Vivien A. Schmidt

Policy Change and Discourse in Europe: Conceptual and Methodological Issues

Since the mid-1980s, the European Union, together with its member states, has undergone a major process of transformation. First with the race to the single market by 1992, then with the run-up to European Monetary Union (EMU) by 1999, and now with enlargement, the EU has seen an explosion of new policies with a panoply of new practices in the context of an expanding European economy and an emerging European polity. In attempting to describe, understand and explain the EU’s transformative experiences, the study of policy change in Europe has also undergone dramatic transformation. Empirically, from an almost exclusive focus on European integration, that is, on the process of building a European space in terms of EU-level policies, practices and politics, scholars have added a concern with Europeanisation, that is, with the impact of European integration on member state policies, practices and politics. Conceptually, on top of the ‘first generation’ studies centred on explaining the process of formation of a European sphere, where scholarly debates divided over whether the EU was fundamentally intergovernmental or neo-functionalist and, more recently, liberal intergovernmentalist, supranational, multi-level, or network-based, we now have a ‘second generation’ of studies that concentrates instead on the process of national adjustment to the EU. These scholarly debates differ over which factors best explain policy change in the process of adjustment – whether external pressures and problems, the ‘fit’ between EU-level policies and national policy legacies and preferences, actors’ problem-solving capacity in a given political-institutional setting, or ideas and discourse (see Heritier 2001; Cowles et al. 2001; Featherstone and Radaelli 2003). Methodologically, the study of European policy change has also become increasingly split among those who emphasise interest-based rationality and game-theoretic behaviour; institutional path-dependencies and historically-shaped patterns of development; social constructions of action, culture and identity; or, most recently, ideas and discourse.

French capitalism transformed, yet still a third variety of capitalism

Rather than one or two varieties of capitalism, this paper argues that there are still at least three in Europe, following along lines of development from the three post-war models: market capitalism, characteristic of Britain; managed capitalism, typical of Germany; and state capitalism, epitomized by France. While France’s state capitalism has been transformed through market-oriented reforms, it has become neither market capitalist nor managed capitalist. Rather, it has moved from ‘state-led’ capitalism to a kind of ‘state-enhanced’ capitalism, in which the state still plays an active albeit much reduced role, where CEOs exercise much greater autonomy, and labour relations have become much more market-reliant.

Speaking of change: why discourse is key to the dynamics of policy transformation

This article maps out the field of study known as discursive institutionalism while exploring the range of ways in which scholars in this field explain the dynamics of change (and continuity). In so doing, it examines theoretical issues related to the timing of change, including crisis-driven or incremental approaches to change in policy, programmatic, and philosophical ideas; the content of change not only in different levels of ideas but also in different types, cognitive and normative, and in different forms of discourse; the processes of change via ‘sentient’ agents in different discursive spheres, whether the coordinative discourse of policy actors or the communicative discourse of political actors with the public; and the context of change, not only the meaning context of ideas and the forum for discourse but also the formal and informal institutional structures that are the focus of rationalist, historical and sociological institutional approaches. The article seeks to demonstrate that only by understanding discourse as substantive ideas and interactive processes in institutional context can we fully demonstrate its transformational role in policy change. Speaking of change, in other words, rather than just thinking it, is key to explaining the actions that lead to major policy transformations.

The politics of economic adjustment in France and Britain: when does discourse matter?

Do legitimating discourses matter for a countrys successful adjustment to economic policy change? Or can adjustment more simply be explained by the interplay of economic and political interests, path dependency, or cultural framing? This article argues that discourse - defined as constituting both a set of policy ideas and values and an interactive process of policy construction and communication - matters, and that it can be shown in some instances to exert a causal influence over and above the interplay of interests, institutions, and culture. In illustration, the article examines critical shifts in the political-economic discourses and policy programs of France and Britain, presenting them as matched cases. It finds that while in Britain the presence of an effective legitimating discourse accompanying economic policy change proved transformative, in France the absence of such a discourse until relatively recently proved problematic.

Trapped by their ideas: French élites' discourses of European integration and globalization1

Abstract Until relatively recently, French élites seemed to have found a winning combination for the communicative discourses through which they legitimated European integration and responded to globalization. First, the Gaullist discourse underplayed the loss of sovereignty by emphasizing the gains to interests and identity through French leadership in Europe. Next, the Mitterrandist discourse updated the ideas in the Gaullist paradigm to legitimate further institutional integration while it added a new rationale for greater economic integration: Europeanization as a shield against globalization. The discourse in the Chirac years did little to change or update this discourse. The problem today is that neither the institutional nor the economic ideas in the discourse are persuasive: the public is convinced that France no longer leads Europe and that Europe no longer protects against globalization. And yet, French élites seem trapped in the old discourse, unable to develop new ideas capable of legitimating France in Europe and the world. This was dramatized by the 2005 French ‘no’ vote on the Constitutional Treaty, and did not change with the 2007 French presidential elections.

