Sophie Heine

Left versus Europe? The ideologies underlying the left's 'No' to the Constitutional Treaty in France and Germany

Abstract The so-called ‘hard Euroscepticism’ is usually perceived, in the scientific literature as well as in the journalistic and political one, as a national phenomenon: Not only are the movements opposed to the EU labelled as ‘nationalistic’ or ‘anti-European’, but they are also explained mainly by national factors – usually combined with more strategic elements. This paper challenges both of these assumptions by confronting them to an analysis of the left-wing critiques made against the Constitutional Treaty in France and Germany. It first highlights that the left-wing critiques made against the current EU mostly contain social and democratic arguments and that their identity dimension mixes national and European elements. Besides, after examining the advantages and limits of the dominant explanations given to the radical oppositions to the EU, we will propose a theoretical framework combining at the same time strategic and ideological elements – very much related to the ‘agency’ dimension – and a broader structural approach – insisting on the constraints encompassing social and political actions. This double endeavour – a new comprehensive analysis of the ideological content of left-wing opposition to the EU and an original explanatory approach to it – should in the end force us both to question the common terminology of ‘Euroscepticism’ and to grant more importance to the European dimension in the study of the radical oppositions to the EU.

Social change in progressive political thought: analysis and propositions

The first part of this article explores the historic controversies that divided progressive movements in Europe over the issue of social change and more specifically the opposition between ‘materialists’ and ‘idealists’: put simply, while the first gave priority to economic structures and material interests, the second highlighted autonomous human action and ideas in explaining social progress. In the second part, this article argues that a particular articulation between interests and ideas constitutes a decisive driving force of social change. This renewed conception aims at overcoming both economic determinism and idealist biases by considering that a convincing ideology can provoke interests-based mobilizations and political support for progressive change.