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This book is essentially about the element of personal choice in cultural affiliation with Europe. Europeanness is not about institutions. It is essentially about ideas. This is in keeping with the approach adopted by contemporary, American analysts such as Robert Kagan and Jeremy Rifkin. It is interesting to note that both see the EU as representing a coherent societal model – a kind of creed – and one that is at variance with the American. The two books reflect the tendency for Americans to focus on the “big picture”, but also their ability to avoid getting lost in the quagmire of details. There may be a tendency for American analysts to describe Europe in overly ethnocentric terms seeing a common “European creed”, because they are used to thinking in terms of an American creed. But this does not change the fact that the approach of American scholars and commentators is often refreshing and a source of inspiration for European scholars mired in the insider-language of the EU.

Robert Kagan starts out with the claim that “it is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world”.¹ It is a dramatic statement, and one that invites further scrutiny. Rifkin is more interested in the relative competitiveness of different powers in terms of guiding ideas and concludes ….my personal belief is that Europe is best positioned between the extreme individuation of America and the extreme collectivism of Asia”.²

Culture and identity used to be the preserve of a small elite, whose rituals, preaching and teaching the masses were simply expected to absorb. In the age of globalization this is no longer a fitting description. Increasingly, at least in the Western world, culture and identity are linked to democracy, to the point where fundamental questions about the concepts of political identity and culture have to be asked. This book explores the sources of national identity and the possible sources of a common European identity and examining the degree to which such a common identity exists in Europe today, it tries to assess the support it enjoys. In this connection I undertake a comparison with other civilizations and with selected national polities. But my ambition is wider: I use the problem of a European identity as a launching pad for asking some more fundamental questions about the nature and sources of human identity, and about the nature of Political Man.³

I am of course not alone in taking an interest in problems relating to culture, identity and religion. In fact, at least within the field of International Relations one has in recent years witnessed a cultural-religious turn reflected in a growing body of research and theoretical debate. A good example is Scott M. Thomas’s recent volume, The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations, in which the author shows how culture and religion influences international relations.⁴ The book itself, though, is mainly about the role of religion. Culture is mentioned time and again but is not analyzed as a separate issue. As I find this a major shortcoming, my book can be read as an attempt to fill this gap.

European identity is one of the most complex phenomena within European studies and social science. It involves i.a. clarifying some difficult conceptual questions and finding solutions to fundamental problems of measurement. I would not go as far as embracing the view of Adrian Fawell that … “the language of ‘identities’ is above all else the province of politicians and pundits: the folks who invoke identities precisely to build collective power, and to blur and mystify the underlying reasons why individuals engage in collective, social cooperation, interpersonal relations, or personal identification”.⁵ But he has a point. The discourse about identity can be used as legitimating ideology and by all sorts of actors. These problems come on top of inherent difficulties involved in studying the EU, notably the need to draw upon several different disciplines.

European identity is, however, also one of the most topical and arguably most important issues, witness the huge debate on the subject. Surely, not all of this attention can be completely misplaced. The fact that a topic attracts attention does not necessarily mean that it is important, but when serious scholarship addresses an issue, this is certainly one reason to pay attention to it.

How important is it for Europeans to share a common identity? This is hotly disputed. Some argue that a close and well-functioning European collaboration is possible without a common identity, however defined. In fact, the same people tend to argue that European collaboration should not concern itself with such normative issues, but ought instead to concentrate on practical collaboration. Others – typically those analysts who regard the EU as a polity with federal features – argue that a common European identity is a prerequisite for a functioning European democracy. What cannot be disputed is the fact that the topic is being intensively discussed not least in the new member states, for whom the return to the European family of cultures has been a costly affair in terms of legislative adaptation etc. Nor can it be disputed that the study of political and social identity touches upon some fundamental and fascinating problems relating to the nature of Political Man, of society and indeed of Mankind.

Identity like culture belongs to the words that everybody uses, but very few understand. In Samuel Huntington’s apt formulation … “it is as indispensable as it is unclear”.⁶ Having a common identity is not about being identical. A person with a strong identity is first of all a unique person. The same applies to nations and civilizations. Defining identity involves asking at least two sets of related questions, both of which exceedingly complex: First of all, to what extent identity relates to underlying sociological factors; and secondly, how identity relates to power. None of these questions can be examined in any great depth here, but by way of illustration one may, for instance, ask how a factor such as urbanization and more broadly globalization with its attendant stress relates to identity formation. It may be surmised that nations with a strong and stable common identity are nations with a high degree of stability on underlying sociological factors. But this goes against the widely held view that the formation of states was related to factors like major wars against “external others”. The power-identity nexus is equally complex and it will be touched upon in several chapters. As a preliminary definition we may say that identity is about belonging, about distinctiveness and about demarcation. Which of the three aspects is the most important is difficult to establish, but all of these dimensions are surely important (see chapter 4).

