Public Contestation Research Articles

Contesting European Solidarity During the “Refugee Crisis”: A Comparative Investigation of Media Claims in Denmark, Germany, Greece and Italy

The migration crisis of 2015 and 2016 was a litmus test for EU solidarity, when increasing numbers of newly arriving refugees fueled its public contestation. Our overall assumption is that the “refugee crisis” contributed to a solidarity gap between inclusive liberal-cosmopolitan and exclusive communitarian attitudes in the EU. We investigate this assumption by contrasting positions regarding solidarity with refugees among state and societal actors. We base our analysis on a fresh dataset of solidarity claims in the largest print newspapers in Denmark, Germany, Greece and Italy for the period of August 2015 – April 2016 coded in the TransSOL project. These four countries were affected differently by the “crisis” and differently attractive for refugees and asylum-seekers as arrival, destination or transit countries. Results suggest a solidarity gap between state actors and societal actors and a higher degree of solidarity contestation in countries with state actors strongly promoting exclusive notions of solidarity. Results speak to the discussion about media representations of migration as well as the contestation of solidarity as a fundamental value.

Proving Their Worth? The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the Members of the European Parliament

Recent trade negotiations in the EU have provoked unprecedented levels of controversy, in particular the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) between the EU and the US. One crucial channel for public contestation is the European Parliament (EP) which, following the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, has to give consent to international agreements. Thus, this article sets out to answer the question: During the dispute over TTIP, did members of the EP (MEPs) engage in the public debate, and if so, how? If they engage in debates, what characterises their engagement: Do they engage with voter concerns, do they engage in a responsive manner, and do they contribute to politicisation as quite a few feared? Building on an analysis of newspaper coverage and plenary debates in the EP, the article shows that many supporters of TTIP attempted to de-politicise the debate, while opponents most frequently evoked ‘the voice of the people’ to politicise TTIP. Thus, MEPs do not only respond to politicisation, they also attempt to make politicisation happen by evoking public concerns. The article highlights the multifaceted relationship between responsiveness and politicisation, where claims responding to voter concerns, are used both to incite contestation and alleviate it.

Eurosceptics into the Limelight? Eurosceptic Parliamentary Actors and Media Bias in EU Affairs

In the spotlight for some time now, the potential of national parliaments to legitimise EU politics has become even more salient given the growing politicisation and public contestation of EU issues. Their ability to realise this potential depends, however, vitally on citizens being actually aware of parliamentary involvement in EU affairs. Academic as well as political attention has therefore more recently turned to the communication function of parliaments, and here the media play a crucial role. Important is not only whether EU parliamentary affairs are covered in the media, but also <em>who</em> within parliament gets the opportunity to raise European issues in the media. In the context of this thematic issue, the question of media visibility is of particular interest with regard to Eurosceptic parliamentary party groups and their members. Do Eurosceptics in parliament get to dominate parliamentary EU news in the media and thus to take ownership of EU issues—or do the media freeze parliamentary Eurosceptics out of the coverage? Both would seriously undermine the legitimising potential of national parliaments. The article therefore analyses to what extent we can find a visibility bias in the print media coverage of Eurosceptic parliamentary actors and explores the factors that contribute to such bias. For the analysis, it draws on a quantitative dataset of all newspaper articles covering parliamentary EU affairs in six member states (Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Poland and the UK) over a period of four years (2010 to 2013).

Exploring the potential for common European politics: cross-national commonalities and differences in the European constitutional referendums

ABSTRACTThe European Union and especially European political integration have increasingly become subject to public contestation. The need to build consensus across different national polities severely limits elites’ policy options. In this article we investigate the potential to build cross-national coalitions among the European public using data on the referendums on the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE). We argue that existing cleavage structures should create both opportunities and hurdles for cross-national cooperation and investigate these patterns in all countries where referendums took place (Spain, France, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg). Using binary logistic regressions we find that strong common patterns, especially along party-political lines, co-exist with country-specific factors. These results demonstrate some potential for a supra-national European political space and discourse and that political parties could play a central part in that process.

