This monograph seeks to analyze the impact of the European Union (EU) on national identity formation in the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia during their early period of membership in the EU, 2004–13. It encompasses a political environment during which three national elections in each country were held and seeks to observe national identity formation through the prism of party politics and party systems. More particularly, it examines the manifestos of political parties in the period and consequently utilizes a methodology that codifies these manifestoes through content analysis to produce an intra-party and interstate comparison of the EU's influence on party policy towards identity formation.
The book consists of an overview and introduction, moving on to an explanation of the project's theoretical background and an outline of prior and current research. It then moves on to explain its methodology and research procedure before presenting a results analysis and a set of conclusions. Three appendices explain the nature and structure of the code analysis and its use through a “Grounded Theory”-based code book.
As such the monograph is based on a traditional social science post-graduate thesis format with around one-third of the content (excluding references) devoted to theoretical and methodological approaches and justification. In effect the work makes a time-limited, niche contribution to the role of parties in national identity formation with reference to the tensions that exist between state and EU perceptions of identity in east central Europe.
Its academic strength lies in a carefully constructed methodological approach and awareness of its associated limitations. The final analysis and findings are carefully constructed and begin to hint at several arenas of debate that are not developed within the thesis construction. It is within these areas that the thesis will need development for future research. This might include a much greater consideration of party interaction and its consequences, within what the author terms European political space; an examination of further externalities to the state identity formation other than EU member state theater, to include such issues as: global economic downturn and the growth of populism, Russia's influence as a close and powerful neighbor, and attention to the historic path dependency of domestic identity formation and its salience for party positioning within the political cultures of the states included in the analysis. Finally, Europeanization, which is presented as a conceptual tool, needs closer attention both in terms of its application, interpretation, and disputation for national identity formation.
These and other broader inclusions could be contained in a future monograph that would not be constrained by the limits of explanation and approaches that thesis writing enforces.
