Download or read book Political Symbolism and European Integration written by Tobias Theiler and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description

Download or read book Political Symbols Symbolic Politics written by Ulf Hedetoft and published by Ashgate Publishing. This book was released on 1998 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book addresses the topic of European unity and/or fragmentation from the vantage point of cultural and symbolic tension and thus the often ambiguous and unresolved figurations of the symbolic politics employed by proponents of integration in depth and the political symbolics of nation-states and national identities.

Download or read book Political Symbolism and European Integration written by and published by . This book was released on 2005-08 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: R.K. Narayan's reputation as one of the founding figures of Indian writing in English is re-examined in this comprehensive study of his fiction, which offers detailed readings of all his novels. Arguing against views that have seen Narayan as a chronicler of "authentic" Indianness, John Thieme locates his fiction in terms of its specific South Indian contexts and cultural geography and its non-Indian intertexts. The study also considers the effect that Narayan's writing for overseas publication had on novels such as Swami and Friends, The Guide and The Man-Eater of Malgudi.Narayan's imaginary small town of Malgudi has often been seen as a metonym for India. Thieme draws on recent thinking about the ways in which place and space are constructed to demonstrate that Malgudi is always a fractured and transitional site, an interface between older conceptions of Indianness and contemporary views that stress the ubiquitousness and inescapability of change in the face of modernity. The study also shows that Malgudi is seen from varying angles of vision and with shifting emphases at different points in Narayan's career. As well as offering fresh insights into the influences that went into the making of Narayan's fiction, this is the most wide-ranging and authoritative guide to his novels to have appeared to date. It provides a unique account of his development as a writer.

Download or read book The Symbolic Politics of European Integration written by Jacob Krumrey and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-02-10 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a cultural history of European integration. It revisits the European Community’s postwar origins through the lens of symbolic representation and so reveals a hitherto unknown side to Europe’s notorious technocrats. They were not simply administrators: they were skillful marketing experts, clever spin doctors, and talented stage directors. After all, what made the European Community stand out among the multitude of postwar European organizations? This book argues that it was not so much its vaunted supranationalism, nor its economic significance; it was its self-proclaimed role as torchbearer of European unity. Combining archival research with media analysis, The Symbolic Politics of European Integration reviews Europe’s early parliaments, its early diplomacy, and its long search for “capital cities,” from Strasbourg to Brussels. It tells the story of the political theater that staged an enterprise of technocrats as the embodiment of a Europe united in peace and prosperity. This book is an invaluable resource for historians of postwar Europe, as well as for analysts of today’s EU, who seek to understand how coal, steel, and tariffs became the stuff the European dream was made of.

Download or read book Debating Political Identity and Legitimacy in the European Union written by Sonia Lucarelli and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-08-06 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can we conceptualize identity and legitimacy in the context of the European union? What is the role of narratives, political symbols, public debate and institutional practices in the process of identity formation and legitimacy consolidation? Debating Political Identity and Legitimacy in the European Union addresses these questions and brings together high profile scholars from various disciplinary backgrounds to debate the ontological and epistemological aspects of research on identity and legitimacy formation in the EU. Part I investigates key elements such as the relationship between ‘Europeanization’ of the EU member states and its effect on the political identity of their citizens; the relationship between the politicization of the EU and processes of identity and legitimacy formation; and the indispensability of European identity for legitimizing the EU. Part II looks at pathways to identity formation and legitimacy construction in the EU by considering alternative types of constitutional legitimacy; political symbolism; Europeanization and politicization of the debate on EU focusing on the foreign policy domain. Bringing together a wide but coherent range of high profile perspectives, this book will of interest to students and scholars of European studies, Political Science, Philosophy, Sociology and Law.

Download or read book Staging Europe written by Jacob Krumrey and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This PhD thesis explores the use of symbolism in European integration during the 1950s and 1960s. The thesis argues that political elites staged the early European Communities - the 1952 ECSC as well as the 1958 EEC and Euratom - as the representation of a united Europe and so tied them to a vision with much momentum in post-war Europe. This symbolic role of the Communities transcended their technocratic set-up and their narrow economic policies: it made them distinctive among the many post-war European organizations. Empirically, this thesis focuses, in separate parts, on three settings where the Communities were staged as the united Europe: the Communities' parliamentary assem-blies (first part), the Communities' diplomatic activities (second part), and the Communities' polycentric seating arrangements (third part). This thesis deals with a wide array of actors who, for different reasons, participated, actively or tacitly, in the staging of the Communities: the news media and occasionally also civil society actors, governments and administrations, parties and parliaments across the original six member states as well as those of the Communities' external partners, Britain and the United States. Conceptually, this thesis presents a cultural history approach to European integration. It aligns itself with a new strand of research in European integration history that aims to go beyond the much-advanced diplomatic history of the European Communities and to add to it an interest in discourses, identities, and symbols. With its study of symbolism, this thesis seeks to bring together the literature on the diplomatic history of the European Communities and the intellectual history of the European idea; it also seeks to help historians define the nature of the European Communities and assess their place in post-war European history. This thesis is based on the papers of Jean Monnet and Walter Hallstein, two key figures of the early European Communities, and archival materials from the Historical Archives of the European Union in Florence as well as the diplomatic archives of France and Germany, Britain and the United States.

