Misperceiving Matters: Elite Ideas and the Failure of the European Constitution
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Misperceiving Matters: Elite Ideas and the Failure of the European Constitution David J. Bailey Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, ERI Building, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
The ongoing problems confronting the European political elite in its attempt to legitimate the European Union (EU) suggest the existence of substantial obstacles to the legitimation of the EU polity. This article presents the findings of a survey conducted from a critical realist perspective, in which the views held by the European political elite about the objections of the European public to the process of European integration are compared with the objections actually expressed by the public themselves, in the specific instance of the French and Dutch no-votes in the referendums on the European Constitution in 2005. The findings suggest a disjuncture between the perceptions of the European political elite regarding popular objections to the EU polity, and the objections actually expressed. In particular, the survey identifies a tendency among the European political elite to redirect blame for political failure towards external (national-level or extraEuropean) factors and/or to re-interpret political failure in terms that confirm (rather than repudiate) existing ideological predispositions. Comparative European Politics (2008) 6, 33–60. doi:10.1057/palgrave.cep.6110121 Keywords: European Union; European constitution; legitimacy; ideas; public opinion; elite surveys
Introduction The rejection of the European Constitution in the French and Dutch referendums of May and June 2005 was the most recent expression of an (often-noted) public disapproval or disengagement with the European Union (EU), which is part of an ongoing problem with EU legitimation (Lord and Beetham, 2001; Eriksen and Fossum, 2004; Mather, 2006).1 Indeed, since the re-launching of European integration with the Single European Act, Europe’s political elite has struggled to convince its populace of both the value and legitimacy of the increasingly empowered supranational tier of European political authority. Besides the French and Dutch no-votes, we have witnessed a series of expressions of popular disapproval, including the French ‘petit oui’, declining turnout in the elections to the European Parliament, no-votes on
David J. Bailey Elite Ideas and the Failure of the European Constitution
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European integration in referendums in Denmark, Ireland and Sweden, and an approval rate for the EU that struggles to climb above 50%. Moreover, many of the attempts to respond to these expressions of dissatisfaction have actually exacerbated popular opposition to European integration. Indeed, the European Constitution itself was initially introduced as a means to resolve some of the legitimacy problems faced by the EU (on this tendency for crises of European legitimacy to recur, see Bailey, 2006). Experience therefore suggests the existence of significant obstacles to the realization of a legitimate and popu
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