Role of Intermediaries

3 Role of Intermediaries

For most Europeans, the complexity of the EU and its distance from everyday experiences has led many researches to consider the role of political intermediaries; group-level processes such as elites, parties, and the media.

3.1 Elites

There are competing means by which we understand the process of elite-mass attitudinal congruence. One is the top-down, elite-driven process whereby elites (also sometimes understood as parties) take on an issue position and mass publics align themselves according to their own ideological orientation, issue salience, and attitudes. The second approach is that parties/elites position themselves in accordance with mass opinion in order to capture a larger constituency and thereby prove more competitive in the electoral marketplace (see Carrubba 2001 ). It is the former theoretical approach that underscores the traditional understanding of this process in terms of support for EU integration as the EU has generally been regarded as an elite driven project. Germane to our discussion here, it has long been thought that mass opinions about European integration are a function of elite and/or party positions; therefore, the following two sections parse this overlap to focus on the explicit role of elites and parties, respectively.

The degree to which mass publics’ and elites’ views converge on a range of issue dimensions is imperative to the perception of appropriate representation (Dalton 1985 , 1987 ; Iversen 1994 ). While the source of citizens’ perceptions about the EU’s legitimacy have included citizens’ own institutional evaluations and media exposure (de Vreese 2002 ), elites have demonstrated not only a higher preference for continued EU integration and for the project in general but have also been cited as opinion leaders. Weßels (1995 ) has argued that due to the complexity of the EU project and distal proximity from the daily lives of individuals, the role of intermediaries is a necessary inclusion, such that evaluations of the role of national political elites led many to conclude that support for continued EU integration was largely an elite-driven process. There is a distinction between EU and national elites (Thomassen and Schmitt 1997 ) and various analyses show that most elites support European integration to a greater degree than mass publics, such as EU parliamentarians (Schmitt and Thomassen 2000 ) and governmental elites (Hug and König 2002 ; Aspinwall 2002 ). Yes, on the whole, popular attitudes regarding the EU are typically considered to be mediated or even manufactured through the attitudes of national and EU elites (Anderson 1998 ; Franklin, Marsh, and McLaren 1994a ); a premise that is increasingly contested (see below).

There has been some evidence of electoral competitiveness based on a combination of the left-right dimension and anti- and pro-integration positions taken up by party elites (Hix and Lord 1997 ). In older member states in which national institutions work well, domestic elites can affect how mass publics evaluate the EU (Franklin, van der Eijk, and Marsh 1995 ; Weßels 1995 ); yet, others have argued that following the Maastricht Treaty,²⁰ this may be less true (Niedermayer and Sinnott 1995 ) as national party elites have been argued not only to ignore EU policy implication in national political debates but even actively generate public resistance to integration (Anderson 1998 ; Franklin, Marsh, and McLaren 1994a ). Further, sub-national elites have been shown to view their nations’ EU membership as largely irrelevant to their platform (Hughes, Sasse, and Gordan 2002 ).

More recent examinations have reached a more nuanced understanding of the elite/mass public divide. Hooghe (2003 ) argues that elites view the EU and its continuation as a means to develop an effective and integrated economic market that results in more significant and unified international political actor while mass publics are more concerned with social policies that impact them more directly. That is, while there is a gap between the levels of support between elites and mass publics on EU support, these differences are a function of underlying and differentiated concerns about what the project can provide and what policies should be under the purview of the EU. National elites seek to exert national competencies onto international issues while mass publics are concerned about the ability of the EU to deliver social goods.

A result of increasing elite-mass disparity is indicated by a decreasing congruence between the policy positions of EU citizens and their elite representatives. As Thomassen and Schmitt (1997 ) note, mass-elite agreement on specific EU policies is known to be poor (see also Schmitt and Thomassen 1999 : chapter 9). This elite-mass discrepancy in policy positions further underscores popular perceptions of the EU as a less then fully democratic set of institutions by cultivating the impression of the EU as an elite playground, segregated from ‘real’ Europe. Schmitt and Thomassen (1999 : 201–202) argue that this might be the case as ‘Euro-crats’ are perceived as being recruited only from a group interested in the EU project and inhabitants of an insular worlds of Brussels and Strasbourg. But rather than assign this as a failure of an elite-mass relationship, they argue that European party elites are in fact ‘leading the way’ on issue of integration rather than being ‘out of touch’ with home constituencies and that the disparity is a constituent issue (Schmitt and Thomassen 1999 : 202). Or put another way, the distance between EU elites and their constituency is created by the sluggishness of popular orientation to adapt to the new realities and new issues facing the EU, or more generally, the EU project per se (Schmitt and Thomassen 1999 : 206; see also Hooghe 2003 ).

