Political Communication in Europe

The Cultural and Structural Limits of the European Public Sphere

Francisco Pérez

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781137305121
• eBook ISBN: 9781137305138
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The disconnection between the institutions of the EU and the people of Europe has often been attributed to the existence of a communication gap resulting from the failure of national medias and politicians to convey the importance of the EU. This book challenges that idea instead showing that the fault lies with the idea and institutions of the EU.

1

The True Deficits of the European Public Sphere: Domesticisation and Politicisation

The expression “communications gap” is, as noted in the Introduction, a loaded term that implicitly attributes to a mediation problem the distance between EU institutions and their citizens. In order to consider the “communication deficit” as one of the potential explanations and not the only explanation for the lack of popular engagement with EU politics, I derive from the literature on political publicity two concepts – “domesticisation” and “politicisation” – that account, without implying any media-related judgement, for the sociopsychological remoteness of the EU and the prominence of bureaucracy and administration over ideological conflict.

The two key issues where which I expect the European public sphere to be dysfunctional are a) its ability to enable domesticisation (the ability to facilitate an identification between representatives and represented) and b) its capacity to encourage politicisation (the capacity to visualise conflict between/among alternative/optional ways of governing a society). The term domesticisation draws heavily on Carl Schmitt’s concept of democracy as identification between the government and the governed. The term politicisation is also very much a Schmittian expression, but I rely on one of his interpreters, Chantal Mouffe, to distinguish between antagonistic politicisation (between enemies, such as the USA and Iran) and agonistic politicisation (between rivals, such as the UK’s Labour and Conservative parties). There is a tight relationship between the two concepts. As will be explained in the following chapters, a low level of domesticisation or identity is linked to antagonistic politicisation (e.g. the enmity between two countries), whereas a high level of domesticisation or identity should be related to an agonistic politicisation – an ideological, not existential conflict, between different conceptions of the public good – usually encapsulated in the ideological poles of left and right.

As Müller (2003) and Kennedy (2008 [1998]) indicate, Jürgen Habermas’ seminal work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, was clearly inspired by Schmitt, who is explicitly cited at the beginning of the book. Habermas’ denunciation of bureaucratisation and neocorporatism as the twin processes behind a “manipulative publicity” in which the citizens of contemporary democracies are invited to see but not to participate (Habermas, 1994 [1962]) echoes Schmitt’s criticism of Weimar-like parliaments in which rational discussion among a previously cohesive class – the liberal bourgeoisie – is replaced by backdoor dealings among sectoral interest groups.

Habermas’ work became more concerned over the years with the ideal forms of speech that should serve deliberative democracy best, leaving aside the inherent incompatibility between a refeudalised state (whereby the administration and corporate private interests reach a consensus that is later sold to the public) and an autonomous sphere of public and rational deliberation (whereby citizens criticise state affairs and become participants in the dealings that are now reached behind closed doors). His criticism was directed against the neocorporatism of the Adenauer governments in postwar Germany (1949–1963), but it could readily be applied to explain the EU’s current hurdles in its own popular legitimation. As a matter of fact, the “representative publicity” that Habermas sees replacing the bourgeois “critical publicity” is even more pervasive at the EU level due to the absence of true mass politics. The medieval publicity, based on the showing of status, on the embodiment of a power that is usually absent, is even more accurately attributable to the contemporary EU than to any national government.

The meetings of European leaders, specially the European Council meetings, are one of the finest examples of representative publicity. For Habermas, in the Adenauer age, parliamentary elections were the only remains of critical, bourgeois-like publicity, as electoral periods recreate, albeit weakly, the public’s chance to deliberate and decide on state issues. In the EU context, parliamentary elections are an even more imperfect mechanism of public control than at the national level, as the future of the community that is at stake – Europe – is rarely discussed, being replaced instead by national concerns. For Habermas, already in the Adenauer years, publicity had regained feudal features, becoming “representative” instead of “discussion-oriented”. This is still true at the national level, but even more true at the EU level, given the absence of that episodic electoral arousal of public deliberation.

