A Common Civic Culture in Europe: Has the Process of European Integration Been Followed by the Convergence of Citizenship Values?

Abstract

Theories of Europeanisation (Lawn and Lingard, 2002) and Globalisation (Ramirez et al., 2006, 2009) have proposed that national education policies and practices are converging towards a uniform model. The premise is that national policies are becoming increasingly alike due to the experience of coping with similar problems and as a result of processes of competition between countries on the world stage, policy borrowing and pressure from international organisations (Green, 1999). In terms of Europeanisation, the European Union (EU) institutions and the Council of Europe have been identified as key actors in the process of drawing national policies of European countries closer together (Novoa and Lawn, 2002). In the field of active citizenship the EU has developed broad common objectives, funded education activities and training, shared good practices and monitored policy outcomes through indicators (Hoskins et al., 2006, 2008, 2012a; Hoskins and Mascherini, 2009). The Council of Europe has also been active on developing tools and sharing good practice on Education for Democratic Citizenship within its member states for over 15 years and has recently adopted a charter on Education for Democratic Citizenship and Human Rights Education (Council of Europe, 2010) that provides a common framework for action across Europe.