Who inhabits the European public sphere? Winners and losers, supporters and opponents in Europeanised political debates

Abstract.  European integration shifts the distribution of political opportunities to influence public debates, improving the relative influence of some collective actors, and weakening that of others. This article investigates which actors profit from and which actors stand to lose from the Europeanisation of political communication in mass-mediated public spheres. Furthermore, it asks to what extent these effects of Europeanisation can help one to understand collective actors' evaluation of European institutions and the integration process. Data is analysed on some 20,000 political claims by a variety of collective actors, drawn from 28 newspapers in seven European countries in the period 1990–2002, across seven different issue fields with varying degrees of EU policy-making power. The results show that government and executive actors are by far the most important beneficiaries of the Europeanisation of public debates compared to legislative and party actors, and even more so compared to civil society actors, who are extremely weakly represented in Europeanised public debates. The stronger is the type of Europeanisation that is considered, the stronger are these biases. For most actors, a close correspondence is found between how Europeanisation affects their influence in the public debate, on the one hand, and their public support for, or opposition to, European institutions and the integration process, on the other.     

The Impact of the European Union on Coalition Formation in a Minority System: The Case of Denmark

Does European Union membership influence coalition patterns in national parliaments? For governments in the Scandinavian countries – with their relatively high share of minority governments requiring external parliamentary support to form parliamentary majorities – the question of ‘coalition management’ is highly relevant. This article provides an empirical test of three central arguments in the Europeanisation literature on the impact of EU membership on national parliaments when political parties pass legislation in the Danish Folketing. The effect of EU content in a law on coalition patterns is compared across policy areas and four electoral periods from 1998 to 2011 encompassing 2,894 laws. The data provide support for the argument that the loss of national agenda‐setting over the legislative process has an impact on coalition patterns in the Danish parliament. It is shown that the coalition patterns on Europeanised legislation are both broader and more stable compared to national, non‐EU‐related legislation. The focus on Europeanisation of legislative coalitions goes beyond previous analysis with an institutional focus, and demonstrates an example of how the EU systematically has an effect on legislative coalition formation in a national parliamentary system.     

The European Union as an opportunity: structures and uses of European soft law in French,Austrian and Irish eHealth policies

Abstract

Does European soft law matter? In order to answer this question, the article investigates the processes through which the European Union (EU) affects domestic politics and policies in the eHealth sector in France, Austria and Ireland. More precisely, it shows how the hardening of EU soft law creates a new rationale for the use of European instruments by domestic actors, thus expanding their strategic opportunities for policy making at the national level. Despite the empirical diversity of the cases, similar patterns of variation in Europeanisation mechanisms emerge over time, and the data show how the varying structure of European soft instruments (i.e. their degrees of ‘hardness’) accounts for these changes. This comparative analysis includes multiple process-tracing cases of eHealth public policy making in France, Austria and Ireland in which Europeanisation processes are at work.     

Altered Europeanisation of Pension Reform in the Context of the Great Recession: Denmark and Italy Compared

This article analyses the Europeanisation of national pension systems in Denmark and Italy. Through the analytical framework of a ‘two-level’ game, it analyses pension reforms in the two countries, which, in the wake of the crisis, breached EU budgetary requirements, and shortly after reformed their pension systems. The EU affects pension reform in both cases, but in distinct ways. When Denmark’s economy was financially vulnerable, the EU’s excessive deficit procedure affected the decision to reform pensions indirectly, by triggering a rapid political decision to speed up a pension reform. By contrast, the Italian economy’s critical vulnerability and the consequent risk for the whole Eurozone led to a situation whereby the European actors entered the domestic political scene and thereafter more forcefully induced reforms. The findings from the two cases show that the EU’s role in pension reform has been significant during crises, but through interaction with domestic actors. Furthermore, from a theoretical perspective, the intervening variables – domestic and EMU vulnerability as well as EU and domestic politics – are crucial to understanding the reform decisions through two-level games.     