Schmitt is relevant for the two dimensions under study (domesticisation and politicisation). On domesticisation, he deemed identification between populations and rulers as key to any democracy’s success (Schmitt, 2008 [1926]). On politicisation, his critique of the decline of parliament and liberalism’s rational discussion was influential on Habermas. But while for Habermas the key to contemporary democracies was to recover that missing rational deliberation, for Schmitt, liberalism’s search for consensus was apolitical (in the sense of not devising a friend–enemy division) and the Trojan horse of technocracy. According to McCormick (2008), liberalism could be defined in the following way: “Governmentally, the constitutional and institutional guarantee of limited government and individual rights; culturally, the emphasis on compromise over conflict, and the individual over the group” (p. 6). Liberalism’s scientific, rational, passionless and non-partisan pursuit of the best solution for public problems is closely linked to the apolitical and technocratic management of contemporary democracies, and in particular the “regulatory state” that the EU is claimed to be (Majone, 1994).

Habermas: Demonstrative publicity and constitutional patriotism

Few concepts have been so profusely discussed in contemporary political communication research as the “public sphere”. There is little doubt that German sociologist Habermas has been the great populariser of the idea, but the many uses of the concept have rendered the “public sphere” a “rhetorical token” (Benson, 2007), open to the most varied meanings and interpretations. Defined by Habermas himself as “a realm of our social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed” (1974, p. 49), the public sphere has been identified in contemporary societies with the (commercial) mass media, a far less critical and deliberative atmosphere than the political newspapers and the bourgeois coffee houses, where Habermas places the ideal form of active citizenship that he would like to bring back to our present times.

Much of the theoretical and empirical production that sprang out of Habermas’ seminal work, his 1962 The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere, has taken two roads. On the one hand, it has encouraged a reflection on the ideal forms of speech (the “ideal speech situation”, in Habermas’ language) to facilitate a “deliberative” form of democracy. The closest practical application of these ideals is said to be found in the so-called “civic journalism” movement, a US development very popular among US metropolitan newspapers in the 1990s (Haas, 2007). Second, Habermas’ decrying of the commercialisation of mass media sparked much criticism about media ownership. With the presumed democratisation of communication enabled by the Internet, much hope has been pinned on a public sphere reliant on alternative, non-corporate media as a means of enabling a more inclusive, participatory and democratic debate (McChesney, 1999).

My focus on Habermas is nevertheless motivated by a third thread of his seminal book, perhaps the more substantive of all but nevertheless the least explored: the “refeudalisation” of the public sphere due to the fusion between the state and society, between public and private, between governmental bureaucracies and organised social interests, be they those of business or labour. This third thread has clear implications for my study of the EU public sphere. If, as I contend, concepts like “networked multilevel governance” are the politically correct labels for old-fashioned bureaucratisation and corporatism, Habermas’ central concern – the transformation of the public sphere from “critical” to “feudal” – deserves far more attention for the EU-minded communication scholar than the ideal forms of speech or the commercialisation of mass media.

In hindsight, this surprising academic neglect of this core Habermasian discussion might have been due to several circumstances. First, Habermas’ work was originally published in 1962 and, though not explicitly named, Adenauer and his neocorporatist way of running Germany were the key targets of his criticism. The English translation of his book did not see the light until the 1990s, a decade in which the “deliberative turn” in political theory somehow pushed into the background the reflection on neocorporatism. Second, although the “hollowing out of the state” by contracting private companies implementing public services has been the source of much academic reflection in recent years (Rhodes, 1997, 2007), Habermas’ reference to the (then, in the 1960s) new age of “social welfare state” might have limited the universality of his critique on corporatism, as it may have been regarded as only applicable to certain European countries. Interestingly enough, given that the EU has been seen as a machine for the replication of the European (welfare, neocorporatist) state model across the Continent (Müller, 2007), I see Habermas’ seeming Europarochialism as an advantage, and as further evidence of the applicability of his critique to the EU case. Third, Habermas has declared himself very sympathetic to the European project (Habermas, 2009), which might have prevented him from criticising the EU for the same reasons he criticised Adenauer’s Germany.