The process of central and eastern enlargement – as well as the specific problem of Turkish accession to the EU – has in recent years prompted a heated political debate about European identity and culture, inspiring scholars to examine the nature of European identity. Central and Eastern Europeans have historically displayed a keen interest in issues of identity and culture as a part of their own fight for the preservation of a threatened, national identity. Another stimulus for this interest has been the “nation-building” and more recently the “legitimacy-building” efforts of the European Commission. Finally, the Euro-American disagreement on the invasion of Iraq has prompted a debate about European identity in the sense of common (foreign policy) values within Europe.

Even though many will object to my use of the word “nation-building” in the EU-context, and identity-building is indeed a more precise term, not only are the kind of measures used by the European Commission in its attempts to strengthen its popular legitimacy and add an emotional dimension to the European endeavour well-known from the history of nation states, but some academic scholars have also explicitly addressed the problem of European identity in these terms. By way of illustration let me draw attention to a learned article by Jos de Beus, which carries the title “Quasi-national European identity and European democracy”.⁷ The article contains an attempt to define nationality in broad heuristic terms, which in all its legal clarity seems helpful to the following analysis as a way of demonstrating the relevance of parts of the literature on nation-building and nations.

A nation can be defined as an extensive set of non-relatives who think and feel that they have important things in common and that they differ so much from other large groups that they constitute a distinctive and self-contained society. Nationals share a certain way of life and attach meaning to it to the point where it turns into a self-enforcing culture.⁸

I do not regard the EU as anything approaching a fully-fledged nation-state, but I do think that some EU-actors are using strategies inspired by nation-building and to the extent that they do, scholars have to acquaint themselves with the nation-building literature.

In recent decades, the EU has through a series of history-making changes in the treaties developed formal governance structures to the point where, today, the EU not only constitutes a political system but also a regional polity, which some scholars argue can be characterized as a special kind of decentralized federation. It is true that the EU is a very atypical state-structure in that regulation is much more developed than for example re-distribution, and that the EU lacks a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Yet, it is difficult to dispute the fact that EU decisions are considered “authoritative” within the EU area. Having said that, it must be added that states – and major states in particular – continue to play a particularly prominent role in the European policy process. Indeed, the informal politics are particularly important in Europe, creating a layer of strong coalition politics and informal leadership mechanisms beneath the formal structures.⁹ Intergovernmentalist scholars such as A. Moravcsik have a point when they argue that transnational preference formation is very weak in the EU.¹⁰

Obviously, the strengthening of the supranational decision-making structures draws attention to the question of legitimation, which is reflected in the considerable body of literature published in recent years on the problem of democracy within the EU. Now, the question is if, apart from legitimation, a supranational decision-making system also requires some kind of common culture or identity, in any case some kind of emotional glue?

The challenges posed by rapid polity-building at the supranational level are fundamental. It can be argued following Joseph Weiler that the precondition for acceptance of supranational majority voting on a large scale is the existence of a feeling of mutual belonging within the boundaries of the polity. Without such a feeling a legitimacy crisis may soon emerge. Some would say that such a crisis is already visible in the EU, witness the negative outcome of the referendums on the first version of the new EU treaty in several EU member states. De Beus points out that “European identity sparks attachment of some existential meaning to European politics as a shared practice as well as participation in the cooperative conflict of European integration for better or worse”. And further … “the rise of European identity stimulates the rise of this constitutive willingness”, and, “the rise of European identity contributes to the rise of commitment to public reason beyond the sphere of the nation state”.¹¹ In other words, if a stronger European identity were to emerge, it could be expected to give European democracy a new resilience.

The Oxford scholar Larry Siedentop’s warning against a hasty federalization of the EU seems pertinent.¹² At least it needs to be examined to what extent the discrepancy between the developed “state-dimension” and the undeveloped “nation-dimension” within the EU constitutes a fundamental problem. To the extent that it does, the next question becomes: what does it take to make European decisions legitimate at a deeper level, and moreover: How does a common political identity come about? What are the sources of common identity? Finally, how far has the EU come on its way to a common identity, and what is the more precise nature of that specific identity compared to that of other polities?