When trade unions succeed: Cases of blocked liberalisation in the common market

Despite the generally accepted weakness of trade unions at the European Union level, an analysis of two high profile cases – the Services Directive and the Port Directive – shows that trade unions are able to mobilise effectively at the European level and, within constellations of actors, crucially impact EU decision making. In contrast to common claims that a lack of access to EU institutions makes such groups powerless, it is argued here that the exclusion of large opposing societal groups from consultations is neither a quick nor a sure fire recipe for dismantling opposition. On the contrary, it politicises the process and may lead to opposing groups mobilising in more contentious ways.     

Implementing Social Europe in Times of Crises: Re-established Boundaries of Welfare?

This volume examines the state of social Europe when European Union principles and policies have to be implemented in the member states while the EU legitimacy crisis and the Great Recession prevail. The volume explores diverse processes, stages and subjects of implementation in a variety of social policies to identify different institutional dynamics and actor behaviours at play. The individual contributions examine the transposition of the patients’ rights directive to the Europeanisation of pension reforms; the role of national parliaments in transposing social Europe; judicial Europeanisation; and the multi-level enforcement of EU decisions. Theoretically, the volume highlights that implementation is often conditioned by domestic politics or comes as a ‘random walk’ due to organisational and cognitive constraints. Empirically, the volume has three main findings. First, the constitutive components of the EU tend to have a contradictory impact on the EU’s social policies and the national welfare systems. Second, crises influence the implementation of social Europe, at times leading to a modification of fundamental principles and content, but not across the board. Third, as a result, there is evidence of differentiated Europeanisation.     

Impaling Dracula: How EU Accession Empowered Civil Society in Romania

Europeanisation scholars increasingly debate when and in what ways the European Union influences domestic politics. This article adopts a ‘bottom-up’ design and the process-tracing method to examine the influence of the EU enlargement context over the political power of the new social movements in Romania between 2000 and 2004 when the EU acquis was being negotiated. It finds that domestic civil society empowerment resulted from the nexus of three interacting causal pathways: the Executive's desire to accede to the EU; a transnational advocacy network, which included domestic NGOs, reinforcing the Executive's anticipatory self-constraint; and to a somewhat lesser extent, the Executive's self-identification with certain elements of the advocacy network, reinforced by a general concern for their external reputation.     

Euro Area entry in east-central Europe: Paradoxical Europeanisation and clustered convergence

Economic and Monetary Union offers a useful case study for critically examining Europeanisation and conditionality as explanatory variables for the euro entry strategies of east-central European states. This article highlights the paradoxes of extreme and limited Europeanisation and of extreme ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ conditionality with multiple sources of uncertainty. These paradoxes have provided the context within which east-central European governments have evolved political strategies for the temporal management of euro entry. These strategies reflect in turn different ‘clusters’ of convergence in the Baltic States, the Visegrad states, and Slovenia. Euro Area accession in east-central Europe offers insights not just into how Europeanisation works in a central political issue area but also into the temporal management of EU policy and ‘clustered’ convergence.     

Understanding varieties of populism in times of crises

Abstract

This introduction presents the conceptual and analytical framework which constitutes the background for the special issue entitled ‘Varieties of Populism in Europe in Times of Crises’. More specifically, this contribution investigates how different populist parties in the European Union have been affected by the recent economic crisis and the more long-lasting political and cultural crises. Analytically, the article disentangles the role of the Great Recession vis-à-vis other factors (such as political and party system factors, but also structural social changes or cultural opportunities) in the growing strength of populist parties in various European countries. It argues that although the economic crisis has without any doubt provided a specific ‘window of opportunity’ for the emergence of new political actors, which have capitalised on citizens’ discontent, long-lasting political factors – such as the increasing distrust toward political institutions and parties – and the more recent cultural crisis connected with migration issues have offered further fertile ground for the consolidation of populist parties in several European countries. Furthermore, as confirmed by the articles presented in the special issue, the various crises have offered differential opportunities for different types of populism – both inclusionary and exclusionary.     

Europeanisation with Many Unknowns: National Company Law Reforms after Centros

Negative integration through the expansive interpretation of European market freedoms is said to undermine domestic social regulation – by vertically imposing a strictly liberal interpretation of EU rules and by pushing EU member states into horizontal regulatory competition. This article analyses domestic policy responses to one particularly prominent instance of negative integration: the CJEU’s case law on the freedom of establishment since its first landmark ruling on Centros in 1999. The analysis shows that national company laws have only converged downwards in one particular subfield – minimum capital requirements – but they remain strikingly diverse across, and increasingly within, member states on most other issues, such as workers’ codetermination rights. Legal uncertainty about the Court’s case law, the mixed economic incentives it provides for firms and political disagreement about appropriate policy responses leave considerable space for differential Europeanisation. The crisis adds to these uncertainties and thus reinforces the trend towards differentiation rather than convergence.     

