Political Communication in Europe: The Cultural and Structural Limits of the European Public Sphere - Tapa blanda

'Communicating Europe and awakening and sustaining public interest in the European Union remains problematic for many different reasons. Teasing out why this should be the case nearly sixty years after the signing of the Rome Treaty marking the creation of the perhaps misleadingly named European Economic Community is tackled in this book from a novel perspective. Francisco Pérez confronts the questions key to understanding not so much why people seemingly do not 'love' the EU but why they continue to find engaging with it unappealing. With Euroscepticism rising on the eve of the 2014 elections to the European Parliament, the book could not be more timely.'

Juliet Lodge, Institute of Communication Studies and Jean Monnet European Centre of Excellence, University of Leeds, UK

'Seoane Pérez offers a sharp and astute analysis of the EU's chronic malaise coming to the conclusion that it suffers from not one, but a double democratic deficit: a domesticisation deficit, the failure to connect to the EU as is always remote, and a politicisation deficit as EU politics is not 'normal' politics, amenable to a left versus right distinction. Across the axes of community, integration and governance, the book manages through original research and analysis to open new horizons in a tired and self-fulfilling debate about the EU, democracy and citizenship.'

Katharine Sarikakis, Department of Communication, University of Vienna, Austria

'With his careful study of the system of political communication in Europe, Seoane Pérez demonstrates how the political organizations of the EU have been built to stifle any pervasive sense of a European polity. From euroskeptic Yorkshire to pro-EU Galicia, his interviews, observations and news content analysis reveals why the framing of regional issues by political actors has actually prevented citizens from feeling that EU issues are relevant or contentious enough to engage them.'

Philip N. Howard, Department of Communication, University of Washington, USA