| Abstract: |
This article addresses the critical issue of how constitutional designing of
the EU is related to the expression of collective identities. A European
collective identity is perceived in terms of the discursive representation of
the underlying demos of a European democracy. Against the common view that
holds the self-identified political community as prior and independent of
constitutional designing, it is claimed that democracy rather operates through
the identification of popular subjectness. The demos is signified and
recognised as distinct and internally coherent through democratic practice. In
the empirical part, it is tested out to what extent public debates on EU
constitution-making were linked to the identification of popular subjectness.
By drawing on a comparative media survey of constitutional debates from
2002-2007, the paper distinguishes different markers of collective identities
(national, European or multiple) that were used for representing and
signifying democratic subjects in the EU. |