Europe is more challenged and contested today than it has even been, facing crisis of an almost existential kind. Yet, political crises are manufactured and narrated, so Europe has the possibility to intervene and ‘bring about her recovery’, instead of letting these crises prove terminal. This book explores the political process in and through which certain events come to be framed as constitutive of a moment that requires a decisive intervention. It shows that crises require a double framing: a situation needs to be identified as one of crisis in the first place and, subsequently, the nature and character of the crisis need to be specified. By examining a wide range of policy areas, the book demonstrates that framing of crises, i.e., identifying one situation both as a crisis and a crisis of a particular kind, contributes to the politicisation (or depoliticisation) of the process of European integration.
The chapters in this book were originally published as special issue of Journal of European Integration.
Benedetta Voltolini is Lecturer in European Foreign Policy in the Department of European and International Studies at King’s College London, UK. Her research focuses on the foreign policy of the EU and its member states towards the Middle East and North Africa, on lobbying and framing in European external relations.
Michal Natorski in Assistant Professor in Public Policy Analysis and Governance at the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance/United Nations University-MERIT at the Maastricht University, Netherlands. His research interests include the diffusion of public policies, international practices, the governance of disruptive phenomena and EU foreign policy.
Colin Hay is Professor and Director of Doctoral Studies in Political Sciences at Sciences Po, Paris, France, and founding Director of the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI) at the University of Sheffield, UK. He is lead editor of New Political Economy and founding co-editor of Comparative European Politics and British Politics. He is a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Science and, until recently, President of the European University Institute’s Research Council.