Industrialists and farmers: British interests and the European community

The ‘Europeanisation’ of domestic public policies has been among the key themes in recent reforms in EU member states. This article employs the analytical concept of ‘isomorphism’ to come to a better understanding of ‘Europeanisation’. Various mechanisms which might lead to isomorphic change are being identified and applied to the reforms in German competition and public procurement law. The application of the isomorphism framework suggests that ‘Europeanisation’ has multiple sources and cannot be understood as a uniform process nor as leading to uniform outcomes.     

The Stein Rokkan Lecture 2016 Mission impossible? Reconciling economic and social Europe after the euro crisis and Brexit

During the crisis, the European Union's ‘social deficit’ has triggered an increasing politicisation of redistributive issues within supranational, transnational and national arenas. Various lines of conflict have taken shape, revolving around who questions (who are ‘we’? – i.e., issues of identity and inclusion/exclusion); what questions (how much redistribution within and across the ‘we’ collectivities) and who decides questions (the locus of authority that can produce and guarantee organised solidarity). The key challenge facing today's political leaders is how to ‘glue’ the Union together as a recogniseable and functioning polity. This requires a double rebalancing: between the logic of ‘opening’ and the logic of ‘closure’, on the one hand, and between the logic of ‘economic stability’ and ‘social solidarity’, on the other. Building on the work of Stein Rokkan and Max Weber, this article argues that reconciliation is possible, but only if carefully crafted through an extraordinary mobilisation of political and intellectual resources. A key ingredient should be the establishment of a European Social Union, capable of combining domestic and pan‐European solidarities. In this way, the EU could visibly and tangibly extend its policy menu from regulation to (limited, but effective) distribution, reaping the latter's benefits in terms of legitimacy. The journey on this road is difficult but, pace Rokkan, not entirely impervious.     

Enter at your own risk: free movement of EU citizens in practice

The citizenship jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice has raised hopes for a more social Europe and triggered fierce debates about ‘social tourism’. The article analyses how this case law is applied by EU member state administrations and argues that they are actively containing the Court’s influence. As a result, rather than reconciling the logics of ‘opening’ and ‘closure’, they are heading towards an uneasy coexistence between free movement and exclusive welfare states. The argument here is illustrated with empirical evidence from Austria and Germany. Although both countries have taken different approaches to EU migrants’ residency and social rights, they produce similar effects in practice: increasingly, EU migrants are being tolerated as residents with precarious status without access to minimum subsistence benefits. Ironically, attempts to restrict residency rights have resulted in a temporary extension of EU migrants’ access to welfare in some instances.     

TTIP and legislative‒executive relations in EU trade policy

Abstract

This paper analyses Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations in order to assess how the move towards tighter economic integration within the EU?US strategic partnership impacts on legislative?executive relations in EU trade policy. The analysis examines the institutional, substantive and party political dimensions of national parliaments’ scrutiny of the Common Commercial Policy. Based on insights into both domestic and EU channels of parliamentary monitoring of TTIP negotiations, the paper argues that, although the government remains the central object of democratic control, the involvement of national parliaments in transatlantic trade extends to encompass the EU’s own transatlantic and trade policies. This is rooted in the legislatures’ legal capacity to constrain the executive in the negotiation, conclusion and, where applicable, ratification phases of EU trade agreements. It is argued that national parliamentary influence takes the shape of politicisation of the legitimacy of the expected policy outcomes of these agreements.     

Making Markets and Eastern Enlargement: Diverging Convergence?

This study deals with the extent and content of 'Europeanisation' in the Central and East European (CEE) countries at the level of market making. It argues that Europeanisation at the level of market making was about creating states with strong capacities to preserve and regulate markets and with increased and reconstructed administrative and planning capabilities. The most successful CEE countries with their strong states and weak social and economic actors converged towards a moving target, that is, towards EU countries in the process of supranational market making with dramatically different constellation of powers among key economic actors. The paper discusses the specifics of national level market making in the CEE countries, the factors of divergence within the region, and the 'diverging convergence' between the CEE and the EU countries.     

