Workshop su "Political Identity and Legitimacy in the Politics of the European Union" , ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops, Nicosia Aprile 2006

A titolo esemplificativo, si allega la descrizione breve del tema del Workshop presentata all'ECPR: In the past fifteen years three areas of investigation have been particularly fruitful in EU studies: the democratic deficit issue, European identity, and the international role of the EU. Though some attention is developing towards linking the second and the third areas, little has been done with regard to the relationship among all three areas. We particularly want to focus attention on “legitimacy”, “political identity” and the relations between the different meanings of these concepts. “Legitimacy” is a broad concept with several meanings which have been investigated individually, but as yet insufficient regard has been given to their mutual relations; for instance, we are thinking of the consequences resulting from the gap between the establishment of a set of social and civic values (input legitimacy) and the ability to show effectiveness in the political implementation of such values (output legitimacy). This is particularly the case with the so-called European social model, as well as with the EU’s civilian or normative power in international politics. The values that are embodied in these models are both a product of an emerging EU political identity and at the same time feed back into the process of identity formation. With respect to identity, the workshop aims at investigating: (a) the relationship between political, cultural and social identity; (b) the chances of regional identity developing as a post-national and (in a sense) post-modern entity. We would appreciate several types of both theoretical and empirical contributions to these encompassing topics, from a range of backgrounds in social science.