Discourse Analysis And European Union Politics 1137393254, 9781137393258, 1137393262, 9781137393265

Table of contents :
Preface......Page 6
Contents......Page 8
Abbreviations......Page 11
List of Figures......Page 12
List of Graphs......Page 13
List of Tables......Page 14
List of Appendixes......Page 15
Chapter 1 Introducing Discourse Analysis in EU Politics......Page 16
What Is Discourse Analysis?......Page 17
Scope of Research......Page 18
Approaches and Research Themes......Page 21
What Can’t Discourse Analysis Be Used for?......Page 24
The Aim of the Book and Its Approach to Discourse Analysis......Page 25
Structure of the Book......Page 29
References......Page 31
Chapter 2 Discourse Analysis as a Research Strategy......Page 35
Agency–Structure as a Continiuum......Page 36
Discursive Conflict–Consensus as a Continiuum......Page 39
Causality and Types of Explanations......Page 42
Discourse Analysis and Time......Page 45
Multi-theoretical Analysis and Counterfactual Reasoning......Page 48
Ideas, Discourse and Institutions: A General Analytical Framework......Page 51
References......Page 54
Chapter 3 Discourse Analysis, Data and Research Techniques......Page 58
What to Read?......Page 59
Documents......Page 62
Interviews and ‘Naturally Occurring Talk’......Page 64
Survey Questionnaires......Page 66
Non-linguistic Data......Page 67
How to Read?......Page 69
Content Analysis and Computer-Assisted Text Analysis......Page 70
Problem Perception Analysis......Page 72
References......Page 74
Chapter 4 Discourse and EU Policy-Making......Page 78
Reforms and Actors in the CAP......Page 79
A Mechannism of Resistance: Discursive Path-Dependency......Page 81
First Mechanism of Transformation: Discursive Ambiguity......Page 83
Second Mechanism of Transformation: Translation......Page 86
Third Mechanism of Transformation: Discursive Entrepreneurship......Page 88
Fourth Mechannism of Transformation: Expertise......Page 91
Expertise in EU Policy-Making......Page 93
References......Page 97
Chapter 5 Discourse and the Strategic Usage of Europe......Page 103
‘Europe’ as a Strategic Discursive Resource......Page 104
Three Conditions Conducive for the Strategic Usage of Discourse......Page 105
How Can It Be Determined Whether Decision-Makers Invoke Discourse Strategically?......Page 108
The Usage of Europe in Banking......Page 109
Ireland......Page 111
Denmark......Page 115
Comparing Ireland and Denmark......Page 120
References......Page 121
Chapter 6 Discourse, Myths and Emotions in EU Politics......Page 126
Myths and Emotions in EU Politics......Page 127
Discursive Institutionalism on Political Myths and Emotions......Page 130
Green and Social Europe: Myths and Emotions......Page 131
The Production of Europe 2020......Page 133
The Reception of Green and Social Europe: Sectoral and Institutional Resonance......Page 134
The Emotional Appeal of Green and Social Europe......Page 140
Explaining the Reproduction of Green and Social Europe: Desire and Self-Blockage......Page 143
References......Page 146
Chapter 7 Visual Discourse, Imagery and EU Politics......Page 150
Visual Discourse, Symbols and Imagery......Page 152
The Roles of Imagery in ‘Green Europe’ Politics......Page 155
Comparisons Across Units: The Multiple Roles of Imagery and Institutionalised Opposition......Page 157
Temporal Comparisons: Dialectic Organisational Interests and Friendly ‘Othering’......Page 161
Appendix 1: Images Scores Directorate-General for Environment—Environment for Europeans......Page 166
Appendix 2: Images Scores European Environmental Bureau—METAMORPHOSIS......Page 167
References......Page 168
Chapter 8 Taking Stock and Looking Ahead......Page 170
Theory-Building Challenges......Page 172
Research Design Challenges......Page 174
Revisiting a General Analytical Framework......Page 177
References......Page 179
Index......Page 180

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN EUROPEAN UNION POLITICS

Series Editors: Michelle Egan, Neill Nugent and William E. Paterson

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS AND EUROPEAN UNION POLITICS Kennet Lynggaard

Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics Series Editors Michelle Egan American University Washington, USA Neill Nugent Manchester Metropolitan University Manchester, UK William E. Paterson Aston University Birmingham, UK

Following on the sustained success of the acclaimed European Union Series, which essentially publishes research-based textbooks, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics publishes cutting edge researchdriven monographs. The remit of the series is broadly defined, both in terms of subject and academic discipline. All topics of significance concerning the nature and operation of the European Union potentially fall within the scope of the series. The series is multidisciplinary to reflect the growing importance of the EU as a political, economic and social phenomenon. Editorial Board Laurie Buonanno (SUNY Buffalo State, USA) Kenneth Dyson (Cardiff University, UK) Brigid Laffan (European University Institute, Italy) Claudio Radaelli (University College London, UK) Mark Rhinard (Stockholm University, Sweden) Ariadna Ripoll Servent (University of Bamberg, Germany) Frank Schimmelfennig (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) Claudia Sternberg (University College London, UK) Nathalie Tocci (Istituto Affari Internazionali, Italy) More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14629

Kennet Lynggaard

Discourse Analysis and European Union Politics

Kennet Lynggaard Department of Social Sciences and Business Roskilde University Roskilde, Denmark

ISSN 2662-5873 ISSN 2662-5881  (electronic) Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics ISBN 978-1-137-39325-8 ISBN 978-1-137-39326-5  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39326-5 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Arterra Picture Library/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Limited The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom

Preface

The topic of this book is discourse analysis as a tool to study and understand European Union (EU) politics. The book is needed for at least two reasons: first, interest in discourse analytical approaches to EU politics has grown considerably since the late 1990s. Yet, the literature has been scattered often in the form of book chapters or journal articles. There is a need to take stock of this important research area in a book-length publication. Second, while much ground has been covered conceptually, empirically, and sometimes in terms of the development of analytical frameworks, there are still significant challenges to discourse analysis as an approach to the study of EU politics. This includes how discourse analytical approaches ‘speak’ to other types of theoretical and analytical frameworks directed at the study of EU politics, how we can further develop our research designs and ultimately improve our understanding of the EU. This book will be of interest for students of the EU and for students with an interest in discourse analysis for the purpose of political analysis. The book offers its readers an updated and accessible account of discourse analysis as a perspective in the study of EU politics. The general approach of the book is one that appraises “open political science” (Rosamond 2008).1 The topic is thus approached from a political science perspective, but with a view beyond this discipline, considering especially 1Rosamond, B. (2008). Open Political Science, Methodological Nationalism and European Union Studies. Government and Opposition, 43(4), 599–612.

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PREFACE

public administration, public policy, international organisation and international affairs. The perspective of this book is also one that accentuates discourse analysis as a set of analytical frameworks and strategies with specific research purposes, rather than generic discourse theory. In that sense, the book follows the recent interest in research design in EU studies and offers guidelines for designing research strategies with the purpose of analysing discourses in EU politics. The book accordingly aims to balance conceptual, methodological and empirical analysis. The book is the product of my interest in and work with discourse analysis as a means to study and understand EU politics. By kind permission, the book contains elaborations of my work published in Journal of European Public Policy, Comparative European Politics, New Political Economy, Journal of European Integration and with Palgrave, CABI and Hans Reitzels. I am grateful to the publishers, editors and reviewers. The research, especially as represented in Chapters 6 and 7, is kindly supported by the Danish Council for Independent Research under Collaborative Research Project Grant No. 12-125297. In writing this book, I hope to contribute to promotion of scholarly dialogue both within discourse analytical approaches and between discourse analysis and other approaches to EU politics. I dedicate the book to Charlotte and Eigil. Copenhagen, Denmark April 2019

Kennet Lynggaard

Contents

1 Introducing Discourse Analysis in EU Politics 1 What Is Discourse Analysis? 2 Discourse Analysis in the Study of the EU 3 Scope of Research 3 Approaches and Research Themes 6 What Can’t Discourse Analysis Be Used for? 9 The Aim of the Book and Its Approach to Discourse Analysis 10 Structure of the Book 14 References 16 2 Discourse Analysis as a Research Strategy 21 Agency–Structure as a Continiuum 22 Discursive Conflict–Consensus as a Continiuum 25 Causality and Types of Explanations 28 Discourse Analysis and Time 31 Multi-theoretical Analysis and Counterfactual Reasoning 34 Ideas, Discourse and Institutions: A General Analytical Framework 37 References 40 3 Discourse Analysis, Data and Research Techniques 45 What to Read? 46 Documents 49 Interviews and ‘Naturally Occurring Talk’ 51 vii

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CONTENTS

Survey Questionnaires 53 Non-linguistic Data 54 How to Read? 56 Content Analysis and Computer-Assisted Text Analysis 57 Problem Perception Analysis 59 References 61 4 Discourse and EU Policy-Making 65 Reforms and Actors in the CAP 66 A Mechannism of Resistance: Discursive Path-Dependency 68 Two Conditions for Transformation: One Necessary and One Conducive 70 First Mechanism of Transformation: Discursive Ambiguity 70 Second Mechanism of Transformation: Translation 73 Third Mechanism of Transformation: Discursive Entrepreneurship 75 Fourth Mechannism of Transformation: Expertise 78 Expertise in EU Policy-Making 80 References 84 5 Discourse and the Strategic Usage of Europe 91 ‘Europe’ as a Strategic Discursive Resource 92 Three Conditions Conducive for the Strategic Usage of Discourse 93 How Can It Be Determined Whether Decision-Makers Invoke Discourse Strategically? 96 The Usage of Europe in Banking 97 Ireland 99 Denmark 103 Comparing Ireland and Denmark 108 References 109 6 Discourse, Myths and Emotions in EU Politics 115 Myths and Emotions in EU Politics 116 Discursive Institutionalism on Political Myths and Emotions 119 Green and Social Europe: Myths and Emotions 120 The Production of Europe 2020 122 The Reception of Green and Social Europe: Sectoral and Institutional Resonance 123

CONTENTS  

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The Emotional Appeal of Green and Social Europe 129 Explaining the Reproduction of Green and Social Europe: Desire and Self-Blockage 132 References 135 7 Visual Discourse, Imagery and EU Politics 139 Visual Discourse, Symbols and Imagery 141 The Roles of Imagery in ‘Green Europe’ Politics 144 Comparisons Across Units: The Multiple Roles of Imagery and Institutionalised Opposition 146 Temporal Comparisons: Dialectic Organisational Interests and Friendly ‘Othering’ 150 References 157 8 Taking Stock and Looking Ahead 159 Theory-Building Challenges 161 Research Design Challenges 163 Revisiting a General Analytical Framework 166 References 168 Index 169

Abbreviations

CAP Common Agricultural Policy CBFSAI Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland CBI Central Bank of Ireland CDA Critical Discourse Analysis Commission European Commission Council Council of the European Union DG Directorate-General DG Environment Directorate-General for Environment DI Discursive Institutionalism DNB Danmarks Nationalbank EEB European Environmental Bureau EMU European Monetary Union EP European Parliament ETUC European Trade Union Confederation EU European Union EUP European Union Politics GDP Gross Domestic Product JCMS Journal of Common Market Studies JEPP Journal of European Public Policy MEPs Members of the European Parliament NGOs Non-Governmental Organisations Social Platform Platform of the European Social NGOs TTIP Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership WEP West European Politics

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List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Agency–structure continuum 23 Fig. 2.2 Discursive conflict–consensus continuum 26 Fig. 2.3 Rational choice institutionalism on stability and change politics 31 Fig. 2.4 Punctuated equilibrium 32 Fig. 2.5 Institutional layering 32 Fig. 2.6 Discourse: change and continuity 33 Fig. 2.7 Temporal comparison 34 Fig. 5.1 Transformations in Irish Europe Discourse 1990–2012 100 Fig. 5.2 Transformations in Danish Global & Europe Discourse 1990–2012 104 Fig. 7.1 Directorate-General for Environment/European Environmental Bureau images 2009–2016 148 Fig. 7.2 Directorate-General for Environment images 2009–2016 148 Fig. 7.3 European Environmental Bureau images 2009–2016 149

xiii

List of Graphs

Graph 1.1 Stacked development of journal articles on ‘Discourse and EU politics’ 1995–2016 Graph 5.1 Meanings Attached to ‘The EU’ Graph 5.2 ‘The Global’ Among Governing Actors 1997–2010 Graph 6.1 NGOs’ references to ‘Europe 2020’ 2005–2012/2014 Graph 6.2 EEB references to ‘smart,’ ‘un-/sustainable’ and ‘inclusive’/‘exclusive’ 2005–2014 Graph 6.3 Social Platform references to ‘smart’, ‘un-/sustainable’ and ‘inclusive’/‘exclusive’ 2005–2012 Graph 6.4 ETUC references to ‘smart’, ‘un-/sustainable’ and ‘inclusive’/‘exclusive’ 2005–2012 Graph 6.5 Businesseurope references to ‘smart’, ‘un-/sustainable’ and ‘inclusive’/‘exclusive’ 2005–2014 Graph 6.6 Emotional Appeals to green and social Europe as a share of total emotional appeals by NGOs Graph 7.1 Images as emblems Graph 7.2 Images as representation Graph 7.3 Images as ordering

4 102 106 124 126 127 127 128 130 151 151 153

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List of Tables

Table 3.1 Advantages and analytical usefulness of types of data 48 Table 3.2 Advantages and analytical usefulness of types of methods of analysis 56 Table 4.1 Discursive ambiguity 72 Table 4.2 Translation 74 Table 4.3 Discursive entrepreneurship 76 Table 6.1 Types of and total number of documents consulted 122 Table 7.1 Four types and roles of symbols in politics 142

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List of Appendixes

Appendix 1: Images Scores Directorate-General for Environment—Environment for Europeans 155 Appendix 2: Images Scores European Environmental Bureau—METAMORPHOSIS 156

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CHAPTER 1

Introducing Discourse Analysis in EU Politics

This chapter approaches discourse analysis as a distinct perspective for political analysis, in particular it focuses on discourse analysis in the study of European Union (EU) politics. Discourse analysis has, over the past two decades, transformed from a marginal and scattered research endeavour towards a vibrant set of approaches to understanding EU politics. The promise of discourse analysis is that it allows not only for political discourse to be captured, but also provides a perspective through which novel interpretations of politics can be made. Some of the issues discourse analysis directs the attention to include questions of political identity, social and political discursive cleavages, the constructions of political hegemonies, political framing and agenda-setting, and the role of media discourse in politics (Howarth 2005: 321). Such issues are not the exclusive research domain of discourse analysis, but are also areas of focus for other theoretical positions and analytical perspectives. Yet, discourse analysis has played a crucial role in developing the research agendas in the first place, some of which have indeed been adopted and even subsumed under other methodologies and theoretical perspectives. The current chapter is organised as follows. The first section outlines key elements of discourse analysis as a field of research. This is followed by a section presenting and discussing discourse analysis in the context of EU studies in terms of the scope of the research, different approaches and key research themes. A section then outlines what discourse analysis cannot be used for, followed by a section outlining the aims of the book © The Author(s) 2019 K. Lynggaard, Discourse Analysis and European Union Politics, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39326-5_1

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and the approach to discourse analysis adopted within. The final section presents the structure of the remaining of the book.

What Is Discourse Analysis? While discourse analysis is a rich and very diverse field of research, a few common features exist. First, discourse is the research object of any discourse analysis (Lynggaard 2012: 88). Hajer (1995: 44) defines discourse as “a specific ensemble of ideas, concepts, and categorizations that are produced, reproduced and transformed in a particular set of practices and through which meaning is given to physical and social realities.” This is an understanding of discourse emphasising the structure and production of collective meaning systems. Others such as Schmidt (2008) highlight the role of actors in producing discourse. She claims that: “Discourse is not just ideas or ‘text’ (what is said) but also context (where, when, how, and why it was said). The term refers not only to structure (what is said, or where and how) but also to agency (who said what to whom)” (Schmidt 2008: 305). Regardless of some variation in emphasis in terms of conceptualisations of what constitutes discourse, common to any approach to discourse analysis is a focus on the production of collective meaning systems. Second, discourse analysis is committed to the study of the products of discourse. Discourse analysis is devoted to questions of how discourse produces positions (or not) for agents to speak and act in discourse, how discourse produces knowledge and knowledge practices and ways of legitimising relationships between authority and the public (Milliken 1999: 229). The discourses dealt with in this book are essentially those that produce political authority allowing for EU institutional actors to act politically, but also actors outside the formal decision-making structures including non-governmental organisations, business associations, experts and researchers, independent agencies, think tanks, and the media. The book also addresses questions of how discourse produces rules for what is considered legitimate political behaviour and policies and the type of knowledge or expertise deemed relevant in EU policy-making. Third, discourse analysis aims to uncover the structure and boundaries of discourse. The structure of discourses and how different meaning systems interrelate—for example, in terms of overlaps and mutual conflicts—communicates something about the severity of political conflicts,

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and the potential for coalitions and compromises (Milliken 1999: 230). There are of course variations as to the exact emphasis placed on these various features of discourse analysis depending on the theoretical origins, and the empirical and analytical ambitions of individual studies. Yet, taken together, discourse analytical endeavours are devoted to the study of the development of the discursive structures and boundaries and their effect on actor positions, knowledge, authority and legitimacy in an area of social reality or, for the purpose of this book, in EU politics.

Discourse Analysis in the Study of the EU Scope of Research Discourse analysis has established itself as an important perspective on EU politics over the past two decades. As a field of research, it has come a long way since Diez (1999), in a special issue of Journal of European Public Policy on “the social construction of European integration” claimed that: “The role of language has as yet been largely neglected in studies of European integration” (Diez 1999: 598). The increased interest in discourse analysis is illustrated by the inclusion of discourse analytical perspectives in general and theoretically informed textbooks and the number of articles concerned with discourse in specialised journals in the field of EU politics. Looking first at textbooks, which all have subsequently been published over several editions, Jeremy Richardson’s ‘European Union: Power and Policy Making’ (1996) is an example of an early inclusion of a chapter that, in addition to actors’ interests, assigns ideas a prominent role in understanding EU policy-making. Wiener and Diez (2004) produced probably the first textbook offering a distinct chapter on discourse approaches (Wæver 2004). Discourse analysis is typically represented in textbooks as one among a number of approaches to governance in the ‘new Europe’ (Rosamond 2003), or discursive institutionalism is presented as the most recently arrived institutional approach among the new institutional schools of thought (Saurugger 2014: 95–99). Perhaps most notably, it seems to be a practice of the past to lump discourse analysis together with social constructivism or the broader notion of sociological institutionalism. The editorial choices of whether to give attention to discourse analysis and, if so, how much attention, no doubt reflects the theoretical and analytical interests of the textbook editors and authors in question. Yet, the increased inclusion

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of discourse analytical perspectives on EU politics is illustrative of it no longer being a marginal body of literature that is of interest only for the narrow circles of the already converted. Another way to assess developments in the use of discourse analysis as means for understanding EU politics is to review journal articles published in this area. Graph 1.1 is a simple count of such articles published in the Journal of European Public Policy (JEPP), Journal of Common Market Studies (JCMS), West European Politics (WEP) and European Union Politics (EUP). The JEPP, the JCMS, WEP and EUP are all ϭϴ ϭϲ ϭϰ ϭϮ :WW

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Graph 1.1  Stacked development of journal articles on ‘Discourse and EU politics’ 1995–2016 (Sources A total of 127 articles, 60 of which appear in JEPP, 41 in JCMS, 24 in WEP and two in EUP. Data collected December 2014 and June 2017 [Searches were conducted on the terms ‘discourse’ and ‘discursive’ in abstracts and titles so as to capture all articles that gave noteworthy attention to discourse. The vast majority of articles published in the selected journals are about EU politics in a broad sense. I have been inclusive with regard to research concerns with discourse, and articles are included that do not necessarily deal with discourse as a separate analytical category. Still, based the abstracts, a few articles were omitted if they were did not have at least some substantial concern with both discourse and the EU. Most omitted articles appeared in WEP, which is also the journal with the broadest research interest in politics in Europe, and is not narrowly confined to the EU/EC research])

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highly ranked English language international journals and core outlets for publications on EU politics. After a few sporadic articles first appearing in the mid-1990s, Graph 1.1 shows that there has been general spiky upward trend since the late 1990s. JEPP appears as an early and major outlet for EU discourse analytical research since the journal was launched in 1994, followed by JCMS, which after publishing their first few articles in the late 1990s/early 2000s picks up again from the mid-2000s. WEP appears as the third most important outlet, but it is also worth noting that WEP was the host for some of the earliest articles and peaked among the selected journals in 2004 with a special issue having a discursive analytical perspective on Europeanisation (cf. Schmidt and Radaelli 2004b). EUP has published just two articles on discourse and EU politics since its inception in 2000. The actual study of discourse is associated with the perspectives of social constructivism and the broader notion of sociological institutionalism (see e.g. Epstein 2008: 6–12), the former being the preferred notion in International Relations and the latter having its origin in organisational sociology. Clearly, discourse analysis, constructivism and sociological institutionalism all view the social world as constructed. However, discourse analysis does have some distinct characteristics that are not easily subsumed in constructivism/sociological institutionalism, some of which are outlined above in the section ‘What Is Discourse Analysis’, and which in turn affect the way research designs are put together from the different perspectives. First, rather than discourse, the preferred unit of analysis for constructivism/sociological institutionalism tends to be ideas, or sets of ideas, which are fairly coherent and predefined entities with potential causal impacts on politics allowing for hypothetical-deductive research designs. On the other hand, a key purpose for discourse analysis is the empirical mapping of discourse including any incoherencies and twists and turns, which call for more analytical-inductive research. Second, where constructivism/sociological institutionalism tends to view ideas as cognitive entities, discourse analysis views ideas as discursive entities. Constructivists/sociological institutionalists therefore strive at making claims about ideas ‘inside actors’ heads,’ whereas discourse analysis aims to capture the ideational by analysing the construction of discourse as it plays out in-between set of actors (Lynggaard 2005: 105–107; see also Chapter 3). That said, constructivists/sociological institutionalists may

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well analyse political discourse as an approximation of what is going on inside the heads of the actors subject to investigation. Likewise, from a discourse analytical perspective, ideas embedded in a given discourse almost certainly in some way or other reflect the ideas of the mind. At the same time, it is entirely possible that actors ‘say something’ while they are ‘thinking something else,’ at least in the short run. This is something addressed in more detail in the context of the ‘strategic usage of discourse’ in Chapter 5. Regardless, what interests the discourse analysist studying political discourse is collective ideas and discourses in political speech. Approaches and Research Themes There are at least five discursive analytical approaches to the study of EU politics; the Copenhagen school, the governance school, critical discourse analysis (CDA), frame analysis and discursive institutionalism (DI). Although feeding on each other, the approaches differ in their analytical assumptions and preferred units of research. The Copenhagen school is interested in how national perceptions of the nation and the state relate to conceptions of Europe and, in turn, how this relationship shapes the policies of EU member states towards European integration—and beyond, for that matter (Wæver 2005; Larsen 1999). This approach has its disciplinary point of departure in international relations and security studies. A key claim is that the national perceptions of the nation and the state is projected into national EU policies and visions of the future of European integration. That is to say the way, for example, that the French and Germans attach meaning to their nation and respectively view the role of the French and German state—often embedded in long-lasting traditions—shape how national decision-makers approach EU policies and how they view the role of EU institutions. The Copenhagen school has prominently coined the concept of securitisation directed at the understanding of processes of de-politicisation, where otherwise day-to-day politics are turned into matters of security allowing extraordinary measures to be taken by state actors. In that sense, the Copenhagen school is broadening traditional conceptions of external and international security. The Copenhagen school’s notable focus on the state/nation relationship and traditional topics of the EU as a polity makes this approach probably the closest a discursive analytical take comes to conventional European integration theory. What is

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much more common is discourse analysis forming the basis for researching central themes and questions of relevance for the broader field of EU studies. The approaches we turn to now all share this feature. The governance school approach the EU as “a complex web of interaction by territorially as well as functionally different actors” (Diez 2001: 10). Whether implicit or explicit, studies of EU governance by means of discourse analysis often find inspiration in Foucault and/or Habermas. Those highlighting the structural side of discourse, or ‘the power of discourse,’ in EU governance tend to be inspired by Foucault, while studies emphasising discursive agency, or ‘the power in discourse,’ in EU governing tend to lean towards Habermas. However, the vast majority of studies are characterised by some kind mixture of discursive structure– agency focus—something we return to in Chapter 2 (section ‘Agency– Structure as a Continuum’). The governance school—certainly in the early 2000s—is especially interested in how the EU is legitimised, which is “determined discursively, building on any combination of participation, output and identity criteria” (Diez 2001: 10). This research has developed into a series of somewhat loosely connected research questions dealing with partial but key questions about EU politics. These include questions of the impact of European integration on national institutions and policies, that is, Europeanisation research (Schmidt and Radaelli 2004a); the extent and nature of democratic legitimacy in Europe (Schmidt 2006); and issues of group formation, for example as networks or coalitions bound together by common ideas and discourse (Hajer 1995, 2005). The most distinct characteristic of CDA is the critical part, which means that, in addition to uncovering the causes and consequences of discursive constructs, CDA evaluates these constructs against value scales of what is just and legitimate, thereby challenging the current state of affairs and aiming to develop strategies for progression (Fairclough 2012: 9–10). CDA studies vary greatly with regard to pushing transformation, just like critical aspirations range from explicit confrontation with dominant discourses to being implicit in a scholar’s choice of research topic or case that is illustrative of the ‘things could be different’ idea. Nevertheless, CDA emphasises the mutual constitutive relation between societal practices (often referred to as ‘context’) and discursive practices (often referred to as ‘text’). Analysing discourse in the context of societal practices, CDA is keen in drawing on broader (critical) social theory such as Bourdieu and Gramsci in order to expose the

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power of hegemonic discourse (Crespy 2015: 109–110). From this perspective, the EU is typically portrayed as “a liberal project, but with its complex institutional architecture, combined with its cultural heterogeneity, Europe constitutes a forum where various streams of market liberalism discourse are intertwined” (Thomas and Turnbull 2017: 934). Such dominant neoliberal discourse(s) are—often purposefully (Heinrich 2015; De Ville and Orbie 2013)—driven by EU political elites and, while being favourable for certain economic and political elites, they also cause political, economic and social marginalisation. The type of issues dealt with from the perspective of CDA includes studies of media discourse and the extent of a European public sphere (Triandafyllidou et al. 2009), European and national political identities (Wodak et al. 2009; Forchtner and Kølvraa 2012), EU presidencies (Nedergaard and Jensen 2017), as well as the everyday practices and political roles of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) (Wodak 2011: 57–155). CDA has been directed at the study of such policies as EU foreign policy (Kutter 2014: 151–169; Wodak and Boukala 2014: 171–190; Carta 2014: 191– 207), EU enlargement policy (Buckingham 2013), EU neighbourhood policy (Teti et al. 2013) and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) (Erjavec and Erjavec 2015). Possibly the most common approach to studying the role of the ideational in EU politics is the fourth category of frame analysis. This group of studies encompasses research typically not explicitly formulated as discursive approaches, but nonetheless takes in the ideational as one among a number of key factors or variables in the analysis of EU affairs. In the broadest sense, this literature includes a large chunk of meso-level analytical frameworks concerned with network analysis, institutional theory and policy analysis, which all—albeit more or less prominently—have some interest in the ideational dimension of politics. This embodies, for instance, the study of the role of knowledge and expertise in EU politics, political communication, public opinion, or broader meaning systems variously conceptualised as policy frames, paradigms (Hall 1993), belief systems (Sabatier 1998) or narratives (Patterson and Monroe 1998). Finally, the fifth approach, discursive institutionalism (DI), is more than anything a continuation of the governance school. It is treated and elaborated in this book as a distinct approach since it is explicitly embedded in the ‘new institutionalisms,’ together with the long-established rational choice, historical and sociological institutional traditions. In that sense, DI is an approach to political analysis that links discourse analysis

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with institutional research. DI highlights the role of ideas and discourse in their institutional context as well as how ideas and discourse affect political outcomes. Ideas concern the substance of discourse, whereas discourse conveys and transforms ideas, making discourse a key mechanism of political change. DI thus emphasises the transformative power of discourse as essential in understanding the politics of change. Especially important are communicative discourse—directed at the public with the aim of legitimizing policy and institutional choice; and coordinative discourse—aimed at establishing ideational agreement among political élites (Schmidt 2008, 2017). Key research themes for discourse institutional analysists accordingly concerns the study of discourse as a (potential) device of political change (e.g., Lynggaard 2006), as a resource for carrying through or, indeed, hindering political reform (Hay and Rosamond 2002; Lynggaard 2013), and as a means for political elites to justify policy and institutional choices, but also how broader public discourse may sway domestic and EU politics (Crespy 2010; Dimitrova and Kortenska 2017).

What Can’t Discourse Analysis Be Used for? It is certainly not the wish of this book to cap analytical imagination and experimentation with the potentials of discourse analysis for understanding EU politics. Still, any analytical perspective on the study of politics is characterised also by its limitations. So, what are the blind spots of discourse analysis? Or, the more positive formulation: for which questions is the literature yet to come up with sensible and coherent answers from the perspective of discourse analysis? First, discourse analysis does not offer explanations of politics with reference to the individual. Even for studies highlighting the strategic usage of discourse in politics or the power of persuasion in generating political support, the strategic resource and the persuasiveness is the property of discourse, and not that of individuals. Imagine, for instance, the choice of an EU member state minister at a Council of the European Union (henceforth: Council) meeting facing a choice to vote for or against a given policy proposal or of abstention: where theoretical positions embedded in methodological individualism explains such choice by Council members rational utility maximising behaviour and/or the institutional design of the Council, discourse analysis highlights how the discursive context gives direction to and allows for certain policy options.

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It certainly does not follow that there is no room for political actors in discourse analysis, but rather that there is a gap between specific individual policy choices and medium- to long-term discursive constructions in politics. Second, identifying the historical origin of a discourse is essentially inconceivable from the perspective of discourse analysis. This means that discourse analytical research cannot, in absolute terms, identify the origin of its own research object—that is, the discourse or discourses being studied. Think, for instance, of the much-studied phenomenon of the twists and turns and institutionalisation of neo-liberal economic ideas in the EU (e.g., Crespy 2010; Coleman 1998; Kinderman 2013; Kuzemko 2014; Rosamond 2012): where do such neo-liberal ideas originate from? From a discursive analytical perspective, ideas are diffused (e.g., among states, institutions or policy sectors), transformed over the course of time, and merge in various guises. Nevertheless, ideas and discourse do not have an absolute historical origin among others limiting the ability to explain politics with reference to short-term confined events. To be sure, it does not follow that discourse analysis is incapable of studying the emergence or impact of, for example, neo-liberal discourse in a given context and at a given point in time. Instead, it follows that the timeframe for analysis is essentially an analytical choice, which in important ways constructs the research object and affects the types of conclusions arrived at on the back of the analysis. Still, we must not despair in terms of producing systematic and sensitive empirical insights into EU politics, but instead choose the timeframe for analysis with care and consider the implications hereof for the conclusions drawn (see Chapter 2, section ‘Discourse Analysis and Time’).

The Aim of the Book and Its Approach to Discourse Analysis The aim of this book is to present a comprehensive critical overview of the state-of-the-art discourse analysis as a distinct perspective on EU politics. The book thus explores key conceptual, methodological and research strategic questions related to discourse analysis as a means of studying and understanding EU politics. Discursive institutionalism form the backcloth for elaborating a general framework for political analysis highlighting the role of ideas, discourse and institutions (Chapter 2,

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section ‘Ideas, Discourse and Institutions: A General Analytical Framework’). The general framework in turn forms the background for exploring a series of central questions related to discourse as a devise of inclusion/exclusion in policy-making (Chapter 4), as a strategic resource for political purposes (Chapter 5), as a means of conveying and appealing to political emotions (Chapter 6) and the role visual discourse and imagery (Chapter 7) in day-to-day EU politics. The book deals with methodological questions and research strategic choices related to the study of discursive structures and agency, discursive conflict and consensus, causality and the time dimension in discourse analysis (Chapter 2, Discourse Analysis as Research Strategy). It is essentially argued that we are probably better off adopting research strategies that balance the focus on discursive structure/agency and conflict/consensus according to the specific research purpose and the extant knowledge available on the area of research. Research techniques and data for capturing discourse empirically are thus discussed in terms of their pros and cons for different research purposes and knowledge ambitions (Chapter 3, Discourse Analysis, Data and Research Techniques) and illustrated by research examples typically using different combinations of research techniques and data material (Chapters 4–7). In pursuit of the above aim, this book relies on a series of analytical choices in approaching discourse analysis. Like most discourse analysis, the book adopts a problem-driven approach to political analysis. Problem-driven discourse analysis addresses distinct empirical and conceptual puzzles and, in the process, poses critical questions to the current state of affairs by demonstrating that the way we study and legitimate politics could have been different. The research ambition of this book is thus as much about the empirical field of EU politics as it is about conceptual exploration of discourse analysis (as reflected in the title of the book). The discursive analytical approach advanced in this book is anchored in the most recent arrival to the ‘new institutionalisms,’ discursive institutionalism. Institutionalist views on European politics has very much become and established itself as mainstream at least since the early 1990s (Saurugger 2014). In that sense, an institutional view allows discourse analysis to be linked to well-developed and sophisticated conceptualisations of EU politics. Moreover, while institutional research is now firmly located in mainstream political science, this very diverse body of literature has its origin in and draws on a range of disciplines including

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politics, economics, sociology and history. Institutionalism thus enables and aspires to cross-disciplinarity and a holistic view on EU politics. The DI concepts and mechanisms elaborated in this book all operate at the ideational level. This view is adopted in order to eschew the traps associated with combining ideational factors with factors derived from an objective material reality for the purpose of political analysis. The focus on the ideational dimension of politics is often conceptualised in opposition to a focus on the interests of political actors (Griggs and Howarth 2002). Whereas interests are typically viewed as the property of individual or collective political actors reflecting their objective material conditions, ideas make up the collective discursive context that actors draw upon and act within in order to articulate and legitimise policy and institutional choices (Lynggaard 2007). Yet, while this book operates at the ideational level, it does not (necessarily) follow that analytical categories such as actors’ interests are obsolete. However, rather than referring interests back to the objective material conditions of agents, political interests are viewed as socially constructed ideational phenomena. Ideational changes are thus considered to potentially give rise to change in preferences that, in turn, may alter agents’ conception of their interests (Lynggaard and Nedergaard 2009: 298–299; see Hay [2006] for a further discussion). The book approaches discourse analysis as just that, the analysis of discourse. This approach not only aspires to mapping, but also to explaining the causes and consequences of political discourse, yet it is not the property of any particular theoretical position. In other words, it is more of a methodological approach rather than a theoretical one (see Chapter 2). In addition, the approach to discourse analysis offered by this book adheres to multi-theoretical analysis. It does so by means of sequential research designs, first uncovering political discourse and second conducting an analysis of the resultant political discourse from a multitude of theoretical perspectives (see Chapter 2, section ‘Multi-theoretical Analysis and Counterfactual Reasoning’). Approaching discourse analysis as a research methodology permits access to a broad range of research tools and to speak to a variety of theoretical and analytical frameworks. While the focus of this book is specifically on discourse analysis in EU politics, it will make use of and reach out at the same time to the broader literature concerned with the study of meaning systems and their implications for politics. This is evident in Chapters 4–7, which in turn draw

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on the literature on decision-making and the role of knowledge production and expertise (Chapter 4), the strategic usage of ideas (Chapter 5), the role of myths and emotional appeals (Chapter 6), and the role of imagery in politics (Chapter 7). Finally, the book approaches theoretical and analytical framework directed at EU politics as discourses in their own right. This means that, while reaching out to theoretical positions based on methodologies that are not straightforwardly compatible with the one adopted by this book, the book elevates theoretical and conceptual acumen to the level of discourse (see especially Chapter 2). In other words, theoretical positions are understood on their own terms, but drawn on and used in the terms of the DI approach advanced in this book. This is done for two reasons: to enable communication across methodologies and to enhance insights into the organisation of EU politics. Discourse analysis is clearly not an approach that is unique to EU studies, but one that is used across the social sciences and beyond. However, the focus of this book is on discourse analysis in the context of the study of EU politics. Against this background, the book thus has two aspirations. First, the book aims to contribute to the advancement of DI as an approach to understanding politics in the EU. The book aspires to contribute to DI, among others, by explicitly addressing discourse analytical questions in terms of analytical strategy, research techniques and data. The book also broadens the research agenda of DI among others by elaborating a series of mechanisms for understanding discursive stability and change, and by zooming in on the role of expertise in policy-making and by carrying the study of political emotions and visual discourse into DI. Second, the book aspires to contribute to the understanding of EU politics by means of discourse analysis. This aspiration is pursued through advancing an analytical approach that, while arguing ‘ideas all the way down,’ positively reaches out beyond discourse analysis to a wide range of meso- and macro level analytical and theoretical frameworks aimed at understanding EU politics. This is essentially allowed by approaching discourse analysis as a methodology— rather than a causal theoretical framework—open to multi-theoretical analysis. In that sense, the hope is that the book will have something to say to anyone viewing EU politics broadly as being transnational, multi-level and polycentric.

