Hans-Jörg Trenz

The Democratizing Dynamics of a European Public Sphere Towards a Theory of Democratic Functionalism

The riddle of how to democratize the multi-level polity of the EU is answered by pointing to the empirical impact of an unfolding European public sphere. It is argued that there is a self-constituting dynamic of a European public sphere which abets the coupling of transnational spaces of communication with the institutional integration of the EU. From this perspective, democracy is not external to the EU, it is already part of the logic of European institution-building and governance and is fostered by collective learning processes in which definitions of the collective good as well as conditions for appropriate forms of political participation are negotiated. In discussing the case of the EU’s constitutional reform, a theory of democratic functionalism is proposed which accounts for this specific form of democratization of the EU.

The EU’s fledgling society: From deafening silence to critical voice in European constitution making

Abstract The European Union is presently at a major crossroads. The Laeken process which launched the EU onto an explicit constitution-making process, has ground to a halt after the negative referendum results in France and the Netherlands. The European Council at its June 16–17, 2005 meeting decided to postpone the ratification process (by then 10 states had ratified and 2 had rejected) and instead issue a period of reflection. These events represent a significant re-politicization of the European integration process. From a research perspective they underline the need to study the dynamic interrelation between the emerging European polity and its social constituency. In this article we present a research framework for analysing EU-constitutionalization in terms of polity building and social constituency building. In empirical terms, this implies looking at the structured processes of intermediation that link institutional performance back to popular concerns and expectations. Going beyond the contentious politics approach we propose that the character of the emerging EU social constituency and its pervading effects on the EU-constitution-making process should be understood not only in terms of public voice (i.e., as ‘organized civil society’) but also in terms of public silence.

Denouncing European integration Euroscepticism as polity contestation

The spreading phenomenon of Euroscepticism is manifested in critical practices in discourse that oppose European integration. This paper explores Euroscepticism as an element of discourse, which cannot only be measured as party positions or individual attitudes. Based on this understanding, our argument is twofold. Firstly, Euroscepticism relates to the unsettled and principally contested character of the European Union (EU) as a political entity: its basic purpose and rationale, its institutional design and its future trajectory. It correlates with pro-European discourse and the attempts to promote the (democratic) legitimacy of the EU. Secondly, we argue that Euroscepticism unfolds primarily through mass media. As such, it is given public expression through general news values, drama and narratives that are targeted to draw the attention of the wider audience. Understanding this responsive and public nature of Euroscepticism leads us, in the end, to a comprehensive typology of six forms of polity evaluation of the EU.

European civil society: Between participation, representation and discourse ☆

Abstract Institutional designs of governance in the European Union frequently underlie a dichotomy between participation as the realm of civil society and representation as the realm of national governments and parliaments. The aim of this paper is to consider organised civil society not as distinct from but as part of the multi-level representative field that is emerging in the EU. This is done by distinguishing two distinct mechanisms of political representation in aggregating individual preferences or in integrating the political community of the EU. In order to spell out this latter integrative function of political representation as a creative practice, the notion of representative claims-making will be introduced. The practice of representative claims-making can then be analysed, first of all, as a way of distributing the social capital of the actors and institutions that populate the European field of civil society activism. Secondly, the practice of representative claims-making can be analysed as a way of building new forms of cultural and symbolic capital of civil society that are needed to occupy the new transnational positions that are made available by European integration.

Regieren in Europa jenseits öffentlicher Legitimation? Eine Untersuchung zur Rolle von politischer Öffentlichkeit in Europa

Spatestens seit dem Vertrag von Maastricht konnen elementare Mangel in der Gestaltung europaischen Regierens nach demokratischen Grundsatzen kaum noch geleugnet werden. Die Beschreibung des dabei vielfach eingeklagten Demokratiedefizits bleibt allerdings weitgehend konventionell an die Erfullung bestimmter Formalien bzw. institutioneller Arrangements gebunden (unvollstandige Gewaltenteilung, fehlende Parlamentarisierung des Gesetzgebungsprozesses, Intransparenz und mangelhafte Zurechenbarkeit von Entscheidungen sowie eine fehlende Verfassung, um nur einige Beispiele aufzufuhren). Aus der Sicht der Burger last sich das Demokratiedefizit dagegen zum einen als ein Gestaltungsdefizit konkretisieren, d.h. als „Probleme der Burger, mit ihren Praferenzen und Interessen im Politikprozes angemessene Berucksichtigung zu finden“, und zum anderen als ein Kontrolldefizit, d.h. als „Schwierigkeiten der Burger, die Ausubung der Macht wirkungsvoll zu kontrollieren“ (Grande 1997: 361f.). Beide hier aufgefuhrten Dimensionen des europaischen Demokratiedefizits lassen sich, wie wir im folgenden darzulegen bemuht sind, auf das Fehlen von Offentlichkeit zuruckfuhren. Wenn man das europaische Demokratiedefizit abstrakt als ein Offentlichkeitsdefizit thematisiert, so eroffnet sich damit eine analytische Dimension, die es uns erlaubt, sich dem Legitimationsproblem europaischen Regierens unbefangen und losgelost von normativen Vorentscheidungen uber die ideale Gestaltung eines demokratischen Gemeinwesens anzunahern.

