This collection presents the main outcomes concerning social rights, active citizenship, and governance in the European Union, as presented at the final conference of the Civil Society and New Forms of Governance in Europe (CINEFOGO) Network of Excellence (Brussels, March 2009). The classic social debate about active citizen involvement in governance has re-emerged in the changing contexts of globalization and European integreation. Researchers have been involved in deepening the understanding of the role of civil society and new forms of governance in Europe and the making of European citizenship. They have been systematically studying political, legal, institutional, and economic conditions, as well as the different roles of various actors and institutions, the extent of their involvement in decision-making, and how their actions influence the changing human living conditions, including the actual accessibility of social rights for EU citizens. Different aspects of the structural changes to welfare states, and the extent and forms of citizens' participation in addressing public affairs, have been placed in the center of research attention. (Series: European Civil Society)

European citizenship has been a key issue since the Treaty of Maastricht. Contributions link citizenship not only to the Treaty provisions but also to the policy regimes of the EU.

This book looks at how Europeanisation affects the link between citizenship and governance in and across the new states of South East Europe. Contributors unpack the intimate relationship between the European Union, national governments, and citizens through a tripartite model that captures the uneven and diversified effects of Europeanisation on the governance of citizenship-related policy areas. Reflecting on the meaning of governance in different contexts, this book invites the readers to reconsider the terms and concepts that are commonly used for studying the consolidation of new states. By doing so, it directs attention to the transformative power of European integration not only on modes of governance but also on practices and experiences of citizenship. Individual chapters are ‘paired’ to examine three policy areas that are to a different degree affected by the requirements of European Union accession. Combining analysis of policy frameworks with assessment of their impact, the contributors highlight that the impact of Europeanisation can be located on a continuum stretching from ‘strongest’ in matters regarding justice and home affairs, to ‘moderate’ in general issues of social policy, to ‘weakest’ in transforming citizenship through education policies. This book was originally published as a special issue of European Politics and Society.

This book approaches the notion of good governance from three different angles. First it establishes whether it is a meaningful notion at all by taking a closer look at the parameters of good governance. Secondly, the authors look at the institutional translation of the criteria of good governance. In a third dimension, the concept may be analysed in relation to a number of substantive issues.

European citizenship, identity and immigration are constitutive issues facing the European polity and have important consequences for domestic political systems. There has been a great deal published about citizenship within the setting of the nation-state and comparative immigration policies, but relatively little has been written on their theorisation in a post-national, post-statist context, such as the EU, and on alternative European institutional designs. Now available in paperback, this volume blends normative political theory with European integration, and develops an original theoretical framework for European Union citizenship, identity and immigration as well as a set of policy proposals for institutional reform. Challenging the conventionally held views in these areas, the author argues that a constructive model of European citizenship and identity is vital to the construction of a democratic, heterogeneous and inclusive European polity. The book will appeal to academics and political actors concerned with issues of European governance as well as to undergraduate and postgraduate students of European politics, European integration, European Union Law, political theory and sociology.

This book provides a broad overview of the main trends in mass attitudes towards domestic politics and European integration from the 1970s until today. Particularly in the last two decades, the "end of the permissive consensus" around European integration has forced analysts to place public opinion at the centre of their concerns. The book faces this challenge head on, and the overview it provides goes well beyond the most commonly used indicators. On the one hand, it shows how integration's deepening and enlargement involved polities and societies whose fundamental traits in terms of political culture - regime support, political engagement, ideological polarization - have remained anything but static or homogeneous. On the other hand, it addresses systematically what Scharpf (1999) has long identified as the main sources of the democratic deficits of the EU: the lack of a sense of collective identity, the lack of a Europe-wide structure for political accountability, and the lack of recognition of the EU as a legitimate political authority. In other words, it focuses on the fundamental dimensions of how Europeans relate to the EU: identity (the sense of an "European political community"; representation (the perception that European elites and institutions articulate citizens' interests and are responsive to them); and policy scope (the legitimacy awarded to the EU as a proper locus of policy-making). It does so by employing a cohesive theoretical framework derived from the entire IntUne project, survey and macro-social data encompassing all EU member countries, and state-of-the-art methods. The IntUne series is edited by Maurizio Cotta and Pierangelo Isernia In a moment in which the EU is facing an important number of social, economic, political and cultural challenges, and its legitimacy and democratic capacities are increasingly questioned, it seems particularly important to address the issue of if and how EU citizenship is taking shape. This series intends to address this complex issue. It reports the main results of a quadrennial Europe-wide research project, financed under the 6th Framework Programme of the EU. That programme has studied the changes in the scope, nature and characteristics of citizenship presently underway as a result of the process of deepening and enlargement of the European Union. The INTUNE Project - Integrated and United: A Quest for Citizenship in an Ever Closer Europe - is one of the most recent and ambitious research attempts to empirically study how citizenship is changing in Europe. The Project lasted four years (2005-2009) and it involved 30 of the most distinguished European universities and research centres, with more than 100 senior and junior scholars as well as several dozen graduate students working on it. It had as its main focus an examination of how integration and decentralization processes, at both the national and European level, are affecting three major dimensions of citizenship: identity, representation, and scope of governance. It looked, in particular, at the relationships between political, social and economic elites, the general public, policy experts and the media, whose interactions nurture the dynamics of collective political identity, political legitimacy, representation, and standards of performance. In order to address empirically these issues, the INTUNE Project carried out two waves of mass and political, social and economic elite surveys in 18 countries, in 2007 and 2009; in-depth interviews with experts in five policy areas; extensive media analysis in four countries; and a documentary analysis of attitudes toward European integration, identity and citizenship. The book series presents and discusses in a coherent way the results coming out of this extensive set of new data.