3.2 Parties, Partisanship, and Ideology

The role of parties has received little attention in early investigations into public opinion of the EU; yet, as of late, more researchers are finding it a fertile research question. The place for parties somewhat depends on the EU project itself; that is, whether EU institutions take on the guise of inter-governmentalism, predicated on the active participation of members’ states and their parliaments, or toward a more European parliamentary model under which the EP would become an effective supra-national parliament. For the question at hand, can the same be said for their role in shaping individuals’ orientation to EU politics? Can European politics be investigated through the lens of national party politics, and thus our understanding of citizens’ response to parties’ role as effective intermediaries of the EU project?

Contemporaneous with the expansion of the EU, scholars noted a decline in the role of traditional mass parties at the national-level (Dalton and Wattenberg 2000 ). Mass political parties have demonstrated a diminishing role in national politics, providing fewer cues and ideological heuristics to constituents and have been traditionally understood as means of representation, origins of coherent policy positions, and informational linkages between governments and their constituents. Evidence of citizens’ attachment to parties, citizens’ partisanship, were no longer effectively explained by their membership in specific social groups, a change that manifests itself as a slow popular, political demobilization. Several reasons for this process have been offered.

Some have argued that rather than a decline of parties, national parties are experiencing or actively undertaking a modernization in response to an expanding supra-national political realm (Panebianco 1988 ; Mair 1990 ; Katz and Mair 1994 ). Rather than the traditional role of parties as consensus-forming intermediaries of national political representation, they have shifted their focus to electoral competitiveness in the realm of increasing EU significance (Panebianco 1988 ). During this period, however, parties were argued to intervene in EU politics. Van der Eijk and Franklin (1996 ) present evidence that national political parties focused European Parliamentary elections on national issues rather than European ones. Thus, they argue, national parties could aid in the building of EU legitimacy by forcing European policymaking to be more transparent and accountable. Rather than pitting national politics against European politics, national parties could eliminate the ability of national politicians in the EU to mislead their national parliaments by removing these representatives’ ability to portray the EU decision-making process as a zero-sum game. Further, national parties might benefit in terms of being able to ‘point the finger’ at policy areas over which they have no control.

Partisanship is relevant at the national-level such that when people support national parties that are pro-EU, they are pro-EU independent of their personal characteristics (Franklin, Marsh, and McLaren 1994a ; Franklin, Marsh, and Wlezien 1994b ; Gabel 1998a ; Ray 2003a ; Hooghe and Marks 2005 ). Yet, the decline of partisanship has accompanied a decline in the relevance of social and political groups. Taggart (1998 ) has argued that parties in fact play a lessened role in the emergence of ‘Euroscepticism’, second to domestic contextual factors, and largely so because of a lack of national conversations on the matter (see elite Section 3.1). The sources of the decline of partisanship might include issue politics (particularly new issues such as immigration and security), a rejection of the incentives of ‘materialist’ parties (Kitschelt 2000 ), and the process of political sophistication (via education and communication). It may as well include a shift toward individual versus community values, signaling a shift from national- to supranational-level politics. All of these developments suggest that national parties are becoming less important than they once were, lowering the degree to which they can influence public opinion about a range of attitudes, including those about the EU.

Yet, perhaps the strongest case for re-inserting party politics back into the discussion of public opinion of the EU has been made by Marks, Hooghe and their various co-authors (Marks and Wilson 2000 ; see also Marks, Wilson, and Ray 2002 ). Marks and Wilson (2000 ) presents party competition over EU politics as historically determined constraints à la Lipset and Rokkan ’s (1967 ) cleavage theory of party alignment. They argue that parties do not take cues from their respective electorates’ on matters of the EU as individuals do not posses sufficiently structured orientations, clearly contradicting Gabel’s (1998a ; 1998b ) instrumentalist notion that individuals can determine what continued integration means to them (as ‘winners’ and ‘losers’). As national parties integrate concerns over EU integration into pre-existing and historically stable positions, this reasserts domestic politics into this question. Rather than a surrogate for EU-level politics, national politics and more specifically parties reflect less of the extant debate over integration than an extension of domestic politics into the EU arena.

