Introduction: European integration as an elite project

This chapter defines the volume's key concepts and introduces the main research questions addressed in the following chapters. Following a review of literature dealing with the challenges of European integration, it focuses on the emergence of various forms of Euroscepticism, Europhobia, and Europhilia among different sectors of the national elites. The notion of Europeanness is introduced as a manifold and compound concept used to analyse differences among the national elites surveyed in this study. Three dimensions of Europeanness appear: emotive, cognitive, and projective. Finally, the chapter introduces the explicit empirical questions addressed by the various chapters: from the question of the career perspective in a supranational scenario, to the problems of European socialization of national representatives and economic stakeholders; from the question of the elite-masses gap to changes in the domestic political discourse of party elite. The methodological and theoretical approaches utilized in the different chapters are also discussed. © Oxford University Press, 2014.