Schmitt’s visions regarding publicity and politics played a strong influence on Habermas’ historical review of the evolution of the public sphere in the 1960s, but the vitality of the “deliberative turn” in political science has diluted the Schmittian influences on his thought, reinforcing instead the legacy of Karl Jaspers and his idea of constant debate as the legimating force of democracies (Müller, 2007, p. 18). This is a shift favoured by media scholars, who have focused on the ideal role that media or journalism could play in a more deliberative democracy. However, my work is an attempt to revitalise the Schmittian traces in Habermas, which in turn moves us away from the narrow focus on the mass media, contextualising journalistic practices within a broader scope, including state bureaucracies and civil society actors, the previously separated realms that Habermas saw dangerously mixing up.

I will now discuss Habermas’ concept of feudal, representative or demonstrative publicity, which I see as rightly applicable to the contemporary EU public sphere. Actually, I consider it as the key to explaining the depoliticisation of European politics. Then I will review Habermas’ idea of a European “constitutional patriotism”, linking it to my – admittedly Schmittian – concern about the differentiation between the representatives and the represented.

Demonstrative publicity: Is the EU’s public sphere “feudal”?

The “transformation” that Habermas deals with in his seminal work has to do with the shift from a critical public sphere, typical of the bourgeois times, to a refeudalised public sphere in the age of mass democracy, where critical deliberation over state matters is artificially aroused in electoral periods, and is not geared towards the best solution but to the commercial-style choosing of political options in the marketplace of ideas. The public sphere of mass democracies is feudal because the separation between the public (the state) and the private (society) is over: the welfare state, in response to mass demands, intervenes in the economy to a degree not seen in the liberal age, making more and more features of private life depending on the state. Likewise, private actors, namely corporatist associations, assume public functions. For Habermas, collective bargaining is one of the most prevalent features in this mixture of the public and the private: “Collective agreements between employers’ associations and trade unions lose their private character; they must have a public character, because the regulations they produce act as if they were law” (Habermas, 1994 [1962], p. 180). There is a transition from liberal discussion to corporatist bargaining, a shift from publicity – where power, in Habermas jargon, is “rationalised” – to backroom dealings that are later “sold” to a passive public. The parliament, the quintessential institution of liberalism, is weakened in favour of the dealings between the administration and trade unions or employer’s organisations. And, just as in the Middle Ages, publicity or the public sphere of mass welfarist democracies becomes “demonstrative” again. The public sphere is not that independent realm where the bourgeoisie assembles to criticise state affairs. In the age of welfare mass democracies, notoriety comes only after agreements have been reached between the state and corporate organisations. Publicity is not about debate but about public relations to win the public’s acquiescence. Publicity becomes medieval – “representative”, “demonstrative” – again, with political actors representing an idea (God-like power) rather than their citizens. Publicity is no longer about rational discussion. The modern prince (the government, the bureaucracy) and the modern estates (business groups and labour unions) “represent their power “before” the people, instead of for the people” (Habermas, 1974, p. 51). That is, “publicity imitates now that aura of personal prestige and supernatural authority so characteristic of representative publicity” (Habermas, 1994 [1962], p. 222).

The view of the EU as a neocorporatist pseudostate has a long tradition in the literature (Schmitter, 1974). It is not hard to tell in the real world either, as both local chambers of commerce and trade unions receive money from the European Social Fund to retrain, respectively, small business owners and workers. The European Council, which seems to have replaced the European Commission as the main policy initiator in the EU, is still not collectively responsible for its decisions, as European governments are reluctant to make themselves accountable to the EP. Much of its publicity is limited to press releases and family photos of strong monarchical reminiscences. EU publicity is much about a medieval “showing of power”, the European Council of heads of state and government being its finest exponent. The COREPER diplomats, whose task is to prepare the groundwork of legislation that is later passed at Council of Ministers meetings, are at least as decisive as MEPs, but their workings are not apparent to most Europeans. The COREPER, Lodge has criticised, is a bureaucratic decision-maker that acts as an invisible legislature (Lodge, 1996).

This said, it would be fair to admit that, as many critics have warned, no liberal democracy can meet the ideal requirements of strong and inclusive deliberation advocated by Habermas. After all, EU neocorporatism is just a pan-European translation of what has been going on for years in its respective constituent states. However, at the EU level the “emergency brake” of ousting governments through popular elections is unavailable to Europeans. If elections change little at the national level, they change even less at the EU level. This, I will argue, is in great part due to the two deficits that I want to highlight, those of domesticisation and politicisation.

