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Scarica summary of the chapter e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Politiche dell'Unione Europea solo su Docsity! EU POLITICS AND POLICIES IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD - B026821 V. Public Opinion and Political Participation I. PUBLIC OPINION, POLITICAL PARTICIPATION AND POLITICS Public opinion refers to people’s attitudes towards a given subject. Political participation: All activities that are aimed at influencing policies and/or the selection of politicians. While public opinion is about everything that people think, political participation focuses on what citizens actually do. In principle citizens have the same opportunities to be active in EU politics as in their own national politics. Electoral participation: voting in elections for the European Parliament and in national referendums on some aspect of European integration. There is a full range of forms of non-electoral participation stretching from contacting the European Parliament or Commission, sending letters to the European Ombudsman and signing petitions, to joining a national protest or even attending one in Brussels. Only a small minority of citizens actually engages them. At the EU level these activities are mostly undertaken by organised groups rather than individual citizens Public opinion and political participation are important for democracies because they connect citizens to the political system. If politicians are able to translate people’s demands into policies and if they success- fully tackle the most important problems this will most likely increase the legitimacy of the political system. Studying public opinion and political participation is crucial to find out to what extent people support their political system and how they try to affect policy- making. Legitimacy: The condition of being in accordance with the norms and values of the people. II. PUBLIC OPINION During the 2nd WW there was a proliferation of ideas on cementing the nation-states together. Political leaders had to be very careful in their plans for seek- ing new forms of cooperation between the nation-states. If there were to be some kind of cooperation between the different European countries, it was essential to find out to what extent the citizens of these countries supported such moves. In 1962, five years after the Treaties of Rome were signed, a Gallup poll concluded that there was ‘very widespread support for the idea of European unification’ amongst the citizens of the six member states. These general levels of support were accompanied by large majorities of citizens in favour of specific policies. When probed on specific themes a sizeable majority of citizens professed to be in favour of the elimination of tariffs (81%), equalising social benefits (77%) and a common agricultural policy (69%). For a long time public opinion surveys on Europe have been haunted by the problem of non- attitudes. A non-attitude is an expression of opinion which is not rooted in strongly held beliefs and hence can be very volatile. For most people Europe and the European institutions were so distant that questions on European integration were rather novel to them and did not tap well-developed opinions. The public opinion was seen as permissive consensus as the mood was supportive, and con- sensual because this was shared by a very large part of the population. The consensus enabled political elites to proceed with the integration project relatively unrestrained. One question which has been consistently included in every Eurobarometer asks citizens whether they consider their country’s membership a good thing, a bad thing or neither good nor bad. Thanks to its inclusion from the beginnings of the Eurobarometer surveys the question has become one of the most prominent tools to assess the public’s mood on European integration. All in all the figure shows that each country has quite different base levels of support that go up and down without there being easily identifiable causes of these up- and downswings. Opinions on the EU are predominantly formed within national contexts. It is therefore hard to talk about the public opinion in the EU. It varies considerably between the member states and it seems to be affected by country-specific events and circumstances, that may or may not relate to the EU. It is clear there is a considerable amount of variation between member states in terms of the levels of support for the EU: consequently the best single way to predict a person’s support for membership of the EU is to ask their nationality. If someone is from Luxembourg or Romania, support is likely to be high. If from the UK or Latvia, expect a critical audience. III. EXPLAINING PUBLIC OPNION Rather than evaluating the EU as a separate entity, people assess it in close relation to their general evaluation of politics. This then also explains why the patterns of support vary so much over time and between the member states. Many of the factors that determine someone’s support for national politics also determine support for the EU. Three groups of factors play a role: 1. Socio-demographic factors: Voting in the elections for the European Parliament remains by far the most common form of political participation for ordinary citizens. Every five years citizens in all the member states have the opportunity to elect a member of the European Parliament. Parliamentary seats are allocated in elections conducted in all member states, rather than in a Europe-wide election on one and the same day. EP elections draw substantially smaller numbers of voters to the polls than national elections. Also, lower turnouts in national elections translate into lower turnouts for the EP elections, with rates which are typically 20–30% lower. We therefore first compare turnout for EP elections with that for national elections in each of the member states. Political scientists Karl- Heinz Reif and Hermann Schmitt classified these as ‘second-order national elections’. For many voters elections for the European Parliament are simply not as important as those that take place at the national level. One factor that may explain the ‘second-order’ nature of EP elections, and the fragmentation of public opinion along national lines in general, is the lack of a ‘European public sphere’. Rather than an integrated European public sphere, where public debate takes place and public opinion is formed, most of the public debate and public opinion formation takes place in domestic public spheres. The decline in turnout for elections is not unique for the EP. In most member states turnout for parliamentary elections has also declined over the past decades, but not to the same extent as for the EP. Apparently EP elections are still not salient enough for most voters: not enough seems to be at stake and in some countries parties are aligned to such an extent that there does not seem to be much to choose between them. The secondary importance of EP elections compared to these national ‘first-order elections’ has important consequences for the behaviour of voters: 1. Because many voters consider EP elections much less important than national elections, turnout is usually lower than for parliamentary or presidential elections at home. 2. Many who do vote in EP elections use them to evaluate national politics rather than European affairs. In this sense, voters use European elections to say something about the performance of their national governments. Consequently, governing parties will tend to lose votes in EP elections. 