European Public Sphere Research Articles

Political Communication in Europe: The Cultural and Structural Limits of the European Public Sphere

Seoane Pérez discusses the issue of the EU’s perceived communication deficit, arguing that this is not the result of a lack of commitment from EU leaders and journalists, but rather of cultural and structural limitations. Based on an analysis of the situation in two regions, Galicia in Spain and Yorkshire in the UK, he claims that there are two important challenges that limit the EU’s democratic potential: a lack of ‘domesticisation’ and a lack of ‘politicisation’.

Conflicts and negotiations about framings of gender equality and diversity by political actors within the European public sphere

This article addresses conflicts and negotiations about gender equality and diversity within the European public sphere (EPS). It aims to explore the specific constraints and possibilities for realizing gender equality and justice from the transnational European context. Research illustrates that the European Union (EU) approach to gender equality has strengthened the transnational space of mobilization and given actors new possibilities to negotiate about multiple inequalities and direct their claims at different levels. This has at the same time led to a diversification of women's claims and conflicts about the meanings and framings of gender equality and diversity within the EPS. This is illustrated by case studies of the framing of gender equality and ethno-national diversity by political actors in the European Women's Lobby and the European Parliament. The article proposes that the multilevel EU polity can be interpreted as a unique case for reframing justice in a globalized world.

Explaining Citizens’ Participation in a Transnational European Public Sphere

Globalization and Europeanization processes have led to an increasing public sphere deficit. This deficit can be addressed by a transnationalization of the individual countries’ national public spheres. This requires a perception of discussions in other national public spheres, a condition which is met if citizens of a nation-state follow reporting of issues in other countries. Using Eurobarometer surveys, we examine the extent to which citizens of 27 European countries engage with foreign media and the factors that determine participation in a transnational public sphere. Only a small minority of EU citizens engage with foreign media, and there are considerable differences between countries and citizens. Using multilevel techniques we find that besides other factors education, professional status and multilingualism play a crucial role in explaining participation in a transnational public sphere, resources which are distributed very unevenly among citizens. Thus, participation in a transnational public sphere is an issue of social inequality.

Does EU Policymaking Allow for Skilful Networkers But Limited Knowledge Managers? The Think Tanks’ Tale

This article aims to depict how the EU policymaking process affects the knowledge-broker role of EU think tanks. To this end, I examine the organisational and output strategies of 22 EU think tanks—think tanks sharing a EU-transnational origin, an interest in EU subjects, and the intention to contribute to EU policymaking. I argue that certain aspects of EU policymaking, (a) the emphasis on participative processes that foster linkage and exchange activities, (b) concern with stakeholder representatives, (c) development frameworks for knowledge management for particular policy actors, and (d) lack of an overarching European public sphere, affect the knowledge-broker role of EU think tanks. As a result, EU think tanks concentrate on customised knowledge management and platform development and dissemination among target publics in order to appeal to partners, members and sponsors and thereby secure funding and reputation.

Participation, Dialogue, and Civic Engagement: Understanding the Role of Organized Civil Society in Promoting Active Citizenship in the European Union

This article looks at current policies concerning the civic and political participation of youths, women, migrants, and minorities in the European Union. It highlights the ways in which active citizenship and civic engagement have become a political priority for European institutions. Representation of local policy actors at the supranational level and strategies for the inclusion of civil society provide a platform for evaluating the impact of Europeanization at the national and subnational level. The article focuses on key discourses and narratives associated with specific policy frames (e.g. European citizenship, European social policies, and the European public sphere (EPS)). Some of the key questions addressed by the article are: What are the strategies that are employed, both by the European institutions in Brussels and organized civil society (OCS), to enhance participation and reciprocal communication? What vision of governance do practices such as active engagement and civil dialogue represent? Drawing on current theories of governance, our article contributes to the debate about the EPS by evaluating the role of OCS in bridging the gap between European institutions and national polities. Equally, our focus on traditionally marginal groups provides a platform for assessing the institutionalization of the ‘European social dimension’.

