The European public sphere and the debate about humanitarian military interventions

Abstract

Studies on the democratic control and legitimacy of Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) have thus far mostly focused on formal institutions. However, a comprehensive analysis requires including the ‘sociocultural infrastructure’ in which such formal institutions are embedded. Students of democracy have argued that the public sphere is a crucial dimension, if not a precondition for all mechanisms of democratic control in general. This paper investigates whether and in which ways Europeans participated in transnational European communication on humanitarian military interventions (1990–2005/2006). The paper analyzes a full sample of 108,677 newspaper articles published in leading newspapers of six EU member states, and the US as a comparative case. It demonstrates that the ‘national’ arenas of political communication are intertwined and allow ordinary citizens to make up their minds about common European issues in the highly controversial and normatively sensitive realm of humanitarian military interventions.

Keywords:

• CSDP
• humanitarian interventions
• military interventions
• democratic deficit
• transnational political communication
• European public sphere

Acknowledgments

This study presents results of the project ‘In search of a new role in world politics. The common European foreign, security and defense policies (CFSP/ESDP) in the light of identity-debates in the member states' mass media’, a unique, large-scale, comparative, quantitative and qualitative media-content analyses carried out at the Freie Universität Berlin and directed by Dr. Cathleen Kantner and Prof. Dr. Thomas Risse. For the generous funding of this project, we are grateful to the German Research Foundation (DFG, contract no. RI 798/8) and the European Commission's Sixth Framework Programme, within which this study was supported as part of RECON (Reconstituting Democracy in Europe, Integrated FP6-Project, contract no. CIT4-CT-2006-028698. Host institution: ARENA, University of Oslo, Norway). My special thanks goes to my colleagues Amelie Kutter and Andreas Hildebrandt, who with astonishing creativity developed and refined the corpus-linguistic methods that generated the data analyzed in this paper. I also wish to thank Jana Katharina Grabowsky for providing the Dutch data as well as Joshua Rogers and Barty Begley for the language editing.

Notes on contributor

Cathleen Kantner is a professor for International Relations and European Studies at the Institute for Social Sciences of the University of Stuttgart. Her current research focuses on public debates about European security and defense issues with particular reference to shared normative beliefs. She is the author of Kein modernes Babel. Die kommunikativen Voraussetzungen europäischer Öffentlichkeit (VS Sozialwissenschaften).

Notes

1. Ordinary citizens use the national media to be informed about politics regardless of the level of the ‘European multi-level system’ on which the decision is taken. Therefore, the search for a European public sphere becomes a search for transnational interlinkages between national media arenas. For this argument, see Eder and Kantner (2000, 2002), van de Steeg (2006), and Risse (2010).

2. Already, the Maastricht Treaty (Treaty on European Union, TEU, 1992, in force by 1993) encountered severe difficulties in the ratification process. In Denmark, the treaty was rejected by a referendum in 1992. A French referendum approved the treaty by a narrow margin. In GER, the Constitutional Court was called on to decide whether the Treaty would undermine the democracy-principle of the German constitution. The decision was in favor of the treaty, but interpreted it in a rather intergovernmentalist way. In the UK, a government crisis broke out over the British opt-out from social provisions in the Treaty.

3. The formula ‘the same topics at the same time under similar aspects of relevance’ goes back to Habermas. See Habermas (1998, p. 160). However, Habermas demanded the whole set of ‘ingredients’ of a ‘complete’ transnational public sphere with strong civil society organizations and political parties organized on a European scale, a common political culture and so on. That he – in the respective article – does not distinguish between transnational communication and a full-fledged public sphere leads him to helplessly accept Grimm's pessimistic evaluation.

4. In the following, I will refer to issues rather than ‘the coverage of this and that event’. An event is a particular instance of something happening (e.g. an international crisis event or a NATO summit). It is not the same as an issue, a controversial social problem, which constitutes a broader topical structure, encompassing several events as belonging together. Issues compete with each other on the public agenda. The attention paid to issues has a kind of life-cycle, the issue attention cycle or the issue cycle for short. See Downs (1972, p. 38).

5. This has been confirmed by other studies: Media visibility of EU politics has increased in all member states throughout the last decades, though levels of coverage vary among countries and media segments. See Semetko et al. (2000, p. 130), Kevin (2003), Gleissner and De Vreese (2005), and Machill et al. (2006). On TV, European issues are still rare, but when they are featured, they get more space than other international news and are prominently placed. See Peter et al. (2003, p. 321).

6. Some authors have introduced benchmarks for the visibility of the contributions to a topic or another content element (a frame, an actor). Gamson, for example, holds that an issue is visible, if it reaches a 10 per cent share of coverage. See Gamson (1992, 197).