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Structure of the Book The remainder of the book is structured in order to begin with two chapters that together critically discuss research design (Chapter 2) and research techniques and data (Chapter 3) in discourse analysis. Chapter 2 elaborates on the distinctiveness of discourse analysis as a research strategy. This chapter argues in favour of moving beyond otherwise fixed methodological positions by elaborating compound research strategies directed at the specific research question at hand. Doing so, Chapter 2 discusses the challenges associated with conducting discourse analysis including those associated with the role of agency and structure, how to approach the study of discursive conflicts and consensus-making, causality and causal mechanisms, the choice of an analytical time dimension and how discourse analysis may speak to other types of theoretical and analytical frameworks. Chapter 2 concludes by outlining a general framework for analysis binding together the concepts of ideas, discourse, and institution. Chapter 3 has a ‘hands-on’ approach and offers concrete guidelines to types of data and research techniques useful for carrying out discourse analysis in the context of EU politics. Here, the pros and cons of available data for the purpose of analysing discourses on EU politics are discussed, including documents, surveys, interviews, ‘natural occurring talk’ and non-linguistic material. Similarly, Chapter 3 addresses the advantages and challenges to research techniques capturing discourse including content analysis, computer-assisted text analysis, and the analysis of problem perceptions. Chapter 3 argues in favour of combining types of data and research techniques depending on the research purpose at hand. This is followed by four chapters focussing on the different roles of discourse in day-to-day EU politics. Doing so, the chapters investigate multiple case areas and diverse sets of actors in EU politics, both at the transnational and domestic levels of politics. More specifically, Chapter 4 focuses on political discourses as a device of inclusion and exclusion in EU policy-making. The claim is that discourse is decisive with regard to which actors are included/excluded from EU policy-making, for the setting of the procedures guiding decision-making, and for which issues stand a chance for serious consideration on EU political agendas. For the purpose of studying the roles of discourse in EU policy-making, Chapter 4 outlines discursive path-dependency as a concept of discursive resistance and further elaborates a series of mechanisms for the study of

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change including that of discursive ambiguity, processes of translation, discursive entrepreneurship and expertise as the advancement of analytical ideas in policy-making. The chapter is illustrated with empirical examples from EU’s CAP and concludes by suggesting a series of relationships between the mechanisms of discursive resistance and change. Chapter 5 focuses on ‘Europe’ discourse as a strategic resource in politics. The point of departure is that political elite discourse on the causes and consequences of key issues such as European integration and globalisation have significant implication for political choices. Often such discourses are internalised by political actors without much reflection. However, sometimes political elites may also purposefully use discourse as a powerful resource in the pursuit of specific political goals. Chapter 5 outlines a discursive institutional framework of conditions and indicators for the study of the strategic usage of Europe discourse. Chapter 5 argues that the general transnational, multi-level and polycentric nature of EU politics supplies an especially favourable environment for using discourse strategically. It goes further by suggesting that institutionally embedded discourse and the political authority attached to political actors are powerful conditions enabling the usage of discourse strategically. This chapter supplies an in-depth empirical study of the use of ‘Europe’ for strategic purposes in national politics, focussing on the banking sector in two EU member states: Ireland and Denmark. The claim is, first, that European integration discourse has profound, but also very diverse impacts on politics across EU member states. Second, discourse about ‘Europe’ is a powerful resource for national decision-makers and has been used to initiate and implement a wide variety of national policy and institutional reforms. Chapter 6 carries the study of political myths and emotions into DI. This chapter argues that political myths and emotions are crucial to an understanding of both how the EU becomes constituted as a political reality and of how the integration process itself occurs. Appeals to political myths and emotions clearly play a role, perhaps even a key role, in communicating and legitimising EU policy and institutional choices, yet the key argument in Chapter 6 is that political emotions are also crucial to understanding coordination among political elites. The political roles of myths and emotions are illustrated by example of role and emotional appeal of ‘green Europe’ and ‘social Europe’ among transnational non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

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Chapter 7 introduces the study of visual discourse and imagery into DI. The chapter argues that visual discourse is especially important in a multicultural and multilingual European context. Using the literature on symbols, the chapter elaborates a fourfold understanding of the roles of imagery in politics. The visualisation of ‘green Europe’ by the European Commission (henceforth: Commission) and a key NGO in this area, the European Environmental Bureau, is used as illustrative of the multiple roles of imagery in EU politics. It is suggested, that in highly institutionalised discursive fields such as green Europe, imagery allows for identity building and the terse communication of organisational interests. Furthermore, imagery contributes to visualizing opposition among otherwise political collaborators, opposition that may, more than anything, serve internal organizational purposes by mobilizing supporters around common ideals. The concluding Chapter 8 takes stock and looks ahead.

References Buckingham, L. (2013). Mixed Messages of Solidarity in the Mediterranean: Turkey, the EU and the Spanish Press. Discourse Society, 24(2), 186–207. Carta, C. (2014). From the “Magnificent Castle” to the Brutish State of Nature: Use of Metaphors and Analysis of the EU’s International Discourse. In C. Carta & J.-F. Morin (Eds.), EU Foreign Policy Through the Lens of Discourse Analysis: Making Sense of Diversity (pp. 191–207). Surrey, UK: Ashgate. Coleman, W. D. (1998). From Protected Development to Market Liberalism: Paradigm Change in Agriculture. Journal of European Public Policy, 5(4), 632–651. Crespy, A. (2010). When ‘Bolkestein’ Is Trapped by the French Anti-liberal Discourse: A Discursive-Institutionalist Account of Preference Formation in the Realm of European Union Multi-level Politics. Journal of European Public Policy, 17(8), 1253–1270. Crespy, A. (2015). Analysing European Discourses. In K. Lynggaard, I. Manners, & K. Löfgren (Eds.), Research Methods in European Union Studies (pp. 102–120). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. De Ville, F., & Orbie, J. (2013). The European Commission’s Neoliberal Trade Discourse Since the Crisis: Legitimizing Continuity Through Subtle Discursive Change. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 16(1), 149–167. Diez, T. (1999). Speaking ‘Europe’: The Politics of Integration Discourse. Journal of European Public Policy, 6(4), 653–668. Diez, T. (2001). Europe as a Discursive Battleground: Discourse Analysis and European Integration Studies. Cooperation and Conflict, 36(1), 5–38.

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Dimitrova, A., & Kortenska, E. (2017). What Do Citizens Want? And Why Does It Matter? Discourses Among Citizens as Opportunities and Constraints for EU Enlargement. Journal of European Public Policy, 24(2), 259–277. Epstein, C. (2008). Power of Words in International Relations: Birth of an AntiWhaling Discourse. Cambridge: MIT Press. Erjavec, K., & Erjavec, E. (2015). “Greening the CAP”—Just a Fashionable Justification? A Discourse Analysis of the 2014–2020 CAP Reform Documents. Food Policy, 51, 53–62. Fairclough, N. (2012). Critical Discourse Analysis. In J. P. Gee & M. Handford (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Discourse Analysis (pp. 9–20). London: Routledge. Forchtner, B., & Kølvraa, C. (2012). Narrating a ‘New Europe’: From ‘Bitter Past’ to Self-Righteousness? Discourse Society, 23(4), 377–400. Griggs, S., & Howarth, D. (2002). The Work of Ideas and Interest in Public Policy. In A. Finlayson & J. Valentine (Eds.), Politics and Poststructuralism. An Introduction (pp. 97–111). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hajer, M. A. (1995). The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernisation and the Policy Process. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hajer, M. A. (2005). Coalitions, Practices, and Meaning in Environmental Politics: From Acid Rain to BSE. In D. Howarth & J. Torfing (Eds.), Discourse Theory in European Politics: Identity, Policy and Governance (pp. 297–315). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Hall, P. A. (1993). Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State: The Case of Economic Policymaking in Britain. Comparative Politics, 25(3), 275–296. Hay, C. (2006). Constructivist Institutionalism … Or, Why Ideas into Interest Don’t Go. Paper Presented at Aarhus University. Hay, C., & Rosamond, B. (2002). Globalization, European Integration and the Discursive Construction of Economic Imperatives. Journal of European Public Policy, 9(2), 147–167. Heinrich, M. (2015). EU Governance in Crisis: A Cultural Political Economy Perspective on European Crisis Management 2007–2014. Comparative European Politics, 13(6), 682–706. Howarth, D. (2005). Applying Discourse Theory: The Method of Articulation. In D. Howarth & J. Torfing (Eds.), Discourse Theory in European Politics: Identity, Policy and Governance (pp. 316–349). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Kinderman, D. (2013). Corporate Social Responsibility in the EU, 1993– 2013: Institutional Ambiguity, Economic Crises, Business Legitimacy and Bureaucratic Politics. Journal of Common Market Studies, 51(4), 701–720. Kutter, A. (2014). (De-)Constructing the EU as a Civilising Power: CFSP/ CSDP and the Constitutional Debate in Poland and France. In C. Carta &

18  K. LYNGGAARD J.-F. Morin (Eds.), EU Foreign Policy Through the Lens of Discourse Analysis: Making Sense of Diversity (pp. 151–169). Surrey, UK: Ashgate. Kuzemko, C. (2014). Ideas, Power and Change: Explaining Eu–Russia Energy Relations. Journal of European Public Policy, 21(1), 58–75. Larsen, H. (1999). British and Danish European Policies in the 1990s: A Discourse Approach. European Journal of International Relations, 5(4), 451–483. Lynggaard, K. (2005). The Common Agricultural Policy and The Dynamics of Institutional Change: Illustrations from Organic Farming in the European Union. Odense, Denmark: Odense University Press. Lynggaard, K. (2006). The Common Agricultural Policy and Organic Farming: An Institutional Perspective on Continuity and Change. Wallingford, UK: CAB International. Lynggaard, K. (2007). Dokumentanalyse af ideer. In L. Fuglsang, P. HagedornRasmussen, & P. B. Olsen (Eds.), Teknikker i samfundsvidenskaberne (pp. 222–242). Copenhagen: Roskilde Universitetsforlag. Lynggaard, K. (2012). Discursive Institutional Analytical Strategies. In T. Exadaktylos & C. M. Radaelli (Eds.), Research Design in European Studies: Establishing Causality in Europeanization (pp. 85–104). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Lynggaard, K. (2013). Elite Decision Makers’ Strategic Use of European Integration and Globalisation Discourses: Irish and Danish Banking Sector Reforms in the 1990s and 2000s. New Political Economy, 18(6), 862–884. Lynggaard, K., & Nedergaard, P. (2009). The Logic of Policy Development: Lessons Learned from Reform and Routine within the CAP 1980–2003. Journal of European Integration, 31(3), 291–311. Milliken, J. (1999). The Study of Discourse and International Relations: A Critique of Research and Methods. European Journal of International Relations, 5(2), 225–254. Nedergaard, P., & Jensen, M. D. (2017). You’re Gonna Have to Serve Somebody: A Comparative Analysis of the Polish, Danish and Cypriot EU Presidency Discourses. Comparative European Politics, 15(2), 286–309. Patterson, M., & Monroe, K. R. (1998). Narrative in Political Science. Annual Review of Political Science, 1, 315–331. Richardson, J. (1996). European Union: Power and Policy Making. Oxford: Routledge. Rosamond, B. (2003). New Theories of European Integration. In M. Cini & N. Pérez-Solórzano Borragán (Eds.), European Union Politics (pp. 104–122). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosamond, B. (2012). Supranational Governance as Economic Patriotism? The European Union, Legitimacy and the Reconstruction of State Space. Journal of European Public Policy, 19(3), 324–341.

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Sabatier, P. (1998). The Advocacy Coalition Framework: Revisions and Relevance for Europe. Journal of European Public Policy, 5(1), 98–130. Saurugger, S. (2014). Theoretical Approaches to European Integration. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Schmidt, V. A. (2006). Democracy in Europe: The EU and National Polities. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schmidt, V. A. (2008). Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse. Annual Review of Political Science, 11, 303–326. Schmidt, V. A. (2017). Theorizing Ideas and Discourse in Political Science: Intersubjectivity. Neo-Institutionalisms, and the Power of Ideas, Critical Review, 29(2), 248–263. Schmidt, V. A., & Radaelli, C. M. (2004a). ‘Policy Change and Discourse in Europe’: Conceptual and Methodological Issues. West European Politics, 27(2), 183–211. Schmidt, V. A., & Radaelli, C. M. (2004b). (Eds.). ‘Policy Change and Discourse in Europe’, special issue of West European Politics, 27(2). Teti, A., Thompson, D., & Noble, C. (2013). EU Democracy Assistance Discourse in Its New Response to a Changing Neighbourhood. Democracy and Security, 9(1–2), 61–79. Thomas, R., & Turnbull, P. (2017). Talking Up a Storm? Using Language to Activate Adherents and Demobilize Detractors of European Commission Policy Frames, Journal of European Public Policy, 24(7), 931–950. Triandafyllidou, A., Wodak, R., & Krzyzanowski, M. (2009). The European Public Sphere and the Media: Europe in Crisis. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wæver, O. (2004). Discursive Approaches. In A. Wiener & T. Diez (Eds.), Theories of European Integration (pp. 197–215). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wæver, O. (2005). European Integration and Security: Analysing French and German Discourses on State, Nation, and Europe. In D. Howarth & J. Torfing (Eds.), Discourse Theory in European Politics (pp. 33–67). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wiener, A., & Diez, T. (Eds.). (2004). Theories of European Integration. Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress. Wodak, R. (2011). The Discourse of Politics in Action: Politics as Usual. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wodak, R. & Boukala, S. (2014). Talking About Solidarity and Security in the Age of Crisis: The Revival of Nationalism and Protectionism in the European Union: A Discourse-Historical Approach. In C. Carta & J.-F. Morin (Eds.), EU Foreign Policy Through the Lens of Discourse Analysis: Making Sense of Diversity (pp. 171–190). Surrey, UK: Ashgate. Wodak, R., de Cilia, R., Reisigl, M., & Liebhart, K. (2009). Discursive Construction of National Identity (2nd ed.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

CHAPTER 2

Discourse Analysis as a Research Strategy

We can probably all recall an image of a cartoon character with a light bulb popping up above the character’s head, illustrating a great idea has just been born, typically after a long and hard period of thinking. This image indicates that ideas are the property of individuals, an ontological position favoured by methodological individualism. It is a view on the ideational that does indeed exist in the academic literature. This is the case for some rational choice institutional approaches acknowledging that individual calculations of ‘costs and benefits’—and thus the reasons for policy and institutional choices—in a given situation is carried out against the background of individuals’ “pre-existing mental constructs” of what is perceived to be the costs and benefits in given institutional context (North 1990: 85). However, the vast majority of studies of the ideational in politics proceed from a social ontology, which is also the general position adopted by this book. As such, this book approaches discourse as a collective phenomenon produced and reproduced inbetween a set of actors. Furthermore, the literature typically makes a distinction between positivist and postpositivist research strategic positions towards the study of discourse (Jones and McBeth 2010). The positivist position favours hypothetical-deductive research designs testing theoretical claims and typically focuses on a few potential explanatory factors studied by means of quantitative methods. The postpositivst position, on the other hand, prefers empirically driven research strategies often exploring a © The Author(s) 2019 K. Lynggaard, Discourse Analysis and European Union Politics, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39326-5_2

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wider range of dimensions of a single case or a few comparative cases. Against this, a key aim of this chapter is to explore the ground for moving beyond fixed dichotomies in discourse analytical research strategies. A multitude of institutionalised academic practices disfavour this move, including the tendency of scholars specialising in sometimes highly sophisticated research techniques leaving little room for engagement with alternatives. However, rather than relying on fixed methodological positions, we are almost certainly better off considering the value of compound research strategies guided by the research question at hand and the nature of the existing research on the area of interest (Friedrichs and Kratochwil 2009). That is, this chapter adopts a problem-driven approach viewing research designs as plans for specific research purposes and for addressing concrete research questions. From this perspective, any research strategy obtains its value by being explicit, substantiated and by contributing new insights into the organisation of society. This chapter emphasises the features of discourse analytical research strategy, which promote these aims. Doing so, this chapter argues in favour of approaching the agency–structure nexus as a continuum, and likewise views the traditional distinction between research strategies analytically emphasising either conflicts or consensus in discourse as a continuum, allowing the researcher to make specific research strategic choices for concrete purposes. This chapter goes on to discuss the research strategic choices associated with causality and causal mechanisms in discourse analysis, and prepares the groundwork for comparative temporal analysis and multitheoretical analysis. The final section outlines an ideational sequence of ideas, discourse and institutions used as a general, yet open, conceptual framework for the remainder of the book.

Agency–Structure as a Continiuum The point of departure for any discursive analytical strategy is the existence of some sort of duality between discursive structures and agents. As summed up by Rosamond: “Agents are bound by structures, but they are also capable through action of altering the structural environment in which they operate, albeit in way that may be structurally contained” (Rosamond 2000: 172). This duality is commonly acknowledged. However, choosing an analytical angle on the agency–structure distinction in our research strategies is neither trivial nor should it be random.

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The focus chosen essentially sets out the direction for the type of analytical results and explanations that our analysis is capable of offering. Holzscheiter (2011: 3–6) summarises very well two ideal-type positions in discourse analysis focussing on discursive agency and structure, respectively. The structure-focused, or ‘power of discourse’ position on the one hand emphasises the study of semantic structures, how discourse creates asymmetrical powers relations, and how “[m]eaning-structures create subjectivities”. In its ideal, typical version, the agency-focused, or ‘power in discourse’ position emphasises the study of how “[s]ubjects create and transform meaning-structures” (Holzscheiter 2011: 6). The endpoints in Fig. 2.1—‘discursive structure’ and ‘discursive agency’— represent the two ideal-type positions in discourse analysis. However, the figure also suggests that the agency–structure dimension of discursive analytical strategies may be viewed as a continuum, making the route between the otherwise fixed dichotomy open to traffic. In practice, discursive analytical research addressing EU politics probably had more of a structural focus in earlier studies, whereas the exercise of discursive agency by actors in EU politics has been a more recent analytical emphasis, beginning approximately after the second half of the 2000s. Regardless, the vast majority of studies are located somewhere between the agency–structure ideal-typical endpoints, giving attention to both discursive structures and agency in some sort of mixture. This is what we turn to now.

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24  K. LYNGGAARD

Some agency-focused studies have pointed to the intentional or strategic use of European integration discourse by politicians and top civil servants to justify or delegitimise political activities and objectives; it is thus a phenomenon associated with political elites (Hay and Smith 2010; Lynggaard 2013; Quaglia and Howarth 2018; Warren et al. 2017). Other studies, which are also on the agency-focused side of the continuum, remind us that agency may also be unintentional. Schmidt (2007), for instance, has shown how an otherwise long-held French elite discourse portraying the French as drivers of European integration left the same elite ‘trapped’ in terms of their ability to react to the public rejection of the Constitutional Treaty in 2005, since it was no longer a persuasive discourse toward the public. As we move further towards the more structurally focused types of studies, we find research focusing on the implications and dynamics of competing EU political discourses. This analytical mixture of the agency–structure dimension is illustrated by Hajer’s (1995, 2005) study of the development in discourse coalitions in EU environmental policy-making. He has shown how, in the 1980s, the new contender discourse coalition favouring more environmentally friendly EU policies successfully exercised discursive agency by giving momentum to a conception among European policy-makers that environmentally friendly policies go hand-in-hand with economic objectives, rather than working against each other. Studies of discursive hegemony is probably the type of research leaning the most towards the ideal-typical structural position. One example highlighting discursive structures is Bacchi (2004; for another example see Macartney 2011), who argues that EU policy discourse on affirmative action as ‘preferential treatment’ contributes to the view that certain societal groups are in need of ‘special help,’ while failing to address the discursive structures creating the need for ‘special treatment’ For instance, in a job-hiring situation, ‘preferential treatment’ may tip the balance in favour of a female candidate, if her merits are judged by the hiring party as equal to other male candidates. Yet, dominant groups conception of what is ‘meritorious’ remains unchallenged. In that sense, research strategies failing to uncover the structure of ‘preferential treatment’ discourse unwittingly contributes to the construction of an agency position disempowering those in need of empowerment (Bacchi 2004). For a specific research objective, we may choose to emphasise, for example, actors’ intentional use of discourse for strategic purposes in politics or alternatively the space of possibility for political activity offered by

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a particular political discourse. The choice of research strategic emphasis can be argued for by referring back to the assumptions of the theoretical framework of choice. However, the empirical field may similarly supply arguments in favour of a particular mixture of focus on the role of discursive agency and structure. In a highly institutionalised policy field, where we may expect the room for manoeuvre of political agents to be limited, emphasising the structure and boundaries of political discourse may be fitting. Likewise, in areas characterised by policy failure, institutional contradiction and, generally, in the study of discourse in times of crisis, studying the impact of agency may be appropriate since in such situations the literature suggests that actors’ have more options to change their structural context. It is certainly always worth considering what we may already know in terms of existing research on discursive structures and agency in the empirical field at hand. Regardless, a comprehensive discourse analysis cannot entirely ignore one or the other. There are clearly conceptual and analytical strategic opposing views at the extremes of the agency–structure continuum. However, the vast majority of scholars conducting discourse analysis are almost certainly happy to accept that the mixture of discursive structure–agency at play is part an analytical choice, and part an empirical question. The point here is that we should seek to be develop our analytical strategies so as to be capable of capturing a range of mixtures of powers of and within discourse; however, they may play out in the case(s) at hand. Furthermore, individual studies and scholars may place themselves anywhere along the agency–structure continuum, just like we may move back and forth and give more or less attention to discursive agency or structure in the course of any given research process.

Discursive Conflict–Consensus as a Continiuum Research strategic considerations on how to study issues of conflicts and consensus in politics is possibly of particularly importance for discourse analytical approaches, and possibly even more so when directed at the study of EU politics. Such considerations are also highly related to analytical strategic choices made regarding the agency–structure dimension. However, this is not necessarily in a 1:1 way, in the sense that a given agency–structure mixture determines a particular conflict–consensus focus.

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Our research strategic choice can be viewed as one that is located somewhere on a discursive conflict–consensus continuum; see Fig. 2.2. The ideal-typical position at the consensus-end of the continuum is the situation where the research purpose is to capture and conceptualise the all-embracing and coherent political discourse, and where the discursive space for political choice is absent. Research purposes located at the ideal-typical position at the conflictual-end of the continuum aim at studying conflicts within and between political discourse(s) reflecting an interpretative context offering a range of political choices. The literature on politicisation/depoliticisation, which are central themes for discourse analysis, is illustrative of the issues at stake here. Studies of depoliticisation may be located towards the consensus endpoint since such studies are typically concerned with the processes though which political choice is severely reduced, if not eliminated from the discursive space of possibility. Politicisation is the reverse process, emphasising a move towards more severe conflicts among and within political discourse(s). For instance, studies of media news have looked into the politicisation of European integration in the context of treaty reforms. It has been shown how political debates and cleavages intensify during treaty reforms, though the politicisation of European integration is anchored in specific national political contexts reflecting domestic political agendas and politics and by no means constitutes an irreversible process (Hurrelmann et al. 2013; Vetters et al. 2009). The choice of an analytical angle on the discursive consensus–conflict dimension depends first on whether the purpose of the research is ­studying stability or change in EU politics and, second, on which actors’ discourse forms the object of the research. First, if the research object is the processes of political change, then the research strategy should probably give attention to conflictual discourse, which is typically conducive to, although not a necessary condition of, political change. Studies of stability in politics and political outcome on the other hand call for attention to consensual discourse.

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However, both types of analytical ambition typically have an interest in the processes and mechanisms arising from a situation characterised by the presence of more conflictual political discourse to a situation characterised by the presence of more consensual political discourse, or vice versa. There may very well be empirical arguments in favour of giving special attention to either political change or stability in particular areas of study. If, as is the case for the edited volume by Schmidt and Thatcher (2013), the analysis takes its point of departure in the observation that neoliberal discourses in Europe have shown to be remarkably resilient to change, even in the wake of the 2008 financial and economic crisis, this reflects in a research strategic emphasis on the promotion, spread and institutionalisation of neoliberal ideas. Research emphasis on conflictual discourses, on the other hand, typically follows an observation, where alternative and marginalised discourse challenge already institutionalised discourse. One such example is the Stratigaki (2005) study of gender mainstreaming, where she shows how two competing conceptions of gender mainstreaming of EU policies resulted in—somewhat unsurprisingly—the less radical and transformative gender mainstreaming discourse having some impact in the second part of the 1990s, especially in areas where it fitted with other economic and social policy goals. Such type research strategies point to clashes within and between alternative discourses. Second, the research strategic location on the discursive conflict– consensus continuum is a reflection of the type of actors’ discourse in focus. The most common distinctions here are whether the focus is on how discourse plays out among political elites, between political elites and the public or, perhaps the least common, within the public. An early and prominent study of conflicting conceptions of the nature of European integration among European political elites is Jachtenfuchs et al. (1998). Investigating the period from the 1950s to the mid-1990s, it has been shown how political elites in France, Germany and the UK convene around four radically different polity ideas that respectively view Europe as an intergovernmental cooperation, as a federal state, as an economic community, and as constituted by governance networks; each polity idea associated with a distinct type of political legitimacy. Another example of the study of elite–elite discourse, which also highlights discursive consensus-making, is Biegon’s (2013) focus on the Commission strategies from the mid-1970s to mid-1990 for legitimising political choices. The focus is on how different strategies have the upper hand during

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different periods of time, but also how alternative strategies, rather than disappearing entirely from the radar, momentarily recede into the background, making room for new ways of political legitimisation. In other words, the analytical eye is directed at identifying consensual legitimacy discourses, including a ‘functionalist Europe’ discourse (1974–1984), legitimising by means of the problem-solving capacity of the EU; a ‘European identity’ discourse (85–89), legitimising by adhering to the existence of common European values and culture; and a ‘democratic Europe’ discourse (90–94), legitimising with reference to transparency and an EU closer to its citizens. At the same time, the co-existence of several such discourses and their potential conflictual relations is acknowledged. The elite–public focus includes numerous studies of the gap between elitist pro-EU discourse and more sceptical EU discourse among the public, which to varying extents is found in many EU member states (Flockhart 2005; Herranz-Surrallés 2012), but also studies of how political elites shape public EU discourse (Kenny 2015). The public–public focus typically has a view at public attitudes toward European integration and/ or lays bare divided public pro-EU/anti-EU discourses (Dimitrova and Kortenska 2017). When making analytical strategic choices along the consensus–conflict dimension, it is key to consider the extent to which the research purpose is to uncover political change and/or continuity, just like the choice depends on the set or sets of actors’ discourse that the research strategy aims to study. Essentially, an analytical strategy must be elaborated so as to match the empirical knowledge ambitions along the conflict– consensus dimension of discourse. Chapter 3, Discourse Analysis, Data and Research Techniques, considers in detail the type of research methods, data sources and empirical material useful for such varied purposes.

Causality and Types of Explanations The explanatory value of discourse in European politics has been, and still is, a highly debated issue. Discourse analysis as a methodological tool is not commonly associated with traditional notions of causality and is often reluctant about making theoretical causal claims (Hansen 2006: 22–25). Not only is the lack of explanatory power of discourse a regular point of criticism from scholars operating in areas other than discourse analysis, but perhaps even more so is it a challenge frequently posed by scholars favourable to discourse analysis (Banta 2013; Jachtenfuchs

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2002: 652–654). However, rather than being about the analytical value of discourse analysis, the critique can be seen as one originating in different ways for researchers to ‘hook-up to the world’ (philosophical ontology) (Jackson 2011: 30–35). On the one hand is the view that research objects exist in the world, independent of the researcher. This view allows the researcher to make causal claims by means of testing a hypothesis against the real world or by detecting the underlying structural powers offering, at least provisionally, the most convincing explanations of observed phenomena. On the other hand is the view that the researcher is inseparable from the objects being researched. This means that in the process of constructing a research strategy for specific purposes, the researcher is also involved in constructing the research object at hand, including (causal) relationships between the units being analysed (Jackson 2011: 26–41). This book adhere to the latter view. At the same time, it is acknowledged that we are probably better off directing our focus toward types of causality and evaluating claims of causality against the principles and procedures adopted by any given methodology. Against this background, while sometimes implicit, discourse analytical research directed at EU politics offers at least three types of causal claims. First, there is the literature that approaches discourse as one ­variable among a series of variables potentially explaining political outcomes. The view is that particularly persuasive discourses ‘shape’ actors’ preferences in favour of certain policy or institutional choices, along with other factors such as actors’ interests and the nature of the politicaleconomic institutional context (Schmidt and Radaelli 2004; Crespy 2010). In order to include ideational and non-ideational variables in a coherent research strategy, it seems there must be some material to the reality approached by the researchers. In other words, the object of research is approached as something that—at least in part—exist in the world independently of the researcher. If, for instance, we set out to study the independent effect of actors’ real material interests and their perception of the same, we must be able to observe the objective material conditions determining actors’ behaviour and evaluate these observations against actors’ ideas about their interest in a given context. This perspective enables investigations into when and how discourse has an independent impact on policy and institutional choices (Schmidt 2003). The key advantage of approaching discourse as one variable among others in political analysis is that it opens up not for only dialogue, but for

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full engagement with theoretical frameworks across political science— and beyond, for that matter. The second type of causal understanding of discourse in politics emphasises the constitutive effect of discourse. Discourse here makes up a conceptual framework through which social, political and economic developments are ordered and understood (Hay and Smith 2005; Smith and Hay 2008). This view is typically not explicitly concerned with causal claims, but nonetheless is based on the assumption that discourse has an impact on political outcomes. For these studies, discourse always matters, yet the causality in question is neither unidirectional nor is discourse associated with a pull/push effect in itself. Instead, there seem to be three aspects of discourse that may matter for political outcomes—that is, the content of a discourse, the degree of institutionalisation of a discourse, and the interactive process of discourse. Both descriptive content analysis and the analysis of degrees of institutionalisation of discourse are essential in mapping discourse and, thus, making claims about the constitutive effect of discourse on politics. However, it seems that it is when we engage in the study of interactive discursive processes, both within any given discourse and between discourses, that we move towards the study of causal mechanisms: that is, towards explaining relationships between observed events that are not claimed to be universal, yet are of explanatory relevance among comparable phenomena (Hedström and Swedberg 1998). Most authors would probably agree that in order for interactive discursive processes to give momentum to change political outcomes, there must exist some degree of coherence, but also some level of ambiguity within the discourse or between the discourses at hand (see this chapter, section ‘Discursive Conflict–Consensus as a Continuum’). The point of departure of this book is that, for a start, we should equip our analytical strategies so to pay more attention, not only the study of discursive coherence and persuasiveness, but also discursive incoherence. I will return to this discussion in more detail in Chapter 4, the sections ‘First Mechanism of Transformation: Discursive Ambiguity’ and ‘Second Mechanism of Transformation: Translation’. Finally, the literature offers ‘actors-in-context’ types of explanations of how discourse affects politics. This perspective focuses, for instance, on how decision-makers respond to the conceived implications of their political–economic context as well as on how decision-makers may use such conceptions for strategic purposes (see Chapter 5, Discourse and the Strategic Usage of Europe). However, the social ontology of discourse

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analysis does not allow for one-sided explanations referring back to individual conceptions, behaviour and actions. Thus, discursive actorness is conceptualised as a discursive position or role from where collective, but also individual agents, may exercise discursive powers. I will return to this discussion in more detail in Chapter 4, the section ‘Third Mechanism of Transformation: Discursive Entrepreneurship’.

Discourse Analysis and Time Time is a key factor in understanding and explaining political outcomes from the perspective of discourse analysis for at least two reasons: (1) the mapping of developments in political discourse is an essential element in the move towards offering discursive explanation of political outcomes and (2) the study of longer periods of time allow for temporal comparisons. The empirical object for our research will typically be an important guide for how we incorporate a time dimension into our research strategy. At the same time, our theoretical approach to political analysis also tends to set out directions for how we view and thus develop a research strategy equipped to capture continuity and change. Take for instance a rational choice institutional perspective on continuity and change in politics: such a perspective will typically view the decision-making processes as characterised by medium- to long-term periods of political stability interspersed by points in time where political actors adjust or change the status quo—as illustrated in Fig. 2.3. A punctuated equilibrium perspective (Baumgartner and Jones 1993; Princen 2013) has a similar view on time in politics. Politics is characterised by stability in the medium- to long-term, where sudden events— for example, change in government, economic crisis—may interrupt the ƐƚĂďŝůŝƚLJ

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32  K. LYNGGAARD

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Fig. 2.4  Punctuated equilibrium

equilibrium, before relocating politics at a new equilibrium; this is illustrated by Fig. 2.4. Closer to a discursive analytical perspective on time in politics is Streeck and Thelen’s (2005: 22–24) historical institutional perspective on gradual institutional change through ‘layering,’ where new institutional elements— regulations, decision-making procedures etc.—are attached to old institutions that they outgrow and replace; this is illustrated in Fig. 2.5. Yet, from a discursive analytical perspective, any point in time is characterised simultaneously by continuity and change. This follows from the idea that any articulation in politics is embedded in pre-existing discourse(s), while at the same time always also articulated in a particular context. Think of, and put into words, any utterance. Then repeat the exact same utterance. And repeat it again. And again. Even if the wordings of the utterances are identical, the second, and perhaps more so the third and fourth time you reproduce the utterance, the context has changed. Essentially, you probably sound increasingly silly because you are repeating yourself. Unless, of course, you are chanting, in which case it is a perfectly accepted spiritual practice. This is an example that we are typically not that interested in when mapping and analysing political discourse. Yet, maybe the example is not that farfetched. When mapping political discourse we are interested in utterances in politics amounting to meaning systems, ways of their reproduction including the authority attached to meaning OD\HULQJ 2OGLQVWLWXWLRQ Fig. 2.5  Institutional layering

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systems, and changes in the same. A discourse analytical view on continuity and change in political discourse is illustrated in Fig. 2.6. While any point in time is characterised by both continuity and change, discursive ruptures may occur through dynamics that are internal to such discourse (discourse B). Furthermore, discursive change may come about through different discourses coming into contact with each other (discourse A coming in contact with discourse B), just like such contact between discourses may produce ‘new’ discourse through merger (discourse A+B). It is thus essential to include a time dimension in a discursive analytical strategy with the purpose of explaining the implications of discourse for politics. In addition, the time dimension allows for cross-time comparisons, or a comparative temporal analysis. A comparative temporal analysis offers an opportunity in otherwise single case studies— for example, policy sector discourse analysis or a country study of the Europeanisation of political discourse—to increase the number of examples and, thus, for within-case comparisons. Within-case comparisons can be done both by comparing points in time and by comparing periods of time. Depending on the number of periods (P) and points in time (t) identified, this procedure will enable us to “compare a case with itself” Fig. 2.7 illustrate a discursive development allowing for comparisons of two periods of time (P1 and P2) and three points in time (t0, t1 and t2). Think for instance of a comparative temporal perspective on the Europeanisation of domestic political discourse: this may call for comparisons of a country before and after EU membership with the aim of isolating the impact of the membership on domestic discourse. With that same aim, more sector-specific variation may form the background for a

34  K. LYNGGAARD Wϭ

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comparison of, for example, before and after membership of the European Monetary Union (EMU) or before and after certain country-specific optouts. The methodological concern here is that the EU or the EMU may well be the cause of change in domestic discourse well before the actual act of membership—for example, triggered by the implications of EU accession negotiations and various pre-accession agreements. This methodological concern may be addressed by a more inductive route to temporal comparisons. Continuing the example of Europeanisation of domestic discourse: the more inductive route calls for, first, a historical in-depth descriptive analysis with the purpose of identifying and discursively characterising periods of time and, second, a subsequent comparison of the time periods identified. The identification of periods also involves a characterisation of the points in time, marking the beginning and the end of the periods. A period can be characterised, for instance, by the institutionalisation of certain conceptions of the implications of European integration among a set of domestic actors. Here, discourse is essentially seen as a process. Yet, analytically, the point in time marking the end of an institutionalisation of a European integration discourse may also be viewed as an instant of change and characterised in terms of discursive differences before and after this point in time (Lynggaard 2011: 30–31; 2012: 98–100; Andersen and Kjær 1996; see also Lynggaard [2006] for an example).