Towards the European(-ised) Public Sphere: The Case of EP Elections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia

European Parliament (EP) elections fall within the category of second-order elections: because these types of elections do not lead to the formation of government there is less at stake and, consequently, voters behave differently when casting ballot. However, since the behaviour of voters in elections cannot be perceived in isolation from the behaviours of political parties and media, the question then arises if media (and political parties) also perceive that there is less at stake and hence they behave differently. To this aim, this article analyses the news media coverage of the 2004 and 2009 EP elections in the Czech Republic and Slovakia (N = 5672) and, at the same time, integrates the second-order election theory with the behaviours of the media. Moreover, the article provides unique comparative evidence of news coverage of national parliamentary (N = 5435) and EP elections in both countries. The results indicate that media across the EU only marginally cover EP elections and particularly less than national first-order elections and that coverage of EP elections is dominated by domestic EU political actors. The findings are discussed in the light of existing literature on EP elections, the existence of Europeanised public spheres and EU’s legitimacy as well as democratic deficit.

From Nation State to Border State

This article's central claim is that a paradigm shift occurred in the intertwining of aesthetic practices, the discursive, and the institutional mechanisms of legitimization and display in the European public sphere from the postwar to the present. More specifically, it foregrounds ‘the problem of Europe’ as it materialized within the modernist rubric of the nation state with Documenta (established 1955) in Germany and the Biennale de Paris (established 1959) in France and in relation to processes of globalization with the peripatetic exhibition Manifesta: The European Biennial of Contemporary Art (established 1996). If postwar cultural initiatives elaborated and exhibited ‘Europe’ as a collection of nation states, the nomadic imperative of Manifesta crystallizes and contributes to the collective imagination of ‘Europe’ and its demos as a permanent experience of the border. Moving from nation state to border state is thus not so much a fully concretized or accomplished political or economic reality as an exhibited cultural proposal for novel iterations of Europe and its publics.

Overlapping and Evolving European Discourses on Market Liberalization

Research Highlights and Abstract This introduction to the special section on European liberal discourses Presents key assumptions discussed in the collection of articles, such as liberalism as a discourse and the conceptualization of discourses as networks. Offers an original typology of liberal discourses regarding State intervention. Introduces two models linking discursive interactions to discursive change, analogous to the operational code approach and to schema theory in cognitive science. Presents original data on DG Trade discourse, to illustrate simultaneous change and continuity. This introduction to the special section on European liberal discourses discusses three themes covered by all contributions: (i) the co-existence of several market liberal discourses in the European public sphere; (ii) interactions among these various discourses; (iii) and discursive changes resulting from these interactions.

The Democratic Function of the Public Sphere in Europe

Democratically legitimized European integration calls for developments in culture and society—which arise naturally in the scope of on-going political, economic and institutional European Union (EU) integration—to be publically debated so they may be politically processed. The space where this happens is the public sphere, or, in the context of the EU, the European public sphere. The latter complements national public spheres. Successful integration among EU Member States is made possible by adhering to a common set of values at the same time as respecting the national identities of the Member States and fostering cultural diversity. By way of Union citizenship rights, individuals are able to make use of and actively promote the Europeanization of societies and cultures. Yet citizens are affected by Europeanization to differing degrees, with only a minority of citizens actively partaking in transnational exchange. In order to account for European integration democratically, the EU treaties hold provisions allowing for a close institutional interdependence of national and European democracy.

Koopmans, Ruud and Statham, Paul (eds) The Making of a European Public Sphere. Media Discourse and Political Contention2010Cambridge University Press 356 pp. £19.99 (paperback).

Koopmans, Ruud and Statham, Paul (eds) The Making of a European Public Sphere. Media Discourse and Political Contention2010Cambridge University Press 356 pp. £19.99 (paperback).

Social media and the institutional illusions of EU communication

Fifteen years ago, the illusions of equality and equivalence were identified as cornerstones of EU translation. This paper revisits these concepts from a contemporary point of view. Several new official languages have been introduced, a new communication policy has been adopted, and social media tools have entered the field of EU communication. Particular emphasis is placed on virtual linguistic landscapes in the EU blogosphere and social media networks, and on the emerging language policy identifiable from the language practices in them. The analysis of language choices in Commissioners' blogs, the European Commission's Facebook profile, EUtube and EuroparlTV indicates that, to further the aim of creating a European public sphere, communication practices are shifting from the policy of multilingualism towards a hegemonic language policy where English dominates.

