The rise of rightwing populism has brought into question prevailing assumptions in social science about multicultural Europe. In this compelling study of populist politics, Mabel Berezin argues that the emergence of the movement in the 1990s was a historical surprise rather than an expected event. She questions whether rightwing populism would exist in the absence of the Maastricht Treaty and the subsequent intensification of cultural and economic Europeanization. Using an innovative methodology, Berezin analyzes the French National Front in relation to the broader context of Europeanization and globalization. She unpacks the political and cultural processes that evoke the thin commitments characterizing citizen support, and shows that we cannot make sense of rightwing populism without considering the historical legacies and practices, both national and international, within which it arises. This book makes a novel argument about the relationship between democracy and political and social security.

The rise of rightwing populism has brought into question prevailing assumptions in social science about multicultural Europe. In this compelling study of populist politics, Mabel Berezin argues that the emergence of the movement in the 1990s was a historical surprise rather than an expected event. She questions whether rightwing populism would exist in the absence of the Maastricht Treaty and the subsequent intensification of cultural and economic Europeanization. Using an innovative methodology, Berezin analyzes the French National Front in relation to the broader context of Europeanization and globalization. She unpacks the political and cultural processes that evoke the thin commitments characterizing citizen support, and shows that we cannot make sense of rightwing populism without considering the historical legacies and practices, both national and international, within which it arises. This book makes a novel argument about the relationship between democracy and political and social security.

In her examination of the culture of Italian fascism, Mabel Berezin focuses on how Mussolini's regime consciously constructed a nonliberal public sphere to support its political aims. Fascism stresses form over content, she believes, and the regime tried to build its political support through the careful construction and manipulation of public spectacles or rituals such as parades, commemoration ceremonies, and holiday festivities.

The fascists believed they could rely on the motivating power of spectacle, and experiential symbols. In contrast with the liberal democratic notion of separable public and private selves, Italian fascism attempted to merge the public and private selves in political spectacles, creating communities of feeling in public piazzas. Such communities were only temporary, Berezin explains, and fascist identity was only formed to the extent that it could be articulated in a language of pre-existing cultural identities.

In the Italian case, those identities meant the popular culture of Roman Catholicism and the cult of motherhood. Berezin hypothesizes that at particular historical moments certain social groups which perceive the division of public and private self as untenable on cultural grounds will gain political ascendance. Her hypothesis opens a new perspective on how fascism works.

The creation of the European Union in 1992 reflected new economic, political, and cultural realities on the continent. The dissolution of national borders and the easing of transit restrictions on people and goods with Europe, have contributed to a radical rethinking of such basic concepts as national sovereignty and citizenship. In "Europe without Borders," Mabel Berezin and Martin Schain bring together leading experts from the fields sociology, political science, geography, psychology, and anthropology to examine the intersection of identity and territory in the new Europe.

In this boldly interdisciplinary effort about the impact of reconfiguration, contributors address such topics as how Europeans now see themselves in relation to national identity, whether they identify themselves as citizens of a particular country or as members of a larger sociopolitical entity, how both natives and immigrants experience national and transnational identity at the local level, and the impact of globalization on national culture and the idea of the nation-state. Theoretically sophisticated and empirically informed, the essays explore an emerging global phenomenon that will have profound political, social, and economic consequences in both Europe and around the world.

Contributors: John Agnew, UCLA; Roland Axtmann, University of Aberdeen; Mabel Berezin, Cornell University; Neil Brenner, New York University; Craig Calhoun, New York University, President of the Social Science Research Council; Juan Diez-Medrano, University of California, San Diego; Roy Eidelson, University of Pennsylvania; Nicholas Entrikin, UCLA; Riva Kastoryano, Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales; Krishan Kumar, University of Virginia; Ian Lustick, University of Pennsylvania; Levent Soysal, New York University.