Anthony Smith, a prominent theorist of nationality and nationalism, is quite pessimistic about the EU’s possibility of ever attaining something similar to a national identity

There is no European analogue to Bastille or Armistice Day no European ceremony for the fallen in battle, no European shrine of kings or saints. When it comes to the ritual and ceremony of collective identification there is no European equivalent of national or religious community … ¹³

Other authors are more sanguine about the prospects. Jürgen Habermas in a response to sceptics such as Smith and Siedentop argues that

Es fragt sich, ob dieser Wechsel des Politischen Klimas nur einen gesunden Realismus..ausdrückt Oder eher einen kontraproduktiven Kleinmut, wenn nicht gar schlichten Defäitismus ¹⁴

Habermas’ optimism derives from his very different understanding of the sources of identity.

For Jürgen Habermas what is at stake is the defence of a specific European way of life, a social model. His views echo those of French and Italian politicians from the centre to the left, and of many Scandinavian politicians on the Left.

Many readers will ask, but why is identity important anyway? Is it not enough for the population in the EU to feel that they are citizens of a union with specific rights and obligations, perhaps sharing a certain pride in the institutional structure, they have helped create? This is a debate that overlaps with more normative and ideological debates.

As I see it, a European identity is important for essentially three reasons:

(i) because culture is related to democracy

(ii) because common identity is the precondition for solidarity and without solidarity neither economic re-distribution nor common defence is realistic

(iii) because identity is about uniqueness and most Europeans want to preserve the unique European heritage.

The latter point deserves the comment that due to the impact of economic globalization, if cultural Europe stands still, it moves backwards. A Danish intellectual, Viggo Hørup, writing in the late 19^th century put it this way: “Culture is not like old wine that can be stored away to be enjoyed at some future moment; culture is like medicine that has to be taken three times every day (see chapter 14).¹⁵ It takes an effort to preserve a cultural uniqueness.

The literature on European identity contains certain lacunae. A serious weakness is the confusion and vagueness of the conceptual debate, and the scarcity of new empirical data in much of the literature. With this book I try to offer both new theoretical and new empirical insights in a debate that tends to get repetitive. First and foremost I offer a new theoretical perspective on European identity and upon identity as such. That there is a need for a new perspective is evident. I totally agree with Adrian Fawell, an American scholar, when he castigates much of the literature on European identity, criticising its tendency to argue in holistic and collectivistic terms. He is surely right in asking the question … “How is any kind of ‘individual’ identity possible, once we move to the historical or sociological mode of understanding, in which persons are in fact exhaustively determined by the (contextually defined, therefore everchanging) social roles and positions that they are found in”.¹⁶ As he points out … “the ghost of Talcott Parsons rides again, and a neo-Durkheimian ontology of social facts, collective consciousness, and functionalist explanations is embraced anew”.¹⁷ To get out of this quagmire and rediscover personal identity, I think one has to broaden the argument about political identity and rely more upon the insights that can be gained from philosophy and the arts. It has to be understood that the nature and sources of national identity depends upon our understanding of Political Man and Mankind itself.

It is not enough to conduct polls and ask people, if they regard themselves as European, although this is a useful starting point for the discussion. We need to ask the right kind of questions in the right way.

Generally, the available literature can be divided into two categories: First of all, liberal and constructivist accounts which often focus upon European citizenship and its potential. Within this strand one also finds a number of post-modernist historical studies seeking to deconstruct traditional understandings of the past. The emphasis in this literature has been upon showing the political and ideological nature of much history-writing on nations.¹⁸ The weaknesses of this literature have to do with the scarcity of theoretical reflection and the problems inherent in social constructivist thinking. I share the scepticism of Scott Thomas, who talks about … “the unbearable lightness of social constructivism”. Unfortunately, although he draws attention to more useful theories and perspectives, he does not offer a coherent, alternative paradigm.¹⁹

Secondly, there is a strand of ethnically and culturally oriented studies exemplified by Anthony Smith focusing upon the limitations of the EU’ s federalist endeavour. A recent contribution belonging in the first category is Gerard Delanty’s constructivist Inventing Europe, which examines the interplay between Europe as idea, identity and reality taking as his point of departure Benedict Anderson’s now classical work Imagined Communities.²⁰ Delanty’s book is largely a historical account distinguishing between Europe as a cultural idea and Europe as a political identity-building project. The problem is addressed from the second angle in another important work by Chris Shore, who in his book Building Europe analyzes the ways in which the Commission has tried to weld the EU together by means of a top-down cultural effort reminiscent of nation-building.²¹

To what extent then, do Europeans actually feel that they belong together and that they share a set of political and cultural experiences, values, symbols etc.? The current state of the European Union in this regard can be analyzed from different angles. I examine the degree of European identity at both the elite level and the popular level.

