Contesting Europe, or Germany's Place in Europe? European Integration and the EU Policies of the Grand Coalition Government in the Mirror of Parliamentary Debates in the Bundestag

Abstract

This article explores how European integration is contested between political parties in debates of the German Bundestag. Distinguishing between ‘domestic’ debates about the conduct of EU policy-making by the German government and ‘supranational’ debates about the institutions and policies of the European Union, the article asks for thematic objects and patterns of polarisation between parties within these debates. Presenting empirical evidence from the manual coding of 23 plenary debates during the second ‘Grand Coalition’ government, it is shown that the polarisation between parliamentary parties differs greatly at both levels of discussion. Whereas the antagonism between government and opposition appears to determine the polarisation of parties in ‘domestic’ debates, more ambiguous and atypical position patterns emerge on behalf of supranational issues. Therefore, the article suggests that a differentiation of various levels of debate is helpful in capturing the polarisation of political parties over the issue of European integration.

Notes

Martin Dolezal, ‘Germany: The Dog that Didn't Bark’, in Hanspeter Kriesi et al. (eds), West European Politics in the Age of Globalization (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp.208–4; Charles Lees, ‘The Limits of Party-Based Euroscepticism in Germany’, in Aleks Szczerbiak and Paul Taggart (eds), Opposing Europe? The Comparative Party Politics of Euroscepticism, Vol. 1: Case Studies and Country Surveys (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp.16–37.

William Paterson, ‘Does Germany Still Have a European Vocation?’, German Politics 19/1 (2010), pp.41–52; Peter Becker, ‘Die Europapolitik des vereinten Deutschland zwischen Kontinuität und Wandel’, in Eckhard Jesse and Eberhard Sandschneider (eds), Neues Deutschland? Eine Bilanz der deutschen Wiedervereinigung (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2008), pp.141–76; Charlie Jeffery and William Paterson, ‘Germany and European Integration: A Shifting of Tectonic Plates’, West European Politics 26/4 (2003), pp.59–75.

For an overview, see Katrin Auel and Arthur Benz (eds), The Europeanisation of Parliamentary Democracy, Special Issue of the Journal of Legislative Studies, 11/3–4 (2005); Andreas Maurer and Wolfgang Wessels (eds), National Parliaments on their Ways to Europe: Losers or Latecomers? (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2001); Christian Demuth, Der Bundestag als lernende Institution: eine evolutionstheoretische Analyse der Lern- und Anpassungsprozesse des Bundestages, insbesondere an die Europäische Integration (Baden-Baden: Nomos, 2009).

For an explanation of this approach, see Tanja Börzel, ‘Europeanization: How the European Union Interacts with its Member States’, in Simon Bulmer and Christian Lequesne, The Member States of the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp.45–77; Simon Bulmer, ‘Theorizing Europeanization’, in Paolo Graziano and Maarten Vink (eds), Europeanization. New Research Agendas (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007), pp.46–58.

Applying the institutionalist logic of the ‘goodness of fit’ approach, it is assumed that speakers in parliamentary debates act within two different sets of incentive structures: first, a set of institutional incentives, concerning formal rules that regulate the access to politically relevant resources (information, agenda-setting power, veto options, and public support); and second, political incentives, understood as conditions that determine the choice of a particular option of strategic action by affecting the calculation of the likely return of these resources (particularly political cleavages and coalitions).

For an explanation of this logic, see Katrin Auel and Arthur Benz, ‘The Politics of Adaptation: The Europeanisation of National Parliamentary Systems’, Journal of Legislative Studies 11/3–4 (2005), pp.374–7.

For an overview of related assumptions and theoretical models, see Gary Marks and Marco Steenbergen (eds), European Integration and Political Conflict (Cambridge, 2004); and Dieter Fuchs et al., ‘European Cleavage, Euroscepticism and Support of the EU: A Conceptual Discussion’, in Dieter Fuchs et al. (eds), Euroscepticism. Images of Europe among Mass Publics and Political Elites (Opladen: B. Budrich, 2009), pp.10–20.

Katrin Auel and Berthold Rittberger, ‘Fluctuant nec merguntur. The European Parliament, National Parliaments, and European Integration’, in Jeremy Richardson (ed.), European Union. Power and Policy-making (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), pp.121–-45; John O'Brennan and Tapio Raunio (eds), National Parliaments within the Enlarged European Union: From ‘Victims’ of Integration to Competitive Actors? (Abingdon: Routledge, 2007).

Maurits van der Veen, ‘The Purpose of the European Union: Framing European Integration’, in Erik Jones and Amy Verdun (eds), The Political Economy of European Integration (London: Kluwer, 2005), pp.88–107; Aleksandra Maatsch, ‘Between an Intergovernmental and a Polycentric European Union. National Parliamentary Discourses on Democracy in the EU Ratification Process’, RECON Online Working Paper 2010/18 (2010), available from http://www.reconproject.eu/main.php/RECON_wp_1018.pdf?fileitem=5456416

Andreas Wüst and Andrea Volkens, ‘Euromanifesto Coding Instructions’, MZES Working Paper 64 (Mannheim, 2003), available from http://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de/publications/wp/wp-64.pdf (accessed 6 Sept. 2010).

The enlargement policy of the EU could be considered a ‘fringe’ case within the distinction of policy-specific and ‘constitutional’ debates, as it may affect the composition and hence the decision-making procedures of the EU. After first stages of empirical fieldwork, however, it was decided to include this topic in the list of policy-specific debates, as political choices and actions in this domain were seen to be debated within a given institutional setup of the EU, whereas no debate about a direct effect of an enlargement of the EU on its institutional structure or its functioning as a political system was visible within the parliamentary debates.

The two Christian democratic parties represented in the Bundestag – the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) – were considered separately, mainly to account for discussions about somewhat more ‘Eurosceptical’ statements by representatives of the CSU compared to their Christian democratic sister party.

This assessment refers to the following three groups of subjects: the rather positively assessed group of general assessments of the EU, the Treaty of Lisbon and EU Climate and Foreign/Enlargement Policy, the ‘middle’ group consisting of statements about EU responses to the financial crisis, German responses to EU climate policy, the involvement of the Bundestag, German involvement in the Lisbon Treaty and German EU policy in general, and the most critically assessed subjects including both levels of the Single Market, German involvement in EU responses to the financial crisis and the quality of democracy in the EU.

Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks, ‘A Postfunctionalist Theory of European Integration: From Permissive Consensus to Constraining Dissensus’, British Journal of Political Science, 39 (2008), pp.1–23.