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Introduction: European politics nowadays ] 29
politics, they reduce the scope of their attention to political developments
in the Union and its Member States - without forgetting or denying that a
number of non-EU countries are an integral part of our European continent.
This is a book about troubled and troubling transformations in contemporary
European societies and politics, which often generate fears among European
citizens. Fears of disintegration at the European level, fears of disorder and
instability at the national level, fears of disorientation at the individual level,
fears of becoming irrelevant at the global level, and fears of the future, which
seems to be full of uncertainties and risks. If you talk to parents today, you
realise that many of them not only think that their children will have a more
difficult life than their own generation, but they also find it increasingly
challenging to foresee what kind of knowledge and skills will prove to be
useful for them in their adult life in just a couple of decades in our rapidly
changing world.
All in all, European societies and politics are full of fears today. Fears of
the known, the known unknown, and also the unknown unknown. Hope
and fear being the key drivers of political participation and action, rising
fears shape political choices in contemporary Europe. However, as Krastev
reminds us: there is a difference between fear and anxiety. While fear is a
reaction to a specific and observable danger, anxiety is a diffuse, unfocused,
and objectless (negative) belief about one's future (Krastev 2020, 37).
Ihe authors of this book make an attempt to shed light on some key
challenges and explain alternative responses given to them in areas that we
believe are major sources of fears for European citizens nowadays. We do this
in the hope that it is still possible to prevent our continent from backsliding
(again) into a new and presumably devastating era of politics of anxiety. If
reading the following chapters will help you cast out even a single demon of
political anxiety of yours, it already was worth it. The future may not be as
doomed as it looks at first glance.
Key concepts and terms
Dealignment/realignment
Demographic decline
Inequalities
Legitimacy (input, output, throughput)
Mediatisation
Politicisation/de-politicisation
Politics of fear/anxiety
Poly-crisis
Power of attraction
Social cleavages