When it rains: Stormwater management, redevelopment, and chronologies of infrastructure

Across the United States, a number of older cities face the immediate challenges of aging and inadequate water systems. Given the fragilities of water systems, municipalities have begun to manage the effects of flooding and reduce the impact of disruptive weather events using a range of stormwater management strategies. This article offers an ethnographic account of flooding and stormwater management in the city of Newark, New Jersey, examining stormwater management, urban redevelopment, and their entanglements in a postindustrial landscape. It discusses the implications of stormwater management strategies in a city that is reinventing itself with an eye to a history of economic decline and deindustrialization and another to chronic flooding and increasingly vulnerable infrastructures. First I analyze public contestation surrounding redevelopment and displacement to argue that a focus on infrastructure burdens as it pertains to flooding helps us to understand urban transformation as it is experienced through the body. Then I focus on the use of open space gardens for stormwater management, revealing the ways in which flood resilience is built into the landscape and the lives of residents. Juxtaposing increased density and vacancy in different parts of the city, this article reveals how concurrent measures of time, progress, and development emerge through stormwater management in the process of building flood resilience.

Contesting Instrumental Knowledge With Communicative Action: Why Kalabagh Dam (Pakistan) Remains Unbuilt

The building of Kalabagh Dam—Pakistan’s largest hydropower development project—has been stalled for decades. This article interrogates why and how this project has been grounded for so long. It shows that the state and its administrative agencies that support dam building rest their case on “expert” knowledge, while dismissing the counterknowledge produced by the anti-dam coalition of environmentalists, nationalists, and spiritualists as “inexpert.” Consequently, the dam has become a proxy for contending knowledge claims between the dam’s supporters and anti-dam activists. Deploying Habermas’s communicative action theory that critiques expert knowledge as “instrumental rationality,” this article demonstrates that the Pakistani anti-dam movement’s communicative action played the pivotal role in stalling the dam’s building. It typologizes actors, defending and opposing the dam, and documents their knowledge claims. The article contributes to the environmental movement literature by illuminating the ways in which anti-dam activists structure communicative claims, and deploy them for the public contestation of instrumental knowledge and interests.

Reversing regimes and concepts: from democratization to autocratization

The debate on regime change has experienced a U-turn. Attention has shifted from the regime transitions occurred during the so-called third wave of democratization to the signals of an incipient reverse trend. However, the actual import and urgency of the problem remain unclear, due to a growing confusion concerning what a process opposite to democratization is, how many distinct forms it can take, and consequently what the empirical referents of the phenomenon are. Building on the notion of “autocratization”, or regime change towards autocracy, the paper elaborates a framework for the comparative analysis of regime changes opposite to democratization. Specifically, we identify political participation, public contestation and executive limitation as the main dimensions of regime variance, define autocratization accordingly, illustrate and systematize the different regime transitions that fall under this label, and clarify what autocratization is not. The proposed conceptual and analytical framework could support future research on comparative autocratization.

Ensuring Access to Information: International Law's Contribution to Global Justice

This essay examines the role of international law is in promoting indirectly global (and domestic) distributive justice. This focus on institutions and processes at the global level is grounded on the assumption that questions of the just allocation and reallocation of resources are ultimately resolved through processes of public deliberation or open contestation (including through the involvement of courts). I argue that the key to approaching a more just allocation of resources is by addressing the democratic deficits that underlie the skewed distribution (or the lack of redistribution) of assets and opportunities. My claim is that international law can play a role in the political empowerment of weak constituencies (within and between states). In doing so, international law can indirectly shape the distribution and redistribution of resources, in a manner that is more dignified and preferable to handing them charitable contributions. Just like the empowerment of labor by the freedom of association, legal intervention that empowers disadvantaged communities will not only increase their bargaining power, but also enable them to function as agents rather than as charity recipients.

Journalism Studies Beyond Journalism

This article discusses the work of Michael Schudson and encourages research in journalism studies that addresses the formation of publics rather than only journalistic institutions. Reviewing Schudson’s work on the cultural history of modern journalism, the article focuses especially on the relation of journalism to culture and technology. The first part argues that Schudson’s proficiency in cultural history distinguishes his writings as both profound, witty and appealing for expert and non-expert readers alike. His early works vividly explore the historical contingencies that defined modern journalism as an important site for cultural negotiation over what it means to live in the present. The second part critically points out Schudson’s reluctance to theorise the relation of journalism to technology, even though he has implicitly interrogated the “content of the form” of modern journalism throughout. The last part is a plea for an extension of journalism studies to understand processes in which publics are forming today. In regard of a radically pluralised field of public contestation in social media and other online platforms, Schudson’s insistence on the relevance (and privilege) of journalistic institutions should be amended by a methodological renewal to investigate new modes of public articulation—beyond journalism.

