Identity, interaction and communication in a (dis)integrating Europe

Abstract

This panel emphasises the dynamic relationship between European integration and collective identity change. The European Union (EU) has successfully accrued political authority over nearly half a billion citizens, even in policy areas that are intrinsically linked to national sovereignty, such as a common currency. To what extent has this impacted people’s everyday lives and the way they relate to the EU and to each other? This panel brings together a set of papers that all study the interaction between European integration and collective identity formation from different angles. While papers 1 and 2 introduce a new measure of European identity and study the link between European identity and institution building (paper 1) and quality of governance (paper 2) at the macro-level, papers 3-5 zoom in on the impact of elite communication and cross-border interactions and study their impact on European identity and support for European integration. The panel also contributes to research on European identity by showcasing how a diverse set of innovative and rigorous research designs and methods, including field and survey experiments, Bayesian estimation, and agent-based modelling, can be used to better understand European identity formation.

Title	Details
Dynamic Democratic Deficits and European Identity	View Paper Details
Introducing a latent measure of EU Identity across time and countries	View Paper Details
Conditional Effects of Media and Interpersonal Communication: An Agent-Based Approach to Opinion Formation on Brexit in London	View Paper Details
Justifying European disintegration: The Impact of Justifications on Public Support for Restrictive Border Policies	View Paper Details