This book shows empirically for the first time how a mass European identity has emerged across the EU member states between 1970 and the present day. Beyond this novel approach, it also offers a whole new theory of political identities, based on two 'civic' and 'cultural' components. Michael Bruter shows how multiple identities reinforce - rather than exclude - each other, and studies in depth the unsuspected impact of the media and political institutions on the emergence of new political identities.

The volume includes entries on each country, each political party group in the European Parliament, and over 140 political, historical, sociological, philosophical, and legal aspects of the elections. Leading scholars cover a wide variety of topics and provide readers with a full set of tools to understand this act of democratic participation.

This book presents the results of a new comparative research project on the trajectories, motivations, perceptions and attitudes of young members (aged 18-25) of 15 different European political parties in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, Norway and Hungary. The project combined a mass survey of 2919 young party members with 517 in-depth interviews.

This book sheds light on new research related to welfare state, child care policies, and small children's everyday lives ininstitutions in a variety of countries. In uniting recent social childhood research, welfare perspectives and historical and comparative approaches, the book explores institutionalization as a feature of modern child life.