Why Narratives of History Matter

Based on a comparative study of Serbia and Croatia, this book investigates the role of narratives in the integration process of candidate countries into the European Union (EU). It develops an original model in order to analyse the structure and political use of narratives. Its novelty consists in integrating the concept of topoi and other elements of literature studies that enable a fine-grained and yet still transferable approach to narratives. I argue that narratives influence the conditions for possible political action by delineating the range of possible and desirable forms of behaviour. This study’s empirical research mainly consists of a discourse analysis of political documents, including parliamentary debates, political speeches and interviews with experts. The author is a political scientist who pursued her PhD at the Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences (BIGSSS) and is now working as a project manager at Steinbeis-Europa-Zentrum in Karlsruhe.