Theorizing European identity: contributions to constructivist international relations debates on collective identity

Abstract

This chapter argues that the literature on European identity has advanced constructivist international relations (IR) theory on collective identity in mainly three ways. First, it has allowed for an empirical analysis of the ways in which collective identities relate to their constituent national identities, underlining that collective identities do not replace, subsume or replicate national identities but coexist with them as alternative forms of identity. Second, it has paved the way for the empirical analysis of the ways in which collective identities relate to ‘other’identities, and the conditions under which different forms of self/other relations materialize. Third, the debate around ‘Normative Power Europe’has deepened our understanding of how the foreign policy/identity nexus operates in international relations. All of these aspects had remained undertheorized in the constructivist IR literature, although their important implications had been acknowledged. Research on how the European collective identity coexists with national identities has demonstrated that even in the context of a shared institutional discourse, collective identity remains pluralistic, contested, and negotiated differently in different national contexts. Similarly, EU enlargement debates have stimulated a large body of empirical research on how European identity is constructed in relation to other identities, focusing in particular on peripheral/outsider states, such as central/eastern European states, Turkey, and Russia. Contrary to abstract theoretical debates on self/other relations in constructivist IR theory, the empirical research on European identity has shown that self/other relations cannot be reduced to a singular form and that multiple and conflicting practices coexist in the construction of collective identities. Finally, the foreign policy/identity nexus in the EU has forced constructivist theorizing to adopt a more critical approach, with a specific focus on the normative implications of the Union’s actorness in world politics. The Normative Power Europe scholars and their self-reflexivist critics have merged the debates about European integration (especially about the interplay between the national level and the European level) with the debate on how the EU places itself in world politics and pursues a specific role which emanates from its normative difference.