Remote, Elitist, or Non-Existent?

This paper looks at how British political elites discuss the European public sphere and citizens’ participation within it. Drawing on 41 in-depth interviews with political elites – including politicians at national and European levels, journalists, political activists, and think-tank professionals – the paper explores interviewees’ understandings of the European public sphere, and their perceptions about its vitality. Our research reveals a great deal of scepticism about the idea of a European public sphere, in part rooted in conventional British Euro-sceptic approaches, and in part fostered by a perception of the remoteness and democratic deficit of the European Union.

Information flows and centrality among elite European newspapers

Combining citations and network analysis, this study examines information flows between 10 European elite newspapers from 2000 to 2009 and identifies this network’s most central actors, sub-groups and structural features. At the same time, the article contributes to the literature with an alternative and network approach to the study of the European public sphere. Results indicate that The Times and The Guardian are the most quoted by other foreign newspapers, while the top monitors of information are The Guardian and El País. A longitudinal analysis of structural network metrics indicates a less dense but more inclusive information exchange that can be interpreted as sign of a qualitative transformation of the European communication space in the direction of a horizontal integration.

The Making of a European Public Sphere: Media Discourse and Political Contention. Edited by Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 356p. $93.00 cloth, $30.99 paper.

The Making of a European Public Sphere: Media Discourse and Political Contention. Edited by Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 356p. $93.00 cloth, $30.99 paper.

The European Public Sphere: Myth, Reality or Aspiration?

The discussion about the public sphere only began to have significant relevance within the setting of the European Union in the middle of the 1990s when a growing degree of attention was directed towards European integration and the role of national and transnational media in providing thrust for it. Since then, the notion of the public sphere has been seen as a central feature of European democracies, shaping the coherence of political systems and decision-making processes. There has also been a tendency in the literature to perceive the European public sphere (EPS) as having positive effects on the EU by endowing it with legitimacy and providing a space where its institutions and leaders can be made more transparent and accountable. What is disputed throughout this scholarship is the possibility of creating an overarching European public sphere that would act as a transnational discursive space uniting various communication fluxes and actors from all strata of society. However, the answers provided by scholars for this puzzle are at most ambiguous or undecided and seem to be torn between viewing the EPS as aspiration, myth or reality.

‘Welcome to the Counterjihad’: Uncivil Networks and the Narration of European Public Spheres

Accounts of a unifying European public sphere (EPS) can seem bleak in a social policy literature, emphasizing the need for coherent deliberative processes to legitimate the European Union as an enterprise in transnational democracy. The article confronts this impasse, arguing that a vibrant plurality of EPSs emerges once analytical pursuit is decoupled from normative associations with the EU project, and so from understandings of civil society and communicative democracy as axiomatic characteristics of an EPS. After discussing the limits of theorizing a singular public sphere converging on the EU, the empirical section of the article portrays a contrasting sphere of pan-European political traction, examining an ‘uncivil’ arena of anti-Muslim coalition-building and exchange. Noting parallels between this ‘uncivil’ pan-Europeanism and normative depictions of Europe's absent (civil, singular, and democratic) public sphere, the article suggests that a less pallid account of European political life emerges once the preoccupation with achieving deliberative coalescence yields to allow recognition (and study) of EPSs in the plural and contestual—as politically constitutive expressions of a multiplicity of open narrative claims and systems taking European conditions and destinies as their core.

Mediating Europe: New Media, Mass Communications and the European Public Sphere

Mediating Europe: New Media, Mass Communications and the European Public Sphere

New Rules, New Players? The ECI as a Source of Competition and Contention in the European Public Sphere

This article analyses the potential effect of the European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) on the field of relations between European institutions and civil society organisations (CSOs). The article builds on empirical analysis of data coming from almost a decade of debate about participatory democracy in the EU, and in particular, evidence from the consultation on the Green Paper about the ECI (European Commission, 2009) and 21 signature-collection campaigns that have been launched so far (Fischer & Lichtbau, 2008; Kaufmann, 2010) in order to foresee the attitudes of these organisations towards the initiative. Analysis of the campaigns launched so far suggests the existence of four categories of promoters. The first two are easily expected, that is, EU organisations working closely with members to launch campaigns and large organisations promoting campaigns on visible topics. Additionally, it seems that the ECI may be used in connection to organisations' commercial interests and that political actors (MPs, MEPs and regional and local authorities) may be important drivers. The article finds no evidence of a significant bias of ECIs towards social movements and national organisations but rather towards EU groups able to play the institutional and the protest game. It finds evidence as well that the promoters of ECIs are evenly divided between organisations wanting to protest against the course of European integration and those wanting to influence its course.