3. Because voters feel there is not much at stake at EP elections, they are more inclined to vote with their ‘hearts’ instead of their ‘minds’. They are more willing to vote for the smaller parties that they ignore in national elections because they feel they would be wasting their vote. Overall, EP elections, then, are not so much about the EU. The emergence of Eurosceptic parties in some of the member states has given voters a wider range of choices when voting in EP elections. In some member states Eurosceptic positions were only expressed by a single, extremist party, making citizens reluctant to vote for them, even if they agree with their viewpoints on Europe. In countries such as the UK, Sweden, Denmark and Poland there is a greater variety of positions towards the EU, with more mainstream parties also expressing Eurosceptic viewpoints. This offers voters a better choice in finding a political party that matches their political views. VI. REFERENDUMS ON EUROPEAN INTEGRATION Referendums are an example of direct democracy and give citizens the opportunity to vote on certain policy decisions. Most of the referendums on European integration have either been about the fundamental decision to join the EU (membership referendums) or the approval of new treaties (treaty referendum). Voters in general turn out in larger numbers for referendums than for elections for the European Parliament. This is so because: 1. most referendums focus on one single issue and give voters a clear choice. AND 2. the outcomes of referendums are generally respected by their governments. Hence, citizens will generally feel that a vote in a referendum has a greater impact than a vote in EP elections. Membership of the EU obviously constitutes such a major decision as it involves the transfer of sovereignty to a new supranational body. Getting the explicit support of a country’s citizenry provides a direct and explicit legitimation of such a decision and commits them to the European project. The referendum practice was kicked off in 1972 when French president Georges Pompidou used his constitutional powers to let French citizens vote on the accession of Denmark, Norway, Ireland and the UK. While most referendums yielded outcomes supportive of integration, several times voters rejected further integrative steps. In 1992 Danish voters rejected the Maastricht Treaty by a very small margin and in 2001 the Treaty of Nice was rejected by Irish voters. In both cases voters eventually approved the treaties after their governments secured modifications or opt-outs. Three factors play a role in determining people’s voting behaviour in referendums: 1. Attitudes towards European integration are the most important factor in determining a yes or no vote. The stronger voters are in favour of European integration the higher the chance they will say yes to their country’s membership or the ratification of a treaty. 2. Voters who do not have very strong pro- or anti-European attitudes are more affected by second-order considerations. The chance of those moderate voters voting in favour of integrative steps increases when they are more supportive of the current government in office. 3. Voters without strong opinions on the EU are more likely to follow the position of the party they voted for in the last election. Such voters make use of so called ‘party cues’ in order to make up their mind VII. THE SHIFT FROM A PERMISSIVE CONSENSUS TO A CONSTRAINING DISSENSUS General support for the EU has not dramatically decreased over the three decades. It has been highly variable in the different member states and has been affected by nation-specific developments. The picture is differ- ent, however, if we look at the participation of citizens in EP elections and referendums on European integration. Turnout has declined steadily and recent referendums on European integration have resulted in several rejections of further integrative steps. Recent analyses of the attitudes of citizens show that issues of identity have become more prominent in determining people’s stance towards politics, both at the national and at the European level. The more critical stance of EU citizens towards European integration can be seen as one of the expressions of this concern about identity. The Eurosceptical attitude that is witnessed in the behaviour of voters in EP elections and referendums has not emerged in isolation, but can be seen as one of the expressions of a concern to preserve national identities. This then also explains why nationalist parties – which tend to emphasise the importance of preserving national identity and culture – have been so successful both at the national and at the European level. All in all, the permissive consensus which facilitated integrative steps for so long has by now been replaced by a ‘constraining dissensus’ – a term coined by political scientists Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks to mark the new constellation in which European integration takes place. While the signals of citizens may at times be erratic, their overall message is clearly in the direction of a more prudent approach to integration in the coming years. Whether the political elites are willing and able to incorporate these messages in their policies remains to be seen. When French and Dutch citizens voted No, other member states quickly cancelled their plans to hold a referendum. None of them dared to submit the revised Treaty of Lisbon to a popular vote, except for Ireland which was constitutionally obliged to do so. While in the short term this may have been the easiest way to move forward, the strategy may turn out to be very costly in the long term, with an ever larger share of citizens turning their backs on the EU. SUMMARY: