Benjamin Leruth

Differentiated integration in the European Union: a concept, a process, a system or a theory?

ABSTRACT Differentiation has been a feature of European integration for more than two decades. Nowadays, more than half of European Union (EU) policies are now implemented in different ways. Recent debates over a potential British exit from the EU revived discussions on the future of European integration, offering a potential case for disintegration. Yet scholars and practitioners still find it difficult to define the notion. The introduction to this collection offers a survey of the literature on differentiated integration, its most recent developments and justifies why the study of differentiation needs to move up the research agenda of European integration. It suggests that studying differentiated integration as a concept, a process, a system and a theory is the minimum needed to understand it. Finally, it demonstrates the necessity to study differentiation as a permanent and ‘normal’ feature of European integration.

Operationalizing national preferences on Europe and differentiated integration

ABSTRACT The existing literature on party and government preferences on Europe mostly focuses on the integration process as a whole. In addition, studies of party-based Euroscepticism tend to offer competing typologies that present some terminological problems. With the increase in differentiation and the potential for disintegration, it is now important to deconstruct support for European integration per policy area. Accordingly, the main purpose of this contribution is to solve problems of existing conceptualizations of élite-based Euroscepticism by presenting a specific operationalization of support for European integration. Based on a qualitative analysis of party documents and élite interviews, such operationalization focuses on policies and policy areas where differentiation takes place, using a scale ranging from full opposition to full support for integration and taking into account internal divisions. This operationalization is then applied to three Nordic countries that have experienced different levels of (differentiated) integration since the early 1990s: Finland; Sweden; and Norway. The contribution concludes that whereas existing categorizations of Euroscepticism are useful to broadly understand élite preferences, operationalizing support for European integration per policy area where differentiation takes place can help understand the mainstreaming of Euroscepticism and offers a more accurate way of understanding new situations where parties supporting and opposing participation in European Union policies co-exist in coalition governments.

Does the information source matter? Newspaper readership, political preferences and attitudes towards the European Union in the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands

This volume focuses on the relationship between the media and European democracy, as important factors of EU legitimacy. The contributors show how the media play a crucial role in making European governance accountable, and how it can act as an intermediate link between citizens and their elected and unelected representatives. The book focuses on widespread levels of Euroscepticism and the contemporary European crisis. The authors present empirical studies which problematize the role of traditional media coverage on EU attitudes. Comparisons are also drawn between traditional and new media in their influence on Euroscepticism. Furthermore, the authors analyse the impact of the internet and social media as new arenas in which Eurosceptic claims and positions can be made visible, as well as being a medium used by political parties and populist movements which contest Europe and its politics and policies. Euroscepticism, Democracy and the Media will be of interest to students and scholars with an interest in European politics, political parties, interest groups, social movements and political sociology.

Euroscepticism as a Transnational and Pan-European Phenomenon The Emergence of a New Sphere of Opposition

Since the early 1990s, Euroscepticism has become an increasingly studied phenomenon. Yet, an area of the academic literature on Euroscepticism that has received little or no attention is the emergence of, and increased development of, transnational and pan-European networks of opposition to the EU. This chapter offers a state of the art review of the existing literature on Euroscepticism, and introduces the concepts of transnational and pan-European scepticism which contribute to the emergence of a European public sphere.

Identifying Attitudes to Welfare through Deliberative Forums – The Emergence of Reluctant Individualism

This article uses deliberative forums to examine attitudes to UK welfare futures. It makes methodological, empirical and theoretical contributions to the field. We demonstrate the value of the approach, provide insights into attitudes, in particular about priorities and how people link ideas together, and show how the UK’s neo-liberal market-centredness fits with enthusiasm for state health care and pensions, desire to close national labour market to immigrants and approval of government interventions to expand opportunities for those who make the effort. Findings point to the strength of the work ethic and individual responsibility alongside a regret that major and highly-valued state services appear unsustainable, the construction of immigrants as simultaneously a burden on provision and unfair labour-market competitors and backing for the development of a ‘new risk’ welfare state through social investment. The study reveals the complexity of responses to current challenges in an increasingly liberal-leaning welfare state.

