe” (The Times, September 11,
2002), or French National Assembly member Elizabeth Guigou say
that “one needs to build a social Europe that is not simply a free-trade
Table 4.1 Descriptive and projected frames about the European Union (1990,
1995, 2000, 2001, 2002), for Europub.com countries, and for Poland
(2000–2004).
Total number of
frames about EU (%)
Subset of frames about
projected EU (What the
EU should/should not be /
Where should it/should
it not lead to) (%)
Europub.com
Europub.com
countries
Poland countries
Functioning of the economy (total,
including neutral statements)
19.8
Democracy, rights, and citizenship
12.8
Sovereignty related issues
(e.g. transfer/no transfer)
10.9
Security and peace
8.8
Equality and cohesion
8.2
Strong economic and political bloc
7.3
Efficiency
6.2
Community of values
6.1
Ethnic exclusion
4.0
A bloc organized around neoliberal
and free trade principles
2.6
National identity (erosion/maintenance)
2.5
N
3654
Poland
14.5
6.0
6.0
8.1
0.0
0.0
15.7
10.8
2.4
0.0
0.0
14.4
0.0
5.6
3.2
4.9
3.0
2.6
1.2
1.1
6.0
1.2
0.0
0.0
0.0
3.6
0.0
0.0
2.4
83
1.1
1.0
3654
0.0
0.0
83
Sources: (1) Koopmans, Ruud. The Transformation of Political Mobilization and Communication in
European Public Spheres. Vth Framework Programme of the European Commission. Contract
Number HPSE-CT2000-00046.
N refers to the total number of claims by actors in the public sphere for which the presence of
frames was ascertained. Frames were coded only for claims referring to European integration, either
because the topic was European integration or because it linked European integration to issues in the
following policy fields: Education, Monetary Policy, Pensions, Agriculture, Immigration, Troop
Deployment. The table includes only the most salient frame categories. For each claim, we coded up
to a maximum of three frames. Because of this and because of the fact that the table includes only the
most frequent frames, the percentages should not add up to a hundred. The first two columns
encompass the second and, in addition, include frames as to what the European union is/is not and
leads/does not lead to.
Europub.com countries: France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, United Kingdom,
Switzerland.
(2) Data collected for Poland by the author, with the assistance of Joanna Jasiewicz (a sample of
129 newspaper articles referred to European integration from the Polish newspaper Gazeta
Wyborcza for the 2000–2004 period). N refers to the total number of claims for which the presence
of frames was ascertained. The sample includes only articles whose main topic was European
integration.
The public sphere and the EU’s political identity
99
area” (Le Monde, December 4, 2002). In even more concrete terms,
Gerhard Schröder warns in an El Mundo article against an East–West
social divide (El Mundo, December 22, 2000), and European
Parliament president Klaus Hänsch criticizes the fact that while monetary policy has been transferred to Europe, employment policy has only
been partly Europeanized, and economic policy remains anchored at the
national level (Le Figaro, December 16, 1995). Politicians are much less
prone, however, to speak for a social Europe than are trade unions.
Whereas 28% of the claims by trade unions use this frame, the overall
percentage is 4.9%. This is actually the only statistically significant
contrast between civil society’s and political actors’ European identity
projects (on this contrast, see Hooghe 2003). The fact that trade unions
often criticize politicians for making insufficient progress toward
strengthening Europe’s social dimension bears directly on the interpretation of the citizens’ opposition to the enlargement process and for
the “No” vote in the French referendum on the European Constitution
(empirical analyses of the Dutch referendum point to other explanations, such as political alienation and xenophobia). Indeed, the inconsistency that one reads in the public sphere between politicians’
proclamations in favor of a social Europe and trade unions’ frequent
criticism of the EU’s neoliberal bent may have raised skepticism and
insecurity among French working-class citizens as to the politicians’ real
motivations, moving many to vote “No” in the 2005 referendum.
Whereas politicians and trade unions differ in the extent to which they
emphasize the social dimension in their political project for Europe, contrasts among European states in this and other dimensions are minor.
Statistical analysis indicates, indeed, that the thirteen most prevalent
frames explain only about 9 percent of the variance in the country where
the frames originate. It also shows that three clusters of frames discriminate best among the frames in various countries. The first is dominated by
egalitarian/cohesion and democracy frames, the second by non-economic
frames, and the third by anti-exclusion and consumer protection frames. It
is difficult to discern clear cultural or geographical patterns in these results.
The French and Spanish public spheres, for instance, display more noneconomic frames and a greater concern with equality and cohesion than do
other countries. The lack of emphasis on these topics in Italy, however,
prevents us from speaking of a Southern European pattern. Also, the
statistical analysis reveals that Northern European states, especially the
Netherlands, are more focussed on growth and less on equality. Here,
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Juan Díez Medrano
however, Germany spoils the geographic pattern, for the frames in this
country express a triple concern for democracy, economic growth, and
social equality/cohesion. The ambiguity of the contrasts described here
thus recommends a focus on patterns observed for the entire group of
states in the sample rather than on cross-country contrasts.
The European Union’s architectural design
It should surprise nobody if citizens do not vote in EU elections and stay
home when summoned to vote on the EU Constitution. Debates in the
public sphere rarely concern key political decisions like transfers of competences, transfers of sovereignty, or even the balance among the various
pillars of the Union. Of 2,593 coded claims, only 495, or 19%, spoke to
any of these issues.4 In Poland for the period 2000–2004, the figure is
even lower, 15%, which reflects the fact that most of public debate in
this country centered on the membership negotiations. In line with an
approach that I used in my book Framing Europe (2003), I distinguish
claims about the EU’s architecture along the sovereignty and competence
transfer dimensions, to which I add a third: the degree of support for
a political Europe. This classification of constitutional models is only
adequate when characterizing public debate, where concrete projects are
seldom discussed and ideas tend to remain vague. Were one to systematically characterize the constitutional designs defended by those actually involved in building the EU, one would need a much more detailed
typology, as developed by Jachtenfuchs (2002). It is those rough and
vague ideas, however, that reach and impact on ordinary citizens, while
at the same time shaping their perceptions of the extent to which elites
listen to their preferences. As the following analysis demonstrates, public
debates on the EU’s architecture display a gap between elites and the
citizens and the divisions between the political elites on the EU’s political
identity that have led to the current institutional standoff.
Before discussing the relative preferences for various European political
projects, it is worth stressing another empirical finding: Claims related to
the architecture of the EU are almost exclusively made by political elites
and, perhaps more striking, by political elites in Germany, France, and
the United Kingdom (320 or 65% of all claims that speak to any of the
4
This analysis only includes claims whose main topic is European integration.
Therefore, the total number of claims is 2,593 and not 3,654 as in Table 4.1.
The public sphere and the EU’s political identity
101
three institutional design issues in the Europub.com countries – 60%
if we add the Polish claims). In the remaining countries, participants in
the public sphere refrain from taking active part in the “high politics”
debate over the architecture of the EU, tacitly recognizing the big three’s
leadership role. In Poland, in fact, issues such as the construction of a
political Europe or the number of competences in the EU were off the
public debate. The only issue pertaining to the EU’s architecture that was
discussed in Poland during the pre-accession years was the sovereignty
issue. Because of this finding and the fact that the Polish sample does not
cover the same years as that of the remaining six countries, the following
discussion, except when noted, refers to the Europub.com countries only.
Claimants in this sample almost unanimously favor a political Europe
(85% of the claims that address the political EU/non-political EU issue),
with Britons as the only exception (44% only). There is no information in
the claims, however, to substantiate the conclusion that support for a
political Europe means that actors in the public sphere are willing to
surrender sovereignty in foreign affairs or security issues. The content of
the Constitution for Europe itself leaves little doubt that European political
actors still see the second pillar of the EU as an intergovernmental sphere.
There is also a great deal of support for the general transfer of competences to EU institutions and, more specifically, for increases in these
competences. In only one-third of the claims addressing the EU’s competences do actors call for a reduction in their number or for strict application of the principle of subsidiarity. In most cases, debate over the EU’s
competences focusses on social issues. Whereas support is relatively high
in countries like Spain, the Netherlands, and France (100%, 80%, and
74.5%, respectively), it is relatively low in countries like Italy and the
United Kingdom (36.8% and 21.7% respectively). More significantly,
however, those advocating a social Europe are predominantly union
leaders, as I previously noted when discussing frames about European
integration. The percentage of claims that express support for a social
Europe thus drop significantly when one excludes union leaders from the
picture, even though support still trumps opposition.
Finally, public actors remain most divided with respect to the transfer
of sovereignty to EU institutions.5 They lean toward supranationalism
5
The vagueness with which public actors discuss the topic of sovereignty prevents
making subtle distinctions between absolute transfers and partial pooling of
sovereignty.
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Juan Díez Medrano
in only a slight majority of claims dealing with this issue (58%).
Spanish, German, and Dutch public actors are the most consistent
supporters of transfers of sovereignty (100%, 100%, and 75% respectively for all claims speaking to the sovereignty issue), whereas French,
Italian, Polish, and British public actors favor these transfers the least
(53.6%, 57.9%, 24%, and 17% respectively).
Since German, French, and British actors are the most vocal on issues
of institutional architecture, it is legitimate to talk of Germany and
France/UK as the two poles of this debate. Beyond this point, however,
a subtle reading of the claims involved must complement cold statistics.
The contrast between Germany and France largely concerns the question of a federal Europe. In the years that comprise this sample, German
proposals for a federal Europe (i.e. German Foreign Minister Joschka
Fischer’s speech at the European Parliament) were strongly rejected by
segments of the French political elite on the grounds that Germany was
trying to force its own political system into Europe. Opposition to a
federal Europe among French political actors mainly expresses a rejection of the specifically parliamentarian supranational structure proposed by the Germans.6 This federal structure pivots around a strong
parliament (with or without a second chamber composed of one delegate per member-state) and a strong Commission, acting as the parliament’s executive branch. Instead, the institutional model of French
political actors pivots around the Council of Ministers, where the
bulk of decisions would be reached through qualified majority voting
(this was the traditional Gaullist consensus, only recently broken by
anti-Europeans and French federalists – see Goulard 2002).
It is indeed the case that French claims concerned with the sovereignty
issue invoke more frequently the extension of qualified majority vote
than do corresponding German claims. One should thus be careful
when concluding that the French opposition to a supranational
Europe is significantly greater than the German. What French and
German elites are defending are different models of supranationalism,
anchored in their respective political traditions – presidentialist and
parliamentarian, respectively. Without taking into account the
6
The view that German political elites see Europe as an extension of their own
institutional arrangements is also discussed in Jachtenfuchs 2002, p. 286; see also
Katzenstein 1997 for a discussion of the institutional similarities between Europe’s
and Germany’s systems of governance.
The public sphere and the EU’s political identity
103
competences that French and Germans want to transfer to the European
level, or how these competences would be allocated across different
levels of government, it is problematic to attribute a greater nationalist
bias to French political actors than to Germans. For one, German
political actors have often stressed strict application of the subsidiarity
principle. Also, the German federal system is one where competences
are not allocated as strictly between the federal and the state levels as
they are in the US. Instead, competences tend to be shared, with the
federal government providing the main legislative or policy framework
and states implementing it with a great deal of autonomy. Finally, in a
critical domain such as foreign affairs and defense policy, the EU’s
second pillar, German public actors have rarely expressed a willingness
to decisively move toward qualified majority making or to the creation
of a European army. In sum, one cannot exclude the possibility that a
presidentialist approach to Europe-making in which the Council of
Ministers, adopting decisions through qualified majority voting,
might develop into a model at least as supranational in its effects as
the architecture that German political actors propose.
The description above refers to competing architectural designs for
Europe, as they appear to the citizens in the public sphere. The architectural designs proposed in actual parliamentary debate or in negotiations at meetings of the European Council may of course differ from
those outlined above. Most citizens would not know it, however, and
their views on the EU will develop mainly in dialogue with the messages
they get from the public sphere, a public sphere in which the media are
the main stage for communication. Content analysis of claims in this
public sphere allows for the distinction of various competing models for
Europe. Political identity projects are either intergovernmental or dual
supranational/intergovernmental, where the latter indicates that nowadays few political actors defend a centralized version of supranationality, in which sovereignty would be strictly divided between various
levels of government or in which the subsidiarity principle would not
reign. This second project is also dual because public actors have rarely
supported the abandonment of the intergovernmental approach in the
EU’s second and third pillars.
Of the countries examined here, the United Kingdom’s and Poland’s
projects qualify as intergovernmental (see Table 4.2). Within the dual
supranational/intergovernmental projects, we can distinguish the federal
parliamentarian one often supported in Germany, Spain, and the
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Juan Díez Medrano
Table 4.2 Publicized political identity projects in the EU (examples)
Dual supranational/intergovernmental
Federal parliamentarian Presidentialist
Non-Social* German political elites
Social
Intergovernmental
French political British political elites
elites
Polish political elites
Netherlands political
elites
Spanish public actors,
both political and civil
Trade unions in all countries
* Those which do not openly call for a social Europe in public discourse and stress
economic growth instead.
Netherlands from the presidentialist one supported by French public
actors. Finally, cutting across the distinctions between the intergovernmental and the dual supranational/intergovernmental projects, we may
distinguish between the non-social one, focussed on economic growth,
and the social one, which emphasizes equality and cohesion. In this
sample, the latter is only advocated by trade unions and by Spanish
political actors. This does not mean that political actors in other countries
oppose a social Europe; but Spain is the country where those political
actors who support a social Europe have been featured most prominently.
The classification of political identity projects above delineates
three major issues of contention that help to explain the paralysis in
today’s EU. The first concerns the limits of supranationalization. This
contentious issue pits intergovernmentalists against supporters of the
supranational/intergovernmental model. The Europub.com dataset
does not show clear trends in support for transfers of sovereignty to
the EU in the period considered here. This may be partly due to the
paucity of data points considered and to the small number of claims that
deal with institutional design in the EU. My qualitative examination of a
large number of newspaper editorials between 1990 and 1997 (Díez
Medrano 2003) suggested, however, that the debate on European
Monetary Union was the first symptom of an emerging elite split
between those still wanting a greater transfer of sovereignty to the EU
and those content with leaving things as they currently stand. I thus
demonstrated that in Britain, Germany, and Spain, conservative
The public sphere and the EU’s political identity
105
newspapers were significantly more reluctant to abandon the national
currency than were more progressive ones. Lack of or limited progress
since then in a number of issues where sovereignty cannot be shared by
different levels of governance, whether taxes or armies, suggest that the
EMU episode was not a random one. European elites are perhaps still
ready to transfer to the EU competences that can be shared between
levels of government (for example, energy policy or environment), but
they have not shown interest in the transfer of those that cannot be
shared, especially in areas like foreign policy and defense where a
majority of citizens are favorable to this transfer.
The second issue of contention in today’s EU concerns its parliamentarian or presidentialist design. Again, the Europub.com data show no
distinctive trend between 1990 and 2002. The European Constitution,
however, expressed a slight shift toward the former but stopped short of
the federal model advocated by political leaders such as Joschka
Fischer. One can easily envisage that this issue will continue to divide
France and Germany in years to come.
Finally, the third issue of contention in today’s EU concerns the neoliberal or social spirit that guides both institution-building and policy.
The Europub.com data show quite clearly that trade unions are much
more vocal than political elites in supporting the maintenance of a strong
social dimension in Europe. I would argue that this split between political
elites more concerned with gross economic performance and trade unions
still attached to the European social model reflects a broader split
between political elites and citizens, which underlies the latter’s lack of
enthusiasm for the euro, Enlargement, and the European Constitution. In
other words, I would argue that the lack of a clear commitment to the
European social model by political elites favors the channeling of frustration by Europe’s have-nots toward both national and European institutions (see Holmes in this volume). This frustration takes the form of
abstention in electoral contests or of opposition to European developments such as the euro, the Enlargement process, and the European
Constitution. The Europub.com data do not provide enough information
to test the hypotheses outlined here in a more systematic fashion.
Conclusion
Political elites like to invoke citizens when justifying their positions on
European integration, and they tend to blame them when explaining
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Juan Díez Medrano
crises in the integration process. Citizens are rarely invited to participate
in the integration process; and when they are, political elites tend to
interpret what they say with a great deal of discretion. The previous
pages have shifted attention to the political elites’ responsibility for the
constitutional crisis and relativized the role of the citizens’ degree of
identification with Europe in explanations of their diminishing faith in
the European project. The empirical analysis of debates in the public
sphere on which this chapter rests suggests that the EU’s constitutional
crisis has pivoted on a mismatch between elite consensus and citizen
divisions on its cultural and social agenda, as well as on divisions
between national political elites regarding the transfer of sovereignty
to the EU. This is probably what one should expect as the EU transforms
itself from a market into a multilevel system of governance.
This chapter demonstrates that until the latest EU-enlargement process,
there was a great degree of consensus across Europe on the conceptualization of Europe-as-polity and on the architectural features of the EU.
The EU was conceived as a political entity, as a democracy, as focussed on
economic performance, and, at least among unions, as a social and
solidarity project. Ethnic or religious issues played a much smaller role
in the definition of this political project during the 1990s and early 2000s,
although the Polish data described above suggests that Europe may be at
a crossroads, where ethno-political and republican views of Europe
increasingly conflict with each other and bring the EU to a standstill.
In a sense, this consensus is good, because it allows the EU to speak
with one voice. Problems currently faced by the EU, such as the accession of Muslim countries and the rise of far-right mobilization and
violence, can only be addressed effectively under a broad consensus
among its members. Across Europe, however, the citizens are split
regarding its cultural identity and social model. The rise of the far
right and the anti-globalization movements testify to this split. This
means that in the short run, a European political leadership that clearly
sides with one of the poles of the citizens’ preferences must pay a price,
and the price is the potential loss of legitimacy and the prospect that
some of its proposals will be defeated in referenda. In this context, the
EU leaders’ temptation to depoliticize the EU again is likely to be strong.
In fact, the way in which the constitutional crisis has been resolved,
mainly through backdoor bargains, suggests that, sad as it may be, this
is the main lesson that the EU political elite drew from the French and
Dutch “No” votes.
The public sphere and the EU’s political identity
107
The prospect of a depoliticized EU should not lead to the expectation
that further reforms will proceed smoothly. Whereas the mismatch
between the elites’ high degree of consensus on cultural and social issues
and the growing cleavages on these issues among the population risks
derailing some of the EU’s projects, dissent among national political
elites on the desirability of further transfers of sovereignty to the EU
slow down the resolution of crises and the design of the EU’s architecture. The dominant architectural design projected for Europe is dual
supranational/intergovernmental, with strong emphasis on subsidiarity, politics, and a tendency to move away from Europe’s traditional
social model. This complexity supports Katzenstein and Checkel’s criticism of simplistic polarities (nationalism/cosmopolitanism) prevailing
in the literature on European identity. In a context in which routine
politics and policy bargaining dominate public debate in the EU, both
the neoliberal/social and the federal parliamentarian/presidentialist
debates, together with the debate on Turkey’s accession, may be the
main institutional issues of contention in coming years, and the ones
whose resolution will determine the EU’s degree of legitimation.
PART II
European identity as process
5
Being European: East and West
HOLLY CASE
This essay traces events and ideas that have blurred the boundary between
supranational and national conceptions of European identity, starting
with the French Revolution and its ideological and geopolitical progeny.
The essay is organized thematically, so following a section on
“Foreground and background” are “Revolution and counter-revolution,”
“Nation and supra-nation,” and “Remembering and forgetting.”
Although the themes are paired opposites, the analysis shows how readily
the oppositional character of the words breaks down under the pressure of
historical contextualization. This notion of opposites in name only – a
perception of difference that masks a profound similarity – is one that
extends to the pair of opposites that appear in the title of this chapter;
namely “East and West.”
Modern conceptions of European identity formed during the course
of wars, revolutions, and utopian political projects that both “halves”
of Europe experienced and interpreted in very localized ways, increasingly within national historical frameworks. This evolution made for
disagreements regarding the nature of “universal” European values and
projects between “East” and “West.” But if we pull back the curtain of
false oppositions, we begin to see the outlines of a structural similarity in
the way “Europeanness” is understood. The similarity rests on the
premise that being “European” is not only compatible with being
“national,” but is a constituent element of national identity. The oppositions themselves, I argue, are thus manifestations of national elites’
desire to associate or disassociate their nation’s course with/from that of
their near or more distant neighbors in order to achieve localized,
generally “national” goals. Historically, attempts to conceptualize a
European identity are rooted in these localized – one might say
I would like to extend special thanks to the volume editors, Jeffrey Checkel and Peter
Katzenstein, as well as to my colleague at Cornell, Valerie Bunce, for their very
helpful comments and feedback on this piece.
111
112
Holly Case
“neighborhood” – experiences and initiatives which national elites cast
in universalist terms, starting with the French Revolution. Thus, when
the editors of this volume argue that Europe’s ambivalence over its sense
of community is due to politics, the statement holds for both the past as
well as the present, for historically the politics of national elites – from
Danton to Derrida, and from Kościuszko to Kaczyński – have converged around the question of what it means to be European.
Foreground and background
In early 2003, on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, Donald Rumsfeld
was asked what he made of the fact that 70 percent of Europeans were
opposed to the Iraq invasion. His answer was: “You’re thinking of
Europe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s old Europe”
(quoted in “Outrage at ‘old Europe’ remarks” 2003). With that, he
implied the existence of a “new Europe” – namely the countries of EastCentral Europe – which thought and acted differently from those of the
“old Europe,” most notably by supporting the war in Iraq.
Shortly thereafter, Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida – two wellknown European intellectuals from Germany and France respectively –
countered Rumsfeld’s neologism with one of their own: “Core” Europe.
On February 15, 2003, mass demonstrations protesting the impending
US-led war in Iraq took place in London, Rome, Madrid, Barcelona,
Berlin, and Paris. These demonstrations signaled what Habermas called
“the birth of a European public sphere.” “Europe has to throw its
weight on the scales to counterbalance the hegemonic unilateralism of
the United States,” he wrote, and in the construction of this new
European identity, the “Old Europe,” namely France and Germany,
would lead the way (Habermas and Derrida 2005, p. 6).1
There were many responses to the Habermas/Derrida idea of “Core”
Europe, among them the following from Hungarian writer Péter
Esterházy:
Once I was an Eastern European; then I was promoted to the rank of Central
European … Then a few months ago, I became a New European. But before I
had the chance to get used to this status – even before I could have refused it – I
have now become a non-core European. [W]hile I see no serious reason for
1
It should be noted that the text itself was written by Habermas and only signed
by Derrida (p. 3).
Being European: East and West
113
not translating this new division (core/non-core) with the terms “first class”
and “second-class,” still, I’d rather not speak in that habitual Eastern
European, forever insulted way. (Esterházy 2005, pp. 74–5)
Like Rumsfeld and Habermas/Derrida, writers on European identity have
often sought to make decisions for Eastern Europeans about who they are
and where they fit into the going version of “Europe.” Before the mostly
Western European Orientalists constructed “the Orient,” luminaries of the
Enlightenment had first flexed their encyclopedic zeal on the Eastern neighbors (Todorova 1997; Wolff 1994). And advocates for the region have
bemoaned the devastating effects of Western attempts to create and later
“solve” the “Eastern Question” and its successors. Partitions, buffer states,
the “cordon sanitaire,” the 14 Points, Munich, Lebensraum, the “iron
curtain,” European expansion: all bear testament to Great Powers’ attempts
to neutralize, parcel off, or make useful the so-called “lands between” of
East-Central Europe (Walters 1987, p. 117; Palmer 1970, p. 405).
But for every narrative of Great Power manipulation, there is one of
injured faith. This was a “powder keg,” an ungrateful beneficiary of
Western civilization, a territory outside Great Power jurisdiction – not
“Core Europe’s” problem, about which Neville Chamberlain opined in
September of 1938, “How horrible, fantastic it is that we should be
digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a
far away country between people of whom we know nothing”
(California University Committee on International Relations 1939,
p. 184). The 1848 revolutions met a bitter end here, the two most
devastating global conflagrations of all time began here, national selfdetermination went haywire here, the ideal of a socialist utopia was
forever tainted by what happened here, and now the most optimistic
project of the twentieth century, the European Union, is being tested
here. Marx wrote that “all great world-historic facts and personages
appear, so to speak, twice … the first time as tragedy, the second time as
farce” (Marx and De Leon 1907, p. 5). He might have been speaking of
East-Central Europe, always a step behind, always taking a good idea
and getting it all wrong, ruining it for the rest of us, so to speak.
Of course, the countries and peoples of East-Central Europe have had
their own stories about what it means to be European, no less packed
with drama and accusations. The “true” Europe is Latin Christianity, or
simply Christianity, and this region has taken countless beatings from
Eastern infidels of various stripes (Mongols, Turks, Soviets) so that
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Holly Case
“Core” Europe could sit back and enjoy the fruits of overseas trade
networks and the Industrial Revolution. States and peoples on Europe’s
Eastern periphery repeatedly sacrificed themselves on the altar of Europe,
serving as the “last bastion of Western civilization.” But they did so at the
expense of their own development, focussing on resistance above all else,
becoming proud, poor, and stubborn, while Western Europeans became
enlightened, rich, and tolerant (Berindei 1991, p. 3).2
Another version of the story goes that East-Central Europe has always
been European. It had medieval kingdoms with lavish courts, it had a
Reformation and a Renaissance, it took the French Revolution seriously,
and it shared in a “common European culture” (Kosáry 2003, p. 7) from
start to finish, even if it did not always seem like it.3 Furthermore, the
manic economic growth of Western Europe was the aberration, the
exception where East-Central Europe was the norm (Brenner 1989).
These stories may have relatively short historical pedigrees (most of
them eighteenth- and nineteenth-century creations, as in fact were ideaof-Europe stories more generally); but they also have breathtaking
geographical sweep, extending into Turkey, Ukraine, Russia,
Armenia, even Kazakhstan. In fact, throughout the past three centuries,
Russia has arguably more consistently considered itself – and been
considered – “European” than has Great Britain.4 Clearly, today’s
Russia is not as invested in the “common European home” as
Gorbachev’s USSR (or maybe just Gorbachev) was;5 but the fact that
further expansion of the European Union is still likely suggests that
2
3
4
5
A version of this narrative of self-sacrifice can be found in the pages of
J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, in which the peace-loving hobbits can
be read as English, the swift and beautiful elves as Scandinavians, and the men as
Slavs – fierce warriors who have a hard time controlling their pride and passion
and seeing the big picture (the most prominent in this regard being the character of
Boromir, who even has a Slavic-sounding name). This stereotype is replicated in
Harry Potter, with the Slavs playing the dumb but benign wizard school of
Durmstrang, whose featured characters are Viktor Krum and Igor Karkaroff. See
also Wolff, “The Rise and Fall of Morlacchismo” (2003, pp. 37–52).
This is the central premise of Czech author Milan Kundera’s famous essay “The
Tragedy of Central Europe” (Kundera 1984).
Russia played a prominent role in the Holy Alliance of the post-Napoleonic
period, whereas Great Britain sat out the alliance. Great Britain was also not part
of the interwar “Pan-Europe” project as conceptualized by Richard CoudenhoveKalergi (Coudenhove-Kalergi 1926, p. 39).
In Mikhail Gorbachev’s speech before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of
Europe on July 6, 1989, he outlined the notion of a “common home” shared by
Western Europe and the USSR together with its satellites (Council of Europe 1997).
Being European: East and West
115
European identity is but loosely tied to geography, and stories about
what it means to be European and how different states and peoples fit
(or do not fit) that mold will continue to abound both within and
beyond the boundaries of the EU.
But for the time being, the stories “Core” Europe must take most
seriously are those of the new member states of East-Central Europe, stories
of always having belonged to, protected, defended, preserved, represented
European culture and values. These stories have the tenor of gentle criticisms but were crafted as appeals: We gave life and limb for your safety and
prosperity, now how about letting us have Macedonia or Transylvania or
Volhynia or, better yet, our own state. And these appeals were competitive
between the states and nations of East-Central Europe. Hence the term
Balkanization, meaning the parcelling up of land, the most recent manifestation of which is the newly won independence of Montenegro. Such pleas
often seemed incomprehensible in their pettiness and frustrating in their
persistence to “Core” European statesmen, who forever lamented what
they perceived as the lack of transcendent ideals and insistence on particularist goals they saw in East-Central European interpretations – or perversions – of Europe’s “universalist” projects. Conflict between states in the
region was seen as counterproductive, retrograde, and typical.6 But these
tensions were also useful to the Great Powers of Europe – Croat antagonism with Hungarians was useful to Austria, Polish aspirations for recovering their state and the Little Entente were useful to France, interwar
Hungarian and Bulgarian revisionism were useful to Nazi Germany.
Overlooking or belittling the East-Central European perspective on
what it means to be European is thus not an error of snobbery alone, it
is a form of denial about the links between cause and effect and, as such, a
political move. When an international commission went to gather information on the Balkan Wars, its report spoke of how “all these countries,
not far from us … are still unlike Europe, more widely separated from her
than Europe from America.” It went on to disclose “an excess of horrors
6
George Kennan thus compared the First and Second Balkan Wars of 1912–1913
to the Wars of Yugoslav Succession of the 1990s, both typified by a variety of
nationalism “inherited … from a distant tribal past: a tendency to view the
outsider, generally, with dark suspicion, and the political-military opponent, in
particular, as a fearful and implacable enemy to be rendered harmless only by total
and unpitying destruction. And so,” he concludes, “it remains today” – nothing
for it but to watch and shake one’s head disapprovingly (International
Commission 1993, p. 11).
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that we can scarcely realize in our own systematized countries,” and
concluded with a grateful sigh that “the Great Powers are manifestly
unwilling to make war. Each one of them … has discovered the obvious
truth that the richest country has the most to lose by war, and each country
wishes for peace above all things” (International Commission 1914, pp. 3,
13, 17). The report was published in 1914, on the eve of World War I.
Efforts to slough off undesirable elements of the European experience
have allowed both “East” and “West” to remain at least partially blind
to what truly connects the two. At the core of this experience is the
slippage between universalist and particularist European utopian
visions, a confusion that is largely of late-eighteenth-century vintage.
In fact, the “Core” Europe thesis of Habermas and Derrida is itself a
product of this slippage, for the two men’s act of coming together to
make a positive political statement about Europe’s trajectory makes
sense only in the context of the “neighborhood” problem of GermanFrench historical rapprochement. Yet, in the essay, the resolution of
that interstate problem is cast as the ultimate manifestation of
“European” goals and values. Little wonder others who like to consider
themselves European are inclined to bring their own “neighborhood”
problems to bear on formulations of European identity.
Revolution and counter-revolution
Although we newcomers like to point out that we, too, have always been
Europeans, we still march to a different tempo, so to speak … and we use
words differently. (Esterházy 2005, p. 75)
In the wake of the failed 1848 revolutions in different parts of Europe –
East and West – Friedrich Engels wrote that
the “European brotherhood of peoples” will come to pass not through mere
phrases and pious wishes but only as a result of thorough revolutions and
bloody struggles; … it is not a matter of fraternization between all European
peoples underneath a republican flag, but of the alliance of revolutionary
peoples against counter-revolutionary peoples, an alliance which does not
happen on paper but on the field of battle. (Engels 1973, p. 227)
The Slavs of Russia and Austria were the “counter-revolutionaries”
who had betrayed the revolution by blocking German and Magyar revolutionaries with their narrow self-interest. “[W]e shall fight ‘an implacable life-and-death struggle’ with Slavdom, which has betrayed the
Being European: East and West
117
revolution; a war of annihilation and ruthless terrorism, not in the
interests of Germany but in the interests of the revolution!” (p. 245).