If Money Talks,What Does it Say? Corruption and Business Financing of Political Parties

Do parties with different ideological origins adjust their policies in response to the binding commitments that derive from the European integration process? This paper examines whether party platforms have adapted to the ideological content of EU treaty provisions – based on ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘regulated capitalism’ – across a range of policy areas The analysis builds on existing research which has examined how party families respond to the challenges and opportunities of the integration process. This is the first study that focuses on long-term party policy adjustment across different policy areas by examining whether there has been a shift away from core ideological goals towards the direction of EU policy. The main finding is that there has generally been a shift towards the direction of EU policy across all party families in both member and non-member states. The findings have implications for the quality of representation and functioning of democracy in the member states since the deepening of the European integration process reduces ideologically distinct policy alternatives across party families and can hinder policy innovation     

Europeanisation of Cross-border Governance? A Case Study on the Cause,Form and Consequences of a Co-operation Project in the German–Polish–Czech Border Triangle

Cross-border governance in central Europe underwent a phase of Europeanisation due to EU enlargement in 2004. The question is how European influences interact with conditions in a specific region. The article applies Knill's framework of Europeanisation mechanisms and Blatter's hypothesis about the role of ‘imported’ ideas and paradigms to a case study on the German–Polish–Czech co-operation project ENLARGE-NET. This project applied a territorial mode of governance. However, it did not evolve into a permanent institution because it was not in line with the regional context, which is characterised by a difficult history, economic disparities, a lack of common identities and few transboundary interdependencies.     

The Political Foundations of the Eurocracy

This article explores the politics behind the design of EU regulatory institutions. The EU has established an extensive ‘Eurocracy’ outside of the Commission hierarchy, including over 30 European agencies and a number of networks of national regulatory authorities (NRAs). The article examines the politics of institutional choice in the EU, explaining why EU policy-makers create agencies in some policy areas, while opting for looser regulatory networks in others. It shows that the design of EU regulatory institutions – ‘the Eurocracy’ – is driven not by functional imperatives but by political considerations related to distributional conflict and the influence of supranational actors.     

The Europeanisation of Research and Higher Educational Policies: Some Reflections

This paper poses the following question: To what extent do European Union (EU) policies affect national policies? In essence this paper studies the Europeanisation of policy in the field of research and higher education (R&E). The field of R&E is largely neglected in the literature on European integration and Europeanisation. I argue that processes of Europeanisation of R&E mirror two interrelated processes: both the emergence of supranational policies at the EU level and national convergence towards these policies. The empirical scope of the paper is the relationship between the EU’s R&E policies and the corresponding Norwegian policies. Our empirical observations based on documentary data and existing bodies of literature reveal that the emergence of creeping supranational policies of R&E at the EU level has accompanied moderate convergence of Norwegian R&E policies. This moderate level of convergence, I argue, reflects a mix of moderate institutionalised linkages between Norwegian ministries and agencies and the EU, moderate adaptational pressures towards Norwegian R&E policies from the EU, and institutional path dependencies in Norwegian R&E policies.     

Solidarity with whom? Why organised labour is losing ground in Continental pension politics

This article explains why the power of organised labour in the reform of Swiss and German pension regimes has faded over the last three decades. Postindustrialisation has brought two different sets of reform issues onto the pension policy agendas of Continental European welfare states: retrenchment of existing benefit levels, and the pension coverage of new, postindustrial social risk groups. Recent pension reforms increasingly combine these two types of measures in encompassing policy packages –‘modernising compromises’– in order to compensate for retrenchment with selective expansive reform elements. Continental trade unions attach a lower importance to postindustrial modernisation than do the left‐wing parties – notably the Social Democrats and the Green parties. Consequently, the distance between the labour movement and the left‐wing parties, as well as intra‐labour heterogeneity, increase and ‘modernising compromises’ tend to divide the left and to marginalise trade unions. The empirical analysis relies on coded actor positions from eight major pension reforms between 1972 and 2003.