The Limits of Normalization: Taking Stock of the EU‐US Comparative Literature

This article contributes to the research on the normalization of European Union (EU) studies by presenting an analysis and assessment of the EU‐US comparative literature. Using an original and comprehensive data set of 104 publications, it shows not only that these comparisons have grown considerably since the early 1990s, but also and more interestingly that EU‐US scholarship itself has increasingly conformed to mainstream political science by becoming more diverse, causal in nature and empirically inclusive. Unlike other accounts of normalization, however, it is argued here that these transformations are only partly desirable, and that a better direction for the future is to develop EU‐US research as a distinct programme within EU studies, centred on a ‘dual mission’ – theoretical and empirical – that accepts political science's scope and explanatory objectives, but at the same time sees the two cases as worthy of being studied in isolation owing to their importance and the political value of their comparison.