Engels’s version of the revolution was thus to be one between peoples
perhaps more than between classes, since some peoples were “revolutionary,” while others were “counter-revolutionary.”
For Engels, the Russian-born anarchist/pan-Slavist Mikhail Bakunin,
who called for a “European brotherhood of peoples,” was ignorant of
“the utterly different levels of civilization of the individual peoples and
the equally different political needs conditioned by those levels. The
word ‘freedom’ replaces all of this [for Bakunin]” (pp. 227–8). Engels
also felt uncomfortable when Bakunin employed the catch phrases of
the French Revolution: “liberty, equality, fraternity.” Uttered by a Slav,
these words sounded naive and outdated, even perverse, because they
were used to call for the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
rather than in the true spirit of the (German) revolution.
The French Revolution has always had a mixed legacy throughout
Europe. From the beginning there were strong feelings about when,
how, and whether it “went wrong” and which bits of it – the rights of
man, the Terror, the Code Napoléon – bore preservation, in what form,
and where. There is no question, however, that it reverberated well
beyond France and set the tone for revolutionary activity in Europe and
beyond. Its reverberations in East-Central Europe were myriad, but
consistently powerful. In the northeast it meant the partial resurrection
of the Polish state, for anachronistic “Illyria” it meant elementary
education in the Slovene and Croatian languages, for Hungary it was
a model on which they would in part base their own 1848 revolution.
The French revolutionary slogan of “liberty, equality, fraternity” was
picked up by anarchists, nationalists, and romantic poets as a motto for
everything from socialism to pan-Slavism (Petőfi 1974; Bakunin 1971;
Levine 1914). Italian nationalist Giuseppe Mazzini used the phrase as a
cornerstone of his 1834 “Pact of Fraternity of Young Europe,” among the
first efforts at conceptualizing a European project by uniting the nationalist
elites of different peoples working toward national independence and unification (Mazzini 1872, pp. 151–91). Furthermore, myriad groups sought
to establish themselves as the torch-bearers of the ongoing revolution.7
7
Leader of the 1848 Hungarian revolution, Lajos Kossuth, said in a speech to the
US Congress in 1852 that “every disappointed hope with which Europe looked
toward France is a degree more added to the importance of Hungary to the world”
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But the Revolution was paradox-ridden from the beginning: how
could something so French also be universal? If entire groups demand
liberty for themselves, what becomes of equality and fraternity? (If the
Hungarians are having a revolution to throw off Austrian rule, and at
the same time the Romanians in Hungary are having a revolution to
throw off Hungarian rule, does that make the Romanians counterrevolutionary? Or if the Polish nobility rises up to throw off
Habsburg rule, and the Polish peasantry rises up to protest the oppression of the Polish nobility, who is the “true” revolutionary?) All of this
related to the question of whether the “rights of man” could be
expanded meaningfully to nations. Did a nation (nationality) have the
same rights as an individual, to “liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression”?8 And if so, which had trump status, the individual
or the nation? This conundrum seemed to take two divergent paths into
the twentieth century – pitting “democracy” against “fascism” or
“totalitarianism.” In the former, the individual forms the main unit of
consideration for rights, in the latter the nation or state. Herein lies the
tension between what Castiglione (this volume) terms the liberal and
communitarian models for citizenship as “citizenship-as-rights” and
“citizenship-as-belonging,” respectively.
Revolution is at the core of both branches. Fascism, communism, and
liberalism all share a utopian strain,9 and responses to them also sought
to mimic their revolutionary components.10 Hence the distinction
between revolution and counter-revolution was never an easy one to
make, which is perhaps why Germans have a fuzzy collective memory of
the 1918–1919 revolutions across Germany and why Hungarians
8
9
10
(de Puy 1852, p. 396). Bakunin wrote to his “brother Slavs” that “the eyes of all
are fixed upon you with breathless anxiety. What you decide will determine the
realization of the hopes and destinies of the world – to arrive soon or to drift away
to a remote and uncertain future” (Bakunin 1971).
See Article 2 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man (1789). It is worth noting
that Article 3 outlines how “The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in
the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not
proceed directly from the nation.”
This phenomenon was brilliantly described in the doctoral thesis of the young
poet/historian Peter Viereck (1941).
Slovene-American writer and political thinker Louis Adamic tapped the
wellspring of revolution-as-reaction when, in 1941, he called for an Americanstyle revolution to take place in Europe to counter the forces of Nazism and
fascism. He wrote, “We must never forget that revolution in Europe means
revolution against the misleaders of the past, who made Hitler’s road easy, as well
as revolution against Hitler” (Adamic 1941, p. 259).
Being European: East and West
119
literally buried the Hungarian revolution of 1919.11 The Cold War,
despite ushering in an era of ideological witch-hunts, did little to clarify
the ambiguity between revolution and reaction. In 1956, for example,
following Nikita Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” – in which he
denounced Stalinism as overly harsh and called for a new course –
Poles initiated strikes and demonstrations, calling for the creation of
workers’ councils. The councils were later allowed to convene following
a tense standoff with the Soviet leadership, but thereafter they were
slowly stripped of their power and then eliminated completely. In
solidarity with the Poles, many Hungarians demonstrated, calling for
a reform communist, Imre Nagy, to resume leadership of the
Communist Party. The concession was granted, but when state security
forces fired on demonstrators, the demonstrators started to fire back.
Within a short time, Soviet tanks came in to put down the uprising – or
was it a revolution? The post-1956 communist regime in Hungary
called the events a “counter-revolution,” since the “real” revolution
had been initiated by the Bolsheviks and had served as the model for
state socialism in Hungary and other countries in the Eastern Bloc. To
the West and many of those who participated directly in those events,
what took place that autumn was a revolution, and its participants
were freedom fighters drawing on the ideals of the French Revolution
and 1848. The year 1956 also posed a problem in “Core” Europe for
socialists, who were forced to recognize that not every deed undertaken
in the name of socialism matched the platonic ideal.12 They scoured
the Left for a “nouvelle alternative,” a “third way” out of the problem
that East-Central Europe represented for the European Left.13 Their
vanguardism was not without condescension toward dissidents living in
the region, seen by the Western leftists as “opposed to the very idea of
socialism” and therefore suspect (Kenney 2002, p. 93).
11
12
13
On memory of the 1919 revolution in Hungary, see Rev (2005, ch. 3).
See, for example, Italian Communist Party Secretary Palmiro Togliatti’s telegram
from October 30, 1956, in which he declares that “Hungarian events have
created a heavy situation inside the Italian labor movement, and in our Party,
too” (“Togliatti on Nagy,” p. 357).
The French journal La Nouvelle Alternative, for example, was founded in 1986 in
part to support “third-way” movements like Polish Solidarity. That objective is
echoed, however faintly, in the present mission of the journal Présentation
(2007).
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It was clear that many of the dissidents had their own ideas about
revolution. In 1989, a youngster named Viktor Orbán gave a speech on
the occasion of the reburial of Imre Nagy, who had been executed in
1958 for his role in the Hungarian “counter-revolution” of 1956. In the
speech, Orbán linked 1848 to 1956 to 1989, calling the latter the
fulfillment of “the will of the revolution” (Orbán 1989, p. 26). In
2006, the legacy of 1956 was hotly contested in a Hungary now
governed by a socialist coalition. Was the revolution of 1956 a leftist/
liberal revolution? Or was it a national one? The question applied as
much to 1848 and 1989 as to 1956. Demonstrators led by Orbán, by
then former prime minister and leader of Hungary’s conservative
opposition, packed the square in front of the Hungarian parliament
building for weeks. During a protestors’ raid on the television building,
participants took down the EU flag, mimicking the removal of the
communist red star from buildings during the 1956 events. Was the
EU just one more foreign oppressor – like Austria in 1848, or the Soviet
Union in 1956? Or would the youngsters who lobbed Molotov cocktails at tanks and security police in 1956 perhaps now be termed
“terrorists” (a term that was in fact used at the time by some communist
commentators)?14
Since the French Revolution, revolutionary activity lies close to the
heart of what is considered “European”; yet there is nothing like a
consensus regarding what counts as revolutionary and what is good
and bad about revolutions.
Nation and supra-nation
In the competition of new ideas about the new European self-consciousness, I
have the odd feeling that we wanted a new giant national state, feelings of
identity, a common enemy, and, instead of national character traits,
Euronational character traits. (Esterházy 2005, p. 78)
World War I made many people wonder what being a European meant
in its aftermath. The works of Virginia Woolf, Siegfried Sassoon,
Robert Graves, Erich Maria Remarque, and Paul Valéry all said
“Good-bye to All That,” to the way things were before the war; a recent
14
Hungarian communists referred to the “terror” perpetrated by the
“counterrevolutionaries” of 1956. See Granville (2004, p. 87).
Being European: East and West
121
French novel/film proposes that the hero being shell-shocked into complete amnesia is the only possible happy ending to a story about World
War I.15 Paul Valéry wrote in 1919 that during the war, Europe “felt in
every nucleus of her mind that she was no longer the same, that she was
no longer herself, that she was about to lose consciousness” (Valéry
1919). History seemed to have run its course, and Europeans were
strumming the lyre to their own demise.
But new voices sprang up to counter the pessimism hanging over the
continent, among them that of Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi. His 1923
book called for the creation of a Pan-Europe, or “self-help through the
consolidation of Europe into an ad hoc politico-economic federation”
that would stretch from France to the border with the USSR, from
Sweden to Africa, restoring Europe to her former glory as a world
player and a truly Great Power (Coudenhove-Kalergi 1926, p. xv).
Coudenhove-Kalergi agreed with those like Valéry for whom “the
World War destroyed the bridges leading to the past, and [e]very man
who goes across them will fall into the abyss,” but optimistically concluded that “the only way to safety, the way upwards and forwards, is
the steep way to Pan-Europe” (p. 211).
Ideas about European unity have nevertheless tended to come at awkward times for East-Central Europe. It is true that Mazzini’s nineteenthcentury “Young Europe” had a Polish chapter, and some elites from the
Little Entente states found Coudenhove-Kalergi’s ideas attractive. Yet
while World War I had been devastating for many in the region, it had
not resulted in the loss of empires or a humbling of national hubris – quite
the reverse. In 1915, the soon-to-be president of the new state of
Czechoslovakia, Tomas Masaryk, declared in a memorandum for the
British government that the aim of the war was the “regeneration of
Europe” (Masaryk 1915, p. 117). This idea, espoused earlier by a number of British statesmen and diplomats, later informed the tone of the
postwar treaty conferences. In the wake of World War I, a “New
Europe” was born, one that was supposed to correct the injustices of
the old by breaking up empires (most notably that “prison of nations,”
the Dual Monarchy/Austria-Hungary) and allowing for the selfdetermination of peoples. New states appeared – or in the case of
Poland, reappeared – on the map, and old ones were resized or reshaped.
15
The film is A Very Long Engagement, directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and released
in 2004. It is based on a 1993 novel of the same title by Sebastien Japrisot.
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Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, and
Albania replaced the sprawling Habsburg Empire and created a land
wedge between Germany and the Soviet Union.
Thus the interwar period was one of trying to make new states work,
rather than about joining another European empire (espoused by an
Austrian, no less, in the person of Coudenhove-Kalergi). For although
Coudenhove-Kalergi saw the seed of Pan-Europe in the Little Entente
and argued that in a new Pan-Europe “the greatest advantage would be
enjoyed by the states of eastern Europe” (Coudenhove-Kalergi 1926,
pp. 128–9, 177), his movement posed little threat to the nation-state
during the interwar period. For one thing, the advocates of “PanEurope” still felt that “every nation is a sanctuary – as the hearth and
home of culture, as the point of crystallization for morality and progress.” Thus, “Pan-Europe” would arise out of the “deepening and
broadening of national cultures,” rather than their negation (p. 161).
Coudenhove-Kalergi himself perceived interwar Europe as “twenty-six
human beings [living] within a narrow space,” thereby conflating
nations with individuals such that Pan-Europe could only be conceptualized as a conglomeration of discrete national units (p. 105).
Furthermore, political union was a pipe dream in a Europe where
fascism and Nazism – the other ways to make Great Powers out of
insecure or devastated states – were prevailing over liberal nationalism
and beached democracy. Fascism revived the question of the primacy of
the individual vs. the primacy of the nation/state, strongly favoring the
latter.16 Making the move to a United States of Europe, by contrast, was
not so high on the list of priorities at that point. In the words of one
Bulgarian professor writing in 1937, “every nation must concern itself
with its own preservation, because if it does not, no one else will”
(Genov et al. 1941a, p. 9).17
This is not to suggest that supranationalism disappeared during the
dark years of World War II. On the contrary, Hitler had a supranational
vision of a New European Order (Martin 2006). Furthermore, that vision
16
17
In Mussolini’s 1932 “The Doctrine of Fascism,” he writes, “Anti-individualistic,
the Fascist conception of life stresses the importance of the State and accepts
the individual only in so far as his interests coincide with those of the State.”
See Mussolini (1935).
This quote was taken from the program of the All-Bulgarian Union, established
in 1937.
Being European: East and West
123
had its advocates in all parts of the continent, from France to Romania:
individuals who imagined the future of their state in a Europe reordered
by Nazi Germany.18 In 1941, for example, Georgi Genov, the same
Bulgarian professor who declared that the golden rule of European
diplomacy should be every nation for itself, wrote of the interwar period
that, “the idea … of a so called Pan-Europe, that [Europe] should
turn into a single federation, stressing the solidarity of European
nations [is] precisely what Germany is calling for today” (Genov
1941b, pp. 7–8).
Indeed, World War II had many Europeans – most notably Hitler and
his allies – talking again about a “new” Europe, one that would correct
the injustices of the interwar period. Hitler’s New European Order was
itself to be a kind of “Pan-Europe” with a decidedly German “Core.”
Nevertheless, it maintained a fierce dedication to the principle of selfdetermination (for Germany), minority rights (for Germans), and
European unity (under Germany), usurping the role the League of
Nations had so ineptly played. In so doing, it won a following among
the states and sub-states whose “revolutions” had proven incomplete.
Slovaks stuck in a state with Czechs were given their own state,
Ukrainians stuck with Poles, and Croats stuck with Serbs were similarly
let loose, and Bulgaria and Hungary were allowed to stretch their borders
back to correct some of the over-self-determination of the post-World
War I treaties. There was great excitement about the New European
Order in these places, and much projection as to what it should look like.
Hence, it is not even the case that World War II was two conceptions of
Europe battling for preeminence – instead, some on Hitler’s side had
much in common with their counterparts on the Allied side and vice versa
(was there widespread anti-Semitism in Allied countries? Yes. Was there
concern with minority rights among Hitler’s allies? Yes.) This problem is
most starkly evident from Allied attempts to formulate concrete war aims
rhetorically distinct from Germany’s, much of which comes through in
the pages of the journal New Europe of the time. In July of 1941, Felix
Gross argued in its pages that “Just as Nazism prepared for the occupation from the ideological standpoint, so must we prepare for the moment
of deliverance by creating ideological conditions for the dynamic
18
My unpublished manuscript focusses on how Hungarian and Romanian leaders
and spokespersons projected Hungary and Romania into the “New European
Order” during the war (Case, forthcoming).
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Holly Case
self-expression of the masses in Europe: an ideological dynamism.” In
October of that year, John Wheeler-Bennett openly wondered, “What
have we to offer as an alternative” to the Nazi “New Order”? Answering,
“Frankly we cannot offer any blueprint … Through the gloom of battle
and suffering – we grope toward the dawn” (Gross 1941, p. 202;
Wheeler-Bennett 1941, p. 278).19
In East-Central European states allied with the Axis, there was much
talk about “becoming more national” so we could be “more
European.”20 There was also speculation as to who would best represent
the interests of the New Order and whose dreams would be realized,
mimicking the revolutionary vanguardism of the previous century. These
discussions took place during the war but looked toward the peace,
trading loyalty to the Axis and sacrifices for the Axis war effort for
promises (even half-promises) of securing Transylvania, Macedonia,
Bessarabia, or an independent Croatia or Slovakia; again the concern
for territory and preoccupation with local squabbles, again the desire to
merge only so as to make a cleaner, fairer cut in the end. While Europe
was supposedly engaged in an ideological struggle of titanic proportions,
while the modern welfare state was being born, while “Core” Europe was
learning a lesson the hard way about isolationism and national chauvinism (again), while Bolshevism was getting a second wind, it may seem
that all the states of East-Central Europe could think about was advancing the legitimacy of their national/territorial claims.
But, arguably, even “Core” European identity was driven by quite
national identity crises.21 Just after the war had ended, in 1946,
19
20
21
A similar idea is expressed in a 1941 book by Louis Adamic in which he laments that
“Since Hitler there haven’t been any new ideas in Europe worth mentioning … there
is as yet no idea beyond hatred of Hitler with which to challenge his ‘New Order’”
(Adamic 1941, p. 257); second half of quote found in (“Books,” p. 336).
In a December 1941 speech, Hungarian prime minister László Bárdossy declared
that, in order to become part of the new European order, Hungarians had to
“emphasize their national uniqueness” (Ellenzék 1941, pp. 1–2). See also
Zathureczky (1943, pp. 7–8). For a comparable Romanian assertion, see
Porunca Vremii (1942).
In his book The European Rescue of the Nation-state, the first edition of which
was published in 1992, Alan Milward sought to debunk the long-held
assumption “that [the European Community] is in antithesis to the nation-state.”
He argued convincingly that “The European Community only evolved
[post-1945] as an aspect of … national reassertion and without it the reassertion
might well have proved impossible. To supersede the nation-state would be to
destroy the Community” (Milward 1992, pp. 2–3).
Being European: East and West
125
Churchill called for European unity, while almost simultaneously
dropping the Iron Curtain between “Eastern” and “Western” Europe
(Churchill 1996, p. 46).22 “Core” Europe emerged battered and worn,
but ready to forget and eager to be supranational, cosmopolitan, and
universalist – building again on one of the French Revolutionary legacies. At the root of the optimism and supranationalism of the postwar
period, however, was the subtextual goal of “taming” Germany. Nor was
postwar supranationalism necessarily cosmopolitan: in the 1960s Charles
de Gaulle created a model for a Europe d’États, wherein the national
interest would prevail over the “European” and France would lead the
way for Europe. In a speech on April 19, 1963, he said:
[I]f the union of Western Europe … is a capital aim in our action outside, we
have no desire to be dissolved within it. Any system that would consist of
handing over our sovereignty to august international assemblies would be
incompatible with the rights and the duties of the French Republic. [I]t appears
essential to us that Europe be Europe and that France be France … our chief
duty is to be strong and to be ourselves. (de Gaulle 1965, pp. 225–6)23
In his essay for this volume, Hartmut Kaelble notes that “the long
history of debate by Europeans does not lead in a straight line to the
modern, liberal identification with Europe.” Similarly, Dario
Castiglione points to the coexistent strains of cosmopolitan and communitarian ideas that – consciously or not – form the core of contemporary European political identity. Thus “Euroenthusiasm” and
nationalism are not necessarily, or even commonly, manifest as polar
opposites. Individuals like de Gaulle and Orbán have therefore viewed a
united Europe as desirable, but not a trump to the national interest;
rather, a constituent part of that interest.
22
23
For Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech, see Churchill (1995, pp. 298–302).
In a speech from May 31, 1960, de Gaulle declared that France desired to
contribute to building Western Europe into a political, economic, cultural and
human group, organized for action, progress and defense … the nations which
are becoming associated must not cease to be themselves, and the path to be
followed must be that of organized cooperation between States, while waiting
to achieve, perhaps, an imposing confederation. But France, as far as she
is concerned, has recognized the necessity of this Western Europe … which
appears today as the indispensable condition of the equilibrium of the world.
(de Gaulle 1965, p. 78)
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Joining the European Union thus was and is often celebrated by EastCentral European politicians and commentators as a return to an important national project begun in the interwar and/or wartime periods that
was aborted by the communist takeover. After 1989, again, as with
Hitler’s New European Order, there was talk of “building up our
national character” so as to be “more European.” In a Hungarian
political commentary from 1990, the author declared, “we can only
truly be Europeans if we are good Hungarians … thus with the strengthening of our national essence we must knock on the doors of Europe so
that we can get back in after a forty-year detour” (Magyar Nemzet 1990,
p. 6).24 The notion is echoed almost verbatim by Habermas and Derrida
in their “Core Europe” piece, when they suggest that in Europe “The
population must so to speak ‘build up’ their national identities, and add
to them a European dimension” (Habermas and Derrida 2005, p. 6).
Remembering and forgetting
There was no 1968 here; there was no student movement and no reappraisal
of the past. (Esterházy 2005, p. 75)
Tony Judt has argued in his recent history of Europe after 1945 that
“Europe was able to rebuild itself politically and economically only by
forgetting the past, but it was able to define itself morally and culturally
only by remembering it” (quoted in Menand 2005, p. 168). Although
the Europe Judt speaks of is again mostly “Core” Europe, East and
West have much in common when it comes to the Cold War habit of
selective memory and strategic forgetfulness.
The most notable convergence of selective memory was of wartime
resistance, which both “halves” of Europe clung to in one form or
another. The two extreme examples are France and Yugoslavia,
where resistance to Nazism during the war was given cult status, and
the heroes of the resistance became the postwar presidents of both
countries, Charles de Gaulle and Josip Broz Tito. But other states, too,
nursed their wounds with pride, most notably Italy and Slovakia with
tales of belated self-liberation. Then there were the proud sufferers –
Poland and Belgium, modern vanguard in the European hierarchy of
undeserved obliteration.
24
There were also more discussions about why “we” should be in and “they” should
be out. See, for example “Németh…” (2004); Adevărul Cluj (1995, pp. 1, 4).
Being European: East and West
127
But heroes and victims alike were problematized, mostly following
1989, when the two Europes were forced to recognize that the new Cold
War clothes that they had worn over their World War II pasts proved
invisible. The perfect Polish victim became the anti-Semitic Jew killer.
The Croat partisan became the man who welcomed the Nazi troops as
they entered Zagreb. The evil Nazi perpetrator became the volksdeutsche victim of violence, internment, fire-bombing, and expulsion.
The French national hero became a dictator who held the country back
and down.
The problematic victim haunted postwar Europe. For the USSR and
East-Central Europe, this meant the Jews, as privileged victims of Nazi
and fascist violence when fascism was supposed to victimize everyone
equally. Coming to terms with the extent to which the Holocaust was
about killing Jews, rather than about fascists victimizing everyone, has
proven a difficult challenge. It is inextricably tied to issues of collaboration and the wartime suffering of the population, most notably at
the hands of the “liberating” Red Army soldiers, to whom countless
statues and monuments were erected and who were regularly – if often
insincerely – honored after the war. Rape, theft, expropriation, and
expulsion are all components of that history (Polcz 2002, pp. 90–110;
Temkin 1998, pp. 199–203).
Similarly difficult for “Core” Europe have been discussions around
German suffering during the fire-bombings, forced expulsions, rape,
and other abuses that took place late in the war or shortly thereafter.
German novelist Günter Grass has placed grim episodes of German
suffering at the epicenter of his literary work.25 More recently, Grass
has highlighted another area of memory and forgetting where East and
West match neatly – specifically in dealing with the unsavory legacies of
collaboration – when he admitted that he had joined the Waffen SS as a
youth.26 Germany’s “unmasterable past”27 renders it difficult to speak
of German suffering without mention of German culpability and
25
26
27
Most notably in his novel Crabwalk, about the sinking of the Wilhelm
Gustloff on January 30, 1945, carrying many refugees fleeing the advance of the
Red Army (Grass 2002).
Nathan Thornburgh, “Günter Grass’s Silence,” Time, Monday, August 14,
2006, www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1226380,00.html (accessed
March 16, 2007).
This is a reference to a book by Charles Maier dealing with the memory of
World War II and the Holocaust in Germany (Maier 1988).
128
Holly Case
collaboration. Such concerns reverberate in the states of East-Central
Europe, as well, during the struggle to determine what aspects of their
communist and World War II past should be spotlighted. Lustration
laws in various countries, attempts at rapprochement with the past,
have not diminished the drama of an opportunistic “outing” of former
secret service informers. And in Poland (as in Turkey), there is a new law
in place forbidding anyone to claim the Poles had any responsibility for
Nazi or Soviet crimes.28
There was also another kind of forgetting the two halves of Europe
shared, a forgetting induced by the magic of consumerism. Robert
Paxton writes of a “New Europe” that emerged in the 1950s and
1960s in the West, one focussed on consumerism that would steer
discussions away from difficult questions about the past (Paxton
2005, pp. 557–67). This was the time when Europe became a tourist
destination for Americans who wanted to ski in the Alps, buy Italian
leather and French perfume, and try their luck at Monte Carlo.29 It was
the Europe of James Bond, where history was decoupled from the
present and served at best as a scenic backdrop for a car chase.
The 1960s were also the time when East-Central Europe was “bought”
in exchange for forgetting the past, specifically the Stalinist, 1956, and
later 1968 past. Kádár gave Hungary “goulash communism” in
exchange for silence on the matter of the 1956 “counterrevolution.”
Czechoslovak and Yugoslav communists maintained power by providing
consumer goods and offering market concessions, the ability to travel and
buy a weekend house in the country or by the sea. This was the era that
East-Central European intellectuals like Czesław Miłosz and Václav
Havel felt brought East and West closer together into a modern malaise
of consumerism and the lies it concealed.30 The “buy-off” also produced
generation gaps between those who benefited from it, and their children
28
29
30
This law is Article 132a of the new Polish lustration law introduced in
December of 2006 (Ustawa 2006). The corresponding Turkish legislation is
Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code, which took effect on June 1, 2005
(Türk Ceza Kanunu 2004).
This is a reference to a 1970s board game created by the American Express
company called “Money Card,” which sets as its object precisely the acquisition
of these consumer goods in the context of travel to Europe.
Miłosz wrote that when the state “will supply its citizens with refrigerators and
automobiles, with white bread and a handsome ration of butter, [m]aybe then, at
last, they will be satisfied. Why won’t the question work out as it should, when
every step is logical? … What the devil does a man need?” (Miłosz 1990, p. 24).
Being European: East and West
129
and grandchildren to whom the bill was presented when the system could
no longer sustain itself. In the caustic 1996 film Pretty Village, Pretty
Flame on the Wars of Yugoslav Succession, Serbian director Srđan
Dragojević includes a wrenching scene wherein a young Serbian militiaman stands up to his ex-partisan commander while both are trapped in a
tunnel called “Brotherhood and Unity.” The younger man asks the
rhetorical question why it is so easy for Muslim, Croat, and Serb militias
to burn down one another’s houses – houses that had been built on
borrowed money and inhabited on borrowed time.
In addition to the postwar buy-off, the long history of emigration,
displacement, expulsion, labor migration – in short, of movement – is
another aspect of especially the twentieth-century European experience
shared by East and West. The memory of this movement was and
remains highly politicized. The Holocaust, the expulsion of eleven
million Germans from East-Central Europe, the population exchanges,
the Gastarbeiter of the 1970s and after, and the refugees of the Wars of
Yugoslav Succession all form a part of this genealogy of mass population displacement, as highlighted in the contribution (this volume) of
Adrian Favell.
Conclusion
Following World War I, World War II, and 1989, when the reinvention
of European identity was a top-priority issue, Europeanness was conceptualized not so much around what had worked, but as an evasion of
what had not worked. National chauvinism, state socialism, Nazism –
the list of failed “European” projects has grown over time, and it has
become increasingly difficult to navigate the narrowing straits of viable
alternatives.
Yet many aspects of self-identification that emerged from these
“failed” models remain common among “Europeans,” both East and
West. There is, after all, a fine line between national chauvinism and the
“building up” of national identities espoused by Habermas and
Václav Havel wrote, “It would appear that the traditional parliamentary
democracies can offer no fundamental opposition to the automatism of
technological civilization and the industrial-consumer society, for they, too, are
being dragged helplessly along by it. People are being manipulated in ways that
are infinitely more subtle and refined than the brutal methods used in the posttotalitarian societies.” See Havel and Vladislav (1986, pp. 115–16).
130
Holly Case
Derrida. And the problem of relinquishing sovereignty that has doomed
previous efforts to define and enforce Europeanness – in the form of the
League of Nations system or Hitler’s “New European Order” – now has
a contemporary corollary: today’s Europe allows for an expansion of
states’ effective influence and reach within the European Union. This
means that states can feel bigger as part of a united Europe, can believe
that they are achieving national unification, even a form of territorial
expansion, by joining the EU; and many do feel that way.31
There is a broad consensus – both within and outside East-Central
Europe – that integration and Europeanization are things that EastCentral European states must do, implying that there is an already
existing static entity called “Europe” that can be joined by assimilating
to its ideals. But as discussed here and elsewhere in this volume, notions
of what it means to be European have themselves been informed by
localized and national experiences and struggles, for so-called “Core”
European countries and peoples as much as for their East-Central
European counterparts. Furthermore, a crisis of legitimacy looms
among “old” EU member states as it becomes increasingly clear that
elite European institutions neither attract the interest nor share the
views of the majority of the population.32 Just as European institutions
are seeking to correct for this imbalance, a new group of countries has
joined the EU. Thus, although change appears to be coming from many
directions, conceptions of European identity will likely continue to be
rooted in “neighborhood” problems and their resolution. The crucial
difference is that there are now many more “neighborhoods” officially
involved in the process.
Certain events, like February 15, 2003, but also 1968, highlight the
localized and politicized nature of seemingly Europe-wide phenomena.
One need only compare the slogans and graffiti of the demonstrators in
Paris and Prague from forty years ago to glean what dissimilar universes
the two groups inhabited and what disparate forces they opposed, despite
31
32
Hungary’s so-called “Renewed Nation Policy,” as espoused by the country’s
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, further states that “Our diplomatic strategy is
focussed on the reunification of the Hungarian nation in the framework of the
European Union” (“Hungary’s Renewed Nation Policy”). On a number of
occasions in 2006, Romania’s current president, Traian Băsescu, called for a
similar reunification of Romania with Moldova. See “Muddled Amity.”
See, for example, the contributions of Helmut Kaelble and Juan Díez Medrano to
this volume, as well as the introduction by Jeffrey Checkel and Peter Katzenstein.
Being European: East and West
131
occupying corners of the same Zeitgeist (“Civilian Resistance …” 2007;
Bureau of Public Secrets 1968; Vaculik 1968). The fallout of the
Habermas/Derrida “Core” Europe essay reveals comparable divergences
of opinion around the significance of February 15. Interpretations of
these events are therefore rooted in politics that seek, reproduce,
create, and propagate views of universality with particular – often
very localized, or “national” – goals in mind. These goals are then
cast in broadly “European” or otherwise universalizing terms that
obscure the politicized nature and localized, “national” origins of
European identity projects.
False oppositions, between cosmopolitan and communitarian,
between top-down and bottom-up, between nation and supranation,
are part of what many essays in this volume seek to undermine or refine.