Multi-theoretical Analysis Reasoning

and Counterfactual

Discourse analytical strategies typically aspire to a high degree of empirical sensitivity, especially for the process of mapping discourse. However, the aim of developing empirically sensitive research

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strategies by no means renders discourse analysis a-theoretical. Yet, rather than adopting a set causal theoretical framework, which is then operationalised and empirically tested, the mapping of discourse tends to be guided by a few key concepts and analytical themes, leaving assumptions about causal relationship behind, at least to begin with. The methodological challenge for discourse analytical research strategies is then, how do we uphold the aspiration to empirical sensitivity, while still generating systematic knowledge that allows for theoretical development? There are at least two ways of dealing with this challenge that are fitting for discourse analysis: adopting research strategies allowing for (a) counterfactual reasoning and/or (b) multitheoretical analysis. Mark Blyth’s study of the role of ideas in transforming institutions at times of uncertainty is an example of putting counterfactual reasoning to good use (2002: see Chapter 8). At the back of Blyth’s analysis of severe economic crises in the USA and Sweden, he puts his arguments to the test by considering if political coalitions and government actions would have formed and occurred in the absence of key economic ideas. Counterfactual reasoning essentially proceeds through a comparison of the results of an empirical analysis with an ‘alternative reality’ with the imagined absence of key explanatory factors. Think, for instance, of the question of whether it is reasonable to imagine that certain specified changes in member state political discourse would have occurred in the absence of the EU, essentially disregarding explanations with reference to Europeanisation. In order for such an analysis to appear reliable, the ‘alternative reality’ with which the actual analysis is compared should be theoretically substantiated and should only vary on explicit and welldefined dimensions (Haverland 2007). Alternative hypotheses about the domestic effects of globalization and domestic reform imperatives may thus form the background for a counterfactual analysis, enabling more nuanced claims of whether European integration is a source of domestic change or if this may have occurred regardless. Counterfactual analysis can be a helpful analytical strategy in cases where a clear a priory distinction can be made between the independent effects of key variables. However, the above example also point to a couple of challenges for counterfactual analysis. First, when dealing with complex fields of political discourse, possibly including a multitude of causes and consequences, the establishment of a convincing ‘alternative reality’ against which the substantive empirical analysis is compared is a difficult task. Even in

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our simple formulated Europeanisation example, we would be facing the cumbersome task of analysing our findings in all of the respective imagined absences of European integration, globalisation and domestic mechanisms of change. Added to this, if our explanatory factors are mutually re-enforcing and interdependent, rather than conflicting and clearly separable, then speculating about the causal relations becomes even more of a challenge. Another way for discourse analysis to contribute to theoretical developments, and for engaging in dialogue with other research positions, goes through multi-theoretical analysis. In order to enable a multitheoretical analysis, we need to develop a research strategy of relevance beyond discourse analytical frameworks. Like counterfactual reasoning, a discursive analytical research strategy allowing for several theoretical interpretations goes through two steps. The first step (1st order analysis) involves a descriptive mapping of the political discourse at hand. The second step (2nd order analysis) involves interpretations of the findings from the first step from different theoretical perspectives. In order to allow for this sequence of analysis, the 1st order analysis must investigate analytical themes and cases of relevance for theoretical frameworks outside of discourse analysis. For instance, mapping Europeanised political discourse in selected EU member states may enable us to make claims about how different discourses sway political outcomes. However, if country cases are selected so to represent e.g. different country sizes (large/small) or polity characteristics (e.g. centralized/decentralized states; neo-corporatist/pluralist states) and institutional variations (e.g. large/small number of veto points; interventionist/liberal policy stances), the way is paved for dialogue across theoretical literatures. That is, the 2nd order analysis can address questions like; do domestic discourses on European integration vary between small and large states? Are there variations in European integration discourses in corporatist and pluralist political systems? In liberal market economies and coordinated market economies? The philosophical underpinnings of the analytical frameworks and theoretical perspectives employed in a multi-theoretical analysis may well differ from that of discourse analysis. However, in this book, analytical frameworks and substantive theories are approached as discourses in their own right. Some might find this controversial. However, it facilitates comparisons of discourses as articulated by actors involved in the empirical field and ‘academic discourses’—all with the purpose of theoretical

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cross-fertilisation and commencing a more comprehensive understanding of EU politics (Lynggaard 2011: 31–33; 2012: 100–101).

Ideas, Discourse and Institutions: A General Analytical Framework Discursive institutionalism is an approach to political analysis formulated most prominently by Vivien Schmidt in numerous publications since the late 1990s/early 2000. Many more collaborators and scholars have since joined and are still joining and contributing to discursive institutional research. Schmidt views discursive institutionalism as an umbrella concept covering any research “taking ideas and discourse seriously” and the institutional context in which they evolve (Schmidt 2010). For Schmidt, ideas refer to the substance of discourse (what the discourse is about), whereas discourse is an interactive process though which ideas are constructed and conveyed. In order to capture discursive interactive processes, Schmidt introduces a distinction between coordinative discourse, referring to the construction and coordination of ideas among political elites, and communicative discourse, through which ideas are communicated between political elites and the public (Schmidt 2008, 2010). Schmidt’s discursive institutionalism further aims to create room for methodological pluralism, allowing for a wide range of analytical strategic choices depending on the research question at hand and mutual engagement, at the very least, at the level of research results (Schmidt 2017). This author is pleased to adhere to such key concepts, principles and ambitions. At the same time, prior to Schmidt coining the term ‘discursive institutionalism,’ research endeavours of a similar type appeared in various guises such as ideational institutionalism and institutional history, some of which are worth revisiting. In particular, the following will have a brief look at the key concepts of ideas, discourse and institution, the links between these and the associated understanding of political change and stability used for the purposes of this book. Informing this book’s approach to discursive institutionalism is an ideational sequence connecting the concepts of ideas, discourse, and institution. Ideas are approached as being prior to the (potential) formation of a discourse, which in turn is prior to the (potential) establishment of institutions (Andersen and Kjær 1996; Kjær and Pedersen 2001; Lynggaard 2006, 2012). To be sure, this sequence is an analytical construct, rather than thought of as a general and accurate description of the

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real world. Furthermore, ideas are not viewed as predating discourse, but rather ideas are conveyed and evolve in discourse. However, for analytical purposes, ideas are approached as the entities that allow for the development of a discourse—that is, discourse as a rule-based meaning system (more about this below). The sequential understanding of ideas, discourse and institutions is thus the starting point for an analytical framework serving the purpose of capturing the discourse or discourses in focus of our empirical research. In other words, the ideational sequence is the point of departure for a 1st order discursive institutional analysis of the twists and turns in a political discourse. The 2nd order analysis then serves the purpose of explaining political outcomes. Compared to Schmidt’s approach, the ideational sequential line of thinking adopted in this book has at least three important implications, namely: it is a discursive institutional analysis operating only on the ideational level; the 1st order analysis views institutions as a discursive phenomenon (more about this below); finally, it is the 2nd order analysis that allows us to move into the broader institutional literature and beyond, by means of comparisons and multi-theoretical interpretations, among others. To be sure, regardless of these largely research strategic variations, the take on discursive institutionalism argued in this book is otherwise very much in line with that of Schmidt and collaborators. In fact, to this author, one of the attractions of discursive institutionalism is that it allows for engagement with any research with some concern with the ideational in politics including rational choice, historical and sociological institutional research. Against this backdrop, in this book ideas are viewed as the ‘atoms’ enabling the production of a discourse. Political ideas are typically contested and attached with different meanings by different political actors. Yet, in order to produce relevant and meaningful statements and to be accepted as serious and legitimate, political actors must express themselves through a set of commonly recognised ideas (Andersen 1995: 18–19; Andersen and Kjær 1996: 8). Discourses unfold as actors turn ideas into rules-based systems of concepts and conceptions. A discourse is thus defined as “a system of meaning that orders the production of conceptions and interpretations of the social world in a particular context” (Kjær and Pedersen 2001: 220). In order to identify a political discourse, we must be able to describe the set of rules that guide the production of concepts and conceptions around a political phenomenon. Institutions represent authorised and sanctioned discourse. That is, the set of rules governing a discourse are referred to as institutions when

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these rules have attained some degree of authority and have been linked to certain sanctions (Andersen 1995: 22). In that sense, institutions create expectations about viable political activity in a particular context by constituting a set of authorised and sanctioned rules for acceptable and valid statements, the production and maintenance of knowledge, and the formulation of relevant political problems and solutions (Kjær and Pedersen 2001). This understanding of institutions is by no means conflicting with Vivien Schmidt’s when she view institutions as “at one and the same time as given, as structures which are the context within which agents think, speak, and act, and as contingent, as the results of agents’ thoughts, words, and actions” (Schmidt 2008: 314). However, the definition of institution adopted in this book (using Andersen, Pedersen, Kjær and others) is probably more narrow in that it is concerned with the rules of “what is sayable” (Foucault 1991: 59), rather than with the rules guiding “what is thinkable.” This does not leave us with “unthinking” political actors (Schmidt 2008: 314). Yet it does mean that the purpose of our analysis is not to get into the heads of political actors inhabiting our field of research, but rather to uncover discourse as it is produced and reproduced among political actors. This clearly has important implications for our choice of research techniques and data, as discussed in much more detail in Chapter 3, Discourse Analysis, Data and Research Techniques. The ideational sequence between ideas, discourse and institutions presented also implies two distinct understandings of change in political discourse. The first type of change appears when (a) ideas are turned into discourse, which is referred to as a process of articulation. Since discourses are rules-based systems of concepts and conceptions, processes of articulation progress through the establishment of some sort of discursive rules. The second type of change appears when (b) discourse is turned into institutions, which is referred to as a process of institutionalisation. Since institutions are authorised and sanctioned discourse, processes of institutionalisation progress through authorisations and the establishment of some sort of sanctions. Finally, although institutions are discourse, which have obtained some degree of authority and been linked to sanctions, this conceptualisation also implies that institutions are not fixed. Rather, institutions are ongoing processes of renewal and possible change and are only upheld for as long as someone actually refers to the authorised and sanctioned discursive rules that constitute institutions (Andersen 1995: 23).

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In conclusion, like the vast majority of research into political discourse, this book adopts a social ontology highlighting the production of discourse in-between actors and the implications for politics. This chapter has argued in favour of a problem-driven approach to discourse analysis, where the choices to be made when putting together a discourse analytical research strategy should reflect the specific research purpose at hand. Key research strategic choices concerns the specific agency–structure and conflict–consensus ‘mixture’ adopted. This chapter has argued in favour of viewing such choices as located on continuums, where the specific research strategic agency–structure and conflict–consensus emphasis should reflect the research purpose and existing empirical knowledge on the area, just like we may move back and forth on the continuums as our research proceeds. In this regard, Chapter 4, Discourse and EU Policy-Making offers a conceptual elaboration of how discursive structures, agency, consensus and conflict allow us to understand political continuity and change. Chapter 5, Discourse and the Strategic usage of Europe elaborates a research strategy allowing for the study of the strategic use of discourse for political purposes and serves as an illustration of the role of discursive agency politics. Chapter 6, Discourse, Myths and Emotions in EU Politics develops an analytical strategy for the study of political emotions and zooms in on how political elites appeal to emotions both in justifying political positions and for rallying organisational members around organisational ideals. Chapter 7, Visual Discourse, Imagery and EU Politics offers an analytical strategy including a fourfold typology for understanding the role of imagery in politics. It is with these thoughts in mind I turn to a hands-on discussion of research techniques and data available for capturing political discourse empirically.

References Andersen, N. Å. (1995). Selvskabt forvaltning: Forvaltningspolitikkens og central forvaltningens udvikling i Danmark 1900–1994. København: Nyt fra Samfundsvidenskaberne. Andersen, N. Å., & Kjær, P. (1996). Institutional Construction and Change: An Analytical Strategy of Institutional History (COS-Rapport No. 5/1996). Bacchi, C. (2004). Policy and Discourse: Challenging the Construction of Affirmative Action as Preferential Treatment. Journal of European Public Policy, 11(1), 128–146.

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Banta, B. (2013). Analysing Discourse as a Causal Mechanism. European Journal of International Relations, 19(2), 379–402. Baumgartner, F. R., & Jones, B. D. (1993). Agendas and Instability in American Politics. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press. Biegon, D. (2013). Specifying the Arena of Possibilities: Post-structuralist Narrative Analysis and the European Commission’s Legitimation Strategies. Journal of Common Market Studies, 51(2), 194–211. Blyth, M. (2002). Great Transformations: Economic Ideas and Institutional Change in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crespy, A. (2010). When “Bolkestein” Is Trapped by the French Anti-liberal Discourse: A Discursive-Institutionalist Account of Preference Formation in the Realm of European Union Multi-level Politics. Journal of European Public Policy, 17(8), 1253–1270. Dimitrova, A., & Kortenska, E. (2017). What Do Citizens Want? And Why Does It Matter? Discourses Among Citizens as Opportunities and Constraints for EU Enlargement. Journal of European Public Policy, 24(2), 259–277. Flockhart, T. (2005). Critical Junctures and Social Identity Theory: Explaining the Gap Between Danish Mass and Elite Attitudes to Europeanization. Journal of Common Market Studies, 43(2), 251–271. Foucault, M. (1991). Politics and the Study of Discourse. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (pp. 53–72). London, UK: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Friedrichs, J., & Kratochwil, F. (2009). On Acting and Knowing: How Pragmatism Can Advance International Relations Research and Methodology. International Organization, 63(4), 701–731. Hajer, M. A. (1995). The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernisation and the Policy Process. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hajer, M. A. (2005). Coalitions, Practices, and Meaning in Environmental Politics: From Acid Rain to BSE. In D. Howarth & J. Torfing (Eds.), Discourse Theory in European Politics: Identity, Policy and Governance (pp. 297–315). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Hansen, L. (2006). Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War. London: Routledge. Haverland, M. (2007). Methodology. In P. Graziano & M. P. Vink (Eds.), Europeanization: New Research Agendas (pp. 59–70). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hay, C., & Smith, N. (2005). Horses for Courses? The Political Discourse of Globalisation and European Integration in the UK and Ireland. West European Politics, 24(1), 124–158. Hay, C., & Smith, N. (2010). How Policy-Makers (Really) Understand Globalization: The International Architecture of Anglophone Globalization Discourse in Europe. Public Administration, 88(4), 903–927.

42  K. LYNGGAARD Hedström, P., & Swedberg, R. (1998). Social Mechanisms: An Introductory Essay. In P. Hedström & R. Swedberg (Eds.), Social Mechanisms (pp. 1–31). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Herranz-Surrallés, A. (2012). Justifying Enlargement in a Multi-level Polity: A Discursive Institutionalist Analysis of the Elites-Public Gap over European Union Enlargement. Journal of Common Market Studies, 50(3), 385–402. Holzscheiter, A. (2011). Power of Discourse or Discourse of the Powerful? The Reconstruction of Global Childhood Norms in the Drafting of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Journal of Language and Politics, 10(1), 1–28. Hurrelmann, A., Gora, A., & Wagner, A. (2013). The Legitimation of the European Union in the News Media: Three Treaty Reform Debates. Journal of European Public Policy, 20(4), 515–534. Jachtenfuchs, M. (2002). Deepening and Widening Integration Theory. Journal of European Public Policy, 9(4), 650–657. Jachtenfuchs, M., Diez, T., & Jung, S. (1998). Which Europe? Conflicting Models of a Legitimate European Political Order. European Journal of International Relations, 4(4), 409–449. Jackson, P. T. (2011). The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations: Philosophy of Science and Its Implications for the Study of World Politics. New York: Routledge. Jones, M. D., & McBeth, M. K. (2010). A Narrative Policy Framework: Clear Enough to Be Wrong. Policy Studies Journal, 38(2), 329–353. Kenny, M. (2015). The Return of “Englishness” in British Political Culture: The End of the Unions? Journal of Common Market Studies, 53(1), 35–51. Kjær, P., & Pedersen, O. K. (2001). Translating Liberalization: Neoliberalism in the Danish Negotiated Economy. In J. L. Campbell & O. K. Pedersen (Eds.), The Rise of Neoliberalism and Institutional Analysis (pp. 219–248). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Lynggaard, K. (2006). The Common Agricultural Policy and Organic Farming: An Institutional Perspective on Continuity and Change. Wallingford, UK: CAB International. Lynggaard, K. (2011). Domestic Change in the Face of European Integration and Globalization: Methodological Pitfalls and Pathways. Comparative European Politics, 9(1), 18–37. Lynggaard, K. (2012). Discursive Institutional Analytical Strategies. In T. Exadaktylos & C. M. Radaelli (Eds.), Research Design in European Studies: Establishing Causality in Europeanization (pp. 85–104). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Lynggaard, K. (2013). Elite Decision Makers’ Strategic Use of European Integration and Globalisation Discourses: Irish and Danish Banking Sector Reforms in the 1990s and 2000s. New Political Economy, 18(6), 862–884.

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Macartney, H. (2011). Variegated Neoliberalism: EU Varieties of Capitalism and International Political Economy. London and New York: Routledge. North, D. C. (1990). Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Princen, S. (2013). Punctuated Equilibrium Theory and the European Union. Journal of European Public Policy, 20(6), 854–870. Quaglia, L., & Howarth, D. (2018). The Policy Narratives of European Capital Markets Union. Journal of European Public Policy, 25(7), 990–1009. Rosamond, B. (2000). Theories of European Integration. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Schmidt, V. A. (2003). How, Where, and When Does Discourse Matter in Small States’ Welfare Adjustment. New Political Economy, 8(1), 127–146. Schmidt, V. A. (2007). Trapped by Ideas: French Elites Discourses on European Integration and Globalization. Journal of European Public Policy, 14(7), 992–1009. Schmidt, V. A. (2008). Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse. Annual Review of Political Science, 11, 303–326. Schmidt, V. A. (2010). Taking Ideas and Discourse Seriously: Explaining Change Through Discursive Institutionalism as the Fourth New Institutionalism. European Political Science Review, 2(1), 1–25. Schmidt, V. A. (2017). Theorizing Ideas and Discourse in Political Science: Intersubjectivity, Neo-Institutionalisms, and the Power of Ideas. Critical Review, 29(2), 248–263. Schmidt, V. A., & Radaelli, C. M. (2004). Policy Change and Discourse in Europe: Conceptual and Methodological Issues. West European Politics, 27(2), 183–211. Schmidt, V. A., & Thatcher, M. (Eds.). (2013). Resilient Liberalism in Europe’s Political Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, N., & Hay, C. (2008). Mapping the Political Discourse of Globalisation and European Integration in the United Kingdom and Ireland Empirically. European Journal of Political Research, 47(3), 359–382. Stratigaki, M. (2005). Gender Mainstreaming vs Positive Action: An Ongoing Conflict in EU Gender Equality Policy. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 12(2), 165–186. Streeck, W., & Thelen, K. (2005). Introduction: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economy. In W. Streeck & K. Thelen (Eds.), Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies (pp. 1–38). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Vetters, R., Jentges, E., & Trenz, H.-J. (2009). Whose Project Is It? Media Debates on the Ratification of the EU Constitutional Treaty. Journal of European Public Policy, 16(3), 412–430. Warren, T., Holden, P., & Howell, K. E. (2017). The European Commission and Fiscal Governance Reform: A Strategic Actor? West European Politics, 40(6), 1310–1330.

CHAPTER 3

Discourse Analysis, Data and Research Techniques

This chapter addresses the question of how we may capture discourse empirically. Here, we discuss types of data useful for carrying out discourse analysis in the context of EU politics and offer guidelines for research techniques. The terms research techniques and data are used in full awareness that the distinction between the two is blurred. From the perspective of discourse analysis, we cannot imagine social science data independent of the researcher in the sense that, as soon as we commence a process of selecting data, we also contribute to the construction of our data and thus to our empirical research object. What is more, the format of our data may well change over the course of the research process. Think for instance of an interview situation taking the form of a more or less structured talk between two or more individuals. The interview may be recorded both as audio and as video, and may also be turned into text by means of a transcription, with all forms of data having use, as well as strengths and limitations in capturing political discourse. This chapter also uses the terms qualitative and quantitative research, acknowledging the blurry distinction between the two. Numbers or numerical data are typically viewed as quantitative data, whereas qualitative data refer to a much broader spectrum of texts, images, audio and visual recordings and cultural artefact. At the same time, the process of interpreting quantitative data may well be regarded as a qualitative research activity, just like qualitative research techniques can both make use of and produce numerical data (Kuckartz 2014: 1–3). The practice © The Author(s) 2019 K. Lynggaard, Discourse Analysis and European Union Politics, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39326-5_3

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of discourse analysis as a research technique is almost exclusively viewed as qualitative in the sense that discourse analysis concerns the study of collective meaning systems as articulated by the actors involved in a given field of research. At the same time, statistical analysis and numerical data often form part—even a crucial part—of any political discourse; for example, statistics as the foundation for political argumentation and a key site for political conflict. We are also increasingly seeing discursive mapping involving quantitative data and occasionally statistical analysis; for example, for the purpose of illustrating the frequency and scope of discursive categories. From the perspective of discourse analysis, however, rather than being neutral and objective, quantitative data and statistical analysis are approached and analysed—like any other data and research techniques—as the products of social processes reflecting societal power structures and politics. In order to move beyond the confines of the traditional distinctions used for characterising and choosing data and research techniques, this chapter ask the questions of ‘what to read’ and ‘how to read’ (Wæver 2005: 39–41) in order to capture EU political discourse. The central claim is that any type of data and research technique has its advantages and limitations and often we are best off drawing of several specific and possible sequential combinations of research techniques and data when seeking to capture political discourse. The next section—what to read—first highlights a few general considerations that are worth taking into account when approaching the choice of data for a specific purpose, which is followed by more detailed discussions of the advantages and usefulness of documents, survey questionnaires, research interviews and non-linguistic data for the purpose of discourse analysis. This is succeeded by a section—‘how to read’—in highlighting ‘content analysis and computer-assisted text analysis’ and ‘problem perception analysis’ as means of mapping the discourse(s) embedded in the selected data material.

What to Read? What we read in order to capture EU political discourse first and foremost depends on our research question and purpose. Yet, two key analytical questions are always worth considering since they are crucial for the choice of data as well as having consequences for the conclusions drawn on the back of the analysis:

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1. Whose discourse(s) is to be uncovered? This involves encircling the set(s) of actors involved in articulating the meaning system(s) in focus. This is essentially the question of what we want our data to represent. Are we interested in data enabling the study of discursive conflicts and coalitions across, for example, the Commission, the European Parliament (EP) and the Council? Or is our focus on same among EP political groups, Directorates-General (DGs), organised interest and EU member states? It is important to acknowledge that there is rarely a 1:1 match between traditionally defined collective political actors and any given discursive formation, making our choice of sources—whether documents, interviews, or otherwise— also a choice of whose discourse these sources represents. 2.  What is the timeframe of the discourse(s) up for analysis? Answering this question involves specifying the beginning and the end of the discursive developments we wish to uncover, whether shorter snapshots or over longer periods of time. Identifying the historical beginning and termination of a discourse are analytical ‘blind spots’ for discourse analysis (see Chapter 1, section ‘What Can’t Discourse Analysis Be Used for?’). Discourses do not pop up out of nowhere; they are transformations or mergers of previous discursive formations. At the same time, there are typically empirical arguments available for substantiating our choice of when in time to commence our study of specific discourses, for example, how best to deal with the financial and economic crisis in late 2008 or conceptions of international terrorism in the early 2000s. Either way, our choice of time perspective is essentially an analytical choice, yet it should by no means be a random one and we certainly need to acknowledge the implications of the choice. Having dealt with the question of ‘whose discourse’ and the analytical timeframe for our study, the selection of data for analysis depends on the availability of the preferred empirical material and how the data have come into existence as well as of the cost involved in collecting the material. It is usually worth considering the following: i.  Whether ‘self-reporting’ data are available or if we are looking for second-hand sources. Self-reporting data here refers to material produced by the actors whose discourse we are aiming to capture. The discourse analysist is interested in uncovering discourse

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among a set or set of agents, making self-reporting empirical material key to understanding the meaning attached by agents to a given political phenomenon. This certainly does not mean that second-hand sources such as media accounts or historical accounts are useless for the purpose of discourse analysis. Rather it means that we need to consider the implications of second-hand sources for the conclusions we draw on the back of our analysis. For instance, if we use media accounts to capture discourses among EU member state governments, then our analysis is essentially the study of media discourses among EU member state governments, which should be reflected in our conclusions. On the other hand, our analysis may well make use of government representatives being quoted in the media, though such data still call for us to take the implications of media editing styles into account when drawing our conclusions. Table 3.1  Advantages and analytical usefulness of types of data Types of data

Advantages

Analytical usefulness

Documents

• Low collecting costs • Available over longer time periods •D  igitalised allowing for text searches • Analysist not involved in data production (typically) •E  nables additional steering & focus on knowledge needed for analysis •L  ow collection cost (if drawing on existing e.g., Eurobarometer/ opinion polls) •E  nables additional steering & focus on knowledge needed for analysis

• Longitudinal studies • Identification of discursive categories •A  ssessment of scope & distribution of discursive categories • Provides indepth knowledge of discursive categories • Allows quantification & qualification of discursive categories • Provides indepth knowledge of discursive categories • Establishes relationships between discursive categories • Ideational entrepreneurship • Visual discourse

Survey questionnaires

Interviews and ‘naturally occurring talk’

Non-linguistic data (Images, symbols, physical objects, observed actions)

•L  ess used for political analysis—originality

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ii. To what is extent are we as researchers involved in creating the data? The question is not whether we are involved (we always are), but rather whether the data would exist regardless of our research activities and how we contribute to shaping the data. This is relevant particularly when using interviews, questionnaires, as well as some non-linguistic data such as photographs taken by the researcher. Table 3.1 gives an overview of the general advantages and usefulness of documents, survey questionnaires, research interviews and non-linguistic data for the purpose of discourse analysis. These types of data will be discussed in more detail in the following sections. Documents Documents as data are probably the most suitable for studying the constructions of discursive categories over time, but they are also useful for the study of scope and distribution discursive categories, especially with the increased availability of computer software allowing us to handle large amounts document material. Documents and document analysis are no doubt the most commonly used data and research techniques in uncovering political discourse (Triantafillou 2016: 134); yet explicit and systematic considerations on the use of documents in discourse analysis are surprisingly rare. From the perspective of discourse analysis, documents are primarily discursive artefacts and treated as a partial and biased documentation of the past. There are at least a couple of reasons for this understanding of documents as data. First, documents produced in and about political processes come into existence and are preserved at the will of political elites, just like “the vast majority of human activities are after all never recorded on paper” (Knudsen 2015: 41, 42). Second, when engaging in the selection and analysis of documents, and publishing research results for that matter, the researcher actively contributes to the construction of the discourse(s) subject to investigation. That is, documents about the past are viewed from and shaped by the present. For these reasons we need to be particularly attentive to and explicit in the establishment of our document archives (i.e., the collections of documents selected for analysis) and methods of analysis.

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A document can be said to be language fixed in text and time (Lynggaard 2015: 154). The concept of text has been used very broadly to include, for example, images, symbols, and physical objects (Bryman 2008; for discussion of the concept of ‘text’ see also Ricoeur 1999). However, initially the focus in this chapter is on written text as data in discourse analysis (the chapter returns to the discussion in the section ‘Non-linguistic Data’). This means that a document is made up of language that has been written down and maintained as such at a given point in time. Even with this more narrow definition, the range of types of documents available for analysis of political discourse in the EU is almost infinite. It includes, for instance, legal writings, various reports, policy papers, manifestos, minutes, newspaper articles, newsletters, transcribed interviews, biographies, memoirs, blogs, personal letters, statistics, academic books and journal articles. The list of public and private, national and European archives offering documents of relevance for uncovering EU political discourse is clearly too many to mention (for more elaborate thoughts on EU archives, see Knudsen 2015). To point to just a few: An invaluable admittance to official EU documents is the Official Website of the European Union (http://europa.eu/). Another is the University of Pittsburgh hosted Archive of European Integration (http://aei.pitt.edu/), which besides research papers includes a vast amount of both recent and more historical official EU documents, most of which is not otherwise available from the europa.eu. Politico— European Edition (http://www.politico.eu/) (previous European Voice) is a media platform specialised in EU politics offering an article archive dating back to 1995. Interest organisations, social movements, political parties and other actors in EU politics typically also give internet access to their official publications including annual reports, speeches, press releases and newsletters. Potentially relevant document material is really only limited by our imagination. Defining documents as fixed in time does not mean that that documents do not evolve over time or possibly change their status; for example, in terms of the authority attached to a document. This will in fact often be the case. Legal texts will typically have undergone a process through the policy intentions of preparatory writings to a piece of legislation. Likewise, internet-based documents such as websites and blogs may be subject to updates. When text changes over time, however, it is advisable to treat such texts as separate documents, not least because the textual change may well be central to our analysis of discursive developments.

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Documents have a series of characteristics making them especially useful as data for the analysis of political discourse. First, a special feature of documents is that the discourse analyst, as a rule, is not complicit in the production of the documents subject to analysis. It is of course possible that the producer of a document—whether individuals or organisations—has contemplated a given document being subject to a subsequent social science analysis. Still, as a rule, documents are not produced primarily for the purpose social sciences analysis (Bryman 2008). The point is certainly not that documents should be viewed as untainted by the researcher and as giving direct access to the truth about a given political discursive phenomenon. Documents as data are—like any other data—also analysed from the position of an analyst, who is likely to view the material from specific theoretical perspectives and always in a specific temporal context. The point is rather that documents as data for discourse analysis differ from the type of data that, for example, interviews and surveys offer for discourse analysis (Lynggaard 2015: 154–156). Second, documents about EU politics are typically ‘low cost data’ and readily available through libraries, archives, databases and digitally. Third, documents are available to cover discursive twists and turns over longer periods of time; for example, using government reports, various annual reports, policy papers, newsletters, and newspaper articles. This is helpful since discourse analysis typically requires longitudinal studies (see Chapter 2, section ‘Discourse Analysis and Time’). Fourth, self-reporting documents produced at the time of the articulation of the discourse(s) subject to analysis are typically obtainable. That is to say, while, for example, interviews are always reflecting respondents’ rationalizations after the fact, documents offering expressions of involved actors’ political discourse at the time of events are usually available, at least when the research object is EU political discourse. Interviews and ‘Naturally Occurring Talk’ Research interviews repeated over time allowing for longitudinal studies of discourse are rare. This is probably due to the fairly high costs associated with conducting research interviews, especially in an EU context, where traveling costs as well as getting an opening in the busy schedules of EU decision-makers are both issues to be reckoned with. To that can be added that funded research projects typically run for three to five years, which may well be the most important barrier to the repetition of research interviews covering a time period of more than a few years.

