Masarykova univerzita V brně Fakulta sociálních studií
Europeanization of polity
Download 370.43 Kb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- 1.3 Europeanization of politics
1.2 Europeanization of polityEuropeanization in polity dimension can have variety of forms. It affects all the elements of public policy, national laws, policies and administrative organization, as well as policy paradigms, styles, and shared beliefs and norms, which are also important elements of national governance systems (Monar 2005, Radaelli 2003: 36). The EU is an extremely complex political system that confronts individual governments with a challenging environment where they lack the resources (authority, agenda control, administrative traditions, party discipline, networks established) which they can mobilize at home for domestic purposes (Kassim 2003). The challenges within EU for national governments are considerable. H. Goetz in his article (2008) offers an overview of approaches to the issue of Europeanization of polity. He presents various standpoints of different researchers, compares the contradictory conclusions of their works and displays particular methods which they used. Despite the growing number of empirical, conceptual and theoretical research, a consensus was not reached concerning domestic responses, beyond a broadly shared consensus on ‘non-convergence’, i.e., the proposition that Europeanization does not imply that the political systems of the EU member states have become increasingly alike over time. Below the conflicting outcomes of the researches are listed. - de-parlamentarization, as national parliaments have ceded powers to the EU and to domestic executives, and the opposite, i.e., re-parlamentarization, as national legislatures have reasserted themselves in the integration process; - growing bureaucratization, as national bureaucrats dominate domestic EU-related policy-making, and the opposite, i.e., politicization, as executive politicians take control of the EU policy process; - increasing centralization in national governments, with the emergence of powerful EU core executives, and the opposite, i.e., progressive diffusion of integration effects throughout the political and administrative parts of the executive (Goetz 2008: 5). As we can see, in the area of polity the results of researches vary in a significant way. This is also confirmed by Kassim (2003) who argues that the impact of EU on national arrangements is not uniform in all the states. The influencing factors appear both from national and European level and very important role is played by national political context and the two-way interaction between national institutions and the EU. The nature of the EU’s impact on national governments as actors is strongly contested (as already mentioned above). Kassim adds that the Union’s effects on governments as administrations is less hourly disputed, though there are differences concerning its relative importance as a source of administrative change. The fact that remains obvious is the dominant and most powerful role of national governments in the relationship between the Union and the national polity, and domestic EU policy making (Kassim 2003: 287). The national parliaments can be examined basically from two standpoints – their institutional responses to Europeanization and their behavioural and attitudinal Europeanization. The former approach had long taken a principal form of single-country studies and it includes examining of particular institutional changes, but also of systemic changes situations where structures or norms that encompass the political system are changed at large, institutional changes refer to alterations in the internal working mode of an institution (Goetz 2008: 9). The latter look beyond the formal institutions and take the strategies into account, which parliamentary actors develop to deal with their power or lack thereof (Auel and Benz 2005: 388, cited in Goetz 2008: 10). The impact of EU on the change of hierarchical relation between the central government and sub-national organs lies in the fact that the actors function in a broader political system where they can develop and promote projects independently from the governments. But it has to be noted that the sub-national mobilization is very uneven and the range of EU’s impact is unequal6 (Kassim 2003: 304-307). Despite these various theories and outcomes, some similarities in the reaction of national systems can be observed – central role remains to foreign affairs ministries, special units to coordinate European business are created, special mechanisms for coordination of EU matters are implemented etc. All member states have put in place structures, procedures, and processes designed to manage their input into EU policy making, and we can observe that international obligations require more, not less, of national administrative systems (Kassim 2003: 296). 1.3 Europeanization of politicsAlbeit the fact which was already mentioned several times, that Europeanization influences all three dimensions of political system, the research in area of politics used to be marginalized by the authors for a long time. As Taggart and Szczerbiak (2004) state ‘there has been little attempt to chart how European integration has permeated the nature of political competition in the candidate states. The process of negotiating accession has thrown new lines of division into the domestic politics of the candidate states and political parties as both the gatekeepers of the interaction between the EU and the states and as domestic actors have taken up the new possibilities through articulating a range of opinions on EU accession and European integration in general’. However, in recent years we can observe growing need to reckon with the questions concerning political actors operating in more complex and multi-level environment motivated by the pressure of European integration. The actors themselves are being changed (or can be changed), their strategies can be transformed and these factors can affect essentially the form of interaction in the political arena (Fiala et al. 2006: 11). According to Hix and Goetz (2000: 10), two types of impact of Europeanization on domestic actors can be determined. As first, delegating of political competences on the EU level and the political result of this process will modify internal political elections, empower some direction of political evolvement and will press on change in certain areas; as second, establishing agencies of government on a higher level will create new opportunities for circumvention of limitations given by the domestic arena, what will change position and strategies of a range of actors functioning in the process of interest organising. In other words, EU membership (or the perspective of membership) can lead to Europeanization of activities and strategies of originally national political actors (Císař 2004: 110, cited in Fiala et al. 2006: 11). In the field of politics research P. Mair and R. Ladrech are considered as classic authors. According to them European integration subsequently diminishes the scope for government manoeuvring in the question of state policies, thereby empties the area of political competition in the sense that the political parties which aspire to participate on power exercising have to reach an elementary consensus in essential political orientation. The parties are becoming part of political mainstream and in this context Mair talks about depolitization of political issues which are connected to European integration. That is why the amount of political issues for change that can be promised by parties to voters, is relatively marginal (Mair 2004: 343-345). The most essential task for Europeanization research according to Ladrech is to examine the adaptation of parties to the changes of area they operate in, in policy as well as on organizational level. Europeanization of political parties should be reflected as an answer of parties on the changes in their environment (Ladrech 2002: 393-396). For purposes of this paper the analytical framework created by Robert Ladrech is highly suitable. He proposes five areas of investigation for evidence of Europeanization in parties and party activity. With the application of modifications for candidate countries, the main research questions are as follows (Fiala et al. 2006: 13-147): 1. Programmatic change – gradually innovating of programmatics with new elements emanating from participation on European integration process; in candidate countries we can observe the rhetoric of political elites asserting unpopular changes by their necessity from EU membership viewpoint. 2. Organizational change – in candidate countries we can expect even more extensive changes than in membership states, concerning the position of new “European elites” inside them. 3. Patterns of party competition – emergence of change in this area is basically not highly presumable, however too high expectations of rising life and social level before membership can lead to formation of highly Euroskeptic parties which could afterwards influence the form of party competition. 4. Party-government relations – wider distance can appear between executive and the political parties, or the overall position of government towards political parties and EU can be transformed. 5. Relations beyond the national party system – the parties of candidate states are probably not very likely to intensively participate on building of European parties or federations. Next issue to be examined in the sphere of political parties is their attitude towards European Union and European integration generally. For this research I will use the typology created by N. Conti and L. Verzichelli. Their five-point scale is suitable for classification of attitudes of political parties towards European integration and EU. They use terms of hard and soft Euroskepticism8 and added the categories of neutral approach, functional and identitarian Europeanism. This concept was applied successfully by many authors in analysing the process of Europeanization in the party systems in Europe.
Directory: 52095 52095 -> Key Concept 1 Technological advances, large-scale production methods, and the opening of new markets encouraged the rise of industrial capitalism in the United States Download 370.43 Kb. Share with your friends:
|