The politicisation of European Treaty Reform: Public justification and party polarisation in the German Bundestag and UK House of Commons debates over revision of the EU treaties

Frank Wendler

Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Global Governance from WZB Berlin Social Science Center

Abstract: The thesis that European integration has become politicised has prompted a major debate in comparative political science and research on the EU. This debate nevertheless remains inconclusive with regard to links between the objects and thematic focal points of EU controversies (justification dimension) and the patterns of polarisation between political parties arising within these debates (interaction dimension). This paper seeks to explore these links through an analysis of parliamentary debates between 2005 and 2009 in the German Bundestag and UK House of Commons over revision of the EU treaties. The results of analysis suggest that disaggregating the various aspects related to the institutional reform of the EU helps to shed light on the different variants of political contention arising in public debates about Europe. It is shown that the democratic legitimisation of European integration in particular prompts relatively strong and atypical patterns of party polarisation, whereas questions concerning the political goals and action capacity of the EU are more consensual and appear to be more domesticated in the sense of being debated within the established patterns of domestic party politics.

Date: 2012
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:wzbtci:spiv2012301

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