How do political authorities build support for themselves and their rule? Doing so is key to accruing power, but it can be a complicated affair. The European Union, as a novel political entity, faces a particularly difficult set of challenges. The Politics of Everyday Europe argues that the
legitimation of EU authority rests in part on a transformation in the symbols and practices of everyday life in Europe. The Single Market and the Euro, European citizenship and the dismantling of borders within Europe, EU public architecture, arts and popular entertainment, and EU diplomacy and foreign policy are important not only for their material effects but for how they change peoples day-to-day experiences and
naturalize European governance. The modern nation-state has long used similar strategies to legitimize its political power. But the EUs cultural infrastructure is unique, as it navigates national identities with a particularly banality, framing the EU as complementary to, rather than in
competition with, the nation-states. These underlying social processes have supported the surprising po