Download or read book Legal Symbolism written by Jiří Přibáň and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jirí Pribán's book contributes to the field of systems theory of law in the context of European legal and political integration and constitution-making. It puts recent European legislative efforts and policies, especially the EU enlargement process, in the context of legal theory and philosophy. Furthermore, the author shows that the system of positive law has a symbolic meaning, reflecting how it also contributes to the semantics of political identity, democratic power and moral values, as well as the complex relations between law, politics and morality.

Download or read book Interests and Integration written by Matthew Joseph Gabel and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2009-12-10 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Integration in Europe has been a slow incremental process focusing largely on economic matters. Policy makers have tried to develop greater support for the European Union by such steps as creating pan-European political institutions. Yet significant opposition remains to policies such as the creation of a single currency. What explains continued support for the European Union as well as opposition among some to the loss of national control on some questions? Has the incremental process of integration and the development of institutions and symbols of a united Europe transformed public attitudes towards the European Union? In this book, Matthew Gabel probes the attitudes of the citizens of Europe toward the European Union. He argues that differences in attitudes toward integration are grounded in the different perceptions of how economic integration will affect individuals' economic welfare and how perceptions of economic welfare effect political attitudes. Basing his argument on Easton's idea that where affective support for institutions is low, citizens will base their support for institutions on their utilitarian appraisal of how well the institutions work for them, Gabel contends that in the European Union, citizens' appraisal of the impact of the Union on their individual welfare is crucial because their affective support is quite low. This book will be of interest to scholars studying European integration as well as scholars interested in the impact of public opinion on economic policymaking. Matthew Gabel is Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Kentucky.

Download or read book Identity Interests and Attitudes to European Integration written by L. McLaren and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-12-16 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With growing levels of Euroscepticism across EU member states, grasping the roots of opposition to European integration has become more important than ever. This book charts public perceptions of the European Union in both the EU-15 and the new member states and introduces an identity-based model to explain mass Euroscepticism.

Download or read book National and Regional Symbolic Boundaries in the European Commission written by Daniel Drewski and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-21 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The process of European integration and the transfer of political authority from the national to the European level have led to the emergence of a field of EU policy making in Brussels, which attracts professionals and experts from all EU member states. This book contributes to research on the dynamics of social integration unfolding at the heart of this field. Based on in-depth interviews with officials working for the European Commission – the EU’s supranational organization – the author explores the perception and negotiation of symbolic boundaries related to their diverse national and regional backgrounds. In line with their cosmopolitan attitudes and role-conception as European civil servants, Commission officials tend to de-emphasize national and regional divisions among them. Nevertheless, subtle symbolic boundaries remain in connection with their diverse organizational cultures, working language preferences, professional values and influence and career prospects. This nuanced account of patterns of social categorization and group-making in a European context will appeal to sociologists with interests in European integration and the emergence of social fields and groups beyond the nation state.

Download or read book Signifying Europe written by Johan Fornäs and published by Intellect L & D E F A E. This book was released on 2012 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Helps us in understanding cultural dimensions of various trends in European unification. Suitable for students, scholars, designers and politicians interested in European policy issues, this book analyses a range of symbols for Europe, interpreting their often contradictory or ambiguous dimensions of meaning

Download or read book Dilemmas of European Integration written by Giandomenico Majone and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2005-03-24 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If one lesson emerges clearly from fifty years of European integration it is that political aims should be pursued by overtly political means, and not by roundabout economic or legal strategies. The functionalist strategy of promoting spillovers from one economic sector to another has failed to achieve a steady progress towards a federal union, as Jean Monnet and other functionalists had hoped. On the other hand, the unanticipated results of 'integration through law' have included over-regulation and an institutional framework which is too rigid to allow significant policy and institutional innovations. Thus, integration by stealth has produced sub-optimal policies and a steady loss of legitimacy by the supranational institutions. Both the functionalist approach and the classic Community Method are becoming obsolete. This major new statement from a leading European scholar provides the most thorough analysis currently available of the pitfalls and ambiguities of 50 years of European integration, without losing sight of its benefits. Majone provides a clear demonstration of how a number of European policies - including environmental protection - lack a logically defensible rationale, while showing how, in other cases, objectives may be better achieved by re-nationalizing the policy in question. He also shows how, in an information-rich environment, co-ordination by mutual adjustment becomes possible, meaning that member states are no longer as dependent on central institutions as in the past. He explains how the challenge for future research is to investigate methods-other than delegation to supranational institutions-by which member states can credibly commit themselves to collective action. Dilemmas of European Integration concludes by explaining exactly why the model of a United States of Europe is bound to fail-not just due to lack of popular support, but because it finds itself unable to deliver the public goods which Europeans expect to receive from a full fledged government. Although failing as a would-be federation, the present Union could become an effective confederation, built on the solid foundation of market integration. The new Constitutional Treaty, Majone argues, seems to point in this direction.