Democracy in Europe: The Impact of European Integration

Europeanization has brought radical change to the governance practices of all European Union (EU) member states, and these practices have clashed with traditional ideas about democracy. The degree to which EU member states have been affected is largely a matter of institutional fit. The EU, as a compound supranational polity in which governing activity is highly diffused through multiple authorities, has been more disruptive to simple national polities such as Britain and France, in which governing has traditionally been channeled through a single authority, than to compound national polities such as Germany and Italy, in which it has traditionally also been diffused through multiple authorities. The main problem for EU member states, however, is that national leaders have generally failed to develop new ideas and discourses to reflect Europeanized realities. But here too institutional differences matter. Simple polities are better positioned to address changes because their concentration of authority ensures them a more elaborate communicative discourse with the general public, in which they are able to speak with one voice, than are compound national polities, let alone the EU, given the number of potentially authoritative voices with differing messages. Vivien A. Schmidt is Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration at Boston University (vschmidt@bu.edu). Her recent books include Policy Change and Discourse in Europe , coedited with C. Radaelli (2005), and The Futures of European Capitalism (2002). Her forthcoming book Democracy in Europe: The EU and National Polities (2006) explores the impact of the European integration on national democracies. This article is a revision of a paper prepared for presentation to the American Political Science Association National Meetings in Chicago, September 1–5, 2004.

Europeanization and the Mechanics of Economic Policy Adjustment

To explain divergence in member-state policy adjustment in response to the economic pressures of globalization and Europeanization (distinguished from European integration as the impact of EU level decisions on national level policies and institutions), this paper identifies five mediating factors: economic vulnerability, political institutional capacity, policy legacies, policy preferences, and discourse. In addition to these factors, it outlines four institutional adjustment pressures, including when an EU model is required, recommended, suggested, or not, to help explain the differential outcomes to Europeanization, whether policy inertia, absorption, or transformation. To illustrate, it focuses on the policy responses of three countries, France, Britain, and Germany, in such sectors as monetary policy, financial services, telecommunications, electricity, transport, the environment, and employment.

Resilient liberalism in Europe's political economy

Preface 1. Theorizing ideational continuity: the resilience of neo-liberal ideas in Europe Vivien A. Schmidt and Mark Thatcher Part I. Economy, State, and Society: 2. Neo-liberalism and fiscal conservatism Andrew Gamble 3. Welfare-state transformations: from neo-liberalism to liberal neo-welfarism? Maurizio Ferrera 4. The state: the bete noire of neo-liberalism or its greatest conquest? Vivien A. Schmidt and Cornelia Woll Part II. Neo-liberalism in Major Policy Domains: 5. The collapse of the Brussels-Frankfurt consensus and the future of the euro Erik Jones 6. Supranational neo-liberalization: the EUs regulatory model of economic markets Mark Thatcher 7. Resilient neo-liberalism in European financial regulation Daniel Mugge 8. Neo-liberalism and the working class hero: from organized to flexible labour markets Cathie Jo Martin 9. European corporate governance: is there an alternative to neo-liberalism? Sigurt Vitols Part III. Neo-liberalism in Comparative Perspective: 10. The resilience of Anglo-liberalism in the absence of growth: the UK and Irish cases Colin Hay and Nicola J. Smith 11. Germany and Sweden in the crisis: re-coordination or resilient liberalism? Gerhard Schnyder and Gregory Jackson 12. State transformation in Italy and France: technocratic versus political leadership on the road from non-liberalism to neo-liberalism Elisabetta Gualmini and Vivien A. Schmidt 13. Reassessing the neo-liberal development model in Central and Eastern Europe Mitchell A. Orenstein Part IV. Conclusion: 14. Conclusion: explaining the resilience of neo-liberalism and possible pathways out Mark Thatcher and Vivien A. Schmidt.

How, Where and When does Discourse Matter in Small States' Welfare State Adjustment?

Since the 1970s small states seem to have had all the problems of big states and then some. Most importantly, that which had distinguished them most as a group in the early postwar years, their vaunted political institutional capacity to adjust to the international economy without significant problems, despite their greater openness to it, seemed to have been lost. They differed not only in whether and when they experienced economic crisis but also in whether and when they mustered the political institutional capacity to resolve the crisis. Most scholars explain these differential trajectories since the 1970s in terms of small states’ differences in economic vulnerability, in policy legacies, in policy preferences, in policy responses, and in political institutional capacity. In what follows, I will argue that discourse—understood as encompassing both a set of policy ideas and an interactive process of policy construction and communication—also matters. To illustrate, I explore the role of discourse in welfare state adjustment in small states, using examples of advanced European welfare states, including the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland. I proceed by first discussing the mediating factors generally brought in to explain small states’ differential policy adjustment. I then show why discourse matters, that is, why it should be considered as a mediating factor in policy change alongside other factors. I argue that discourse taken in institutional context can be seen as another form of institutionalism, providing a framework for the analysis of policy change that complements the traditional three institutionalisms. I then show how and where discourse matters, that is, how discourse helps create an interactive consensus for change and where institutional context affects discursive interactions. Lastly, I discuss when discourse matters, that is, when it has exerted a causal influence above and beyond the interplay of interests, institutions and culture.

European Political Economy: Labour Out, State Back In, Firm to the Fore

Much has changed in European political economy over the past 30 years, both in terms of the political economic realities and the scholarly explanations of those realities. National economic policies and policymaking have undergone major transformations, largely in response to the pressures of globalisation and Europeanisation. Such transformations have entailed significant alterations in the role of the state, the importance of business, and the power of labour. In light of these changes in the political economic realities, political economists have shifted their focus over time, first taking labour out of the equation, then bringing the state back in only to devalue it in light of globalisation and Europeanisation before putting the firm front and centre. Only recently has the state been brought back in yet again while labour has made a comeback.