The symbolic politics of European integration: Staging Europe

Summary:

This book presents a cultural history of European integration. It revisits the European Community’s postwar origins through the lens of symbolic representation and so reveals a hitherto unknown side to Europe’s notorious technocrats. They were not simply administrators: they were skillful marketing experts, clever spin doctors, and talented stage directors. After all, what made the European Community stand out among the multitude of postwar European organizations? This book argues that it was not so much its vaunted supranationalism, nor its economic significance; it was its self-proclaimed role as torchbearer of European unity.

Combining archival research with media analysis, the book reviews Europe’s early parliaments, its early diplomacy, and its long search for “capital cities” from Strasbourg to Brussels. It tells the story of the political theater that staged an enterprise of technocrats as the embodiment of a Europe united in peace and prosperity.

This book is an invaluable resource for historians of postwar Europe, as well as for analysts of today’s EU, who seek to understand how coal, steel, and tariffs became the stuff the European dream was made of.

Table of contents:

1. Introduction: The EC as a theater state

Part I: Europe on the diplomatic stage
2. Statesmen made in Washington: Official EC visits to the United States
3. At the Eurocrats’ court: Foreign representatives, diplomatic ceremonies, and the empty chair crisis
4. Ambassadors from Europe: The EC’s diplomatic missions in Britain and the United States

Part II: A parliament for Europe
5. The self-styled constituante: From the Council of Europe to the Common Assembly
6. Constitutional theater: From the Common Assembly to the European Parliament

Part III: The race for the capital of Europe
7. The provincial heart of postwar Europe: The seats of the Council of Europe and the ECSC in Strasbourg and Luxembourg
8. A Europe ruled from Paris? Paris, Brussels, and the battle for the seat of the EC

9. Conclusion: The power of Europe
10. Epilogue: Symbolic surplus and democratic deficit