Democracy In The European Union: The Social Identity Dynamics Of Europeanization

This analysis shows how the European integration drive spurs image alteration of national self and other through applying findings from social psychology. It highlights the implications of the EU constraining national polity punishments against civil society actors violating sovereignty-based norms. The EU encourages cross-border activity strategies among the multitude of private sector, interest group and social movement actors. National actors undergo inducements to justify and defend their transnational vested interests domestically and regionally. These incentives motivate European national polity actors to transcend traditional national stereotypical images of self and other when confronting negative social selfimage intra-European comparisons. This study analytically outlines how, instead of engaging in the social psychology of zero-sum social competition, European integration facilitates adopting strategies emphasizing intra-European social mobility and social creativity. Social mobility includes self-identity transformation, legitimated within a framework of being so-called European. The opportunity for pursuit of a strategy of social creativity, i.e. being different but equal in social status, is supported. EU policy making institutions functionally serve to coopt national sovereignty to legitimize social deviance. These institutions accommodate nationalist values while encouraging the perception of deviance as a form of social creativity contributing to the constitution of a European great power identity ideal.