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From Realpolitik to Gefühlspolitik : strategically narrating the European Union at the national level
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Gellwitzki, C. Nicolai L. and Houde, Anne-Marie (2022) From Realpolitik to Gefühlspolitik : strategically narrating the European Union at the national level. Journal of European Public Policy . doi:10.1080/13501763.2022.2139402 ISSN 1350-1763. (In Press)
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WRAP-From-Realpolitik-to-Gefuhlspolitik-strategically-narrating-the-European-Union-at-the-national-level-Houde-2022.pdf - Published Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives 4.0. Download (2248Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2022.2139402
Abstract
Studies on European narratives predominantly focus on which narratives about the EU exist and which are more salient for political actors and audiences. The question remains as to how political actors can strategically utilize those EU narratives at a national level to justify their decision-making and further their objectives. We argue that to render narratives efficacious in convincing audiences of the appropriateness of political decisions, actors engage in Gefühlspolitik – emotional politics – rather than Realpolitik by strategically (re)constructing EU narratives and emphasizing their intersections with national narratives and collective memory to construct emotionally compelling stories and moral imperatives. Therefore, how EU narratives are utilized on a national level is more dependent on the national context and their affective appeal than on their actual content. We demonstrate our argument by looking at the case of the German government narrating the EU during the migration crisis. We show how the government anchored the European peace narrative in German collective memory to construct compelling moral imperatives that significantly narrowed the discursive space and let the German government’s policies appear as apolitical necessities without alternative.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Politics and International Studies | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of European Public Policy | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Routledge | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 1350-1763 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | 2022 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| DOI: | 10.1080/13501763.2022.2139402 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | In Press | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Open Access (Creative Commons) | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 21 October 2022 | ||||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 23 November 2022 | ||||||||
| Related URLs: |
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