Habermas offers a good explanation for the depoliticisation of the EU: corporatism does not want notoriety, or at least it wants it only to gain acquiescence, not to publicise debates. Nevertheless, the recipes he has provided so far are not as convincing. Habermas himself deemed naïve his call for a democratisation of the organisations dealing with the state, such as political parties, unions and other associations. The resuscitation of a liberal public sphere in an age when the public are not restricted to the well educated and property owners – the bourgeoisie – might indeed be doomed. As I shall discuss below, politicisation does not come from inclusive deliberation. Consensus and rational deliberation are usually better reached in secret than in public (Naurin, 2007). On this, the EU is very liberal – so liberal that it has many of the features of that hypertrophy of liberalism known as technocracy. Although Habermas criticises corporatism because it is depoliticising, in Mouffe’s view his remedy – rational deliberation and consensus – is also depoliticising, as politics would imply passion and conflict.

Habermas’ contribution to the domesticisation debate is also, like his recipe for democracy, highly rational, very liberal and passionless. In an indirect way, by urging a constitutional civil nationalism for the EU, he is giving his own reply to the “Schmittian imperative” (Müller, 2007, p. 79): that in order to work, democracies need some sort of homogeneous demos. That’s the task of constitutional patriotism.

Constitutional patriotism: A civic nationalism for the EU?

Constitutional patriotism is one among the many “Germanisms” that characterise the EU. The indirect German federalism, which endows Länder with the task of implementing the law of an elusive federal power, is said to have been copied onto Europe by the EU and its member states (Smith, 1999). Up to a point, with constitutional patriotism there is a similar German-to-EU translation.

After the Second World War, Germany was divided, and German nationalism was still tinged with the excesses of National Socialism. Popular loyalty to the new federal state could not be based on traditional nationalism but on an allegiance to the values and procedures enacted by the constitution. Jan-Werner Müller, author of the most comprehensive survey on constitutional patriotism available (2007), defines it as “the idea that political attachment ought to center on the norms, the values and, more indirectly, the procedures of a liberal democratic constitution” (p. 1). Though still quite abstract and, as Müller puts it, “bloodless”, German constitutional patriotism is nevertheless grounded on two sentimental assets: memory and militancy (Müller, 2007, p. 10). Germans share a “self-critical remembering of the Holocaust”; they are negatively defined by a genocide. The German constitutional “we” comprises those who regret and will never repeat the killing of Jews. Also, the German “we-ness” springs from a “militant democracy” that renders the “enemies of democracy” incompatible with the democratic game – hence the banning of the Nazi and Communist parties by the Constitutional Court in the 1950s.

Habermas is not the father of German constitutional patriotism, although he has been one of its main definers over time. What he can claim is his proposal to endow Europe with its own version of constitutional patriotism, linking the identity of Europeans not to their particular nations but to the shared values enshrined by the failed and then resuscitated Constitutional Treaty (Habermas, 2012).

The first reference to a “constitutional patriotism” (Verfassungspatriotismus) is credited to Dolf Sternberger, who introduced the concept during the 30th anniversary of the German post-Second World War Federal Republic (Müller, 2007). He talked then about “state friendship”, “a kind of civic reason that would make citizens identify with the democratic state and, not least, defend it against its enemies” (Müller, 2007, p. 21). He also claimed that until the arrival of Romanticism and its political correlate, nationalism, all patriotisms were constitutional.

Habermas vindicated the concept of a constitutional patriotism during the so-called “historians dispute” (Historikerstreit) (1986–1989). On one side, there were voices who wanted to recover a German national pride by claiming that the Holocaust was a reaction to Stalin’s Gulag deportations. Habermas was on the side of those who wanted Germans to acknowledge the past and posited constitutional patriotism as the more convenient form of political identification for Germans.

In...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1. The True Deficits of the European Public Sphere: Domesticisation and Politicisation
• 2. The Antipopular Bias of Integration by Stealth
• 3. Governing the EU: Consensus Diplomacy and Associative Corporatism
• 4. The “No Demos” Conundrum
• 5. Explaining the Domesticisation Deficit
• 6. Explaining the Politicisation Deficit
• 7. Conclusions
• Methodological Appendices
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index