The Law of Emergency and Reason of State

This paper examines the role of human rights in political emergencies. It introduces the concept of reason of state as an alternative to theories of emergency powers that are based on either state prerogative or liberal legalism. It argues that state prerogative and liberal legalism suffer from a common defect: both are premised on a dynamic of norm and exception and thus are poorly equipped to deal with the ‘pseudo-emergencies’ that dominate state practice today. Reason of state better illuminates ongoing legal and political dynamics by focusing on the state’s role as custos – a guardian or protector of the regime of law – and the pressures such a claim place on legal order. Viewed from this perspective, human rights adjudication can be seen as a mechanism for normalizing and constitutionalizing reason of state by subjecting its exercise to public deliberation, contestation, and justification.

Ein betrunkener Gast?

This paper examines the influence of populist radical-right parties (PRRPs) on the democratic quality in Europe. We build on both, theoretical work and qualitative evaluations on the influence of populism on democratic quality. We follow Cas Mudde and Cristobal Rovira Kaltwasser’s (2012) distinction between populism in government and populism in opposition. We expect populism in opposition to function as a corrective. That is to say, it acts as a “drunken guest” who blurts out painful truths (e. g. issues which are ignored by other parties or shortcomings of policy outputs). In government, however, it is likely to harm democratic quality since it does not respect the rules of public contestation (e. g. undermining the legitimacy of democratic institutions). Furthermore, we contend that the effect’s size is moderated by the level of consolidation, and in the case of PRRPs in government, by the specific type of government. Our empirical tests reveal evidence for the effects of PRRPs in government. We further demonstrate the moderating influence of the cabinet type, adding to the existing literature by offering a comparative, large-n study and testing qualitative derived theory in a cross country setting.

Public Support for European Integration

Public opinion is increasingly at the heart of both political and scholarly debates on European integration. This article reviews the large literature on public support for, and opposition to, European integration, focusing on conceptualization, causes, and consequences: What is public support for European integration? How can we explain variation in support and Euroskepticism? What are the consequences of public support for elections and policy making in the European Union? The review reveals that although a growing literature has sought to explain individual support for European integration, more work is needed to understand the ways in which opinions are shaped by their national context and how increasing public contestation of the European Union poses a challenge to, and an opportunity for, the future of the integration project.

The knowledge gap in world politics: Assessing the sources of citizen awareness of the United Nations Security Council

AbstractThe past decades have seen a significant expansion in the scope and authority of international organisations (IOs), raising questions about who participates and is represented in the public contestation of IOs. An important precondition for citizens to become critically involved in the public debate about an IO is that they are aware of the politics of that IO. This article sheds light on this largely unexplored issue, asking why some citizens are more aware of IOs than others. This question is examined in the context of a powerful international organisation, the United Nations Security Council. Using a multilevel analysis of citizens in 17 Asian and European countries, this article argues that citizen knowledge about the Council is shaped by economic conditions and cosmopolitan identity. Higher levels of knowledge are found among the wealthier, and there is some evidence that income inequality depresses knowledge among poorer citizens. Furthermore, citizens identifying with groups or individuals across nation-state borders are more likely to know more about the Council. The article sketches broader implications for the study of the politicisation of IOs and citizen representation in the public contestation of IOs.

Republican democracy and compulsory voting

In this article, I focus on Chapters 4 and 5 of On the People’s Terms, chapters that deal with democratic influence and control. I take an applied political science approach to how Pettit’s republic might be practically achieved by exploring the under-appreciated capacity of elections to mobilise the resistance-prone, contestatory public upon which his republicanism depends. Whereas Pettit tends to focus on public contestation between elections and only demands that the public has the opportunity to vote when elections are held, I argue that they should be given a more prominent role within his republic and further, that access to voting is not enough: rather, citizens should actually vote. In order to ensure that participation is socially inclusive and that the public’s attempts at influence are ‘individualised’, ‘unconditioned’ and ‘efficacious’ in the manner Pettit desires, I suggest that compulsory voting should be a major pillar of his republicanism.

