Citizens of Europe?

MICHAEL BRUTER is Lecturer in European Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UK. His work specializes in the study of European identity, public opinion, electoral behaviour, and extreme right politics. He has published numerous articles and conducted several research projects in these fields and various areas of European Union and comparative European politics.

Michael Bruter shows how multiple identities reinforce - rather than exclude - each other, and studies in depth the unsuspected impact of the media and political institutions on the emergence of new political identities.This book shows empirically for the first time how a mass European identity has emerged across the EU member states between 1970 and the present day. Beyond this novel approach, it also offers a whole new theory of political identities, based on two 'civic' and 'cultural' components. Michael Bruter shows how multiple identities reinforce - rather than exclude - each other, and studies in depth the unsuspected impact of the media and political institutions on the emergence of new political identities.