7. A frame is defined as a ‘scheme of interpretation’ or an ‘interpretative package’ by which people organize experiences and information in meaningful ways and which guides their actions. Frames serve as a communicative device for selecting, emphasizing, and presenting an event, a situation, or an issue in a social context. See Goffman (1974). Gamson and Modigliani (1989, p. 2f). Entman (1993, p. 52), Reese et al. (2001), and Renfordt (2007, p. 6). In public debates, various frames are offered by different speakers and groups and they compete with each other. Therefore, framing effects are difficult to assess. No single speaker or medium has the power to hegemonically project ‘its framing’ on the society members – framing is a collective, constructivist activity. See Baumgartner and Mahoney (2008).

8. The sampling procedure did not include any EU or CSDP keywords in order to avoid sampling on the dependent variable.

9. A new member state, Poland, was to be included, but data was not available in time. The analysis of the Polish case therefore remains a task for further research.

10. There is one exception: For Ireland, only one paper was available. The selected broadsheets are Der Standard and Die Presse for Austria; Le Monde and Le Figaro (1997–2006)/Les Echos (1993–96) for France; Süddeutsche Zeitung and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung for Germany; The Irish Times for Ireland; NRC Handelsblad and De Volkskrant for The Netherlands; Guardian and The Times for The United Kingdom; and New York Times and The Washington Post for the US. For the detailed sample characteristics see the Appendix, Table A1.

11. See <http://www.lexically.net/wordsmith/version4/> (last accessed 10 November 2008).

12. For this procedure, we used the software package SPSS Clementine. Available at: <http://www.spss.com/de/clementine/> (last accessed 10 November 2008).

13. Only one paper was available for Ireland.

14. The maximum months are: April 1999 (GER, NL, AU, FR, IR), October 2001 (US), and March 2003 (IR, UK).

15. No articles on humanitarian military interventions could be identified in November 1991 (GER) and December 1992, January 1993, and April 1993 (AU). The minimum values for NL (January–March 1990) and FR (May 1990) are also close to zero. In the English-speaking countries, the numbers do not fall so dramatically. The minimum months were February 1990 (UK), May 1990 (US), and February 1997 (IR).

16. However, the intercorrelation is somewhat lower than among the overall issue cycles on both ‘wars’ and ‘interventions’, which indicates slightly more cross-national differences, or more precisely, more transatlantic differences as soon as we focus not just on the conflicts as such but on their normative dimension as ‘humanitarian interventions’. See Kantner (2009, sections 4.1.1 and 4.1.2).

17. Studies using σ-convergence measures are common in econometrics, because they allow the assessment of dynamic processes of convergence and divergence without assuming a fixed standard value to which different time series should converge. For the advantages of the σ-convergence measures that do not assume convergence toward a postulated value, but instead calculate whether the variation from the common mean decreases over time, see, for example: Barro et al. (1991), Higgins et al. (2003), and Dreger and Kholodilin (2007).

18. The immediate time after the fall of the Berlin Wall also saw the gradual breakdown of the USSR. Early in 1990, Soviet troops occupied Baku (Azerbaijan) under a state of emergency decree issued by Mikhail Gorbachev. Violent confrontations occurred. Hence, the West could not be sure how peacefully the transformation in the East – especially in the multi-ethnic states – would proceed.

19. In October 1990, the Rwandan Patriotic Front began its offensive and the Habyarimana regime called for international support. See Adelman and Suhrke (1996), Twagilimana (2007, p. xxxii).

20. In April 1991, Iraqi forces succeeded in crushing the series of uprisings following military defeat in the Gulf War and international action was taken to address the developing refugee crisis. See Ghareeb and Dougherty (2004, xviii). In spring 1991, the situation in Yugoslavia began to escalate as well.

21. In 2000, the right-wing populist Freedom Party (FPÖ), led by Jörg Haider, and the conservative People's Party (ÖVP), led by Wolfgang Schüssel, formed a new Austrian coalition government. The EU reacted with diplomatic sanctions in order to demonstrate that an extreme right-wing party in government was at odds with ‘European identity’.

22. The following analyses include only those articles in which humanitarian military intervention was the main issue of the article. However, our sample includes also articles that only touch on our issue in the context of another main issue. An example would be an article on developmental aid that contains a passage on the difficulties of nation-building by means of humanitarian military intervention. Some articles just gaze the issue. 61 per cent of the coded articles treat it as main issue.