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Research interviews do, however, have a role to play in uncovering political discourse. The advantages of interviews are first and foremost that they allows us to qualify and establish relationships between discursive categories. To be sure, it is far from all discourse analyses that have the ambition of proposing causalities and the ones that do tend to conceive of causal relationships as having a high degree of context dependence (see Chapter 2, section ‘Causality and Types of Explanations’). Regardless, interviews may give access to information on issues such as how ideas travel—i.e. diffuse—from one discursive context to another, for instance, by means of personal exchanges and relations. Having shown similarities between ideas articulated in otherwise different contexts, the discourse analysists will typically assume or theoretically argue the topic of how ideas have travelled from one context to another. To an extent, we are at all interested in ‘the smoking gun’; however, interviews may help us to empirically substantiate such relationships (e.g. Cairney 2009). Second, interviews have shown to be particularly useful in discourse analyses with a special interest in ideational agency including the study of policy or norm entrepreneurs (Copeland and Scott 2014; Ackrill and Kay 2011; Bjökdahl 2008) and transnational networks and advocacy coalitions (Chira-Pascanut 2014; Quaglia 2010). Documents in the form speeches, personal letters and memoirs, for example, have a similar use, but interviews allow for the collection of more guided information, with the advantages and drawbacks that follow from this. Third, interviews offer an opportunity to get access to information about political processes, otherwise not articulated and documented. This may be key information helping us to interpret other types of empirical material—most commonly documents—but also non-linguistic data (see further section ‘Non-linguistic Data’, this chapter). Interviews thus have an advantage in illuminating politics beyond formal and legalised decision-making processes (see e.g., the in-depth study of citizens’ discourses on EU enlargement from Dimitrova and Kortenska [2017]). Research interviews are also associated with a number of challenges when used for the purpose of capturing discourse (Howarth 2005: 338– 340). First, interviews always involve ‘retrospective rationalisation’ and possibly ‘rehearsed organisational stories’ deprived of conflicts and complexities. Organisational stories may very well be the object of our discourse analysis, yet it is worth keeping in mind that the legitimacy and even survival of political parties, social movements and other collective

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political actors arguably depends on their ability to mobilise members’ desires around stylised organisational stories or utopian ideals. In other words, challenges to such ideals may be silenced, since they represent a challenge to the very existence of the organisation, but possibly also to individual identities (see Kølvraa 2016: 176–178). Second, regardless of whether we approach the interview situation with more or less structured interview techniques, the researcher is always part of the meaning construction. For the purpose of discourse analysis aimed at uncovering discourse among a set of political actors this is an issue for concern. It is also a concern which to some extent is always present, although it is typically less of a problem when conducting elite interviews since we may assume that highly professionalised political elites and experts are less inclined to let opinions and meanings trusted upon them by the interviewer. One way to deal with the latter issue is through the researcher’s use of less guided oral data or what is sometimes called ‘authentic interaction’ (Steensig 2015: 321–347). Recordings of naturally occurring talk at conferences, workshops or office talk fall into this category, and this has the advantage of not being the product of the analysist. It is talk that would have taken place regardless, which may serve the purpose of gaining access to discourse that is different from officially documented political discourse. Survey Questionnaires Questionnaires offer some of the same advantages of research interviews. Regardless of the degree of openness of the questions, questionnaires are similar to guided data in interviews; the key difference being that interviews that include follow-up questions are much more open to taking to new directions in the actual interview situation. However, questionnaires typically represent lower-cost data and, especially if organised electronically, allow for a larger number of respondents. Questionnaires are thus useful for both qualifying and quantifying discursive categories. Survey questionnaires repeated over a certain time period as means for uncovering discursive developments are much less common—for the same reasons as interviews above. An important exception being Eurobarometer surveys and opinion polls, which are ready available on wide range of institutional and policy matter including public views on policy issues and trusts in EU institutions (http://ec.europa.eu/ COMMFrontOffice/PublicOpinion/). Questionnaires have shown to

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be particularly helpful in identifying social interactions underpinning political discourse. One interesting example is a study by Mérand et al. (2011) using questionnaires to investigate the interactions among political agents in EU security governance by which they identify the political networks underpinning ideas and institutions in EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (see also Joerges and Neyer [1997] for an example from the food policy area). Non-linguistic Data Text as images, symbols and physical objects is crucial in capturing what may be termed ‘visual discourse.’ The distinction between visual discourse and written text is blurred in that written text is clearly also visual and texts typography and layout may well be approached as a significant dimension when analysing visual discourse. Political analysis is not a complete stranger to the use of images, symbols, physical objects and observations of actions as data. At the same time, it is no doubt the least common sources of empirical evidence in political analysis, just like university training in research techniques directed at non-linguistic data are non-standard in political science, possibly with the exception of observational methods. However, how visual objects and processes construct and are constructed by the social world (Rose 2001: 140) may well be relevant—key, even—to capturing and understanding political discourse. Images, symbols, physical objects and observations of actions can be viewed both as (1) the visual dimension of any political discourse and as (2) a distinct research object (Howarth 2005: 340), that is as visual discourse. The former allows interpretations of, for example, images and observations of actions to form part of our mapping of a political discourse in the context of other data, including documents and interviews. Visual discourse as a research object, on the other hand, involves a more systematic identification and specification of the rules regulating or guiding such visual discourse. One example of the latter is Aiello and Thurlow’s (2006) study of the visuals used by nominated and competing cities for the EU Commission ‘European Capital of Culture’ program. Using official promotional material from 30 cities, Aiello and Thurlow show how visuality plays an important role in intercultural communication and that such communication by no means is apolitical (see also Chapter 7, Visual Discourse, Imagery and EU Politics). When using non-linguistic data for the purpose of discourse analysis, it is also worth considering the level of involvement of the analysist

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in producing such data. Visuals such as logos, online and offline use of images, report layouts, design of buildings and office arrangements are all self-reporting data, whereas the researcher is more involved in the data construction if they are producing own photos or engaging in participatory observations, for example. While non-linguistic data may well offer guidance for understanding specific issues and situations, it is also clear that the nature of such data allow for, if not multiple interpretations, then certainly a range of interpretations and political activities. A key challenge when using non-linguistic data for political analysis is then to establish some level of transparency in our analytical move from observation (e.g., an image) to interpretation. This challenge may also be expressed as one associated with our level of interpretation. Typically, we distinguish between pre-iconographic, iconographic and iconological interpretations of images and other visuals (Rose 2016: 198–201). Pre-iconographic refers to a literal compositional interpretation of, for instance, an image focussing on the identification of ‘people, places and things’ including collars, shapes and gestures and any associated text such as headlines and brief captions associated with the image (van Leeuwen 2004: 92). An iconographic interpretation emphasises the standard and specific symbolic meaning associated with our material, whereas iconological interpretation aims at saying something about the more general cultural, and possibly ‘deeper meaning,’ of images. Clearly, the distinctions between pre-iconographic, iconographic and iconological interpretations is blurred. Still, it may be useful for taking bearings, both regarding what (and what not) should be aimed for in our use of non-linguistic data and for explicating our purposes for the readership. Furthermore, at least for the purposes of empirically mapping discourse (in a 1st order analysis, see Chapter 2, sections ‘Multi-theoretical Analysis and Counterfactual Reasoning’ and ‘Ideas, Discourse and Institutions: A General Analytical Framework’), we are probably, in the first instance, mostly interested in the literal and possibly standard symbolic meanings associated with our data. Regardless, it is almost always worth investigating the production and editorial processes and people involved in giving birth to our visual material (photographers, painters, visual consultants, editors etc.), any stated intentions of the political actors making use of the visual material at hand and the reception of such visuals (Rose 2001: 16–17, 30; see also Chapters 6 and 7). To cover some of these issues—with the emphasis depending on our specific research purposes—documents, interviews and surveys may all come in useful.

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How to Read? The way you read your empirical material first and foremost depends on your research question and knowledge ambition. Our research question and knowledge ambition may in turn be more or less theoretically or empirically driven. On a general level, the literature typically distinguishes between critical readings highlighting power asymmetry in discourse and associated political inequality, hegemonic readings focussing on the production of ‘common sense’ discourse and how it underpins power elites, and genealogical readings tracing changing meanings attached to societal phenomenon’s in different periods of history (Triantafillou 2016: 133–134; Jørgensen and Phillips 2002: 6–8). It should also be noted, however, that most discourse analytical research transcends such distinctions, which is also the case in the study of EU political discourse. Clearly, research emphasis varies as to whether we are interested in the critical voices in or around EU institutions and possibly the oppressive and marginalising effects of the European political economy, whether the focus is on discursive struggles for attaining the upper hand in EU decision-making or whether we set out to study the historical twist and turns in European integration discourse among EU institutional actors. Regardless of our specific focus, however, there are a number of common issues to consider when reading data with the purpose of capturing EU political discourse. The following will have a focus on content analysis including the more recent use of computer software Table 3.2  Advantages and analytical usefulness of types of methods of analysis How to read… Content analysis

Advantages

• Supplies numerical data & descriptive statistics about discursive categories • Good for illustrative purposes Computer-assisted text • As above analysis • Allows for (easier) trial-anderror searches for patterns • Can handle large amount of data Problem perception • Focuses on the word-in-context dimension

Analytical usefulness • I dentifies themes & word categories • I dentifies relationships between categories • As above • As below

•M  ore revealing of broader, than simple word categories

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in text analysis and more interpretative problem perception analysis. Table 3.2 summarises the advantages and analytical usefulness of the techniques, which will now be discussed in more detail. Content Analysis and Computer-Assisted Text Analysis The study by Bennet (2015) shows how there appears to be very little communication (in terms cross-citations) between scholars using content analysis and computer-assisted text analysis and, on the other hand, scholars studying discourse and their implications for politics. This author very much agrees with Bennet, however, that there are only good reasons to improve the lines of communication across to the two fields. In particular, content analysis may be used for the purpose of mapping what our discourse at hand is about. Content analysis traditionally uses statistical analysis of the appearances of word categories across texts (Herrera and Braumoeller 2004). It involves identifying themes, word categories and possibly relationships between categories observed in the empirical material. In order to conduct an explicit and systematic contents analysis, the establishment of a ‘codebook’ is key. A codebook may be driven mainly by the empirical material or mainly by an established theoretical framework. If the codebook is empirically driven, then the data—e.g., documents—supply the themes and categories for the analysis, typically through intensive and repeated readings of the data with the purpose of revealing patterns in the material. If the codebook is theoretically driven, then theoretical concepts and relationships form the background for operationalisation and development of indicators, which are then empirically traced. Most often, however, the process of conducting content analysis is one where the researcher moves back and forth between the empirical material and the conceptual framework, while continuously giving precision to the concepts, the empirical indicators and possibly collecting further material. Content analysis has been used for—among other things—systematic cross-country studies of media discourse in EU member states on a range of policies (Wueest and Fossati 2015; Meyer 2004; della Porta and Caiani 2006; Roggeband and Vligenthart 2007), for the study of forms of argumentation in member state negotiations (Reinhard 2012; Lord 2008), in Commission’s public consultations (Wright 2007) and among political parties and organised interests (Hurka and Nebel 2013). What is common for these studies is that they use content analysis to supply numerical data and possibly descriptive statistics about discursive

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categories and that content analysis is part of research designs including other research methods, typically qualitative readings of documents and/ or research interviews. What is more, for the purpose of mapping discourse, it is also acknowledged that it is generally not sufficient to focus on the content of public policy. We must also look at ways of arguing and discursive interactions and indicators of politics (see also Schmidt and Radaelli 2004: 205–207); for example, which actors are especially keenly contributing to authoritative political discourse and which actors are marginalised in the process. Computer software has become increasingly popular and useful for text analysis, especially for the purpose of content analysis. Software for text analysis—of which Nvivo is one of the most used—has eased ‘bookkeeping’ when handling large amounts of documents (and audiovisual data too) and allows for computer-assisted analysis of the material. The basic coding and techniques of analysis are similar to the practices of content analysis not using computer software, the material can be organised in various files, or sources; code the material and confront the material with quarries, just like the software may help the researcher to visualise and present findings (Kelstrup and Lynggaard 2016). What computer-assisted analysis does is just that, it assists the researcher in conducting the analysis. Computer software is especially helpful for finding patterns in the material. Essentially, the software allows for a trial-and-error-type of approach to the material, where the means of identifying patterns of interest by repeated quarries are (fairly) easily and quickly carried out. For instance, with a few clicks, it is possibly to generate lists of the most commonly used words and ‘word clouds’ useful for establishing discursive categories in more empirically driven content analysis. Whether computer-assisted or not, the usual considerations of methods apply, including regarding possible biases in the material and any inconsistencies in the coding; here, it may be worth having additional independent ‘coders’ of the material to ensure consistency (see Campbell et al. 2013). Whether computer-assisted or not, content analysis does, of course, have some drawbacks. One of the drawbacks is that discourse here tends to be detached from its context. Content analysis excludes analysis of, for instance, what is the authoritative position of the actors producing discourse? How is discourse related to the institutional and social context in which it is constructed? How does a broader audience receive the discourse? If, however, we free ourselves from the narrowest understanding

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of content analysis, there is no reason that we should not be able to address also these questions, while using word categories as illustrative of scope and developments in political discourse. That is, combining more qualitative readings of data with quantitative content analysis of word categories may very well supply more solid empirical foundations for identifying and analysing political discourse. Problem Perception Analysis One often used research techniques to capture discourse goes through the study of problem perceptions (Lynggaard 2006; Bacchi 2009; see also Mehta 2011). Using problem perceptions as indicative, or as symptoms, of a broader meaning system is closely associated with content analysis. Yet the study of problem perceptions typically has more focus on the word-in-context dimension. Problem perceptions are viewed as ideational symptoms reflecting the discourse within which a set of actors operate. Take, for example, the EU’s employment policy; here we have seen how national decision-makers come to talk about new employment policy problems, such as gender mainstreaming, raising employments rates and the inclusiveness of societal actors in labour market governance, through their involvement in the processes and activities related to the Open Method of Coordination. Such new ways of conceiving of key problems in turn having real consequences for both national employments policies and governance on the area (Zeitlin 2010). Studying and recording articulations of perceptions of political problems over a certain time period may thus be a very manageable technique to uncover a discourse empirically. A discourse can be said to exist to the extent that it is possible to register and describe a systematic set of rules for how central problems, their sources and solutions are articulated among a set of agents. Such rules may be described in terms of whether the policy problem at hand is seen as caused by individual shortcomings or alternatively is considered the product of societal structures. For instance, is unemployment viewed as being caused by an individual’s lack of motivation to find a job or perhaps rather the consequence of socio-economic structures disfavouring certain groups of individuals in the labour market? Clearly, whether one or the other perception has the upper hand matters for policy choices; for example, should employment policies be directed at incentivising individuals or rather addressing labour market structures? To that, it can be added that perhaps the preferred policy

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solutions among decision-makers are more likely to frame their articulation of policy problems, rather than the other way around, as suggested by Kingdon (1995). Other categories may also be useful to capture discursive rules including, for instance, conceptions of ‘us/them,’ ‘right/ wrong’ or more specific categories—possibly inspired by available case specific research or preferred analytical and theoretical frameworks. Finally, in the same manner, the study of discursive agency may be conducted by, for instance, registering ‘first movers’ on the use of specific problem perceptions including the use of conceptions first articulated as the EU-level and then carried into a national context. One of the downsides of problem perception analysis is that it may be a fairly cumbersome process, especially if we deal with a large amount of empirical material. However, it is certainly also an option to conduct computer-assisted problem perception analysis, for instance, by coding and analysing broader sections of text articulating such perceptions. It will take a little more manual coding, but essentially problem perceptions analysis also tends to be more revealing in the sense that we get more of a sense of the discourse at play (rather than ‘merely’ categories of words). In conclusion, depending on the research question at hand documents, survey questionnaires, research interviews and non-linguistic data all have their the advantages and usefulness for the purpose of discourse analysis. Yet, to be clear, the highlighted benefits and potential function of different types of data all depend on the concrete choices made in a specific research context regarding, for example, the criteria for selecting relevant documents, the choice of interviewees and interview technique, the nature of interview and survey questions and categories and much more. Chapters 4–7 provide illustrations of some of such choices and the associated lines of arguments for specific discursive analytical purposes. However, documents are often a good place to start and are key in capturing developments in discursive categories over the course of time. Documents may suffice as the sole data material for many discursive research purposes (see Chapter 4, Discourse and EU Policy-Making; and Chapter 5, Discourse and the Strategic Use of Europe). At the same time, it is often worth considering a mixture of data supplementing documents with research interviews (see Chapter 6, Discourse, Myths and Emotions in EU Politics), and possibly surveys and non-linguistic data (for the latter, see Chapter 7, Visual Discourse, Imagery and EU Politics), again depending on the specific research question and context. Content analysis—computer-assisted or nor—and problem perception analysis

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are, in various guises, some of the most used means of mapping the discourse(s) embedded in the selected data material. One reason for the popularity of these techniques is probably that compared with other means of discursive ‘readings’ of empirical material, they stand out by being less connected to any particular strand of discourse theory or discourse analytical school of thought. Regardless, Chapters 4–6 serves also as examples of the use of problem perception analysis (Chapter 4) often in combination with simple (Chapter 5) or more elaborate computerassisted content analysis (Chapter 6). Chapters 4–6 furthermore serves as examples of the use of discourse analytical research techniques in a combination with research techniques known especially for use in comparative politics, including comparative temporal analysis (Chapter 4), cross-country comparative temporal analysis (Chapter 5) and crosssectoral comparative temporal analysis (Chapter 6).

References Ackrill, R., & Kay, A. (2011). Multiple Streams in EU Policy-Making: The Case of the 2005 Sugar Reform. Journal of European Public Policy, 18(1), 72–89. Aiello, G., & Thurlow, C. (2006). Symbolic Capitals: Visual Discourse and Intercultural Exchange in the European Capital of Culture Scheme. Language and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), 148–162. Bacchi, C. (2009). Analysing Policy: What’s the Problem Represented to Be? Frenchs Forest, NSW, Australia: Pearsons. Bennett, A. (2015). Found in Translation: Combining Discourse Analysis with Computer Assisted Content Analysis. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 43(3), 984–997. Björkdahl, A. (2008). Norm Advocacy: A Small State Strategy to Influence the EU. Journal of European Public Policy, 15(1), 135–154. Bryman, A. (2008). Documents as Sources of Data. In A. Bryman (Ed.), Social Research Methods (3rd ed., pp. 514–536). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cairney, P. (2009). The Role of Ideas in Policy Transfer: The Case of UK Smoking Bans Since Devolution. Journal of European Public Policy, 16(3), 471–488. Campbell, J. L., Quincy, C., Osserman, J., & Pedersen, O. K. (2013). Coding In-Depth Semistructured Interviews. Sociological Methods & Research, 42(3), 294–320. Chira-Pascanut, C. (2014). Discreet Players: Jean Monnet, Transatlantic Networks and Policy Makers in International Co-operation. Journal of Common Market Studies, 52(6), 1242–1256.

62  K. LYNGGAARD Copeland, P., & Scott, J. (2014). Policy Windows, Ambiguity and Commission Entrepreneurship: Explaining the Relaunch of the European Union’s Economic Reform Agenda. Journal of European Public Policy, 21(1), 1–19. della Porta, D., & Caiani, M. (2006). The Europeanization of Public Discourse in Italy a Top-Down Process? European Union Politics, 7(1), 77–112. Dimitrova, A., & Kortenska, E. (2017). What Do Citizens Want? And Why Does It Matter? Discourses Among Citizens as Opportunities and Constraints for EU Enlargement. Journal of European Public Policy, 24(2), 259–277. Herrera, Y. M., & Braumoeller, B. F. (2004). Symposium: Discourse and Content Analysis. Qualitative Methods, 2(1), 15–39. Howarth, D. (2005). Applying Discourse Theory: The Method of Articulation. In D. Howarth & J. Torfing (Eds.), Discourse Theory in European Politics: Identity, Policy and Governance (pp. 316–349). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hurka, S., & Nebel, K. (2013). Framing and Policy Change After Shooting Rampages: A Comparative Analysis of Discourse Networks. Journal of European Public Policy, 20(3), 390–406. Joerges, C., & Neyer, J. (1997). Transforming Strategic Interaction into Deliberative Problem-Solving: European Comitology in the Foodstuffs Sector. Journal of European Public Policy, 4(4), 609–625. Jørgensen, M., & Phillips, L. J. (2002). Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method. London, UK: Sage. Kelstrup, J. D., & Lynggaard, K. (2016). Computer-baseret dokumentanalyse i tre trin. In C. J. Kristensen & M. A. Hussain (Eds.), Metoder in Samfundsvidenskaberne: Engrundbog for de samfundsvidenskabelige bacheloruddannelser (pp. 139–154). Copenhagen: Samfundslitteratur. Kingdon, J. W. (1995). Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies (2nd ed.). Boston: Little, Brown. Knudsen, A.-C. L. (2015). European Union History. In K. Lynggaard, I. Manners, & K. Löfgren (Eds.), Research Methods in European Union Studies (pp. 37–54). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Kølvraa, C. (2016). European Fantasies: On the EU’s Political Myths and the Affective Potential of Utopian Imaginaries for European Identity. Journal of Common Market Studies, 54(1), 169–184. Kuckartz, U. (2014). Qualitative Text Analysis: A Guide to Methods, Practice & Using Software. London: Sage. Lord, C. (2008). Two Constitutionalisms? A Comparison of British and French Government Attempts to Justify the Constitutional Treaty. Journal of European Public Policy, 15(7), 1001–1018. Lynggaard, K. (2006). The Common Agricultural Policy and Organic Farming: An Institutional Perspective on Continuity and Change. Wallingford, UK: CAB International.

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Lynggaard, K. (2015). Dokumentanalyse. In S. Brinkmann & L. Tanggaard (Eds.), Kvalitative Metoder: En Grundbog (pp. 153–167). Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag. Mehta, J. (2011). The Varied Roles of Ideas in Politics: From “Whether” to “How”. In D. Béland & R. H. Cox (Eds.), Ideas and Politics in Social Science Research (pp. 23–46). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mérand, F., Hofmann, S. C., & Irondelle, B. (2011). Governance and State Power: A Network Analysis of European Security. Journal of Common Market Studies, 49(1), 121–147. Meyer, C. (2004). The Hard Side of Soft Policy Co-ordination in EMU: The Impact of Peer Pressure on Publicized Opinion in the Cases of Germany and Ireland. Journal of European Public Policy, 11(5), 814–831. Official Website of the European Union. http://europa.eu/. Politico: European Edition. http://www.politico.eu/. Quaglia, L. (2010). Completing the Single Market in Financial Services: The Politics of Competing Advocacy Coalitions. Journal of European Public Policy, 17(7), 1007–1023. Reinhard, J. (2012). “Because We Are All Europeans!” When Do EU Member States Use Normative Arguments? Journal of European Public Policy, 19(9), 1336–1356. Ricoeur, P. (1999). Hvad er en tekst? – forklare og forstå. In J. Gulddal & M. Møller (Eds.), Hermeneutik: En antologi om forståelse (pp. 238–262). Copenhagen, Denmark: Gyldendal. Roggeband, C., & Vligenthart, R. (2007). Divergent Framing: The Public Debate on Migration in the Dutch Parliament and Media, 1995–2004. West European Politics, 30(3), 524–548. Rose, G. (2001). Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials. New York, NY: Sage. Rose, G. (2016). Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Material. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Schmidt, V. A., & Radaelli, C. M. (2004). Policy Change and Discourse in Europe: Conceptual and Methodological Issues. West European Politics, 27(2), 183–211. Steensig, J. (2015). Konversationsanalyse. In S. Brinkmann & L. Tanggaard (Eds.), Kvalitative Metoder: En Grundbog (pp. 321–348). Copenhagen: Hans Reitzels Forlag. Triantafillou, P. (2016). Analyse af Dokumenter og Dokumentation. In C. J. Kristensen & M. A. Hussain (Eds.), Metoder I Samfundsvidenskaberne (pp. 125–137). Frederiksberg: Samfunds Litteratur. University of Pittsburgh Hosted Archive of European Integration. http://aei. pitt.edu/.

64  K. LYNGGAARD van Leeuwen, T. (2004). Semiotics and Iconography. In T. van Leeuwen & C. Jewitt (Eds.), The Handbook of Visual Analysis (pp. 92–118). London: Sage. Wæver, O. (2005). European Integration and Security: Analysing French and German Discourses on State, Nation, and Europe. In D. Howarth & J. Torfing (Eds.), Discourse Theory in European Politics (pp. 33–67). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wright, S. (2007). A Virtual European Public Sphere? The Futurum Discussion Forum. Journal of European Public Policy, 14(8), 1167–1185. Wueest, B., & Fossati, F. (2015). Quantitative Discursive Institutionalism: A Comparison of Labour Market Policy Discourse Across Western Europe. Journal of European Public Policy, 22(5), 708–730. Zeitlin, J. (2010). Towards a Stronger OMC: A New Governance Architecture for EU Policy Coordination. In E. Marlier, D. Natali, & R. Van Dam (Eds.), Europe 2020: Towards a More Social EU? (pp. 253–273). Brussels: Peter Lang.

CHAPTER 4

Discourse and EU Policy-Making

This chapter focuses on political discourses as a mechanism of inclusion and exclusion in EU policy making. The claim is that discourse is decisive in terms of which actors are included/excluded from EU policy making, for the setting of the procedures guiding decision making, and for which issues stand a chance for serious consideration on EU political agendas. Policy making is typically viewed as a process encompassing agenda setting, decision making, implementation and evaluation. The level of detail and dimensions of policy-making processes vary, yet the general assumption is that the making of policy continues after the authoritative adoption of a policy—for example, a piece of legislation, a strategy or plan of actions, or an intended institutional reform—into implementation and evaluation. This is also point of departure of discursive institutionalism, which has a procedural perspective on policy making in the sense that agenda setting is an on-going process of definition and redefinition of policy issues; the making of policy decisions occurs throughout the policy process, just like policy implementation and evaluation permeate all dimensions of policy making. This view implies there is no given sequence in policy making processes. Policy solutions may well, for example, be advanced in a policy process prior to the identification of a policy problem, essentially draining the process of rationality (Kingdon 1995). To the extent that discursive institutionalism focuses on specific dimensions of policymaking processes, or on points in time in a narrow sense, it does so while © The Author(s) 2019 K. Lynggaard, Discourse Analysis and European Union Politics, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39326-5_4

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acknowledging that policy-making events must always be viewed in their temporality—that is, in the context of evolving discourses before and after such events. For those reasons, discursive institutional perspectives typically view policy making by means of longitudinal studies focusing on policy change and continuity. In order to understand processes of inclusion/exclusion in policy making, this chapter thus puts forward a series of conditions and mechanisms of stability and change in political discourse. Moreover, this chapter illustrates this approach to policy making with empirical examples from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which has been a highly contested, yet key area for EU policy-making for more than 60 years, crucial in establishing the EU as a transnational political authority (Biebuyck 2016). The chapter is organised as follows: after a short introduction to the CAP as a field of policy making, a section follows presenting discursive path-dependency as a dynamic concept directed at capturing resistance to political change and two conditions for discursive transformation: one necessary for (alternative discourses) and one conducive to (ideational crisis) change in policy-making. However, neither of the two conditions are sufficient to overcome discursive path-dependency and bring about changes in the ways of policy making. For that to happen, mechanisms of transformation must drive discursive developments. The subsequent four sections thus elaborate and conceptualise transformative mechanisms in terms of discursive ambiguity, translation, discursive entrepreneurship and expertise as the advancement of analytical ideas.

Reforms and Actors in the CAP The history of the CAP is characterised by many failed and watereddown reform attempts. However, once or twice in every decade, reform has in fact been adopted, some of which has amounted to change in political outcomes. Since the early 1970s, the CAP has been subject to the following key reforms: • 1972: ‘The Mansholt Plan’ aimed at a general modernisation of agriculture by improving farm efficiency, enlargements of farms and training programmes for farmers. • 1984: This reform addressed surplus production, especially in the dairy sector.

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• 1988: ‘Budget stabilisers’ was introduced by means of a production threshold. This meant that after a certain level of production, the otherwise guaranteed prices to farmers’ would be reduced. • 1992: The key elements of the so-called ‘MacSharry reform’ were the introduction of a decoupling of payments to farmers’ from the level production—a scheme where farmers would receive payments by taking farmland out of production—and an agri-environmental programme supporting food production according to certain environmental standards. • 1999: ‘The Agenda 2000’ reform continued the enhancement of environmental objectives in relation to food production, introduced a rural policy within the auspices of the CAP and, as something new, emphasised the ‘multifunctionality’ of farming, which was no longer only about producing foodstuffs. • 2003: The ‘Mid-term review’ reform most importantly meant a further decoupling of payments and production, just like food quality and safety, and animal health issues moved up on the political agenda. • 2008 and 2013: Both of these less-than-radical reforms continued the emphasis on rural development and the environment. The literature offers a wide range of explanations of CAP reforms and of why reforms of the CAP are indeed very cumbersome and significant departures from the status quo are rare (for an overview, see Lynggaard and Nedergaard 2009: 293–297). Accordingly, the CAP is notoriously known for its high-level path-dependency, a path from which it only rarely digresses in the context of external pressures from international trade negotiations in the World Trade Organisation or possibly from the European Council, where CAP reform may gain some momentum if linked to other pressing policy issues on their agenda. The Farm Council has traditionally been a defender of policy status quo, just like the historically very influential farm lobby has impeded policy change, both on the EU and domestic levels of politics. The European Commission, the Commission Services and the European Parliament (EP) on the other hand have all favoured more radical CAP reforms, though the latter has historically—before the adoption of Lisbon Treaty in 2009—had limited formal decision-making powers in the area. These types of explanations are based on the view that the positions of key actors in agricultural policy-making reflects their material interests, which are pursued under

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the conditions of the institutional settings at any given point of time; that is, explanations emanating from various versions of rational choice and rational choice institutional theory. While by no means disregarding such views, the remainder of this chapter highlights the role of discourse in policy making. The empirical focus is especially on the MacSharry reform, which is still considered to be the most radical departure from the status quo within the CAP. The analysis emphasises how discursive developments leading up to the actual adoption of the reform effected policy-making in this area. The research is designed as a comparative temporal analysis (Chapter 2, section ‘Discourse Analysis and Time’) drawing literature on CAP reforms and official EU documents (Chapter 3, section ‘What to Read?’), which are analysed by means of the problem perception perspective (Chapter 3, section ‘How to Read?’).

A Mechannism of Resistance: Discursive Path-Dependency The rational choice institutional conceptualisation of path-dependency holds that policy-making in a given field of politics rarely deviates from the chosen path due to the increasing returns of sticking to known practices. That is, the benefits of continuing along a chosen path increases over the course of time compared with the cost of transforming the status quo (Pierson 2000: 252). From a discursive institutional perspective on discursive path-dependency, however, political actors are not only motivated by a calculus of the cost and benefits associated with a chosen path, but also by institutionalised discourse. The concept of discursive pathdependency refers to the significance of past institutionalised discourse for the structuring of political activity and future policy outcomes. That is, “[i]nstitutional inertia may also result from the sedimentation of particular rules, norms, codes and meanings that over time are taken for granted by the social and political actors and, therefore, tend to regulate and frame their deliberation about policy choices” (Torfing 2009: 78). The argument is that: once institutionalised discourse sets the stage in a given policy field for which policy issues are relevant for political consideration as opposed to those that are not relevant; which political actors are considered legitimate participants in policy making as opposed to those that are not; and what the appropriate procedures are for making policy decisions

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as opposed to what are inappropriate decision-making procedures. Taken together, this means that in order to identify discursive path-dependency, an analysis needs to “show that reproductive choices of … political actors are a result of the gradual sedimentation of rules, norms, values and ideas that makes it increasingly difficult to deviate from the established policy path” (Torfing 2009: 78). Importantly, institutional creation—the establishment of a path—is a process of ‘gradual sedimentation’ of political discourse among a set of actors (Jovanovic and Lynggaard 2014). Thus, while discursive path-dependency is primarily a mechanism of resistance to political change and has an excluding effect on the policy making process, it is also a dynamic concepts which allows path-dependency to be overcome (see Baldi 2012; Crespy and Schmidt 2014). Perhaps the most illustrative case of discursive path-dependency in the context of EU politics is the field of the CAP. Key ideas still informing the CAP were even constitutionalised in the sense that they are embedded in the 1957 Treaty of Rome. The Treaty of Rome stipulates that the CAP must (a) increase agriculture productivity by means of technical progress; (b) ensure a fair standard of living for agricultural populations; (c) stabilise markets; (d) guarantee regular supplies; and (e) ensure reasonable prices in supplies to consumers (Minet 1962). The Constitutionalisation of policy ideas clearly renders policy change very difficult and, ultimately, only possible by unanimity among all member states and ratification by national parliaments and/or national referenda. What is more, political discourse insisting that agriculture is an exceptional sector justifying special political attention and assistance from the state has historically enjoyed a high degree of institutionalisation among the central agent within the CAP, including the Council of Farm Ministers, the Directorate-General (DG) Agriculture, the farm lobby, and the wider public (Skogstad 1998; Lenshow and Zito 1998; Daugbjerg and Feindt 2017; Fouilleux et al. 2017). On the other hand, alternative policy ideas in favour of the liberalisation of agricultural markets and a more internationally competitive agricultural sector were largely resisted within the CAP in the first 40 years of its existence. This is all illustrative of a discursive path-dependent CAP highly resistant to change. However, especially since the mid-1980s it has also become increasingly clear that the CAP has been penetrated by alternative ideas, actors and policy-making procedures.

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Two Conditions for Transformation: One Necessary and One Conducive From a discursive institutional perspective, the existence of alternative discourses about the state of affairs is a necessary condition for institutional change to come about. The reason for this is that it is only in such a situation that a particular institutional context may be contested through disputes over the articulation of the ideas embedded in this context (Campbell and Pedersen 2001). Moreover, an ideational crisis is conducive for institutional change in the sense that it may create a space of possibility for alternative ideas to be adopted in a particular discursive and institutional context or policy field (Campbell and Pedersen 2001; Hay 2001). An ideational crisis can be said to exist when conceptions of crisis are widely expressed across a policy field. However, in themselves neither the existence of alternative discourse nor an ideational crisis accounts for any policy-making transformations. Below I elaborate on four mechanisms that can interrupt and even contribute to overcoming discursive path-dependency: discursive ambiguity attached to, for example, political objects and events; processes of translation of ideas; discursive entrepreneurship; and the role of expertise in policy making.

First Mechanism of Transformation: Discursive Ambiguity Discursive ambiguity is a transformative mechanism internal to discourse aiming to capture the dynamic associated with discourse never being entirely coherent. On the one hand, a discourse is characterised by the systematic by which meaning is attached to social or physical phenomenon. On the other hand, such a system of meaning is also characterised by being open-ended and never entirely fixed. In other words, rather than associating the power of discourse with its degree of coherence or ‘persuasiveness’ (Hajer 1995; Hall 1993; Kingdon 1995), the concept of discursive ambiguity emphasises that disputes over ideas embedded within any one discourse contain an important mechanism of transformation. This is also a point—i.e., the dynamics of discursive ambiguity— hinted at by Schmidt and Radaelli (2004: 202) and elaborated upon by an increasing range of scholars (Carstensen and Schmidt 2016: 323–324; Béland and Cox 2016: 432). Whether the example is political discourse about Corporate Social Responsibility (Kinderman 2013), food safety

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(Paul 2012), energy and defence (Jegen and Mérand 2014) or wider ranging discourse on neo-liberalism (Wincott 2004: 358; Schmidt and Thatcher 2013: 26–29) or modes of governance (Borrás and Radaelli 2011), the points are alike: regardless of the level of internal coherence of a political discourse (i) there is always room for different articulations of key ideas and conflicts over the meaning of political objects, events and structures; and (ii) discursive ambiguity is a potential vehicle for political transformation. Discursive ambiguity may leave the institutional context unchanged to the extent that the already institutionalised discourse remains intact and alternative ideas are rejected. This outcome is referred to as a strategic choice and is the most common outcome since institutionalised discourse, by definition, has the upper hand by already being authorised and linked to sanctions. That is, institutionalised discourse—or ideational dominance—not only enforces a certain understanding of, for example, policy problems, ways of dealing with such problems and conceptions regarding who has a legitimate saying in the policy-making process, institutionalised discourse also serves to exclude ideas, actors, and procedures by means of de-legitimisation (Schmidt and Thatcher 2013: 18). However, the outcome of discursive ambiguity may bring about institutional change to the extent that the alternative ideas are layered alongside already institutionalised discourse. In this situation, future conflicts must be expected since discursive ambiguities are essentially institutionalised, leaving policy making unsettled. Finally, the outcome of discursive ambiguity may be institutional change to the extent that a mutation occurs out of the meeting of rival ideas. A mutation is the term used to describe the outcome of an interaction between alternative ideas, producing, for instance, a combination of policy problems, their sources and solutions, which differ from how they appeared prior to the interaction. The institutionalisation of mutated ideas constitutes institutional change. When the outcome of discursive ambiguity is a mutation, then the level of conflict in policy making must be expected—at least provisionally—to decrease. Overall, discursive ambiguity pays attention to incoherence and inconsistencies within discourses and among the agents referring to this and thus—it is argued here—emphasis is given to a significant internal mechanism of institutional change with potentially severe implications for policy making. This is summarised in Table 4.1. The MacSharry CAP reform in 1992 is illustrative of how discursive ambiguities may contribute to change in policy making. Prior to

72  K. LYNGGAARD Table 4.1  Discursive ambiguity Internal mechanism of transformation

Types of discursive outcomes

Discursive ambiguity Strategic choice Layering Mutation

Types of institutional outcomes

Types of effects on policy-making

Rejection Conflicts Change

Excluding Unsettling Including

the reform, political discourse on the CAP was highly unsettled. In the EP, discursive ambiguities were represented by the EP Committee on Agriculture on one side, and by the EP Committee on the Environment on the other. The EP Committee on Agriculture questioned the existence of a relationship between modern agricultural production and adverse environmental effects; even if the link could be shown to exist, the scope of environmental problems related to agriculture is likely to remain unclear. Accordingly, it was questioned whether the Community had the means to address such problems (European Parliament 1986; Attached Opinion). At the same time, it was not contested that the extensification of agriculture should be encouraged by the CAP and alternative farming methods should be subject to Community regulation due to its contribution to the maintenance of the countryside. The EP Committee on the Environment insisted that agriculture was “not the enemy of the environment” and “intensive farming is not the only cause of the deterioration of the rural environment” (European Parliament 1986: 13). Yet the principles of operation of the CAP—that is, ‘market unity,’ ‘Community preference’ and ‘financial solidarity’—and its instigation of intensive agricultural production was identified as the cause of environmental problems in rural areas (European Parliament 1986: 19). Solutions were a CAP in support of extensive agriculture and biological farming that was considered to: counteract the adverse environmental effect of intensive farming, lessen the use of energy in agriculture and improve the quality of land and food products, constituting an employment opportunity in rural areas and providing a positive effect on animal health. However, the EP at large eventually stuck to the idea that intensive agriculture causes both surplus production and environmental depletions. These ideas were largely accepted by the Commission Services and the Commission towards the end of the 1980s (European Commission 1989). By 1992, different ideas about agricultural production had

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mutated and prepared the way for new types of actors to enter CAP policy making. That is, by 1992, all the central political actors within the CAP had endorsed the conception that intensive farming causes both agricultural surplus production and environmental depletion, possibly regarded as the most pressing problems in agriculture at the time. Discursive ambiguities appear to have in part driven these developments. An overall displacement of discourse in any given field of policy making is, however, unlikely to be driven only and primarily by internal discursive ambiguities. For this to happen, we probably need to have a view as to how different discursive contexts interact. The concept of translation serves to capture such processes.

