Debating Political Identity and Legitimacy in the European Union

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.

Furio Cerutti is Professor of Political Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, University of Florence. In recent years he has been Visiting Scholar at the Center for European Studies of Harvard University (2003-04) and Visiting Professor at the Université de Paris 8 (Spring 2005) and the Humboldt University in Berlin (September 2007). A member of GARNET, a Network of excellence funded by the European Union under the Sixth Framework Programme, he coordinates a transnational research group on normative issues of regional and global governance and participates in an other group on environmental governance.

Sonia Lucarelli is Senior Researcher and Lecturer of International Relations at the University of Bologna at Forlì and Vice President of the Forum on the Problems of Peace and War in Florence. She is member of the Board of the Network of Excellence GARNET. Lucarelli teaches regularly at the Institute Sant’Anna in Pisa and at the Italian Air Force War College in Florence. She has been Associate Professor at the Universities of Pisa, Siena and Bologna.

Professor Schmidt is the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions. She was awarded a French National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS) Visiting Researcher Fellowship to the Center for the Study of Politics (CEVIPOF) at Sciences Po in Paris (July-Dec. 2007) and named to the Franqui Interuniversity Chair for Foreign Scholars to lecture in Belgium at the Free University of Brussels and the Catholic University of Louvain (Jan.-June 2007). She has been decorated by the French government as a Chevalier in the Order of the Palmes Académiques; honored by the University of Massachusetts Boston with the Distinguished Scholar Award; and given a special award for her book, Democratizing France, at the Gaston Defferre Prize Ceremony in Marseilles. She has also held many grants and fellowships, including a Rockefeller Foundation Residency grant for the Bellagio Center, a Fulbright EU Research Award held in the UK, a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar Award in France, and a pre-dissertation fellowship under the Fulbright-Hays program. Professor Schmidt is past head of the European Union Studies Association-USA. She directs European Studies activities at Boston University, and was founding Director of the European Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts, an interdisciplinary program with courses, lectures, and a European Scholar in Residence Program.