I H S — Eric Miklin / Scholar — 87
Research Interests
Current Research
EU-Democracy and Legitimacy, European Public Sphere and Decision Making Processes, EU developmental policy
Dissertation Outline
Title: The role of the Left-Right schema in the decision-making processes of the Council of Ministers. Studies on the European political space. (June 2005)
Research-Puzzle
The European political space and the question of the dimensions in which European issues are being discussed has become a focus of scientific discussion in recent times. Since the late 1990s, a number of studies dealing with these questions have been carried out.
However, at least until last year, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the empirical analysis of the political space in which the Council of Ministers makes its decisions (but see Mattila 2004; Zimmer et al. forthcoming)
Spatial theory has shown that for the national level, structuring political spaces along only one or two ideological dimensions decreases the problems that arise due to limited information in the context of voting (e.g. Downs 1957; Budge 1994; Hinich/Munger 1993).
For the national level, there is a broad consensus about the fact, that political contestation is structured mainly along a Left-Right dimension (e.g. Barnes/Kaase 1979; Downs 1957;
Fuchs/Klingemann 1990). Some scholars argue that this schema has to be divided into an economic and a social left-right dimension (e.g. Kitschelt 1994; Franklin 1992). “But no one really doubts the critical importance of the categories of Left and Right in Europe”
(Marks/Steenbergen 2002: 880). Hence, concerning the European political space, the consequential questions are: are European issues related to the dominant dimension(s) of national contestation? Or are they building up one or even more new dimensions of contestation – with all the associated consequences for the stability of the political system and the actors (e.g. parties, citizens) operating in it?
Theory
For a long time, the European political space has been seen as dominated just by one dimension: the Integration-vs.-Independence dimension. More recent approaches like the Hix-Lord model and the Hooghe-Marks model have argued that, as the integration process has increasingly blurred the distinction between national and EU-level politics, contestation in Europe is structured along two dimensions: the Left-Right dimension and the
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vs.-Independence dimension (Hix/Lord 1997; Hooghe/Marks 1999). Recent studies have shown clearly that the Left-Right schema indeed plays a decisive role in contestation about Europe (Marks/Steenbergen 2004). However, they have also shown that neither the Hix-Lord model nor the Hooghe-Marks model are able to describe the European political space accurately – especially, as they say nothing about national contextual factors, that may lead to a break-up of the Left-Right dimension at the European level. Therefore, the research-questions this study is dealing with are to which extent the Left-Right schema constrains (1) the actors positions during and (2) the outcome of the decision-making processes within the Council and (3) especially to which extent national contextual factors are leading to a break-up of the ideological Left-Right dimension and, moreover, to the emergence of further dimensions?
Methods
Former studies on how decisions are taken within the Council have focused exclusively on quantitative approaches (e.g. Mattila 2004; Zimmer et al. forthcoming). However, the methods used in these studies cannot really answer the question of which role the Left-Right scheme effectively played during the negotiations and the decision-making processes and which factors lead to a break up of the left-right dimension. To answer this question, a qualitative approach – most likely qualitative expert-interviews – seems to be more appropriate. However, this of course means that only a few cases can be analyzed this way.
Therefore the aim is to choose about two or three EU-directives out of a certain policy-area where the hypotheses formulated in this study would expect te left-right dimension either to play an important role or to be broken up by national contextual factors.
Literature
Barnes, Samuel/Max Kaase, 1979: Political actions: Mass participation in five western democracies. Beverly Hills: Sage.
Budge, Ian, 1994: A new spatial theory of pary competition: Uncertainty, ideology and policy equilibria viewed comparatively and temporally. In: British Journal of Political Science 24, 443-476.
Downs, Anthony, 1957: An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper & Row.
Franklin, Mark, 1992: The decline of cleavage politics. In: Mark N. Franklin/Thomas T Mackie/Henry Valen/et al (eds.), Electoral change. Responses to evolving social and attitudinal structures in western countries. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 383-405.
Fuchs, Dieter/Hans-Dieter Klingemann, 1990: The Left-Right schema. In: M. Kent Jennings/Jan W. van Deth/et al (eds.), Continuities in political action. A longitudinal study of political orientations in three western democracies. Berlin, New York: Walter de Gruyter, 203-234.
Hinich, Melvin J./Michael C. Munger, 1993: Political ideology, communication, and community. In: William A. Barnett/Melvin J. Hinich/Norman J. Schofield (eds.), Political
economy: Institutions, competition, and representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 25-50.
Hix, Simon/Christopher Lord, 1997: Political parties in the European Union. New York: St.
Martin's Press.
Hooghe, Lisbet/Gary Marks, 1999: The making of a polity: the struggle over European integration. In: Herbert Kitschelt/Peter Lange/Gary Marks/John D. Stephens (eds.), Continuity and change in contemporary capitalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 70-97.
Kitschelt, Herbert, 1994: The transformation of European Social Democracy. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Marks, Gary/Marco Steenbergen, 2002: Understanding political contestation in Europe. In:
Comparative Political Studies 35/8, 879-892.
Marks, Gary/Marco Steenbergen (eds.), 2004: European integration and political conflict.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mattila, Mikko, 2004: Contested decisions: Empirical analysis of voting in the European Union Council of Ministers. In: European Journal of Political Research 43, 29-50.
Zimmer, Christina/Gerald Schneider/Michael Dobbins, forthcoming: The contested Council:
The conflict dimensions of an intergovernmental institution. In: Political Studies.
Previous Research
‘Emergence of a European Public Sphere? Studies on the Democratic Ability of the European Union.’ Master Thesis. Vienna University, Austria
Abstract
During the last few years the discussion on the democratic deficit of the European Union may has lost lot of its news value but surely none of its relevance. Searching for ways to reduce this deficit, the emergence of a European public sphere as one of the basic prerequisites for a European democracy moved into the focus of the scientific discussion.
The possibility of such a public sphere has been often denied. Following this assumption any institutional democratization of the EU would not only not reduce the democratic deficit but even enlarge it. Hence the aims of the thesis are to discuss the theoretical possibility of a European public sphere – and consequently European democracy – and to isolate the factors that have until now inhibited its development and also those which could accelerate its emergence in the future. Therefore two possibilities of realization are discussed: The development of a network of transeuropean media and the Europeanization of national media. In the thesis the Europeanization of national media is described as the more realistic variation because it makes it easier to overcome the linguistic borders within the European Union. The conclusion of the analysis is that there is no well-founded argument that corroborates the impossibility of the emergence of a European public sphere by the Europeanization of the national media. However, it is mainly the institutional structure of the
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EU that inhibits its development. Therefore only comprehensive institutional reforms could accelerate this process.
I H S — Patrick Müller / Scholar — 93