Understanding today’s EU requires a prism which is attentive to the interactions between the polity-building and world-inhabiting facets of the emerging polity. We cannot separate developing a theory of the EU as a polity from determining its placement in the world. Norms of cooperation become...

The question of the European cultural heritage and the wider historical legacy of Europe has been the subject of much discussion in recent years as is reflected in new approaches to memory and commemoration, values, and European identity. Unlike earlier histories, which generally contained a...

The rise of the meso level of government in Europe can be explained by the pressures of managing national diversity, functional restructuring and political change. Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom all have such a level but taking very different forms. All have embarked on a second round of...

The processes of building the United States of America (USA) during the nineteenth century and the European Union (EU) since mid-twentieth century are among the major claims for the possibility of a vast, ‘imperial’-size political unit based on democratic principles. The crucial period for...

There is a widespread perception among the public and policy-makers that EMU carries one-way pressures for enhanced flexibility in the labour market. We discuss the theoretical basis of this by examining four mechanisms through which the establishment of the common currency and the functioning...

“Unity in Diversity” was the fortunate motto of the otherwise unfortunate Draft Constitutional Treaty. The motto did not make it into the Treaty of Lisbon. It deserves to be kept alive in a new constitutional perspective, namely the re-conceptualisation of European law as new type of...

This paper examines the political categories of ‘Left’ and ‘Right’, in particular as they are evoked and instrumentalised by political actors in the democratic process. Drawing on some of the insights of positioning theory, it shows how ‘Left’ and ‘Right’ are discursive resources...

Substantial theoretical and conceptual advances have been made with respect to agenda-setting as a determinant for policy outcomes. An actor-centred perspective on frames and venues is core to this literature, structure as a single standing category has received less attention. In this paper we...