Still, individuals’ partisanship has been demonstrated to move with their support for integration. Moreover, Ray (2003b ) has demonstrated that if individuals are strong partisans they are more likely influenced by party stances about the EU, especially if there is little controversy over a party’s policy stance about integration (see also Hooghe and Marks 2005 ). Given these additional facets of this relationship, it is important to note the steady decrease in intra-party consensus on European integration (as per party manifestos, see Hooghe and Marks 2006 ). Ray’s argument mirrors the proxy argument by arguing that national parties provide cues about the EU and in terms of future integration, individuals’ evaluate that contingency through the lens of potential domestic political outcomes. It also asserts the primacy of national political contests (or first order elections) over the perceived lower saliency of European elections.

Further complicating the party-constituency dynamic, the recursive nature of party positions and voter opinions is further exacerbated by the strategic responses of political parties to the opinions of likely supporters (Carrubba 2001 ). Evidence suggests a weak causal arrow for the effect of national parties’ positions on citizens’ support for the EU. Evans (2002 ), for example, shows that citizens’ opinions of EU integration are resilient in the face of positional shifts by their own party in Britain. More recently, Crum (2007 ) demonstrates that for referenda, many Europeans have displayed little support for the EU project despite their partisan affiliation with pro-EU parties. Although possibly related to the temporal nature of referenda (and narrower issues), there remains evidence of this attitudinal division among elites and mass publics in other time periods (Schmitt and Thomassen 2000 ). More recently, Gabel and Scheve (2007 ) provide a sophisticated statistical analysis of elite cues to suggest that mass publics do respond in accordance to elite positions (and messages) are more influential than early work has demonstrated even for the politically savvy citizen.

In conjunction with long-standing domestic constraints, discernable pro- and anti-EU parties have largely been understood along two dimensions. The first taps the normative underpinnings of the project placing social democracy at one end and market liberalism at the other. The second dimension, as we have seen some evidence of above, is the contest between the sovereignty of the nation-state in the face of the continuing integration or supra-nationalism (Hooghe and Marks 1999 ). While some have linked EU support with satisfaction with incumbent government (Franklin, van der Eijk, and Marsh 1995 ), more recent contributions have demonstrated further that support for incumbent parties is linked to pro-EU stances while support for opposition parties is anti-EU. Yet, while Ray (2003a ) concedes this point, he argues that this takes place under the contingency of the timing of national and EU elections (and EU policy referenda) such that, “…the effect of support for an incumbent party may be contingent on that particular political contest, and disappear at other times” (Ray 2003a : 260).

At the broadest level, right leaning parties are often more supportive of EU as the left views further integration as a manifestation of capitalist forces. And while it would seem naturally to conclude that citizens who support a national party that is pro-EU are often pro-EU, individuals’ partisanship demonstrates little correlation between support for integration and left/right party affiliations although parties line up coherently along this continuum (Aspinwall 2002 ). Again, Taggart (1998 ) as well cited domestic contextual factors for the lack of Euroscepticism in national parties such that Euroscepticism is almost completely absent from party platforms in Western Europe and that anti-integration positions are merely the product of minor parties’ efforts to appear as radical outsiders.

This discussion of parties is relevant to our understanding of public perception of the EU as the lack of parties’ electoral competition across an explicitly defined EU dimension does little to encourage their constituents to engage in the same debate, fostering a continued national debate rather than a pan-European one. A direct result of the fragmented European public is weak influence of individuals’ ideology as an explanatory variable, especially if citizens cannot correctly discern their parties’ EU positions. In doing so, this further limits the applicability of citizens’ left/right ideology as a useful heuristic in understanding the EU policy positions, more broadly. Taken together, these examinations of national parties suggest that the lack of a discourse by parties over the issue of the EU fails to provide meaningful positions on the EU debate and thereby limits their role as effective intermediaries.

As a consequence, van der Brug and van der Eijk (1999 ) address the disparity in mass publics’ and elites’ perception of the EU political world in order to assess the effectiveness of elections as an effective means of communication of mass publics’ political preferences. They find that voters “…have adequate perceptions of the choices offered to them…” (van der Brug and van der Eijk 1999 : 129) and they, “…perceive parties quite accurately in terms of left-right ideology…” (van der Brug and van der Eijk 1999 : 154); however, they conclude that European voters are not able to clearly discern national parties’ EU policy positions (van der Brug and van der Eijk 1999 : 153). This undermines individuals’ use of ideology as a meaningful heuristic to guide individuals’ assessment of the spectrum of EU policy positions and more importantly, parties’ alignment with those positions (Fuchs and Klingemann 1990 ) ultimately contributing to a feeling of disassociative representation.