The book is based upon a modern positivist epistemology, but one that has a clear preference for qualitative methods. While stressing the inherent limits to testing in the humanities and social sciences, I remain committed to the goal of improving and enhancing our scientific knowledge i.a. through inter-subjective peer evaluation and Popperian falsification.²² Given the book’s individualist ontology and its emphasis upon motivations that are not strictly rational, it has been necessary in some parts of the study to apply a hermeneutical method.

What kinds of conclusions can we expect to be drawn from a study of European identity? Like all social entities, Europe and the EU have certain sui generis features. In fact, to talk about culture and civilization implies almost per definition a sui generis perspective. Having said that, it is unhelpful for EU-studies to stress the sui generis features of European integration to the point of closing the scholarly mind to processes of collaboration taking place beyond Europe. We should try as far as possible to escape the methodological predicament of N=1 – drawing conclusions on the basis of a single case. To some extent this is a question of arguing at a sufficiently high level of abstraction and of avoiding purely descriptive studies. Fortunately, there has in recent years been a tendency in EU-research to relate the study of EU-matters to general theories not only within International Relations, but also within Comparative Politics.

Area studies such as the study of European integration may help generate new concepts. Indeed, in this book I introduce a number of new concepts that hopefully will be regarded as helpful. Alternatively, one may start out with the “conventional theoretical wisdom” and then modify established concepts in the light of area-studies.²³

Theorizing typically starts with conceptual innovation. And a useful starting point in conceptual innovation is the introduction of new metaphorical concepts. Indeed, metaphorical concepts are becoming more common in political science partly as a bi-product of growing interaction between the humanities and social science and the new popularity of some humanities disciplines. Some area-related concepts are too culturally “loaded” to allow transfer to other area cases. Others have transfer potential. I think it is fair to say that history with its symbolic richness can play a helpful role in conceptual innovation. It would be wrong to think of metaphors and science as belonging to two different worlds. Great scientists such as Darwin and Einstein believed that the use of metaphors is vital to the development of scientific ideas,²⁴

Of course most, if not all, theoretical concepts reflect to varying extents the particular reality of a specific context or mind. Methodological concepts on the other hand would appear to possess a higher “universality content”. Against these odds, how is one to develop universal theory? Sartre once, ironically paraphrasing the artist Wols, quipped that in order to speak universally one ought to behave as half Marsian, half human and (in a characteristic Sartrean phrase) to look at the world with inhuman eyes. Kant and Adam Smith similarly believed in the need for human beings to practice self-detachment. The perspective of this book is more grounded. Although in other respects impressed by Sartre, I prefer to lean mainly on the dictum of the science historian, Stephen Jay Gould, who says that … “creative science is always a mixture of facts and ideas. Great thinkers are not those who can free their mind from cultural baggage and think and observe objectively (for such a thing is impossible), but people who use their milieu creatively rather than as a constraint”.²⁵

European identity is a “frontier topic” located at the margins of political science. It is also a topic that has forced me to move beyond my “home ground” of international relations and into the domains of comparative politics, sociology and the humanities. I have regarded this as an exciting challenge. It is my firm belief that the most interesting problems relating to European integration, indeed to political science, can best be studied using an inter-disciplinary approach combining notably international relations, comparative politics and sociology, but also at times including disciplines such as philosophy and parts of the humanities. In my view the topic of European identity cannot be analyzed in a satisfactory way without gathering insights from i.a. philosophy, anthropology and literature.

Some will undoubtedly find this book slightly oceanic in its reach and somewhat weak on facts if not speculative. To those critics I have three answers: First of all, social science being an on-going process, the ability to ask new important questions and introduce new perspectives, is as important if not more important than testing existing theories or uncovering new facts. Secondly, facts do not speak for themselves. All too often scholars marshal an impressive army of new facts, but fail when it comes to offering an interpretation of how all these facts, often derived from different fields of research, fit together. In other words, there is a need for scholars to also produce a synthesis. Obviously, problems that involve inter-disciplinary research put a particular premium on the ability to produce an interpretative synthesis. Thirdly, some topics are easier than others to study empirically. As soon as the researcher takes up questions relating to say culture, identity or mentality, the ground under his feet gets notoriously shaky. But should this lead us to give up asking these questions? I think not. In some contemporary social science research, one detects a problematic tendency to let methodological or technical concerns determine the topic of research. It is easy to produce elegant banalities.

