Civic Competence and Identity in the European Polity

Abstract

Given its profound novelty and complexity, it is hardly surprising that the European Union (EU) has been attributed so many different neologisms over the years (Chryssochoou 2001). Whether these attributes are ‘trapped in a state-oriented mode of thinking’ (Jachtenfuchs et al. 1998: 417), they only capture part of a more complicated reality. Hence, EU scholarship is still in search of a reliable theory for the future of ‘the most complex polity that human agency has ever devised’ (Schmitter 2000: 75). Underlying the difficulties for a conceptual consensus is that the process of conceptualising the EU rests on competing normative orders that account for different ‘structures of meaning’ (Jachtenfuchs et al. 1998: 411). The most challenging question today remains that posed by Puchala (1972): ‘where do we go from here?’ This question is of immediate relevance to the democratisation of the EU. In this chapter, it will be examined in relation to the concept of ‘civic competence’ and the prospects for a European civic space.1 Such a civic dimension is important for a republican view of Europe and European citizenship, and it is to this that we shall first turn.