The Enlarged EU in a Globalized World: A Comparative Analysis of Elite and Public Opinion Support for a Common European
In the context of the debates on the present and future role of the EU in a globalized world, in this chapter we focus on the prospects for a common EU foreign policy as conditioned by the attitudes of elites and public opinion within the enlarged EU. The
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Introduction The European Union as an actor of international relations is able to pursue its external goals in two ways. One instrument is its economic external relations (trade agreements, development and humanitarian aid), which have been developed parallel to the economic integration process. The other mechanism are the foreign, security and defense policies (CFSDP), where the integration has been less intense than in the economic realm (Hix and Høyland 2011). While some important progress has been made since the Maastricht Treaty in the area of security and defense policies, the EU is still far from becoming a unitary actor in world politics, and a common European foreign policy seems unlikely to emerge anytime soon. In the context of a progressive politicization of EU policies (Checkel and Katzenstein 2009), sometimes referred to as constraining dissensus (Hooghe and Marks 2008), it becomes crucial to investigate the patterns of both public opinion and elite support for further development of integration in this aspect. In the present chapter we argue that the structure of elite and public opinion attitudes towards a common European foreign policy conditions the prospects for its further development. In spite of apparent widespread support, we cannot take the aggregate public opinion survey results as a direct impulse to develop a common European foreign policy. Divergent national interests and reluctance to cede sovereignty in sensitive policy areas, accompanied by issues of democratic legitimacy (Lucarelli 2011), the problems of a common European public sphere (Risse 2010), and the absence of a clear common political identity constitute some of the obstacles to the deepening of integration within the EU.
A. Sojka (*) • R. Va´zquez-Garcı´a Department of Political Science and Public Administration, University of Granada, Calle Rector Lo´pez Argu¨eta s/n, 18071 Granada, Spain e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] A. Boening et al. (eds.), Global Power Europe - Vol. 1, Global Power Shift, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-32412-3_4, # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013
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A. Sojka and R. Va´zquez-Garcı´a
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Furthermore, in spite of efforts aimed at bringing its policy-making closer to the citizens, European policy-making remains a primarily elite-driven process. Therefore, the existing fragmentation in national public spheres is made worse due to a widespread disconnection between the generally pro-European national elites and the more Eurosceptic public opinion. Finally, the recent eastward enlargements have increased the internal diversity within the EU, as well as the number of strategic national interests which must be reconciled at the supranational level. Increased diversity encapsulated by the EU-27 in terms of historical state formation, nationbuilding, democratization and identity formation (Ichijo and Spohn 2005) results in important country-level differences in attitudes towards EU-level policies. These differences constitute the main focus of the present chapter. Our aim is to investigate them in the co
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