Converging on euroscepticism: Online polity contestation during European Parliament elections

Does the increasing politicisation of Europe signify a step towards the legitimation of the Union? This could be the case if the increased public intensity of debate and polarisation of opinion brought about by politicisation do not fragment the audience and if arguments presented in public are sufficiently clear about the desired nature of the polity. To answer this question, the focus of this article is on dynamic contestation in the public sphere using original data of news platforms and political blogs in 12 EU Member States and transnational websites during the European Parliament election campaign of 2009. The results are, first, that diffuse eurosceptic evaluations dominate public debates despite large variation in the intensity of debate across Member States. Second, a majority of evaluations made, particularly those by citizens leaving comments online, are negative in all countries included in this study. A gap between elites and citizens persists, but it appears less pronounced than often proclaimed in the literature. And third, democracy is a primary concern in EU polity contestation, especially for those evaluating the EU negatively. Although little evidence is found of a fragmentation of audiences, the prominence of diffuse euroscepticism poses a major challenge to legitimation of the Union.

Reconciling diversity and unity: Language minorities and European integration

Language minorities can be found as evidence of unfinished nation building in relatively closed territorial settlements all over contemporary Europe. From a comparative perspective, different paths of accommodating linguistic diversity can be followed, resulting in very dissimilar regimes of legal, political and cultural recognition. In recent years, standardization of minority protection has taken place, with a new emphasis on the values of linguistic diversity, non-discrimination and tolerance. As will be argued, the expanding rights of language minorities must be understood in relation to a re-structuration of nation states in Europe and a re-evaluation of difference in the course of European integration. The confrontation with internal diversity and the confrontation with a Europe of deep diversity are closely interlinked, setting the conditions for the unfolding of a new politics of recognition towards language minorities. This changing minority— majority relationship and the related processes of Europeanization of opportunity structures for the political and cultural mobilization of language minorities will be analysed with reference to specific case studies from Germany, France and Spain.

Digital Media and the Return of the Representative Public Sphere

Abstract This article analyses how digital media redefine the boundaries of the political public sphere. Against the mainstream assumption of a new emancipatory potential of the digital media, which strengthens the participatory and interactive elements of the public sphere, it is argued that digital media introduce a new representative order of political communication. In this sense, there is a need to conceptualise the digital public sphere in relation to political representation. Digital media do not straightforwardly unbound political communication in replacing the representativeness of the national public sphere. The performance of the Internet in promoting political communication remains rather limited and, by and large, continues to reproduce the national public sphere. At the same time, the digital media have multiplied the symbolism of representation, which is continuously in the making, by providing new offers for the identification of publicness through shared problems and solutions.

Mediatized representative politics in the European Union: towards audience democracy?

Unlike the institutional and constitutional set-up of the compound system of EU political representation, the politicized and mass-mediated aspects of EU representative politics have only recently started to receive scholarly attention. In this contribution, we argue for a reconceptualization of EU political representation as a triadic and mediatized communicative act between political agents, constituents and the audience. We then apply the notion of ‘audience democracy’ to the representative politics of the EU, which after decades of operation within the parliamentary and political party spheres with the ‘permissive consensus’ of its citizens, are in the last few years increasingly and decisively carried out in the (mediatized) public sphere. Last but not least, we discuss the role of ‘audience democracy’ in constraining or enriching the democratic legitimacy of the EU.

Mediati(zi)ng EU politics: Online news coverage of the 2009 European Parliamentary elections

Abstract In this paper we propose that the concept of mediatization should be used not only in the narrow sense to analyze the impact of media on the operational modes of the political system, but also in more general terms to capture the transformation of the public sphere and the changing conditions for the generation of political legitimacy. More specifically and with regard to the role of political communication on the internet, we focus on the transformative potential of online media in terms of a) publicity: the capacity of the online media to focus public attention on the political process of the EU; b) participation: the capacity of the online media to include plural voices and activate the audience; and c) public opinion formation: the capacity of the online media to enable informed opinions. We test our mediatization model on the online debates that took place during the 2009 EU elections (May–June 2009) in 12 member-states and at the trans-European level. The findings confirm the mediatizing impact of online political communication on the generation of the political legitimacy of the EU. Online media constitute a virtually shared forum for political communication that political actors and users increasingly occupy developing homogenous patterns of evaluating European integration. Furthermore, the stronghold of offline media in the EU e-sphere and the tendency to discuss the EP elections within the frame of domestic (national) politics reaffirm the key role of national political and media cultures.