Suchergebnisse

The debate over the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) in late 2018 showcases the crucial role of digital and, in particular, social media as vehicles of disinformation that populist actors can exploit in an effort to create resentment and fear in the public sphere. While mainstream political actors and legacy media initially did not address the issue, right-wing populist actors claimed ownership by framing (presumably <em>obligatory</em>) mass immigration as a matter of social, cultural, economic, and not least political risk, and created an image of political and cultural elites conspiring to keep the issue out of the public sphere. Initially advanced via digital and social media, such frames resonated sufficiently strongly in civil society to politicize the GCM in various national public spheres. In this article, these dynamics are explored by comparing the politicization of the GCM in three EU member states, namely Germany, Austria, and Sweden. Using a process-tracing design, the article (a) identifies the key actors in the process, (b) analyzes how the issue emerged in social and other digital media and travelled from digital media into mainstream mass media discourse, and finally (c) draws comparative conclusions from the three analyzed cases. Particular emphasis is placed on the frames used by right-wing populist actors, how these frames resonated in the wider public sphere and thereby generated communicative power against the GCM, ultimately forcing the issue onto the agenda of national public spheres and political institutions.

The debate over the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration (GCM) in late 2018 showcases the crucial role of digital and, in particular, social media as vehicles of disinformation that populist actors can exploit in an effort to create resentment and fear in the public sphere. While mainstream political actors and legacy media initially did not address the issue, right-wing populist actors claimed ownership by framing (presumably obligatory) mass immigration as a matter of social, cultural, economic, and not least political risk, and created an image of political and cultural elites conspiring to keep the issue out of the public sphere. Initially advanced via digital and social media, such frames resonated sufficiently strongly in civil society to politicize the GCM in various national public spheres. In this article, these dynamics are explored by comparing the politicization of the GCM in three EU member states, namely Germany, Austria, and Sweden. Using a process-tracing design, the article (a) identifies the key actors in the process, (b) analyzes how the issue emerged in social and other digital media and travelled from digital media into mainstream mass media discourse, and finally (c) draws comparative conclusions from the three analyzed cases. Particular emphasis is placed on the frames used by right-wing populist actors, how these frames resonated in the wider public sphere and thereby generated communicative power against the GCM, ultimately forcing the issue onto the agenda of national public spheres and political institutions.

The book is a highly interesting read particularly for international audiences hoping to get a deeper insight not only into the causes and consequences of the collapse of the three banks, but more importantly also into the histo rical, political - cultural, and no less into the political - psychological background and dimension of the crisis. The chapters presenting Iceland's economic history as well as the rise and fall of the Icelandic banks therefore present a very useful summary o f the existing literature on the subject, although the interested reader could also have hoped for a more diverse selection of sources.

Considering the myths that have been spun not only on the causes of the crisis, but maybe more importantly on the democratic awakening in Icelandic society in the aftermath, it is evident that a much broader audience – especially outside Iceland – should have a keen interest in understanding the political and societal climate that facilitated the emergence of the phenomenon that has also been termed "Viking Capitalism".

Apart from the question of whether permanent exemptions from EU rules could be achieved in Iceland's (by now halted) EU accession negotiations, the EU's institutional development in the wake of the Lisbon Treaty has been used as a key argument for the conservative government to first suspend the negotiations and subsequently also to propose to withdraw the membership application altogether. In this regard, concerns about the democratic quality of EU decision making play a key role. However, as this article argues, the institutional development of the EU since Lisbon, particularly in relation to democratic governance, has been considerably more subtle than it is claimed to be and has to be seen as a continuation of a much longer process. More importantly, however, the debate leaves pressing questions about the nature of the EU as a polity unaddressed. In this context, this article addresses the question of what kind of democracy is possible in the kind of polity sui generis that the EU undoubtedly is.

The introduction of the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) in the Lisbon Treaty has given the European Union (EU) its strongest element of transnational participatory democracy to date. One million EU citizens from at least seven different member states can now request legislative proposals from the European Commission. This article discusses the ECI from a small-states perspective, assessing its impact on the role of small-state citizens in the union. The theoretical argument draws both on the international relations literature on small states and on James Bohman's work on transnational democracy, suggesting that the ECI is a particularly fruitful tool that gives EU citizens an institutional incentive for initiating deliberation on perceived injustices. The empirical argument presents the findings of a quantitative analysis of the organizers of the first sixteen initiatives, suggesting that the ECI is indeed a tool used by citizens from the union's smaller states. However, the analysis also shows that state size can and should be conceptualized not merely in terms of traditional indicators such as most importantly population size, but also in terms of constructivist notions of perceptual size.