My own contribution has endeavored to complicate the false opposition
between “East” and “West” by pointing to structural similarities in the
way European identity has been formulated by invested national elites
in both “halves” of Europe. In 1996, (formerly East) German writer
Christa Wolf published a novel entitled Medea: Stimmen [Medea:
Voices]. The work revisits the epic tale of Jason and Medea, evoking
parallels with the relationship between West and East Germany following reunification. At the core of the narrative is a pair of crimes: the
murder of two innocent children, heirs to the thrones of Corinth and
Colchis. Using backhanded means, the two sides accuse each other of
the crimes they themselves committed in an effort to mask the profound
similarity between them. As only good fiction can, Wolf captures the
tragedy of willful misunderstanding that defines the relationship
between East and West.33
33
Similar to her West German counterpart, Günter Grass, who joined the SS as a
youth, in the 1990s it was revealed that Wolf worked for a short time as an
informer for the Stasi.
6
Who are the Europeans and how
does this matter for politics?
NEIL FLIGSTEIN
The European Union has produced a remarkable set of agreements to
guide the political interactions of countries across Europe in the past
fifty years. These agreements have produced collective rules governing
market transactions of all varieties, created a single currency, established a rule of law that includes a European court, and promoted
increased interactions for people who live within the boundaries of
Europe. Moreover, the EU has expanded from six to twenty-seven
countries. The endpoint of the EU has been left intentionally vague
and can be encapsulated by the ambiguous phrase “toward an ever
closer union.”
Much of the political criticism of the EU has focussed on the lack of
transparency in its procedures and in its accountability to a larger democratic public (Baun 1996; Dinan 2002; McCormick 2002). Many of
Europe’s citizens have little knowledge about the workings of the EU
(Gabel 1998). This lack of “connectedness” to the EU by ordinary
citizens has caused scholars to try to understand why a European identity
(equivalent to a “national” identity), a European “civil society,” and a
European politics have been so slow to emerge (Laffan et al. 2000). The
main focus of these efforts is why, after fifty years of the integration
project, there is so little evidence of public attitudes that reflect more
feelings of solidarity across Europe. Even among those who work in
Brussels, there are mixed feelings about being European (Hooghe 2005;
Beyer 2005).
I argue that the literature has so far failed to understand how it is that
some people across Europe are likely to adopt a European identity and
I would like to thank Svein Andersen, Jeff Checkel, Peter Katzenstein, Thomas
Risse, and Ulf Sverdrup for comments. I would also like to thank the rest of the
authors of this book, who participated in discussions of this paper at two separate
meetings.
132
Who are the Europeans?
133
some are not. I propose that the main source of such an identity is the
opportunity to positively interact on a regular basis with people from
other European countries with whom one has a basis for solidarity.
Since this opportunity is restricted to a certain part of the population, it
follows that not everyone in Europe is likely to adopt a European
identity. Moreover, those who have this opportunity tend to be the
most privileged strata of society: managers, professionals, white-collar
workers, educated people, and young people. This chapter provides
evidence that it is precisely these groups who tend to think of themselves
as Europeans, speak second languages, report having traveled to
another member state in the past twelve months, and have joined
European-wide organizations.
This unevenness of interaction with others in Europe has produced a
counter effect. Those who have not benefited from travel and from the
psychic and financial rewards of learning about and interacting with
people from other countries have been less favorable toward the
European project (see Holmes 2000 for a discussion of how some of
these people have viewed what it means to be a “European” through the
“Le Pen effect”). I will show that substantial numbers of people in
Europe sometimes think of themselves as Europeans; but there remains
a large group, somewhere around 45 percent, who are wedded to their
national identity. This suggests several key dynamics for politics.
First, national political parties have responded to the pro-European
position of middle- and upper-middle-class citizens by opting for a proEuropean platform over time. I show that center-left/center-right parties
in England, France, and Germany have all converged on a proEuropean political agenda. This reflects their desire to avoid alienating
core groups for whom European integration has been a good thing. In
this way, the “Europeans” (that is, middle- and upper-middle-class
people in each of the member states) have had an important effect on
national politics. But parties on the far Left and far Right are full of
people for whom Europe has not been a good thing. Right-wing parties
worry about Europe undermining the nation, and they thrive on nationalist sentiment. Left-wing parties view the economic integration
wrought by the single market as globalization and hence a capitalist
plot to undermine the welfare state.
Second, the way in which particular political issues have played out
across Europe depends on how the “situational Europeans” (that is,
those who sometimes think of themselves as Europeans) come to favor
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Neil Fligstein
or not favor a European solution to a particular political problem.
Frequently, such groups examine these issues from the point of view
of their own interest and that of the nation. They pressure their governments to respond to their interests and to undermine a broader possibility for European cooperation. But if those who sometimes think of
themselves as Europeans recognize that a particular political issue
should be resolved at the European level, they will support more
European cooperation.
The chapter has the following structure. First, I consider the issue of
how to think about European identity. I suggest a set of hypotheses
about who are most likely to think of themselves as Europeans. Next,
I provide data that are consistent with the hypotheses. I then show how
the main political parties in the largest countries have sought out these
voters by taking pro-European positions. In the conclusion, I discuss the
issue of the “shallowness” of European identity and the problem this
presents for the EU going forward.
Theoretical considerations
European economic integration has been good for jobs and employment across Europe. It has changed the patterns of social interaction
around Europe. Over 100 million Europeans travel across national
borders for business and pleasure every year, and at least 10–20 million
go to school, retire, or work for extended periods across national
borders (for an elaboration, see Fligstein 2008b; for a view of how
working abroad changes one’s identity, see Favell 2008a). This experience of citizens in other countries has been mostly positive. People have
gotten to know their counterparts in other societies, appreciated their
cultural traditions, and begun to see themselves as having more in
common. These positive interactions have caused some of them to
identify as “Europeans.”
Sociologists, anthropologists, and political scientists have been interested in the formation of collective identities since the founding of their
disciplines (for a critical review of the concept of identity in the postwar
social science literature, see Brubaker and Cooper 2000). Collective
identities refer to the idea that a group of people accepts a fundamental
and consequential sameness that causes them to feel solidarity amongst
themselves (Brubaker and Cooper 2000; Therborn 1995, ch. 12). This
sense of collective identity is socially constructed, by which I mean that
Who are the Europeans?
135
it emerges as the intentional or unintentional consequence of social
interactions. Collective identity is also by definition about the construction of an “other.” Our idea of who we are is usually framed as a
response to some “other” group (Barth 1969). Collective identities are
anchored in sets of conscious and unconscious meanings that people
share. People grow up in families and communities, and they come to
identify with the groups in which they are socially located. Gender,
ethnicity, religion, nationality, social class, and age have all been the
basis of people’s main identities and their central relationships to various communities.1
National identity is one form of collective identity. Deutsch defined
nationality as “a people striving to equip itself with power, with some
machinery of compulsion strong enough to make the enforcement of its
commands probable in order to aid in the spread of habits of voluntary
compliance with them” (1953, p. 104). But in order to attain this, there
has to be an alliance among the members of disparate social groups.
“Nationality, then, means an alignment of large numbers of individuals
from the lower and middle classes linked to regional centers and leading
social groups by channels of social communication and economic discourse, both indirectly from link to link with the center” (1953, p. 101).
Deutsch’s approach helps makes sense of one of the most obvious
difficulties with a theory of nationality. In different times and places, the
basis of an appeal to a common culture can include language, religion,
race, ethnicity, or a common formative experience (for example, in the
US, immigration). Deutsch makes us understand that any of these
common cultures can form the pre-existing basis of a national identity;
which one gets used in a particular society will depend on history. The
historical “trick” to the rise of a nation-state will be to find a horizontal
kind of solidarity that is appealing to a wide group of people of differing
social strata, offering a sense of solidarity that justifies producing a state
1
In this chapter, I lack the space to consider more adequately the problem of how
people become socialized to identities. For a critical discussion of the use of the
concept “identity” in the postwar era, see Brubaker and Cooper (2000). For a view
from the social psychological literature, see Tajfel (1981) and Turner (1975). For a
discussion of identity formation as socialization applied to the EU, see Checkel
(2005). For a consideration of how people might hold conflicting multiple
identities including national, regional and local identities, see Brewer and Gardner
(1996), Brewer (1993, 1999), Risse (2004), Risse et al. (1999), Díez Medrano
(2003), and Díez Medrano and Gutierrez (2001).
136
Neil Fligstein
to protect the “nation.” Nationalism can have any cultural root, as long
as that culture can be used to forge a cross-class alliance around a
nation-building project.
Deutsch recognized that not all forms of social interaction between
groups were positive (1969). Groups who interacted could easily become
conflictual if they came to view their interests and identities as competitive and antithetical. In this way, national identity could be a source of
conflict for groups in a society who did not think of themselves as
belonging to the nation and, if the patterns of interaction became conflictual, could result in some groups deciding to form a new or alternative
nation. Thus, in order for a national identity to emerge, groups needed to
come to a positive sense of solidarity based on the idea that they were all
members of a single overarching group. National identities were also
frequently imposed on unwilling groups through conquest or subordination (Tilly 1975; Gellner 1983). Subsequent attempts to theorize nationalism have focussed on understanding how these conflictual mechanisms
might be institutionalized or overcome (Tilly 1975; Gellner 1983;
Rokkan 1973; Breuilly 1993; Brubaker 1992).
Deutsch’s theory helps us make sense of what has and has not
happened in Europe in the past fifty years. If there is going to be a
European national identity, it will arise from people who associate with
each other across national boundaries and experience that association
in a positive way. As European economic, social, and political fields
have developed, they imply the routine interaction of people from
different societies. It is the people involved in these routine interactions
who are most likely to come to see themselves as Europeans and
involved in a European national project. They will come to see that
their counterparts in other countries are more like them than unlike
them, and to relate to their counterparts as part of an overarching group
in Europe, “Europeans.”
Who are these people? My evidence suggests that these include the
owners of businesses, managers, professionals, and other white-collar
workers who are involved in various aspects of business and government. These people travel for business and live in other countries for
short periods. They engage in long term social relationships with their
counterparts who work for their firm, are their suppliers, customers, or
in the case of people who work for governments, their colleagues in
other governments. They speak second languages for work. Since 1986,
they have created Europe-wide business and professional associations,
Who are the Europeans?
137
where people gather yearly to discuss matters of mutual interest. Young
people who travel across borders for schooling, tourism, and jobs (often
for a few years after college) are also likely to be more European.
Educated people who share common interests with educated people
around Europe – such as similar professions, interests in charitable
organizations, or social and cultural activities like opera or art – will
be interested in travel and social interaction with people in other societies. People with higher incomes will travel more and participate in the
diverse cultural life across Europe. They will have the money to spend
time enjoying the good life in other places.
If these are the people who are most likely to interact in Europe-wide
economic, social, and political arenas, then it follows that their opposites
lack either the opportunity or the interest to interact with their counterparts across Europe. Most importantly, blue-collar and service workers
are less likely than managers, professionals, and other white-collar workers to have their jobs take them to other countries. Older people will be
less adventurous than younger people and less likely to know other
languages. They are less likely to hold favorable views of their neighbors
and more likely to remember who was on which side in World War II.
They will be less likely to want to associate with or to have curiosity
about people from neighboring countries. People who hold conservative
political views that value the “nation” as the most important category
will not want to travel, know, or interact with people who are “not like
them.” When they do, they will not be attracted to the “others” but
instead will emphasize their cultural differences. Finally, less educated
and less financially well-off people will lack the inclination to be attracted
to the cultural diversity of Europe and be less able to afford to travel.
If I am right, this suggests that the basic conditions for a European
national identity as posited by Deutsch have not been met. A cross-class
alliance based on forms of shared culture and patterns of interaction has
not emerged in Europe. Instead, the patterns of shared culture and
interaction that have occurred across European borders have exactly
followed social class lines. People who tend to think of themselves as
European represent the more privileged members of society, while
people who tend to think of themselves as mainly national in identity
tend to be less privileged.
Sociologists tend to think that it is difficult to separate out the rational
(that is, self-interested) from the affective component of identity (Brubaker
and Cooper, 2000). Identities involve worldviews about who we are,
138
Neil Fligstein
what we want, what we think, and most important, how we interpret the
actions and intentions of others. Implicit in this understanding of identity is
that people often come to identify with a group of others because we share
common interests (material and otherwise). In this way, an identity acts as a
cultural frame that tells us who we are and how we ought to act. This view
of identity embeds our sense of “what our interests are” in our sense of who
we think we are in a particular situation. This conception of identity is as
much cultural as it is normative.
Gabel (1998) demonstrates that people who have something to gain
from the EU – professionals, managers, educated people, farmers, and the
well off financially – are also more likely to be in favor of its activities.
I produce results that support Gabel’s view. My goal is to broaden his
view of why these privileged groups are Europeans and why they support
the EU. It is certainly the case that these groups have benefited materially
from the EU. European integration has been first and foremost about
creating a single market. But this market integration project has had the
unintended outcome of giving some groups more opportunities to interact with people from other societies. These interactions have given them
firsthand experience of their counterparts in other countries and made
them feel positive affect for people who are like them.
The issues of identity, interest, and interaction are difficult to untangle, both theoretically and empirically. For example businesspeople
who depend on trade for their livelihood are likely to spend time
in other countries and get to know people from those societies. This
interaction will reveal common interests and a common set of understandings. People will develop friendships and get to know other people
with whom they will come to share a deeper identity. So, an Italian
businessman who befriends a French businessman will find they share a
common interest in having more opportunity to interact. They will
come to see each other less as Italian and French and thus, foreign,
and more as sharing common interests. These common interests will
eventually bring them to see themselves more as Europeans and less as
just having national identity. Of course, to the degree that these relationships are driven by material interest (i.e. the selling and buying of
things), affect is more difficult to separate from interest.
These fictitious businesspeople begin by interacting with one another
for business. They discover that people from other societies who occupy
similar social positions are not so different from themselves. This makes
them see that national identities are limiting and that a European
Who are the Europeans?
139
identity gives them more freedom to associate with others who are really
like them in other societies. They are all educated, rational people who
prefer to find win-win situations, who prefer compromise to conflict,
and who accept cultural differences as interesting and stimulating. It
should not be surprising that the “agents” of European identity should
be the educated middle- and upper-middle classes who espouse
Enlightenment ideology.2 After all, the Enlightenment reflected the
cultural conception of those classes in the eighteenth century.
Evidence for “Who is a European”
I begin my search for Europeans by examining a number of datasets:
three Eurobarometers that gather public opinion data, and a dataset
I gathered on the founding of European-wide associations that was
collected from the International Handbook of Nongovernmental
Organizations. The appendix at the end of this chapter contains information on the data and measures reported in the tables that follow.
I begin with the Eurobarometer data.
Table 6.1 reports on the degree to which people across Europe view
themselves as Europeans. Only 3.9% of people who live in Europe view
themselves as Europeans exclusively, while another 8.8% view themselves as Europeans and having some national identity. This means that
only 12.7% of people in Europe tend to view themselves as Europeans.
I note that this translates into 47 million people, a large number!
Scholars who have looked at this data generally conclude that the
European identity has not spread very far (Gabel 1998; Deflem and
Pampel 1996).3
2
3
Habermas (1992) views a European identity as part of the idea of completing the
Enlightenment project. He argues that “reason” and “rationality” should guide
people’s interactions. Being a European is about trying to settle differences
peaceably with respect for differences and others’ opinions. A European state
would be democratic and ideally would follow the creation of a European civil
society where rational differences of opinion could be aired. Finally, he has
recently argued that Europe should also stand for social justice and defense of the
welfare state (2001). Such an identity, of course, was associated during the
Enlightenment with the rising middle classes and in contemporary Europe with
social democracy.
In this volume, Favell presents interview data on people who have moved to other
countries to live and work. His sample reflects people who are at the extreme tail of
my distribution here.
140
Neil Fligstein
Table 6.1 “In the near future, will you think
of yourself as a …?”
European only
European and Nationality
Nationality and European
Nationality only
Total:
Mostly National
Mostly European
Sometimes European
3.9%
8.8%
43.3%
44.0%
87.3%
12.7%
56.0%
Source: Eurobarometer, EB 61, April 2004.
But this misses several interesting aspects of European identity. An
additional 43.3% of people view themselves as having a national identity and sometimes a European identity (while 44% of people never
view themselves as having anything but a national identity). The 43.3%
of people who sometimes view themselves as Europeans can be viewed
as “situational Europeans,” that is, under the right conditions they
will place a European identity over a national identity. So, if the right
issue comes along, 56% of people will favor a European solution to a
problem. If, however, all of the situational Europeans remain true to
their national identity, 87.3% of people will be anti-European. This
complex pattern of identity explains much about the ups and downs of
the European political project. One can predict that most of the time,
most of the population who live in Europe will see things from either a
nationalist or a self interested perspective. But occasionally issues will
arise that will bring together majorities of the population around a
European perspective.
Table 6.2 reports the results of a logit analysis predicting whether or
not a person has any European identity. The dependent variable in
the analysis is whether or not the person ever thinks of him/herself
as a European (i.e. the 56%) or as only having a national identity
(i.e. the 44%). Here, the class bias of European identity is clearly
revealed. People who are more educated, have higher incomes, and
are owners, managers, professionals, or white collar workers are more
likely to see themselves as European than people who are less educated,
have lower incomes, and are blue collar. There are several suggestive
141
Who are the Europeans?
Table 6.2 Statistically significant predictors of whether or not (+ = positive,
− = negative) a respondent ever views him/herself as a European, speaks
a second language, travels to another European country, and views the
EU as “good for their country” (see Appendix for more details)
Independent
variables
Gender (Male=1)
Age at leaving
school
Income
Age
Left–Right politics
(Left lower value)
Occupation1
Owner
Professional
Manager
White collar
Not in labor force
Have some
European identity
Travels to other Views the EU
Speaks
Some
“good thing”
European
European second
for country
language country
identity
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
−
+
+
−
+
−
−
+
−
−
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
−
+
+
+
+
+
+
1
Left-out category: Blue collar/Service.
Note: results include measures controlling for country.
demographic effects. Young people are more likely to see themselves as
European than are old people, and men are more likely to see themselves
as European than are women. This is consistent with our argument that
young people and men have more opportunities to travel and interact
with their counterparts in other countries, either for fun or for work.
Finally, people who judge themselves as left wing politically are more
likely than people who view themselves as right wing politically to be
European. Since most right-wing parties in Europe favor the nation and
national discourse, it makes sense that people in such parties would not
have a European identity and would be against the EU more generally.
This analysis clearly supports a class-centered view of who the
Europeans are. But it does not directly consider why those people
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Neil Fligstein
might be Europeans. Here, I turn to other datasets to explore more
carefully Deutsch’s hypothesis that interaction produces common identity. One problem in the Eurobarometers is that the European identity
questions have been asked infrequently and never in concert with questions about social interactions. So, I have to pursue a more indirect
strategy in order to link the social class background with opportunities
to interact across Europe.
I do this by choosing two indicators of social interaction: second
language use, and data on European travel. The acquisition of a second
language only makes sense if one intends to use it for business or travel.
It is difficult to learn a second language, and if one does not use the
language, it quickly disappears. People who intend to interact with
others in different societies in a significant way are more likely to
make the investment in a second language. I argue that the people
who will make this investment will reflect those who have the opportunity to learn such languages and use them, that is, the young, the
educated, and those with white-collar and professional occupations.
An even more direct indicator of interacting with people from other
societies is direct report of recent travel experiences. If people report
having traveled to other countries recently, then it is a fair bet that they
do so relatively frequently. If it is true that interaction produces collective identity, then the same people who have a European identity (again
the young, the educated and white collar and professionals) will report
traveling to other European societies more frequently.
Table 6.3 shows that 61.6% of people in Europe claim to speak a
second language, as reported in a Eurobarometer conducted in 2000.
This result should be interpreted with some caution. The actual level of
skill in a second language was not directly measured by the survey. This
was a self report and so one cannot be sure of its validity. Even if the
degree to which Europeans actually speak second languages is overstated, the distribution of those languages and the relationship between
speaking a second language and age is what one would predict: 57.5%
of those who speak a second language report that language is English,
15.6% report the second language is French, and 11.3% report their
second language is German. This variable is heavily skewed by age:
82.4% of people aged 15–24 claim to speak a second language, while
only 34.1% of those 65 and above do so. There are also clear national
differences in second language usage. The British have the lowest use of
second languages, reflecting their clear advantage with English as the
143
Who are the Europeans?
Table 6.3 Second language use in Europe overall and
by country. “Do you speak a second language?”
Overall
No
38.4%
Yes
61.6%
By country:
Belgium
Denmark
Germany
Greece
Italy
Spain
France
Ireland
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Portugal
Great Britain
Austria
Finland
Sweden
37.6%
12.6%
41.3%
46.8%
44.7%
52.3%
47.0%
46.6%
2.3%
13.0%
53.5%
64.3%
52.7%
28.8%
12.6%
62.4%
87.4%
58.7%
53.2%
55.3%
47.7%
53.0%
53.4%
97.7%
87.0%
46.5%
35.7%
47.3%
71.2%
87.4%
Source: Eurobarometer 54LAN, December 2000.
language of business. At the other extreme, 97.7% of Luxembourgois
report speaking a second language. In general, people from smaller
countries are more likely to speak second languages than people from
larger countries.4
Table 6.2 also presents the results of a logit regression where the model
predicts which social groups were more likely to speak a second language. Here, I observe once again the effects of social class. People who
are educated, and who are owners, professionals, managers, white collar,
and not in the labor force all report higher levels of second language use
than the less-educated or blue-collar workers do. One of the strongest
4
It is interesting to note that citizens of small countries generally have more
European identity, speak second languages more, and travel more. Obviously, if
you live in a small country, you need to know more than one language, and your
opportunity to travel involves less time and money. But it also means that you are
more aware of your neighbors, are more likely to interact with them frequently,
and thus, more likely to see yourself as more like them.
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Neil Fligstein
Table 6.4 Distribution of European travel in 1997.
“Have you been in another European country in the
past 12 months?”
Total
No
75.1%
Yes
24.9%
By country:
Belgium
Denmark
Germany
Greece
Italy
Spain
France
Ireland
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Portugal
Great Britain
Austria
Finland
Sweden
68.1%
65.2%
58.8%
88.7%
88.4%
88.6%
77.6%
76.9%
43.9%
57.7%
94.5%
76.3%
78.3%
83.7%
68.3%
31.9%
34.8%
41.2%
11.3%
11.6%
11.4%
22.4%
23.1%
56.1%
42.7%
5.5%
23.7%
21.7%
16.7%
31.6%
Source: Eurobarometer 48.0 Fall 1997.
effects in the model is the effect of age. All Europeans are pushed to learn
second languages in schools (with the exception of the British). This
shows up clearly in the model. Language use is an indicator of social
interaction of people across countries, and then there is a clear link
between patterns of social interaction and social class position.
Table 6.4 presents data on whether or not the respondent in the
survey has been in another European country in the past twelve months.
These data come from a Eurobarometer conducted in 1997. Of those
surveyed, 75.1% answered “no,” while 24.9% answered “yes.” These
data show quite a bit of variation across country as well. Generally,
people who live in the poorer countries in the South, like Greece, Spain,
and Portugal, report traveling the least. People in the rich countries like
Germany, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Sweden travel the most.
Another interpretation of this data is that people in the North tend to
travel more, suggesting that part of this travel is for recreation, not just
Who are the Europeans?
145
for business. This makes my measure of interaction more problematic.
It could be argued that tourists get on a plane, arrive at a beach where
they are surrounded by their fellow citizens, and barely interact with the
locals. While one must be cautious in overinterpreting the results of the
analysis, the explanatory factors that work for the other variables hold
up for this one as well.
Table 6.2 also presents results from a logit analysis where the dependent variable was whether or not a person had traveled outside of their
country in the past twelve months. The effects in this analysis mirror the
effects in the analysis of who regards him/herself as a European and who
speaks a second language. The class differences are quite apparent, as
educated people and people who are owners, managers, professionals,
and white-collar workers travel more than less educated people and
blue collar workers. This is the most direct evidence I have for the idea
that interaction patterns follow social class lines. There are several other
interesting effects in the models. Old people are less likely to travel than
young people, and women less than men. This implies that both women
and the elderly encounter people from other countries less frequently
than do men or young people. People who are more right wing than left
wing in their politics are also less likely to travel net of social class. This
implies that people who tend to value the nation over Europe do not
travel to foreign countries for work or pleasure.
These results provide strong, albeit indirect support for the idea that
people who tend to think of themselves as Europeans are people who
are more likely to interact with others across Europe. Managers, professionals, white collar, educated people, and males and the young are all
more likely to report having been in another European country in the
past twelve months, being able to speak a second language, and having
a European identity. This conforms to my view that the EU has provided
the opportunity for interaction for the most privileged members of
society and that these members of all European countries are more
likely to be European.
A European civil society?
One could argue that the evidence presented can easily be accounted for
by “interest” driven arguments. That is, the EU has benefited these
groups materially; it is no surprise that they favor Europe and think of
themselves as Europeans. From this point of view, their speaking second
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Neil Fligstein
languages and traveling abroad is not a cause of their identity, but an
effect of their material interests. They make money by being able to
travel and speak second languages and so it should be no surprise that
they think of themselves as European.
This is a difficult argument to refute with the data. Indeed, it is
possible to see that interest and identity are wrapped up together. But
it is useful to put together one other dataset that measures the likelihood
of interaction. One frequent claim is that if there are going to be
Europeans, there needs to be a European “civil society” (Laffan et al.
2000). The definition of exactly what this would be is contestable
(Calhoun 2003).
Here, I take a standard view and argue that one measure of a Europewide civil society is the existence of Europe-wide organizations or associations. My earlier results showed that people who tend to think of
themselves as Europeans and who are more likely to travel or speak
second languages are managers, professionals, the educated, and the
young. I expect that the main Europe-wide associations founded by
these people will be professional, scientific, trade, and interest group
associations like hobby groups or special interest groups like environmental or peace groups. Professionals and middle- and upper-middleclass people create groups that reflect their occupational, political, and
cultural interests. Professional, scientific, and trade groups reflect the
interests of the educated and those involved in political and economic
exchange to meet routinely. Social and cultural groups reflect the founding of a true European civil society, a society of nonprofits oriented
toward charity and social activities that brings people together from
around Europe. Their members will also be predominately the middle
class, the upper middle class, and the educated and young in general.
If European political, social, and economic integration has increased
over time, one would expect that the number of Europe-wide associations
would increase, as these people would have the chance to routinize their
interactions with each other by setting up nonprofit groups that would
meet routinely to discuss matters of joint interest. This should particularly
expand after 1985, when the EU began to complete the single market,
thereby increasing the opportunities for interaction to occur.
The data I collected came from the Yearbook of International
Organizations (2000). I created a database with every organization
that was set up on a European basis. I eliminated organizations that
were explicitly founded to lobby in Brussels. I was able to code 989
147
Who are the Europeans?
(a)
Number of organizations founded per year
Number of Organizations Founded
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
93
91
19
89
19
87
19
85
19
83
19
81
19
79
19
77
19
75
19
73
19
71
19
69
19
67
19
65
19
63
19
61
19
19
19
59
0
year
Foundings of Organizations by Type
20
18
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
19
59
19
61
19
63
19
65
19
67
19
69
19
71
19
73
19
75
19
77
19
79
19
81
19
83
19
85
19
87
19
89
19
91
19
93
Number of Organizations
Founded
(b)
Professional
Business &
Trade
Scientific
Sports
Nonprofit
Figure 6.1: Europe-wide associations.
Source: Union of International Associations. 2000. Yearbook of International
Organizations. Frankfurt: Sauer.
organizations. Figure 6.1a presents the founding of these organizations
over time. Between 1959 and 1985, there were an average twenty such
organizations founded each year. Starting in 1985 with the announcement of the Single Market, the number of organizations spiked to a peak
of 58 founded in 1990, and dropped off thereafter. I note that this dropoff is partially due to the biasses inherent in the data source. The
International Handbook of Nongovernmental Organizations is slow
to add organizations once they are founded, as they need to discover the
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Neil Fligstein
existence of the organizations in order to add them to their database.
This shows that the creation of such organizations was highly related to
the increasing opportunity for people to meet and interact in the wake of
the Single Market.
Figure 6.1b shows that the vast majority of organizations founded
were professional and scientific organizations. A typical professional
or scientific organization would be the European Association of
Chiropractors or the European Association of Meteorologists. The
third largest group was business or trade associations. Here, a typical
association might be the European Association of Direct Marketing or
the European Association of Chemical Producers. The most interesting
part of the graph is the increase in sports/hobby organizations and
nonprofit organizations after 1984. In the sports hobby category are
included the European Association of Mushroom Gatherers and the
European Association of Bicycling. In the nonprofit category are organizations such as the European Societies of Cancer and the European
Save the Whales Association. These are the purest form of civil society
organizations, in that they reflect how citizens decide to devote
resources to Europe-wide organizations with no obvious material interest. While these organizations comprise a relatively small percentage of
all organizations (about 15 percent of all cases), they show clearly that
in the wake of the Single Market, some people took the opportunity to
interact across national borders.
The vast majority of these organizations’ main activities are to meet
annually somewhere in Europe to discuss matters of mutual interest.
These conferences and conventions are frequently held in warm and
pleasant places. Like all professional meetings, the more instrumental
purposes are supplemented by partying, networking, and vacationing.
These conferences bring about increased interaction across national borders and furnish their participants with new friends, job contacts, and
business opportunities. They are part and parcel of what creates Europe.
How should this matter for politics?
It is useful to summarize the results so far. Only about 12.7% of
Europe’s population basically sees itself as European. These people
are disproportionately the most privileged members of society, that
is, managers, professionals, and white-collar people, educated people,
and the young. In this way, the European project has given the most
Who are the Europeans?
149
opportunities to the people who are already the most privileged. But it is
also the case that 56% of people who live in Europe have some
European identity: 61.6% claim to speak a second language, and
24.9% have been out of their country in the past year. The educated
and the middle and upper middle classes have taken the opportunities
afforded by work and pleasure to create new patterns of association.
They have founded Europe-wide organizations and associations. While
some Europeans are clearly more affected by the EU than others because
they have more opportunities to interact with people from other countries routinely, a substantial proportion of Europeans appear to have at
least some interactions across borders in their lives. This interaction
appears to have some impact on their identities as well.
One of the interesting questions is, what effect does this have on
national politics? The assumption in much of the academic literature
is that the EU has a democratic deficit. This is usually meant to imply
that “average” people feel out of touch with decision making in
Brussels. But this decision making is undertaken by the member state
governments and their representatives in Brussels and the directly
elected European Parliament. One obvious reason that “average” people do not experience a democratic deficit is that they still vote for their
national politicians and even their representatives for the European
Parliament. National political parties take a position on European
integration, and voters are able to decide whether this issue is salient
enough to them to vote for a political party on the basis of this position.
Haas argued that in the 1950s, European integration had no salience
for voters across Europe (1958). He analyzed the political positions of
various parties across Europe and observed little support or opposition
for the European project. Haas thought that if the project were ever
to go anywhere, this would need to change. Subsequent research has
revealed that most people have almost no knowledge of the EU and
its workings (for a review, see Gabel 1998). But, even here, large and
important minorities of people across Europe find European issues
salient to their voting. (For an interesting set of arguments that locate
support for the EU in national politics, see Díez Medrano 2003).
