Description
Book SynopsisFrom its beginnings, the European Union has resounded with debate over whether to move toward a federal or intergovernmental system. This book provides an empirical analysis of differing attitudes to European integration in three of Europe's most important countries: Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom.
Trade Review"By explaining differential attitudes to European integration in terms of differences in national culture, Diez Medrano opens up the field of European integration studies to cultural and sociological inquiry."--Choice "Without question a significant achievement... Medrano's study constitutes a significant contribution to the literatures on European integration, political culture, and nationalism. It tells a compelling story of the construction of collective identities and of the myths upon which they are frequently based."--Andreas Sobisch, Perspectives on Politics "Framing Europe is an extremely significant book on an important topic: attitudes toward European integration in Great Britain, Spain, and Germany. It is impressive for its combination of ethnographic, interpretive, historical, and statistical methods and for its synthesis of a vast amount of material... Framing Europe is an important intervention in the cultural sociology of politics. One can read it as an argument about the way political resentations result from other representations in complexly overdetermined historical conjunctures."--George Steinmetz, American Journal of Sociology "Medrano has provided us with new and valuable insights into the EU and European integration--well written, close to his sources and data, employing an interesting analytical approach and design that links micro-level attitudes among European citizens to macrolevel processes."--Stefan Hojelid, European Legacy
Table of ContentsList of Figures ix List of Tables xi Acknowledgments xiii One Introduction 1 PART I: FRAMES ON EUROPEAN INTEGRATION AND THE EUROPEAN UNION IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, GERMANY, AND SPAIN 19 Two Ways of Seeing European Integration 21 Three Good Reasons for and Attitudes toward European Integration 65 Four Journalists and European Integration 106 PART II: NATIONAL CULTURES AND FRAMES ON EUROPEAN INTEGRATION 157 Five Spain: Europe as a Mirror with Two Reflections 159 Six West Germany: Between Self-Doubt and Pragmatism 179 Seven East Germany: A Different Past, a Different Memory 200 Eight The United Kingdom: Reluctant Europeans 214 Nine Frames and Attitudes toward European Integration: A Statistical Validation 236 Ten Conclusions 249 Appendix 1 Selection and Distribution of Respondents, and the Interviewing Process 263 Appendix 2 Newspaper Selection, Sampling, and Coding Procedures for Editorials and Opinion Pieces 267 Appendix 3 Frames on European Integration: A Discriminant Analysis, by City 270 Appendix 4 Sources for Part II: Novels, History Textbooks, and Head of State Addresses 271 Notes 277 References 299 Index 315