Second Mechanism of Transformation: Translation Translation is the “process whereby concepts and conceptions from different social contexts come into contact with each other and trigger a shift in the existing order of interpretation and action in a particular context” (Kjær and Pedersen 2001: 219). The concept of translation proposes that agents operating in one social context select from concepts and conceptions made available to them through contacts with other social contexts. The discursive bits and pieces, so to speak, selected by agents may in turn be connected to conceptions already embedded in their context of operation, triggering displacements or mutations in the discursive and institutional order (Kjær and Pedersen 2001). Translation is somehow a more complex process than that of diffusion (DiMaggio and Powell 1991; Strang and Meyer 1994; Börzel and Risse 2012b). Like diffusion, translation is about the spread of ideas; yet from this perspective, ideas are often translated in a selective way, displacing or mutating with the discursive and institutional context into which they are translated (Pedersen 2007; Béland 2009: 710–711). Institutional change occurs to the extent that ideas are displaced or mutate. The mutation of ideas must be expected to lead to more inclusive policy making, whereas a displacement of ideas is expected to cause the most disruption and lead to the most inclusive policy making. In EU policy making, we have seen processes mirroring translations between levels of governance, for example, from the EU level into national contexts, from the national to the EU level, between the EU and global levels, but also between policy sectors. Translation arguably offers a conceptual alternative as it deals with some of the admitted limitations of

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diffusion studies (Börzel and Risse 2012a). Several studies have shown how especially the Commission acts as a vehicle for processes of translation between, for example, global trade negotiations and EU-level policy reforms and in connecting otherwise sectorised policy fields—this is a role that may be termed ‘translator,’ and which the chapter returns to in the section on Discursive entrepreneurship. Finally, it should be noted that when referring to translation as an external mechanism of transformation, this is to emphasise the contact needed between different social contexts to drive the processes; however, the process of translation involving the selection of bits and pieces of externally available discourse, possible ideational mutations and displacements, are all processes internal to a given discursive and institutional context. Table 4.2 summarises the types of translation processes and their implications. An illustrative example of processes of translation and its implications for policy-making is the case of the appearance of ideas establishing a relationship between intensive agricultural production and environmental depletion within the CAP in the early 1980s, eventually leading to the 1992 reform discussed above (Lynggaard 2006). Key for such a relationship to be established was alternative agricultural discourse, made available in part by the emerging European Commission (EC) environmental policy. Thus, ideas holding that there was a link between the protection of the natural environment and agricultural policies first became embedded in the EC environmental policy during the 1970s (Council 1973, 1977). Although such ideas were translated from the area of environmental policy-making into the CAP, the translation process was selective in the sense that the idea that technological progress supply solutions—as it was held within the EC environmental policy—was not adopted within the CAP. Rather, political actors operating within the CAP upheld that technological progress and the modernisation of agriculture was a central source of surplus production and environmental depletion (European Commission 1985). In that sense, the at-the-time new idea of concern with Table 4.2 Translation External mechanism of transformation

Types of discursive outcomes

Types of institutional outcomes

Types of effects on policy-making

Translation

Mutation Displacement

Change Radical change

Including Reconfiguration

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environmental depletion mutated with existing CAP ideas about agricultural surplus production, preparing the way for institutional change. The selective translation of ideas essentially allowed for the legitimisation of the CAP through its association with environmental protection, while blaming modernisation—not the agricultural sector in itself—for the degradation of the environment in the first place. The mutation of new ideas with existing ideas and their eventual institutionalisation also permitted the CAP to open the way for political actors involved in alternative agricultural production and the protection of environment. At the same time, the selection, translation and mutation of ideas do not proceed automatically, but rather are in need of agency, or discursive entrepreneurship.

Third Mechanism of Transformation: Discursive Entrepreneurship The third proposed conceptualisation of a mechanism of institutional change is that of discursive entrepreneurship. Discursive entrepreneurship is defined here as a political role upheld by individuals or collective agents, from where momentum is given to discursive and institutional change. A typology of discursive entrepreneurship may be established that distinguishes between translators, venue makers and carriers (Lynggaard 2007). First, the concept of discursive entrepreneurship prepares the field for the study of the agency, which contributes to processes of translation (see section ‘Second Mechanism of Transformation: Translation’). This is considered the more vigorous type of entrepreneurship since it is exercised by linking up discourses from different social contexts. Discursive entrepreneurship may also be exercised by means of venue making. This type of entrepreneurship prepares the field for the study of the agency, which contributes to the establishment of meeting places, bringing together political actors and enabling the production of collective meaning. The third type of discursive entrepreneurship— carriers—deals with individuals or collective agents endorsing discourse that may, over the course of time, become institutionalised. Carriers are essential to processes of institutionalisation, yet they exercise a less vigorous type of entrepreneurship compared with translators and venue makers. Altogether, rather than attributing policy entrepreneurs with extraordinary resources and skills including psychological predispositions, discursive entrepreneurship is conceptualised as a position enabled

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by the rules governing a particular discourse. The roles and degrees of vigorousness of the different types of discursive entrepreneurship are summarised in Table 4.3. Of the EU’s institutional actors, the Commission is studied the most and is most often viewed as being placed in a particularly favourable position to exercise discursive entrepreneurship. Numerous studies have shown how the Commission exercises entrepreneurship both internally in EU policy making and externally in international negotiations (Fouilleux 2004; Kostadinova 2013; Van Den Hoven 2004; Copeland and Scott 2014; Ackrill and Kay 2011). Advocating policy change by means of entrepreneurship clearly does not equal impact on policy outcome (e.g., Mendez 2013); rather, the entrepreneurial role of the Commission tends to be a procedural type. The Commission has been shown to exercise discursive entrepreneurship; for example, through the advancement of certain interpretations of policy problems, but also by pushing for new modes of governance. The Commission not only has a history of partly financing and initiating the establishment of Eurogroups—for example, in the area of environmental protection and civil society groups—but also act as a venue maker by establishing favourable and inclusive governance structures in support of such groups (Bauer 2002). On the other hand, the Commission advancements of a narrow policy problem framing may also have exclusionary effects deeming some political actors less relevant in the making and shaping of a policy (Radaelli 2007). Somehow surprisingly, much less is known about the extent of discursive entrepreneurship exercised by the EP. However, one example of the EP and especially alternating EP committees acting as translators, and thus exercising the most vigorous type of discursive entrepreneurship, is the case of the institutionalisation of a policy field concerning organic farming within the auspices of the CAP. The outcome of this process of Table 4.3  Discursive entrepreneurship Mechanism of transformation

Roles of discursive entrepreneurship

Degrees of vigorousness

Discursive entrepreneurship

Translators Venue makers Carriers

High Medium Low

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institutionalisation of discourse associated with environmental protection and food quality eventually supplied openings for new types of political actors and ways of policy making to be installed in CAP. To be sure, various Commission DGs and member state governments also contributed to the process at different points in time, especially as venue makers and carriers of ideas. However, groupings within the EP have been the most keen translators of ideas and discourse ever since the early 1980s to the mid-2000s (Lynggaard 2006: 102–104, 126–127, 160–161, 176–181). Importantly, the EP discursive entrepreneurial role was exercised against the backdrop of limited formal decision-making powers on the area of CAP. That is, it was not until the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009 that the EP swapped its ‘consultative’ competences with the powers of a co-legislator along with the Council in agricultural policy making. Even less is known about the extent of discursive entrepreneurship exercised by the Council and member state governments. Yet typically, the entrepreneurship of governments—whether viewed as pushing policy norms (Björkdahl 2008) or the construction of collective meaning through networks (Nedergaard 2007)—has been studied as a phenomenon associated with the Council presidency or coalitions of governments advocating collective issues within the Council. Moreover, this discursive entrepreneurship tends to be associated with the less vigorous types of venue makers and carriers and largely directed at other governments within the Council and (Mendez 2013: 646–647; Zito 2001: 591–592). The limited knowledge about discursive entrepreneurship in and especially around the Council is probably explained in part by the most common view, namely that the actions of governments in the Council are primarily driven by economic interests and/or their role is to endorse— or not—policy proposals rather than shaping political discourse throughout policy making processes. Furthermore, existing research has a bias towards the role of small states, whereas large member states are viewed as not being as concerned with—or in need of—exercising discursive powers. Regardless, the concepts of discursive entrepreneurship allow for the discursive powers of not only the Commission to be studied, but also the Council and the EP as well as other key actors, such as the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the European Central Bank (ECB) (Schmidt [2016] strongly hint at the relevance of the latter).

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Fourth Mechannism of Transformation: Expertise The role of knowledge production and expertise in policy making has been a prominent area of research in EU studies for a long time. Early on, Radaelli (1999) drew attention to the role of different kinds of expertise in the EU policy processes. The key point is that the type of expertise prevailing in a given policy field depends on the degree of political salience, or public attention, and the uncertainties attached to a policy issue. It is further noted that the political salience and uncertainty associated with a policy field is based on the conception of these same factors among decision-makers, rather than being inherent in the policy issue at hand—or fixed in time, for that matter. In other words, the discursive framing of a policy issue impacts on the type of expertise informing policy-making in the field. The discourse institutional claim is that the production of knowledge is a political process and discourse is decisive for the type of expertise informing EU policy making. The focus in the following is on the narrower role of expertise in EU politics compared with the broader notions of knowledge production. Expertise is clearly a form of knowledge, but it is also a particular kind of knowledge that is produced by expertise. The EU’s institutional actors—the Council, increasingly the Parliament, and most importantly the Commission—possess some level of ‘in-house expertise.’ In that sense, EU institutional actors’ all contribute to the production of expertise. At the same time, EU institutions rely on the input of outside expertise in their preparation and implementation of policies. Such inputs are typically viewed as supplied by networks of experts, organised interests, independent agencies and think tanks. However, the discursive institutional perspective on the role of expertise in policy-making entails moving beyond a ‘supply and demand’ understanding of the relationship between those producing expertise (e.g., organised interests, agencies and think thanks) and those in need of expertise (e.g., the Commission, the EP and governments). To make this move, Blom and Vanhoonacker (2014) propose a helpful distinction between the constitutive politics and operational politics of ‘information.’ The constitutive politics of information refers to “the way in which policy-relevant information has to be assessed, distributed, and processed, possibly including the standardization of its provision and its statistical quantification” (Blom and Vanhoonacker 2014: 9). The operational politics of information refers to “the ways in which the actors

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who are involved in the daily processing of policy-relevant information actually go about thanks to and despite the formal instructions and formats decided upon in the constitutive process” (Blom and Vanhoonacker 2014: 9–10). This distinction allows for a broader investigation of the interactive production and role of expertise among a wider range of political actors in policy making. Furthermore, in order to study and fully appreciate the role of expertise in EU policy-making, expertise is here conceptualised as the advancement of a particular type of ideas—namely, analytical ideas. The discursive institutionalism typically differentiates between the role of normative and cognitive ideas in EU policy making (Schmidt 2002; Schmidt and Radaelli 2004; see also Campbell 2004, 1998; Lynggaard 2008). Normative and cognitive ideas (or arguments) are viewed as interdependent in the process of policy-making. Normative ideas used by political elites to legitimise policy initiatives must—to be successful—be grounded in ‘sound’ cognitive ideas about the viability of a policy initiative. On the other hand, for cognitive ideas to fly, they must be linked up with normative ideas about the appropriateness or legitimacy of given a policy initiative (Schmidt 2002: 171). To this, Pedersen (1995) adds that normative ideas are predictions of future development linked to ideals about desired or undesired future developments. Normative ideas thus create unease about the future and, possibly, a need to make a choice. It has further been suggested that the types of agents engaging in advancing normative ideas—or in campaigning—include politicians, spin doctors, political aides and organised interests (Campbell 2004: 127ff). Cognitive ideas, on the other hand, are based on comprehensive insights into how desired developments may be pursued strategically through planning (Pedersen 1995; see also Blyth 2002: 40–41). Cognitive ideas in turn create expectations about acceptable political activity but also expectations about how desired developments can be pursued in an efficient manner. While cognitive ideas may well draw on ideas coined among experts, academics, or organised interests, they are likely particularly prominent among politicians and high-ranking government officials (Campbell 2004: 127ff). Against this backdrop, expertise is here view as the advancement of ideas that are different in kind, ideas that may be termed ‘analytical ideas’ From this view point, analytical ideas are based on experience and the evaluation of previously envisaged developments against actual developments. Analytical ideas build a focus on the positive/negative

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relationship between a previously anticipated development and a subsequent actual development (Pedersen 1995). Conceptualising expertise as the advancements of analytical ideas dissociates expertise with particular actors, scientific methods and evidence. Instead, expertise is viewed as a discursively produced phenomenon and experts are only experts because they have been discursively labelled as such. Expertise stored as experience is in itself the product of historical power structures setting criteria for, for instance, what constitutes good and relevant knowledge and ways of producing knowledge (Trondal et al. 2015). To that can be added that not only do societal and political elites’ conceptions of what is good knowledge production evolve over time, but the futures on which political actors project their experiences may well turn out to require different types of expertise. Certainly, the perspective advanced here does not assume that politics informed by expertise is any more efficient or rational than politics with a claimed absence of expertise. Nor is it assumed that experts have an extraordinary and context-independent problem-solving capacity in politics. Finally, the involvement of expertise by no means needs to lead to technocratic or bureaucratic politics insulated from the public (Radaelli 1999: 762ff), though there are examples of how strong and often complex expert discourses may work to squeeze out public participation (Cengiz 2016). Expertise in EU Policy-Making It has long been claimed that expertise inform policy-making on the organisational, national and European level, particularly in decision-making environments characterised by uncertainty and complexity (Fischer 1990; Richardson 2006; Lynggaard 2008). A situation characterised by uncertainty and a lack of knowledge about, for instance, the problem-solving capacity of a particular policy instrument can pave the way for analytical ideas based on experiences predicating something about future developments and, as such, can serve to reduce complexity and uncertainty. In a transnational EU context, policy coordination may take place in epistemic communities, which can be seen as particularly—though not exclusively—coining analytical ideas and thus expertise. Epistemic communities are networks of experts that supply ideas to the policy process (Hass 1992). Central to such networks are that the ideas supplied are based on shared causal beliefs among the network members, and that

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such causal beliefs are based on an analysis of practices as well as a shared conception of the processes through which ideas are validated and invalidated. Ideas coined among experts thus tend to be assessed in terms of their technical feasibility and capability of implementation as opposed to their political viability in a particular context (Richardson 2006: 7). Epistemic communities haves been identified in and shown to have an impact on such areas as the making of the EMU (Verdun 1999; Kaelberer 2004), European Security and Defence Policy (Howorth 2004), competition policy (van Waarden and Drahos 2002), environmental policy (Zito 2001), transport policy (Schot and Shipper 2011) and the regulation of biotechnology (Salter and Jones 2005) to mention a few. Yet, when broadening the view on expertise to mean the advancement of analytical ideas in policy-making, then expertise is potentially coined by a wide range of actors. That is, expertise may be exercised by various individual and collective agents (some of which are suggested above) at different points in time, and it may be exercised individually, simultaneously or successively (for a similar point, see Radaelli 1999: 768ff). A prominent example of the production and usage of expertise within and around the Commission can be illustrated by developments in the CAP. Expertise has played a role ever since the early developments of the CAP (Germond 2014), but has possibly come to play an even more important role in the 1990s and early 2000s (Lynggaard 2006). In-house Commission expertise and outside inputs of expertise at least in part pushed for the MacSharry reform in the early 1990s. The failure of past policies including the limited success of two reform attempts in the 1980s (in 1984 and 1988) and developments in agricultural production data and CAP spending had, by the late 1980s/early 1990s, made problems of surplus production, budget pressure, and the uneven distribution of funds even more evident (Moyer and Josling 2002: 103ff; Patterson 1997: 154). Very aware of the high political salience of reforming the CAP, the Commissioner for Agriculture (Ray MacSharry) established a group in the early 1990s of high-ranking officials from the DG Agriculture, which elaborated a radical reform paper without the usual consultation of member states and organised interests (Coleman and Tangermann 1999: 395; Fouilleux 2004: 241–242). Experiences of the 1980s, which had established relationships between certain policy instruments and outcomes, were within this group linked up to developments in production and spending data in the early 1990s. As noted by Kay (1998: 102): “MacSharry used to spend time studying tables

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showing the distribution of the benefits of the CAP at an EU and member state level.” Likewise, the initial report, which subsequently fed into the 1992 CAP reform, was elaborated with only a few Head of Divisions within the DG Agriculture knowing about it, and “drew extensively on data and reports from the commodity divisions” (Kay 1998: 103). The success of what became known as the ‘MacSharry Reform’ in 1992 is thus often attributed to the secrecy surrounding the elaboration of the reform proposals and the initial insulation of the high-ranking bureaucrats, political advisors and the Commissioner for Agriculture from outside pressures. Based on the experiences from the elaboration of the 1992 CAP reform it had become apparent that the analytical capabilities and expertise of the Commission had been key in pushing the 1992 reform, but also that these capabilities were insufficient. Throughout the 1990s, the DG Agriculture built up its internal capacity of systematic data collection, economic modelling as well as political analysis through internal reorganisations, increased financial resources, a strengthening of research and additional experts including agri-economist and personnel with knowledge of both the EU-level and domestic political context being taken into service (Fouilleux 2004: 242ff.). A broader view on the in-house expertise deployable by the Commissions may also be assessed by having a look at recruitment procedures and the professional background of employees in the Commission. Over the years, it has generally become more likely to meet an economist than a legally trained employee in the corridors of Commission offices and some Commission DGs and organisational units do lean towards hiring from specific professions; for example, DG Agriculture and DG Internal market prefer economists and Eurostat statisticians. However, perhaps contrary to common perception, Commission recruitment procedures do not in themselves favour special professions, but rather and increasingly so, public administration generalists are the most typically favoured and recruited (Christensen 2015; Gornitzka and Sverdrup 2014). Much less is known about the advancement of expertise by the EP. While the EP obtains key information, especially from the Commission on legislation in the making and organised interests, in-house resources is probably becoming still more important. The last decade or so has seen the setting up of EP DGs for internal policies (DG IPOL), for external policies (DG EXPOL), and not least, in 2013, a DG for Parliamentary Research Services. These all supply Members of the European Parliament

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(MEPs) and committee work with information on draft legislations and broader analysis, just like the EP library service provides shorter analysis and briefs on the request of MEPs (Dobbels and Neuhold 2014: 81–82). However, very little is known about the nature and role of the EP expertise produced in-house for broader policy-making processes. The myriad of organised interests in and around Bruxelles is another key source of expertise input to EU policy-making. Organised interests, whether governmental, non-governmental, business or civil society organisation, tend to be viewed as suppliers of expertise, especially to the Commission and, in more recent history of European integration, to the EP. To that can be added the increasing role of think tanks and EU agencies on specific policy areas as well as Commission service units—most notably Eurostat and the Joint Research Centre (Gornitzka and Holst 2015: 4; Ossege 2015). In short, the emphasis on expertise as analytical ideas direct the attention towards the discursive characteristics of expertise and the range of political actors having the capacity to potentially employing expertise in policy-making, rather than the production of expertise being confined to the usual suspects, such as researchers and policy experts. In conclusion, the discursive institutional conceptual framework offered in this chapter claims to capture and explain the role of discourse in policy-making, especially discourse as a vehicle for the inclusion/ exclusion of ideas, actors and procedures guiding policy-making. It is probably fair to say that the exact mixture of conditions and mechanisms and their sequence in driving discourse developments and policy-making have some case specificities. In other words, the ambition is not to advance a general discursive causal model for explaining developments in policy-making. Based on a little bit of suspicion, however, a likely sequence of events related to different outcomes may be suggested. A radical—and rare—reconfiguration of policy-making is likely to involve severe interruptions of the discursive path of development, interruptions that almost certainly require external contributions. The processes of translation are a likely key mechanism in capturing how discourses in different social contexts come into contact and possibly trigger change in the existing discursive and institutional order. It is harder to make claims about the most likely timing of translation processes in a policy-making. Yet, if the translation of ideas occurs in a discourse with a low degree of ambiguity, the translation may work as a trigger for longer-term developments, thereby opening up the policy-making field. On the other hand, it is also possible to imagine the processes of translation coinciding with

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ambiguities internal to a discourse, together tipping a balance of actors and ideas and triggering a displacement of discourse and possibly radical change to policy-making. Discursive entrepreneurship must be expected to play a key role in the presence of discursive ambiguities and during processes of translation. Expertise in some form or another is rarely absent from any EU policy-making process. By way of suspicion, however, the role of expertise may be particularly pronounced in the context of the translation of novel ideas into a field of policy-making. Expertise may even play a key role in the translation process, especially if expertise is offered by outside groupings, as opposed to in-house expertise.

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CHAPTER 5

Discourse and the Strategic Usage of Europe

In the spring of 2017, the Commission published a white paper to launch a general debate about the ‘Future of Europe’ to coincide with the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome. The white paper set out five scenarios: ‘Carrying On,’ ‘Nothing but the Single Market,’ ‘Those Who Want More Do More,’ ‘Doing Less More Efficiently,’ and ‘Doing Much More Together’ (European Commission 2017a). The Commission motivated the debate on the future of Europe with a need to deal with changes in Europe associated with “the impact of new technologies on society and jobs, to doubts about globalisation, security concerns and the rise of populism” (European Commission 2017b). Though mentioned only once in the white paper and even then somewhat laconically formulated—“And last year, one of our Member States voted to leave the Union” (European Commission 2017a: 4)— Brexit was almost certainly a key motivation for the debate. At the same time, the Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker was clearly aggravated—and had expressly communicated as much on several occasions over the years—by what he saw as ‘EU-basing’: namely, national policy-makers blaming the EU for national failures and thus escaping their own responsibility to the public (European Parliament 2017). Juncker called for national governments to take a stand in the debate on the future direction of the EU, rather than using ‘Europe’ as a scapegoat, whether for failed domestic policies and unpopular political initiatives. This is the focus of this chapter: domestic decision-makers’ © The Author(s) 2019 K. Lynggaard, Discourse Analysis and European Union Politics, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39326-5_5

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strategic usage of European integration discourse for political purposes. To empirically illustrate this, the chapter presents an indepth study of bank sector reforms in the 1990s and 2000s in two small EU member states, Denmark and Ireland. The chapter is organised as follows. The next section outlines a discursive analytical perspective on conditions and indicators of the usage of ‘Europe’ as a strategic discursive resource. The subsequent section illustrates the usage of Europe with the example of national banking sector reform.

‘Europe’ as a Strategic Discursive Resource The usage of ‘Europe’ as a discursive resource for strategic purposes has become the focus for a still growing field of research (Hay and Rosamond 2002; Hay and Smith 2005, 2010; Smith and Hay 2008; Schmidt 2007; Tsarouhas and Ladi 2013; Lynggaard 2013). The perspective is one that studies European integration and globalisation in concert. The analytical focus is on the construction, institutionalisation and decision-makers’ strategic usage of European integration and globalisation discourses. The chief assumption is that political elite perceptions of the implications of European integration/globalisation affect political decisions and outcomes. Political actors most often operate according to a set of institutionalised discourses without much further reflection. Yet, sometimes decision-makers use European integration/globalisation discourse strategically, and such discourses have shown to be very powerful tools to initiate and legitimise or, indeed, hinder a wide range of institutional and policy reforms (Lynggaard 2015). In other words, when introducing discourse as a strategic resource into an analysis it involves a move towards a more actor-centred analytical focus (see Chapter 2, section ‘Agency–Structure as a Continuum’; see also Saurugger 2013). Discourse is not just internalised meaning systems adhered to without much further thought, political actors also use discourse strategically for political purposes. Compared to the concept of discursive entrepreneurship, the conceptualisation of the strategic usage of discourse differs on at least two important accounts. First, where discursive entrepreneurship is exercised with the purpose of bringing forward the policy-making processes, the strategic usage of discourse is goal-oriented, directed at a desired political outcome. Jacquot and Woll (2003: 7) suggests that European integration can be used by political actors: (i) for the purpose of pursuing specific and well-defined goals; (ii)

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for the purpose of advancing a certain understanding of a political subject and thus a frame for political debates; and (iii) for the purpose of legitimising political decisions. Second, as opposed to the attractiveness of discursive ambiguity for the purpose of exercising discursive entrepreneurship, the strategic usage of discourse is likely to benefit from a discursive framing emphasising coherence and resonance with popular perceptions of current events (Thomas and Turnbull 2017: 934–936). That is, when the Commission outlines five future alternatives for Europe, the significant rhetorical activity is the advancement of a debate on “the future of Europe”: rather the five options for futures outlined. Certainly, although the focus on the strategic usage of discourse involves a move closer to the actions of individuals, it is also clear the strategic resource employed—discourse—is a collective phenomenon. Three Conditions Conducive for the Strategic Usage of Discourse Political actors’ usage of Europe as a strategic resource does not mean they will do so successfully. Likewise, it is unlikely that any single actor can control the process between, on the one hand, discursively framing political debates and/or the promotion of specific political goals and, on the other hand, political outcomes. Just like attempts at legitimising political decisions through strategic usage of discourse by no means equates to the audience accepting such decisions as legitimate. There are at least three conditions that probably matter for actors’ ability to deploy discourse in politics successfully. First, institutionally embedded discourse supplies a powerful resource for agents in strategically using common sense arguments for political purposes. Think for instance of sustainability as a discourse: sustainability is, in an EU context, readily usable for political actors in—it seems—almost any field of policy including the environment, climate, transport, agriculture and economics. In other words, it is almost impossible to disagree with the need for the EU to promote sustainability, which may well be used to characterise societal and economic developments, or the status of fiscal policies. However, this has not always been the case. The institutionalisation of sustainability discourse in EU politics goes back to about the mid-1980s, where it was linked to environmental policy (which in turn may be traced back to

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the early 1970s) (Hajer 1995; Baker 2007), but subsequently to other issues such as the need for sustainable fiscal policies. Among others, the latter helped to promote the understanding of sustainability advanced by Businesseurope associating ‘sustainable growth’ with structural reforms and austerity measures (Lynggaard 2017). Discourse may be institutionally embedded to varying extents and in a variety forms including in legal texts, ‘actions plans’ and ‘codes of conduct,’ amongt many others. The second condition, which is of particular relevance to the ability of agents to use political discourse strategically, is the authority attached to the agents deploying discourse for political purposes. The different roles and competences of political agents in EU politics imply variation in the authority of their utterances. Yet, the authority attached to different political agents is neither something that has come naturally nor has it come without the striking of blows. Rather, the ‘discourse of political authority’—or the ideal against which political authority is evaluated—in the EU is closely associated with representative democracy. Furthermore, the way political authority is viewed in an EU context reflects the historical origin of European integration characterised by struggles between ideals of territorial, functional and expert representation (Rittberger 2009). Following the logic of territorial representation, authoritative political roles are, among others, assigned to member state governments, parliaments and political parties, the EP and MEPs, local and regional governments. The logic of functional representation associate political authority with the representations of group interests first and foremost organised interest, whereas the logic of expertise representation assigns political authority to, for example, the Commission in-house experts, specialised agencies, researchers, think thanks, policy experts and epistemic communities (see Chapter 4, section on ‘Fourth Mechanism of Transformation: Expertise’). Evaluating the degrees of authority attached to EU political actors is obviously a difficult task. Even if it were acknowledged that representative democracy in its various forms is the most significant source of political authority in the EU, it must still be expected that different conceptions of what constitutes political authority exist within and between political elites and the public, in addition to the variation that arises over time. Our knowledge on the exact nature of discourses of political authority among EU political elites is limited. However, it is probably fair so say that elite conceptions of political authority is at least in part reflected in the territorial, functional, and expert representativeness

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of political actors as embedded in EU treaties and associated EU law. It is probably also fair to say that political elites attach a fair amount of authority to political expertise in EU politics, at least compared with domestic politics in many member states. This is due not least to a need for expertise to assist in handling EU decision-making environments characterised by a high degree of uncertainty and complexity (see Chapter 4, section ‘Fourth Mechanism of Transformation: Expertise’). As for public conceptions of political authority, if using Eurobarometer data—for all the associated shortcomings—and looking at citizens’ ‘trust in EU institutions’ as an indicator, then on average there has been surprisingly little variation in trust attached to the different EU institutions over the past 25 years; the ECJ probably comes out a little more trusted compared with the EP, the Commission, the Council of Ministers and European Council. Most striking, however, is the considerable variation of trust in EU institutional actors across the public in different member states, with additional variation across time within some member states (Eurobarometer 2017a, b, c, d, e). Regardless, what is fairly clear is the range of key actors well-positioned to take on a role from where they can make authoritative utterances in EU politics and thus use discourse strategically and potentially do so successfully. Degrees of authority attached to different political actors and variations over time are almost certainly context specific and essentially pose an empirical question. The third condition that is of relevance in terms of agents’ ability to use political discourse strategically are politics characteristics. Woll and Jacquot (2010) hint at three dimensions of politics that are especially supportive of the strategic usage of political discourse: (1) informal and non-constraining policy-making procedures (as opposed to highly institutionalised ones); (2) the ability of issues and actors to movement between policy fields and levels of politics (as opposed to insulated and sectorised policies and single level politics); and (3) the existence of heterogeneous coalitions (allowing for learning among members as opposed to routinized behaviour). Whether all or some of such supportive dimensions of politics are present probably varies across political sectors. However, the transnational, multi-level and polycentric nature of EU politics allows for both movements across policy field and political levels and is conducive for heterogeneous coalitions, at least compared with domestic politics. It is less straightforward to identify whether EU politics is more or less informal and non-constraining compared with domestic politics.

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How Can It Be Determined Whether Decision-Makers Invoke Discourse Strategically? This certainly not an easy question to answer but, first, the time dimension is arguably of particular importance. While actors are likely to become less reflexive and strategic over the course of time of the development and possible institutionalisation of particular EU political discourses, a more sudden articulation of ‘new,’ or previously downplayed discourses suggests a more reflective and strategic choice. Second, actors in the decision-making elites are probably more likely to be reflexive and strategic users of discourse. There are at least a couple of reasons for this. Decision-making elites are likely to be aware—perhaps often acutely—of the presence of alternative and competing political discourses both domestically and internationally. In other words, decision-makers are faced with the task of articulating European integration/globalisation discourses as opposed to alternative conceptions of the causes and consequences of European integration/globalisation, suggesting at the very least some level of strategic reflection. Third, gaps between coordinative discourse used in more private negotiations among decision-makers and communicative discourse articulated by the same actors publicly in order to justify policy choices may also be indicative of strategic choices (see Schmidt [2008] for the distinction between coordinative and communicative discourse). For instance, it has been shown that Anglophone politicians publicly tend to emphasise globalisation as necessitating certain domestic policy choices, whereas privately they point to their own agency and ability to influence the direction of globalisation (Hay and Smith 2010). Hay and Smith (2010) suggest that this implies that decision-makers are more strategic in their use of discourse in public fora. This may be the case. However, such an interpretation also seems to assume that it is possible to draw fairly clear lines between private and public discourse (in order to measure differences) and that private discourse reflects the somehow deeper and more real beliefs of decision-makers (in order to judge alternative discourses directed at the public as strategic). Regardless, the use of different discourses in different—for example, more or less private/public and national/international—is indicative of decision-makers’ reflexive and strategic use of discourse (Lynggaard 2013: 864).