Peoples’ Europe and the Limits of the European Public Sphere and Civil Society

This article considers the contexts within which the debates on European civil society are taking place. It considers the relationship among the European Union (EU)-motivated civil society discussions, member-state behaviour in relation to social change, and, more broadly, people's everyday engagements. The main question posed is whether there is a distinction between European civil society as perceived by the EU and member states and the European social space that is informed by people's interactions and negotiations with each other on norms and values guiding their everyday lives. The main aim of the article is to illuminate the relationship between people's everyday experiences of each other and how these experiences inform how different people participate in civil society debates.

The Place of Religion in Habermas's Transformed Public Sphere

Our essay reflects on Jurgen Habermas's (1962/1989) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere from the perspective of recent changes in Habermas's thinking on what kinds of deliberative conditions, warrants, and ought to be part of deliberative claims made and contested in a public sphere. Maybe more than in any other of Habermas's works, Structural Transformation outlined a set of counterfactual expectations for a public sphere. These counterfactual norms were criticized both for their idealism and for the actuality of their perceived exclusionary tendencies; Calhoun (1992) notes that even Habermas himself was less than satisfied with his work. Our purpose in this essay is not to add to the criticisms of this work, but to reflect on an opportunity Habermas opened and prefigured in Structural Transformation but did not pursue until recently: the possibility of integrating religious discourse into the public sphere, predicated on his recent references to a post-secular society as the touchstone for rational deliberative practice (2005, 2006, 2008, 2010). Backing and warranting decisions through religiously based claims has been a defining characteristic of U.S. public and political discourse. Whether one judges this to be a positive or negative aspect of civic discourse in the United States, religious language matters in deliberative practice here, carrying the kind of communicative power Habermas saw operating in and through a public sphere: It carries weight in the legitimization of claims about both character and policy. Yet despite the wide use of Habermas's early works to model, critique, and understand public deliberation in the U.S., Structural Transformation itself makes scant reference to religion. In part, this is due to the historical and political structure of European civil society, on which Habermas's work is based. His historical survey of the origins of European public spheres distinguishes between the State and the Public, with few references to the and religion, likely because matters of state and religion have been more closely connected--formally, if not in practice--in past and present-day Europe than in the United States. Habermas (1962/1989) treats the Church, for example, as just one institutional entity among many under human/civic law: Church itself continued to exist as one corporate body among others under public (p. 12; see also pp. 33, 36, 40, 133). As a consequence, his discussion of State legitimacy and sovereignty emphasizes law over religion in a way that would be different had he located the origins of the public sphere before eighteenth century Europe, when the still occupied significant public roles. The crux of Habermas's thinking about the role of the lies in the notion of publicity and privacy. In Structural Transformation, Habermas (1962/1989) argues that religion had over time transformed into a private engagement (pp. 11, 68, 90, 91), which moved religion into the space of private interest that is to be bracketed in engagements within a public sphere. In his earlier work, religious doctrine did not meet the requirements of good reasons necessary for productive public debate. Religion was, both in its use and in its logic, private; it pertained to private interests and, from a deliberative standpoint, did not make the evidence and warrants behind its claims available to public con-testing. But his recent re-thinking of religion's role (e.g., Habermas, 2005, 2006, 2008) rests, we argue, on this issue of privacy. Habermas tries to demonstrate that his former views create an imbalance in deliberative obligation for citizens of faith. He has pointed to the continued influence of religion, both in the foundational elements of Western democracy and the current U.S. political sphere, as a reason to reconsider the necessity of only secular justifications for religious claims. Asserting that Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of western civilization (as cited in Case, 2006, para. …