It is useful to make an argument about why this might be. It follows from
our analysis that middle- and upper-middle-class voters benefit directly
from Europe, either materially or because they have formed identities
whereby they relate to their peers across societies. These are certainly
people who tend to vote, and it follows that political parties would want
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Neil Fligstein
to take political positions on the EU that might attract such voters. While
the EU is not going to be the only issue on which voters support parties, it
might be one of the important issues (Featherstone 1999).
Table 6.2 explores this hypothesis by considering the determinants
of whether the EU is viewed by respondents as good or bad for their
country. In Europe, 56.2% of people in 2004 viewed the EU as a good
thing for their country, while 24.9% viewed it as neither a good nor a
bad thing for their country and only 19% viewed it as altogether a bad
thing for their country. A logit analysis is used to separate the determinants of a more positive view of the EU. Once again, the class basis
of support for the EU comes through. Higher educated, higher income
people, as well as owners, professionals, managers, and white-collar
workers are more likely to see the EU as a good thing for their country
than are those who are lower educated, poor, or blue collar. Gabel
(1998) has interpreted this from a rational choice perspective. Since the
main beneficiaries of the EU’s Single Market have been those who are
better off, they continue to support the EU.
But there are a number of other effects in the model that can be given a
more interactional and identity spin. Older people feel less positive
toward the EU than younger people net of social class. Since younger
people are more Europeanized in the sense that they are more likely to
travel and speak second languages, it follows that they view the EU in a
more positive way. There are two interesting effects of identity in the
model. People who describe themselves as left wing are more likely to
view the EU as a good thing for their country than are people who are
more right wing. Right-wing politics in Europe tend to be more focussed
on the “nation,” and therefore people with those politics are going to be
more skeptical of the EU and its effects on their country. Finally, if a
person has some European identity, s/he is more likely to see Europe as a
good thing for his/her country. Taken together, these results imply that
there are indeed political constituencies within each European country
who will favor the EU. Their support reflects both interest driven
reasons (i.e. the economic opportunities afforded by the EU) and identity driven reasons (i.e. the opportunities to travel and interact, and the
desire to protect the nation from “Europe”).
This difference of perspective on the value of the EU has played out in
interesting ways in European political parties over time. Since the 1950s,
the center left/center right parties in the largest countries across Western
Europe have converged in their support of the EU. I believe that this has
151
Who are the Europeans?
not occurred as a result of these parties being driven by elites that have
converged on this opinion. Instead, political parties on both the Left and
the Right have experimented with taking both pro and con EU positions.
They have discovered that by and large, even though there may be vocal
and active minorities in each country who oppose European political and
economic integration, there are not enough of these folks to actually get
elected on an anti-EU platform. Moreover, given that middle- and uppermiddle-class voters tend to be pro-EU, and given that these people tend to
vote, center-left and center-right parties chase these votes, eventually
realizing that the EU is not a good wedge issue to win elections.
The data used for this analysis come from Budge et al. (2001). They
consist of an analysis of the platforms of political parties across Europe.
I present data on the major political parties in England, France, and
Germany over time. The variable I present is the negative mentions of
the EU in the party platform, subtracted from the positive mentions of
the EU in the platforms in a given election year. I choose to present this
measure because it taps directly into the degree to which the EU is
viewed in a mostly positive or a mostly negative way by each of the
political parties.
The data for Germany are presented in Figure 6.2. All three major
German political parties generally have more positive than negative
things to say about the EU. This reflects the German political consensus
that the EU is a “winning” issue. There is some interesting variation in
this variable. In the 1987 election, the Social Democrats increased their
negative comments on Europe, while the Christian Democrats increased
their support. These negative comments were mainly about their
12
Positive–negative
10
8
Christian Dems
Free Dems
Social Dems
6
4
2
0
98
94
19
90
19
87
19
83
19
80
19
76
19
72
19
69
19
65
19
61
19
57
19
19
19
53
–2
Figure 6.2: Net positive party attitudes toward the EU, Germany
152
Neil Fligstein
Positive–negative
10
8
6
4
2
0
–2
–4
–6
–8
–10
92
87
83
79
74
70
66
64
59
97
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
19
55
Conservatives
Labour
Figure 6.3: Net positive party attitudes toward the EU, Great Britain
opposition to the Single Market, which they tended to view as helping
capitalists and hurting workers. This strategy did not work very well,
and they shifted their position in the subsequent election to a more proEuropean stance. The Christian Democrats took a more negative view
of the EU in the 1990 political campaign. This reflected party members’
negative reaction to the commitment made by its leaders to a monetary
union. The Free Democratic Party was a moderate supporter of the EU
throughout the period. In the wake of the Single Market and the run up
to the euro, the party increased its positive mentions of the EU. By the
late 1990s, the EU was a frequent topic in party platforms, and all three
parties had converged to a positive position. In Germany, the way to get
the votes of the middle and upper-middle classes was to be pro-Europe.
That all parties eventually came to adopt this position demonstrates
that there were few votes to be won by opposing the EU.
Figure 6.3 presents similar data for Great Britain. Here one can see that
the Labour and Conservative parties both tried to use the EU as a political
issue. In 1974, the Labour Party was negative about joining the EU, while
the Conservatives were positive about joining the EU. During the 1980s,
the political parties switched positions. Labour favored the EU and the
Conservatives, led by Thatcher and Major, opposed it. In the 1990s, the
Conservative Party moderated their view and the Labour Party became
even more supportive of the EU. It is interesting that even though Europe
appeared to be an important wedge issue in British politics, eventually
both main political parties realized that they lost more voters by subscribing to an anti-EU point of view than they gained.
153
Who are the Europeans?
14
Positive–negative
12
10
8
6
Gaullists
National Front
Socialists
4
2
0
–2
97
93
19
88
19
86
19
81
19
78
19
73
19
68
19
67
19
62
19
58
19
19
19
56
–4
Figure 6.4: Net positive party attitudes toward the EU, France
Figure 6.4 presents the data for France. The Gaullist party during the
1950s and 1960s was both positive and negative about the EU (and the
comments cancelled one another out). On the one hand, de Gaulle
himself did not like the EU because of his concerns about sovereignty.
On the other hand, French business did very well as a result of EU
membership. The Socialist Party was vaguely Europeanist during this
same period. This was partially to distinguish itself from the Gaullists,
but also because of France’s leadership in the EU. Beginning in the early
1980s, this positive support went up as France’s leadership in the EU
was a source of national pride and European economic integration was
viewed as a possible solution to economic stagnation. After the fall of
the Berlin Wall, both main political parties in France grew increasingly
supportive of the EU. They viewed France’s role in Europe as mainly a
function of its leadership in the EU. Monetary union was popular in
France, and the German–French alliance that drove the EU was viewed
as a positive thing. The National Front (an extreme right-wing party)
intentionally decided to take an anti-EU stand in the 1990s, with the
idea that opposing the EU and supporting the “nation” would work
to get them votes. This strategy has succeeded to some degree. The
National Front played an important role in the defeat of the European
Constitution in France; but they still have not been able to win a
national election on an anti-EU platform.
In the three biggest EU polities, we see a remarkably similar pattern.
Over time, the EU has become a more salient issue for political parties,
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Neil Fligstein
and the center-left/center-right parties have converged in their support
for the EU. During the 1970s and 1980s, the Labour and Conservative
parties in Great Britain shifted their positions on the EU in order to
attract middle-class voters. The defeat of the Conservative Party with
their strongly anti-EU stance caused them to shift their position in the
1990s, and both the Labour and the Conservative Party now favor the
EU. German political parties all have come to support the EU despite
having briefly flirted with an anti-EU platform. In France, the National
Front is the only political party to try to run on an anti-EU agenda since
the 1980s. Since their votes have tended to be protest votes against both
immigrants and foreign trade, it is not surprising that they have taken an
anti-EU stand. No major center-left/center-right European political
party in the largest countries is likely to run against the EU, precisely
because it is unpopular to do so. Middle- and upper-middle-class voters
benefit from the EU and identify with it sufficiently that no political
party can win an election on an explicitly anti-EU program. Large
majorities in every society think that the EU has generally been a good
thing for their country. Vocal minorities have caused parties to experiment with anti-EU stands. But the basic sense that the EU is positive
means that politicians continue to support some forms of European
integration.
Conclusion
There is little evidence for an outpouring of sentiment among the
citizens of Europe supporting a European nation. Even in Brussels,
where people work for the EU, the socialization of citizens as
Europeans has been less than one might expect (Hooghe 2005;
Beyers 2005). In spite of the obvious limits of survey data, the results
presented here help make sense of much of why this is the case. Only
12.7% of the people living in Western Europe think of themselves
as Europeans. While overall, 56% of people in Europe sometimes
think of themselves as European, 44% still have only a national identity. For the 43.3% who sometimes think of themselves as European,
they still think of themselves as being members of a nation-state
first. Moreover, in Great Britain, Finland, Sweden, and Austria, majorities of the population never think of themselves as Europeans. Put
simply, there are not enough people with strong European identities
to push forward a Europe-wide political integration project. While
Who are the Europeans?
155
there is a majority in most countries who sometimes think of themselves
as European, this is clearly a shallow and situational identity.
Building on the work of Karl Deutsch, I argue that for a national
identity to emerge, a class alliance between elites and members of the
middle and working classes has to become framed around a national
“story.” This story has to explain why everyone who lives within some
geographic boundaries is part of a larger group, a group whose identity
needs reinforcing by a state. The main mechanism by which this story
gets told and spreads is through cultural communication. Groups from
different classes have to meet in some organized setting, routinely
interact, and come to view the other people as part of the same group.
It is the case that in Europe, the story of being “European” has only
been told in a partial way. On the one hand, there has been increased
communication and interaction among certain groups in Europe.
People who are educated or are owners, managers, professionals, or
white-collar workers have had opportunities to meet and interact with
their counterparts in other countries because of the EU’s market and
political integration project. For these people, this interaction has produced a positive European identity and support for the EU project, just
as Deutsch would suggest. But for the vast majority of the population,
these interactions are infrequent. For them, the national narrative still
dominates. A substantial number of people in Europe sometimes think
of themselves as Europeans (what might be called situational
Europeans, that is, people who in some circumstances think of themselves as Europeans). But these people obviously do not share as many
interactions with other Europeans.
The economic and social construction that has accompanied the
growth of the EU since its inception in 1957 has produced a complex,
if explicable politics. The goal of the member-states’ governments has
consistently been to create a single market in Western Europe, one that
would eliminate tariff and nontariff barriers and eventually open all
industries to competitors from other countries. This goal has created a
huge increase in cross-border economic activity, trade, investment, and
the creation of Europe-wide corporations. On the social side, the people
who have been most involved in this market-opening project have been
managers and professionals who have the opportunity to travel and
work with their counterparts in other countries. These groups have
benefited financially but have also had the pleasure of discovering that
people in other countries could be friends, and travel and work bring
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Neil Fligstein
them to new and interesting places. Meeting people from other societies
has been a good thing that has encouraged people to see themselves as
both similar and different.
Perhaps the most interesting and subtle effect of all of this economic
and social interaction is the creation of interest in European affairs in
national political discourse. There is strong evidence that European
affairs are covered in national papers and that national groups organize
to protest to their governments about EU policies they don’t like. There
is also some evidence that on occasion, these discussions can be transEuropean and result in policy coordination. But these discussions more
frequently reflect the complex identities of people who live in Europe.
Since the majority of those people have predominantly a national
identity, it should not be surprising that many European political issues
end up appealing to national as opposed to European-wide interests.
This means that as issues confronting Europeans are discussed within
national media, they are more likely to be filtered through national
debates and self images than through European ones. So while there is
certainly a wide awareness of European issues, the ability to produce
European policies will always be difficult because of the institutional
limits on the EU and the conflicting political demands that citizens place
on their governments.5
It is useful to consider two scenarios for the future of European
identity. One argues that we are at the limit of European identity and
thus, the European national project will never happen. The other suggests forces that might push for an increase in European identity. First,
let us consider the scenario for why European national identity will not
emerge. For the majority of the European population, the opportunity
to interact with people across borders has been greatly circumscribed,
either by choice or by lack of opportunity. Blue-collar and service
workers and the less educated have not had the opportunity to learn
second languages or to interact for business or travel with their counterparts in other countries. As a result, they have lacked the impetus to see
themselves as Europeans. Educated people and people with high-status
occupations are more likely to become at least partly Europeans, but
there are not enough of them to have a big effect on creating a mass
“European identity.”
5
Díez Medrano reviews the literature on this topic in this volume and arrives at a
similar conclusion.
Who are the Europeans?
157
For blue-collar and service workers, the EU has not delivered more
jobs and jobs with better pay, but rather deindustrialization and globalization. There is the suspicion that the EU is an elite project that has
mainly benefited the educated, and our evidence bears this out. The
elderly still remember World War II and its aftermath. The elderly and
the economically less privileged have less interest in knowing more
about their neighbors and more in keeping a strong sense of national
identity. Those politically on the right have created a politics to defend
the nation. In some countries, they view the EU as intrusive on national
sovereignty and by implication, on national identities. In others, they
view immigrants as a threat to their livelihood and the nation. Perhaps
the most divisive politics in Europe concerns the current rise in immigrants from Africa and the Middle East. Those who view this migration
skeptically are distrustful of the EU and are satisfied with the national
story.6
Now with enlargement to twenty-seven countries, a whole variety of
people are entering the EU without a history of interacting with their
counterparts across countries. The middle and upper-middle classes of
what was formally Central and Eastern Europe do not necessarily feel
affinity with the Western European project. There is already evidence
that many of them feel ambivalent about their future in the EU, and their
positions on Europe and having a European identity more closely
approximate those who are skeptical than those who are optimistic.
The existence of these new member-states will mean even fewer citizens
who will see Europe as for them and about people like them.
It is possible to present a scenario implying that the process of
European identity building is just starting and that over time, the forces
producing more Europeans will rise. First, the European project has
only really been going on since the mid-1960s. The biggest expansion of
opportunities to interact with other people in Europe occurred beginning with the Single Market in the mid-1980s. It just might be too early
to see a majority emerging to create a European nation. After all,
national identities took hundreds of years to evolve, and Europeans
have only been interacting in large numbers for 20–25 years. Second,
6
Holmes’s chapter in this volume discusses how the opponents of an enlightened,
capitalist “Europe” think about what is going on. He argues that their version of
what it means to be a “European” is more exclusionary of nonwhite and nonChristian groups.
158
Neil Fligstein
demography is working in the EU’s favor. Young people are more likely
to know second languages, be educated, travel, and be more open to the
EU. As older people pass away and are replaced by the young, there
should be more people who think of themselves as Europeans. Third, as
skill levels rise and education increases generally, people will be more
interested in the cultural story of being with other Europeans. One of
our more interesting results was the fact that educated people were the
most likely to use a second language for travel and communication. As
education levels rise, one would expect that the European identity
would become more widespread. European issues are widely covered
in the European press, and center-left and center-right parties generally
continue to support the European project.
Finally, as European markets continue to integrate, people will have
more opportunities to interact with people in other countries. This
could happen through work. Interaction will occur more generally as
media coverage, tourism, and the awareness of culture in other countries expands. So, for example, the creation of a European football
league would spark even more Europe-wide interest in games being
played across Europe. Games would be televised, people would have
the opportunity to follow foreign teams, and they would travel even
more to support their teams.
All of these processes have yet to play out for the citizens of Central and
Eastern Europe. Over time, Central and Eastern Europeans will travel
west for work and school. Businesspeople will gradually become more
integrated with their Western European counterparts, particularly those
who work for multinational enterprises. If my analysis is right, the middle
and upper-middle classes in Eastern Europe will eventually come to interact with and relate to their colleagues in Western Europe. This interaction
will make them become more favorable toward European integration.
All in all, my analysis suggests that, first, given that 87.3 percent of
the European electorates mainly think of themselves as national in
identity, the most likely outcome will be for the national story to
continue to trump the European one. The challenges of the future will
be decided by the part of the population that is situationally European.
As issues play out, the middle-class voters who sometimes think of
themselves as Europeans will empower their governments to cooperate
either more or less with other European governments. Second, which
way they go will be part of a political process that involves framing
around identities. One can imagine a particular event that would bring
Who are the Europeans?
159
people in Europe closer together. A Europe-wide terrorist event, for
example, might push forward a Europe-wide response and the sense
that European citizens were in it together. One could also imagine an
event that would split Europe up. A severe economic crisis in one of the
large member states might tempt citizens to vote for a party that offered
to protect national jobs by leaving the monetary union and the EU. This
is where real history and politics will matter for what is to come.
Appendix
The data analyzed in this chapter originate with the Eurobarometers.
The Eurobarometers are financed by the European Commission and are
carried out simultaneously in the European Union member countries.
The surveys study the social and political opinions of persons living in
the member countries. The material is collected by specialized organizations in each country. For example, in Finland, the material is collected
by TNS Gallup Ltd (Gallup Finland). The collection is coordinated by
INRA EUROPE (International Research Associates Europe). The surveys used here were provided through the Survey Research Center at the
University of California and were accessed through the Interuniversity
Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) at the University
of Michigan. The identity questions were asked in Eurobarometer 61,
which was conducted in February–March of 2004. The Eurobarometer
used for the language data was 54.2, conducted in the fall of 2000.
Eurobarometer 48.0 was conducted in the fall of 1997 and focussed on
issues surrounding travel. All of the surveys used standard questions to
obtain demographic data.
It is useful to review the questions and how the data were coded for
the data analysis.
• Some European identity: 0 = national identity only; 1 = European iden•
•
tity only, European and national identity, national and European
identity.
“Do you speak a second language?” The dependent variable in the
analysis is coded “0” if the respondent does not speak a second
language and “1” if they do.
Respondents were asked whether they had taken a trip in 1997.
A variable was coded “0” if the respondent had not visited another
European country in the past 12 months and “1” if they had.
160
Neil Fligstein
• Views the EU as a good or a bad thing : 0 = bad thing, neither good
•
•
•
•
•
•
nor bad thing; 1 = good thing.
EU has a positive or a negative image: 0 = very negative, fairly
negative, neutral; 1 = fairly positive, very positive.
Gender: 0 = female; 1 = male.
Age: Age in years.
Age at school completion: Age in years during last year of school.
Income scale: Income was reported from all sources. It was converted
into local currency. It was then converted into five groups for each
country based on the income distribution. “1” is the lowest income
group, while “5” is the highest.
Left–Right politics: The question asked was, “People talk about politics
as being left and right. How would you place yourself on this scale?”
Respondents were asked to place themselves on a five-point scale where
“1” indicated the farthest “left” and “5” was the farthest right.
The occupational variables were coded based on the response to the
following question: “What is your current occupation?” Respondents
were given nineteen choices. I created a series of dummy variables
whereby a person was coded “0” if they were in the category and “1”
if they were not. The following groups were coded as “1” for each of
the dummy variables.
• Owner: 1 = self employed, categories 5–9: farmer, fisherman, profes•
•
•
•
•
•
sional, owner of a shop, craftsman, other self employed, business
proprietor, partner in a business.
Manager: 1 = general management, middle management, supervisor,
categories 11, 12, 16.
Professional: 1 = employed professional, category 10.
Other white collar: 1 = employed, working at desk, salesman, categories 14, 15.
Blue collar and Service: Left-out category, categories 15, 17, 18.
Not in the labor force: 1 = house caretaker, student, unemployed,
retired, temporary ill, categories 1–4.
Country dummy variables: 0 = if respondent not in the country;
1 = respondent in the country. The “left out” category for all of the
analyses is Great Britain.
All of the data analyses were done using logit regression models in the
computer program SPSS. Logit regression is the appropriate technique
161
Who are the Europeans?
when the dependent variable in a data analysis is “limited” (discrete, not
continuous). Researchers often want to analyze whether some event
occurred or not, such as voting, participation in a public program,
business success or failure, morbidity, or mortality. Binary logistic
regression is a type of regression analysis where the dependent variable
is a dummy variable (coded 0, 1). More details on logit regression and
its interpretation are available from Demaris (1992). For nontechnical
readers, a positive statistically significant coefficient implies that more
of variable X implies that it is more likely that the respondent will be in
category “1” rather than category “0.” So a positive coefficient on
gender below implies that men are more likely to think of themselves
as Europeans. A negative coefficient implies that as X increases, the
probability that the respondent will be in category “0” increases. So, for
example, in the case of European identity, age is negatively related to
having a European identity. This means that older people are less likely
to see themselves as Europeans.
Table 6.A.1 Means and standard deviations for logit
analysis of determinants of European identity
Variable
Mean
SD
Gender
Left–Right politics
Age at school completion
Age
Income scale
Owner
Manager
Professional
White collar
Service/Blue-collar
Not in the labor force
Some EU identity
EU good/bad thing
EU positive/negative image
.52
2.32
18.44
44.83
3.29
.08
.10
.13
.11
.21
.37
.54
.56
.54
.50
1.06
1.96
10.57
1.49
.27
.28
.12
.30
.41
.50
.49
.46
.48
162
Neil Fligstein
Table 6.A.2 Results of a logit regression analysis
predicting whether or not a respondent ever viewed
him/herself as a European
Variables
B
S.E.(b)
Gender
Age at school completion
Income
Age
Left–Right politics
Occupation:
Owner
Professional
Manager
White-collar
Not in the labor force
Belgium
Denmark
Germany
Greece
Spain
France
Ireland
Italy
Netherlands
Luxembourg
Portugal
Finland
Sweden
Austria
Constant
.20**
.04**
.06**
−.004**
−.06**
.05
.00
.02
.002
.01
* p < .05, ** p < .01
.25**
.74**
.51**
.35**
−.01
.73**
.60**
.71**
.18
1.09**
1.32**
.60**
1.59**
.32**
.83**
.87**
−.28*
.08
.32**
−1.19**
.11
.23
.10
.09
.07
.13
.13
.11
.13
.13
.13
.13
.13
.12
.16
.12
.13
.12
.12
.16
163
Who are the Europeans?
Table 6.A.3 Results of a regression analysis
predicting attitudes toward the EU (see Appendix
for explanation of data coding)
“Is EU a good/bad thing?”
Variables
B
S.E.(b)
Gender
Age at school
completion
Income
Age
Left–Right politics
Occupation:
Owner
Professional
Manager
White-collar
Not in the labor force
Belgium
Denmark
Germany
Greece
Spain
France
Ireland
Italy
Netherlands
Luxembourg
Portugal
Finland
Sweden
Austria
European identity
Constant
.06
.02**
.06
.00
.01*
−.019**
−.01*
.00
.001
.003
.07*
.12
.09**
.05*
.05
.14**
.08
.05
.18**
.17**
−.09*
.34**
.20**
.06
.35**
.16**
−.03
−.28**
−.32**
.35**
2.18**
.02
.08
.03
.02
.02
.05
.05
.04
.05
.04
.05
.05
.06
.05
.06
.05
.05
.05
.05
.02
.06
* p < .05, ** p < .01
164
Neil Fligstein
Table 6.A.4 Means and standard deviations
for variables used in data analysis
Variable
Mean
SD
Gender
Age at school completion
Age
Owner
Manager
Professional
White-collar
Service/Blue-collar
Not in the labor force
Second language
Use language at work
Use language for social reasons
.51
17.44
43.46
.09
.11
.10
.14
.23
.33
.62
.34
.76
.49
4.96
17.47
.27
.28
.13
.30
.41
.50
.48
.50
.28
Source: Eurobarometer 54LAN, 2000.
Table 6.A.5 Logistic regressions predicting
second language use, use of language at work,
and use of language for social purposes
Second language use
Variables
Gender
Age at school completion
Age
Occupation:
Owner
Professional
Manager
White-collar
Not in the labor force
Belgium
Denmark
Germany
Greece
Spain
B
S.E. (b)
.03
.04**
−.06**
.04
.00
.00
.68*
1.63**
1.41**
.96**
.60**
−.22**
1.99**
.31**
−.08**
−.31**
.08
.24
.09
.08
.06
.09
.11
.09
.08
.09
165
Who are the Europeans?
Table 6.A.5 (cont.)
Second language use
Variables
France
Ireland
Italy
Netherlands
Luxembourg
Portugal
Finland
Sweden
Austria
Constant
B
−.32**
.36
.16
.21**
4.96**
−.07.
.70**
1.89**
−1.04**
1.39**
S.E. (b)
.09
.19
.09
.08
.57
.08
.09
.11
.08
.09
* p < .05, ** p < .01
Source: Eurobarometer 54LAN, 2000.
Table 6.A.6 Means and standard deviations
for analysis of European travel data
Variable
Mean
SD
Gender
Age at school completion
Age
Owner
Manager
Professional
White-collar
Service/Blue-collar
Not in the labor force
Left–Right politics
Income (harmonized)
Europe travel
EU good/bad thing
.48
17.04
43.54
.09
.09
.15
.13
.20
.34
3.21
31.71
.26
2.46
.50
4.46
17.92
.27
.28
.13
.30
.41
.50
2.02
40.72
.44
1.23
Source: Eurobarometer 47, 1997.
166
Neil Fligstein
Table 6.A.7 Logit regression for determinants
of European travel
European travel
Variables
Gender
Age at school completion
Income
Age
Left–Right politics
Occupation:
Owner
Professional
Manager
White-collar
Not in the labor force
Belgium
Denmark
Germany
Greece
Spain
France
Ireland
Italy
Netherlands
Luxembourg
Portugal
Finland
Sweden
Austria
Constant
B
−.17**
.01**
.00
−.019**
−.01**
.07*
.26**
.66**
.46**
−.32**
.44**
.36**
.87**
−.97**
−.89**
−.17**
−.18**
−.99**
.75**
1.32**
−1.67**
−.54**
.26 **
−.17
−1.73**
* p < .05, ** p < .01
Source: Eurobarometer 47, 1997.
SE(B)
.04
.00
.00
.01
.003
.02
.08
.07
.07
.06
.09
.10
.09
.12
.13
.11
.10
.13
.12
.11
.11
.12
.11
.11
.12
7
Immigration, migration, and free
movement in the making of Europe
ADRIAN FAVELL
Europe historically has been made, unmade, and remade through the
movements of peoples. Despite the image today of Europeans as a
rather sedentary and socially immobile population – particularly when
compared to the highly mobile spatial and social patterns of North
Americans – contemporary Europe has essentially emerged out of a
crucible of local, regional, and international population movements
over the centuries.
In this chapter, I consider the crucial impact of migration in Europe on
European identity, by building a bridge between historical analyses of
the phenomenon and emerging patterns that are shaping Europe as a
distinctive new regional space of migration and mobility. My contribution points to how migration is making and remaking Europe, less at the
level of identity in people’s heads – in fact, if anything, most migrations
are contributing to the growth of anti-European sentiment – but more in
a territorial and (especially) structural economic sense. This is less easy
to see if a purely cultural view is taken of the question of Europe. After
sketching the role of population movements in the making and unmaking
of Europe historically, I explore in depth the three kinds of migration/
mobility that are most salient to the continent today and its structural
transformation: first, the ongoing, traditional “ethnic” immigration of
non-Europeans into European nation-states; second, the small but symbolically important emergence of new intra-European “elite” migrations,
engaged by European citizens enjoying the fruits of their EU free movement rights; and third, the politically ambiguous flows of East–West
migrants – which fall somewhere between the other two forms – that
have been connected to the EU enlargement processes formalized in 2004
This chapter started life as a lecture for the Sociology Department at the University of
Copenhagen in late 2006, and is a new take on ideas first in Favell 2003a. I thank
Nauja Kleist for the original invitation to speak, and the editors, my co-authors in the
volume, and Thomas Risse for useful comments and criticisms in its development.
167
168
Adrian Favell
and 2007. The distinctiveness of Europe as a world region – hence in this
sense, its economic and territorial identity – can best be grasped by briefly
comparing it again to the US and North America as a similar but
differently structured regional migration space, a theme I turn to in my
conclusion.
Population movements in the making
and unmaking of Europe
It is not uncommon to picture European nationals as somehow innately
predisposed to not move. Europe is typically seen as a patchwork of
“thick” inherited cultures – divided up by proudly preserved languages
and social practices – that map out a continent of stubbornly rooted
peoples with strong national and local identities, not much affected
by the efforts of European institutions – or globalization – to get them
to think differently. It is also seen as a continent largely hostile to new
immigrants, struggling to integrate even the small numbers of ethnically
and racially distinct minorities that do manage to get in.
The US, as is so often the case, is often referred to in order to underline
this contrast. If the EU can be thought of for a moment as a kind of federal
United States of Europe, the numbers are stark. While around 12% of
Americans are foreign born (Batalova and Lowell 2006), less than one in
fifty Europeans lives outside his/her state of national birth, and even
intra-regional migration within European nation-states is lower than
cross-state migration in the US, at 22% compared to 33% (European
Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions
2006). European society is thus seen as the product of historically rooted
cultures; America unequivocally has been built on immigration and the
melting pot of newcomers. Despite fluctuating political resistance to new
immigration, the base numbers and percentages moving to the US are still
bigger than anywhere in Europe, as is the sheer size of recent immigrantorigin populations over two or three generations – which in some states
such as California now exceed 50%. And the attractiveness of the US
for new generations of the internationally ambitious and talented is still
unanswered by Europe as a global economic force: two-thirds of tertiaryeducated migrants from developing countries choose America as their
destination, with dramatically beneficial consequences for the American
economy (Peri 2005). It appears, in short, that Americans are willing to
move and accept movers; Europeans are not.
Immigration, migration, and free movement
169
A short pause for thought on this assumption will quickly reveal its
historical ineptitude (see also Recchi 2006). America, after all, was
largely populated by Europeans who moved and moved again: over
sea, and then over great stretches of land. Thought of less shortsightedly, Europe is and always has been a continent of migratory flux.
Early modern Europe – the kind of Europe celebrated by nationalists
everywhere in terms of culturally rooted folklore (Hobsbawm 1983;
Anderson 1991) – in fact was already a patchwork of circular, seasonal,
and career mobility well before industrialization. These revolutions then
changed everything: sweeping peasants off the land, ripping apart rural
communities, packing expansive cities full of new social classes, and
creating economic channels of mobility that linked all of Europe,
and eventually the world, in a new system of empire and capital (Moch
2003; Bade 2000; Hobsbawm 1987). On the ground, this meant continual flows of migration. By the late nineteenth century, unprecedented
numbers were also moving across national borders as worker populations, and across seas as New World migrants and settlers (Hatton and
Williamson 1998). Europeans went everywhere.
Why this is forgotten in the image of a sedentary Europe today is, of
course, that the wars of the twentieth century stopped much of this
migration. Nation-states finally reigned supreme as the dominant form
of global social organization: cementing the institutionalized role of
state-centered power as explosive population containers, using military
service, citizenship, and welfare rights in the name of national identity,
to build political distinctions between insiders and outsiders and fix
people spatially (Torpey 2000; Mann 1993). This, then, became the
familiar, legitimate political topography of the modern world, leaving
numerous ethnic groups on the wrong side of territorial borders or in
despised social locations, the stateless residual populations of a now
thoroughly nationalized Europe. This left one disaster – the Jewish
Holocaust – which scarred the continent forever, and an ugly aftermath
of war that brutally shifted yet more populations east and west.