Does political discourse matter? Comparing party positions and public attitudes on immigration in England:

The 2015 UK General Election campaign was mostly dominated by the issues of immigration, public debt, and income inequality. While most political parties adopted austerity-led programmes in order to reduce the level of public deficit, their stances on immigration vary significantly despite the two main parties converging on a welfare chauvinist frame. This article compares party positions to policy recommendations formulated by participants in a democratic forum as part of the ‘Welfare States Futures: Our Children’s Europe’ project in order to determine whether recent party pledges on immigration are being used by citizens in a large group discussion over the future of welfare policy in the United Kingdom. The analysis shows that while participants are committed to tougher policies in order to reduce existing levels of net migration, most of the policy priorities formulated do not match those of the two mainstream parties (i.e. the Conservative Party and the Labour Party) but rather those of the UK Independence Party (UKIP). It also demonstrates that participants’ individual political preferences do not seem to match their own positions on immigration and that there is little difference between left-leaning and right-leaning voters.

Moral economies of the welfare state: A qualitative comparative study

This paper uses innovative democratic forums carried out in Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom to examine people’s ideas about welfare-state priorities and future prospects. We use a moral economy framework in the context of regime differences and the move towards neo-liberalism across Europe. Broadly speaking, attitudes reflect regime differences, with distinctive emphasis on reciprocity and the value of work in Germany, inclusion and equality in Norway, and individual responsibility and the work-ethic in the UK. Neo-liberal market-centred ideas appear to have made little headway in regard to popular attitudes, except in the already liberal-leaning UK. There is also a striking assumption by UK participants that welfare is threatened externally by immigrants who take jobs from established workers and internally by the work-shy who undermine the work-ethic. A key role of the welfare state is repressive rather than enabling: to protect against threats to well-being rather than provide benefits for citizens. UK participants also anticipate major decline in state provision. In all three countries there is strong support for continuing and expanding social investment policies, but for different reasons: to enable contribution in Germany, to promote equality and mobility in Norway, and to facilitate self-responsibility in the UK.

Does the Information Source Matter? Newspaper Readership, Political Preferences and Attitudes Towards the EU in the UK, France and the Netherlands

Previous research has indicated that political radicals and cynics tend to obtain information from like-minded media sources. In this study, we relate media use to political preferences by utilising a cross-national large-N data set collected during the European elections in 2014 through an online opt-in sample and the European Election Studies (EES), in order to test whether individuals who are negatively opinionated towards the EU and the political elite get informed via media that have a similar attitude towards the EU and politics. Our findings indicate that Eurosceptic voters differ considerably from moderate and pro-European voters in terms of their daily media use. In addition, we find that getting informed via a left-wing- or a right-wing-oriented mainstream media matters, when explaining voter’s policy preferences.

Is ‘Eurorealism’ the new ‘Euroscepticism’? Modern conservatism, the European Conservatives and Reformists and European integration

In 2009, United Kingdom Prime Minister David Cameron announced the creation of a new pan-European group, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR). This group, often considered as ‘soft Eurosceptic’ in the existing literature, is mostly composed of right-wing, nationalist and conservative political parties working together to “reform the EU on the basis of Eurorealism, Openness, Accountability and Democracy”. This chapter analyses the evolution of right-wing Euroscepticism at the transnational and pan-European levels, and the development of ‘Eurorealism’ as an alternative to the notion of ‘Euroscepticism’. It attempts to offer a clear definition of this term and to understand why the ECR group was so successful in attracting new parties following the 2014 European elections. More particularly, this chapter aims at explaining why historically pro-European and ‘hard Eurosceptic’ parties switched their stance to adopt a more critical (or more favourable) position on European integration by joining the ECR.

New Challenges for the Welfare State and New Ways to Study Them

This chapter presents Democratic Forums as a new approach to studying welfare state attitudes that places the naive assumptions of ordinary people at centre stage and limits the extent to which the pre-conceptions of researchers shape research questions.