The Europeanization of National Public Spheres: Political Discourses in Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom

Meyer, Martin F. (2005) The Europeanization of National Public Spheres: Political Discourses in Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom. MPhil Thesis, Centre of International Studies, University of Cambridge.

Abstract

This study forms part of the ongoing debate on the Europeanization of national public spheres – meaning that European issues, actors, and institutions become increasingly important in political communication and mobilization of the different member states – as a means of overcoming the problems of democracy in the European Union. Drawing on original data collected as part of a transnational research project, the study measures several theoretically possible forms of this process across three comparative dimensions: countries, policy domains, and years. The study shows that in all the countries, a fairly high degree of Europeanization can be observed for those policy fields where the EU enjoys a great amount of political competences, whilst the findings are almost negligent for those issues where the member states have retained their autonomy. The study thus reaches the conclusion that the “democratic deficit” does not stem primarily from the lack of Europeanized political debates covered in the mass media. Instead, the essence of the problem is shown to be the differential access political actors have for participating in political discourses. So far, European public spheres are overwhelmingly populated by the so-called elites – state and party actors – while civil society actors find it increasingly difficult to get a foothold beyond the nation-state level. Institutional reforms need to address this problematic trend by putting “the public” back into the public sphere.