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The Usage of Europe in Banking For the purpose of illustrating different usages of Europe by national decision-makers, the following focus on banking sector reforms, which is further exemplified by a focus on two small EU member states and open economies with a long history inside the EU. The research draws on a number of research designs, research technics and data as presented in Chapters 2 and 3. The research is designed as a cross-country comparative temporal study (Chapter 2, section ‘Discourse Analysis and Time’) of Irish and Danish banking systems approximately covering the period from 1990 to 2012. The choice of case countries was taken so to allow for a 2nd order multi-theoretical analysis (Chapter 2, section ‘Multitheoretical Analysis and Counterfactual Reasoning’) moving beyond discourse analysis and drawing broadly on rational choice and historical institutionalism and the literature on the varieties of capitalism (Menz 2005) and variegated neoliberalism (Macartney 2011). The 1st order analysis mapping banking discourse in Ireland and Denmark is based on documents (Chapter 3, section ‘What to Read?’) that were analysed by means of a problem perception perspective in combination with simple computer-assisted text analysis (Chapter 3, section ‘How to Read?’). A wide range of documents were consulted, most of which published by the central banks in the two countries, the main representative organisations for banks, and the ministries in charge of banking. The archive consisted of roughly 130 documents, especially annual reports, newsletters and speeches. The case of banking is especially interesting for the purpose of investigating the strategic usage of European as a strategic discursive resource. Not only has the national banking sectors in EU member states been subject to a range of EU-level supervisory standards and regulations since at least the 1980s, banking is a prime example of globalisation involving liberalisation and the harmonisation of sector regulations and increased cross-boarder competition. At the same time, in accordance with the historical institutionalism, the effect of the EU and global forces are typically viewed as mediated through long-established national practices (Coleman 1994; Lütz 2004; Busch 2004). That is, differences in national banking are often explained by variation in national traditions in terms of government-sector policy objectives, the degree of autonomy of supervisory institutions and Central Banks, the scope of sector

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intervention, the kinds of market-regulatory instruments involved, and the influence of sectoral-organised interests in policy-making (Pagoulatos 1999; Busch 2009). The historical institutionalism no doubt is very helpful in explaining the long-term impact of global forces and EU membership on national banking sectors. However, a discursive institutional perspective offers additional insights into how sectoral political actors coordinate and legitimise bank sector reform and how political elites may use Europe as a strategic resources in bringing about banking sector reform, even in situations where legal pressures for adaption are absent. Institutionalised bank sector discourses ensure continuity in banking, yet giving attention to the usage of diverse understandings of the implications of European financial integration introduces a more dynamic element into the analysis of bank sector reform. The analysis suggests that a focus on bank sector discourse is a necessary supplement to interest-based explanatory frameworks on the effect of European integration and globalisation. It will be shown how the interest-based explanations—amongst others—fall short of capturing the noticeable sudden change in Denmark around the millennium in terms of the significant attention being given to the global competitiveness of the Danish economy and banking sector. Rather the speedy change in the bank sector focus appears to reflect the strategic use of discourse by decision-makers in the banking sector, allowing the sector—among others—to adapt to the EU banking regulations and standards in spite of Denmark not having joined the Eurozone. Ireland and Denmark show a number of political–economic institutional similarities, allowing for interesting comparisons. Ireland and Denmark both: • Joined the EU in 1973 and both are small, open economies. • Have a long history of involvement in European integration and of exposure to the global political economy. • Have a fairly high and very similar levels of, as well as recent developments in, GDP—at least up until the 2008 financial crisis (GDP measured at current market prices in Purchasing Power Standards per inhabitant; Source: Eurostat 2011). • Have similar approaches to banking sector regulation giving priority to financial market liberalisation, and ‘light-touch,’ ‘principle-based’ and ‘competition-friendly’ regulation. That is, Ireland and Denmark represent the market-making ‘regulatory philosophies’ also found

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in the financial sectors in the UK, the Benelux countries, and other Nordic countries, as opposed to market-shaping regulatory approaches in Southern European countries, France and Germany (Quaglia 2010). • Have fairly similar banking sector compositions in terms of the number of commercial banks, the number of employees in banking, the dominant position of a few major banks in the domestic markets and—in the face of the 2008 financial crisis—the level of exposure to international risk in the two countries are largely comparable (OECD 2010; Kluth and Lynggaard 2013). At the same time, Ireland and Denmark display differences, which lead to different expectations with regard to decision makers’ strategic usage of Europe in the two countries. That is: • Whereas EU accession in Ireland was promoted by political elites through a discourse that favoured opening up economic competition and liberalisation (Falkner and Laffan 2005), in the Danish case conflicting discourses exist with regard to the benefits of EU membership both among different elite groups and between the elites and the public (Kelstrup 2006). • Unlike Ireland, which is a full European Monetary Union (EMU) member, Denmark has not joined the third phase of the EMU and has not introduced the euro, which was rejected by referendum in late 2000. • Whereas Ireland consistently hosted 35–36 foreign banks between 2006 and 2009, Denmark only hosted 8–9 foreign banks in the same period—though if the share of income of foreign banking is compared in the two countries, the differences are not as marked as might have been expected given the heavy promotion of Ireland as an international financial centre since the late 1980s (OECD 2010). Ireland The general view by Irish civil servants and politicians on European integration prior to the financial crisis was positive and one of strong commitment. Moreover, economic policy-making was viewed as impacted the most European integration and globalisation (Hay and Smith 2005; Smith and Hay 2008). The most significant discursive change appeared

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in the early 2000s among decision-makers within the government and the Central Bank of Ireland (CBI). After the early 2000s, there was progressively more focus on the EU as a forum in which to deal with global financial instability and sector reform, and on the restructuring of the Irish financial sector by the use of European financial integration discourse. The discursive changes are summarised in Fig. 5.1. The central political actors’ strategic usage of discourse and its implications for political outcomes is discussed in detail below. The 1990s were characterised by the preparation and implementation of requirements related to stage three of the EMU, and the Irish banking sector adapted to comply with a significant number of EU regulations. In this context, European integration was viewed by the government and the CBI as a favourable, but also essentially a non-negotiable condition for the well-being of the Irish economy. The Irish government self-image was one of a government dedicated to EU harmonisation and a complete and speedy adoption of EU financial regulation (Central Bank of Ireland 1991, 1993, 1996, 1997, 1998). However, from the early 2000s, the 1HJRWLDEOH

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Fig. 5.1  Transformations in Irish Europe Discourse 1990–2012

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CBI has been especially keen to ensure and expand its areas of authority by using European financial integration discourse as a strategic resource. This is most clearly illustrated in the context of a reorganisation of authority in Irelands’ financial sector around the millennium. As part of a major plan for restructuring the financial sector, an interdepartmental advisory group advocated in favour of a large number of advisory, regulatory and supervisory responsibilities to be gathered under the auspices of a new independent regulatory authority (Department of Finance 1999). While partaking in the work of the interdepartmental advisory group, the CBI objected to the advisory groups initial recommendations, claiming that stripping the CBI of its regulatory and advisory functions would devaluate the banks positive international image, impose unnecessary transactional costs, involve a duplication of tasks already delegated to the CBI by the EU, and lead to a loss of expertise (Central Bank of Ireland 1999). By renaming and restructuring into the ‘Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland’ (CBFSAI), the Irish Central Bank managed to expand its area of competences to include additional financial regulatory and supervisory tasks (Central Bank of Ireland 2001, 2003). It was unclear whether EU regulation in fact delegated the specific tasks to the CBI as claimed. However, this uncertainty allowed the Central Bank to use European integration discourse strategically, and successfully expand its regulatory and supervisory powers by arguing that continued international confidence in Irelands’ financial sector was dependent on this arrangement and that Ireland was legally bound to comply with the obligations of EU financial regulation. While the CBI may or may not be motivated by a ‘bureaucracy-maximising’ logic as, for example, public choice and historical institutionalists may claim, pursuing such interests successfully seems to be allowed by the strategic usage of discourse on European integration. Graph 5.1 illustrates the meaning attached to the EU between 2004 and 2011 by Irish Ministers of Finance according to four categories: (2) the EU as a forum through which Ireland and the EU as a whole can influence global banking; (2) the EU as a forum for Ireland to exercise influence over banking in the EU; (3) the EU as a factor in establishing the conditions for Irish banking; and (4) other references to the EU. This simple categorisation confirms that there has been a clear and steady (except for 2010) expansion of the perception that the EU simultaneously represents a forum for Ireland/the EU to influence

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Graph 5.1  Meanings Attached to ‘The EU’ (Source Lynggaard [2013]. Data: 19 Speeches/statements delivered by Ministers of Finance on Banking. Total number of references to EU = 167. Number of references per year >10, except 2011 = 9)

global banking and, particularly, a forum where Ireland can and should influence banking in the EU (that is, categories [1] and [2], respectively). Essentially, the Irish government increasingly viewed the EU as the most central forum for influencing and pushing for much needed improvements of global financial regulations and standards. Moreover, compared with the 1990s, European financial integration is no longer a non-negotiable condition for the Irish economy, but rather the EU is an opportunity for the Irish government to have an impact on financial sector policies. The latter is a view shared by the CBI. During the 2000s—even in the face of the 2008 financial crisis and the resultant need for a bailout and the imposition of strict reform requirements on Ireland—the Irish government and the CBI continued to claim influence on EU financial regulation and conceive of various EU fora as the most important channels for dealing with global challenges to the financial sector during the 2000s (Central Bank of Ireland 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2008). While Irish banks shared and contributed to the same European integration and globalisation discourses as the government and Central Bank through the 1990s (Irish Banking Federation 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997), since the mid-2000s, they have distanced themselves from the

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prevailing European integration discourse. Irish bankers have thus progressively claimed EU financial regulation as being too comprehensive and far-reaching. Irish banks have been keen to state their positive contribution to the Irish economy, something that can only by upheld if the EU produces both less and better regulation of the financial sector (Irish Banking Federation 2005a, b, 2006a, b, 2007a, b). The stated positive contributions of Irish banks to the economy included a broad palette of financial services, a high degree of international competitiveness, inclusiveness towards new actors in the market, and their ability to create highly skilled and well-paid jobs (Irish Banking Federation 2007a). The very deliberate strategic use of discourse is illustrated in a statement to Irish bankers by the Irish Banking Federation (IBF) Chief Executive: It is clear that we have a lot more work to do to get this message across to our politicians and to policy makers. We all have a responsibility to make our voices heard. Over the coming months why not take each and every opportunity to tell the success story of the [Irish financial service] sector, and its great potential for further growth to politicians, policy makers and influencers alike. If you don’t do it, don’t assume that someone else will. (IBF Chief Executive Pat Farrell in Irish Banking Federation 2007a: 4)

Still, in spite of criticising the EU for the overregulation of the banking sector, Irish banks remain fully committed to European financial integration. That is, neither the 2008 financial crisis and resultant crisis of the Eurozone challenged the conception that banking should be subject to a common EU regulatory framework. If anything, subsequent to the crises, bankers are less likely to disapprove of prudent EU regulations (Irish Banking Federation 2009a, b, 2010a). Elite decision-makers in the Irish banking sector continue to be committed to European integration. Denmark In the 2000s, compared with lower levels of administration and other policy sectors, civil servants in the Danish central administration, particularly in trade and business policy, felt increasingly and the most affected by internationalisation—an internationalisation that was viewed as the consequence of the Danish membership of the EU (Jørgensen 2003). At the same time, ever since the late 1980s, Danish governments— whether centre-right or centre-left—have only hesitantly used European

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integration discourse to justify banking sector reforms (Østrup 2009). Against this backdrop, the most significant change in the Danish case is the emergence of a globalisation discourse in the banking sector in the 2000s, which had otherwise been close to absent during the 1990s. Below, it will be argued that the emergence and deployment of a globalisation discourse to justify banking sector reforms in the 2000s can be viewed as the result of the long-lasting uncertainty about the Danish commitment to European integration. That is, while the Danish banking sector was adapting to EU regulations and standards, the Danish government as well as the Central Bank strategically used globalisation discourse to argue that such sector reforms were necessary in order to prepare for the increased global competition facing the Danish banking. The discursive changes are summarised in Fig. 5.2. Below, the strategic usage of globalisation and European integration discourse and its implications for political outcomes is discussed in detail. Different Danish governments and the Danmarks Nationalbank (DNB) have consistently viewed financial integration in the EU as a favourable, 1HJRWLDEOH

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Fig. 5.2  Transformations in Danish Global & Europe Discourse 1990–2012

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but also as a non-negotiable condition for the well-being of the Danish economy. The view has been that the Danish banking sector must adjust to still more competitive financial markets in Europe and to EU regulatory harmonisation. The 1990s saw two key examples of how the Danish banking sector felt the need to prepare for increasingly competitive markets. In the early 1990s, the sector thus underwent rationalisations and centralisations in the form of a series bank mergers, a general reduction of employees and branches, all of which was justified as preparations for intensified financial market competition (Danmarks Nationalbank 1991, 1993; Balling and Grosen 2002). The second part of the 1990s saw an enactment of a Nordic stock exchange cooperation (NOREX). In 1997, the Copenhagen Stock Exchange thus joined the Stockholm Stock Exchange in a formal cooperation, which was later expanded to include stock exchanges in Helsinki, Reykjavík, and the Baltic countries (Danmarks Nationalbank 1995, 1999, 2001). The stock exchange cooperation was justified in Denmark by the need to prepare for intensified competition in EU markets for trade with securities. On the one hand, European integration discourse in terms of intensified competition created a need for strategic action in the financial sector. On the other hand, the opt-out from joining the Eurozone and the absence of globalisation discourse forced the Danish government and the DNB to turn to Nordic cooperation. At the same time, the uncertainty of the Danish relationship with financial cooperation in the EU, the exposure of the Danish economy to international crises, and the political and economic cost associated with the opt-out from the Eurozone was a major concern for both the Danish governments and the DNB. After its marked absence in the 1990s, the 2000s saw the emergence of a globalisation discourse among the governing actors in the banking sector in Denmark. The globalisation discourse arose out of a major report entitled ‘The financial sector after the year 2000.’ The report was prepared by a government committee set up in 1997 and included a broad palette of representatives from the financial sector. The recommendations that emerged from the committee included initiating financial sector regulation with a focus on more transparency in financial markets, efficient and uniform financial sector supervision, and improving the competitiveness of the Danish financial sector (Økonomi- og Erhversministeriet 1999). Subsequent to the release of the report, the implication of globalisation became a key concern for bank sector actors. The mounting emphasis on the effects of globalisation is illustrated by

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the DNB chairman speeches at the Danish Bankers’ Association annual meetings during this period (see Graph 5.2). Throughout the 1990s, the DNB persistently adjusted Danish regulatory practices to EU financial sector regulations and standards (Østrup 2009). In the 2000s, however, global financial standards originating from the Basel agreements and involving regulatory harmonisation and liberalisation became much more important for different Danish DNB (Danmarks Nationalbank 2001–2008). On the one hand, different Danish governments and the DNB viewed globalisation as favourable for growth in the Danish economy as well as an opportunity to modernise the public sector. On the other hand, in order to benefit the most from globalisation, it was thought that Denmark should keep away from implementing its own regulations and instead should develop more proactive strategies towards international standards, most importantly in the context of EU financial cooperation. Here, the globalisation discourse given momentum by the ‘The financial sector after the year 2000’ report came in handy. The emerging globalisation discourse thus allowed governing actors to justify bank sector reforms with reference to the need to prepare for increased global competition, while adapting to EU financial integration. The rather sudden emergence of a globalisation discourse in the Danish political

Graph 5.2  ‘The Global’ Among Governing Actors 1997–2010 (Source Lynggaard [2013]. Data: DNB Chairmen speeches delivered at annual meetings of The Danish Bankers’ Association, 1997–2010)

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context emphasises it was used strategically, rather than being a gradually internalised discourse among the governing actors in banking. A most interesting exception appeared in the context of Denmark preparing to assume the Presidency of the Council of Ministers in the first half of 2012. This marked a strong, yet short lived, emergence of a European integration discourse. Illustrative of this discursive turn is a vast increase, from late 2009 to late 2011, in references to European integration in speeches held at the Danish Bankers’ Association annual meetings by the Chairman of this association, the DNB and the Minister for Economic and Business Affairs (Finansraadet 2011a). In the wake of the financial and the Eurozone crises, the Danish Presidency arguably offered a ‘not-to-be-missed’ opportunity through which Danish decision-makers could credibly claim their influence on EU financial integration (cf. Hay and Rosamond 2002). Like the governing actors, the Danish banks also became markedly more concerned with the implications of globalisation for the financial sector in the 2000s. In addition, like the governing actors, Danish banks conceived of globalisation as a favourable, but also as a non-negotiable condition for the well-being of the Danish economy. Globalisation was viewed as implying amplified financial market competition and harmonisation of financial regulations. However, compared with the governing actors, Danish banks were much more keen to use European integration discourse for strategic purposes. Danish banks was concerned with the uncertainty of Denmark’s commitment to the EU and European financial integration, in particular the opt-out from the Eurozone, and the limited influence of Denmark on both EU economic policy-making and in the European Central Bank Governing Council (Finansraadet 1991, 1992, 1994). Danish banks further maintained their competitiveness was threatened by Danish authorities over-implementing EU regulations and standards as well as adopting restrictive and exclusive Danish regulations resulting in subsequent adjustments to EU regulation or even opt-outs (Finansraadet 1996– 2000). Like their Irish counterpart, Danish banks wanted better and less restrictive regulations, which should be fully harmonised at the EU level. Danish sectoral regulation and standards should closely match those adopted by the EU and the best practices in EU member states, a view that was upheld even following the rejection of the euro at a referendum in 2000 (Finansraadet 1997, 1998, 2002, 2004, 2007, 2011b, 2012). Danish banks thus used European integration discourse strategically to

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make demands for less and better regulation of the sector. At the same time, a globalisation discourse shared by the sector justified the necessity to safeguard the international competitiveness of Danish banking. The Danish government and DNB come across as especially receptive to this strategy. The governing actors are clearly committed to financial integration in the EU, but are also vulnerable to damaging public claims about, for example, the ‘over-implementation’ of EU regulations by Danish authorities. The Danish government is keen to talk down the role of the EU in Danish sector reforms, whereas Danish banks are less focused on how they feed into the public European integration discourse than governmental actors. Comparing Ireland and Denmark A change in the strategic use of discourse occurred in the 2000s in both Denmark and Ireland. During this period, the Irish governments and the central bank increasingly made use of discourse on European financial integration in order to justify the reorganisation of the financial sector in Ireland as well as to claim the EU as being the most important forum for influencing and improving global financial regulations in the face of global financial turbulence. In the meantime, after being barely detectable during the 1990s, Danish elite decision-makers began using globalisation discourses in order to justify regulatory initiatives and bank sector reforms in the 2000s. Variation between the Irish and the Danish case can be explained by differences in the ability of governing actors to make credible claims about their influence on European integration. That is, in contrast to Ireland, Denmark has an opt-out from the Eurozone severely constraining the Danish credibility in terms of claiming influence on financial integration in the EU. Rather, as ‘a last resort,’ the Danish governing actors are driven to justify bank sector reforms through the use of globalisation discourse, while at the same time adapting regulations in line with the EU. The discursive institutional analysis offered by this chapter is, more than anything, a supplement, albeit a necessary one, to historical institutional and interest-based explanations of how national banking is effected by European integration and globalisation. Interest-based analyses highlight the importance of the composition of banking sectors and the economic interests of key political actors. Accordingly, it could be argued that actors in the Irish banking sector in the 1990s were much

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more orientated towards dealing with the implications of globalisation, compared with their Danish counterparts, owing to the greater significance of international banking for the Irish economy. However, this type of explanation also falls short of explaining the rather sudden and significant rise of concerns with the implications of globalisation for Danish banking around the turn of the millennium. Additionally, decision-­ makers in Danish banking come across as just as concerned with the impact of European financial integration as their Irish counterpart, in spite of being outside of the Eurozone. The discursive institutional emphasis instead allows for a focus on decision-makers’ strategic use of discourse and introduces a dynamic element into the analysis. To be sure, conceptions of the nature and the implications of European integration and globalisation among central decision-makers have very real consequences for political outcomes in the two countries, including for the ability to introduce sector reforms and for the content of such reforms. What the analysis above suggests is that decision-makers may use discourse strategically to carry out reforms and, in the Danish case, to ‘bypass’ an opt-out from the Eurozone and adjust to EU regulations in this area regardless. Institutionally embedded globalisation discourse supplied a strategic resource to do so.

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110  K. LYNGGAARD Danmarks Nationalbank. (18 Speeches from 1997 to 2010). Chairman’s Speech Delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Danish Bankers’ Association. Copenhagen: Danmarks Nationalbank. Danmarks Nationalbank. (The Danish National Bank Annual Reports in All Odd Years from 1991 to 1999 and All Years from 2000 to 2008). Beretning og Regnskab. Copenhagen: Danmarks Nationalbank. Department of Finance. (1999). The Report of the Implementation Advisory Group on a Single Regulatory Authority for Financial Services. Dublin: Department of Finance. Eurobarometer. (2017a). Trust in EU Commission 1993–2016. http://ec.europa. eu/COMMFrontOffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/Chart/getChart/chartType/lineChart//themeKy/9/groupKy/24/savFile/661. Accessed 8 April 2017. Eurobarometer. (2017b). Trust in the European Parliament 1993–2016. http:// ec.europa.eu/COMMFrontOffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/Chart/ getChart/chartType/lineChart//themeKy/9/groupKy/23/savFile/661. Accessed 8 April 2017. Eurobarometer. (2017c). Trust in the Council of the European Union 2005–2013. http://ec.europa.eu/COMMFrontOffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/Chart/ getChart/chartType/lineChart//themeKy/9/groupKy/31/savFile/54. Accessed 8 April 2017. Eurobarometer. (2017d). Trust in the EC Council of Minister 1993–2004. http://ec.europa.eu/COMMFrontOffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/Chart/ getChart/chartType/lineChart//themeKy/9/groupKy/30/savFile/661. Accessed 8 April 2017. Eurobarometer. (2017e). Trust in the European Court of Justice 1993–2013. http://ec.europa.eu/COMMFrontOffice/publicopinion/index.cfm/Chart/ getChart/chartType/lineChart//themeKy/9/groupKy/28/savFile/661. Accessed 8 April 2017. European Commission. (2017a, March 1). White Paper on the Future of Europe: Reflections and Scenarios for the EU27 by 2025 (COM[2017]2025). Bruxelles: European Commission. European Commission. (2017b, March 1). Press Release: Commission Presents White Paper on the Future of Europe: Avenues for Unity for the EU at 27. Bruxelles: European Commission. European Parliament. (2017, March 1 Wednesday). Statement by the President of the Commission on the White Paper on the Future of the European Union (Debate). Debates. Brussels, Provisional Edition. Bruxelles: European Parliament. Falkner, G., & Laffan, B. (2005). The Europeanization of Austria and Ireland: Small Can Be Difficult. In S. Bulmer & C. Lequesne (Eds.), The Member States of the European Union (pp. 209–228). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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CHAPTER 6

Discourse, Myths and Emotions in EU Politics

This chapter focuses on the role of political myths in EU politics with a special view to the emotional appeals of such myths. Political myths are approached as a particular type of discourse—namely, discourse with a narrative structure—that serve the role of communicating and mobilising political emotions. The claim is that political myths are critical to integration processes in Europe and to the constitution of the EU as a political reality (Manners 2014; McNamara 2015). Collective myths about Europe are essential to whether citizens feel any attachment to the EU, community solidarity, and to mobilise both citizens and elites behind or against European integration. In the context of EU political research, the study of political myths is thus typically associated with political legitimacy and identity politics. Furthermore, European political myths are not only about collective understandings of the past, but also a projection of the past onto the future. That is, European political myths also establish a series of anticipations about the future European integration (Stråth 2005). The topics addressed in this chapter are closely related to research on collective memories, political identity and legitimacy in European integration. However, the focus is turned towards the role of, and especially the strategic usage of, political myths and emotions in day-to-day EU politics. Against this backdrop, it is argued that political myths and emotions play a key role in communicating and legitimising policy positions among political actors and in mobilising support behind such positions. © The Author(s) 2019 K. Lynggaard, Discourse Analysis and European Union Politics, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39326-5_6

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The chapter is organised as follows: the first section outlines and discusses a conceptual framework for the study of myths and emotions in politics and anchors this framework in the discursive institutionalism. With the example of ‘green Europe’ and ‘social Europe’ myths among transnational non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the second section illustrates the political roles of myths and emotions in EU politics. A special focus is on the Commission’s ‘EUROPE 2020: A strategy for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth’ (European Commission 2010; hereafter: ‘Europe 2020 strategy’). The focus on the Europe 2020 strategy is chosen in particular as this strategy reflects and feeds into long-standing EU political myths about green Europe and social Europe, which in turn serves as vehicles for emotional appeals in EU politics.

Myths and Emotions in EU Politics The study of myths and emotions in EU politics is almost exclusively associated with political legitimacy and identity politics. Myths are, in the broadest sense, collective ideas providing the public with “origin, continuity, historical memories, collective remembrance, common heritage and tradition, as well as a common destiny” (Obradovic 1996: 196). This conception of myths refers to what has also been termed ‘foundational myths’ (Della Sala 2010: 6), which are essential for feelings of solidarity, the public backing of shared political institutions and the acceptance—whether enthusiastically or not—of the political outcome of those institutions. The presence and extent of foundational myths in Europe is highly debated. On the one hand, some claim that, due to the lack of both geographical and cultural unity in Europe, collective political myths are not only absent, but also very unlikely to ever appear (Obradovic 1996). Contrary to this, others claim the largely ‘neofunctional’ (E. B. Hass) ideas about European integration being founded on rational, inescapable and non-political processes constitute a very forceful European political myth (Hansen and Williams 1999). Regardless of the view taken, compared with the national level, European foundational myths are almost certainly weaker and less institutionalised. For that reason, it has been argued that identity and legitimacy in the EU rely especially on the existence of functional myths (Della Sala 2010). Functional myths are “a ‘brand attribute’ of Europe, a particular feature that distinguishes Europe from other political entities and that adds to a common identity” (Lenschow and Sprungk 2010: 136). Compared with

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foundational myths about, for instance, the ‘birth of the nation’ or ‘the state,’ functional myths refer to specific policy ideas, people and events. The concept of political myth is closely associated with the concepts of discourse and narrative, but they are not the same. This chapter views political myths as discourse, which has obtained the structure of a narrative, while at the same time appeals to emotions. First, a political myth is discourse in the sense that it is made up by collective understandings of causal relationships, the roles of involved actors and links between events in an area of politics (Bottici 2007: 116–130). Second, a political myth has the structure of a narrative in the sense that it has a plot. The plot begins by setting a scene including the introducing key themes and actors, carries on by building up to a climax and ends with a resolution (see also Hannes-Magnusson and Wiener 2010: 34–35). Finally, a political myth appeals to emotions in the sense that they provide significance to a societal group by addressing their social and political conditions (Bottici 2007: 116–130). Altogether, a political myth is more than a meaning system (like a discourse) presented as a plot (like a narrative); a political myth must also be emotionally appealing to a societal group (Lieberman and Gray 2007: 378; Hannes-Magnusson and Wiener 2010: 35; Lynggaard 2017: 1412–1413). While the role of emotions has long been regarded as a central dimension of politics (Neuman et al. 2007; Redlawsk 2006), it is a more recent concern for students of EU politics. The study of political emotions is in this context linked to research into public attitudes to European integration (Bakker 2016; Boomgaarden et al. 2011; Vasilopoulou and Wagner 2017) and more generally with the nature and extent of identification with the EU among the public and within the political elites (for an overview, see Bourne 2015; Kølvraa 2016). With the purpose of zooming-in on the role of emotions in day-to-day politics, political psychology offers a number of key insights. The literature in this field is characterised by three distinctions on the understanding of political emotions. The first distinction concerns the relationship between reason and emotion (Elster 1999: 283–328; Marcus 2003: 183–188; Crawford 2000: 137–145). One view on this distinction is characterized by the a priori separation of political emotions from reason. Studies that take this approach vary in terms of how emotion is perceived, from those that believe emotion should essentially be curtailed from politics to those claiming that emotions, in certain instances, may work to improve political institutions. From this perspective, while EU elite decision-making is,

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and should be, guided by reason, emotions are viewed as noise, either to be avoided or as a largely random force that may promote certain political objectives in EU politics. Another view on the distinction between reason and emotion approaches emotion as something that neither should—nor indeed can—be eliminated from political decision-making; similarly, political emotions should not be conceived as being opposite to political reason. The two are interrelated and political reasoning depends on political emotion. Political emotions not only allow for routine political activity, but also for swift evaluations and reactions by political agents to political challenges (Marcus 2000: 222; 2003: 204). This perspective suggests that emotions attached to political events and circumstances may activate already internalised behaviour among EU decision-­makers without much thought, while at the same allowing for EU decisionmakers to appeal to emotions for political purposes, for example, by warning of “unusual and/or threatening circumstances” (Marcus 2003: 203) such as financial crises, EU enlargements and decision-making fatigue, all creating a need for reflection and possibly political initiatives. The second distinction in the literature concerns whether emotions are viewed as the property of individuals or if emphasis is on culturally constructed emotions embedded in political discourse (Ross 2006: 210– 214; Marcus 2000: 222). The former typically refers to the individuals’ ‘personality’ or psychological dispositions, often acquired early in life, in understanding how decision-makers and political leaders act in politics. From this perspective, EU politics is, at least in part, guided by the emotional dispositions of centrally placed EU decision-makers and their ability to invoke such among fellow political elites, and possibly more broadly in the public (Garry 2014: 250). The latter perspective is concerned with collective emotions attached to external events or situations driving sets of political actors to react in certain ways and collectively (Marcus 2000: 222). EU politics is, from this perspective, in part driven by emotions stored as collective memory and embedded in political discourse including audio and visual discourse (for an example in US politics, see Brader 2005). The third distinction concerns the extent to which political emotions are involuntary or a resource for strategic political activity (Ross 2006: 204–210; Elster 1999: 306–312). Approaching political emotion as involuntary makes emotions an integrated, but largely uncontrollable, dimension of politics. From this perspective, EU politics is driven, at least in part, by emotions that may work so as to support or impede

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the establishment of EU institutions, but essentially in an unmanageable fashion. Viewing emotions as a strategic resource, on the other hand, allows for emotional learning, and unlearning for that matter, and thus the strategic usage of emotions for political purposes. This perspective establishes emotions as a resource that EU decision-makers can use for generating support or opposition to political objectives. It is probably also a political resource, which is not easily manipulated due to, amongst other, the existence of historically highly institutionalised affections attached to the nation state in Europe. As a starting point, this chapter views political emotions as feelings that “are internally experienced, but the meaning attached to those feelings, the behaviours associated with them, and the recognition of emotions in others are cognitively and culturally construed and constructed” (Crawford 2000: 125; see also Ross 2006: 200–201). In addition, political emotions are processes of evaluation that can influence political behaviour and decisions and that such evaluative processes are different from, but not in opposition to political cognition or reasoning (Marcus 2000: 224). Marcus argues that emotions are: “intimately involved not only in habits, prejudices, and other instances of reliance of learned behaviour but in the recruitment of reason and the full display of cognitive activities” (Marcus 2003: 204). Accordingly, political emotions can appeal both to already internalised emotions so to trigger learned behaviour without much further reflection and warn political actors of “unusual and/or threatening circumstances” (Marcus 2003: 203). The latter is much more likely to generate reflection and strategic behaviour in terms of how to respond to unusual or threatening circumstances. Discursive Institutionalism on Political Myths and Emotions Discursive institutional research has, in the past, shown little concern with the role of myths and, by association, emotions in politics. However, anchoring the study of political myths in a discursive institutional framework helps to generate expectations about the possible impact of myths and emotions in mundane politics. First, the level of institutionalisation of political myths must be expected to matter in the sense that “myths can reinforce existing institutions and the position of some members of the community, but also sanction social segmentation and political hierarchies, and even embolden oppositional groups” (Zaiotti 2011: 542). Second, the process through which political myths

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are institutionalised is expected to matter in terms of their impact on politics. From the perspective of the discursive institutionalism, a political myth is institutionalised as political actors attach authority and sanctions to said myth. European political myths may, for instance, obtain authority and be linked to sanctions through EU law or, more informally, by being a frame of reference for political debates and negotiations, where political actors must express themselves though such frame of reference in order to be considered relevant and legitimate. Furthermore, the implications of political myths may also depend on whether they are institutionalised among larger groups of political actors or in more narrow political circles. That is, foundational myths concerns, if not all, then large societal and political grouping, whereas functional myths must be expected to primarily have their effect at the level of the political sector, or possibly on a few interrelated sectors. Finally, political elites in the EU are expected to play a particularly significant role in the institutionalisation of myths. They are thus both central in attaching authority to political myths and in striking a balance between EU-wide political myth-making and long-established national political myths. The political stakes involved are high in what may be seen as clash between EU and domestic foundational myths. It has even been argued that the ‘Constitution for Europe’ was rejected in both France and the Netherlands referenda in 2005 as it was by many seen as the intrusion of EU statehood on the nation state (Manners 2011: 244–245, 252ff; also McNamara 2015: 142–143, 162–166). Yet, day-to-day EU politics typically stays clear of this clash. That is, elites in EU policy-making are very much alert to the emotional importance of national myths (McNamara 2015: 3), suggesting at the very least some level of strategic reflection.

Green and Social Europe: Myths and Emotions The remainder of the chapter focuses on ‘Green Europe’ and ‘Social Europe’ with the purpose of illustrating the role of political myths and emotions in EU politics. A further focus is placed on the elaboration, adoption and implementation of the Europe 2020 strategy and the emotional response of Bruxelles-based transnational NGOs to the strategy. The EU’s response to the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent economic crisis was, severely criticised by some for focusing one-sidedly on austerity policies. The Europe 2020 strategy can be viewed as a way to accommodate to these critiques by speaking up for the need to promote

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“smart, sustainable and inclusive growth” in Europe. The Europe 2020 strategy produced expectations about the general direction of European integration in the near future as well as very specific anticipations by setting up concrete strategy targets and instruments to reach such targets. At the same time, it was acknowledged that societal actors needed to feel ownership in order for the strategy to be successful. In the words of the European Commission president Barroso: The condition for success [of Europe 2020] is a real ownership by European leaders and institutions. Our new agenda requires a coordinated European response, including with social partners and civil society. If we act together, then we can fight back and come out of the crisis stronger. We have the new tools and the new ambition. Now we need to make it happen. (European Commission 2010: 4)

The claim here is that the materialisation of this ownership in part depends on the ability of the strategy to feed into political myths and thus appeal to emotions. In order to investigate this claim, the analysis focused on the production, reception and reproduction of the Europe 2020 strategy, emphasising associated political myths and appeals to emotions. The reception and reproduction of political myths was investigated by focussing on four transnational NGOs—the social policy coalition Platform of the European Social NGOs (Social Platform), the European Environmental Bureau (EEB), the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and Businesseurope (until early 2007: the ‘Union of Industrial and Employer’s Confederations of Europe’ [UNICE]). Together, they cover a broad range of policies and are all key social partners in EU policy-making. The study drew on a number of research designs, research technics and data, as presented in Chapters 2 and 3. The research was designed as a cross-sectoral comparative temporal study (Chapter 2, section ‘Discourse Analysis and Time’) of four of the largest Brussels-based NGOs, together covering a broad spectrum of policy issues and roughly encompasses the period 2000–2014. The data consist of documents (Chapter 3, section ‘What to Read?’) analysed by means of a problem perception perspective in combination with computer-assisted text analysis (Chapter 3, section ‘How to Read?’). Table 6.1 gives an overview of the document material, which is published by the EEB, the Social Platform, ETUC and Businesseurope and consists largely of annual reports of said organisations.

122  K. LYNGGAARD Table 6.1  Types of and total number of documents consulted Sources

Type of document

No. of documents per source

EEB

Biannual Memorandums 2005–2014, each approx. 40–70pp. Annual Reports 2002–2012, each approx. 20–40pp. (except briefer 2008–2010 report). Work Programmes 2002–2012, each approx. 15–25pp. Annual Resolutions 2000–2013, each approx. 100–200pp. Biannual Economic Outlooks 1999– 2014, each approx. 10–30pp.

