On the wake of the failed referenda of the European Union Constitution in France and the Netherlands in 2005, EU and European national leaders proclaimed the existence of a 'communications gap', by which the incomplete and scarce coverage of EU issues by the news media, along with the denial of national leaders to acknowledge the European dimension of political life, were behind Europeans' seeming rejection of further European integration and the lower participation levels in European Parliament elections. This thesis challenges this mediation theory to explain the lack of popular political engagement with European politics and suggests instead a cultural and structural explanation that would account for the distant and apolitical nature of EU affairs. Using in-depth interviews with a hundred EU political actors from two European regions in which the popular support for the EU is clearly divergent (Yorkshire in the UK, Eurosceptic, and Galicia in Spain, pro- EU), and drawing from evidence of a comparative content analysis of EU news in those regions' benchmark newspapers, I· argue the 'domesticisation' and 'politicisation' deficits of the EU are better explained by the elitist and anti-popular pattern of European integration, the neo-corporatist and diplomatic way of governing the EU, and the inexistence or incompleteness of a European political people (a demos). The EU political regime is found to be close to the 'managerial state' that Jurgen Habermas saw in post-World War II Germany. Even in those regions like Galicia where the EU is positively regarded, European affairs are an administrative (non political) matter, making the EU the sort of technocratic government that Carl Schmitt feared liberalism would lead to. The reasons why the EU is remote and difficult to politicise on a left versus right axis are, therefore, structural and cultural rather than communicational.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:550882 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Perez, Francisco Seoane |
| Publisher | University of Leeds |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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