Another Theory is Possible: Dissident Voices in Theorising Europe

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. As all the contributors to the special issue make clear, there is a rich diversity of alternatives to mainstream thinking and theorising the EU on which to draw for different ways of theorising Europe. The introductory article briefly examines the discipline of mainstreaming, then surveys 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 approach for the health and vitality of EU studies and the EU policy field itself. The article sets out the wide range of contributions which the special issue articles make to theorising the EU. It summarises the special issue argument that by allowing for dissident voices in theorising Europe another Europe, and another theory, is possible indeed probable

European communion: political theory of European union

Political theory of European union, though an engagement between political concepts and theoretical understandings, provides a means of theorising the EU as a political object. It is argued that the notion of sharing or ‘communion’, lying at the interface of political theory and political conceptualisation, provides a better means of theorising the EU as a political object rather than terms such as integration or cooperation. By exploring European communion through an engagement with political theory, the paper sets out how three different understandings of the EU as a political object are being constitutionalised – the EU as a constellation of communities; the EU as a cosmopolitan space; and the EU as an example of cosmopolitical coexistence

Political psychology of emotion(al) norms in European Union foreign policy

The article uses political psychology to understand how emotions such as fear, anger, hate and passion fuel the construction of emotional norms in foreign policy, and why this is important to the contributing articles to this Global Affairs special issue (SI) on emotion(al) norms in EUropean foreign policy. It argues that the SI sets out a significant stage in the political psychology of emotions from IR to the EU over the past 50 years. The value of the SI’s theoretical contribution to the field is demonstrated by using the political psychologies of individual cognitive psychology, social psychology, social construction, psychoanalysisand critical political psychology to allow for engagement with the broader inter-discipline. The article concludes that the SI has made an original and interesting contribution in terms of empirically multileveled, theoretically emotional, andmethodologically discursive approaches to the understanding of the political psychologies of emotional norms in EU foreign policy

European Communion and Planetary Organic Crisis

The most common way of theorising the European Union’s crises is to see them as, at best, a run of ‘bad luck’, or at worst as ‘multiple challenges’. This chapter brings two very different perspectives to the study of the European Union (EU) and its crises by theorising European (dis)integration using the Critical Social Theory (CST) of ‘European communion’ (Manners, 2013a) within the context of ‘planetary organic crisis’ (Gill and Benatar, 2020). These perspectives mark a radical break from ‘classical integration theories’ in using CST; from viewing the crises as distinct from each other; and from seeing the crises as particular to the EU. The rest of this section sets out the main arguments for a European communion theory of planetary organic crisis. The following five sections focus on European communion in the context of the neoliberal economic, demographic social, climatic ecological, proxy conflict, and ethno-nationalist political crises of the 21st century. The final section concludes on making sense of European communion and planetary organic crisis

The External Dimensions of the European Union's Autocracy Crisis

This contribution analyses the external dimensions of the EU’s autocracy crisis. It argues that the internal and external dimensions of the crisis, and those relating to accession, are interlinked, and that more genuine social democracy, human rights, and rule of law would help address the crisis. It concludes that a paradigm shift to a holistic approach is needed to understand and address the causes, not just the symptoms, of the EU’s autocracy crisis