N = 20

Social Platform

ETUC Businesseurope

N = 23

N = 13 N = 32

The document archives for each of the NGOs consists of similar types of documents for each year covered, the large majority of which are also similar in scope over the years. However, a few additional reports have been included in the material in selected years to compensate for annual reports that stand out as somewhat brief in order to allow for comparisons of quantitative indicators across time. Comparisons across NGO archives are carried out with more caution due to some differences in type of document material and differences in the scope of the documents. However, patterns can and will be identified and compared across the four NGOs. The Production of Europe 2020 The Commission published the Europe 2020 communication in March 2010. The strategy set out to promote three priorities: ‘smart growth,’ ‘sustainable growth’ and ‘inclusive growth.’ Smart growth is to boost the economy by stipulating the production of ‘knowledge and innovation’ in European societies. Sustainable growth aims at “a more resource efficient, greener and more competitive economy,” whereas inclusive growth is to secure “a high-employment economy delivering social and territorial cohesion.” The priorities are to be realised by 2020 through a wide range specified initiatives and targets, typically measured in absolute figures and/or in percentages compared with a default position. The objectives and targets in the strategy was met with different levels of enthusiasm among groups in the EP and member states. The most

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divergent opinions appeared in relation to the strategy governance architecture and spending issues (European Parliament 2009; Taylor 2010; Brand 2011). However, the opposition to the strategy was modest and it was adopted in a surprisingly peaceful process. More than anything, this reflected that the strategy priorities feed nicely into long-established ‘green Europe’ and ‘social Europe’ discourses and narratives in the EP and among EU member state governments (Lundvall and Lorenz 2012: 334; Warleigh-Lack 2010: 306). Existing research has captured and conceptualised both ‘green Europe’ and ‘social Europe’ discourse and narratives. Green Europe as a discourse has most importantly been described by the notion of ‘Ecological modernisation’ (Hajer 1995). Ecological modernisation captures the scope of and process through which green Europe discourse has, since the second part of 1980s, entered and influenced institutional and policy choices at the EU and national levels. Likewise, ‘social Europe’ discourse has been captured through a very substantial literature focussing on the rise and impact of neoliberal discourse in EU politics, often emphasising associated challenges to the ‘European Social Model’ (Atkinson and Davoudi 2000; Ferrera 2014; Kahn-Nisser 2013). Furthermore, green and social Europe have as narratives over the years worked as platforms allowing for resistance to be expressed to EU climate change and austerity policies, among others. The prominence and influence of green and social Europe narratives on EU politics has varied over the years, and has always struggled in the context of highly institutionalised economic concerns at the heart of EU institutions and policies (Manners and Murray 2016: 191–195). Finally, the Europe 2020 strategy is a reflection of the continuous production and reproduction of such longstanding green and social Europe discourses and narratives (Mendez 2013). Against this backdrop, the attention is turned to the reception and emotional appeal of green and social Europe narratives among Bruxelles-based NGOs; that is, the questions of whether green and social Europe have any resonance among the NGOs and qualify as political myths. The Reception of Green and Social Europe: Sectoral and Institutional Resonance A wealth of NGO networks, seminars, hearings, conferences and publications appeared in the context of the elaboration and adoption of Europe 2020. One of the key NGO responses was the formation of the

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‘Spring Alliance’ in 2009 by the EEB, the Social Platform, ETUC and European Confederation NGO for Relief and Development, which had the sole purpose of influencing the formulation and implementation of the strategy. The Spring Alliance produced two ‘Manifestos’ (Spring Alliance 2009, 2014) and was successful in attracting attention from the Barroso Commission (European Environmental Bureau 2009c: 1–2; Zeitlin 2010: 262). Another similar targeted initiative was the ‘The EU Semester Alliance’ launched in 2014, which embraced an even broader palette of civil society NGOs. Graph 6.1 is a simple word count of references made to ‘Europe 2020’ by the EEB, the Social Platform, ETUC and Businesseurope. This is used as an indicator of if, and to what extent, Europe 2020 is adopted as a concern among NGOs. Businesseurope stands out by its near-absence of references to Europe 2020. This may mean that Businesseurope is much less concerned ϱϬ ϰϱ ϰϬ ϯϱ ϯϬ



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Graph 6.1  NGOs’ references to ‘Europe 2020’ 2005–2012/2014 (Sources Lynggaard [2017] & EEB Biannual memorandums 2005–2014; Social Platform annual reports 2005–2012 & Social Platform work programs 2005–2012; ETUC annual resolutions 2005–2012; Businesseurope biannual economic outlooks 2005–2014. *Searches were conducted on the terms ‘Europe’ and ‘2020’ within a five-word distance)

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with the Europe 2020 than the EEB, the Social Platform, and ETUC. However, Businesseurope is indeed receptive to some of the key issues in Europe 2020 as will be demonstrated below. Starting at a low level, the EEB, the Social Platform, and the ETUC all show a steep increase in references made to Europe 2020 during 2010, the year of the adoption of the strategy. The years following the adoption of Europe 2020 see a continued increase in Europe 2020 references made by the EEB, a small increase by the ETUC and a decrease by the Social Platform. The EEB, the Social Platform and the ETUC all show a decrease in 2012, leaving the number of references at an even or lower level than by the end of 2010. Data available only for the EEB show a renewed and steep increase in Europe 2020 references in 2013 and 2014. While these observations should be treated with some caution, a few preliminary interpretations can be made. First, and possibly not so surprising, NGOs did in fact adopt Europe 2020 as a concern in their policy papers. Second, based on the data here, NGOs appeared to react immediately to the adoption of the Europe 2020, but did not seem to be proactive during the elaboration of Europe 2020 prior to 2010. Third, it seems that concerns with Europe 2020 have not necessarily waned in a linear way, but may be actualised by specific events or situations. This point is indicated by the EEB, which show a renewed concern with Europe 2020 in 2013 and 2014, possibly actualised by the agreement (early 2013) and adoption (end 2013) of the multiannual financial framework 2014–2020. A closer look at the reception of the substance of Europe 2020 among NGOs shows that the strategy gave a strong boost to key issues associated with green and social Europe. One indicator is the number of references in documents to the terms ‘un-/sustainable’ and ‘inclusive’/‘exclusive’ and ‘smart’ in the period 2005–2012/2014 (see Graphs 6.2, 6.3, 6.4, and 6.5). The graphs show a decrease in the total number of references from 2005 to 2007 among all NGOs, apart from Businesseurope, where the highest total number of references appear in 2006. This is followed by a significant rise between 2009 and 2010 in the total number of references, except from the Social Platform, where the increase appears between 2010 and 2011. That is, the data suggest that—except for Businesseurope—the NGOs in question not only respond to the 2020 strategy in general, but also to the substance of key strategy objectives concerning green and social Europe. Furthermore, the data suggest that

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Graph 6.2  EEB references to ‘smart,’ ‘un-/sustainable’ and ‘inclusive’/ ‘exclusive’ 2005–2014 (Sources Lynggaard [2017] & European Environmental Bureau Biannual Memorandums 2005–2014. *Searches were conducted on the terms ‘smart*’, ‘inclusi*’ and ‘exclusi*’, ‘sustainab*’ and ‘unsustainab*’ so as to capture all forms and their negations)

NGOs are especially receptive to issues related to their sectoral activities. This is best illustrated by the high number of references to ‘inclusive’/‘exclusive’ and ‘un-/sustainability’ by the Social Platform and the EEB, respectively. Finally, NGOs are much more responsive to topics drawing on already institutionalised discourse, than those outside established vocabulary. This is illustrated by the term ‘un-/sustainable’ collecting many more references than ‘inclusive’/‘exclusive,’ apart from by the Social Platform, where this is reversed. The point is also illustrated by the term ‘smart’ hardly being detectable in the material (‘smart’ almost exclusively appears in the context of mentions of the full title of the Europe 2020 strategy). Even if the searched is broadened to include ‘innovation’ and ‘knowledge’ as key descriptors of ‘smart growth,’ the result is the same. Certainly, the word counts used here as indicators are clearly neither straightforward reflections of the scope of concern attached to green and social Europe, respectively, nor do they say anything about the meaning attached to green and social Europe. (Un-)sustainability may, for instance, be used variously to characterise the state of environmental,

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Graph 6.3  Social Platform references to ‘smart’, ‘un-/sustainable’ and ‘inclusive’/‘exclusive’ 2005–2012 (Sources Lynggaard [2017] & Platform of European Social NGOs Annual Reports 2005–2012 & Platform of European Social NGOs Work Programmes 2005–2012)

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Graph 6.4  ETUC references to ‘smart’, ‘un-/sustainable’ and ‘inclusive’/ ‘exclusive’ 2005–2012 (Sources Lynggaard [2017] & European Trade Union Confederation Annual Resolutions 2005–2012)

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Graph 6.5  Businesseurope references to ‘smart’, ‘un-/sustainable’ and ‘inclusive’/‘exclusive’ 2005–2014 (Sources Lynggaard [2017] & Businesseurope Biannual Economic Outlooks 2005–2014)

social, economic and fical policies. For instance, Businesseurope unsurprisingly links ‘sustainable growth’ to structural reform and austerity measures. A typical line of argument for Businesseurope is that: A reform agenda for a smart consolidation of public finances should focus on expenditure cuts while preserving productive public investments in education, innovation and infrastructure, and undertaking growthenhancing tax reforms. The fear of a tax-driven budgetary consolidation underlines the necessity to combine fiscal sustainability and growth, and this can only be achieved through far-reaching structural reforms. (Businesseurope 2011a: 13)

In quantitative terms, of the references to ‘un-/sustainability’ between 2005 and 2014 by Businesseurope, more than 40% occur within a distance of five words from the terms ‘public finances,’ ‘public debts,’ ‘fiscal policies’ and ‘stability’.

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The Emotional Appeal of Green and Social Europe Thus far, the chapter has approached green and social Europe as discourses and narratives and has discussed their reception among transnational EU NGOs. At this point, the attention is turned to the emotional appeal of green and social Europe; that is, whether they qualify as political myths. Measuring political emotions is not an easy task. Political psychology offers a number of methods for capturing deep emotional structures including experimental methods, actors’ emotional selfreporting, and interpretation of bodily expressions. However, for the purpose of studying the emotional appeal as a distinctive feature of political myths, discourse analysis turns its attention to emotional language. Certainly, from a discourse analytical perspective, there does not exist such a thing as a generically emotional term. The emotional appeal of words rather depends on both the social and linguistic context of their usage. To that can be added that the language of the specific context—the language of mundane EU politics—is rather discreet and at times technical (think, for instance, ‘Eurospeak’) compared with, say, the language used in the context of political aggression and warfare (see Matsumoto et al. 2013). However, in addition to the a more traditional ‘words-in-context’ discourse analysis, this study also follows recent calls for making better use of both comparisons and quantitative data in analysing political discourse (see Wueest and Fossati 2015). Against this background, this study focuses on the terms ‘justice’ and ‘democracy’ as indicative of political emotional appeals. The range of wordings that may appeal to emotions is endless and whether emotionally appealing depends on the context of their usage. Yet, democracy and justice is, especially in politics, at least potentially associated with emotions (Edelman 1977: 49–50). Virtually any political system assumes its legitimacy with reference to it being just and democratic, just like political decision-making and actors’ policy positions may be delegitimised by characterising them as unjust and undemocratic. Labelling political systems, actors and processes as (un)democratic and (un)just is not necessarily an act of embracing or, alternatively, an expression of fundamental distrust, but it nevertheless suggests that something is at stake. That is, when green and social Europe is systematically linked to issues concerning justice and democracy, then it is taken as illustrative of their appeal to political emotions and thus mythical status.

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Using this indicator on the document material, Graph 6.6 shows that when the EEB appeals to political emotions by referring to democracy and justice, about 20–30% of the time they link such appeals to key issues concerning green Europe (apart from 2010, when it was about 10%). The pattern is the same in the case of ETUC. That is, when the ETUC appeals to emotions, about 20–40% of the time they also refer to social Europe (apart from 2006, when it was 50%). Roughly 40–70% of the time (except for 2007, when it was 20%) that the Social Platform appeals to political emotions it is in the context of social Europe topics. Finally, BussinessEurope stands out by their lack of appeals to political emotion as measured here. Taken together, to this author, the data show that political emotions are frequently and systematically evoked in the context of green and social Europe, qualifying both as political myths. This is further emphasised by the near-absence of appeals to emotions in the context of ‘smart growth,’ ‘innovation’ and ‘knowledge.’ ϴϬй ϳϬй ϲϬй ϱϬй ϰϬй ϯϬй ϮϬй ϭϬй Ϭй ϮϬϬϱ

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Graph 6.6  Emotional Appeals to green and social Europe as a share of total emotional appeals by NGOs (Source Lynggaard [2017], *Searches were made on occurrences of ‘democra* OR justice*’ as an indicator of total number political emotional appeals in each set of sources per year. **Political emotional appeals occurring within a five-word distance of ‘ustainab* OR unsustainab* OR green* OR environment*’, or ‘inclusi* OR exclusi* OR social*’ was used as an in indicator of appeals to green and social Europe, respectively. ***The number of emotional appeals/number of which were associated with green or social Europe: EEB 384/104; Social Platform 179/81; ETUC 178/52)

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Turning to a more qualitative analysis emphasising the broader context in which the transnational NGO’s envoke political emotions shows that a key frame of reference for the EEB is the multilateral ‘Aarhus convention’ from 1998. This political agreement joined by the EU calls for enhanced democratic governance in environmental policy-­ making by means of public participation. Following the Aarhus convention, a series of EU regulations and directives have been adopted so to enhance transparency, public participation and democratic governance in the area of environmental politics. It is in this context that the EEB uses the emotional appeal of the green Europe political myth. One example of the line of arguments used by the EEB using emotional appeals refers to transatlantic trade negotiations and agreements. The EEB thus argues that transatlantic trade regulations: not only threatens to weaken critical consumer and environmental safeguards, but at its core conflicts with the democratic principle that those living with the results of regulatory standards – citizens of our countries – should be able to set those standards through the democratic process, even when doing so results in divergent standards that businesses may find inconvenient. (European Environmental Bureau 2014b: 12–13)

Furthermore, the EEB is unwilling to place the objective of sustainability side-by-side with that of growth. On the one hand, the EEB argues, for instance, that: “[T]he focus of Europe 2020 is competitivity, growth and jobs. The fact that the growth is supposed to be smart, sustainable and inclusive does not make Europe 2020 a sustainable development strategy” (European Environmental Bureau 2012a: 9; see also European Environmental Bureau 2010a: 8). On the other hand, promoting sustainability has positive effects on the economy. The EEB thus claimes that: “By investing in efforts to meet a more ambitious [green economy] target, the EU will also invest in its own sustainable future, creating new, local and long term jobs, driving innovation and technological change” (European Environmental Bureau 2010b: 9). In other words, for the EEB, sustainable development is helpful in creating jobs and improving European competitiveness, yet sustainability is the non-reducible societal ideal from which benefits follow for the economy. Certainly, benefits for the economy do not equal economic growth. On the odd occasion that the EEB refers to economic growth, it is associated with negative developments.

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The Social Platform is a key actor in reproducing the myths about social Europe. The very bedrock of the Social Platform, which is reiterated in virtually all of their publications, is to “promote social justice and participatory democracy” (e.g., Platform of European Social NGOs 2005a: 6; b: 18; 2008b: 11; 2011a: 5). Furthermore, in relation to the 2020 strategy, the Social Platform states that: “The EU is back once again to the growth and jobs agenda that was not successful in the past. The reason – growth at any cost is not what people want, they want an inclusive growth based on solidarity and social justice” (Platform of European Social NGOs 2011a: 1). Likewise, the ETUC view themselves as defenders of social justice, especially in relation to labour market policies (European Trade Union Confederation 2002: 14, 60; 2004: 9; 2009: 51, 60; 2010: 100). The ETUC views investments in the public sector as key to the protection of the ‘European social model’ and to enforce sustainable development (e.g. European Trade Union Confederation 2010: 16). Overall, of the NGO’s included in this study, the reproduction of myths by ETUC is probably the most in accordance with the 2020 strategy (e.g. European Trade Union Confederation 2011: 95). The analysis strongly suggests that NGOs are the most receptive to political myths that feed into their sectoral activities. The EEB shows very little emotional appeals to social Europe, while the Social Platform and ETUC similarly fall short in emotional appeals to green Europe. The very limited emotional appeal to green Europe by ETUC is especially illustrative of political emotions being linked to an NGO’s principal area of work. On the one hand, green Europe as a narrative is by far the most mentioned by the ETUC (Graph 6.4); on the other hand, the ETUC only rarely attached political emotions to green Europe. Explaining the Reproduction of Green and Social Europe: Desire and Self-Blockage Kølvraa (2016: 176–178) suggests that there is an utopian aspect to political myths that puts political communities in an paradoxical position. Political myths are key in rallying desires and political communities around utopian societal ideals. At the same time, political communities are deprived of collective identity and desires in the process of realising their utopian ideals, thus jeopardising the very survival of the community. In dealing with this paradox and securing their own survival, political communities engage in processes of ‘self-blockage’ and delay the

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realisation of ideals by continuously constructing rivals and obstacles (Kølvraa 2016: 177). Arguably, political communities may also opt for a rearticulation of their organisational ideals. However, political communities are much more likely to maintain often highly institutionalised ideals, rather than engage in a highstake strategy involving considerable uncertainty about the potential appeals of adjusted utopian ideals. Transnational NGOs also appear to opt for maintaining their utopian ideals in their reproduction of green and social Europe political myths, arguably to secure organisational survival. Though the promotion of sustainable development has a positive impact on job creation and European competitiveness, the EEB is thus reluctant to place growth on par with sustainability (e.g., European Environmental Bureau 2007: 7; 2010b: 8–9; 2012a: 9). The EEB does not separate growth from sustainable development, but insists that growth follows from sustainability—not the other way around. The EEB thus probably plays the most independent role in political mythmaking and does so in accordance with the conception of ‘ecological modernisation,’; that is, an understanding holding that the promotion of a green Europe is not in opposition to technological advancements and economic growth (Baker 2007). At the same time, the EEB arguably ensures their own organisational survival by maintaining sustainability as a non-reducible societal ideal. Although individual organisational members of the Social Platform have emphasised a range of different ideals over the years (Cullen 2010), as a political community the Social Platform promote inclusive growth as a response to futile EU macro-economic policies. The Social Platform links growth with the promotion of inclusive societies and labour markets, but distances themselves from the EU commission ‘growth and jobs agenda’ (e.g., Platform of European Social NGOs 2011a: 2). Growth in Europe is promoted by political and economic solidarity, not the other way around. The ETUC holds that EU austerity policies of the past have failed and investments in the public sector are key in securing the ‘European social model’ (e.g., European Trade Union Confederation 2010: 16). Yet, in their reproduction of the social Europe political myth, the ETUC is probably the most in line with how it is represented in the Europe 2020 strategy. By way of conclusion: it is particularly noteworthy that a political initiative such as the Europe 2020 strategy seems to boost political myths instantly in the wake of its adoption. The EEB, the Social Platform and

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the ETUC all responded straightaway to the substance of the political myths represented in the 2020 strategy. Furthermore, the three Brusselbased NGOs all make strategic use of the political myths when justifying their policy position. Finally, to varying extents the EEB, the Social Platform and the ETUC all contribute to the reproduction of political myths—in this study, green and social Europe myths. However, they do so in a way that allows them to restate their utopian ideals, arguably so to ensure rallying collective desires around such ideals and essentially the survival of their organisation. This study does not reveal whether this organisational behaviour is a calculated choice, the consequence of long-institutionalised practices—that is, something pursued without much reflection—or perhaps a combination of the two. Businesseurope stands out by not appealing to emotions associated with green and social Europe. Assuming that liberal economic discourse is prominent to EU politics, then Businesseurope is arguably less concerned with the promotion of their utopian ideal. This author suspects, however, that the analysis of Businesseurope above may reflect the very formal economic format of the document material used to study Businesseurope, whereas interviews with and speeches by key personnel may lead to more nuanced conclusions. From the perspective of discursive institutionalism, the analysis suggests that the role of political myths and associated political emotions is potentially significant, not only for the support or otherwise for political institutions, but also in day-to-day EU politics. It is still early days for research into the role of emotions in day-to-day EU politics; however, the analysis suggests political actors are especially receptive to emotions when appealing to institutionalised discourse embedded in their key area of political activity. In that sense, emotions appear to be of even greater significance when linked to political topics on which the involved actors must be expected to possess indepth knowledge and technical expertice, thus supporting the notion that emotions and rationality are interdependent rather than opposites in politics. Furthermore, emotions also appear to play a role in underpinning actors’ core political objectives in coordinative discourses among political elites. That is, emotional appeals allow political elites to justify political positions and, arguably, mobilise desires around utopian organisational ideals. Finally, political emotions are almost certainly not merely operating without the knowledge of political elites, but are also used strategically for political purposes. However, while the topic is touched upon above, further research is

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needed into the conditions for and mechanism through which political elites in the EU appeal to emotions, both among themselves for coordinative discursive purposes and towards the public for communicative discursive purposes.

References Atkinson, J. R., & Davoudi, S. (2000). The Concept of Social Exclusion in the European Union: Context, Development and Possibilities. Journal of Common Market Studies, 38(3), 427–448. Baker, S. (2007). Sustainable Development as Symbolic Commitment: Declaratory Politics and the Seductive Appeal of Ecological Modernisation in the European Union. Environmental Politics, 16(2), 297–317. Bakker, B. N. (2016). Personality and European Union Attitudes: Relationships Across European Union Attitude Dimensions. European Union Politics, 17(1), 25–45. Boomgaarden, H. G., Schuck, A. R. T., Elenbaas, M., & de Vreese, C. H. (2011). Mapping EU Attitudes: Conceptual and Empirical Dimensions of Euroscepticism and EU Support. European Union Politics, 12(2), 241–266. Bottici, C. (2007). A Philosophy of Political Myths. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bourne, A. (2015). European Identity: Conflict and Cooperation. In K. Lynggaard, I. Manners, & K. Löfgren (Eds.), Research Methods in European Union Studies (pp. 55–71). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Brader, T. (2005). Striking a Responsive Chord: How Political Ads Motivate and Persuade Voters by Appealing to Emotions. American Journal of Political Science, 49(2), 388–405. Brand, C. (2011, April 19). MEP Calls for Europe 2020 to Be “Budget Priority”. European Voice. http://www.politico.eu/article/mep-calls-for-europe-2020-to-be-budget-priority/. Accessed August 2015. Businesseurope. (32 Issues from 1999 to 2014, a, b). Biannual Economic Outlook. Brussels: Businesseurope. Crawford, N. (2000). The Passion of World Politics: Propositions on Emotion and Emotional Relationships. International Security, 24(4), 116–156. Cullen, P. (2010). The Platform of European Social NGOs: Ideology, Division and Coalition. Journal of Political Ideologies, 15(3), 317–331. Della Sala, V. (2010). Political Myth, Mythology and the European Union. Journal of Common Market Studies, 48(1), 1–19. Edelman, M. (1977). Political Language: Words That Succeed and Policies That Fail. New York: Academic Press. Elster, J. (1999). Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

136  K. LYNGGAARD European Commission. (2010, March 3). EUROPE 2020: A Strategy for Smart, Sustainable and Inclusive Growth (Communication from the Commission Brussels). Bruxelles: European Commission. European Environmental Bureau. (20 Issues from 2005 to 2014, a, b). Biannual Memorandum to Council Presidency. Bruxelles: European Environmental Bureau. http://www.eeb.org/index.cfm/library/?month=0&year=0&Memorandums=1. Accessed April 2016. European Environmental Bureau. (2009c, October). Metamorphosis (Newsletter #55). http://www.eeb.org/publication/2009/Meta_55_Web.pdf. Accessed August 2015. European Parliament. (2009, December 15). Debates. http://www.europarl. europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=CRE&reference=20091215&secondRef=ITEM-12&language=EN. Accessed August 2015. European Trade Union Confederation. (13 Issues from 2000 to 2013). Annual Resolution. Brussels: European Trade Union Confederation. Ferrera, M. (2014). Ideology, Parties and Social Politics in Europe. West European Politics, 37(2), 420–438. Garry, J. (2014). Emotions and Voting in EU Referendums. European Union Politics, 15(2), 235–254. Hajer, M. A. (1995). The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernisation and the Policy Process. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hannes-Magnusson, H., & Wiener, A. (2010). Studying Contemporary Constitutionalism: Memory, Myth and Horizon. Journal of Common Market Studies, 48(1), 21–44. Hansen, L., & Williams, M. C. (1999). The Myth of Europe: Legitimacy, Community and the “Crisis” of the EU. Journal of Common Market Studies, 37(2), 233–249. Kahn-Nisser, S. (2013). Conditionality, Communication and Compliance: The Effect of Monitoring on Collective Labour Rights in Candidate Countries. Journal of Common Market Studies, 51(6), 1040–1056. Kølvraa, C. (2016). European Fantasies: On the EU’s Political Myths and the Affective Potential of Utopian Imaginaries for European Identity. Journal of Common Market Studies, 54(1), 169–184. Lenschow, A., & Sprungk, C. (2010). The Myth of a Green Europe. Journal of Common Market Studies, 48(1), 133–154. Lieberman, S., & Gray, T. (2007). The Role of Political Myth in the International Conflict over Genetically Modified Foods and Crops. European Environment, 17(6), 376–386. Lundvall, B.-Å., & Lorenz, E. (2012). From Lisbon Strategy to Europe 2020. In N. Morel, B. Palier, & J. Palme (Eds.), Towards a Social Investment Welfare State? Ideas, Policies and Challenges (pp. 333–353). Bristol: The Policy Press.

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Lynggaard, K. (2017). Exploring the Emotional Appeal of Green and Social Europe Myths Among Pan-European Union Organisations. Journal of European Public Policy, 24(10), 1409–1429. Manners, I. (2011). Symbolism in European integration. Comparative European Politics, 9(3), 243–268. Manners, I. (2014, November 28–29). The European Union’s Institutionalisation of Symbols and Myths. Paper Presented at 3rd Midterm Conference of the European Political Sociology Research Network of ESA (European Sociological Association), Europe’s Global Challenges: Society, Politics, Markets, University of Copenhagen. Manners, I., & Murray, P. (2016). The End of a Noble Narrative? European Integration Narratives After the Nobel Peace Prize. Journal of Common Market Studies, 54(1), 185–202. Marcus, G. E. (2000). Emotions in Politics. In N. Polsby (Ed.), Annual Review of Political Science (pp. 221–250). Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews. Marcus, G. E. (2003). The Psychology of Emotion and Politics. In L. Huddy, D. Sears, & R. Jervis (Eds.), Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology (pp. 182– 221). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Matsumoto, D., Hwang, H. C., & Frank, M. G. (2013). Emotional Language and Political Aggression. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 32(4), 452–468. McNamara, K. R. (2015). The Politics of Everyday Europe: Constructing Authority in the European Union. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mendez, C. (2013). The Post-2013 Reform of EU Cohesion Policy and the Place-Based Narrative. Journal of European Public Policy, 20(5), 639–659. Neuman, R., Marcus, G. E., Crigler, A. N., & Mackuen, M. (2007). The Affect Effect: Dynamics of Emotion in Political Thinking and Behavior. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Obradovic, D. (1996). Policy Legitimacy and the European Union. Journal of Common Market Studies, 34(2), 191–221. Platform of European Social NGOs. (11 Issues from 2002 to 2012, a). Social Platform Annual Report. Brussels: Platform of European Social NGOs. http://cms.horus.be/site/99907/AboutUs.asp?DocID=8151. Accessed April 2016. Platform of European Social NGOs. (11 Issues from 2002 to 2012, b). Work Programme of the Social Platform. Brussels: Platform of European Social NGOs. http://cms.horus.be/site/99907/AboutUs.asp?DocID=8150. Accessed April 2016. Redlawsk, D. P. (Ed.). (2006). Feeling Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ross, A. A. G. (2006). Coming in from the Cold: Constructivism and Emotions. European Journal of International Relations, 12(2), 197–222.

138  K. LYNGGAARD Spring Alliance. (2009). For a European Union That Puts People and Planet First. Manifesto. https://www.etuc.org/sites/www.etuc.org/files/manfinal. pdf. Accessed November 2015. Spring Alliance. (2014). A Better Europe Now. Manifesto II. https://www.etuc. org/sites/www.etuc.org/files/manfinal.pdf. Accessed November 2015. Stråth, B. (2005). Methodological and Substantive Remarks on Myth, Memory and History in the Construction of a European Community. German Law Journal, 6, 255–271. Taylor, S. (2010, March 31). Backing for Europe 2020. European Voice. http:// www.politico.eu/article/backing-for-europe-2020/. Accessed August 2015. Vasilopoulou, S., & Wagner, M. (2017). Fear, Anger and Enthusiasm About the European Union: Effects of Emotional Reactions on Public Preferences Towards European Integration. European Union Politics, 18(3), 382–405. Warleigh-Lack, A. (2010). Greening the European Union for Legitimacy? A Cautionary Reading of Europe 2020. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 23(4), 297–311. Wueest, B., & Fossati, F. (2015). Quantitative Discursive Institutionalism: A Comparison of Labour Market Policy Discourse Across Western Europe. Journal of European Public Policy, 22(5), 708–730. Zaiotti, R. (2011). Performing Schengen: Myths, Rituals and the Making of European Territoriality Beyond Europe. Review of International Studies, 37(2), 537–556. Zeitlin, J. (2010). Towards a Stronger OMC: A New Governance Architecture for EU Policy Coordination. In E. Marlier, D. Natali, & R. Van Dam, (Eds.), Europe 2020: Towards a More Social EU? (pp. 253–273). Brussels: Peter Lang.

CHAPTER 7

Visual Discourse, Imagery and EU Politics

Political initiatives and policies guiding the visual representation of the EU go as far back as the EC/EU itself. This is evident in the very deliberate, but typically also political very cumbersome processes of adopting and designing visual representations of the EU, such as the EU flag and the Euro banknotes and coins (Fornäs 2012: 117–120, 210–215). At the same time, EU institutions have become even more explicit and managerial in shaping and regulating their own visual identity and communication, perhaps since the mid-2000s. In early 2006, the Commission thus adopted a white paper for a common communication policy. One key purpose was to give the EU ‘a human face’ and it was stated that: The European Union is often perceived as ‘faceless’: it has no clear public identity. Citizens need help to connect with Europe, and political information has greater impact when put in a ‘human interest’ frame that allows citizens to understand why it is relevant to them personally. EU institutions and all levels of government can do more to ‘give a human face’ to the information they provide. (European Commission 2006: 9)

A wide range of initiatives, strategies, and concrete actions followed including a revamping of existing EU institutional audiovisual services such as Europe by Satellite as well as the adoption of new ‘visual identities’ redesigning logos and specifying rules for their use in 2010s by © The Author(s) 2019 K. Lynggaard, Discourse Analysis and European Union Politics, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39326-5_7

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the Commission (2011), the ‘Council Family’ (2014), and the EP (2015). To this can be added the European External Actions Service in 2010; here, a new and highly detailed manual was adopted, which over 40+ pages set out rules for the visibility of the EU in external activities, by mean of flags, banners, photographs, leaflets, webpages and others. This all testified to the significant attention given to the visual presence of the EU. The study of the role of visual discourse in an EU context is typically associated with the study of citizens identification with the EU (Cram and Patrikios 2015: 185–186), media studies (Mortensen 2016; Aiello 2012) or security studies and the role of iconic imagery in international relations (Hansen 2015, 2017). Exposure to EU symbols such as maps of Europe, the flag, passports and so on, is typically linked to citizens feeling of belonging to Europe and in turn acceptance (or not) of EU political authority (Bruter 2003, 2009). The relationship between visual discourse and political identity is seen as reciprocal; while visual materials are tools in the construction of European identity, some level of collective identity and institutional trust is required for imagery and symbols to take effect (Kaelberer 2004: 177; Risse 2003). A key focus for media and communication studies is the relation between media images and policy agendas, whereas security studies are interested in the effect of images on political interventions. This literature is certainly related to the endeavour of this chapter, yet the focus is put on an issue, which is much less studied: the role of visual discourse in mundane politics. The interest here is on how visual discourse forms part of day-to-day politics in the EU. The role of visual discourse is arguably especially important in a multicultural and multilingual European context. What is more, visual discourse is by no means apolitical, but rather is a means of exercising power (Aiello and Thurlow 2006). The distinction between visual discourse and written discourse is blurred in that written text is clearly also visual and text typography and layout may well be approached as a significant dimension of a visual discourse. Furthermore, any interpretation of visual discourse is almost always made in the context of accompanying text, whether written or oral. Images, symbols, physical objects and observations of actions can thus be viewed both as the visual dimension of any political discourse and as distinct research objects (Howarth 2005: 340). This chapter approaches visual discourse as a research object in itself. This choice of focus serves heuristic purposes. More than anything, the study of visual

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discourse call for data and research methods that are different from those directed at linguistic discourse (see Bleiker 2015). At the same time, it is acknowledged that symbols and imagery are almost always experienced in a context of written and/or spoken discourse. The following second section—Visual discourse, symbols and imagery—outlines a fourfoldtheoretical perspective on visual discourse, emphasising alternate powers represented through imagery. The third and final section—The roles of imagery in ‘green Europe’ politics—illustrates the use of imagery in dayto-day EU politics giving an example of the European Commissions’ Directorate-General for Environment (DG Environment) and the Bruxelles-based NGO, the European Environmental Bureau (EEB).

Visual Discourse, Symbols and Imagery The literature on the role of symbols in politics is useful for the purpose of studying EU visual discourse. Symbols typically have a physical form and are “about something.” Symbols “refer to a body of social values, knowledge and practices which offer guidance for interpreting, processing and coping with specific issues or situations” (Blühdorn 2007: 255). Symbolic manifestations include icons (e.g., maps, flags, logos), rituals (e.g., joint acts of remembrance, ‘Europe day,’ ‘family photos’ (for the latter, see Lundgren 2018)) and taboos (e.g., phases referring to the practice of European integration including ‘ever closer union,’ the ‘European Social Model’ and more recently, ‘The European Semester’) (Manners 2011). While symbols offer guidance for understanding specific issues and situations, it is also clear that the nature of symbols allows for, if not multiple, then certainly a range of interpretations and political activities. In the words of Foret (2009: 313): Symbols are fields where conflicts take on their most exacerbated form, in interaction with other areas of the struggle for power. Positions, strategies and meanings are made particularly obvious because they are stylised, codified and more or less ritualized. Therefore, symbols are amplifying mirrors of social, political and cultural changes and competitions.

The literature on political symbols suggests there are at least four, admittedly stylised, ways to conceptualise the nature and roles of imagery in politics: imagery as (1) Emblems; (2) Representation; (3) Domination; or (4) Ordering (Manners 2011: 245–250; Lynggaard et al. 2014)— see Table 7.1. Viewing symbols as emblems suggest that imagery is

142  K. LYNGGAARD Table 7.1  Four types and roles of symbols in politics Symbols

Symbols viewed as

Emblems

Instruments for Serve as a resource for Concrete and individuconveying interests underpinning interests alised policy objectives, often economic ones e.g.: • materials associated with a policy sector • visualisation of a policy problem OR solution • demonstrated consequences of failed policies, as well as new and improved policy directions Collectively conCreate identities Collective efforts e.g.: structed meanings and shape actors’ • groups of people preferences • typically positive connotations Elitist means for Create feelings of Hierarchies of social and reproduction subjugation, political institutions, e.g.: powers & social negotiation or • hierarchies of groups divisions opposition of people (depending on • buildings and archireception) tecture associated with power • demonstrations and activism Collective attempts Include and exclude Antagonisms e.g.: at creating an ‘us’ actors and ideas • nature and culture and ‘them’ • social and political classes • colours (bright vs dark) • geographical places • ‘good and bad’

Representation

Domination

Ordering

Claims about their role Non-linguistic indicators in politics

purposefully selected and communicated by political actors with the purpose of conveying their interests. Images are instrumental for actors in their pursuit of political objectives, typically reflecting key economic interests. In day-to-day politics, material associated with a concrete policy sector, the visualization of policy problems and/or solutions, the

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consequences of failed policies, and directions for improved policies are all visual indicators of emblematic imagery. Symbols as representations view imagery as collective manifestations of social phenomena, which serve to build group identity and such identifications, in turn, shape actors’ preferences. As noted by Luoma-aho (2004: 107), “One of the most important political functions of symbolic activity is to create unity, which is the discursive premise of any political identity.” Furthermore, even if unity is rarely, if ever, realised, symbols and imagery at the very least contribute to the group identity to which oppositional voices must also articulate themselves through and against (Luoma-aho 2004: 107). At least from the perspective of the producer of identity-mobilising imagery, such images will typically have positive connotations, showing groups of people mobilised around collective aspirations and/or achievements. This perspective essentially emphasizes the social and cultural processes associated with the production and reproduction symbolic imagery. The emphasis on symbols as ideological means of dominations suggest that imagery is used instrumentally by dominant political groups to reproduce existing power relations and, essentially, to create social divisions. This perspective emphasises asymmetrical power relations in the production of symbolic imagery. While existing power relations are significant, their reproduction also depends on the reception of imagery among the dominated in terms of feelings of domination, acceptance or rejection (Obradovic 1996; Aiello and Thurlow 2006). In day-to-day politics, this type of imagery visualises hierarchies of social and political institutions; for instance, in the form of alternate and stratified groups of people, buildings and architecture associated with political powers as well as visualisations of political activism, oppositions and protest actions. Finally, symbols may be viewed as devices providing order to individual and social life. From this perspective, imagery contributes to the establishment of rules for who we are and what is acceptable and, especially, who are we not and what is not acceptable in social life. In other words, imagery affects the inclusion/exclusion of types of actors and ideas in politics life. This type of imagery uses antagonisms, for instance, opposing social and political classes, nature and culture, colour contrasts (e.g., bright vs dark), opposing geographical places (e.g., north–south, east–west, Europe–USA) and visuals associated with what is commonly perceived as ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ In its most stylised form, antagonistic imagery is associated with manipulation and political propaganda (Pribersky 2006: 144).

