Twenty years ago, in the pages of the Journal of Common Market Studies, Hedley Bull launched a searing critique of the European Community's 'civilian power' in international affairs. Since that time the increasing role of the European Union (EU) in areas of security and defence policy has led to a seductiveness in adopting the notion of 'military power Europe'. In contrast, I will attempt to argue that by thinking beyond traditional conceptions of the EU's international role and examining the case study of its international pursuit of the abolition of the death penalty, we may best conceive of the EU as a 'normative power Europe'.

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The article argues that dissident voices which attempt to theorise Europe differently and advocate another European trajectory have been largely excluded and left unheard in mainstream discussions over the past decade of scholarship and analysis. Dissident voices in European Union studies are those that seek to actively challenge the mainstream of the study of Europe. The article briefly examines the discipline of mainstreaming, then surveys the extent of polyphonic engagement in EU studies, before setting out how the special issue contributors move beyond the mainstream. The article will argue the merits of more polyphonic engagement with dissident voices and differing disciplinary approaches for the health and vitality of EU studies and the EU policy field itself. It summarises the special issue's argument that by allowing for dissident voices in theorising Europe, another Europe, and another theory, is possibleindeed, probable. Introduction: Dissident VoicesThe past decade has witnessed the opening of a yawning chasm between scholarly attempts to theorise European union and the political realities of the EU (European Union) in crisis. The decade that has witnessed the ascendency of political systems analysis, neoliberal assumptions of efficiency and Europeanisation studies within Europe has also seen the failure of intergovernmental attempts to reform the EU, economic crisis across Europe and a collapse in popular support for the European project, as seen in the European Parliament elections. Dissenting voices that attempt to theorise Europe differently and advocate another European trajectory have been largely excluded and left unheard in mainstream discussions over the past decade of scholarship and analysis. Mainstream EU scholarship broadly accepts the premise that the EU is a neoliberal, state-like political system and that Europeanisation is a one-way process. As Mads Jensen and Peter Kristensen (2013) have demonstrated, a few core journals, in particular JCMS and JEPP (Journal of European Public Policy), constitute the key nodal points for EU communication practice where network analysis shows a clear political science hegemony.Dissident voices in EU studies are those that seek to actively challenge the mainstream of the study of Europe on these grounds. While the mainstream of EU studies may consider itself 'pluralist', this self-reading only makes sense within a narrow conception of *The authors are very grateful to the anonymous reviewers and all the participants at the EWIS Izmir workshop (May

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The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize 2012 to the EU (European Union) came as a surprise. Not only was the eurozone economic crisis undermining both policy effectiveness and public support for the EU, but it was also seriously challenging the EU's image in global politics. The eurozone crisis, the Nobel Prize and the search for a 'new narrative for Europe' demonstrate that the processes of European integration are always narrated as sense-making activitiesstories people tell to make sense of their reality. This article argues in favour of a narrative approach to European integration through the construction and application of an analytical framework drawing on different theoretical perspectives. This framework is then applied to six European integration narratives to demonstrate the value of a narrative approach. The article concludes that narrative analysis provides a means of understanding both EU institutional and non-institutional narratives of European integration.

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