Finally, analyzing aggregate phenomena at the European level is exceedingly difficult. However, scholars should not let themselves be intimidated by complexity.

This book posits a new, existentialist view of Political Man focusing upon personal – but not necessarily rational – choice. I challenge holistic accounts, which emphasize structural determination. Holism is not only an analytical concept but also a normative stance. In my view no one has critizised it with greater perspicacity than the Spanish writer, Ortega y Gasset. When he talks about the “masses” he is in actual fact referring to a normative aspect of holistic thinking. As he points out, the “mass” is a psychological fact. In his own words … “in the presence of one individual we can decide, whether he is mass or not”.²⁶ The contrast to the mass in Ortega y Gasset’s thinking is the “select minorities”, whose members demand more of themselves than does the rest (even though they may not themselves fulfil these higher exigencies). One may – as this author – find the concept of “select minorities” unhelpful and still sympathize with Ortega y Gasset’s attack on “mass society” and by implication holistic, political thinking.

Thus the book is in part about choices and attitudes. But whose choices and whose attitudes, and attitudes to what one may ask? Putting it a bit sharply: It may well be that the nation is an imagined community as argued by sociologists – but who then is doing the imagining? Europeans can be defined either as the elite (political or economic) or as the broader public. In my view European identity has to be studied from both perspectives. The days are long since gone, when one could study the EU solely from the perspective of the elite. Glenda Rosenthal’s The Men behind the decisions from 1976 retains a certain value given the continuing democratic limitations of the EU, but it would be unhelpful to study European identity solely from an elite perspective.

We already have a certain amount of knowledge about the attitudes of the broader European public to questions of identity. Not only has Eurobarometer carried out a number of polls on the subject, a body of data is also available through the so called European Values Study.²⁷ Though valuable and sophisticated in methodological terms, the study was purely quantitative and failed to examine theoretical problems. The study concluded that cultural diversity is very considerable in the EU-area at the level of citizens. Prima facie, it would therefore seem that the scope for a common European identity is limited. Eastern enlargement is likely to have further reinforced value diversity. Yet, this assessment rests upon the premise that a European identity needs to display more or less the same density or “thickness” as known national identities. It also departs from the simplified assumption that there is only one important source of common identity in Europe.

This book takes a critical look at opinion polls on European identity. The problem with much of the Commission (and some of the other) polling is that the dependent variable is rather vague: Too often either the wrong questions are being asked, or the questions are too broad. When people say they feel they belong to Europe, they may mean many different things. Do they feel an attachment to common symbols in use? Or to the European territory? Or do they feel they share a history with other EU member countries?

Significantly, we may underestimate the degree of common identity. Europeans may not be aware of the extent to which they are part of a European cultural community. How many West Europeans know that Riga was founded in 1201 by German aristocrats and clerics?

Identity is linked to culture. Cultural identity is one dimension of national and personal identity and in my view a very important one. Culture is a notoriously contested concept. It has to do with meaning, with form and aesthetic phenomena and with customs and ways of life. Some anthropologists even regard culture as a kind of steering system for human beings. The emphasis is placed differently in the literature. I tend to place the emphasis upon meaning and aesthetic phenomena rather than upon custom. Meaning like aesthetic pleasure is compatible with an individualist and voluntarist ontology. Traditionally, culture has been defined rather narrowly as acquired learning. The word culture itself derives from the Latin word for cultivating. The modern debate about the concept tends to focus more on culture as customs, habits, a way of life or forms of meaning. The problem with a very broad definition of culture is that it overlaps with the concept of civilization. I shall come back to the difference between culture and civilization later.

Political culture has been defined as … “the manifestation in aggregate form of the psychological and subjective dimensions of politics. A political culture is the product of both the collective history of a political system and the life histories of the members of that system, and thus is rooted equally in public events and private experiences”.²⁸ The study of cultural issues has normally been seen to involve a special hermeneutical methodology (“Verstehen”), but recent research has tended to challenge this view, arguing that cultural problems can be analyzed by means of empirical, even quantitative methods.

