Pieter de Wilde

Can the Politicization of European Integration Be Reversed

Following the failure of the Constitutional Treaty, executives of European Union (EU) Member States and the European Commission tried to take European integration as a political issue as much off the agenda as possible and limit involvement of citizens in EU decision�?making. This article assesses the viability of this attempt to combat politicization of European integration and comes to the conclusion that it is unlikely to succeed in the long run. Politicization, it is argued, is a direct consequence of the increasing authority of the EU. The executive response to reverse this trend, however, does not address its cause, but rather the intermediating factors in the form of political opportunity structure. Since the cause of politicization remains intact and intermediating factors are unlikely to be controlled by executives, this attempt to reverse politicization is not viable.

Introduction: the differentiated politicisation of European governance

Abstract The politicisation of European governance has become an important subject in debates about the institutional design, day-to-day decision-making and democratic legitimacy of the European Union. This special issue takes stock of this development of politicisation research, including the theoretical development as well as the rapidly expanding body of empirical evidence. It synergises the various perspectives on politicisation of European governance, building on a common understanding of politicisation as a three-dimensional process involving increasing salience, polarisation of opinion and the expansion of actors and audiences involved in EU issues. The introduction outlines the central theoretical and conceptual questions concerning the politicisation of European governance and provides a guiding framework for the contributions to this special issue. The contributions document that a differentiated Europe leads to differentiated politicisation across times, countries and settings. The differentiated patterns, particularly across countries, present profound challenges to the future trajectory of European integration and its democratic legitimacy.

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.

Politicisation of the EU Budget: Conflict and the Constraining Dissensus

The current political climate in the European Union, referred to as the ‘constraining dissensus’, may place negotiations on the multiannual EU budget centre stage. Media framing of EU budget negotiations as conflict between member states may reinforce the constraining dissensus by resonating with exclusive national identity. In contrast, media emphasis on conflict within or across member states may alleviate the constraining dissensus by strengthening cross-cutting cleavages. This study tests hypotheses about patterns in politicisation of the EU budget in three budgets (Delors II, Agenda 2000, Financial Perspectives 2007–2013), three countries (the Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland) and two forums (media and national parliaments). It finds predominant international conflict framing, especially in media. Thus, media coverage of EU budget negotiations likely reinforces the constraining dissensus. However, as debates intensify, the constraining dissensus may be loosened through more pluralist framing in the d...The current political climate in the European Union, referred to as the ‘constraining dissensus’, may place negotiations on the multiannual EU budget centre stage. Media framing of EU budget negotiations as conflict between member states may reinforce the constraining dissensus by resonating with exclusive national identity. In contrast, media emphasis on conflict within or across member states may alleviate the constraining dissensus by strengthening cross-cutting cleavages. This study tests hypotheses about patterns in politicisation of the EU budget in three budgets (Delors II, Agenda 2000, Financial Perspectives 2007–2013), three countries (the Netherlands, Denmark and Ireland) and two forums (media and national parliaments). It finds predominant international conflict framing, especially in media. Thus, media coverage of EU budget negotiations likely reinforces the constraining dissensus. However, as debates intensify, the constraining dissensus may be loosened through more pluralist framing in the debates. Further comparative empirical research into the dynamics of politicisation is called for.

Debating globalization: cosmopolitanism and communitarianism as political ideologies

Abstract Economic, cultural and political systems formerly bounded by the borders of nation states are increasingly globalized. Politicians, civil society and other societal actors engage in publically debating issues related to globalization. Whether conflicts consolidate to form a stable cleavage depends among other factors on the extent to which they become ideologically underpinned. As the basis for such an underpinning, we identify philosophical debates about justice between globalists and statists and between universalists and contextualists as raw material that political entrepreneurs active in the public sphere can draw upon. On this basis, we identify four major bones of contention that could provide the core of such ideological underpinning: the permeability of borders; the allocation of authority between levels; the normative dignity of communities; and the patterns of justification. One ideal typical combination of those four components can be labelled cosmopolitanism—combining arguments from globalists and universalists; another communitarianism, combining statist and contextualist arguments. The more these two ideal types feature as political ideologies in public debate, the more do debates about globalization solidify into a new cleavage. We develop a conceptual framework which can subsequently be used in support of empirical research analysing the ideological foundations of globalization conflicts.

The opposition deficit in EU accountability: Evidence from over 20 years of plenary debate in four member states

Debates about the European Unions democratic legitimacy put national parliaments into the spotlight. Do they enhance democratic accountability by offering visible debates and electoral choice about multilevel governance? To support such accountability, saliency of EU affairs in the plenary ought to be responsive to developments in EU governance, has to be linked to decision-making moments and should feature a balance between government and opposition. The recent literature discusses various partisan incentives that support or undermine these criteria, but analyses integrating these arguments are rare. This article provides a novel comparative perspective by studying the patterns of public EU emphasis in more than 2.5 million plenary speeches from the German Bundestag, the British House of Commons, the Dutch Tweede Kamer and the Spanish Congreso de los Diputados over a prolonged period from 1991 to 2015. It documents that parliamentary actors are by and large responsive to EU authority and its exercise where especially intergovernmental moments of decision making spark plenary EU salience. But the salience of EU issues is mainly driven by government parties, decreases in election time and is negatively related to public Euroscepticism. The article concludes that national parliaments have only partially succeeded in enhancing EU accountability and suffer from an opposition deficit in particular.

Accountability and opposition to globalization in international assemblies

Advocates of a global democratic parliament have expressed hopes that this would not only legitimize global governance in procedural terms, but also bring about more cosmopolitan policies. They point to the European Parliament as an example of a successful real existing democratic parliament beyond the state with cosmopolitan intent. We analyse plenary debates in the United Nations General Assembly and the European Parliament about the issues of climate change, human rights, migration, trade and European integration between 2004 and 2011 to study the nature of opposition to cosmopolitanism within these two assemblies. We find more vocal and better-organized opposition to cosmopolitanism in the European Parliament than in the United Nations General Assembly. We demonstrate the plausibility that direct and more proportional mechanisms of delegation and accountability in the case of the European Parliament account for this observed difference. Should further research confirm these initial findings, advocates of a global democratic parliament may find that an empowered democratic World Parliament would support less cosmopolitan policies than the current United Nations General Assembly.

The Politicization of European Integration: Towards Democratic Renationalization?

European integration has become increasingly controversial since the beginning of the 1990s (Eichenberg and Dalton 2007; Hooghe and Marks 2009; de Wilde and Zurn 2012; Statham and Trenz 2013b). That is, mass publics have come to pay more attention to political decision making within the European Union (EU) framework and at the same time seem more critical of the results. What is more, the action repertoire of political elites in Europe appears restricted in light of this increased contentiousness. In this way, social contestation and political decision making appear intricately linked (Schmitter 1969; Aspinwall 2002; Mattila and Raunio 2009). This increasing contentiousness has been called the ‘politicization’ of European integration (Schmitter 1969; Ray 1998; Hooghe and Marks 2006, 2009; de Wilde 2011b; de Wilde and Zurn 2012). To be more precise, the process of politicization refers to ‘an increase in polarization of opinions, interests or values and the extent to which they are publicly advanced towards policy formulation within the EU’ (de Wilde 2011b: 566–7).