Globalization, European integration and the discursive construction of economic imperatives

Abstract

While studies of globalization proliferate, we remain relatively under-informed about discourses of globalization and associated issues of power and knowledge. These issues come to the fore in the light of the intensive deployment of particular rhetorics of globalization and European integration within policy-making, journalistic and corporate communities. This paper seeks to contribute to the development of an institutionalist and yet social constructivist understanding of the appeal to external economic constraints (such as globalization and European integration) within contemporary European public policy and political economy. Through an attempt first to map the range of discourses of globalization and European integration in contemporary Europe and then to chart the (frequently) strategic deployment of such discourses in Britain, France, Germany and Italy, the paper attempts to move beyond an understanding of globalization discourse as the linguistic expression of exogenous interests. It shows how ideational structures become institutionalized and normalized, thereby coming to delimit conceptions of 'the possible' among political actors.