Europeans were once again moved, in search of a stable political solution that might once and for all settle the ethnic and ideological frontiers
of the so-called “shatter zone” in Central and East Europe (Mazower
1998; Brubaker 1996; Mann 2005). Europe gave up its empires, and the
Iron Curtain created a new, nearly impermeable material and psychological barrier, freezing East–West mobility and literally severing the
latitudinal land movements and interactions that had, in longue durée
170
Adrian Favell
geographical terms, been the greatest civilizing resource of the continent
(Diamond 1997).
In the West, generous welfare state structures in the postwar period –
a kind of liberal democratic form of socialized nationalism prevalent throughout the continent up to 1970 (Mazower 1998) – cemented
national populations in place like never before. The shrunken West
European powers eventually re-emerged economically, but they did
so by now servicing their migrant worker needs, first via a new wave
of migrants from the peripheral South to North (from Italy, Spain,
Portugal and Yugoslavia), then – as these movements too dried up –
via a large, hitherto unprecedented immigration from former colonies
and dependencies outside Europe (especially Turkey, North and
Central Africa, the West Indies, South Asia, and Indonesia). This, of
course, brought an even more explosive mix of race and cultural diversity into the fractious continent (Castles and Miller 2003).
A historical ground map to European population movements –
breathless as this sketch is – is necessary for any discussion about
the place of migration today in the making of a European identity. It
is not an easy map to capture (see also King 2002). Conventional postcolonial and guest-worker immigration was supposed to have ended in
the 1970s, leaving only limited channels of family reunification and
asylum as entry points for migration. Immigrant populations were
supposed to have settled and integrated as nationals and citizens,
turning more or less culturally homogeneous national societies into
reluctantly multicultural ones.
The 1980s, and especially 1990s, have changed all this again. A wave
of “new migrations” has mixed up the continent once more (Koser and
Lutz 1998). A globalizing economy has liberalized post-industrial societies, leading to a new dual service economy driven largely by a demand
for cheap foreign labor (Sassen 2001; Piore 1979). Global transportation systems have facilitated movement to Europe from increasingly
diversified and unpredictable sources (Held et al. 1999). European
working classes, as in America, no longer wish to take on 3D (dirty,
dangerous, and dull) tasks that might be left to more motivated and
cheaper foreigners. Migration here, as elsewhere, has also dramatically
feminized, as women from developing countries have become the carers
and domestic workers of the highly developed. Asylum, which once
functioned as a more symbolic gesture to enable small numbers of
political refugees to escape to the West, has turned into an uncontrollable
Immigration, migration, and free movement
171
torrent as Europe has picked up the human pieces of numerous regional
and global wars; asylum also has become effectively a channel of labor
migration. Europe was supposed to become a fortress; by the early 2000s
the reverse was happening (Favell and Hansen 2002).
Added to these new forms of immigration, novel intra-EU migrations
have also become a feature of the European migrant tapestry. The
European Union was built on the four freedoms, including the free
movement of persons (the others being the free movement of goods,
services and capital). Long-standing EU15 member states have enjoyed
these rights for decades now. The numbers of West Europeans on the
move have by no means been large, but they are highly symbolic. For
every one who moves to work and settle freely in a neighboring member
state of the EU, many more are moving temporarily as students, shoppers, commuters, and eventually retirees. Add to this the ever changing
geographical definition of the Union with successive enlargements
reuniting Europe, and the potential for a new kind of migration in
Europe – “free movement” – looks set to again unmake and remake
the settled patchwork of national societies that had, more or less successfully, used the EU to rescue the European nation-state in the postwar period (Milward 2005). The most visible intra-EU free movers now
are, of course, after 2004 and 2007, the socially and spatially dynamic
mobile populations of new Eastern and Central Europe, grabbing
access to a European space that is now all theirs again. But, arguably,
free movers will, due to the concentric logic of an externalizing, “neighborhood”-building EU, in future be coming from Ukraine, Turkey, and
Morocco as well.
These combined phenomena leave a confusing setting for evaluating
the impact of population movements on European identity. As I will
show, untangling the impact of these various new migrations on the
making and unmaking of Europe, it can be seen that Europe is struggling to maintain distinctions among three distinctive groups, but moving toward a new solution. Here, I will sketch the outlines of this likely
future, before going on to explore this scenario in more depth in the rest
of the chapter.
A first kind of migration – traditional, poor, “ethnic,” extra-European
immigrants from Africa and Asia – insofar as they can be distinguished
as such – is being processed, with a great deal of social and political
conflict, in line with the established methods for dealing with postwar,
post-colonial, and guest-worker migrants. These immigrants continue to
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be framed as the legitimate concern of national societies, not the EU;
recent years have seen the return of nationalist integration policies across
all of Europe, alongside a growing instrumental role they play in fueling
the symbolic closure of anti-EU and anti-globalization politics. However,
in Europe as elsewhere, this often ugly politics of immigration does not
square with the economics of migration. Nostalgia for contained, culturally secure, citizenship and nation-based societies sits badly with a
globalized dual labor market within service-sector-driven economies
run by multinationals, which demand an almost endless reserve army
of flexible foreign labor.
The experiences of a second group of migrants, at the other end of the
social scale – West European movers I call “Eurostars” – tell a different
story about Europe today. Unsurprisingly, they reflect a Europe at its
most enthusiastically cosmopolitan and post-national. Yet, even with
all formal barriers to migration down, they encounter limitations and
resistance to their movement that suggest the resilience of national
ethnicities in even the most structurally global and multinational of
locations – London and Amsterdam being my examples.
A third group of migrants – the new East European movers – are the
most ambiguous of all. Are they cadet “Eurostars,” as the theory of
European integration predicts they will one day become? Or are they still
more like traditional “ethnic” immigrants, and likely to be treated this
way? I argue that both are true. They are making a new European space of
movement and fulfilling a new idea of European citizenship; but they are
also being shuffled into economic roles in the West European economies
assigned in the postwar period to traditional non-European immigrants.
Herein lies the punch line. A kind of European fortress may yet be built on
the back of this ambiguous spread and opening of Europe to the East. A
tempting racial logic is at stake for Europeans today. Opening to populations from the East may enable the more effective closing of Europe to the
South, filling the structural need for which Western Europe had historically
to turn to colonial and developing country immigrants from more distant
societies and cultures. Racial and cultural distinctions might be used to
achieve what concrete, electronic surveillance, and barbed wire cannot.
The three migrations in Europe
I will now explore in greater detail each of the three migrations identified above: traditional non-European “ethnic” immigrants; West
Immigration, migration, and free movement
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European “Eurostars”; and the new East–West post-Enlargement
movers. It is essential to analytically distinguish them before showing
how the new migration scenario is blurring many of these supposedly
clear distinctions.
Traditional non-European “ethnic” (im)migrants
New forms of migration and mobility have changed the context of
population movements in Europe, but the dominant story about immigration today in Europe is still, mostly, the ongoing classic post-colonial
and guest-worker scenario. Unquestionably, European economies still
generate a strong demand for migrant workers, alongside an alluring
image that generates a supply – alluring enough to offset the often
highly costly and uncertain calculations that lie behind migrants’ decisions to move from Africa or Asia. Where the story has changed is in the
increasingly diverse source origins of ongoing immigration: now from a
range of countries with little or no colonial connexion to the destination
countries. Previous generations of post-colonial immigrants could at
least count on a symbolic connexion to the metropolitan destinations,
together often with having been socialized to some extent in the language and culture of the country. Nowadays sources and destinations
are equally scattered, a factor that increases the tensions that emerge
politically around the migration in the receiving society. For example,
on this score, the reception context of British West Indian migrants in
the 1960s differs dramatically from the Sri Lankis or Kurds arriving in
Denmark today. National integration systems thus find it that much
harder to deal with the new migrations.
In addition, channels of migration today are much more “bottomup” than in the days of relatively planned post-colonial and guestworker recruitment migration. Some of the most remarkable migration
systems that have emerged have been very specific in their internal selforganization: Senegalese street vendors in Italy (Riccio 2001), Cape
Verdean domestic workers in Italy and Spain (Andall 1998), Chinese
migrants in Britain and France (Benton and Pieke 1998), Middle
Easterners in Scandinavia (Diken 1998), and so on. In the main, though,
the largest groups of migrants – from Turkey and Morocco – are rather
predictable and continuous migration systems built on long histories
and easy connexions with a range of countries (for some sources:
Lesthaege 2000; Kastoryano 1993; Bousetta 2000; Phalet et al. 2000).
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As everyone knows, these various immigrations have visibly put
black, brown, and yellow faces in white Europe, including in some of
the least likely places. Issues of multiculturalism or inter-ethnic conflict
that were most familiar to former colonial powers like Britain and
France are now raised in every country in Western Europe, and increasingly in East and Central Europe too. As a majority of these new
immigrants hail from predominantly Muslim countries, the Islamic
dimension of this immigration – whether by practicing religious affiliation or merely the parent culture – has become the defining issue of
twenty-first-century European “identity” most associated with immigration today (see also Byrnes and Katzenstein 2006).
This is of course an issue imprisoned in broader geopolitical struggles
linked to the “war against terror,” and at the mercy of reductive, inflammatory visions of the so-called “clash of civilizations” (Huntington
1996). It is now difficult to see past the rhetoric to assess qualitatively
how different these new migrations and the multicultural problems are
from those of the “old” immigration of the 1950s and 1960s. In fact, the
trajectory of these visible, so-called “ethnic” immigrants in European
society is a quite familiar one. At a macro-level, they have been a key
structural feature of all postwar European societies. What impacted first
the large post-colonial and guest-worker countries has had similar effects
in asylum-receiving countries in northern Europe, and later in new destinations in southern Europe. Each nation-state has faced similar “multicultural questions,” albeit with different timings and political saliency (Favell
2001; Joppke and Morawska 2003). Europe as a whole has become a
continent of immigration, and (with more difficulty) a continent of Islam;
but the political and social processes raised by these questions have everywhere been dealt with as predominantly national ones, now raging at the
core of domestic national politics everywhere, from Britain to Denmark,
and the Netherlands to Spain.
Immigration, then, is certainly a European question; but the politics
of immigration are still dominantly national in locus. Cooperation at
the European level has had its effects, particularly on border control and
entry policies; but the EU has little effect on the policies or processes of
immigrant settlement. The basic problems for these non-European
immigrants – “Third Country Nationals” as they are known in EU
jargon – is one of attaining formal national citizenship and recognized
national membership: they are not European citizens, even when they
have permanent residency. Naturalization into their adopted host state
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provides the one sure route to becoming a European, but successful
naturalization is inevitably a nationalizing process (Hansen 1998). The
effect on European identity of these new immigrations is, in this sense,
negative: it helps to preserve the nation-centered status quo. Whatever
transnational, even pan-European social forms migrants might develop –
Islam, for example, has taken specific “Euro” forms in the visions
of young leaders like Tariq Ramadan – the socialization pressures faced
by Muslim immigrants are overwhelmingly national. Nearly every
European nation-state has formulated in recent years a policy on “integration” of immigrants that reflects mainly nation-building concerns
about imparting national culture and values to newcomers, and very
little of the kinds of post-national responses to immigration that would
be the consequence of a through Europeanization of the issues involved
(Favell 2003b). The most encouraging message all such immigrants get
from their host societies is: “integrate – or else …”
Immigration is thus dominantly a national issue everywhere because
of the integration question. Even progressive, inclusionary movements
are always framed in terms of inclusion into national identities: finding
your place in “multi-ethnic” Britain, or “republican” France, or the
“tolerant, pluralist” Netherlands, and so on. As recent debates in all
these countries reveal, immigration issues and the vulnerable populations who embody them are consistently projected by both pro- and
anti-immigration politicians and media into grand national debates
about citizenship, national culture, language acquisition, and absorption in national welfare and labor market systems. Ongoing “ethnic”
immigration in fact has become one of the primary ways in which
nation-building continues its classic operations in Europe today, despite
other Europeanizing and globalization processes. If by the making of
Europe or a European “identity” is meant something over and above
the nation-state – something post-national, cosmopolitan, a European
“society” and so on – then “Europe” is simply not very relevant to most
traditional immigration policy questions.
Moreover, the anti-immigrant reactions seen across Europe in the
toughening of politics on immigration and integration are also a crucial
pillar in the anti-EU backlash. They are again a distinct part of the unmaking of European identity (in a post-national sense), although, as Doug
Holmes (this volume) points out, these politics themselves have Europeanized nationalists and nativists in support of their own, different vision
of Europe – a Europe of nation-states. Populations remain, on the whole,
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hostile to migrations of all kinds. Progressive immigration policies – on
citizenship rights and so on – have generally only been advanced politically in Europe by depoliticizing the issues into legal and technical arenas,
and typically during periods of low saliency of immigration politics
(Guiraudon 1998). In terms of Neil Fligstein’s analysis (this volume)
about how and why people might feel “European,” immigration in fact
is one of the issues leading nationals of member states to feel much less
European – including the immigrants themselves, who have no option, if
they wish to be included in their host society, but to comply with the
integrating/nationalizing pressures attached to citizenship and membership acquisition. The effects of immigration, in fact, suggest an opposite
dynamic to the Deutsch hypothesis: more mobility and more interaction
leading to a less integrated Europe.
A different view about the aggregate effects of new immigration
might be taken if we were to view the question in structural, economic
terms, rather than the cultural ones reflected in political debates and
discussions on identity. Far from the maelstrom of rhetorical national
politics, policy makers in the EU certainly have been talking about
coordinating or formulating immigration policies at the EU level;
indeed, the only EU policy field where there is rapid integration today
is in security-based externalization efforts on immigration and border
control. This is more a question of nations efficiently devolving control
mechanisms to more effective agency than anything supranational as
such; but it has certainly Europeanized police forces and other state
agencies in ways they would have not expected. There seems to be a
huge effort in redirecting the internal European integration project
to external border construction and policy – particularly to the south.
In this sense, immigration does appear to be helping in the (negative)
construction of Europe – as the “fortress” hoped for by alarmed national
populations.
Economics, though, may yet defeat this particular vision of Europe.
The numbers of extra-EU immigrants are still rising, despite the efforts
to control and limit them. This migration does still seem to be fulfilling a
structural demand for migrants, driven by the demographic demand
of declining childbirth and aging populations, and the economic
restructuring of European national welfare state economies into a global service economy. No European nation-state can escape the changing
structure of labor markets, and their rescaling at a wider European
level, as they become organized everywhere around highly polarized,
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service-industry driven global cities. Every European economy is witnessing a division of labor and widening of inequalities between the
primary sectors of middle- and upper-class employment, and lower
grade working-class jobs that native nationals are less and less willing
to fill: notably cleaners, domestic workers, restaurant and shop workers,
taxi drivers, construction and agricultural workers, and so on. There is
national level resistance to this process, as well as variation across the
“varieties of European capitalism” (Esping-Andersen 1999) – Britain is
much more polarized and hence open to migrants than, say, Denmark –
but these structural economic effects are impacting all.
These processes are thus integrating Europe under a new economic
rationale. On their convergent economic trajectories, European economies are coming to look more and more like North America in their
structural demand for migration to fill the secondary labor market
demand. This will mean high levels of tacit migration, social and economic marginalization for immigrants, and policies at the border that
“talk the talk” of control but are porous and liberalizing in their effects –
what is referred to in the American context as “smoke and mirrors”style border control policies (Massey et al. 2002). Viewed this way,
immigration is still building a new Europe, in a structural sense –
although host populations don’t much like politically the apparently
neoliberal Europe that is being built by these processes (see also Díez
Medrano in this volume).
Eurostars and Eurocities
What happens when you remove race, class, ethnicity, inequality, borders, barriers, and cultural disadvantage from immigration? Answer:
you get “free movers.” Nationals of European member-states are also
European citizens, among whose basic rights are those that ensure their
unfettered ability to move, shop, work, live, and settle wherever they
want abroad in Europe, whenever and however. Globally speaking, the
European Union is a unique space in this sense: there is nothing like this
kind of politically constructed post-national space anywhere else on the
planet. Free moving European citizens don’t need visas; they don’t need
to worry about citizenship or integration; they often don’t even need
residency to live and work where they choose – they can come and go in
a free European space. European free movement laws – which date back
to the original Treaty of Rome in 1957 – undid the nationalizing logic of
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nation-states as population containers just as the postwar settlement
and the completion of European welfare states was cementing this
national system firmly in place.
In theory, then, European free movement could be an avenue for
building a very different kind of Europe. Yet, numbers of such migrants
have historically been small. Still, today, less than one in fifty Europeans
lives outside their country of origin, and numbers have not grown
appreciably with any of the major steps toward European integration.
The interest in this small population in comparison to traditional immigrants is precisely as an unexpected limit case: they reveal exactly what
other types of immigrants have to face to achieve anything like level
playing field conditions with national citizens (the following discussion
is based on Favell 2008a).
The “Eurostars,” as I call them, are at the heart of the EU Commission’s efforts to build Europe through dynamic mobility policies; the
talk nowadays is not of moving coal miners and factory workers from
the South to the North – as it was when Freedom of Movement of
Persons was established as one of the basic provisions of the Treaty of
Rome in 1957. The talk at the heart of the much touted 2000 Lisbon
agenda, rather, is the movement of professionals, the skilled and the
educated: the circulation of “talent” in a “knowledge economy,” with
its beneficial side effect the building of European identity – through the
kinds of cross-border interactions discussed by Fligstein in this volume. This
movement is likely to be a predominantly urban hub phenomenon – hence
the emergence of “Eurocities,” a network of cosmopolitan places driving
the new European economy: familiar big cities such as London, Amsterdam, Brussels, Milan, Munich, Berlin, Barcelona, Vienna, and so on, that
enjoy semi-detached identities from the national societies in which they
are situated.
Unquestionably, London has benefited the most from these trends
since the 1990s. Offshore from the continent, a global hub and gateway
for all of Europe, London is the European destination of free movement
par excellence, an urban economy that has in the last ten to fifteen years
creamed off the brightest and best of a whole generation of French,
German, Italian, and Spanish movers (and others), frustrated with
stagnant economies or parochial career hierarchies back home. What
began as a large but rather invisible migration of West Europeans has
laid a path now for a new generation of young, talented, and educated
Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, and others heading in the same
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direction – not least because other countries (such as France and
Germany, most notably) have unwisely kept doors shut for these
very same grade-A migrants from new accession countries. European
mobility of this kind is also promoted as the model for future postEnlargement migrations. At the very least, mobile East European EU
citizens taking their new European chances as “free movers” – no
longer “immigrants” – are likely to largely exceed the paltry numbers
of West Europeans who have moved with these same rights during the
previous three to four decades.
For sure, those movers found pioneering the life of Eurostars are
the most likely to both feel and make a post-national/cosmopolitan
European identity. As the PIONEUR survey documents in some detail
(Recchi and Favell, in press), they embody in flesh and blood – albeit in
small numbers – what the philosophers and cosmopolitan social theorists of Europe have long been dreaming of.1 This much is no surprise.
In Fligstein’s terms, these people undoubtedly are the prototypical
Europeans – although, as PIONEUR shows, they find little difficulty in
combining their new European identity with identities rooted in both
their nation of origin and nation of residence (Rother and Nebe, in press).
But are they really making or changing Europe in a macro-structural
sense? The irony is, of course, still patent: break down all barriers,
create all kinds of incentive structures, paint a Europe without frontiers
and only opportunities, and still you only get low, statistically insignificant levels of movement. Typically, the assumption here is that this is
because Europeans don’t like to move; that they are inherently rooted
to where they were born by culture and language. But this culturalist
view of Europe is unsustainable given its longer and dramatic migration
history and the fact that English has provided a common second
1
The EU Framework V funded PIONEUR project (2003–6) “Pioneers of European
Integration ‘from below’: Mobility and the Emergence of European Identity
among National and Foreign Citizens in the EU,” directed by Ettore Recchi of the
University of Florence, completed the first ever systematic survey of the migrant
population of West European citizens within the EU, interviewing randomly 5,000
foreign residents from the five (EU15) largest states in the five largest states
(i.e., Germans in Britain, France, Italy and Spain; British in Germany, France, Italy
and Spain; French in the four other countries and so on). It posed questions about
the socioeconomic and geographical profile of these migrants, their reasons for
migration, their social and spatial mobility, their feelings of European identity,
their media consumption, and their political participation. See our web site:
www.obets.ua.es/pioneur.
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language that can be used interchangeably by Europeans in most professional circles or multinational corporations located in major cities.
But whatever the reason for immobility, European cross-border movement is a perilously slow and marginal way of making Europe. So much
for philosophy and economic theory. This exceptional “most likely
case” scenario is, however, revealing of the stark limitations of any
post-national Europeanized space under even the best possible theoretical conditions.
So being European for these free movers is certainly a banal fact
in terms of identity survey questions. Yes, there are forms of new
Europeanized life, highly Europeanized spaces in cities, and slowly
growing numbers of “new Europeans” in these terms out there. But
more importantly, even with the low numbers, when the lives, experiences and trajectories of these would-be cosmopolitans are studied
ethnographically, the movers can be seen to face surprising local and
national barriers blocking their aspirations in even the most ostensibly
cosmopolitan of locations.
After London, another vastly popular hub of European mobility is
Amsterdam. The Netherlands is often rated the number one open global
economy in the world, and Amsterdam is seen as the liberal capital of
Europe, widely seen as the most open and tolerant urban culture on the
continent. It is a very popular destination with Irish, British, German,
and Southern European migrants. Yet even here, EU movers often find
themselves excluded on an informal level in their chosen places of
residence by locally specific, highly ethnicized processes of exclusion.
These center in Amsterdam, as in other Eurocities, on the competitive
struggle for highly sought after prizes of settlement – high-quality urban
lifestyles – in the most desirable locations of global cities. The Dutch are
open, tolerant, cosmopolitan – for sure – but they simply do not make it
easy for foreigners to settle on an everyday level, ensuring that even the
closest European neighbors have minimal access to the internal secrets
of a national “culture” reserved to native speakers. This “culture”
structures the confusing rules and regulations that police organizational
life, access to the best housing, and attainment of the elusive quality of
life that native Amsterdammers spend years strategizing to attain.
Despite its appeal and the very high numbers of foreigners who move
there, very few stay, turnover is high, and the Netherlands has one of
the smallest foreign resident populations in the continent. It takes elite
capital, and the adoption of a disconnected “expat” life in the city, to
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surmount these barriers – a stratification which ensures that European
mobility cannot be massified downwards to the middle classes, or effect a
bigger structural change on the Europe of nation-states. It will remain an
exclusive property of elites, if any, and European spatial mobility opportunities will not lead to dramatic new social mobility or the emergence of
a more widespread cosmopolitan sensibility (as the theorists dream) (see
also Recchi, in press, for a quantitative analysis of PIONEUR findings in
these terms).
It is a fair retort to suggest that expecting Europeans to build Europe by
moving and resettling long term abroad is setting the bar too high in some
respects. Yet, these same Europeans consistently (in Eurobarometer surveys) rate their rights of free movement as the most important benefit of
EU membership – ahead of the economy and security – and around a
third claim to be ready to move abroad if the opportunity and demand
arose (European Year of Worker’s Mobility 2006).2 Perhaps other
forms of more transient/temporary mobility in Europe will be more
significant: businessmen, students, retirees, shoppers, cross-border traders, commuters, and so on. Again, the broader terms of Fligstein’s search
for the Europeans establishes the evidence, such as it can be shown
through the limited available attitudinal sources of the Eurobarometer
surveys. Maybe the experience of any cross-border mobility, even the
most short-term, may have big Europeanizing effects. However, if mobility consists primarily of holidaying with co-nationals on a beach in the
Costa del Sol, or going on the rampage as a hooligan at a European
football championship, European identity will not be the result. Thus far
the evidence is ambiguous, even for the most likely beneficiaries such as
Erasmus students or retirement migrants. Most of the evidence on these
other forms of mobility suggests that experience of these benefits of EU is
not particularly destructive or transformative of national cultures or
identities (as PIONEUR also underlines; see also King et al. 2000; King
and Ruiz-Gelices 2003), and that when Europeans go home, they go
home to their primary national identities. Eurostars, on the other hand,
2
Of those surveyed, 37% think they would be willing to move to another country
that offered better conditions, 53% think the “freedom to travel and work in the
EU” is the most important single benefit of membership – ahead of the euro (44%)
and peace (36%) – and 57% have travelled internationally within the EU in the last
two years. Yet, less than 4% have ever lived and worked abroad.
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are explicitly trying to live a post-national life; most of them find that it is
a rather difficult proposition in the EU today.
East–West movers
Setting up the contrast between these two types of migrants in Europe –
“ethnic” immigrants and “elite” professional movers – unfortunately
emphasizes what has become a clichéd view of the polarized mobility
opportunities alleged to index the winners and losers of globalization
and regional integration processes (Bauman 1998). The image, in fact, is
far from empirically accurate (on this, see Smith and Favell 2006).
“Ethnic” immigrants often contain a fair number of middle-class and
highly qualified movers, who frequently use their relatively privileged
homegrown social and economic capital to engineer what becomes a
social move downward into higher paying, but lower level work in the
West. It is a universal fact of migration that it is not the poorest and least
capable of migrating that move, but those with some degree of human
capital or networks-based social capital (Hammar et al. 1997). Among
the intra-European migrants, meanwhile, there is much evidence that
free movement rights in Europe have been most effectively mobilized by
a new generation of “social spiralists” – upwardly mobile, ambitious,
provincial, working- and lower-middle-class migrants, often from the
South, often women, using international migration in Europe as an
escape from career and lifestyle frustrations at home (Favell 2008a: 64).
The caricature of “ethnic” immigrants and “elite” movers is even
less applicable to the new form of migration that has in the last few
years grown to become the most important visible proof of a changing
Europe: post-Enlargement migration. This migration is dated post
2004 and 2007, although in truth the migration was already well
established, both informally and semi-formally, before these dates,
and encompasses countries not even now among the twenty-seven
official members of the EU. EU A8 movers, new accession country
citizens, and by extension migrants from all candidate, possibly
candidate, associate, and neighboring countries may fall under this
logic – because of the territorial, “concentric” effects of integrating
markets on a regional scale across these borders through the European
neighborhood policies (Rogers 2000; Favell 2008b). The question,
though, is whether post-Enlargement migrants are following the classic
“ethnic” trajectory, or whether they are, rather, “free movers” destined
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to become the full and free European citizens of the future? Which
scenario best applies?
Demographic and economic theory is highly hopeful here. The newly
freed “free movers” are seen as the avatars of an all-triumphant theory
of European integration, which predicts a win-win-win outcome for
Europe from these new movements (ECAS 2005, 2006): the migrants
win through satisfying their ambitions and mobility goals; the receiving
society wins from creaming off their talent and enthusiasm; and the
sending society will benefit from the positive development dynamics
initiated by the movement of talented individuals who circulate money
and networks within the new Europe, and who will bring back their
talents at some point to the newly integrated Eastern economy – where
all the best opportunities will be located in future. In short, movement
theoretically promotes European integration, efficient economic
dynamics, and a circulation of talent and capital flowing back into
development. True to this theory, more spatial/social mobility is seen
among East European movers. This generation of new Europeans are
ambitious, dynamic movers ready to get what’s theirs from the West,
while benefiting from ease of mobility back and forth from West to East.
Well over half a million citizens from the A8 accession countries
of 2004, for example, took the chance to move into Britain’s boom
economy since 2004. In this, at least, they are unequivocally making
Europe – regardless of how they or others might express their feelings in
Eurobarometers or identity terms. This movement marks arguably the
biggest social change in Europe in half a century: the definitive end of
the Cold War, and a European social experiment that will leave neither
West nor East unchanged.
But, at the same time, a negative political scenario continues to react
to these migrants as “immigrants” rather than “free movers.” Identity
can be mobilized negatively on this issue if migrants are seen by domestic populations as threats rather than benevolent economic complements to domestic economies. On this point, the evidence is equivocal.
A pragmatic reaction has on the whole greeted many of these migrants.
Over Romanians in Milan and Bilbao, Poles in Berlin and London,
Russians and Yugoslavs in Paris or Amsterdam, overt politics has certainly not reacted anything like as violently as it has against the (somewhat) more visible North African or African populations in the same
places. For sure, Polish plumbers and the “invasion” of Roma have
grabbed headlines in France and Britain; France remains mostly closed
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to new accession members, and Britain shut its doors to Romanians and
Bulgarians. But, overall, the reaction has been slow and measured, more
in tune with the growing realization that these new faces are part of a
rather permanent looking East–West economic system that might have
even deeper consequences than the limited settlement of new “ethnic”
immigrants.
This reaction can apply even when these migrants are white,
Christian, skilled and in high demand – and it can happen equally to
the Romanian farm worker in Italy, the Polish shop owner in Germany,
or the highly skilled Hungarian office worker in England (see the
ethnographies collected in Favell and Elrick 2008). The ambiguity of
their presence is sharpened by the fact that it is not so clear that the old
traditional nation-building integration response is so applicable here.
Older immigrant populations might resent that East Europeans can
come and go, taking the same jobs, but facing none of the integratory
pressures that are put on traditional immigrants to demonstrate that
they “belong” in their West European host countries. There is still room
for these migrants to be enveloped in the traditional nation-building
processes of exclusion/inclusion, but for the main part they are establishing patterns of circular, temporary, and non-residential mobility in
the new European space (Morawska 2002; Wallace and Stola 2001).
Locals react with horror when they see the wives and children of Polish
workers cluttering up state school and medical facilities. They understand quite well that the solution is to make sure that low cost airlines
are plentiful, mobility easy, and economic conditions back home promising enough to ensure it is a temporary residence. West European
nations, if they stay open and porous enough, might just get this
migration/development equation right with Poland, although more
permanent brain- and brawn-drain is an ongoing threat for the new
Balkan member states.
An evaluation of the future of this new European migration system,
then, needs to stress both dimensions of the Europe it is building. Yes,
the integrating Europe of mobility promised by demographers and
economists is happening. But the system they are moving into is more
often than not a system based on a dual labor market – in which East
Europeans will take the secondary, temporary, flexible roles based on
their exploitability in terms of cost and human capital premium.
Europe thus comes to resemble the US–Mexico model: where East–
West movers do the 3D jobs or hit glass ceilings, and where underlying
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“ethnic” distinctions between East and West are unlikely to disappear.
In a sense, this mode of inclusion continues the iniquitous longerstanding historical relationship between East and West analyzed in
this volume by Holly Case. Eastern Europeans will get to move, and
they will learn the hard way that the West only wants them to do jobs
that Westerners no longer want. The danger, in short, is they will
become a new Victorian service class for a West European aristocracy
of university educated working mums and “creative class” professionals, who need someone to help them lead their dream lives.
The concentric, externalizing logic of regional integration is meanwhile pushing the EU to begin negotiations out across the Eastern
borders, micro-managing border scenarios with new neighbors to
encourage trade and mobility while controlling unwanted security and
policing implications. The idea, again, is that free movement of all kinds
can be governed; and that when it is governed well it is a win-win for
both sides. This feature of European integration puts it far ahead of
other steps toward regional economic integration around the world. Via
bilateral external accords and neighborhood polices, the regional integration project in Europe stretches far east to the Urals, extends south to
the Atlas mountains, and laps up against the borders of the Dead Sea. It
can be expected that population movements of all kinds will increase
within this concentric European space, and that those moving within
this space will claim new rights as de facto European free movers rather
than non-European immigrants.
