Rethinking transnational solidarity in the EU

Most contemporary analysis of popular attitudes in the European Union takes identity as the explanatory idea, and posits a hierarchy of totalising identities — national, supranational, regional and so forth. This 'horizontal' approach has arguably resulted in unproductive debate concerning the normative basis on which the Union's future should be built. More useful is to focus on how popular attitudes differ according to different areas of transnational concern. This paper seeks to outline a theoretical framework for such a 'vertical' approach, and to sketch its application using the environmental and judicial fields as case-studies.