Constructing Europe? The evolution of French, British and German nation state identities

This essay investigates the impact of deep-rooted identity constructions relating to "Europe" and of ideas about European political order on the way in which political elites in France, Great Britain, and Germany have constructed nation-state identities since the 1950s. We seek to understand why two dramatic shifts in French nation-state identity occurred-one with the emergence of the Fifth Republic under President de Galle in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the other during the 1980s and 1990s when political elites increasingly incorporated "Europe" in the nation-state identity of the Fifth Republic; why (West) German political elites have shared a consensual and thoroughly Europeanized version of German nation-state identity since the end of the 1950s as a way of overcoming the country’s own past; and why the English nation-state identity which continues to dominate the British political discourse of Europe has remained virtually the same since the 1950s and why Europe still constitutes the, albeit friendly, 'other.'