Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski: Citizenship and Collective Identity in Europe, London, New York, Routledge, 2010, ISBN 978-0-415-49658-2

As the European Union (EU) experiences one of the longest and deepest economical crises of its history, the cultural and ideological differences between its various collectivities are becoming ever more apparent, thus potentially jeopardizing the EU’s long term integrative projects. In Citizenship and Collective Identity in Europe, Ireneusz Pawel Karolewski, a professor of Political Science, the topical issue of collective identity in Europe through an examination of the concept of citizenship. In his efforts to elaborate a reliable theoretical perspective with which to study the relationship between collective identity and citizenship, the author primarily undertakes a comprehensive but effective review of these two concepts. After establishing this theoretical framework, he then frames his argument and builds ideal types in order to empirically analyze the citizenship-collective identity nexus as it pertains in the EU. By adopting a relational approach to citizenship, Karolewski identifies three of its components: rights, obligations and compliance. The different configurations these components assume influence the particular form of citizenship possible and allow the author to conceptualize this notion in political and relational terms. Citizenship is thus identified as a type of membership in a political community in which individuals share and assume diverse ties. Before discussing the different models of citizenship in relation to their collective identities, Karolewski maps this last concept from a functionalist perspective to identify its different functions. By doing so, he highlights the possible links between his two main notions and the weaknesses of the functional conceptualisations of collective identity. Karolewski’s extensive overview of these central concepts might be considered an unnecessary detour for some readers, but it is well worth the while for the more interested ones. It is indeed extremely well documented and illustrated with sources from diverse fields of research, even though politics is largely dominant. For those readers less interested in Karolewski’s theoretical overviews, the author has taken the effort to include detailed recapitulations throughout the book. This review of the concepts used in this study subsequently leads the author to frame his argument. In order to bypass the deficiencies of the functional conceptualisations of the notion of collective identity, Karolewski proposes an approach which specifically links citizenship to collective identity. To do so, he defines collective identity as a sense of political commonness where shared citizenship can be regarded as the main integrative device. Depending on the configuration of the three components of citizenship identified earlier, different models of citizenship – each of them associated with a specific form of political collective identity – are generated. Those three ideal types, in the Weberian sense, allow the author to empirically explore the different models of citizenship in the EU and their consequences on a potential European collective identity. The republican model of citizenship focuses on the obligations citizens have towards their political community. By highlighting the obligation component of citizenship, this ideal type theoretically engages individuals in a logic whereby they feel obliged to commit themselves to the res publica and the common good of its citizens. This model is active and participatory; two civic virtues with integrative effects entailing a strong notion of collective identity where public interests, in the minds of citizens, are superior to private interests. To explore a form of republican citizenship in the EU, the author focuses on its constitutional conventions. Even if the deliberation processes suggested by the EU relate in theory to a European republican notion of citizenship, Karolewski argues that these processes do not generate the required mechanisms to produce a real republican sense of collective identity. By constantly expanding its borders, the EU has engaged itself in an ever …