Imaginäre Grenzen. Zur Entstehung impliziter Kollektivität in EU-Europa

Drawing on a practice-theoretical approach inspired by the notion of the social imaginary, imaginary borders in the European Union are conceptualized as the public emergence, maintenance and modification of interpretations about European borders through practices of circulation of symbols, commodities, and people. The construction of borders in the EU is thus neither located on the attitudinal level nor conceived of as the deliberate construction of meaning, but as the unintended emergence of the border as a meaningful category from taken-for-granted practices carrying their own meaning. Focusing on twin towns’ activities in the European Union as a paradigmatic location for the articulation of political-cultural understandings of the EU, it is argued that these articulations are not only embedded within economic and social circuits, but in the first place emerge from them as taken-for-granted and imaginary meanings of what the EU as a polity is and where its borders are. Methodologically, this calls for an understanding of the relationship between imaginary political collectivity and its economic, social and cultural channels of circulation which is not conceived as a text-context-relation but as one of mutual imaginary constitution.     

Xenophobia,ethnicity and national identity in eastern Germany

This article offers an explanation of the latent xenophobia in post‐unification eastern Germany from the perspective of national identity. Easterners over‐emphasised ethnicity as the one remaining identity pillar that was still not threatened by the transition processes of unification. However, instead of focusing on the ‘self — on pride in tradition, history and culture, easterners concentrated on the ‘other’ — on ethnic exclusion and ethnic chauvinism. The united Germany therefore faces the challenge of filling the empty shell of German ethnicity with a positive meaning.     

The European Parliament in Treaty Reform: Predefining IGCs through Interinstitutional Agreements

Abstract:  Despite the fact that Interinstitutional Agreements (IIAs) are an established part of the mass of informal and formal rules structuring EU decision-making and interinstitutional relations, there is as yet no common understanding of their role and functions in the institutional and legal system of the EU—neither in political science nor legal studies. Tracking the evolution of the European Parliament's competencies in three areas where IIAs figure prominently—comitology, legislative planning, and the establishment of procedures to hold the Commission accountable—this article seeks to show that the European Parliament strategically uses IIAs as instruments to wrest competencies from the Council and the Commission. Having no formal say in treaty reform, the European Parliament 'creates facts' through informal but politically binding IIAs hoping that, once established, it can achieve a later codification of its new rights at IGCs. Viewed this way, the analysis of the role of IIAs in Treaty Reform could help to explain a still under-researched puzzle in European integration theory, namely the incremental parliamentarisation of the institutional system of the EU over the last two decades.