Project description
Unmasking cultural stereotypes in EU governance
Cultural stereotypes pervade discussions on EU governance, perpetuating divisive notions such as ‘the lazy Greeks’ or ‘the stingy Dutch’. Negative stereotypes in particular can create friction between nations, stoke Euroscepticism, and even lead to discrimination. While existing research has identified political rhetoric and media coverage of stereotypes, their impact on the conduct of national and EU officials remains largely unexplored. The ERC-funded EUROTYPES project will address this gap, investigating the influence of cultural stereotypes on cooperation and effectiveness in EU governance, with a focus on civil servants rather than political elites. The project promises to unveil hidden dynamics at play and push the boundaries of our understanding of how stereotypes affect European integration.
Objective
Cultural stereotypes are often present in the political and media discourse on European Union (EU) governance: e.g. the lazy Greeks, the tax-dodging Italians, the stingy Dutch, and so forth. Especially when stereotypes are negative, they create conflict between national governments, fuel Euroscepticism among voters, and can lead to the discrimination of citizens or Member States. Yet while stereotypes have been studied in political rhetoric and media coverage, we know little about their impact on the behaviour of national and EU officials. To address this gap, EUROTYPES sets out to investigate how cultural stereotypes impact cooperation and effectiveness in contemporary EU governance.
The project is the first of its kind because it studies stereotypes among civil servants as opposed to political elites in the EU, who often use stereotypes strategically for electoral gains. The focus is on multi-level policy enforcement, a new phenomenon in European integration which captures the participation of national and EU civil servants in joint on-the-ground operations in border control, law enforcement cooperation, financial supervision, etc. Since they are not socialized in Brussels or running for office, such officials are much more likely to (genuinely) display cultural stereotypes.
EUROTYPES pushes the frontiers of knowledge in several directions. First, it applies an original version of qualitative content analysis to identify stereotypes relevant for multi-level policy enforcement. Second, it uses recent developments in experimental research to capture the role of stereotypes among civil servants. Theoretically, the project constructs an innovative account of stereotypes as habits and positions them vis--vis other explanations of political behaviour (interests, norms, ideas). The goal is to show whether and how stereotypes hinder EU cooperation and, in the long run, establish a comprehensive research agenda on cultural stereotypes in transnational bureaucracies.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- social sciencessociologygovernance
- humanitieslanguages and literatureliterature studiesliterary genresessays
- social sciencespolitical sciencespublic administrationbureaucracy
- social sciencessociologysocial issuessocial inequalities
- social scienceslaw
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC GrantsHost institution
2311 EZ Leiden
Netherlands