Justification and political polarization in national parliamentary debates on EU treaty reform

ABSTRACT

National parliaments are arenas both for the discursive justification of European integration and its party political contestation. This article harnesses a discourse theoretical framework to investigate the links between both dimensions in debates about the revision of the EU treaties in the parliaments of four member states (Austria, France, Germany and the United Kingdom). Two arguments are proposed: first, a distinction between discursive perspectives and related mobilizing arguments helps to disentangle different thematic layers of debate, characterised as ‘problem-solving debates’ on the effectiveness of political action in the EU, ‘directional debates’ about the substantive goals of EU governance, and ‘legitimacy debates’ about the compatibility of supranational institutions with domestic democracy. Second, the empirical data show that each of these debates is linked to characteristic patterns of polarization along institutional and party political divides, adding fresh insights for the literature on party politics and public debate about European integration.

KEY WORDS:

• Discourse theory
• EU Treaty reform
• Europeanization
• national parliaments
• party politics
• politicization.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to thank the JEPP referees for their constructive comments.

Notes

1 The 18 parliamentary party groups are (with abbreviations that will be used subsequently): for Austria: Österreichische Volkspartei (ÖVP); Sozialdemokratische Partei Österreichs (SPÖ); Grüne (GR); Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs (FPÖ); and Bündnis Zukunft Österreich (BZÖ); for France: Union pour une Majorite Presidentielle (UMP); Nouveau Centre (NC); Socialist, Republicain, Citoyen (SRC); Gauche Democrate et republicaine (GDR); for Germany: Christlich-Demokratische Union (CDU); Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU); Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD); Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP); Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (B90/GR); Linkspartei (LINKE); and for the United Kingdom, the Labour Party (LAB); Conservatives (CON); and Liberal Democrats (LD).

2 Parties were categorized as follows: parties in government (SPÖ, ÖVP, UMP, NC, CDU, CSU, SPD, LAB); parties in opposition (GR, FPÖ, BZÖ, SRC, GDR, FDP, B90/GR, CON, LD); centre-right parties as those having a moderate right score between 5 and 8 in both the general left/right and GALTAN (green/alternative/libertarian vs. traditional/authoritarian/nationalist) dimensions in the 2006 Chapel Hill data set (ÖVP, UMP, NC, CDU, CON; cp. Hooghe et al. 2010); centre-left parties as having a moderate left score between 2 and 5 in both the general left/right and GALTAN dimensions (SPÖ, SRC, SPD, LAB); mainstream parties as the combination of centre-right and centre-left parties; and extreme parties as parties having a Chapel Hill score below 2 or above 8 in the general left/right score (FPÖ, BZÖ, GDR, LINKE). Three parliamentary party groups in the French Assemblee Natioanle are not contained as such in the data set: here, the SRC and GDR were identified with the values of their main subgroup, the Parti Socialiste (PS), and Parti Communiste Francais (PCF) respectively; the NC was identified with its most closely related political party, the Union pour la Democratie Francaise (UDF). For explanations of all abbreviations, see Note 1.

Additional information

Biographical note: Frank Wendler is DAAD Visiting Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and the Jackson School of International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle, USA.