Extraction:

Drawing on unique material, the book presents an empirically rich and theoretically relevant contribution not just to issues regarding the role of small states within or outside the union, but also allows for broader conclusions regarding the institutional logics that explain political action in the context of European integration. In the Icelandic context, its relevance stems mainly from the fact that it asks a somewhat different question: it is not interested in the potential role that Iceland may have as a full member of the EU, but instead analyzes the channels for influence that are available already today to non-members such as the three EEA/EFTA countries Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein.

The European Union's Lisbon Treaty, in force since December 2009, introduced the European Citizens' Initiative (ECI) as a means of strengthening citizen involvement in EU decision making. A minimum of one million citizens from at least seven of the EU's current 27 member states can request that the European Commission submit a legislative proposal on the issue of the initiative. But the ECI is not only a means of strengthening participatory democracy in the EU. It also bears the potential for a more fundamental transformation of democracy, namely in the direction of transnational participatory democracy. Starting with a short introduction to how the ECI will work in practice as well as a brief history of participatory democracy in the EU, this article therefore examines the ECI from the perspective of democratic theory. How profound an impact will the ECI have on democracy in the European Union?

The European Union's perceived democratic deficit has various sources, but it is to a large extent the outcome of unresolved disputes about the locus of democratic rule in EU decision making. As decision making moves to supranational (and transnational) arenas, intergovernmentalists maintain that democratic legitimacy, and therefore also democratic procedures, should remain rooted in the nation state. Without settling normative questions as to whether a reconstitution of democracy beyond the nation state is desirable, answers to questions about the democratic quality of EU decision making will remain conceptually blurry and thus inconclusive. While these issues blur paths to a democratic reform of the EU's institutional architecture, they also impair the prospect for a fundamental infrastructural requirement for European-level democracy, namely a lively European public sphere that can serve as a counterweight to institutional decision making at the EU level. The literature on the European public sphere suggests that a European public sphere can be conceptualized as a transnational communicative network in the existing national mass media. Drawing on empirical material from debates on EU constitution making in Swedish and German daily newspapers, this article not only shows that newspapers already play an active role in framing EU politics, but furthermore suggests that deliberation on EU politics already follows transnational patterns. While deliberation is seen by some to hinge on the prior existence of normatively integrated communities, our analysis suggests that transnational communities with a preference for intergovernmental and supranational integration, respectively, are already well established.

What kind of public sphere is possible in the European Union? Against the backdrop of debates on the transformation of democracy beyond the nation-state, this study explores daily newspapers' role in providing forums for transnational debate in the presumed absence of an overarching European collective identity. It uses empirical means to reconsider the question of the supposed co-constitutiveness of the public sphere and political community. In Habermasian discourse theory, the deliberative public sphere is thought to bridge gaps in social integration, while communitarians claim that normative debate can only draw on pre-existing communal values. But if the public sphere has a social integrative function, how can we then conceptualize the minimum level of social integration that allows individuals to initiate a deliberative search for solutions – in our case in the European Union? This study contends that efforts to conceptualize this minimum level of social integration as an "identity light" fail to distinguish clearly between the identity of the community (even in a thin form) and recognition of affected parties on a given issue. Drawing on social constructivism, constitutional patriotism and Deweyan pragmatism, the study argues that affectedness ultimately determines recognition of legitimate participants in any political debate. Yet affectedness is constructed in framing processes. On this basis, the study explores whether transnational debate hinges on daily newspapers' perspectives and preferences on European integration and EU democracy. Daily newspapers are here presented not only as important framers of public debate, but also as bearers of normative views regarding the level at which democratic opinion formation on European issues should take place. Do newspapers with a pronounced preference for more democracy beyond the nation-state play a more active role in providing forums for transnational debate? The empirical analysis of debates on EU constitution making indicates that newspaper framing and transnational engagement follow cross-national patterns linked to newspaper orientations. This empirical finding suggests that despite the presumed absence of a thick sense of European community, lively transnational debate is possible even in newspapers favoring intergovernmental integration. On the other hand, the empirical also indicates that the inclusion of non-domestic speakers as authors presents a challenge for a European public sphere understood as a shared communicative space.