Government Euroscepticism and differentiated integration

ABSTRACT

It is common to consider mass politics and Eurosceptic politicization as ‘post-functionalist’ constraints that encourage differentiated European integration. This study argues that the relevance of Euroscepticism depends on who wins the domestic competition for government office. European mass politics are organized as delegation systems. These systems concentrate authority in the government and give little influence to parliaments and publics. If Eurosceptic parties reach the government, they will push for differentiation and even disintegration. If pro-EU parties succeed, uniform integration is likely to prevail. An empirical analysis of differentiated integration from the 1992 Maastricht Treaty to the 2016 Single Resolution Fund shows that only government Euroscepticism – rather than opposition, extra-parliamentary, or popular Euroscepticism – encourages differentiation. This study explains how uniform integration can prevail even in ostensibly Eurosceptic countries. It suggests that the impact of Eurosceptic politicization depends on party competition and is often more limited than might seem at first sight.

KEYWORDS:

• Differentiated integration
• Euroscepticism
• party politics

Acknowledgements

For comments, I am grateful to Christopher Wratil and three anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Thomas Winzen is a Lecturer in Government at the Department of Government, University of Essex.

Notes

1 A question is why a Eurosceptic country does not veto a treaty entirely rather than opt-out of one policy? Yet, EU treaties are packages that included policies – such as the Single Market – that even Eurosceptic governments supported. Vetoing an entire treaty would prevent such consensual reforms. Moreover, even a Eurosceptic veto does not prevent differentiation if the remaining member states can develop a policy outside of the treaty framework, as was true for the Schengen Area and still is for the European Stability Mechanism and Fiscal Compact.

2 It should be noted that market, regulatory, and agricultural policies have given rise to transitional differentiation in the context of enlargement (Plümper and Schneider 2007). These cases of differentiation originate in distributional conflicts rather than politicization and fall outside of the scope of this study.

3 The appendix provides brief information on the issue-specific treaties.

4 Chapel Hill data is not available for Croatia, Cyprus, Luxembourg, and Malta. In addition, the Czech government’s position during the negotiation of the Lisbon Treaty cannot be identified as it had a non-partisan caretaker cabinet.