Summary
Contents
Subject index
The European Union (EU) poses quite profound questions for scholars and students of the social and political sciences. This benchmark Handbook is designed to provide an authoritative state-of-the art guide to the scope of the field suitable for both established scholars and students of the EU; reflect and contribute to the debates about the nature of the field of EU studies and EU politics in particular; and explore in detail the development of the many approaches to the study of EU politics. Divided into four sections, the Handbook focuses on theorizing European integration; the EU as polity; politics and policy making in the EU; and the EU and the international system.
Constructivism and EU Politics
Constructivism and EU Politics
Introduction
The complexities and challenges for a chapter such as this are captured in the very phrase ‘social construction of Europe’. Should the emphasis be on Europe – thus suggesting the sui generis nature of the post-war European project and the special, regional-specific (constructivist) conceptual tools needed to study it? Or, should it be on the words social construction, implying a particular analytic orientation that can be applied across regions – including but not limited to Europe and the EU?
This essay comes down heavily in favour of the latter, as this would seem a natural choice. After all, within political science, constructivism's origins and two-decade long gestation were within the subfield of international relations, not in EU studies (Adler ...
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