A parallel can be made to the argument of Robert Putnam on regional political reform in Italy that a successful democratisation is the outcome of deeply entrenched civic traditions of social solidarity and involvement in community matters. The emergence of a hegemonic great power or a new regional project poses a challenge to any nation-state. At elite as well as popular level a perceived genuineness, an established representation of the past, has to be reconciled with a new regional identity. This process might run more or less smoothly, whether it is about incorporating democracy into an established national order, as in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, or a European identity during the last few decades. It might 'activate' dimensions of the nations history that support or contradict the established self-understanding.
Identity change is a more complex and drawn-out process than political and economic change.
On the one hand, popular world-views and perceptions do not necessarily correspond to the dominant political or intellectual discourse. On the other hand, some sort of indirect response may nevertheless be assumed. As Eric Hobsbawm has noted, intellectual 'invented traditions' must in some way be related to the felt needs of the communities to which they are addressed. To understand how images of an emerging European order interact within existing collective identities in the EU today, we need to understand how the concept of 'Europe' has related to the nation-building project in a longer time perspective as well as how it has been transformed in the postwar European integration process. This workshop will explore how established national discourses are reconciled with an emerging European identification within the European Union.