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Ian Manners, photo.

Ian Manners

Professor | Excellent Teaching Practitioner

Ian Manners, photo.

Another Theory is Possible : Dissident Voices in Theorising Europe

Editor

  • Ian Manners
  • Richard Whitman

Summary, in English

The past decade has witnessed the opening of a yawning chasm between scholarly attempts to theorise European union and the political realities of the EU (European Union) in crisis. The decade that has witnessed the ascendency of political systems analysis, neoliberal assumptions of efficiency and Europeanisation studies within Europe has also seen the failure of intergovernmental attempts to reform the EU, economic crisis across Europe and a collapse in popular support for the European project, as seen in the European Parliament elections. Dissenting voices that 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. Mainstream EU scholarship broadly accepts the premise that the EU is a neoliberal, state-like political system and that Europeanisation is a one-way process.

Dissident voices in EU studies are those that seek to actively challenge the mainstream of the study of Europe on these grounds. While the mainstream of EU studies may consider itself ‘pluralist’, this self-reading only makes sense within a narrow conception of ontology, epistemology and methodology, as the special issue discusses. Theorists working from a dissident perspective adopt a variety of ontological, epistemological and methodological standpoints. What they share is their starting point that the study of Europe has a dominant set of discursive, intellectual and academic practices which they seek to challenge.

Publishing year

2016-01

Language

English

Pages

3-202

Publication/Series

Journal of Common Market Studies

Volume

54

Issue

1

Document type

Editor for a journal

Publisher

Wiley-Blackwell

Topic

  • Political Science

Keywords

  • European Union
  • European integration
  • dissident voices

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1468-5965