The western Balkans are caught between internal dynamics acting to couple borders with national myth-making, and post-modern Europeanizing forces hoping to nurture cosmopolitan polities.
Europe's conceptions of citizenship, state sovereignity and nationalism have been bound up with each other historically, but the future may instead promise "a teeming European nation of nations" rooted in a "radical democratization of the European Union."
Crises, like those gripping Europe, tend to expose the process and practice of regional governance as technocratic and elite-driven. But citizens and civil society may well demand more voice and power, in a 'politicisation' of regions.
The accounts, symbols and feelings that we have about national identity were largely imagined, created and popularized in the nineteenth century. The word ‘nationalism’ itself dates from the early nineteenth century and marked the increasing use of national identity in order to make political clai
Underpinning the Euro crisis is a collection of mismatches, of cultures, institutions, expectations and norms between varied European actors and, critically, debtors and creditors. Europe will not survive without unification to smoothe and manage these differences, but it need not be as painful or
Internally-oriented communication initiatives and an overreliance on technical jargon prevent citizens from having a real conversation with the EU.
In search of a new European politics, we must face the fact that we have skirted the political question of identity: how do we redraw the boundaries (symbolic and physical) dividing us so that we can re-democratize the European public space?
The European Union needs to undergo a revolution founded on “pragmatic wishful thinking” that will make it more modern, global, networked, and effective. But for “EU 2.0” to become possible, says Kalypso Nicolaïdis, there must be a new governing idea for the European project: sustainable integrati