23. Examples for the approval of the priority of international law are the following passages: ‘… Especially, the manner is not acceptable. The recourse to war must remain an exception … This was at least the achievement of the Charta of the United Nations after two world-tragedies. To liberate oneself from these conditions by introducing free interpretations of just war implies that all acts of violence can be justified. This again would mean that the rules introduced voluntarily have no longer authority and it must not even surprise that they regularly would be circumvented’. (Le Figaro, 17 March 2003) Or: ‘The European-American schism that destroyed the unity of the old West has its roots … in the differing weighting of power and law. The government of George W. Bush used its power without validation by international law and hopes that the democratization of Iraq retrospectively legitimates its actions. Most Europeans deny the possibility of such an ex post justification of this preventive war. Conversely, the Europeans must let themselves being reproached with since the last Balkan war proved that they are only with the help of the Americans able to exert the necessary power. The inability to effectively act militarily is a consequence of the missing European foreign policy’ (SZ, 19 April 2003).

24. The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) was only assumed by the United Nations General Assembly in 2005 which is quite at the end of our period of investigation.

25. A French example for a relativization of international law is: ‘To his defence it must be said that George W. Bush does not lack arguments [in favour of the Iraq-war]. Alone with the support of the British he brought to fall an infamous regime. … In the name of a universal morality America resorted to arms, this work should serve as a model that all dictators of the planet notice. … One does understand the Americans better if they remind the world that reason does not always come along with legality. It is a question of pragmatism’ (Le Figaro, 17 March 2003).

26. In 1995, Dutch UN troops failed to protect the Bosnian civilians in the ‘save haven’ of the city of Srebrenica from Serbian militias' atrocities. For the influence of this traumatic experience on the discourse on humanitarian military interventions, see Grabowsky (2010).

27. Examples for approvals of the multilateral pole are the following German passages: ‘According to the unilateral ideal pursued by the USA, domestic democratic procedures of the American State would remain the only legal controls in matters of war and peace. It is obvious, that the international community cannot content oneself with this’ (SZ, 9 May 2003). Or: ‘Yet, if the citizens and governments of Europe don't use the hour, if they don't forcefully turn against the American unilateralism as they manifested on February 15^th [the day of the international peace demonstrations], than Europe will probably never again play a role in the future designing of the World’ (the US-American philosopher Richard Rorty, SZ, 31 May 2003).

28. An example for a defense of an unilateral position which is seen as rational under certain circumstances, but not considered desirable as general doctrine of employment, would be the following statement: ‘Undoubtedly they [the US] had no other choice: After 9/11 – and disenchanted by the experiences made in Kosovo that have shown the clumsiness of NATO's functioning – US-Americans have marginalized NATO. To fight against Al-Qaida in Afghanistan they preferred to choose their Allies one by one and thus introduced their new doctrine of employment in the Alliance: The mission determines its coalition’ (Le Monde, 05 December 2002).

29. Legal framing trumped framing in terms of interests, identity, or universalist principles. See Renfordt (2011, 203).

30. For this classification, see Asmus et al. (2003) and Kagan (2003).

31. Examples for the justification of military power are the following passages: ‘I do believe that we need to give ourselves immediately the military and legal means for an intervention in Kosovo, and to let this Belgrade know. This way we can finally break through the infernal cycle of war. This will take long and will be difficult, but I cannot forget the most universal message that Europe created: the Kantian idea according to which every human being is an end in itself’ (Le Monde, 25 December 1992). Or: ‘The extent of human suffering and material destruction is tremendous – especially among the Albanians and in Kosovo, but also for the Serbs and in the whole country. The aerial war of the NATO was unavoidable. [given Milosevic's refusal of the Rambouillet treaty]’ (FAZ, 7 June 1999).

32. The following passage in an example for the justification of civil power: ‘Yet the West disposes of a better weapon than its military arms: its wealth and its economic power. Aid should only be delivered to authorities who engage in the reestablishment of peace and respect for human rights. This kind of reputable extortion must also be applied to Russia – itself a traditional protector of the Serbs. And also there must be spoken clearly instead having the diplomats getting lost in their subtle games’ (Le Monde, 11 November 1992).

33. The plea for military power was for example expressed in the following passage: ‘The effect of attraction of the European model – besides its economic “gigantism” – confers a considerable potential in terms of ‘Soft Power’ to Europe – a classification used by Joseph Nye concerning the four essential components of power. However, Europe only plays a small role in the world order. Europe lacks of two further dimensions, unity and military capacity – that constitute the force of the USA to contribute to international problem solving’ (Le Figaro, 7 April 2003).

34. Another example for the rather optimistic view on what military power can achieve would be the following statement: ‘In Europe, the memory of vacillation and impotence in the face of the Yugoslav tragedy will reinforce the belief that only the solid reality of American power can be counted on to resolve, or contain, the world's spreading regional conflicts’ (Guardian, 29 November 1995).

35. France: 10.18 statements for civil power and 11.00 for military power in 100 articles.

36. US: 4.82 statements for civil power and 14.18 for military power in 100 articles. UK: 8.91 statements for civil power and 16.82 for military power in 100 articles.