Democratic backsliding and the poverty of the European Commission’s conception of democracy

The European Commission has had a central role in debates over democratic backsliding in EU member states. But what type of democracy does the Commission uphold? Drawing on an analysis of speeches by European Commissioners, Alvaro Oleart and Tom Theuns write the Commission tends to articulate a technocratic and legalistic conception of democracy. They argue that if the Commission were to adopt a more pluralistic approach, it would be better equipped to tackle democratic backsliding

What the politicisation of the EU means for the future of Europe

European integration has become increasingly politicised over recent decades. Taru Haapala and Alvaro Oleart argue that while this process is often regarded as a negative development for the integration project, there are also potential benefits. Drawing on a new book, they outline a framework for understanding how politicisation might shape the EU’s future

Framing TTIP in the wake of the Greenpeace leaks: agonistic and deliberative perspectives on frame resonance and communicative power

Publisher's version (útgefin grein)Although never conceived as a tool of direct democracy, the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) raised hopes that it would involve citizens more directly in EU decision making. Previous research has suggested that one contribution of the ECI is its effect on fostering public deliberation on EU issues, raising questions about the ECI’s potential as a tool for social movements to generate communicative power in relation to EU issues. This article draws on agonistic and deliberative perspectives to argue that communicative power generation can be seen as a process where ECI organizers use social media to advance specific understandings of their concerns and channel those understandings into mainstream mass media. The article analyses this by investigating how frames constructed on the Stop TTIP campaign’s Facebook page have resonated in twelve online news sites in four European countries in the wake of the Greenpeace leaks.Peer Reviewe

Conclusion: How to channel populism in Europe democratically

The central finding of this book is that many European democracies have proven resilient to anti-pluralist populism. They do so, however, in multiple, different ways. The concluding chapter reflects upon the country studies to identify the various paths that populist parties have followed as well as the institutional and behavioural mechanisms that may help to reduce their anti-pluralist inclinations. While underlining that all populist parties need to be evaluated in their national context, we argue that democratic systems can accommodate them through strategies that carefully navigate between the extremes of uncritically embracing and their outright ostracization. Furthermore, we reflect on the implications of our findings at the level of the European Union as a whole. While the challenges posed by populist parties need to be tackled first and foremost in each national context, European democracies can be mutually supportive, and the EU has a role to play in monitoring and acting upon any indications of anti-pluralism. Finally, we reflect upon how the different methods used in this volume complement each other, and on the role that academics have in contributing to the literature and the public debate on populism in a way that itself fosters pluralism

The Europeanisation of public spheres and the value-based politicisation of TTIP in Spain, France and the UK: From Permissive Consensus to Empowering Dissensus

The negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) triggered an unprecedented level of protests in the European Union (EU) in several member states. However, it was unclear whether the contestation of TTIP led to the Europeanisation of the national public spheres (Risse, 2010), given the general national fragmentation of the political debate in Europe (Koopmans and Statham, 2010a). This thesis analyses the debate and politicisation of TTIP in the Spanish, French and British media, and aims to answer two research questions. First, how and to what extent were national media discourses about TTIP Europeanised? Second, how does this type of Europeanisation of public spheres contribute to the democratic legitimacy of the EU? In order to answer the two research questions, an interdisciplinary theoretical framework has been put forward. Departing from the literature on the European public sphere (Koopmans & Erbe, 2004; Fossum & Schlesinger, 2007; Eriksen, 2005; Trenz, 2009) and the importance of analysing the Europeanisation of public spheres at the national level (Risse, 2010), the thesis argues that the literature often overlooks the role of conflict in the understanding of the public sphere. The gap in the literature has been addressed through a hybrid conceptualisation of the public sphere, combining a typically Habermasian deliberative approach with Chantal Mouffe’s ‘agonistics’. Empirically, the thesis undertakes a framing analysis of two different data sets through both qualitative and quantitative methods. The first data set is composed of press releases of a diverse group of EU-level political actors, in order to see what is the preferred framing of TTIP by different actors. The second is composed of the written articles dedicated to the TTIP negotiations in nine national news outlets (three from each selected country) in France, Spain and the UK, from the public announcement of the negotiations (February 2013) until the negotiations were officially frozen (November 2016). The actors’ discourse has been developed as a frame-mapping exercise undertaken inductively, identifying how different actors made sense of TTIP and put forward a number of competing frames. The findings of the empirical analysis of actors’ press releases indicate the attempt to strategically politicise or depoliticise the discussions around the TTIP negotiations, framed through different values by the different actors. These frames have been situated in categories, depending on whether they depoliticise TTIP, they challenge it in an agonistic or antagonistic way, or they focus on the negotiations as a process. The framing analysis of the media content on TTIP in the Spanish, French and British public spheres has revealed two separate chronological periods in the TTIP debate based on the presence of frames, measured through a framing ratio. The first period represents the traditional ‘permissive consensus’, while the second illustrates the agonistic politicisation of TTIP. Each national public sphere developed its own dynamics, which shows the importance that the national context has when discussing TTIP and Europe (Diez Medrano, 2003). However, while the Spanish, French and British public spheres have slightly different chronologies in their transitions from the first to the second period, there is a transnational coherence in terms of the frames of reference across the three countries. The findings of the media content analysis, particularly during the second period of the TTIP debate in the three countries, support the argument that there has been a Europeanisation of national public spheres that has happened in combination with a value-based and agonistic (Mouffe, 2013) politicisation. Rather than opposing the EU as a polity, the agonistic politicisation that has taken place in the case of TTIP has legitimised the EU by opening a space for the contestation of the negotiations, while accepting the EU as a political arena. The thesis argues that this agonistic Europeanisation of the national public spheres can lead towards an ‘empowering dissensus’ for European integration. The combination of agonistic politicisation and Europeanisation of public spheres is a process that matches ‘policy with politics’ at the EU level and normalises the EU as a polity by channeling conflict as politics in the Union rather than politics of the Union.Doctorat en Information et communicationinfo:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublishe

Framing TTIP in the wake of the Greenpeace leaks: agonistic and deliberative perspectives on frame resonance and communicative power

Although never conceived as a tool of direct democracy, the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) raised hopes that it would involve citizens more directly in EU decision making. Previous research has suggested that one contribution of the ECI is its effect on fostering public deliberation on EU issues, raising questions about the ECI’s potential as a tool for social movements to generate communicative power in relation to EU issues. This article draws on agonistic and deliberative perspectives to argue that communicative power generation can be seen as a process where ECI organizers use social media to advance specific understandings of their concerns and channel those understandings into mainstream mass media. The article analyses this by investigating how frames constructed on the Stop TTIP campaign’s Facebook page have resonated in twelve online news sites in four European countries in the wake of the Greenpeace leaks

The discursive legitimisation of a market-oriented EU trade policy through "European values" in a post-permissive consensus era: From 2006 global Europe to 2015 trade for all

SCOPUS: ch.binfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe