The Politicization of Europe: Contesting the Constitution in the Mass Media by Paul Statham & Hans-Jörg Trenz

Author:Paul Statham & Hans-Jörg Trenz [Statham, Paul & Trenz, Hans-Jörg]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780415635660
Google: O6kLuwAACAAJ
Goodreads: 15859028
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2012-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

Explaining political parties’ stances over Europe

Before we examine how parties contest Europe in national public debates, it is first necessary to look at the explanations that exist for why parties take up positions over European integration within their national political space.

A common starting point for discussions on party competition and alignments over European integration within national party politics is the existence of a so-called inverted ‘U’ pattern of support. In this view, political parties’ stances over European integration cross-cut the left-right divide, so that centre-left and centre-right parties are pro-European, while opposition comes from the marginal poles of the extreme left and right. Many authors observe that the inverted ‘U’ pattern of party alignments accurately describes the state of affairs for the ‘permissive consensus’ era (e.g. Hix and Lord 1997; Marks and Steenbergen 2004; Marks and Wilson 2000; Taggart 1998).

In their explanation, Hix and Lord (1997) argue that parties from the political mainstream have interests in maintaining the ‘status quo’ by pursuing a strategy that incorporates European integration issues into the existing left/right axis of party contestation. They see European politics as increasingly two-dimensional, whereby left/right contestation in the domestic arena, principally over economic and socio-political issues (functional interests), is largely independent from contestation over ‘national sovereignty’ (territorial interests) that ranges across positions that are either for or against more EU-integration. According to Hix and Lord, major parties prefer to contest left/right issues and try to avoid contestation over Europe, which leads them to adopt a generally pro-European stance over integration. This leaves open a political space for opposition to European integration from minor parties from the extreme left and right.3

Another set of explanations considers these strategic considerations, but places more emphasis on the ideational substance and contents of supporting and opposing European integration when accounting for why parties adopt positions (e.g. Hooghe and Marks 2004; Hooghe et al. 2004; Kriesi 2007). In these approaches, the inverted ‘U’ is less an observation and more an explanatory thesis. Theories are advanced for how European integration issues constitute an ideological axis for contention that cross-cuts the traditional left/right cleavage. This transformation of the ideological space leads to new opportunities for mobilization and for strategic realignments among parties. Importantly, this perspective leads to explanations for why mainstream centre-parties of left and right can take up different stances over European integration issues. Hence it presents theses for the polarization of party actors’ positions over European issues as a basis for their competition at the core of party systems. This also implies a transformation away from the inverted ‘U’ pattern of alignments. However, disagreements exist among authors about the nature and degree of this transformation of the national political space.

In an important contribution, Hooghe et al. (2004) argue that some aspects of parties’ contestation over Europe are absorbed into their left/right contestation, but others are not, in part because EU competences do not penetrate all policy fields equally. This means that the two dimensions (more/less integration; left/right) are not necessarily independent from each other, as

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