It would in my view be wrong to regard culture and religion as two separate worlds. Geertz usefully talks about religion as a cultural system, and from Max Weber he borrows the notion of “religious rationalization” to denote the specific development of religion in certain parts of the world.²⁹

The word culture can be used to refer to either high culture, mass culture or ethnic culture. Ethnic culture tends for better or worse to be more egalitarian and more group-oriented than high culture. Much of the high culture that national citizens in Europe enjoy is shared with other European citizens regardless of their national attachment. This is because it has a high “universality content”. This raises the wider question, how aesthetics and politics are related, a question to which I shall return later. The scientific approach to aesthetics is an interesting but also difficult field. Few scholars in Northern Europe have dared address the question.³⁰

Latin is no longer a lingua franca in Europe, but a sort of “Europe of letters” must still be assumed to exist, and the fine arts can be argued to constitute a kind of universalizing language. Importantly, I shall argue that a more widespread aesthetic practice on the part of ordinary citizens is likely over time to have political repercussions.

Mass culture is even less patient with national or regional borders than high culture. It is often global. One may prepare for river rafting in a seemingly remote Brazilian village and yet hear the sound of the melody one heard 6 months ago in one’s home town in Europe. Ethnic culture is more exclusive, introverted and dependent upon demarcation. Its originality typically depends upon its being delivered in the native language, which in itself erects barriers. Typically, each national culture is composed of several layers of culture, which to a varying extent are transnational.

It is important to understand the changing relationship between culture and democracy. Increasingly, Western and perhaps even global culture is being democratized to the point of making the two concepts intimately related (see chapters 2 and 4). Individuals increasingly make conscious choices about personal identity; not only about their life-style, but also about their political values including their nationality.

So what about the elite? Two points seem pertinent: First, democracy and mass education has prompted the revolt of the cognitive elite, especially in the USA. Christopher Lasch has spoken with characteristic eloquence of the “dark night of the soul” in America.³¹ But his analysis of the professional elite is also likely to be relevant beyond the USA. Arguably, in other parts of the Western world – and not least in Europe – global mass culture has come to be regarded as a threat to the survival of what I shall call ‘constitutive culture’. Secondly, notwithstanding the general trend in the direction of democratization, the supranational level of governance in Europe displays a number of special features, amongst others a continuing dominance of a powerful elite. Although from a historical perspective EU-politics have probably in recent years become less elitist, it remains the case that European policy-making is highly centralized and complex with economic and political elite networks dominating decision making. It should be added that this elitism is largely the result of a deliberate choice on the part of the founders of the EU. The horrors of Nazism and Fascism understandably instilled a fear of unbridled populism in the European elite.

This elitism becomes evident already if one takes a quick look at the EU’s leadership structures: There is no direct election of the president of the European Commission and the chairman of the European Council does not have a popular mandate. It is also a view shared by many scholars and political practitioners. Describing European politics in the 1980s, former French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine called EU-politics a case of “enlightened despotism”.³² This does not seem a world apart from what was described by Glenda Rosenthal, when in 1976 she referred to … “the important part played by elite networks of all kinds”.³³

We know from the literature on nation-building and cultural communities that state elites play a crucial role in diffusing and reproducing ideas about a common national identity. Therefore the ideas of the EU elite are obviously of considerable interest. The European elite in the sense of the persons taking the most important political decisions over a considerable period of time is a multi-faceted phenomenon. It has various layers, economic and political as well as cultural, and is not always confined to the European territory. Transatlantic networks remain of importance, though less so at the cultural level. The elite-data analyzed in this study centres upon the political elite layer and i.a. examines the attitudes of the members of the EU constitutional convention as an instance of critically important, political elite attitudes in the EU.³⁴ The broad composition of the convention spanning both national and European parliamentarians as well as members of national governments makes this body reasonably representative of the EU political elite.

The book thus relies in part on a survey of the members of the European convention undertaken in the final months of its work. While the results of this survey should be treated with care given the limited response rate, they do shed some light upon the attitudes of key sections within the EU political elite.³⁵

The European Constitutional Convention was convened in 2002 with a view to revising and consolidating existing European treaties. The convention was a departure from the traditional way of revising the EU treaties through intergovernmental conferences.³⁶ Thus the composition of the convention was unusual. It consisted of altogether 105 members. Most of them were delegates from national parliaments (56 members including opposition and anti-EU parties); and representatives from member state governments themselves (28 members); other members included a delegation from the European Parliament (16 members) and the European Commission (2 members). A limited number of seats were also allocated to representatives from the candidate countries. The convention was headed by a president (the former French president, Giscard D’Estaing), a presidency and a praesidium. One notes that despite its limited size the convention can be said to reflect quite well the span of opinion in the European political elite. However, it cannot be said to be fully representative. Transnational actors were absent; and so were influential personalities in public opinion. In addition, European countries that at the time of convening the convention had not applied for EU membership – such as Norway, Iceland and Switzerland – were not represented.³⁷ Nor were countries in the EU’s neighbourhood with a reasonable claim to European status (e.g. Croatia). The qualitative part of the survey, in which respondents answered open questions is particularly interesting in that it adds depth to the survey to some extent transforming it into a series of case-studies.

In a sense, testing the existence or not of a common identity within the EU political elite is a “critical test”. After all, if one is to take seriously the goal of a European federation and a common European identity, then at least the governing elite in Europe must display such an identity. This makes the EU constitutional convention an interesting case.³⁸ The major part of the study will however, in keeping with my epistemological assumptions, draw upon qualitative sources including speeches by politicians, contributions by European intellectuals and classics within European philosophy and literature.

The structure of the book is as follows:

Chapter 2 asks some preliminary questions regarding the nature of Political Man, linking this to the debate about sources of identity. It outlines the individualist premises of the book underlining the limitations of both a rational choice approach and a holistic approach and introducing what I call an integrist perspective on Political Man.

Chapter 3 examines to what extent Europeans regard themselves as European, drawing upon polls carried out by the European Commission’s Eurobarometer.

Chapter 4 discusses the key concepts of culture, identity and nation.

Chapter 5 stresses the importance of historical experience for identity-formation, arguing that we are witnessing a move from history to memory in identity debates and suggesting a typology of historically related role conceptions.

Chapter 6 investigates the sources of national identity. The discussion is summarized in a theoretical model.

Chapter 7 similarly analyzes the sources of transnational identity, outlining a theoretical framework describing a number of ideal-type models.

Chapter 8 adds a brief comparative perspective, discussing to what extent existing polities can help us understand the dilemmas of the EU.

Chapter 9 explores to what extent Europe can be said to be a cultural community: To what extent is there a common cultural-philosophical tradition uniting Europeans?

Chapter 10 sharpens the focus and tries to pinpoint the originality of Europeanness. I argue that part of the tradition of European individuality is overlooked because it has been universalized and has come to be taken for granted.

Chapter 11 studies the alleged new cleavage between the “old Europe” and the “new Europe”, placing it in a historical perspective.

Chapter 12 compares Europeanness with other civilizations and argues that Europe is confronted with a risk of Orientalization in the sense of Oriental values and religious creeds increasingly replacing European values and creeds.

Chapter 13 examines the EU’s international identity, and introduces the concept of cultural externalization to describe the tendency of the EU to try to compensate for internal heterogeneity by means of a strategic diffusion of its own values and way of life.

Chapter 14 turns attention to the attempts on the part of Europeans to defend their cultural legacies and their particular outlook in the face of standardizing globalization.

Chapter 15 examines the attempts on the part of the central EU institutions to construct common unifying symbols, emphasizing the inherent limitations of this endeavour.

Chapter 16 examines value identity as a possible building-block of European identity. The Haider case in Austria and the Muhammed case in Denmark are briefly analyzed with a view to assessing the strength of the European value community.

Chapter 17 turns attention to rights as a source of common identity, assessing the degree to which the EU has acquired a constitutional identity based on common rights, including a common citizenship.

Chapter 18 examines performance as a possible source of common identity: Is contemporary Europe perhaps best seen as a “working community”?

Chapter 19 adds a cosmopolitan perspective to the debate about a European identity.

Chapter 20 summarizes the book’s main arguments and results.

1 Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power, America and Europe in the new World Order. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2003, p. 3. See also Jeremy Rifkin, The European Dream. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2005.

2 Rifkin, op.cit. p. 365.

3 The question about the effects of identity and culture is not addressed in this book. For a recent work on this important and complex problem see Jan-Erik Lane and Svante Ersson, Culture and Politics. A comparative approach. Ashgate 2005.

4 Scott M. Thomas, The Global Resurgence of Religion and the Transformation of International Relations. Palgrave: Macmillan, 2005.

5 Adrian Fawell, “Europe’s identity problem”. West European Politics. Vol. 28, no. 5. November 2005, p. 1113.

6 Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civilization and the re-making of world order. Touchstone Books. 1998, p. 21.

7 Jos de Beus, “Quasi-national European identity and European democracy”. Law and Philosophy, Vol. 20. 2001.

8 Ibid. p. 292.

9 See i.a. Thomas Pedersen, Germany, France and the integration of Europe. London: Pinter, 1998; and Keith Middlemas, Orchestrating Europe: The Informal Politics of the European Union. London: Fontana, 1995.

