Authority transfer or membership conflict? Explaining politicization of European integration in public debates on major integration steps

Grande, Edgar and Hutter, Swen (2015) Authority transfer or membership conflict? Explaining politicization of European integration in public debates on major integration steps. [Conference Proceedings] (Submitted)

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Abstract

While there is increasing evidence that European integration has been politicized, knowledge on the driving forces of this process is still limited. In this paper, we contribute to this research by examining the importance of authority transfers to the EU as drivers of politicization. It innovates in two ways: First, we extend the authority transfer argument by highlighting the mobilizing power of membership conflicts; and, second, we analyze the relevance of national opportunity structures, referenda in particular, and actors’ mobilizing strategies for politicization. Our findings show that the authority transfer argument needs to be extended and integrated into a broader framework of political conflict. Empirically, we trace politicization in public debates on every integration step (treaty reforms and enlargement) from the 1970s to the late 2000s in six West European countries (France, Germany, Britain, Austria, Sweden, and Switzerland) based on a relational content analysis of newspaper coverage.

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