Tracking Comet ISON through the Twittersphere

People are increasingly turning to the Internet and social media for science-related information and communication. Online social media systems are a convenient source of timely and rapid information, including science-related information; however it is argued that the emergence of social media systems is a fundamentally new development in science communication. A distinguishing characteristic of social media systems is their support for ‘democratic,' user-generated content, and for the public debate and contestation of scientific ideas. The emergence of the online environment as an important source of science information is still comparatively new, as is research to understand how people find and use science information in this setting. This study investigates how information about comet ISON was communicated on the Twitter social media platform. Tweet time sequence visualization and network visualization were found to offer complementary insights into the Twitter data, and to offer a productive methodological approach for future research work.

Book Review: Europe: The Struggle for EU Legitimacy: Public Contestation, 1950–2005

Book Review: Europe: The Struggle for EU Legitimacy: Public Contestation, 1950–2005

Making democratic contestation possible: public deliberation and mass media regulation

While recent democratic theory has insisted upon the contestability of public policies as a key source of democratic legitimacy, the role mass media should play in fostering public contestation has yet to be specified. The role of deliberative theory in particular should be to try to identify which standards mass communication needs to meet in order to provide a general forum for democratic contestation. This article focuses on the theoretical foundations of such a project. It puts forward three claims. First, the contestability of public policy can only be a source of democratic legitimacy if citizens have the opportunity to participate in public contestation through – among other forums – a general public forum that is endowed with a deliberative dimension. Second, media pluralism alone is insufficient in providing such a public forum: both external standards (related to the independence of mass media) and internal standards (related to the norms guiding media practices) need to be satisfied. Third, and as a consequence of the preceding two, the democratic contestability of public policies presupposes effective mass media regulation that goes beyond the promotion of media pluralism. Democratic contestation requires more than a ‘marketplace of ideas’.

Making Democratic Contestation Possible: Public Deliberation and Mass Media Regulation

While recent democratic theory has insisted upon the contestability of public policies as a key source of democratic legitimacy, the role mass media should play in fostering public contestation has yet to be specified. The role of deliberative theory in particular should be to try to identify which standards mass communication needs to meet in order to provide a general forum for democratic contestation. This article focuses on the theoretical foundations of such a project. It puts forward three claims. First, the contestability of public policy can only be a source of democratic legitimacy if citizens have the opportunity to participate in public contestation through – among other forums – a general public forum that is endowed with a deliberative dimension. Second, media pluralism alone is insufficient in providing such a public forum: both external standards (related to the independence of mass media) and internal standards (related to the norms guiding media practices) need to be satisfied. Third, and as a consequence of the preceding two, the democratic contestability of public policies presupposes effective mass media regulation that goes beyond the promotion of media pluralism. Democratic contestation requires more than a “marketplace of ideas”.

Anthropology and Ethnohistory of the Maya

Anthropological, linguistic, historical, and archeological research on the Maya proceeds today amidst public contestation, for political and economic reasons, of the identity of Maya people and the nature of Maya culture. Neo-liberal multiculturalism, struggles over dwindling land and forest resources, the intensification of international tourism, and the growth of pan-Maya movements repeatedly raise the question of who and what is authentically Maya. Our scholarship, while motivated by quite different concerns and interests, unavoidably touches on similar issues in its exploration of the forms and meanings of Maya expression, belief, and ritual from ancient times to the present.

Social Protest under Authoritarianism: A Critique of Regime Type and Instrumental Rationality-based Explanations

This article critically examines two key assumptions of the research on social protest. First, it explores the validity of the typologies of regime type that guide the literature on social protest and the presupposition that democracies are reasonably responsive to popular demands, including to those made through public contestation. Since citizenship rights are not evenly distributed among all citizens in these countries, it is argued that this assumption is unwarranted. Second, the article challenges the presupposition that protestors are driven by one form of rationality, namely instrumental rationality. In contrast, following Weber, it is argued that participants in public contestation may be directed by different rationalities. Specifically, protestors may seek to do more than simply influence policy outcomes. These arguments are developed with reference to the case of Palestinian citizens of Israel who initiated various forms of social protest under military rule, which lasted from 1948 to 1966.