Civilizationism in the European Union beyond the far right: a morphological approach

Abstract

Both far-right and liberal EU elites increasingly speak about the need to defend European civilization. However, research on far-right ‘civilizationism’ is more advanced because the term remains theoretically tied to the study of far-right discourses, from where it originally emerged. In this article, we present a framework for studying civilizationism in the EU beyond the far right. First, drawing on the work of Michael Freeden, we conceptualise civilizationism as an ideological element of Europeanisms, understood as a regional family of ideologies that includes both liberal and far-right varieties. Second, we theorise that civilizationism is most likely to manifest as a thin ideology that supports the conceptual arrangements of various Europeanisms. Third, we show empirically how liberal civilizationism emerged during the refugee crisis (2014–2019) and consolidated during the Ukraine crisis (2022–2023) due to wider morphological shifts. Overall, the article contributes to the literature on political ideologies in the EU.