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Abstract
This article explores the paradox of constructive ambiguity. Based on a focused, longitudinal comparison of the European Union’s energy and defence policies, it analyses the role played by strategies of ambiguity in European integration. Ambiguity is found to be an attractive strategy for political entrepreneurs when member state preferences are heterogeneous and the EU’s legal basis is weak. It is likely to be effective, however, only if it is embedded in an institutional opportunity structure – that is, a formal-legal context – that entrepreneurs can fold into their strategic repertoire of ideas. While ambiguity can be strategic in circumstances where clarity would create strong opposition, it is not sufficient to entrench a European policy if it does not rest on an institutional basis. This suggests that European political entrepreneurs should be wary of relying on coalition building by ambiguity only.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this article was presented at the Eighteenth International Conference of the Council of European Studies, Barcelona, 20–22 June 2011. We thank Esther Barbé, Nora El Qadim, BC Lu, Grégoire Mallard, Frédéric Varone, Antoine Rayroux, and two anonymous WEP reviewers for their comments and suggestions. This research was funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council.
Notes
1. Neil Fligstein (Citation1997), referring to the role of the Delors Commission in producing the Single Market Programme, talks of ‘framing’ ambiguity. Speaking of the same programme, Nicolas Jabko (Citation2006: 6) also refers to a ‘fundamental ambiguity’ that was ‘the necessary glue for putting together a winning coalition in favor of European reforms’. While these arguments are congruent with ours, they do not specifically test whether and how ambiguity is constructive.
2. Joint Declaration by the Signatory Ministers (18 April 1951). Available at http://www.cvce.eu/viewer/-/content/a5bee6ca-6506-48bb-9bd5-c1aa8487bdfd/en (accessed 3 December 2012).
3. The Council of Ministers adopted a first directive (68/414/EEC) in 1968: member states were asked to maintain a minimum stock of crude oil and/or petroleum products for 65 days of consumption. Growing concerns about import dependence let to an increase of this strategic reserve to 90 days in 1972 (directive 72/425/EEC). Similar measures to secure stocks of fossil fuels followed in 1973 (73/238/EEC) and 1975 (directive 75/339/EEC) in the wake of the 1973 oil crisis.
4. http://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets/index_en.htm (accessed 9 June 2011).
5. http://eeas.europa.eu/energy/index_en.htm (accessed 9 June 2011).
6. Our interpretation may appear contradictory with Grégoire Mallard’s who, in his forthcoming book, argues that ambiguity (which he opposes to transparency and opacity) was the main strategy adopted by the negotiators of the EDC treaty. The disagreement is based on a different operationalisation of ambiguity, and it is useful to contrast it with ours. For Mallard, the ambiguity of formal treaty provisions encourages policy actors to negotiate the creation of informal rules, which may or may not in turn become formal rules. Rather than focusing on treaty negotiations as he does, we look at how political entrepreneurs communicate with their audiences to push for a policy initiative. While the content of treaty provisions may have been ambiguous, there was, in the debates leading to the National Assembly vote that defeated the treaty, growing agreement on what the EDC meant, namely the creation of a European Army. The interpretation that thus crystallised may have been wrong, of course, but one would be hard pressed to imagine what could have been a clearer strategy than presenting the EDC ‘like a quasi-federation’.
7. Between 1987 and 1991, defence expenditures as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) fell from 4 per cent to 2.8 per cent in France, from 3 per cent to 1.9 per cent in Germany, and from 4.7 per cent to 4.2 per cent in the UK. While defence expenditures in Europe oscillated between 5 per cent and 7 per cent of GDP around the mid-1960s, they had dropped to between 1.4 per cent and 2.3 per cent around the turn of the twenty-first century. These budget cuts led to an important downsizing of European armed forces. Between 1987 and 2001, military personnel declined by 50 per cent in France and 38 per cent in Germany. In the UK, regular forces declined by one-third.