Conclusion: Migration and comparative regional
integration processes
Migration of all kinds is making Europe in new ways, but the new
migration system engendered by successive EU enlargements and
other externalizing efforts will prove the most momentous. In these
terms, it is true that the founding fathers would perhaps not believe
the European regional integration process that they put in train. As
the logic of enlarging has triumphed over deepening, a functional new
regional European space is being built, squaring the demography/
economy/securitization question – although the borders of that space
certainly do not end at the borders of EU27. When political integration
of the EU hit the rocks, all the growth energy of the EU was turned into
the activities of governing the porous borders of a new regional space,
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hence opening mobility and the four freedoms (in at least a partial way)
to an EU45 or EU55 through the extension of the European market
beyond all previous ideas of Europe.
The key question of course will be: Where lie the borders of this
“space” and “system”? Who is in/out? What, in other words, will be
the relationship of the newly fluid East European “free movers” – both
new and potential members – to those post-colonial, “non”-European
“immigrants” who have filled the secondary economic roles for Europe
in the past?
One way of answering this question is to go back to the US–Europe
comparison and lay out the emergent European regional space against
the North American one. Viewed this way, it becomes instructive to
compare the expanding, explicitly political logic of European regional
integration with the politically ungoverned and socially disastrous scenario that the US now faces with Central America. Where Europe is
increasingly turning to the East for its migrant labor sources, the US
relies massively on Latino migration from the South to fill the same
roles. And as the recent politics of immigration in the US testify, the
Mexico–US immigration scenario (and by extension the relationship
with all of Central America) is now tragically hamstrung between the
irreconcilable paradoxes of the national container “migration state”
(Hollifield 2004), unable to take effective political steps toward a postnational regional integration in the European mold, while structurally
dependent on cross-border mobility (Massey et al. 2002). America
desperately needs a rational economic solution; but its politics will not
allow it.
The US remains an economy and society driven by immigration. The
American economy more than ever is based on its porous borders. The
Californian agricultural economy would collapse without it; Texas is
much the same. What do Los Angelenos do when there is a hole in their
roof, a problem with the garden sprinkler, or a fence that needs patrolling at night? They phone up Carlos, a recently naturalized MexicanAmerican, who has in fact been living in the city for twenty-five years.
He then phones up some “guys” he knows, and you stop asking questions. Or if you need some help getting the house clean or the baby
monitored, your neighbor’s home help, Susana, always has a “sister” or
“cousin” willing to come by, for cash in hand. The middle and upper
class can get back to work making money franchising cable comedy
shows, or get busy with their yoga class after dropping the kids off at
Immigration, migration, and free movement
187
school. This is how the city works, how everyone makes money and
creates time for themselves. Nowadays it’s exactly how New York,
Chicago, Atlanta and Houston work too, and it’s getting to be that
way in Dalton, Georgia, Las Vegas, Nevada, or even (someday soon)
Des Moines, Iowa. European middle classes in London, Paris, or Rome
are learning the same economic logic; and the home helps they are
turning to, and becoming increasingly dependent on, are increasingly
East European in origin.
Politically, though, the two continents are divergent. Nativism is on
the rise in the US, usually based on spurious cultural and linguistic
arguments that are woefully outdated in their views of the population
dynamics of major urban centers i.e., Huntington 2004. Congress
has recently failed in several attempts to pass legislation to regularize
undocumented migration and to square the economic demand for
workers with the push for more political control. Only border control
and internal security has tightened. But as a recent satirical movie made
clear, “A day without a Mexican” is the day the miracle American
economy grinds to a halt. The scenario was actualized in the massive
one-day Mexican protests in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the spring of
2006. America has tried to look east to fill its voracious immigrant
demand – one can argue that the US is so soft on immigration from
Korea, Japan, China, and Vietnam precisely for this reason – but it still
needs Carlos and his crew. White supremacists in the US have had their
day, thanks to demographics. Even the Bush presidency understood
that a Republican with no Asian or Latino voters is now a Republican
out of office. Nativists will always want to build fences to the sky, and
they may still feel empowered and legitimated to take their rifles out as
minutemen to patrol the Arizona desert. But as is shown by the trucks
pouring northwards across that border, while American capital and
tourism pours south, the US economy does not and will not ever end at
El Paso or Tijuana – arguably a lot more of the Central and South
American continent than US citizens would like to admit is indisputably
North America (see also Pastor 2001). But, as ever, this reality is driven
by economic facts way in advance of any political understanding. It
awaits a political leadership able to grasp it.
Europe faces similar issues with immigration, but politically and
economically it is choosing a different path. In the twentieth century,
Europe’s greatest weakness in relation to the US was that its borders
were ambiguous and its internal politics and economics fractious – to
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the tune of millions dead. Discounting its practically empty neighbor
Canada, the US took a lead as the major container nation-state in
the world because it had seas on either side and vast deserts to the
south. It was a nation-state like no other, and it pursued a policy of
essentially open doors to immigration – and a flattening of barriers to
all internal migration – that fueled its growth and power to a scale that
dwarfed all its rivals. Europe, too, eventually opened its societies to
immigration and intra-regional migration, and now it seeks to manage
a migration scenario that is close to being as dynamic and unruly as the
one that dominates North American debates. London, the boomtown of
European mobility, has in fact shadowed the mythical immigrant city of
New York in terms of immigrant-led population growth in the period
2000–2005. But there is one major difference between the continents.
The US has to look south for its sources of cheap labor. Europe, on the
other hand, can look east; and this is what it has been increasingly doing.
But where does this leave Europe’s own South? Put another way,
this is the ethnic question of European identity again: the crucial issue
of whether or not Moroccans and Turks – by far the largest immigrant
populations in Europe, and the closest “ethnic” neighbors – are also
mobile Europeans by the logic of regional integration. The politics
currently do not look good: Europe may choose to heed nativism and
treat its Moroccans and Turks in the same dismal fashion in which
the US treats its Central American “alien” workforce. Yet, by a purely
economic/concentric logic of regional integration, their mobility should
come to resemble less and less the traditional nationalizing/integrating
immigrant trajectory, and more that of new and potential East European
members. Other contiguous populations to the south and east might also
make this claim – although the space of the European neighborhood, as
any space, has to end somewhere. Physical borders matter; to some extent
you can build walls and patrol seas. The US is trying this again on its
southern border, although as tens of thousands of have discovered at
great human cost, it does not stop migration. But other mechanisms can
make migration a lot more unpleasant. What if Europe could remove its
reliance on ethnic workers in the lower, secondary slots in the economy; if
demand itself could be removed by a racial and ethnocentric logic? For
the time being, this seems the underlying logic determinate in defining
who can be a “free mover” and who cannot. The strong suspicion is that
the eastward expansion of Europe is being built with a racial logic,
seeking to open borders to the East while closing them to the South.
Immigration, migration, and free movement
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This is politically functional, economically attractive, and a dynamic
solution in the short term.
European enlargement and externalizing agreements have made it
possible for Europe to look east. These same policies are being used to
more effectively border and police borders in the South – reinforcing
borders and, through neighborhood policies, enticing southern states
in Africa and the Middle East financially and politically in order to
implement more effective means of remote control. The payoff for a
Europe, which is uneasy primarily about a neighboring Islamic South
rather than a less familiar Balkan East, is clear. Most Poles, Romanians
and Ukrainians are white and Christian; most Turks, Moroccans,
Senegalese, or Somalians are not. But there is a sting in the tail of this
logic: it will not solve the longer term demographic question. East
Europeans have similarly low birthrates to their West European neighbors. The tension here between a porous East and a bordered South
is thus likely to be a central defining feature of the ongoing regional
integration being built through Enlargement. As always with the study
of population movements, this dramatic macro-process can be very
effectively viewed and humanly grasped through the micro-level experiences of the various migrants enacting these processes in Europe at the
ground level.
PART III
European identity in context
8
Identification with Europe and
politicization of the EU since
the 1980s
HARTMUT KAELBLE
Since the 1980s, the European Union (EU) has undergone a process of
profound politicization and a deliberate, though less striking process of
de-politicization. These developments have left their mark on the
identification of Europeans with Europe and the EU. This identification
has some specific qualities: it is predominantly liberal; it attempts to
encompass Europe’s substantial internal diversities; it is based on common social and cultural rather than political experiences; and it is
disappointingly weak in the view of some, surprisingly substantial in
the view of others. These qualities, I argue, have much to do with the
distinctive politicization the EU has experienced since the early 1980s.
I start with a short outline of the history of the politicization and depoliticization of European affairs since the 1980s. In the second section I
analyze changes in the identification with Europe under five separate
headings. The final section develops my answer to the question of how
politicization and identification with Europe have become deeply
intertwined.1
1
Research by historians on the politicization of the EU in the 1980s is lacking, and
research on European identity is also scarce. The vast majority of books and
articles on European identity are written by social scientists, lawyers,
philosophers, or specialists on literature. A few have been written by historians
such as Wlodzimierz Borodziej and Heinz Duchhardt (Borodziej et al. 2005),
Federico Chabod (1995), Etienne François (2006), Robert Frank (2004), Ute
Frevert (2003), René Girault (1993, 1994), Hartmut Kaelble (2001a, 2001b,
2002a, 2002b), Maria G. Melchionni (2001), Luisa Passerini (1998, 1999), Kiran
Patel (2004), Wolfgang Schmale (2003), Alexander Schmidt-Gernig (1999), and
Bo Stråth (2001, 2002). If they write on this topic at all, historians usually work on
the history of the European idea rather than on identification with Europe. Major
reasons are the strong traditional link of European historiography with national
history, the lack of appropriate sources for the history of European identity
beyond and below the elites, and sometimes the fear of being involved once again
in the construction of an identity that might be misused by politicians – the fear of a
new jingoism introduced purposefully or involuntarily by historians.
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Politicization and de-politicization since the 1980s
Since the 1980s, the EU has experienced a period of politicization, as
profound decisions affecting the character and future course of the EU
became matters of public debate. Previously, there had existed a diffuse
and largely uncontroversial general support for complicated expert
decisions, for example on the creation of a common market, a common
agricultural policy, and various European funds. After the mid-1980s,
debates on Europe became more contentious, with increasingly clear
contrasts between supporters and opponents of the European project.
Besides Europe’s economic integration, important new fields became
part of a broadly based and widely debated process of Europeanization
including labor markets, consumer and environmental protection,
human rights, foreign workers, student exchange programs, university
exams, drivers’ licenses, identity cards, and border controls. In addition,
various national referenda on new European treaties stirred at times
intense political debates.
A crucial part of the politicization of identities was intellectuals’
rediscovery of Europe as a topic for political analysis. In the mid1980s, scholars such as Edgar Morin, Richard Löwenthal, Antony
Giddens, Umberto Eco, Jürgen Habermas, and later Bronislaw
Geremek and many others started to write and talk about the EU.
This ended a long period of disinterest and disdain with which intellectuals, for the most part, had treated the area of the EU since the 1950s –
as a small, purely economic, technocratic, culturally unattractive, and
conservative project.
It is important to put this rediscovery of Europe in a larger historical context. Over the last two centuries, one can distinguish three
periods of debate about Europe. After intensifying greatly during the
Enlightenment, the debate declined during the rise of European nationstates and the building of European empires. It was reignited only at the
end of the nineteenth century, provoked first by the rise of the US as the
largest and most modern economy and society, and later by the deep
economic and moral crisis Europe experienced during and after the two
world wars. The discourse about Europe receded during the Cold War,
as intellectual and political attention shifted to the “West,” which
included North America, divided Europe, and excluded Eastern
Europe. Only in the 1980s did a new debate on Europe re-emerge.
With the fall of the Soviet empire, the dissolution of the third world
Identification and politicization of the EU
195
bloc, and the increase in the EU’s power, intellectuals began to identify
Europe as a major topic for political discussion rather than an esoteric
occasion for the manifestos of small idealistic circles (Frank 1998; Girault
1994; Kaelble 2001a, 2002a; Osterhammel 1998; Pomian 1990).
These cycles of intellectual engagement differed in the eastern part of
Europe during the nineteenth century and after 1945 (see Case in this
volume). In the nineteenth century, the debate on European topics
concentrated largely on common culture, values, economy, society,
religion and the Church. Since Europe lacked a political center, the
discourse skirted around common political issues. In contrast, starting
in the early and mid-1980s, public debate began to recognize the EU as a
centre of politics and to discuss common European political issues
decided by European institutions.
In addition, since the mid-1980s a European public sphere has begun
to distinguish itself (see Medrano in this volume). Based on a connected
network of national rather than Europe-wide media, it is reflected in the
simultaneous appearance of the same news in the media of different
nation-states, presented from a European rather than a purely national
perspective; in the growth of an expert public sphere particularly in
political science, law, and economics; and in the rise of new European
symbols, all based on a substantial increase in the knowledge of foreign
languages (Eder and Spohn 2005; Risse 2002; Kaelble 2002b, 2007a;
Kaelble et al. 2002; Machill et al. 2006; Medrano 2003 and in this
volume; Meyer 2007). However, whether a European public sphere has
emerged fully remains a point of considerable controversy among
specialists.
Three major upheavals contributed to the politicization of the EU.
First, since the mid-1980s the power of the EU has grown substantially,
partly in response to Eurosclerosis in the early 1980s, partly due to the
breakdown of the Soviet empire and the challenge that German unification posed for all European states. A series of agreements and treaties
between 1986 and 2007 (the Single European Act, the treaties of
Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice, and finally the treaty of Lisbon)
redesigned the EU. Expanding its competence well beyond the sphere
of economics, the EU began to make decisions in external and internal
security, social policy, migration and consumer policy, and cultural
policy. As a consequence, it began to intervene in many ways in the
daily lives of citizens, becoming the inevitable target of political criticism. Significantly, the expansion of its power occurred in a period of
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growing economic difficulties, increasing energy prices, rising unemployment, and spreading skepticism about the economic future of Europe.
Hence, the EU could no longer profit indirectly from the exceptional
economic boom of the postwar years (the “trente glorieuses”); instead,
Europe’s image suffered under the impact of these economic challenges,
thus providing grounds for even further criticism.
The geographic expansion of the EU was a second factor contributing
to its politicization. To be sure, important enlargements had occurred
earlier. However, these remained within the borders of Western Europe,
as set by the Cold War, and were not tied to dramatic institutional change.
In contrast, the accessions prepared and decided since the early 1990s – by
Europe’s neutral states, by the Central European countries, and finally by
Romania and Bulgaria, as well as ongoing negotiations regarding Turkish
membership – had a different character. They raised fundamental questions concerning Europe’s boundaries, and criteria for democratic governance had to be specified. Finally, in a time of economic difficulties and
political volatility, the membership of poor Central and Eastern European
countries with a strong need for subsidies and liberalization of migration
policies were widely seen as posing serious economic and political challenges for national and European decision makers. The debate about the
boundaries and the basic values of the EU further increased politicization.
A third factor was the American and East Asian waves of globalization that have reached Europe since the 1980s. In trade, capital investment, corporate ownership and management, migration, transport,
communication, knowledge transfers, and culture and media, Europe
became more closely linked to global markets. And while its lack of
political and military power denied it superpower status, Europe’s
importance in world affairs increased visibly on questions of trade,
capital flows, migration, human rights, and environmental issues.
Europe was also on the receiving end of global changes. Immigration
from the eastern and southern Mediterranean, sub-Saharan Africa, the
Caribbean, India, and East Asia was beginning to lead to the establishment of new, permanent ethnic and religious minorities in Europe.
Furthermore, awareness was spreading that the era of Western global
superiority might be coming to an end, and that the rise of China and
India signaled the arrival of new actors on the global scene who might
well surpass Europe in the not-too-distant future. Although Europe
often operates as a global actor, Europeans frequently saw it as a victim
of globalization. On crucial issues of economic and social policy,
Identification and politicization of the EU
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Europeans typically expected EU policy to be more effective than
national policy. This, too, contributed to the politicization of the EU.
Politicization, to be sure, was accompanied at times by a policy of depoliticization, in line with national political experiences. At the level of
the EU, specific institutions of de-politicized decision making existed or
emerged in this period: the European Court in Luxembourg, which
became a central enactor in European integration; the European Central
Bank, which was established with the introduction of the euro currency;
the European Court of Auditors; and various European agencies regulating different arenas of policy. The European Court of Justice and
European Central Bank became totally autonomous from and unconstrained by the European Council and European Commission. In its
design, the ECB followed very closely the model provided by the
German Bundesbank – a case of voluntary de-politicization after the
disastrous experience of totalitarian politicization during the Third
Reich and uncontrolled inflation after military defeat.
The introduction of direct elections to the European Parliament in
1979 failed to enhance the political standing of that body and thus acted
as a further de-politicizing factor in European politics. In contrast to
national elections, elections to the European Parliament have not provided a genuine choice among competing programs and political teams
that might sway the direction of the European Commission; instead,
they have typically become a further electoral test of the political
performance of national governments. As it turned out, European elections were not about Europe but were rather by-elections over national
controversies. As a consequence, participation fell continuously in all
EU member states except Denmark and Spain (Kaelble 2008).
Developments in European civil society also reinforced de-politicization.
More than at the national level, European actors tend to organize
unobtrusively, preferring telephone calls, petitions, personal encounters, expert statements, and discussions of white and green papers to
public mobilization and strategies of politicization. In a word, to the
extent that it has begun to emerge embryonically, European civil society
is bypassing the public sphere and eschewing strategies of politicization.
Yet these factors working toward de-politicization were too weak to
stop the politicization of the EU. The broadening and deepening of its
political agenda over the last two decades has moved the EU quite a
distance, from an administrative body to a political institution subject
to genuine political debate.
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Identification with the EU
The politicization of European affairs had a substantial effect on how
Europeans have identified with Europe. Strength, unity, and clash
are categories that do not capture European, national, or Western
identifications. Identification did not become stronger; no single
European identity emerged; and European identity did not begin to
clash with that of other civilizations. Five possible changes in identification, spanning internal and external developments, command our
attention.
A liberal identification with Europe
The era of Europe’s politicization did not result in a weakening of liberal
identification with Europe. Rather, a politicized debate over the character of Europe and the EU gave liberal identification with Europe a
stronger political profile. Yet, we should readily acknowledge that a
single European identity has never existed in Europe’s past and did not
emerge in the 1980s. Identification with Europe has always been a
subject of dissent and debate, a choice among different options, a
contest between or coexistence of different concepts, a history of varieties and multiplicities of identifications rather than the existence of one
unchallenged, hegemonic idea of Europe.
A brief, cross-national glance at the history of identification with
Europe reveals the existence of five different types of identification
since the late eighteenth century.
First, identification with a superior Europe, more advanced than all
other societies of the world and in all fields of human endeavor: economy, political institutions, warfare, technology, science, urban planning, education as well as the arts, lifestyle, and social organization.
Europe was seen as the harbinger of progress for the world, sometimes
linked to concepts of culture, at other times to concepts of race. This was
the predominant identification of the nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Some European critics, to be sure, regarded Europe’s superiority as a disadvantage, a burden, even a menace for the non-European
world. Tending to idealize the non-commercialized China, India,
or Africa, they were in a clear minority. In recent decades the view of
European superiority is the rarely articulated in public and exists for
the most part only as a concealed or suppressed worldview.
Identification and politicization of the EU
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A second identification is with European inferiority – cultural, economic, political, or moral – in the face of a threat posed by the outside
world. It expresses the fear of decline and of Europe’s colonization by
others. Paradoxically, this identification with an inferior Europe has
often elicited more passion than the identification with a superior
Europe. It had already developed before World War I, became predominant in the interwar period, and only gradually weakened in the
1950s and 1960s. Although it declined in the 1980s, the sense of
European inferiority did not fully disappear. The more recent widespread perception of the rise of Asia and the Islamic world has elicited
once again this kind of identification.
A third identification focusses on Europe as part of the modernized
world and as an actor in a mission of global modernization. Although
non-European societies such as the US have played the leading role,
Europe is an important, indeed indispensable, part of modernity. This
identification was particularly common between the 1950s and 1970s and
has become less compelling since the 1980s. A fourth identification with
Europe sees it as one civilization among several others, endowed with both
positive and negative traits, engaged in friendly competition with other
non-European societies and civilizations, learning from others and exporting its own ideas and practices to other parts of the world, appreciative of
immigration from other parts of the world as an enriching experience. This
identification already existed in the nineteenth century. It became important only after the fall of the European overseas empires and after the early
decades of the Cold War. Fifth and finally, there exists an inward-looking
identification with Europe that focusses on Europe’s internal diversity, as
summarized in the formula “European unity in diversity.”
In light of such a multitude of identifications with Europe during the
last two centuries, it is far-fetched to assume that history has now run its
full course, ending with the emergence of a single identification. The
result of the history of the last several decades is the same as for the last
several centuries: the persistence of various identifications that are
primarily, though not exclusively, liberal, tolerant, and also cosmopolitan. With many gradations, three basic orientations toward Europe
prevail: Europe as one civilization among others; Europe as marked by
great internal variety; and Europe as an inferior victim exposed to the
threats posed by a globalizing world.
Especially for liberals, during the recent era of Europe’s and the EU’s
politicization, history has played an increasingly important role. From
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the liberal perspective, identification with Europe as it now exists stands
as a refutation of a Europe occupied, exploited, and oppressed by a
murderous Nazi regime in a disastrous war accompanied by unfathomable war crimes, and a Europe ravished by genocide and a Holocaust
perpetrated by Nazi Germany. Liberals support the EU as a very different
model, infinitely preferable to the Europe ruled by Nazi Germany (Giesen
1999; Eder and Giesen 2001). In addition, liberal views are informed by
new post-colonial sensibilities and a renewed interest in the history of
European colonial empires, in Europe’s “mission civilisatrice” and
Europe’s carrying the “white man’s burden,” and in the history of the
universalistic claim of European values that rings hollow when measured
against the mostly deplorable conduct of European imperialists. Here
too, liberal views are reinforced greatly by the European past as the
political “other” that contemporary Europe has rejected.
At the same time, history also became an important source for a
positive identification with Europe. Schuman, de Gasperi, Adenauer,
and also Churchill were celebrated as Europe’s mythical founding
fathers after World War II. May 9 was introduced as the day of
Europe, celebrating Robert Schuman’s declaration in 1950, following
Jean Monnet’s design. Plans were launched for the eventual creation of
European museums in Brussels and in Aix-la-Chapelle. The comité de
liaison, a group of historians backed by the European Commission, was
established in 1982. A network of historians of European identity
was founded in 1989 by the late René Girault, thereafter directed by
Robert Frank (Girault 1993, 1994; Frank 2004; cf. Loth et al., in press).
European history schoolbooks have been published (François 2007), as
have numerous handbooks. After a decline of interest in European
history in the 1960s and 1970s and a long period in which the subject
was not attractive to historians, it has now returned as a widely appreciated topic in the 1990s, part of the liberal identifications with Europe.
Even though liberal identifications have predominated since the
1980s, one should not forget the other forces in this history of identification with Europe. A closer look reveals that important pioneers of the
European unity movement did not wish to see a liberal, democratic
Europe. For example, Coudenhove-Kalergie, usually considered one of
the great visionaries of European unity, believed that unity could also be
achieved in partnership with a dictator such as Mussolini, whom he
greatly respected (Conze 2004). Usually regarded as an innovative
period of European unity plans and movements, during the interwar
Identification and politicization of the EU
201
period three important non-liberal trends of European identification
were influential: the understanding of Europe developed first by Italian
fascism and later by the German Nazi regime; the conservative Catholic
and Protestant concept of the Occident, skeptical of mass democracy;
and finally the concept of a superior European civilization that was
frequently suffused by racial and racist concepts and, typically, firmly in
opposition to the principles of liberal democracy (Conze 2005; Frevert
2003; Kaelble 2001a; Kletzin 2000; Laughland 1997; Li 2007; Loth
1995; Pagden 2002; du Réau 1996; Rößner 2007; Schmale 2003;
Wilson et al. 1995; Case, this volume).
Hence, the long history of debate by Europeans does not lead in a
straight line to the modern, liberal identification with Europe. That
history serves as a useful reminder that new anti-democratic identifications with Europe may well emerge once again. Douglas Holmes (this
volume) is thus correct to explore the renewed identification of rightwing extremists with Europe.
Identification with Europe’s internal diversity
Identification with Europe’s internal diversity is a second change
directly linked to the politicization of the EU. Simply put, as the EU
became a readily identifiable center of power, it also began to be viewed
as a threat to European diversity of culture. Conservation of Europe’s
diversity in the arts, sciences, intellectual and political culture became an
alternative source of identification with Europe. For this conception of
identity, Europe’s unity in diversity offers an attractive paradox. Here,
identification is constituted at its core by the appreciation of differences
among countries, regions, political orientations, and individuals. The
interest in and tolerance of the different “other,” and a culture of
individualism of persons and collectivities, is seen as one of Europe’s
greatest achievements, worthy of full identification. Difference is seen as
a humanitarian achievement and also as a major stimulant for economic
and cultural innovation, as well as for effective democratic institutions.
This celebration of Europe’s strength and its harbinger of modernity
tends toward Euro-centrism. It typically presumes, quite erroneously,
that in its internal differentiation Europe is unrivaled among the world’s
major civilizations. Since the 1980s, this identification has been quite
common in the debates about Europe (Brague 1992; Castiglione and
Bellamy 2003; Checkel 2007b; Delanty 1995; Frevert 2003; Habermas
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2003; Kaelble 2001a, 2002a; Katzenstein 2006; Kohli 2000; Landfried
2005; MacDonald 2000; Mendras 1997; Müller 2007; Osterhammel
1998; Passerini 1998, 1999; Risse 2004; Stråth 2001; Shore 2000;
Swedberg 1994). Edgar Morin called this the “dialogique,” the fundamental inner logic of Europe based on the dialogue between diverging
tendencies (Morin 1987, p. 128; see also Eisenstadt 2003). Stein
Rokkan (1983; see also Flora 1999) built elaborate taxonomies around
the construct of diversity. Many other social science approaches in more
specific fields have followed Rokkan’s lead, usefully summarized by
Göran Therborn (1995). Some scholars go as far as to argue that each
nation develops its own characteristic identification with Europe, based
on its specific national experiences including perceptions of national
security, national past and future, and basic national values. The identification with Europe’s internal diversity and the European predilection
for difference thus has become well established. As opinion polls show,
European identities readily combine identification with country, region,
or locale with an identification with Europe (Bruter 2005; Duchesne
and Frognier 1995; Herrmann et al. 2004; Kohli 2000; Malmborg and
Stråth 2002; Risse 2004). Identification with Europe’s internal diversity
is implicitly based on the reasonable assumption that Europeans normally prefer multiple identities.
The predilection for difference is even more important as it touches
on the role of intellectuals. With the increase in EU power, especially
since the late 1980s, a new, critical, engaged European intellectual has
emerged who remains independent of Brussels. One important way of
illustrating such intellectual autonomy is the sustained critique of the
EU’s homogenization of culture and lifestyles and the plea for the
conservation or revitalization of differences in Europe. The concept is
particularly attractive for social scientists with their well-established
research methods, including the building of typologies, international
comparison, and the study of flows, transfers and encounters.
Identification with European diversity is thus a reaction to the rising
and homogenizing power of the EU.
Does the identification with internal divergences indicate a more
flexible European self-understanding, more easily integrating differences between East and West as well as North and South? Two observations suggest that this is not the case. First, even though internal
differences were enormous, turning the observation of difference into
identification with difference has not been a long-standing tradition in
Identification and politicization of the EU
203
European history. Instead, this kind of identification can primarily be
found only since the 1980s. To be sure, appreciation of Europe’s internal diversity has existed for a long time; but direct identification with
internal differences emerged only when the EU became recognized as a
powerful actor of homogenization; when European mental maps had to
include once again, as before the Cold War, Eastern and South-Eastern
Europe with their very different historical experiences; and when even
the EU started to invest in liberal precepts extolling the virtues of
productive competition among different European states.
Second, Europe’s internal differences did not increase in the 1980s. In
a longer historical perspective of the last two centuries, economic and
political variation among European countries and regions increased
until the middle of the twentieth century. This was followed, after the
1950s, by a period of distinct convergences, first within the western,
then within the eastern part of Europe, and finally, after 1989, across
the entire continent (Kaelble 2007b). Obviously, there is no direct
parallel between changes in divergence and the identification with
difference. On the contrary, there exists a paradoxical connexion
between identification with European diversity and periods of convergence when internal divergences do not threaten unity. The identification with diversity in Europe depends on a very specific and possibly
transient constellation of factors in recent history (see also Case in this
volume). It may not last.2
Identification with European lifestyles and values
During the period of politicization of the EU, identification with
European lifestyles and values increased, a lived and often unreflected
identification with a way of life rather than a self-consciously adopted
political program. This identification is rooted in consumption and
consumer tastes, work and leisure, family life, and cities and landscapes,
2
This argument should be explored further through a comparison of Europe with
other civilizations that are marked by internal divergences and debates on internal
difference – such as the United States, India, Africa, the Arab world, Latin
America, and East and Southeast Asia. To be sure, there have been varying
interpretations of such differences by central power holders, by spokespersons of
the periphery, and by more recent research. In its political, social, cultural, and
economic diversity, Europe is distinctive, not unique (Eisenstadt 2003, 2006;
Katzenstein and Shiraishi 2006).
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but also in values such as well-developed social security systems, secularization, human rights and tolerance, a strong role for intellectuals,
civility, strict limitation on private and public violence (and hence
opposition to the death penalty), equality between men and women,
and universal education (Joas and Wiegandt 2005; Kaelble 2007b).
This kind of identification prompted the late French historian René
Girault to draw a distinction among the concepts of Europe vécue –
the unconscious and implicit identification with common norms and
lifestyles and established solidarities; Europe pensée, the debates on
Europe; and Europe voulue, the creation of European institutions
(Girault 1994).3 Behind such categories looms the larger question of
whether the identification with Europe was stimulated primarily by a
convergence in Europe’s social structures, lifestyles, and values, along
with the intensifying transfers and interconnections between European
societies; or by public debates in the media; or by the governance of the
EU (see also Bach 2000; Münch 2001; Risse 2004).
An implicit identification with common European lifestyles and
values does not necessarily signify a decline in the identification with
national ones. To the contrary, the two might go together. Furthermore,
identification with European values does not necessarily mean a rejection of non-European values.4
Lacking adequate empirical research on the identification with
European diversity, we can only point to the most important trends
that reinforce and undermine identification with European norms and
lifestyles. First, since the 1950s and 1960s, European lifestyles have
become increasingly internationalized. More consumer goods began
to be imported from other European countries, more than from the US
or East Asia. Hence, identification with hybrid European consumption
tastes and patterns became easier. In addition, cross-border travel,
study, marriage, work, and retirement have enormously enhanced direct,
3
4
Along these lines, Luisa Passerini has explored with great imagination the
European cultivation of love between women and men as an implicit European
identity (1999).
While it does not address the precise question posed, one of the few relevant
empirical studies (Delhey 2004; see also Bach 2000) has established that
Europeans’ confidence in other European countries has increased somewhat
during the last decades, especially for Northern European states with their
remarkable record of economic prosperity and efficient public administration.
Confidence in one’s own country tends to correlate positively with confidence in
other European countries.
Identification and politicization of the EU
205
personal experiences with the lifestyles of other European countries.