Download or read book Europe in Search of Political Order written by Johan P. Olsen and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2007-02-01 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals with ongoing processes of European cooperation and integration, processes that may have a potential to change the political organization of Europe. Based on ideas from 'the new institutionalism' the book offers a systematic perspective on institutional change and in particular the role of institutions in relation to four central and durable issues in the study of political life. These are: (1) the mediation between unity and diversity: what ties a society together and what keeps it apart. (2) The relations between citizens and their helpers: why the democratic deficit in the European Union can not be eliminated solely by making mechanisms of direct citizens participation and representation more efficient. Needed are also institutions that make direct participation redundant because they routinely work with integrity, generating expected and desired outcomes. (3) The relation between democratic design and historical drift: To what degree democracies are able to design and reform key institutions of governance so that their structures reflect popular will, understanding and control. (4) The co-existence of old and new political orders: How elements of a new order may supplement rather than replace elements of the old order, generating a 'mixed order' based on partly inconsistent principles and rules.

Download or read book Building Europe written by Cris Shore and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The development of the European Union has been one of the most profound advances in European politics and society this century. Yet the institutions of Europe and the 'Eurocrats' who work in them have constantly attracted negative publicity, culminating in the mass resignation of the European Commissioners in March 1999. In this revealing study, Cris Shore scrutinises the process of European integration using the techniques of anthropology, and drawing on thought from across the social sciences. Using the findings of numerous interviews with EU employees, he reveals that there is not just a subculture of corruption within the institutions of Europe, but that their problems are largely a result of the way the EU itself is constituted and run. He argues that European integration has largely failed in bringing about anything but an ever-closer integration of the technical, political and financial elites of Europe - at the expense of its ordinary citizens. This critical anthropology of European integration is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the culture and politics of the EU.

Download or read book Religion and the Struggle for European Union written by Brent F. Nelsen and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-01 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Religion and the Struggle for European Union, Brent F. Nelsen and James L. Guth delve into the powerful role of religion in shaping European attitudes on politics, political integration, and the national and continental identities of its leaders and citizens. Nelsen and Guth contend that for centuries Catholicism promoted the universality of the Church and the essential unity of Christendom. Protestantism, by contrast, esteemed particularity and feared Catholic dominance. These differing visions of Europe have influenced the process of postwar integration in profound ways. Nelsen and Guth compare the Catholic view of Europe as a single cultural entity best governed as a unified polity against traditional Protestant estrangement from continental culture and its preference for pragmatic cooperation over the sacrifice of sovereignty. As the authors show, this deep cultural divide, rooted in the struggles of the Reformation, resists the ongoing secularization of the continent. Unless addressed, it threatens decades of hard-won gains in security and prosperity. Farsighted and rich with data, Religion and the Struggle for European Union offers a pragmatic way forward in the EU's attempts to solve its social, economic, and political crises.

Download or read book Substance and Symbolism written by Ian Manners and published by Ashgate Publishing. This book was released on 2000 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text claims that the beliefs behind symbolic agreements provide a greater understanding of European integration than a focus on the material motivations of agreements of substance. The book argues that intergovermental co-operation amongst EC states in the immediate post-Cold War period was due to the agreement of symbolic, yet insubstantial new policy areas. It also suggests that ten years after the Cold War in Europe these symbolic agreements are becoming more substantial, thus moving the focus away from material gains and towards subjective beliefs.

Download or read book European Integration and Disintegration written by Robert Bideleux and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Europe has changed radically since 1989 and continues to change at great speed. This book deals with the principle problems and challenges confronting Europe in the aftermath of the Cold War and the collapse of European communism. Whilst endeavouring to strike a balance between East, West, North and South, the volume is more concerned with the changing political, economic and cultural morphology of Europe, and of the relations within it, than with the formal institutional arrangements of the European Community and its successor, the European Union. There are already numerous books on the institutional development of the EU, but relatively few with a wider compass and institutional interpretations of European integration. The book shows that the study of European integration should be taken in the round, avoiding a narrow and self-centered concern with the development of the 'lesser Europe' of the EU. It demonstrates that integration should be seen as neither an inexorable predetermined process, nor as an automatic consequence of high levels of economic interdependence, but rather as something that proceeds in fits and starts and sometimes suffers reverses.