The article argues that dissident voices which attempt to theorise Europe differently and advocate another European trajectory have been largely excluded and left unheard in mainstream discussions over the past decade of scholarship and analysis. Dissident voices in European Union studies are those that seek to actively challenge the mainstream of the study of Europe. The article briefly examines the discipline of mainstreaming, then surveys the extent of polyphonic engagement in EU studies, before setting out how the special issue contributors move beyond the mainstream. The article will argue the merits of more polyphonic engagement with dissident voices and differing disciplinary approaches for the health and vitality of EU studies and the EU policy field itself. It summarises the special issue's argument that by allowing for dissident voices in theorising Europe, another Europe, and another theory, is possibleindeed, probable. Introduction: Dissident VoicesThe past decade has witnessed the opening of a yawning chasm between scholarly attempts to theorise European union and the political realities of the EU (European Union) in crisis. The decade that has witnessed the ascendency of political systems analysis, neoliberal assumptions of efficiency and Europeanisation studies within Europe has also seen the failure of intergovernmental attempts to reform the EU, economic crisis across Europe and a collapse in popular support for the European project, as seen in the European Parliament elections. Dissenting voices that attempt to theorise Europe differently and advocate another European trajectory have been largely excluded and left unheard in mainstream discussions over the past decade of scholarship and analysis. Mainstream EU scholarship broadly accepts the premise that the EU is a neoliberal, state-like political system and that Europeanisation is a one-way process. As Mads Jensen and Peter Kristensen (2013) have demonstrated, a few core journals, in particular JCMS and JEPP (Journal of European Public Policy), constitute the key nodal points for EU communication practice where network analysis shows a clear political science hegemony.Dissident voices in EU studies are those that seek to actively challenge the mainstream of the study of Europe on these grounds. While the mainstream of EU studies may consider itself 'pluralist', this self-reading only makes sense within a narrow conception of *The authors are very grateful to the anonymous reviewers and all the participants at the EWIS Izmir workshop (May
Introduced by Ian Manners in an article published in 2002, the idea of ‘normative power Europe’ has been very widely debated by scholars in the fields of European studies and international relations. This article marks the first decade of scholarship on normative power Europe through a critical engagement with the concept, its influence and the wider normative turn within the literature on the European Union’s role beyond its borders. The article reviews the strands of literature that have drawn on the concept of normative power and outlines the contours of the international debate on the concept. It provides an assessment of the impact of normative power and its application through the variety of ways it has been used via engagement, reaction and counter-reaction.
The English School of international relations has rarely been used to analyse European integration. But, as we argue in this article, there may be considerable value in adding the English School to the canon of approaches to European integration studies in order to contextualize European integration both historically and internationally. The concepts of international society, world society and empire in particular may be used to reconfigure the current debate about the nature of EU governance and to compare the EU to other regional international systems, as well as to reconceptualize the EU's international role, and in particular the EU's power to influence affairs beyond its formal membership borders. Conversely, analysing the EU with the help of these English School concepts may also help to refine the latter in the current attempts to reinvigorate the English School as a research programme. the participants at the panels on the English School and European integration at the BISA annual conference, Bradford, December 2000, the ECSA biennial conference, Madison, WI, May-June 2001, as well as audiences in the Universities of Birmingham, Keele, Lisbon and Munich. 1 It is, however, worth remembering that in the early years, studying European integration was meant to be seen as a particular case, amongst others, which could be compared, or be accounted for by existing theories, or (especially in the case of federalism) as a model for political organization beyond the nationstate. 2 The comparative approach, too, often privileges the state model by making it the main point of comparison, rather than other post-international systems (Wiener, 2001, pp. 77-8).
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