Although such international exposure is not limited to Europe, it tends
to take place mostly between European countries. Moreover, the identification with Europe vécue was reinforced by strong trends toward
European social convergence in important fields such as work, health,
migration, education, urban life, social welfare programs, and media, as
well as by weakening divergence among states, transnational regions,
and between East and West (Kaelble 2007b). Finally, the representation
of other European countries has changed. The impact of the experience
and memory of war and war propaganda has gradually eroded, allowing confidence in other European countries.
In contrast, two trends work in the opposite direction, undermining
identification with European lifestyles and values: competition on the
labor market, resulting in anxiety about job loss to immigrants from
other European countries; and the dearth of institutions of European
solidarity providing help among Europeans in times of personal crisis or
disaster. In the absence of much needed empirical research, trends
working in favor of identification with Europe appear to be stronger
than those undercutting it.
A cautious and restrained identification with Europe?
Many scholars and public intellectuals argue that, compared to national
identities, the identification with Europe is weak in its statistical, political, and symbolic impact. I shall first present the evidence in more
detail, and, in the following section, cover the opposite, and to me more
obvious argument.
In terms of statistics, only slightly more than half of Europeans
identify with Europe and regard themselves as Europeans. In some
European countries such as Britain, Sweden, Austria, and Hungary,
only a minority does so. Furthermore, over the last three decades,
opinion polls on the relative strength of national and European identities record no clear rise in the identification with Europe (Bruter 2005;
Kohli 2000; Díez Medrano 2003).
In addition, political solidarity as a crucial indicator of identification
remains underdeveloped across Europe. The charter of fundamental
rights signed in the Treaty of Nice (2000) and later incorporated into
the proposed European constitution addresses only citizen and human
rights, without explicit reference to the duties and obligations of citizens
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Hartmut Kaelble
such as paying taxes and contributing to public social insurance programs –
not to speak of social or military service (Kohli 2000; Offe 2001).
Moreover, European symbols have remained far less potent than
national ones. To be sure, there have been efforts to create common
European symbols, particularly during two major periods since the end
of World War II. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, when a strong
European movement was active in the initial period of European integration, many European symbols were proposed: various designs of a
European flag (not only the flag eventually adopted by the Council of
Europe, but also an alternative design with a green E on a white background); postage stamps; historical places commemorating Europe, such
as Strasbourg; human rights charters; historical figures such as
Charlemagne, reinforced by the Charlemagne prize of Aix-la-Chapelle;
institutions for advanced education, such as the College of Europe in
Bruges; and rituals such as the lifting of border barriers by young
Europeans or the signing of international treaties by elder statesmen.
The 1980s and 1990s – that is, the era of politicization of the EU – also
witnessed numerous inventions of European symbols, often created by the
EU: a European anthem, a Europe day, a European flag, two European
charters of rights (1989, 2000), the Erasmus program, the buildings of the
European Parliament in Strasbourg and Brussels, and finally the euro
currency (Hedetoft 1998; Jones 2007; Kaelble 2003; Passerini 2003).
But only the European flag (blue with twelve golden stars), the Erasmus
program, and the EU currency (the euro) have fully succeeded. Relative to
national symbols, most other European ones have remained weak or
ambiguous. The European anthem and Europe Day5 remain largely unobserved and unknown. References to outstanding European historical
figures are infrequent. French and Germans successfully reinterpreted
Charlemagne as a European symbol after 1945; but he is not a figure of
common identity for British, Polish, Swedish, or Portuguese citizens. French
historian Jacques Le Goff disavows Charlemagne as a major European
symbol. For him, the origin of Europe lies in the European network of
intellectuals that emerged in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries rather
than in Charlemagne’s conquest of the Carolingian empire (Le Goff 2003).6
5
6
In fact, there are two Europe Days, one created by the European Council (May 5),
one by the EU (May 9).
Whether Robert Schuman or Winston Churchill played the crucial role
among the founding fathers remains disputed.
Identification and politicization of the EU
207
Further, a common European history, another symbol of European
unity, remains to be written. European schoolbooks are the exception,
not the rule (François 2007). Lacking are the typical ingredients of
national history – a common war of independence, a common period
of defeat and suffering, a common period of subsequent reaffirmation
of the body politic, a history of common frontiers, and a common
historical memory. To be sure, common European places and objects
of memory (lieux de mémoire) can be traced, but they are much less
evident than national ones (François 2006). Europe lacks a symbolic
capital such as Paris or London. Brussels is an administrative center, but
no capital with which to identify, for lack of what one would expect
from a capital: a purposeful architectural ensemble of buildings for the
European Parliament, the European Commission, and the European
Council; a European museum, a European opera and theater, a
European academy of sciences, a major European university, a
European library, European monuments, and European street names.
One major factor accounting for variation in the identification with
Europe has to do with the “other,” which can be close or alien, amicable
or inimical, helpful or menacing, linked to or separate from Europe. Each
identification is probably rooted in opposition to one or several others.
The loss of the United States as a conspicuously emphatic “other” after
the fall of the Wall, and the loss of the Soviet Union/Russia as an alien
and menacing “other” are major reasons for the recent weakness of the
identification with Europe. During the Cold War, identification with
Europe was undermined for a different reason, as Europe was encompassed by a broader Western or international communist identity.
Another explanation for the weakness of identification with Europe
is its complex relationship with national identity. Some see a strong
national identification as the main reason for a weak identification with
Europe. Hence, the weak British identification with Europe has been
attributed to the strong British national identity, based partly on the
unique British role and success in defeating Nazi Germany. Discredited
nations, such as Germany after World War II and Spain after Franco,
are instead developing a strong identification with Europe. In a view
that is now contested in the social sciences, this argument suggests that
the relationship between the two forms of identification is mutually
exclusive (Eisenstadt and Giesen 1995; Risse 2004).
A final explanation for weak identification with Europe is a relatively
weakly developed European public sphere in which a European identity
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could be created, renegotiated, and reaffirmed. European media, intellectuals, films and bestseller lists, a European education system, political
debates, competing politicians and political camps, and election campaigns with rival candidates are largely lacking. To be sure, while some
indicators point to the rise of a European public sphere, it is both
different from and reliant upon different national public spheres (Eder
and Spohn 2005; Risse 2002; Kaelble 2002b; Díez Medrano 2003;
Meyer 2007).
In sum, Europe is not a cultural nation (Kulturnation), which emerges
before the establishment of a political nation (Staatsnation), as was true
of historical developments in Italy, Germany, and Poland in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Europe is not a demos in search of
a state. Hence many social scientists and lawyers believe that the creation of European institutions without a European demos is not likely or
even possible.
A distinctive identification with Europe
This discussion yields an obvious question: Is identification with Europe
weak simply because it differs from what we know about national
identities? European identifications, I argue here, are distinctive in the
sense that all transnational identifications differ from national ones.
First, identification with Europe does not aim at being a primordial
identification, as national identity does in purposefully seeking to displace regional and local identities. It is, instead, part of an ensemble of
multiple identities. Hence, under normal circumstances, European and
national identities should be complementary rather than competing.
Moreover, during the second half of the twentieth century, identification with Europe has included a very special relationship to violence and
war. Learning from the two world wars, identification with Europe
usually meant avoiding conflict and violence against ethnic or religious
groups in Europe, rather than glorifying a war of independence as in
many European nations and former colonies. European identity, today,
is not grounded in violence, war, and death.
Furthermore, identification with Europe was clearly influenced by the
attempt to overcome Europe’s colonial past and colonial hierarchies
both outside and inside Europe. Hence, EU membership on relatively
equal terms between large and small member states, rather than a
hierarchy of power, is constitutive of Europe’s identity and crucial for
Identification and politicization of the EU
209
the identification with Europe. The more small states joined the EU, the
less the identification with Europe could be centered solely on large
countries. In addition, identification with Europe typically does not
stand for identification with a model for the rest of the world, as
national identity often does.
Finally, the relationship between trust and identification with institutions at the European level is also distinctive. At least in recent years,
trust in and expectations of specific policies of the EU have been
stronger than overall identification with the EU. These specific policies
are above all foreign policy, defense policy, environmental policy, and
the fight against organized crime and terrorism; they have been much
weaker on questions of education, health, housing, and pensions.
According to Eurobarometer polls, and with unavoidable variations
among states, in these policy fields Europeans trust the EU more than
they do their national governments in these fields (DGPC Division of the
EU: Eurobarometer 2004, pp. 59–94; see also Eisenstadt 2006,
pp. 223–49). The share of Europeans who expect positive actions
from the EU is higher than those who identify with it. Even in countries with particularly weak identifications with Europe, such as Sweden
or Austria, a majority of the citizens favor a European foreign and
defense policy. Though more refined historical research is needed, one
can conclude with some confidence that, viewed against the historical
experiences of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the rise in
Europeans’ trust in the EU as an international political body is a new
and noteworthy development. Identification with the EU might be
weak. Trust in the EU is not.
In addition, an important upheaval took place in the relationship
between EU citizens and political decision makers during the 1980s.
European citizens’ identification with the EU started to matter politically
as the EU initiated policies to create or reinforce loyalty to the EU. This
policy consisted of the creation of European symbols mentioned above;
developing an EU social policy and thus establishing the image of a social
Europe; strengthening the human rights jurisdiction with the European
Court in Luxembourg; developing policies in favor of enhancing
European mobility by abolishing passport controls and the emergence of
European-wide networks as in the Erasmus and European research programs; and strengthening cross-border exchanges and communications
by enforcing cost reductions for international remittances and telephone
calls, and by abolishing the costs of doing business with multiple
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Hartmut Kaelble
currencies in a common market through the creation of a common
currency (Eder and Giesen 2001; Hedetoft 1998; Kaelble 2002a; Kohli
2000). The EU policy had an unintended consequence: To the extent that
the French referendum of 2005 was more than a plebiscite on the performance of an inept French president, the failure of the first European
constitution illustrated that the average European favored a Europe different from that of the elites. The “Non” vote showed that Europeans
took Europe and European affairs seriously, and that they identified with
the EU. The average French citizen did not opt out of the European
project, but while voting “Non” had a different project in mind. That
vote was identification by voice rather than exit (Medrano, this volume).
The history of identification with Europe follows a model in which
public institutions precede identification, rather than the other way
around as in the evolution from Kulturnation to Staatsnation – from
demos to state. This model occurs frequently in the European history of
“state-nations” – in France, Britain, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland, the
Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark. Analogously, the identification
with Europe was emerging in the framework of an international institution, the EU – which was first created by an international elite and only
several decades later became the object of trust, confidence, and incipient identification by European citizens.
Conclusion
I have argued here that the politicization of the EU was not just a typical
process as experienced by many other countries throughout modern history. Quite to the contrary, this politicization had peculiar characteristics
that need to be considered. It was induced by intellectuals, journalists,
experts, and national politicians rather than by European political parties
or interest groups. Media, rather than the European Parliament or the
European Council, provided the platform. Despite this, the EU’s media
policy has remained surprisingly restrained and cautious, with no attempt
being made to control the existing media or to create new media supervised
by the EU. The EU’s major response to this politicization has been a
persistent effort to create bonds of loyalty among European citizens and
the EU through a plethora of symbolic, social, economic, and constitutional policies.
Moreover, the EU chose a policy of controlled politicization, inviting
experts to hearings, conferences, and reports much more frequently
Identification and politicization of the EU
211
than national administrations did, and experimenting with a process of
preparation of major decisions by green and white books. The EU also
adopted a policy of de-politicization, through the creation of institutions such as the European Central Bank, the European Court in
Luxembourg, and the European Court of Auditors. Elections for the
European Parliament and the activities of European civil society also
remained outside the politicization process.
Finally, the process of politicization happened in specific circumstances: the breakdown of the Soviet empire; an expansion of the
power of the EU, to a substantial degree caused by German unification;
globalization and the gradual dissolution of the Third World; and a
weakening of the political assumption of the superiority of the Western
model of capitalist development. Politicization was not triggered, as in
many national cases in the past, by an authoritarian regime, dictatorship, colonial rule, or a menacing foreign power.
Politicization has had a strong impact on identification with the EU
since the 1980s. It explains why public debate about identification with
Europe and the EU has became more vivid and at the same time more
diverse and controversial. With the re-establishment of democracy after
World War II, identification with a democratic Europe was bolstered by
the contrast of a Europe run by Nazi Germany. More recently, politicization supported the predominance of liberal identifications with the
EU at a moment of triumph for Western democracy, while communism
fell. In recent years, that liberal vision has been encountering opposition
from a New Right, with its own views on Europe.
Under these specific circumstances, identification with Europe has
often been grounded in a profound appreciation of Europe’s distinctive
internal diversity. Politicization triggered by internal dictatorship or
external threat would have led to different, more homogenous representations of Europe. The widespread preference for internal diversity
was caused by politicized disputes over the homogenizing effects of EU
policies, and, paradoxically, by the recent convergence of European
societies, occurring at times quite independently of the policies pursued
by the European Commission.
Politicization also led to more intensive reflection and public debate
on common European values and lifestyles touching on issues of societal security; opposition to violence, both private (ownership of weapons) and state (death penalty and war); the role of religious values
in the context of Europe’s multiple secularisms; protection of the
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environment; strict separation of work and non-work; family intimacy;
equality of men and women; and a specific European consumption
style, shaped by specific European design and use of consumption for
the creation of social distinctions. As a consequence, identification with
the EU remained restrained and cautious in part because Europe was
spared a major external threat or attack.
Politicization of the EU also helped to reinforce identification with
Europe. It clarified for European citizens that the power of the EU was
substantially enlarged. Hence, identification with the EU became based
on substantial trust and high expectations for the decisions of this more
powerful institution in specific policy arenas such as foreign affairs,
international and internal security, unemployment, and the environment. At the same time, politicization was reflected in growing tensions
between elite and mass public concepts of Europe, illustrated by
national referenda on the European constitution. Politicization led to
an identification with the EU that was grounded at least in part in
controversy at the very time that weak identification increased, nonreflexively. Since the early 1980s, politicization and identification have
been constant themes in European history. The past is once again
becoming prologue.
9
Conclusion – European
identity in context
PETER J. KATZENSTEIN AND
JEFFREY T. CHECKEL
Europe’s identities, this book argues, exist in the plural. There is no one
European identity, just as there is no one Europe. These identities can be
conceived as both social process and political project. Understood as
process, identities flow through multiple networks and create new
patterns of identification. Viewed as project, the construction of identities is the task of elites and entrepreneurs, operating in Brussels or
various national settings.
Process and project involve publics and elites; they are shaped by and
shape states; they are open-ended and have no preordained outcomes;
and they serve both worthy and nefarious political objectives.
Bureaucrats crafting a Europe centered on Brussels, xenophobic nationalists, cosmopolitan Europeanists, anti-globalization Euro-skeptics,
and a European public that for decades has been permissive of the
evolution of a European polity – they are all politically involved in the
construction of an evolving European identity.
Following the 2004 and 2007 enlargements, a politically cohesive
Western Europe centered on the European Union (EU) is receding, while
a politically looser and more encompassing Europe is rising. Europe is
no longer what it was during the Cold War, an integral part of an anticommunist alliance. In the wake of 9/11, for many in Western Europe,
Europe now represents an alternative to American unilateralism and
militarism. For Central and Eastern European states seeking to build
their own democratic and capitalist futures, Europe has become both a
place of return and an inescapable destination. Globalization and the
Single Market, a common foreign and security policy, and the threat of
a virulent Islam are central to Europe’s future – refracted through
prisms provided by multiple intersections of different senses of
belonging.
Where that sense of belonging is reacting to threats or challenges
posed by others – Islamic fundamentalism, US unilateralism, East Asian
competition – it often reveals a Europe that is perceived as a community
213
214
Peter J. Katzenstein and Jeffrey T. Checkel
of shared values. Threats and fears are powerful identity mechanisms.
Threats make us choose sides. And threats are egalitarian. The politics
of threat and fear are one kind of European identity politics.
Where that sense of belonging is challenged to create something on its
own – in the EU’s constitutional process or in choosing between the
continent’s secular and religious heritages – Europe often reveals itself
to be a community of strangers. As a political project, European identity
is an important concern for political, economic and academic elites
and parts of the middle class, who are drawn to a European construct
as complementing the primacy of national identity. Yet, at the level
of mass society, “European” often means little else than the geographic
expansion of a specific national identity – a supranational nationalism –
onto European beaches and into European soccer arenas.
This variation reflects the reality of contemporary Europe, where
debates over the EU and its constitutionalization increasingly intersect
with other arenas of identity construction such as professional networks, transnational religion, everyday individual practices, social
movement politics, and party competition.
In this closing chapter, we begin by summarizing our main findings
on the construction of identity in today’s Europe. A second section
places these findings in a broader global context. We then return for a
more detailed look at European identities, arguing that while they are
distinctive, the dynamics creating them are in no sense unique or sui
generis.
Identities in the new Europe
In its empirical chapters, this book has looked to domains of identity
construction found in discourses, institutions, daily practice, and the
cultural substrates of societies that interact with European politics,
broadly understood as developments affecting both state and society.
We thus shift the analysis of identity partially away from the EU and its
institutions.
While the old EU with its fifteen member states clearly incorporated a
great deal of variety, the enlargements of 2004/2007 are nonetheless
creating a Union that differs greatly from its smaller predecessors. It is
true that Western Europe will now act as an even stronger agent of
modernization for Eastern Europe. But it is a fundamental mistake to
see the EU’s new Eastern members as little more than vessels capturing
Conclusion – European identity in context
215
the political visions, programs, and policies of its old Western members.
The new members have their own visions, programs, and policies
grounded in a history that points to persistent differences in experiences
and memories (Case, this volume). For years to come, the contested
politics of European identity will have the potential to spill into many
different policy domains.
East and West, new and old will have to forge new political bonds,
requiring considerable adjustment of the old West and, very likely,
dramatic change in Brussels. Students of the EU and of European
identity must come to grips with the reality that Enlargement has
fundamentally altered their core units of analysis. Before the late
1990s that unit was secular identities, illustrated by the work of normative theorists like Jürgen Habermas (Castiglione, this volume) or
empirical findings on the role EU institutions play in creating new
(secular) senses of belonging in Europe (Herrmann et al. 2004; Bruter
2005; Hooghe 2005; Beyers 2005; Zürn and Checkel 2005).
Yet, in the form of Polish Catholicism, the 2004 Enlargement reintroduced religion into Europe. Put bluntly, although Poland itself is
divided on the issue of religion, the Polish Church and its powerful
political allies are seeking to re-Christianize a godless Europe lost in the
grip of secularism. Since 1945, West European Christian Democracy
has been supportive of the European integration movement. But its
vision was never as bold as that of Polish Catholicism. Furthermore,
orthodox Christianity is now an official part of the EU as well. As a
result, confessional identities are interacting with secular ones in ways
that are utterly novel (Byrnes and Katzenstein 2006). This dynamic was
illustrated clearly by the row that broke out in 2003–2005 over whether
the (secular) EU constitution should contain a reference to Europe’s
Christian heritage. And it is rehearsed daily by political conflicts over
the manifold and complicated relations between Europe and Islam.
What have we learned?1 The history of nation-states or state-nations
does not provide useful material for analyzing the emergence of a
collective European identity. European identity politics are not like
those in a cultural nation, where processes of cultural assimilation
precede political unification (Kaelble, this volume). The number of
unambiguously committed Europeans (10–15% of the total population) is simply too small for the emergence of a strong cultural
1
We thank Neil Fligstein for discussion on these points.
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Peter J. Katzenstein and Jeffrey T. Checkel
European sense of belonging. The number of committed nationalists
(40–50% of the total) is also too small for a hegemonic reassertion of
nationalist sentiments. The remaining part of the population (35–40%
of the total) holds to primarily national identifications that also permit
an element of European identification.
But neither do European identity politics resemble that of a statenation, where the process of political unification precedes cultural
assimilation. Over a period of centuries, state-building European elites
did their best to minimize or suppress ethnic, linguistic, religious, and
regional differences. Collective national identities that complemented
and eventually supplanted these alternative identities centered around
common institutions such as schools, the army, or the Church, and were
forged across alliances that connected economically privileged groups
with economically disadvantaged ones.
This book suggests that European identities are supported by factors
too weak or inchoate to replicate processes of nation-state identity
formation. Instead of one strong European identity, we encounter a
multiplicity of European identities. As Europe’s market integration has
accelerated, multiple factors are fragmenting the very possibility of a
collective European identity. The chapters analyze the proponents and
opponents of Europe, capturing both their identity projects and the
variety of identity processes of which they are a part.
The proponents are many and varied, including West Europeans
(Case, Castiglione, and Kaelble), EU and national elites (Díez Medrano,
Favell, Fligstein), middle- and upper-middle-class business elites
(Fligstein), and young Eurostar migrants (Favell). These agents favor a
rational, technocratic Europe, marked by tolerance of the Enlightenment
and rational discourse (Castiglione, Díez Medrano, Kaelble). Opponents
are from lower strata, those with less education, the losers in the integration process (Holmes, Fligstein, Favell), and those favoring various
national identity projects that are threatened by migration streams from
east to west and south to north (Case, Holmes, Favell, Kaelble). Instead of
technocracy, the opponents favor a more authentic national or postnational identity. Authenticity means a return – to national values and
national culture – and less disruption by international competition and
transnational movements (Holmes). Their vision is a Europe in which the
national community is primary and non-nationals or religious others are
marginalized. And opponents feel excluded from what they regard as a
dominant, liberal, and exclusionary vision (Case, Kaelble).
Conclusion – European identity in context
217
Advances in European integration during the last two decades have
created the winners of integration, who are available for a certain kind of
European identity. At the same time, the building of Europe by stealth
through de-politicization – relying on the courts and the European Central
Bank, the creation of a united currency zone, the establishment of the
Schengen area, and the process of Enlargement – has increased opposition
everywhere. The chapters by Holmes, Díez Medrano, and Favell suggest
that de-politicization has been followed by a re-politicization, especially of
identity and of a quite different kind.
When we view identity in Europe as process, there is again no unified
storyline. On the one hand, as Neil Fligstein documents in his chapter,
the EU’s internal market has created growing transnational networks of
like-minded elites who are comfortable viewing themselves as
European. While their absolute numbers are small, this is indisputably
a key arena and social process of identity construction. Driven initially
by a simple market logic, repeated contact has led a number of these
individuals to report a sense of community that, analytically, goes
beyond a simple calculus of economic self interest and, geographically,
spans national borders.
On the other hand, that same market-opening logic has stimulated
other social processes that seemingly undercut those outlined by Fligstein.
Especially after the 2004 and 2007 enlargements, the influx into West
Europe of migrants from the East, who are both “European” (they are,
after all, EU nationals) and foreign, has unleashed a new and increasingly
politicized set of identity dynamics. Are these individuals – be they Poles
in France, Czechs in London or Romanians in Italy – migrants or
Europeans? Is their movement strengthening or undermining more
encompassing senses of community in Europe (Favell, this volume)?
Even in the case of intra-West European migration – Favell’s
“Eurostars” – we see processes of identity construction that do less for
the creation of prototypical European citizens than for the reinforcement
of national senses of belonging.
The findings we sketch here have clear implications for how to study
identity in Europe. It is no longer sufficient to explore EU institutions
and their effects on identity in isolation from broader social and political processes; nor is it sufficient to examine nationalist movements as if
they exist separate from European institutions. Rather, the challenge is
to connect these disparate political phenomena through research that
crosses disciplinary boundaries. As Holmes, Fligstein, Favell, and others
218
Peter J. Katzenstein and Jeffrey T. Checkel
in this volume demonstrate, the payoff of such boundary crossing is
high, giving us a more complete picture of the politics of European
identity construction.
The return of Eastern Europe to the European identity mix, as Case
argues in her chapter, has additional implications for research practice.
Datasets need to be extended to the East (Díez Medrano, this volume).
More important, our capacity for political analysis needs to improve
through a more intimate knowledge of East European politics. And the
historical experiences and memories of political actors in the East must
be given their proper due. As Shmuel Eisenstadt (2002) reminds us, in a
world of multiple modernities, modernization and political change are
dialectical, not unilinear. Religious fundamentalism is a modern form of
politics that is contesting different forms of secularism; and antiEuropean backlash is a modern form of oppositional politics that resists
Europeanization. Given these facts, it is highly unlikely that the EU will
operate as some great modernization machine, streamlining its new East
European members to fit a West European mold.
Identities in comparative perspective
Europe is one among several civilizational polities, including the United
States, China, Japan, India, and Islam (Katzenstein 2007). The civilizational label became increasingly frequent in the mid-eighteenth century,
as talk of Latin Christendom declined. Civilizations operate at the
broadest level of cultural identity. Not fixed in time or space, civilizational ideas and identities are multiple. Because civilizations are culturally integrated, they can assume a reified form when encountering
other civilizations. And because they are differentiated, civilizational
ideas and identities transplant selectively. The practices of civilizational
polities and the peoples they rule lead to processes such as
Americanization, Sinicization, Japanization, and Europeanization. It
is these polities and their characteristic processes and practices that
allow us to place European identities in a broader comparative setting.2
Civilizational identities are often shaped by and reflected in institutionalized memories – 150 years of national humiliation for China, the
2
Because the EU is sui generis in its institutional structure, focussing only on
political institutions at the regional level makes it much more difficult to create a
comparative context (Katzenstein 2005).
Conclusion – European identity in context
219
civil war and the global fight for rights for the United States, World
Wars I and II and the Holocaust for Europe, for example. But acts of
remembrance are myriad and occur in innumerable frames. Even
though polities and states, through education and other means, seek
to regulate memory, there is no unity in memory. Official acts of
remembrance thus are only one part of the politics of collective memory.
“There is no chorus of memory,” writes Yale historian Jay Winter
(2007, p. 3); “instead there is a party line, and then a host of other
stories not easily combined.” Civilizational memories are a cacophony.
Greece as the foundation of European civilization is a perfect example. Widely regarded by Greeks and Europeans alike as Europe’s foundational civilization, its history tells a very different story. Greek
civilization was not foundational in the sense of having existed apart
from the influence of Africa, Egypt, and the eastern Mediterranean, to
which it was linked intimately. Athena was most likely neither black
(Bernal 1987) nor white (Slack 2006), but brown. Greece as the civilizational foundation of a Europe set apart from Islam is also difficult to
comprehend – in light of the country’s incorporation into the Ottoman
empire for half a millennium.
Analogously, the notion of a China or Japan as largely closed off
from the rest of the world remains one of the staples of Chinese and
Japanese self-understanding, despite massive evidence to the contrary
(Hansen 2000; Hamashita 2008). And in the case of America, conflicting notions of secularism and religion, non-intervention and imperial
expansion create multiple political traditions that remain deeply contested (Smith 1993; Mead 2002).
In the face of civilizational hybridities, memories and myths clash
within civilizations in a kaleidoscope of different political colorations
and in the cacophony of multiple voices. There is in fact nothing
unusual in the European story when it is compared to that of Asia and
the Americas.
Asia
Like Europe, Asia’s collective identities are distinctive. These identities
are multiple, contested, and complementary, rather than a substitute for
typically stronger national, subnational, and local identities. And they
operate in an area with a very different setup of regional institutions
from that of Europe (Katzenstein 2005, pp. 60–75). While Europe looks
220
Peter J. Katzenstein and Jeffrey T. Checkel
back at half a century of institutionalizing the growth of a European
polity, the most characteristic institution in East and Southeast Asia at
the regional level has been the market, specifically production alliances
between different firms increasingly centered around China, heavily
concentrated in electronics, and fully linked to global markets.
In comparison to Europe, the civilizational content of identities in
Asia is less significant than the fact that political leaders invoke universal, regional, and local referents, sidestepping specific cultural features in the interest of instrumental political purposes (Katzenstein
2005, pp. 76–81). The political temptation of invoking unified and
essentialized conceptions of the Occident, or West, is in Asia as appealing as the urge of European politicians to invoke the East, or Orient, as a
differentiating myth. Such cognitive and symbolic political moves are
designed to impose clear boundaries where none exist, on one Eurasian
landmass, a handful of civilizations, and scores of nations and states.
Singapore is a case in point of how the construction of civilizational
identities in Asia, as in America and in Europe, is highly variable and
deeply contested (Katzenstein 2005, pp. 78–9).
Singaporean identity was crafted deliberately as an act of state creation, championing Asian civilizational values. Such an abstract and
embracing ideological construct has the enormous political advantage
of sidestepping all of the racial and cultural specificities that divide
Singapore’s Chinese, Malay, and Indian populations. In the 1970s,
Singapore funded identity entrepreneurs employed in government-run
think tanks to develop a legitimacy-enhancing state ideology.
Eventually, in the 1980s and 1990s, that state ideology radiated outward into Asia and from there to Washington, DC. The abstractness of
the category of Asian values leaves open which values are to be furthered, and thus the extent to which Asian and Western values disagree or
clash. The incontrovertible truth is that Singapore offered other Asian
polities a dramatic, early illustration that modernization without
Westernization was indeed a viable path for Asian societies.
This dramatic modernization notwithstanding, the Asian past throws
a long and dark shadow over its future. For the last two decades, and
with increasing intensity in recent years, Japan’s unwillingness to atone
for past transgressions toward its neighbors has become a seemingly
insurmountable obstacle for the evolution of a politically relevant sense
of Asian civilizational identity. Old wounds simply have not been
permitted to heal (Katzenstein 2005, pp. 86–8). For numerous reasons,
Conclusion – European identity in context
221
Japan has been unable to atone for the horrors of the Pacific War in a
way that is acceptable to its neighbors: continuity in political leadership
before and after 1945; a centralized education system run by a conservative bureaucracy in the Ministry of Education; the gradual ascendance of the views of that bureaucracy over those of the left-wing Japan
Teachers’ Union; the rise of a new nationalist movement that Prime
Ministers Koizumi and Abe courted in the early years of the new
millennium; and, more recently, resentment and envy over China’s
growing importance in East Asian and world affairs and anger and
nervousness about North Korea’s nuclear policy (Katzenstein 2008).
The Americas
Identity formation in the Americas is shaped by a history that is very
different from those of Europe and Asia (Katzenstein 2005, pp. 226–31).
While the political salience of the United States for Europe and Asia
assumed enormous importance only after World War II, this has been a
long enduring feature for Latin America. Indeed, it dates back to the Latin
American independence movements in the early nineteenth century and
the Monroe Doctrine of 1823. The essential purpose of the interAmerican system was anti-European. The goal was to keep the leading
European powers at bay – Spain and Britain in the nineteenth century;
imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union during the
twentieth century. It was thus only natural that the other states in the
Americas looked to Europe, and especially to the Iberian peninsula, as a
natural balancer to pervasive American influence.
The proliferation of regional institutions in the Americas is primarily
focussed on market integration. This is not to say that Latin American
institutions have the political character of Europe’s emerging polity.
Rather, in contrast to Europe, they are often working at cross-purposes.
Because of the dual role played by the United States – as both a regional
and a global power – Latin American states seek to build and undermine
regional institutions at one and the same time. In contrast to the evolving European polity, during the second half of the twentieth century,
the Inter-American system remained a bargaining relationship between
conflicting and often vitally important state interests.