10 Andrew Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe. Cornell University Press, 1998.

11 Ibid.

12 Larry Siedentop, Democracy in Europe. Columbia University Press, 2001.

13 Anthony Smith, “National identity and the idea of European unity”. International affairs; Vol. 68/1. 1992, p. 73.

14 J. Habermas, A Constitution for Europe. New Left Review. 2001.

15 Viggo Hörup, “Fortrinlige objekter”. 17.9.1893. In: Viggo Hörup i skrift og taler. Bd. 3. Gyldendal, 1904.

16 Adrian Fawell, “Europe’s Identity Problem”. West European Politics; Vol. 28, no. 5. November 2005, p. 1110f.

17 Ibid.

18 A Danish example is Uffe Östergaard, whose studies have i.a. sought to deconstruct what he regards as anti-German prejudice in Danish history-writing. Among his major works are: Uffe Östergaard, Europas ansigter. Nationale stater og politiske kulturer i en ny, gammel verden. Köbenhavn: Rosinante, 2001, and Europa: identitet og identitetspolitik. Köbenhavn: Rosinante, 2000.

19 Thomas, op.cit., p. 93.

20 See Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1983 and Gerard Delanty, Inventing Europe. Vhps Distributors, 1995.

21 Chris Shore, Building Europe. London: Routledge, 2000.

22 See especially Karl Popper, The logic of scientific discovery. Routledge, 2002.

23 Thomas Pedersen, Area-studies and general theory; A two-way street. Working Paper, Aarhus University 2004.

24 See Eleonora Montuschi, “Metaphor in science”. In: W.H. Newton-Smith (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Science. Blackwell, 2000.

25 See Stephen Jay Gould, An Urchin in the Storm. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1988.

26 José Ortega y Gasset, “The coming of the masses”. In: Bernard Rosenberg & David Manning White, Mass Culture. The popular Arts in America. New York: The Free Press, 1957, pp. 43ff.

27 The European Values Study. Tilburg University 2003. The survey was conducted in three different years in 16 different European countries.

28 Quoted in Jan-Erik Lane & Svante Ersson, Culture and Politics. A comparative Approach. Ashgate, 2005, p. 17.

29 See Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books, 1973, p. 87 and 171f.

30 One important exception is the Danish historian of ideas, Dorthe Jörgensen, see i.a. her Skönhedens metamorfose: De ästetiske ideers historie. Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2003; and Dorthe Jörgensen, Skönhed: En engel gik forbi. Aarhus: Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 2006.

31 Christopher Lasch, The revolt of the elites and the betrayal of democracy. W.W. Norton & Co., 1995.

32 See Hubert Vedrine, Les Mondes de Francois Mitterrand. Paris: Fayard, 1998.

33 Glenda Rosenthal, The Men behind the decisions. Lexington Mass. 1975, p. 133.

34 See Jo Shaw et.al., The convention on the future of Europe: Working towards an EU constitution. London: Federal Trust for Education & Research, 2003 for an overview of the EU convention.

35 The response rate was around 50 %, which is clearly less than ideal, but probably a realistic figure given the fact that we are dealing with very busy personalities.

36 See the survey in Peter Norman, The accidental constitution: The story of the European Convention. Brussels: Eurocomment, 2003; and also George Tsebelis & Sven-Oliver Proksch, “The Art of political manipulation in the European convention”. Journal of Common Market Studies; Vol. 45/1. 2007.

37 The views of the latter countries can however from a methodological view be said to have been to some extent covered by other former EFTA states (Scandinavians and Austria) similar in outlook. Switzerland, though, remains somewhat sui generis.

38 The method used for gathering the convention data was as follows: An extensive questionnaire was mailed to all convention members, who were given three months to return the questionnaire. Reminders were mailed several times. The response rate was approximately 50 %. This is clearly less than ideal but not surprising given the fact that we are dealing with busy politicians. In view of the fact that the statistical population is quite high, even a relatively moderate response rate can be expected to provide useful information. In order to offset the expected problems regarding a low response rate, convention members were not only presented with closed, multiple choice questions but also with open questions allowing them to comment on a number of issues. This open section of the survey is particularly interesting, when the response rate is medium or low. In this case the analysis in a sense becomes more qualitative than quantitative in that the focus shifts from aggregate figures to in-depth analysis of attitudes – in other words to a more qualitative analysis. The content of the questions ranged from questions regarding attitudes to external powers (the USA, Russia etc.) to questions regarding cultural values, e.g. the convention members were asked to list the three most important European philosophers, and the three most important European novelists etc.