8 - The restructuring of political conflict in Europe and the politicization of European integration

Summary

In this chapter, we link the debate on the emergence of a European public sphere (Wessler et al. 2008; Koopmans and Statham 2010a; Risse 2010) to current transformations of political conflict in Europe and the politicization of the European integration process. Our starting point is the assumption that the transnationalization of public spheres is both an “enabling condition” for the politicization of European Union (EU) politics and its product, as the premise of this book argues. The crucial questions, then, are as follows: Who are the driving forces and beneficiaries of this politicization? Which actors make most effective use of these new discursive opportunities? What are the most likely consequences of this politicization of European integration? Most authors agree that an expansion of the European public sphere and a politicization of the integration process are necessary preconditions for the further development of the EU political system. Normative approaches to European integration assume that politicization will have mainly positive effects on the integration process because it gives cosmopolitan supporters of the “European project” better opportunities to articulate their views and to mobilize European citizens (Delanty and Rumford 2005; Beck 2006; Habermas 2006a, 2011; Beck and Grande 2007; Eder and Trenz 2007). In these arguments, the link between politicization and European integration is crucial, although our knowledge on its constitutive factors, causal relationships, and dynamics is still insufficient. Against this background, this chapter explores empirically the link between politicization and European integration. Based on a dynamic framework of political structuring (Grande and Kriesi 2012), we analyze two factors that have been decisive in shaping this link: (1) the structure of political conflict produced by the recent politicization of the European integration process; and (2) the actors and actor constellations responsible for this structuring of political conflict.