European Union in Search of Narratives

<p>This book examines the legitimization of the European Union through the development and rapid rotation of narratives aiming to convey its identity and purpose.</p><p>Utilizing literature and data across a wide range of interdisciplinary areas rarely studied together the book argues that three narratives have been dominant over the last 20 years: ‘Europe of rights’ ‘Europe of values’ and a ‘European way of life’. It presents both theoretical and empirical research on the transformation of political domination collective identities and EU legitimization and analyses various 'crises' linked to socio-economic security identity and normative issues such as terrorism and radicalization pandemics and morality politics. It finds that European narratives express lower ambitions on charismatic community-building are constantly expanding to new domains and are increasingly framed as being in a situation of existential threat which may increase democratic tensions and give rise to a populist backlash.</p><p>This book will be of interest to students and scholars of European integration European Parliament legitimization studies political communication and to comparative politics and political sociology.</p>