Fantasies of power: Performing Europeanization on the European periphery

Abstract

This article offers a fresh look at contemporary processes of Europeanization. Using the Eurovision Song Contest as empirical illustration of how states perform Europeanization, this article makes three principal arguments. First, it challenges optimistic accounts of cultural Europeanization and identifies the limits that the Europeanization project faces. Second, it proposes that the process of Europeanization is fundamentally a process of political imagination. How states choose to Europeanize, which attributes of Europe they accept and which ones they reject are shaped by what they imagine Europe to be and what they imagine their role in Europe is. Third, it argues that European states with uncertain or transitional identities on the European ‘periphery’ use performative symbols, such as carnivals, festivals or cultural events to express their fantasies about power and equality within the international system.