FollowSPIRe’s week ten seminar will feature SPIRe’s Dr. Paul Gillespie presenting on his research “Crisis as choice: Comparing Typologies of Political Identity in the European Union” from 12:00-13:00 Wednesday, April 10th in G316 Newman Building, UCD Belfield. All are welcome.
ABSTRACT
How can a more politicised European Union combine the nation-states which are its members with the supranational structures and institutions required to hold such an emerging polity together legitimately? There is a widespread feeling that new approaches are needed and a new vocabulary to express them, straddling scholarly writing, political discourse and popular engagement as the financial and eurozone crises force political choices on all concerned, as events and political discourse daily confirm. The issue of the EU’s future political order is now formally inscribed in its political agenda by the Van Rompuy Report of 2012.
The phrase “multiple political identities” crops up in the theoretical and empirical literatures on post-national democracy, comparative federalism, cosmopolitan democracy, multiculturalism, neo-medievalism and European constitutionalism, straddling political science, sociology, international relations, social psychology and anthropology. But more theorising of the subject is needed to clarify its difficulties and understand whether and how national and European identifications combine.