Europe's Prolonged Crisis ― The Making or the Unmaking of a Political Union

This volume outlines a political sociology of crisis in Europe, focusing on state and society transformations in the context of the 2008 financial and monetary crisis and its aftermath in Europe. Dysfunctions of the market and the European economic and monetary system pose severe challenges to the legitimacy of political order at national, European and global level. In this collection, the contributors investigate how the crisis undermines the integrity of political institutions and democratic government at EU and member state level, and analyse how the experiences of social deprivation are translated into political conflict and cleavages across the European space. Evidence is provided for how the return of redistributive conflicts correlates with a 'new politics of identity', nationalism, regionalism and expressions of Euroscepticism. Crisis affects patterns of social exclusion but, as this book reveals, it can also activate social networks and impacts on new forms of solidarity, which are emerging locally and transnationally.

Hans-Jorg Trenz is Professor at the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication at University of Copenhagen, Denmark, and adjunct Professor at ARENA, Centre for European Studies of University of Oslo, Norway. His main research interests are in the areas of media, communication and the public sphere, civil society, European civilization and identity, political sociology and democracy.

Carlo Ruzza is Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Trento, Italy. His research interests focus upon civil society, social movements, right-wing parties and the process of European integration.

Virginie Guiraudon is a Research Director at Centre d'etudes europeennes de Sciences Po, Paris. Her main interests lie in the comparative politics of immigration and citizenship and also include European integration and transnational mobilization. She sits on the board of various journals such as Comparative European Politics and the European Journal for Political Research.