3.3 Mass Media

There is evidence that mass media influence citizens’ comprehension of and eventual orientation to the EU, as well as their broad support for – and political engagement in – EU affairs. One measure of mass media’s ability to exert influence is predicated on the amount of EU policies, actors, and topics that they choose to include, thereby regulating the amount of exposure citizens are able to have. De Vreese et al. (2006 ) have demonstrated that the EP elections are more visible in the ten newer member states than in the pre-2004 expansion 15 members. For the former, broadcast and print news coverage presented mixed messages while for the later, the messages were generally negative toward the EU. They correctly assert that mass media are effective intermediaries of European politics due to the second-order nature of the electoral process and the distance from these citizens’ immediate experiences. Banducci and Semetko (2004 ) demonstrate that individuals are more likely to participate in EP elections in an environment of increased campaign visibility. However, their results may be a function of the increased profile of pro-EU actors and issues cultivating broad EU support (de Vreese 2002 ) or a temporal effect of a general heightened electoral season. Nonetheless, de Vreese and Boomgaarden (2006 ) demonstrate a broader effect such that in periods of increased EU coverage, individuals made gains in knowledge about the EU.

For Britain, several studies have examined the effects of media as a mediator of popular EU support. Most studies do not accord much explanatory power to media as their effects on popular attitudes are often significant but small (Norris et al. 1999 ; Newton and Brynin 2001 ). For example, Curtice (1999 ) finds little power behind newspaper consumption and individuals’ EU monetary policy attitudes. Relying on cross-national aggregate data, Norris (2000 ) has argued that when an attentive public receives extensive media coverage of an issue that has consistent directional bias, media have a discernable negative effect at the aggregate level; yet, this linkage is inconsistent and substantively somewhat weak. Like Dalton and Duval (1986 ) who earlier linked the tone of British press and support for integration at the aggregate level, Norris cites contemporaneous negative press coverage and attitudes regarding the Euro and the EU in general, although in using aggregate data, she is unable to clearly assign causality. Other authors have similarly pursued more specific policy implications of EU integration, particularly the Euro. Semetko, de Vreese, and Peter (2000 ) qualitatively compare the cases of Britain and Germany in the pre-Euro period of 1998-99 and demonstrate distinctly national news ‘spins’. This conflict frame or “economic consequences frame” (Semetko, de Vreese, and Peter 2000 : 135) is congruent with other studies (for examples in the Dutch case, see Semetko and Valkenburg 2000 ) yet is limited to the economic dimension of EU integration. However, another study supports the broad contribution of mass media as Carey and Burton (2004 ) demonstrate independent – albeit weak – effects of parties and media, but a more powerful effect in conjunction – and on message – with one another.²¹

Taken on the whole, while systematic attempts to employ individual-level media effects theories (agenda-setting, priming, and framing) has begun to make headway in small N studies, the examination of mass media and the support for the EU has progressed in a piecemeal fashion, relying on case studies and a fluid set of dependent variables. More importantly, this research and others (Meyer 1999 ; Anderson and McLeod 2004 ) has underscored the role of mass media as a contributor to flagging EU legitimacy via a communication deficit. This communication deficit is a function of failed attempts at connecting EU constituents to the integration project and conveying its relevance. This, coupled with what they demonstrate are often negative or ambiguous messages (see also Norris 2000 ), contributes to the inability to overcome the specific problem of EU legitimacy and even the larger issue of a shared public domain (Schlesinger 1999 ). Further, national and European media apparatuses, including both political and media actors alike, are creating a media environment in which regional, national, and trans-national media are competing and cooperating unevenly. This arrangement may alter our understanding of the traditional national-level media organization as EU broadcasting policy increasingly seeks to remove national barriers to transmission and ownership and establish norms for content. Finally, in the absence of a trans-national or EU ‘press corps’ (including the lack of a definitive EU spokesperson or unified voice), these changes are likely to continue to undermine the ability of national media to exert a clear and consistent role.

Although not limited to the study of mass communication in the EU, political communication scholars have cited the theoretical and conceptual difficulties in large N cross-national research. Deficiencies in conceptual comparability across audience members, technologies, presentation, and context in addition to the methodological difficulty in determining a ‘true’ media effect have discouraged large scale media studies concerning the EU (see Hallin and Mancini 2004 ). However, it would behoove scholars to begin to generate prima facie evidence as to the existence of a media-EU-constituent linkage (de Vreese et al. 2006 ).