The shadow that the US throws over the Americas is exceptionally
long because, in contrast to Europe and Asia, it plays the parts of both
the regionally dominant state and a world power. This makes the
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Peter J. Katzenstein and Jeffrey T. Checkel
politics of civilizational identities in the Americas complex and contested. In contrast to Asia, the Americas feature many multilateral
institutions. And in sharp contrast to Europe, the US is deeply involved
in the regional architecture of the Americas. Multilateral institutions are
not merely ways of solving collective action problems. They are also
central sites for rivalry and competition between Latin and Central
American states and the US. Patron–client relations and coercive diplomacy are hallmarks of intra-American political relations for which one
finds Asian analogues, but for which European analogues exist after
1945 only in exceptional circumstances.
The emergence of the Americas as a distinctive Western hemisphere –
warmly welcomed as such inside, and grudgingly recognized outside of
the region – occurred in the first three decades of the nineteenth century.
Only by the 1880s, however, did Pan-Americanism gain some momentum. Within the latter, anti-Americanism became one form of collective
identity uniting Latin America (Sweig 2006). In Asia and Europe, in
comparison to Latin America, regional variations in anti-American
sentiments are stronger – for example, between East and West
Europe, and between East, Southeast and South Asia. But as is true of
Europe and Asia, anti-American sentiments in the Americas are cyclical.
The visits of Presidents Nixon in 1958 and Bush in 2006 were high
points of anti-Americanism. In the intervening decades, these sentiments, though not absent, were much less intensely felt throughout
the region.
Compared to the southern hemisphere of the Americas, the civilizational identities of North America are even less developed. Canada’s and
Mexico’s history and relations with the US differ greatly, and Canadian
and Mexican anti-Americanisms are considerably weaker than in Latin
America. James Bennett (2004) argues that North America is deeply
divided between the American-Canadian Anglosphere and Mexico.
This view is mistaken, as it overlooks the internal split of Canada and
the vitality and growth of the Hispanic strand in the repertoire of United
States identities. It is, however, correct in pointing to the existence of no
more than a thin veneer of a civilizational identity that, while perhaps
comparable to Asia’s, is arguably lagging behind Europe’s.
Anti-Americanism in North America is more muted than in the South
(Bow et al. 2007). This is aptly illustrated by the case of Canada, where
Anglophone and Francophone varieties of anti-Americanism differ considerably. Each has had its distinctive roots and historical trajectory.
Conclusion – European identity in context
223
The Anglophone Canadian, in the words of historian Frank Underhill,
is “the first anti-American … the ideal anti-American as he exists in the
mind of God” (quoted in Hillmer 2006, p. 63). If there is a common
theme in this ideal anti-Americanism, it rests in what Freud called the
narcissism of small differences to foster group cohesion and a positive
self-image. Not being American is one of the few readily available
markers of Canadian identity. When mixed with a dose of resentment
and fear, as has occasionally been the case, Anglophone antiAmericanism can be of considerable political importance, as it was at
the outset of the twentieth century, the early 1960s, and the late 1980s.
More typical, however, is the muting of anti-Americanism by extensive
and direct personal contacts with America and Americans.
In contrast, Francophone anti-Americanism has nearly always been a
non-issue for the simple reason that the politically relevant and resented
“other” has been Anglophone Canada. America by way of contrast has
normally been admired and, with the exception of its militarist tendencies, the United States is often viewed as a potential ally in the enduring
struggle that pits Francophone against Anglophone Canada.
European identities
The historical evolution of Europe and its contested identities is marked
neither by total rupture nor by unending sameness. Instead, that evolution is a blending of old and new elements, along a road that has many
novel twists and turns even though its general direction is quite familiar.
During the last four decades, how old and new Europe combine has
been a source of deep interest – and not only to the editors and authors
of Dædalus (1964, 1979a, 1979b, 1997). And what is true of scholars is
true of politicians. They, too, are engaged in the never-ending redefinition of what it means to be a European, and what Europe stands for. If
there is something noteworthy about these identity dynamics today, it is
their politicization at the intersection of globalization – in the form, for
example, of migrants or foreign cultural values – and Europeanization –
in the form of an expanded European Union searching for legitimacy.
They are no longer a purely national affair, if in fact they ever were
(Case, Kaelble, this volume).
Europeans have been preoccupied with the many dramatic changes
that have transformed their regional politics in the aftermath of the
Cold War. They are too ready to assume that there is something very
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Peter J. Katzenstein and Jeffrey T. Checkel
special and unique about a Europe that stands simultaneously for both a
contested idea and a unifying metaphor (Delanty 1995). Yet, as the
preceding section demonstrates, there is nothing unusual in thinking of
a region – Europe, in this case – as a self-conscious idea, encountering
others, and as an unthought metaphor for self-interpretation. In meeting other civilizational discourses and actors, Europe can look like an
active partner, even a fortress. And in encountering its own conflicts and
contradictions, Europe can look like a maze. This is not particularly
remarkable, and certainly not unique.
This book’s core claims thus do not traffic in European exceptionalism or uniqueness. Depending on the political context, Asia and the
Americas also resemble fortresses and mazes. As is true of Asia and the
Americas, Europe has its own distinctive set of often conflicting and
sometimes converging identities that help shape European politics.
Remarkably, Europe has evolved from a would-be to an actual polity
(Lindberg and Scheingold 1970a; Olsen 2007). This polity links states
that are pooling some of their sovereignty, and it fosters novel ties
across national borders between different segments of Europe’s different civil societies.
With Europe lacking internal characteristics that can generate a
strong sense of collective self, one source of its identity lies in its relations with other international actors (Neumann and Welsh 1991;
Neumann 1996, 1999; Meyer 2004, pp. 120–65). In the past,
Europe’s “other” has traditionally been located to the east and taken
on either religious or civilizational forms. Historically, both Turkey and
Russia have imposed on Latin Christendom a degree of coherence that
would otherwise have been lacking (Nexon 2006). Represented by the
Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, most Europeans may not
have known who they were and with which Europe to identify. But they
did know who they were not and with whom not to identify – the
Ottoman and Muscovite empires to the east. However loosely coupled
civilizational empires may be internally, they do manage to identify
themselves at their fuzzy borders where they encounter the “other”
(Case, this volume). Europe’s relations with Turkey and Russia
(Morozov 2007) remain today deeply contested. During the Cold
War, anti-communism had similar, perhaps more powerful effects,
since the Iron Curtain between East and West was so unambiguous.
Many Europeans continue to have a difficult time acknowledging
what is now increasingly recognized – multiculturalism is not a passing
Conclusion – European identity in context
225
phase, but a new chapter in Europe’s evolution. Multiculturalism in an
era of radicalized Islam has, since 9/11, given a new political urgency to
this question and to conflicts over European identities – in Britain,
France, Spain, the Netherlands and Germany, and throughout Europe
more generally. Apart from the political fissures in the Turkish and
Muslim communities, numerous conflicts pit political forces preferring
Europe’s distinctive Christian or secular legacies, on the one hand,
against coalitions that regard the move to a new form of multiculturalism as both inevitable and, in the light of Europe’s deep and longstanding entanglement with the Islamic world, desirable.
European identities also crystallize in relation to America. European
anti-Americanism has a long pedigree, especially in France. America has
always been both a dream and a nightmare, especially for Europe’s
cultural and political elites, as Hannah Arendt (1994) observed half a
century ago. After the 9/11 attacks, Le Monde famously exclaimed that
“we are all Americans now.” However, since the summer of 2002 and the
American choice to wage war against Iraq without UN support, antiAmericanism has once again become a political force affecting all
European states, those opposing and those supporting the Bush administration. Anti-war and anti-American demonstrations staged on February
15, 2003 drew some of the largest crowds ever recorded in European
capitals. This is not the first time there has been a strong anti-American
shift in European sentiments. The late 1960s movement against the war in
Vietnam, and the early 1980s peace movement, are useful reminders that
anti-Americanism is a cyclical rather than a secular political phenomenon
(Katzenstein and Keohane 2007; Markovits 2007).
Europeans are coming to terms with a sense of self that exhibits a
broader range of identities and values than Europe was willing or able
to accommodate in the past. The definition of a European self in relation
to the other, be it to its east or to its west, is comparable to demarcating
the European self of today from the Europe of the past. In the views of
an overwhelming majority of Europeans, today’s Europe is much preferable to the dark continent of war, repression, and genocide of a
couple of generations ago (Mazower 1998, pp. 138–81). Submerging
the memory of Auschwitz in a liberal, modernizing European project
that readily accepts the soft dimensions of power and post-national
identities is an opportunity that many Europeans have come to
embrace, often with considerable eagerness. Viewing Auschwitz in a
broader, non-European perspective, as the European manifestation of
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Peter J. Katzenstein and Jeffrey T. Checkel
genocidal warfare that European imperialists practiced with great
eagerness on a global scale, is not as readily acknowledged. The universal significance of Europe’s global mission, however, is associated
not only with the European Enlightenment but also with the dark sides
of European imperialism. This, too, is a Europe from which many
Europeans seek to distance themselves.
European ambivalence – between pro- and anti-Americanism,
between pro- and anti-Islamic sentiments, between old national and
new supranational allegiances, and between the fearsome European
past of the 1930s and 1940s and the peaceful and prosperous Europe
of today – is captured well by Castiglione and Bellamy when they
write, with specific reference to the EU, “most people believe it to be
useful without feeling deeply attached to it” (Castiglione and Bellamy
2003, p. 21).
European identities today thus remain plastic and open to multiple
interpretations. They are neither defined primordially from within, nor
simply imposed politically from without. They emerge instead from the
confluence and blending of a variety of projects and processes. With
some justification, John Meyer (2000, p. 3) concludes that “the exact
definition of Europe and its people is uncertain, variable, and for most
participants unknown.”
Identity matters
Nothing in this book or concluding chapter should be read as a claim
that identity does not matter. It matters crucially, both to the future of
the European project centered on the EU, and to a set of identity
processes and European politics more generally. After all, if identity
has played a key role at many points in Europe’s luminous and dark
pasts (Nexon 2006), why should that role diminish now?
Rather, our concern has been to argue that developments in contemporary Europe require a different kind of scholarship on identity. Both
disciplinary and epistemological boundary lines should be questioned –
and crossed. European identity construction is occurring at the multiple
intersections of elite projects and social processes; at both supranational and national-regional levels; within EU institutions but also
outside them, in daily practice and lived experience; driven by the
economic logic of an aging continent that needs migrants but simultaneously fears them.
Conclusion – European identity in context
227
If our hunch and analytic direction in this book are correct, then the
coming years will see students of European identity elaborating contingent, multi-causal frameworks that connect the national and the
supranational, that integrate variables or mechanisms across the social
sciences, and that view epistemological differences as an opportunity
for learning rather than barriers to be reified (Katzenstein and Sil 2005;
Johnson 2006; Lebow and Lichbach 2007). Empirically grounded,
middle-range theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967) appears more apposite
to the task at hand than overly ambitious and universalizing models of
politics.
At the same time, our arguments about identity should not be read as
saying that anything goes or that everything matters.3 Statements of this
sort say everything – and thus nothing. On the contrary, the anthropological explorations of Holmes; the sociological investigations of
Favell, Fligstein, and Díez Medrano; the historical analyses of Case
and Kaelble; and the normative problematization of Castiglione are
models of analytic rigor. However, it is a rigor more concerned with
explicating identity dynamics than with fitting them into preconceived
theoretical frameworks.
Capturing such dynamics results in an argument about identity that
resembles a rich tapestry more than a tight framework. There may be a
time and place for parsimonious, deductive reasoning on identity
(Laitin 1998); but post-Cold War, enlarged, quasi-constitutionalized
Europe is neither that time nor that place (Hopf 2002). Students,
scholars and policy makers are better served by nuanced, crossdisciplinary inquiries and arguments that more closely approximate
the multiple worlds Europeans experience on a daily basis.
3
We thank Adrian Favell for pushing us to elaborate our thinking on these points.
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Index
Adenauer, Konrad, 62
alienation, 59, 72–3
allegiance, 39, 43, 48, 50
alpeggio system of summer grazing in
Lombardy, 64–7
Americas, the, 221–3
regional institutions, 221, 222
Amsterdam, 180–1
anthropology, 17–18
anti-Americanism, 15, 36, 222, 225,
anti-globalization, 83, 106
anti-Islamism, 36
Arendt, Hannah, 225
Asia, 219–21
associations in Europe, 23, 146–8, 149
non-profit organizations, 148
professional, scientific and trade
groups, 146, 148,
sports/hobby organizations, 148
authenticity, 216
Bakunin, Mikhail, 117
Bennett, James, 222
Blair, Tony, 53, 74–8
Britain
and Islam, 76
multiculturalism, 75, 76, 77
pluralism, 75, 76
political parties, 152
British National Party, 72
Brubaker and Cooper, 81
Budge, Ian, 151
Byrnes, Timothy, 96
Calhoun, Craig, 90
Canada, 222, 223
capitalism, 62
Case, Holly, 22, 111–31, 185
Castiglione, Dario, 12, 19–20, 29–44,
118, 125
Catholicism, 14, 15, 53, 62–4, 215
central banks, 60, 61
Chamberlain, Neville, 113
Charlemagne, 206,
Checkel, Jeffrey T., 1–18, 213–27
China, 219
Christian Democratic doctrine, 14,
15, 215
Christian Democratic Party
(Germany), 151
Christianity, 113
Churchill, Winston, 124
Cicero, 51
citizens, role of, 86, 92, 106
citizenship, 17, 34, 46, 95
ethical, 44, 53, 67–70
liberal and communitarian models
of, 118
national, 174
civil society, 23, 145–8, 197, 211
civilization, 199, 200
civilizational identity, 25, 218, 220, 221
Cold War, 127
common currency, 53, 60–2, 104, 210, 217
communication, 103, 155
communism, 118
communitarianism, 44, 118, 125
community, 48–51,
political, 30–4, 48, 49
of practice, 64–7
republican conception of, 51
of strangers, 29–44
conflict, 46–8, 63, 66, 174
conscription, 50
consensus, 43–8, 81
Conservative Party (Britain), 152, 154
constitution of the EU, 47, 94, 100
constitutional crisis, 81, 83–9, 106,
debates about, 11, 33, 40
design of, 100, 105
259
260
constitutional patriotism, 20, 30, 44, 45
and European political identity, 38–43
constructivism, 8, 91
consumerism, 128, 195, 204
Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard, 121,
122, 200
culture, 54, 67, 195, 208
diversity of in Europe, 201
and European identity, 92
de Gaspari, Alcide, 62
de Gaulle, Charles, 125
Delors, Jacques, 61
democracy, 44, 91, 106, 196
and European identity, 42, 95
participation in, 47, 87, 106
role of conflict in, 46–8
depoliticization, 24, 107, 194–7, 217
Derrida, Jacques, 42, 112–13, 116, 126,
129, 131
Deutsch, Karl W., 6, 7, 135–6, 155
interaction and identity, 142
Dragojevic, Srdan, 129
Eastern and Central Europe, 37, 117,
127, 158, 169, 213
European identity, 113, 114, 218
and the European Union, 115,
126, 130
migrations from, 171, 172, 179,
182–5
Eder, Klaus, 89
Eisenstadt, Shmuel, 218
elites, 16, 81, 94, 105,
architectural design of the EU, 100
commitment to the European Union,
1, 82, 89, 210
monopolization of debate on the
EU, 86
political identity project, 97, 131, 157
emigration, 129; see also immigration,
migration
Engels, Friedrich, 116–17
Enlargement of the EU, 2, 88, 196,
214, 217
and Central and Eastern Europe, 37,
64, 188
Enlightenment, 1, 95, 113, 139, 194
Esterházy, Peter, 112–13, 116, 120, 126
Eurobarometer polls, 10, 159–61
Index
Eurofederalists, 34, 35
Europe, 3
civilizing mission, 200
colonial past, 208
“Core Europe,” 112, 115, 116, 124,
126, 131
cultural and religious origins of,
35, 95
cultural view of, 167–72, 179
debate about, 194
distinctiveness of, 3
diversity in, 9, 46, 63, 82, 84,
201–3, 211
history, 53–5, 207
identification with, 193–206
lifestyles, 203–5, 211
migrations, 168, 172–85
as a multilevel polity, 7–9
and nation-states, 9
nationalism, 120–6
“New Europe,” 121, 123, 214–18
“Old Europe,” 112
revolutions, 116–20
role of intellectuals, 202
scholarship on, 3, 194
and the USA, 36, 226
violence and war in, 208
European Central Bank, 60, 61, 197,
211, 217
European Commission, 197
European Council, 197
European Court in Luxembourg, 197, 211
European Court of Auditors, 197, 211
European Court of Justice, 197
European identity, 9, 19–25, 31, 63,
193–206, 213–27
anti-democratic identifications, 201
aspects of, 140
collective, 215
complexity of, 156
conditions for, 137
cosmopolitan project of, 11–12, 13,
125, 179
cultural and economic, 94, 106
datasets about, 139–45, 218
determinants of, 164
divisions over, 89
Eastern and Western, 111–31
ethnographic approach to, 79
evolution of, 223–6
Index
experimental, 52–8
future of, 156, 158
history of, 126–9, 198–9, 210
importance of, 226–7
and integration, 74–9, 88
interests and, 138, 145
liberal, 198–201
migration and, 23–4
multiple projects of, 78, 79
multiplicity of, 25, 199, 208, 213,
216, 224
multiracial and multicultural, 78
and national identity, 111
national-populist project of, 11, 12, 13,
and nationalist groups, 72–3
negative elements of, 36, 37
and the “New Europe,” 214–18
normative theory of
and the “other,” 207, 224
people viewing themselves as
European, 139, 140, 141, 162,
176, 205
political identity, 34–8, 81–104
politicization of, 1–19, 81, 211, 212, 223
and politics, 132–66, 216
positive-sum nature of, 9, 31
as a process, 3, 22–4, 157, 213, 217
as a project, 19–21, 93–4, 213, 214
scholarship on, 9–11, 217, 226, 227
“situational,” 133, 140, 158
sources of, 133, 136, 224
theories of, 4–11, 134–9
and Turkish identity, 71
types of, 24, 201, 202, 203–5,
208–10, 211
weak levels of, 88, 205–8,
welfare states and, 207
European Monetary Union, 104
European Parliament, 64, 197, 211
European Peoples Party, 64
European Union, 43, 196
acquisition of a second language in,
142–4, 158, 164–5
architectural design of, 32, 33,
100–5, 107
benefits of, 181, 216
characteristics of, 94–7, 98, 203
Charter of Fundamental Rights, 95, 205
civil society, 145–8, 211
community of shared values, 95, 213
261
competence, 96, 101, 195; see also
sovereignty
constitution: see constitution of the EU
cultural policy, 195
debate about, 194
decision-making mechanisms, 47
democratic deficit, 95, 132, 149
de-politicization, 24, 107, 194–7
directives and regulations, 65
dual service economy of, 170, 184, 188
economic and cultural conceptions of,
96, 97
enlargement: see Enlargement of the EU
environmental policy, 209
federal vision of, 35, 102
foreign and security policy, 40, 103,
209, 212, 213
freedom of movement, 60, 171,
177, 209
goals and principles of, 86, 155
history of, 53–5, 194–7
immigration policies, 176, 187–9, 195
institutions: see institutions of the EU
legitimacy of, 83, 96, 130, 223
migration in, 170, 172, 182, 196, 217
opposition to, 59
organizations and associations,
146–8, 149
politicization of, 193–206,
political allegiance to, 32, 39, 48, 210
political identity projects in,
97–100, 104
political leadership, 106
political movements in, 56
and political parties, 153
public support for, 100, 101, 150,
163, 216
scholarship on, 194
security, 12, 176, 195
skills and education, 158
social equality, 97
subsidiarity, 63, 64, 75, 96
symbols of, 206, 209, 210
technocratic nature of, 55, 59, 61
transfer of sovereignty to, 82, 96, 100,
101, 104
travel within, 144–5, 158, 165, 166, 204
values, 95, 96
Europeans, situational, 133
Europub.com database, 92, 93, 97
262
“Euro-skeptics,” 34, 35, 36, 37, 83
“Eurostars,” 18, 71, 172, 177–82, 217
fascism, 54, 118, 122
Favell, Adrian, 13, 18, 23–4, 71, 84,
167–81
Firat, Bilge, 70–1
First World War, 121
Fischer, Joschka, 105
Fligstein, Neil, 12, 23, 85, 132–66, 176
Fogarty, Michael P., 63–4
force, availability of use of, 49, 50, 51
“Fortress Europe,” 35, 46
France, 83, 87, 94, 102, 126
French Revolution, 117
political parties, 153, 154
supra-nationalism, 102
Free Democratic Party (Germany), 152
freedom of movement, 60, 167–81, 209
and European identity, 181, 183
and migrations, 177–82, 185, 186
freedom of speech, 91
French Revolution: see France
Gabel, Matthew J., 138, 150
Gal, Susan, 57
Gastarbeiter, 129, 170, 173
Gaullist party (France), 153
Genov, Georgi, 123
Gerhards, Jürgen, 90,
Germany, 102, 103
integration into the EU, 52, 55
political parties, 151–2, 154
and World War II, 127
supra-nationalism, 102
Girault, René, 204
globalization, 82, 157, 170, 182, 196,
213, 223
anti-globalization movements,
83, 106
and the service economy, 176
Grass, Günther, 127
Grasseni, Cristina, 64–7
gratuità (free-giving) in Italy, 68
Great Powers, 113
Greece, 219
Grimm, Dieter, 90
Gross, Felix, 123,
guest workers, 129, 170, 173
Guigou, Elizabeth, 97
Index
Haas, Ernst B., 5–6, 149
Habermas, Jürgen, 8, 20, 39, 44, 215
constitutional patriotism, 30, 38, 44,
45, 86
“Core Europe,” 112–13, 116, 126,
129, 131
European identity, 39, 40–3,
public sphere, 89
religion, 46
Hänsch, Klaus, 99
Havel, Václav, 128
Hegel, G. W. F., 50–1
Hitler, Adolf, 122
New European Order, 123, 130
Holmes, Douglas, 12, 17, 20–1, 72,
84, 175
Holocaust, 127, 129, 169, 225
Hopf, Ted, 8
human rights, 95, 209,
Hungary, 13, 57, 119, 120, 126, 128
identity, 4, 218–23, 226–7; see also
European identity, national
identity, political identity
in the Americas, 221–3
Catholic configuration of, 63–4
civilizational, 25, 218, 220, 221
collective, 12, 45, 54, 59, 134, 215, 219
and common culture, 135
components of, 137
construction of, 25, 29, 214, 226
encrypted, 72–3
ethnic, 96
formation of, 52, 60
and interests, 138, 145, 146
and the “other,” 8, 207, 224
politics of, 77
as a project, 69, 77, 81, 82
regional, 31
scholarship on, 226
types of, 20, 52
immigration, 45, 157, 167–81, 217; see
also migration, emigration
anti-immigrant reactions, 175, 183–4
“ethnic,” 23, 167, 171, 173–7, 188
“Eurostars,” 18, 177–82, 217
Islamic dimension of, 174, 175
integration policies for migrants, 12,
175, 184
politics of, 13, 174
263
Index
post-colonial and guest worker,
170, 173
sources of, 173
institutionalism, 7
institutions of the EU, 132, 197, 211, 217
and European identity, 215, 217
support for, 101, 209
integralism, 20, 55–8, 62, 85
pluralist character of, 58,
integration, 2, 40, 106, 217
beneficiaries of, 23, 149, 154, 157
communication theory of, 6
and Eastern and Central Europe, 130
economic, 134, 138, 158, 177, 194
and European identity, 78–9,
85, 88
functional, 5, 6, 38
and migrations, 185–9
neo-functional theory of, 5–6, 38, 40
political, 2, 34, 154, 185
public support for, 87, 106
regional, 5, 182, 185, 186, 188
religion and, 185–9
resistance to, 82, 86
scholarship on, 88
theory of, 4, 5–7,
intellectuals, role of, 202
interactions among people in the EU,
132, 157, 204, 209
and European identity, 137, 138
those involved in, 133, 136, 137,
145, 217
interest group politics, 23
intergovernmentalism, 33, 47, 103, 107
Iraq, 225
Islam, 15, 76, 106, 174, 213
Jachtenfuchs, Markus, 100
Japan, 219, 220–1
Judt, Tony, 126
Kaelble, Hartmut, 24, 125, 193–206
Katzenstein, Peter J., 1–18, 213–27
Kielmansegg, Peter Graf, 90
Koopmans, Ruud, 92,
Labour Party (Britain), 152, 154
language acquisition (second
languages), 142–4, 158, 164–5
Latin America, 221–3
Le Goff, Jacques, 206
Le Pen, Jean-Marie, 53, 55–60
integralism, 21, 55–8, 62, 78, 84
League of Nations, 54, 55, 129
Libera, Bishop Piotr, 96
liberalism, 78, 92, 118
lifestyles, 203–5, 211
Lindberg, Leon N., 5
London, 178–9, 188
terrorist attacks in, 74, 77,
Masaryk, Tomas, 121
Mazzini, Giuseppe, 117
media, 103, 195, 210
Medrano, Juan Díez, 21, 81–104
Mexico, 222
migration, 23–4, 84, 129, 167–81; see
also immigration, emigration
“bottom up” channels of, 173
East–West migrants, 167
“elite,” 23, 167
“ethnic,” 171, 173–7, 188
“Eurostars,” 172, 177–82
post-Enlargement, 182
professional, skilled and educated
migrants, 178
sources of, 173
structural demand for migrants, 176, 188
Miłosz, Czesław, 128
modernization, 199, 201, 214
Monnet, Jean, 55, 61, 200
Morin, Edgar, 202
Muehlebach, Andrea, 67–70
multi-level governance, 7–9, 47
multiculturalism, 62, 84, 174, 224
in Britain, 75, 76, 77
nation-states, 48, 60, 75, 169, 194, 215
and the European Union, 9, 32
National Front (France), 153, 154
national identity, 35, 41, 83, 133,
135–6, 155
and European identity, 31, 111, 140,
207, 216
national politics, politicization of,
15–16
National Socialism, 54, 122, 123,
nationalism, 72–3, 83, 120–6, 129, 217
neo-functional theory of European
integration, 5–6, 38, 40
264
Netherlands, 83, 87, 94, 180–1,
Neumann, Iver, 8
Niedhardt, Koopmans and Pfetsch, 92
North America, 221–3
anti-Americanism in, 222
civilizational identity, 222
Nye, Joseph, 5
Orban, Viktor, 120
Pan-Americanism, 222
patriotism, 50, 51
Paxton, Robert, 128
Perkovic, Marko, 73
personal interactions among people in
the EU, 132, 157, 204, 209
and European identity, 137, 138
those involved in, 133, 136, 137,
145, 217
Pfaff, William, 84
Pfetsch, Barbara, 92
Pierson, Paul, 7
pluralism, 58, 74–8,
pluralism, ideological, 63
Poland, 96, 97, 100, 101, 119
Catholicism, 14, 96, 215
political identity, 29–44
as allegiance, 31
and civil society actors, 92
conflict and consensus in, 43–8
and constitutional patriotism, 38–43
debate about, 32, 34
exclusionary identity, 39
experimental identity, 52–8
forms of, 31
functional element in, 29
meaning of, 81
nation-like conceptions of, 34–8
negative elements of, 45
and political allegiance, 48
and political community, 30–4
politicization and de-politicization
of, 34
post-national nature of, 41
projects for, 81, 93–4, 97–100,
103, 104,
and the public sphere, 81–104
republican conception of, 39, 82
value-based, 45
political leadership, 187
Index
political parties, 15, 16, 23, 83, 99, 150
far-right parties, 84, 106, 211
national, 133
platforms of, 151
political refugees, 170
politicization, 1–18
anthropological approach to, 17, 20
of European identity, 1–19, 81, 211,
212, 223
of the European Union, 193–206,
historical approach to, 18–19, 24–5
multidisciplinary perspectives on, 17–19
of national politics, 15–16
of religion, 14–15
sociological approach to, 18, 23
of “who we are,” 11–14
politics
citizens’ influence on, 86
constitutional, 40
distinction between Left and Right, 58
elite politics and mass politics, 7, 16,
and European identity, 132–66,
ideological drift, 57
Pope John Paul II, 68, 95
Preuss, Ulrich, 48
public sphere, 17, 21, 81–104, 112, 195
and the architectural design of the
EU, 103
characteristics of European, 89–93
and civil society actors, 90
claims made about the EU in, 94, 100
Europeanization of, 83, 90,
normative aspect of, 91
political debates in, 92
rationalism, 7
rationality, 137
refugees, 129
religion, 46, 195, 215, 218
Catholicism, 62–4
Christian Democrats, 14
and the European Union, 14, 62–4, 96
politicization of, 14–15
Protestantism, 14
role of, 46
revolutions, 22, 116–20, 169
rights, 91, 95, 118, 209; see also
freedom of movement
Risse, Thomas, 89
Rokkan, Stein, 202
265
Index
romanticism, 1
Rumsfeld, Donald, 112
Russia, 114
sacrifice, 50
Scheingold, Stuart A., 5
Schröeder, Gerhard, 99
Schuman, Robert, 62, 200
Second World War, 123,
self-determination, right of, 53, 54, 123
Singapore, 220
skinheads, 72,
Skowronek, Stephen, 54
SocialDemocraticParty(Germany),151–2
social class, 137, 141, 143, 145, 148,
150, 155
social equality, 97, 99
social inclusion, 92
social justice, 64
socialism, 119
Socialist Party (France), 153
solidarity, 42, 49, 61, 76, 78, 106, 205
South America, 221–3
sovereignty, 21, 32, 34, 35, 37
civic/republican conception of, 21
transfer to the EU, 82, 96, 100, 101, 104
statehood, open, 51
subsidiarity, 63, 64, 75, 96
supranationalism, 81, 100–5, 120–6
political agenda of, 20, 55, 78, 103
experiences of, 22,
and intergovernmentalism, 33, 103, 107
and European identity, 36
and integration, 60, 62
symbols
national, 206
of Europe, 205, 206, 209, 210
territoriality, 32,
Therborn, Göran, 202
trade unions, 97, 99, 101, 105
traditional social practices and EU
regulation, 64–7
travel within Europe, 144–5, 158, 165,
166, 204
Trichet, Jean-Claude, 61, 62
trust, 209
Turkey, 70–1, 88
Underhill, Frank, 223
USA
anti-Americanism, 15, 36,
222, 225,
border control, 187
and Europe, 36
foreign policy, 40
immigration, 186–7,
migration in, 168
nativism in, 187
political salience of, 221,
religion in, 46
structural demand for
migrants, 177
terrorist attacks in, 225
Valéry, Paul 121
values, 44, 74, 95, 195
Asian values, 220
British, 74, 75
Catholic, 68, 70
Christian, 95
and a community of shared, 213
and a community of strangers, 95
cultural, 67
democratic, 95, 96
European, 42, 44–6, 95,
96, 211
and European identity, 203–5
and political identity, 44–6,
Vanhoonacker, Sophie, 84
Versailles Treaty, 53, 54, 55
voluntary service, 68,
war against terror, 174, 209
Weber, 49–50
welfare states, 15, 68, 170, 176
Westbrook, David, 60, 61
Wheeler-Bennet, John, 124
Winter, Jay, 219
Wolf, Christa, 131
Wood, Nicholas, 73
World Wars, 169, 208
First, 121
resistance movements, 126
Second, 123, 127,
Yugoslavia, 126