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Anchoring the study of visual discourse in discursive institutionalism permits well-established conceptual institutional frameworks to be reached, and commences the work necessary to understand the role of visual discourse in short- to medium-term day-to-day EU politics. At the same time, this provides a connection to long-term European integration. There is not a 1:1 relationship between the four types of roles of imagery in politics and schools of thought found in the new-institutionalisms. However, the alternate views on the role of imagery in politics do stretch to institutional thoughts found in rational choice, historical and sociological institutionalism with the purpose of establishing expectations about the relationships between imagery and political outcomes. The study of the roles of imagery in politics is approached here as essentially an empirical question. This study is thus open to types of structural features affecting the construction of symbols as well as the degree to which, and how, agents—collective or individual—contribute to such constructions. In other words, the four dimensions of powers embedded in imagery are elevated to dimensions potentially embedded in any given visual discourse. From this perspective, visual discourse may depict concrete political objectives and rationalise ways of reaching such objectives. It may also portray collective and identity-creating political efforts, elite domination and social divisions, the inclusion/exclusion of political actors and ideas, or any combination of the four dimensions. Following from this perspective, the analytical eye is equally concerned with the power dimension(s) absent, as it is with those implied by imagery.

The Roles of Imagery in ‘Green Europe’ Politics For the purpose of illustrating the roles—indeed, they are multiple—of imagery in EU politics, the remainder of the chapter focuses on ‘green Europe.’ As a discourse, ‘green Europe’ has at least since the mid-1980s enjoyed a highly institutionalised position with substantial consequences for both politics at the national and EU level. ‘Sustainability’ and ‘ecological modernisation’ are terms at the heart of green Europe, as is the idea that the EU exercises leadership in promoting climate policies globally (Hajer 1995; Baker 2007). What existing research reveals much less about is the visual manifestation of green Europe and its role in mesolevel EU politics. However, how visual objects and processes constructs and are constructed by the social world (Rose 2001: 140) is important, even crucial, in capturing and understanding political discourse, both as

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a strategic resource for political agents and as a space of possibility for institutional and policy choices. This study focuses on the production and reproduction of images of ‘green Europe.’ The research draws on a number of research designs, research technics and data as discussed in Chapters 2 and 3. The research is designed as a comparative organisational and comparative temporal study (Chapter 2, section ‘Discourse Analysis and Time’) focusing on the European Commissions’ DG Environment and one key EU transnational NGO—the EEB—encompassing the period 2009–2016. The data consists of 72 images covering this period and interviews with newsletter editors (Chapter 3, section ‘What to Read?’). The images are, with a few exceptions, front page images of the DG Environment magazine Environments for Europeans (40 in total; 5 per year) and the EEB’s newsletter Metamorphosis (32 in total; 4 per year).1 Both magazines are flagship publications for the two organisations and the front-page images are associated with the most thorough editorial considerations, including thoughts about the key messages to convey through the means of images. The study was focused on iconographic interpretation, emphasizing the conventional and specific symbolic resonance of images (Chapter 3, section ‘What to Read?’). In order to make comparisons across both organisational units and time, images are categorised using the fourfold framework elaborated above, allowing multiple interpretations. Furthermore, the research has been designed so to allowed for each image to score in two of four categories by weighting an image with the score 2 in the interpretative category viewed as offering the best match to the image, and the score 1 in the second most fitting category (for individual image scores, see Appendices 1 and 2). Each category scores were subsequently turned into a percentage share of the total score of all four categories. Finally, though all categorisations were made by the author, image features motivating particular interpretations (see Table 7.1, last column) were given a particular focus and have been refined and discussed in the context of one group interview with the editorial team producing Environment for Europeans (two DG Environment employees) and an interview with the EEB head communication officer. 1 All images available at http://ec.europa.eu/environment/efe/archives_en & http://archive.eeb.org/index.cfm/library/?firstpublications=2&year=0&month= 0&Metamorphosis=1.

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Comparisons Across Units: The Multiple Roles of Imagery and Institutionalised Opposition The front pages of the DG Environment magazine ‘Environments for Europeans’ consists of images, short texts referring to key stories, the magazine title, the European Commission logo and—until early 2012— four small and simple abstract two-colour images referring to the environmental elements of air, water, vegetation and soil. The interpretations forming the background for the categorisations of front-page imagery acknowledge the blurred distinction between text and images, rather than uphold a somehow rigid distinction between image and text. In that sense, “certain images — and words — can be repeatedly discursively constituted, thus assuming a position where they appear to be ‘speaking’ in and of themselves” (Hansen 2017: 588). At the same time, “the image can never be exhausted by the text and the text can never be exhausted by one image” (Hansen 2017: 589). The actual title of ‘Environments for Europeans’ is probably the clearest attempt at evoking a collective European attachment to the environment and possibly, secondarily, promoting Europe as especially concerned with the environment. Adjustments to the actual font, layout and collars of the magazine title over the years suggest strategic considerations on behalf of publisher. Initially the title text was blue with ‘for’ appearing in italics and ‘EUROPEANS’ highlighted in a bold font (the first three issues of 2009). After a brief period without the italic, it returned but then emphasised both ‘for’ and ‘Europeans’ and instead highlighted ‘EVIRONMENT’ in bold font. At the same occasion, the text collar was changed from blue to a blue/green collar scale, a collar scale that was subsequently expanded further. In early 2012, a redesigned Commission logo—changing from a simple flag logo to include an abstract visualisation of the Berlaymont building in the background— was moved from the bottom left of the front page to the much more prominent top middle above the actual magazine title. The four abstract images referring to environmental elements were also abandoned. This remains—at least for now—the layout that was settled on. The claim is not that the layout adjustments and changes all follow extensive strategic considerations. However, it is almost certainly not entirely random. Together, the visual changes signal that the environmental focus has become a stronger selling point, which in turn has obtained a closer institutional association by the much more prominent visual

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presence of the Commission after 2012. This by no means suggests that identity-creating efforts directed at the publics have been downplayed. This is illustrated by—among other things—the increased emphasis on the environment being ‘for Europeans,’ and, at the same time, a relaxation of the blue-collar scheme often associated with EU institutional actors. The latter was in fact a very conscious move on behalf of the DG Environment with the purpose of visually softening the institutional connection (Directorate-General for Environment Interview 2017). A special feature of EEB’s Metamorphosis newsletter is the inclusion of an editorial on the lower half of the front page, though the font of the editorial is small and the actual content of the editorial attracts little attention at first glance. The front page image including a short headline of the key story is the centre of attention. All Metamorphosis front pages include a logo, where the French abbreviation (BBE) and the English (EBB) is intertwined, written on blue thick backstroke, and all encircled by 12 golden stars. In that sense, the logo has a very clear reference to the EU flag. This is also a reference that the EEB wanted to do away with in a recent ambition—and advertisement for professional assistance—for developing a new visual presence of the organisation, an ambition realised in mid-2017 after extensive discussions (European Environmental Bureau Interview 2016). The revised logo depicts an abstract green and blue leaf, while abandoning the golden stars and the French abbreviation. Looking across the entire collection of data, it appears that imagery serves multiple roles in visualising ‘green Europe’; see Fig. 7.1. Images as emblems, as representations, as ordering devices and as a domination are all present in the material, although not in equal measures. Emblematic imagery are the most commonly used, closely followed by representational and ordering imagery. Imagery visualising hierarchies of social and political domination are significantly less present. However, a closer look at DG Environment and EEB imagery, respectively, makes it apparent that, whereas images of domination are absent in the Commission’s visual communication on green Europe, the EEB regularly uses images illustrating social divisions and uneven power relations—see Figs. 7.2 and 7.3. However, the type of domination depicted by the EEB is by no means suggesting subjugation, but rather an opposition that is open for political negotiations. Visualisations of opposition are, for instance, provided via imagery showing material, collars or text referring to ‘nature’ and ‘environmental protection’ against the background of EU institutional

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Fig. 7.1  Directorate-General for Environment/European Environmental Bureau images 2009–2016 (Note 216 points distributed across a total of 72 images, 9/year)

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Fig. 7.2  Directorate-General for Environment images 2009–2016 (Note 120 points distributed across a total of 40 images, 5/year)

buildings (European Environmental Bureau 2009b, 2015d) and political activism and groups of people taking to the street to demonstrate (European Environmental Bureau 2015a, 2016b). Furthermore, the readiness of entering into political negotiations—rather than political

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Ϯϴй

149

Ϯϴй ŵďůĞŵ ZĞƉƌĞƐĞŶƚĂƚŝŽŶ ŽŵŝŶĂƚŝŽŶ KƌĚĞƌŝŶŐ

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Fig. 7.3  European Environmental Bureau images 2009–2016 (Note 96 points distributed across a total of 32 images, 4/year)

apathy—is equally clear in imagery of inviting banners and slogans such as ‘WE HAVE the SOLUTIONS’ (European Environmental Bureau 2016d) and ‘JOBS. JUSTICE. CLEAN ENERGY. #peoplesclimate’ (European Environmental Bureau 2016b). One the one hand, it is arguably key for the organisational survival of the EEB to depict opposition and invoke desires among its supporters by means of reference to utopian ideals (Chapter 6, section ‘Myths and Emotions in EU Politics’). On the other hand, the EEB is keen to visualise its inviting approach to political negotiations, not only in order to pursue specific political objectives (suggested by the regular use of emblematic imagery), but also to visualise the institutionalised access to EU decision-making long enjoyed by the EEB. It is probably not so surprising that the DG Environment restrains from using imagery depicting hierarchal power relations and social divisions. Rather, the DG Environment adheres to a visual discourse emphasising emblematic and representational imagery. It is also clear that the use of identity-building representational imagery is restrained and subtle. Apart from the standard visual format and logo, the editorial style is to downplay imagery that is overly EU associated—including ‘flagging’ and the accompanying collar palette (Directorate-General for Environment Interview 2017). Instead, representational imagery shows a more or less abstract means of transport and technologies, both of which signal progress and (often global) leadership (Directorate-General

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for Environment 2009a, b, e, 2011f, 2012c, 2016c). Representational imagery also regularly depicts interdependencies between, on the one hand, nature and our use of natural resources and, on the other hand, culture and our daily collective lives (surprisingly often visualised by means of fitting cogwheels) (Directorate-General for Environment 2011c, e, 2013a, 2014d, 2015b). In addition to very often being stylised computer graphics (as opposed to photography), emblematic imagery depict specific policy sectors in need of regulation (DirectorateGeneral for Environment 2010b, 2011a, 2012b, d, 2013b, c). The emblematic imagery used by the DG Environment occasionally depicts specific policy solutions. However, emphasis is most often put on the largely economic benefits of addressing the challenges at hand— visualised by, among other things, gold bars or a little piggy bank (Directorate-General for Environment 2014d, 2015a, e, 2016c). In that sense, emblematic imagery of the DG Environment has an agenda-setting purpose. Temporal Comparisons: Dialectic Organisational Interests and Friendly ‘Othering’ When comparing the type of imagery employed over time, then it becomes clear that the DG Environment consistently uses representational imagery more than the EEB—with the exception of in 2010. Therefore, not only does DG Environment use identity-building imagery more overall than the EEB, it also does so consistently (see Graph 7.2). What is somehow more surprising is that the DG Environment fairly consistently visualises organisational interests—expect from in 2011 and 2014—to higher degree than the EEB (see Graph 7.1). Yet, the tendency is less pronounced and the organisational interests visualised by the DG Environment are more those of an agenda-setting nature, than those representing ready-made policy objectives. However, over time, there appear to be parallel patterns especially in the use of images as conveyors of organisational interests and as ordering devices. This arguably reflects that the DG Environment and the EEB enhance their mutual needs for conveying organisational interest and are engaged in a process of ‘othering,’ even if it is a fairly friendly one. Hansen’s (2006) conception of processes of ‘othering’ is especially helpful in understanding the dialectic use of imagery by the

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Graph 7.1  Images as emblems (Note All scores calculated as yearly scores in percentage of total scores 2009–2016 for EEB and DG Environment, respectively)

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Graph 7.2  Images as representation (Note All scores calculated as yearly scores in percentage of total scores 2009–2016 for EEB and DG Environment, respectively)

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Commission’s DG Environment and the EEB. To Hansen (2006: 34–37), ‘othering’ is neither something that necessarily takes place between two radical adversaries nor between state actors. Rather, she argues, that we view othering as processes of self and other identification that may play out among any set(s) of discursive subjects, whether political authorities or not. This perspective enables a move beyond viewing the self–other relationship as a simple duality and instead directs the analytical focus towards ‘less-than-radical,’ or even ‘friendly,’ othering. It follows that the identifications resulting from othering may take a variety of forms including articulations of conflicting, complementing, superior or inferior identities. Processes of ‘othering’ are typically associated with the production and reproduction of identities and senses of belonging to a system of political institutions. Interestingly, however, such processes also seem to be at play in the day-to-day practices of political actors. The data suggest (see Graph 7.3) that the DG Environment and EEB use imagery— more or less abstractly or literally—conveying boundaries between who they are/are not and what ideas they subscribe to or distance themselves from. Whether ‘othering’ is based on concrete strategic choices is less clear. The DG Environment and the EEB no doubt have a present and continued awareness of each other’s use of images, though image mirroring is probably not something they do on a ont-to-one basis. One the hand, both are deeply involved and are key players in a common field of politics, where they are likely to relate to similar political events and issues on the area of green Europe. On the other hand, it is entirely possible that the DG Environment and the EEB could have employed alternate visual strategies—as they appear to have in their use of domination and, to some extent, representational imagery. Yet, the long-standing institutionalised relationship between the DG Environment and the EEB appear to be reflected in the timing of imagery conveying specific organisational interests. It is also clear that the process of othering is a friendly one, largely evolving around imagery depicting what each side views to be the best environmental practices, much less through the construction of a radical or inferior other. The EEB occasionally identifies themselves as representing the real defenders of nature against the foot-dragging EU institutional actors (European Environmental Bureau 2009b, 2014b, 2015d). The EEB also more implicitly identify themselves as a critical oppositional voice by visualising a global stand-off

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Graph 7.3  Images as ordering (Note All scores calculated as yearly scores in percentage of total scores 2009–2016 for EEB and DG Environment, respectively)

between the EU (visualised by euro coins and bank notes) and the USA (visualised by US currency), both of which are depicted as driven by economics, rather than by environmental ideals (European Environmental Bureau 2013c). However, more than anything, the EEB are friendly othering the DG for Environment on what they view as the best practices in environmental policies, rather than on the distribution of political authority in environmental decision-making. Likewise, the DG Environment is friendly othering on environmental practices, rather than estranging political collaborators such as the EEB. Occasionally, DG Environment explicitly visualise EU global leadership (DirectorateGeneral for Environment 2011f), which is as close the Commission’s visual palette comes to constructing opposing political actors. Instead, the friendly othering of more radical environmental societal ideals (adhered to by the EEB, amongst others) by the DG Environment takes the form of depicting the best environmental practices, which are practices that are also beneficial to the economy and our personal health. This is furthermore illustrated by headlines such as ‘Going green – the business case’ (Directorate-General for Environment 2015a) and ‘our health,

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our wealth’ (Directorate-General for Environment 2015d; see also Directorate-General for Environment 2014d, 2015a, e, 2016c). In conclusion, from a discursive institutional perspective, it is hard to imagine the written/spoken and visual dimensions of a discourse being radical different from each other, at least not in the long run. In the long run, such contradictions will lead to discursive adjustments or, if not resolved, those involved in the production of contradicting visual and written/spoken discourse will be identified as inconsistent and possibly illegitimate political actors. At the same time, the study of visual discourse may also reveal additional dimensions to political analysis. The analysis above suggests, first, that visual discourse serves multiple roles in day-to-day politics. Second, in highly institutionalised discursive fields like green Europe, imagery allows for identity-building and the terse communication of organisational interests. Third, imagery contributes to visualising opposition among otherwise political collaborators, opposition that may more than anything serve internal organisational purposes by mobilising supporters around common ideals. Certainly, this study claims neither that the process of categorisations and analytical interpretations of the images is entirely replicable, nor does it claim or even aspire to the requirements typically associated with inter-coder reliability. Inter-coder research techniques, which essentially proceed by subjugating the data material to the interpretation of two or more researchers, may well add dimensions and broaden the interpretative perspective. Reception analysis and experimental research designs seeking audience interpretations of visual data is certainly an option for capturing the meanings attached to imagery. There are also online software available, for example, tracking the online presence of individual imagery, which is helpful for mapping how imagery travels across media platforms, and geographical contexts (see Mortensen 2016). For the purpose of this study, admittedly less sophisticated interview methods have been used to supply a context for imagery categorisations and interpretations. At the same time, this approach has been chosen above, say, one using established ‘code-books’ or guides for symbolic interpretation which, while useful for certain research purposes, tend to draw on more fixed interpretations of specific symbols and cultural artefacts, and possibly are less attentive to everyday practices of interpretations. Finally, cross-sectoral comparisons including less institutionalised political sectors and possibly more critical organisational voices may well reveal additional aspects of the roles of visual discourse in day-to-day politics.

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Appendix 1: Images Scores Directorate-General for Environment—Environment for Europeans Symbols as…

Images scores DG Environment—Environment for Europeans

Emblems

2009a(0); 2009b(0); 2009c(0); 2009d(0); 2009e(1); 2010a(1); 2010b(2); 2010c(1); 2010d(1); 2010e(1); 2011a(2); 2011b(1); 2011c(1); 2011d(1); 2011e(1); 2012e(1); 2012a(2); 2012b(2); 2012c(1); 2012d(2); 2013a(1); 2013b(2); 2013c(2); 2013d(2); 2013e(2); 2014a(1); 2014b(1); 2014c(1); 2014d(2); 2014e(0); 2015a(2); 2015b(0); 2015c(0); 2015d(0); 2015e(2); 2016a(0); 2016b(2); 2016c(2); 2016d(1); 2016e(1) 2009a(2); 2009b(2); 2009c(2); 2009d(1); 2009e(2); 2010a(0); 2010b(0); 2010c(0); 2010d(0); 2010e(0); 2011a(0); 2011b(0); 2011c(2); 2011d(2); 2011e(2); 2012e(2); 2012a(1); 2012b(1); 2012c(2); 2012d(1); 2013a(2); 2013b(0); 2013c(1); 2013d(1); 2013e(0); 2014a(0); 2014b(0); 2014c(2); 2014d(1); 2014e(2); 2015a(1); 2015b(2); 2015c(1); 2015d(1); 2015e(1); 2016a(2); 2016b(1); 2016c(0); 2016d(2); 2016e(2) 2009a(0); 2009b(0); 2009c(0); 2009d(0); 2009e(0); 2010a(0); 2010b(0); 2010c(0); 2010d(0); 2010e(0); 2011a(0); 2011b(0); 2011c(0); 2011d(0); 2011e(0); 2012e(0); 2012a(0); 2012b(0); 2012c(0); 2012d(0); 2013a(0); 2013b(0); 2013c(0); 2013d(0); 2013e(0); 2014a(0); 2014b(0); 2014c(0); 2014d(0); 2014e(0); 2015a(0); 2015b(0); 2015c(0); 2015d(0); 2015e(0); 2016a(0); 2016b(0); 2016c(0); 2016d(0); 2016e(0) 2009a(1); 2009b(1); 2009c(1); 2009d(2); 2009e(0); 2010a(2); 2010b(1); 2010c(2); 2010d(2); 2010e(2); 2011a(1); 2011b(2); 2011c(0); 2011d(0); 2011e(0); 2012e(0); 2012a(0); 2012b(0); 2012c(0); 2012d(0); 2013a(0); 2013b(1); 2013c(0); 2013d(0); 2013e(1); 2014a(2); 2014b(2); 2014c(0); 2014d(0); 2014e(1); 2015a(0); 2015b(1); 2015c(2); 2015d(2); 2015e(0); 2016a(1); 2016b(0); 2016c(1); 2016d(0); 2016e(0)

Representation

Domination

Ordering

Source Directorate-General Environment magazine Environment for Europeans, all issues 2009–2016. Individual image scores appear in parentheses

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Appendix 2: Images Scores European Environmental Bureau—METAMORPHOSIS Symbols as…

Images scores EEB—METAMORPHOSIS

Emblems

2009a(1); 2009b(0); 2009c(0); 2009d(0); 2010a(2); 2010b(0); 2010c(0); 2010d(0); 2011a(0); 2011b(2); 2011c(2); 2011d(2); 2012a(1); 2012b(0); 2012c(0); 2012d(2); 2013a(2); 2013b(2); 2013c(0); 2013d(2); 2014a(0); 2014b(0); 2014c(2); 2014d(2); 2015a(0); 2015b(2); 2015c(0); 2015d(0); 2016a(1); 2016b(1); 2016c(1); 2016d(0) 2009a(0); 2009b(0); 2009c(2); 2009d(2); 2010a(0); 2010b(0); 2010c(2); 2010d(1); 2011a(2); 2011b(1); 2011c(0); 2011d(0); 2012a(2); 2012b(2); 2012c(0); 2012d(0); 2013a(0); 2013b(1); 2013c(0); 2013d(0); 2014a(1); 2014b(1); 2014c(0); 2014d(0); 2015a(1); 2015b(0); 2015c(0); 2015d(0); 2016a(2); 2016b(0); 2016c(0); 2016d(1) 2009a(0); 2009b(1); 2009c(1); 2009d(1); 2010a(0); 2010b(1); 2010c(0); 2010d(0); 2011a(1); 2011b(0); 2011c(1); 2011d(0); 2012a(0); 2012b(0); 2012c(1); 2012d(1); 2013a(0); 2013b(0); 2013c(1); 2013d(1); 2014a(0); 2014b(0); 2014c(0); 2014d(0); 2015a(2); 2015b(1); 2015c(2); 2015d(2); 2016a(0); 2016b(2); 2016c(0); 2016d(2) 2009a(2); 2009b(2); 2009c(0); 2009d(0); 2010a(1); 2010b(2); 2010c(1); 2010d(2); 2011a(0); 2011b(0); 2011c(0); 2011d(1); 2012a(0); 2012b(1); 2012c(2); 2012d(0); 2013a(1); 2013b(0); 2013c(2); 2013d(0); 2014a(2); 2014b(2); 2014c(1); 2014d(1); 2015a(0); 2015b(0); 2015c(1); 2015d(1); 2016a(0); 2016b(0); 2016c(2); 2016d(0)

Representation

Domination

Ordering

Source European Environmental Bureau magazine METAMORPHOSIS, all issues 2009–2016. Individual image scores appear in parentheses

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References Aiello, G. (2012). The “Other” Europeans: The Semiotic Imperative of Style in Euro Visions by Magnum Photos. Visual Communication, 11(1), 49–77. Aiello, G., & Thurlow, C. (2006). Symbolic Capitals: Visual Discourse and Intercultural Exchange in the European Capital of Culture Scheme. Language and Intercultural Communication, 6(2), 148–162. Baker, S. (2007). Sustainable Development as Symbolic Commitment: Declaratory Politics and the Seductive Appeal of Ecological Modernisation in the European Union. Environmental Politics, 16(2), 297–317. Bleiker, R. (2015). Pluralist Methods for Visual Global Politics. Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 43(3), 872–890. Blühdorn, I. (2007). Sustaining the Unsustainable: Symbolic Politics and the Politics of Simulation. Environmental Politics, 16(2), 251–275. Bruter, M. (2003). Winning Hearts and Minds for Europe: The Impact of News and Symbols on Civic and Cultural European Identity. Comparative Political Studies, 36(10), 1148–1179. Bruter, M. (2009). Time Bomb? The Dynamic Effect of News and Symbols on the Political Identity of European Citizens. Comparative Political Studies, 42(12), 1498–1536. Cram, L., & Patrikios, S. (2015). Visual Primes and European Union Identity: Designing Experimental Research. In K. Lynggaard, I. Manners, & K. Löfgren, (Eds.), Research Methods in European Union Studies (pp. 184– 205). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Directorate-General for Environment. (All Issues from 2009 to 2016). Environment for Europeans. Bruxelles: European Commission. Directorate-General for Environment Interview. (2017, February). Interview with Editorial Team (Two DG Environment Employees) Editors of Magazine Environment for Europeans. Bruxelles. European Commission. (2006, February 1). White Paper on a European Communication Policy (Com2006 Final 35). Bruxelles: European Commission. European Environmental Bureau. (All Issues from 2009 to 2016). METAMORPHOSIS. Bruxelles: European Environmental Bureau. European Environmental Bureau Interview. (2016, March). Interview with European Environmental Bureau Communication Manager. Bruxelles. Foret, F. (2009). Symbolic Dimensions of EU Legitimisation. Media, Culture and Society, 31(2), 313–324. Fornäs, J. (2012). Signifying Europe. Bristol, UK: Intellect. Hajer, M. A. (1995). The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological Modernisation and the Policy Process. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

158  K. LYNGGAARD Hansen, L. (2006). Security as Practice: Discourse Analysis and the Bosnian War. London, UK: Routledge. Hansen, L. (2015). How Images Make World Politics: International Icons and the Case of Abu Ghraib. Review of International Studies, 41, 263–288. Hansen, L. (2017). Reading Comics for the Field of International Relations: Theory, Method and the Bosnian War. European Journal of International Relations, 23(3), 581–608. Howarth, D. (2005). Applying Discourse Theory: The Method of Articulation. In D. Howarth & J. Torfing (Eds.), Discourse Theory in European Politics: Identity, Policy and Governance (pp. 316–349). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Kaelberer, M. (2004). The Euro and European Identity: Symbols, Power and the Politics of European Monetary Union. Review of International Studies, 30(2), 161–178. Lundgren, M. (2018). Taking Center Stage: Decoding Status Hierarchies from Group Photos of European Leaders. European Union Politics, 19(4), 549–569. Luoma-aho, M. (2004). “Arm” Versus “Pillar”: The Politics of Metaphors of the Western European Union at the 1990–91 Intergovernmental Conference on Political Union. Journal of European Public Policy, 11(1), 106–127. Lynggaard, K., Manners, I., & Søby, C. (2014, June, 5–7). Symbols and Myths in European integration. Paper Presented at 7th Pan-European Conference on the European Union, The Hague. Manners, I. (2011). Symbolism in European Integration. Comparative European Politics, 9(3), 243–268. Mortensen, M. (2016). “The Image Speaks for Itself”—Or Does It? Instant News Icons, Impromptu Publics, and the 2015 European “Refugee Crisis”. Communication and the Public, 1(4), 409–422. Obradovic, D. (1996). Policy Legitimacy and the European Union. Journal of Common Market Studies, 34(2), 191–221. Pribersky, A. (2006). Europe as a Symbol in Political Image Constructions. Semiotica, 159(1–4), 143–150. Risse, T. (2003). The Euro Between National and European Identity. Journal of European Public Policy, 10(4), 487–505. Rose, G. (2001). Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials. New York, NY: Sage.

CHAPTER 8

Taking Stock and Looking Ahead

The financial and economic crisis appear to have peaked; the immediate shock of the Brexit vote is wearing off; and the presidential election in France, and the general elections in the Netherlands and the UK (all first half of 2017), which had all been predicted to favour EU sceptics, turned out quite to the contrary. The recent election for the European Parliament (May 2019) certainly lead to a more diverse parliament, though it is less clear whether the position of EU sceptics will be strengthened and if and how change in the composition of the EP will materialise in terms of EU politics in the years to come. At the same time, the causes and consequences of the challenges to EU politics and integration are clearly still present. There are still ‘bad banks,’ uncertainties of the division of competences among EU financial sector regulatory and supervisory agencies, several of which are newly established. In particular, youth unemployment is still high and the related economic and social problems will no doubt be present, perhaps even for decades to come. Widespread anxieties about migration into and across Europe have shown to be particularly difficult to deal with in an EU based on the free movement of people. The scepticism against the EU and the outright popular and political pressures to leave the Union are also not going away. These are all issues that are illustrative of future challenges to European societies and politics and, by association, to the study of EU politics. © The Author(s) 2019 K. Lynggaard, Discourse Analysis and European Union Politics, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39326-5_8

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The hope for this book is that it has shown how discourse analysis supplies some valuable tools for the study and understanding of EU politics, and arguably even more so in the context of EU politics on the back of multiple crises. One prominent example using elements from the discourse analytical toolbox in this regard is the Adler-Nissen et al. (2017) study of the implications of the discursive practices of Brexit. This research show how multifarious conceptions of ‘Brexit,’ in the EU and globally, not only reflects broader and historical discourses on the role of the UK in Europe, but also form part of the continuous construction of other nation-state identities, and establish expectations about the future of unity in the EU and the structure of the global economy. Furthermore, the future popular support for, or resistance against, the EU (with the former seeming to be the general trend at present), will almost certainly reflect how the causes and consequences of Brexit are articulated and used by EU political elites. Likewise, anxieties about migration in Europe not only reflects both popular and elite political anti-foreign discourse, but also highlights the absence of an EU-level counter-discourse allowing for the legitimisation of policies favouring more inclusive pluri-cultural European societies. Even the free movement of people and thus the functioning of the internal market arguably depend on the articulation of such discourse (Börzel and Risse 2018). Discourse analysis is still not part of mainstream research in EU politics. Yet, it has increasingly established itself as a field of research and an approach to EU politics over the past two decades (see Chapter 1). In that sense, discourse analysis is no longer an approach that scholars within this field need to justify anew as a research position; rather, it has become established as such. It certainly does not follow—and rightly so—that discourse analysis is not confronted with criticism and faced with challenges in terms of providing insights into EU politics. What it does mean, however, is that the challenges to discourse analysis as a means of studying EU politics are increasingly formulated in its own terms; that is, with a point of departure in, if not an acceptance then an understanding of, the basic premises and research ambitions of discourse analysis. At the same time, challenges to discourse analytical takes on EU politics are also posed from the viewpoint of other research positions, often expressed in more general terms and, even if there is also some academic ‘othering’ going on, such critiques are equally important. Such critiques may help us to push the boundaries of what we may achieve with our efforts, while at the same time avoid doing violence to

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the premises of discourse analysis. In other words, over the years, a range of challenges have been posed to discourse analysis, both ‘from within’ and ‘from without’ this field of research. The remainder of this chapter will discuss key challenges to discourse analysis in EU politics research, advance a series of responses to such challenges as well as reformulate some of the challenges that are clearly still present. The challenges to discourse analysis as a means of understanding EU politics are associated with theoretical and conceptual development, research designs and the empirical foci of discourse analysis. The most important challenges in these areas are addressed in turn.

Theory-Building Challenges Discursive analytical perspectives typically have a hesitant approach to theory-building, providing more general—even causal—claims allowing for predictions about politics. The hesitant view on theory building in a traditional sense follows on from discourse analysis being a ­problem-driven, rather than theory-driven, research endeavour. By being problem-driven, discourse analysis aims to address specified empirical and conceptual puzzles, and often poses critical questions to the state of affairs by claiming, for example, that the way we talk about and legitimate politics could have been different. The problem-driven perspective in this book is intimately linked to the choice of the empirical research object: EU politics. This reflects the fact that the research ambition is as much about the empirical field of EU politics as it is about discourse analysis. There certainly are theory-building ambitions directed at EU politics from the perspective of discourse analysis, the Copenhagen School’s take on foreign policy in Europe being the best example hereof. Discursive institutionalism also brings in causal elements, including claims about, for instance, the relationship between key state structures and political elites’ choice of discursive emphasis on coordinative and communicative discourse in policy-making and legitimisation. Common to the Copenhagen School and discursive institutionalism is that the causal claims are based on extrapolations of the empirical mapping of the relationship between institutionalised discourses and the state/institutional choice. Wæver and collaborators in the Copenhagen School probably claim a higher degree of stability in nation/state discourses, than

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Schmidt and collaborators claim about the relation between the state’s institutional structures and the choice of discourse. At the same time, both research endeavours will almost certainly agree that, while discourses are contingent, theoretical generalisation are enabled by what appear to be highly institutionalised discursive configurations. In other words, rather than deriving causal claims from theoretical assumptions, discourse analysis commences theory-building from the mapping of political discourse in a concrete empirical field of research. Arguably, the latter is a key area of research focus for the further development of causal claims about EU politics from the perspective of discourse analysis. Mapping what may be called institutionalised ‘master discourses’ associated with EU institutional actors offer a way to make empirically grounded causal claims of political activity of these actors. Furthermore, linking empirically grounded claims about institutional actors’ master discourse to varying levels of authority attached to individual EU institutional actors allows for claims to be made about power distributions and expectations about political outcomes. Jachtenfuch et al. (1998) carried out their empirical investigations of EU polity discourses among large EU member states as early as in the late 1990s. However, the research following up on such issues is very limited and still little is known about polity discourses among EU institutional actors. Possibly one key hurdle to this type of research taking off in the past has been that scholars drawing on discourse analysis very often direct their research at observed changes and the associated implications. The study of political change is indeed an area of research where discourse analysis claims to have its analytical advantage. Yet, somehow counter-intuitive to discourse analysists, perhaps discourse analytical research should increasingly direct the attention towards highly institutionalised discourses in EU politics for the purpose of substantiating causal claims. Schmidt and Thatcher (2013) and collaborators provide a recent and prominent example investigating mechanisms driving highly institutionalised neo-liberal ideas in Europe. Future research into to what extent key actors in EU politics adhere to alternate institutionalised master discourses and the associated implications for their role in EU politics could build on this work. A second challenge related to the ability of discourse analytical perspectives to engage with theory-building is what may be termed the ‘temporal challenge.’ The temporal challenge is essentially about pushing discourse analysis toward the study of the relationship between discourse and short- to medium-term politics. In the past, discourse analysis has

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helped us to understand the implications of long-term discursive constructs for EU politics, including the attachment of authority and legitimacy to alternate institutional-, transnational- and national-based actors, and how and which type of political issues are to be dealt with in different policy-making fora at different levels of politics. What discourse analysis is still challenged to deal with is how discourse impacts short- to medium term politics. Research aimed at investigating the strategic usage of discourse (see Chapter 5) may offer a path to conceptualising and theorising such issues. It is clearly also a research endeavour that must be reflected in discourse analysists’ choice of the empirical field of research and calls for designing research aimed at studying the short-term implications of discourse for politics. The knowledge ambition of discourse analysis is most often at the level of conceptual development. To this author, this is an entirely legitimate knowledge ambition of political science research. However, for the purpose of engaging in theory-building, mapping master discourses in EU politics may be an alternative way forward. At the same time, any theory-building attempt from a discursive analytical perspective must acknowledge that causal claims will only be at play, as long as discourses are reproduced along an ideational path. In other words, causality can only be assumed when established empirically and must be expected never to be fixed, regardless of how highly institutionalised any such causal relation may be empirically.

Research Design Challenges It follows from the problem-driven nature of discourse analysis that discursive analytical research strategies, methods and research designs are adopted and adjusted for specific research purposes (Torfing 2005: 27). This, however, does not hinder general considerations about the research strategic choices that any discourse analysist faces when putting together a research strategy. Such choices concerns the strategic emphasis that research should place on the agency–structure and consensus– conflict dimensions, how to approach causality and causal mechanisms, and whether to engage in comparative and multi-theoretical analysis. Similarly, different types of data and methods of analysis are available for different purposes. This book addressed such issues in detail specifically in Chapters 2 and 3. The book has further adopted and adjusted research strategies for specific purposes in the Chapters 4–7.

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The key reason for these foci of this book is that discourse analysis addressing EU politics have been and still are challenged by ensuring transparency in research design, methods and choice of data. Arguably, ensuring research transparency is of particular important to discourse analysis. The gist of the matter is, when we conduct discourse analysis, we also construct our research object through the choice of conceptual lenses, research design, and the selection of some data at the expense of other relevant data and methods of analysis. This is an epistemological position shared by all constructivists. Since the researcher is involved in constructing the research object, it becomes all the more important to allow readers access to how this construction takes place. The resultant transparency challenge is possibly not as grave for monographies and PhD theses, but more so for journal articles, which only allow so much space for research design, methods and data reflections. It is, however, crucial that we also ensure research strategy transparency for shorter research publications. In many ways, the research strategy guiding any given discourse analysis is a key part of the research results of such analysis allowing the reader to gain access to conceptual measurements, indicators and data material. To this author, transparency, systematic and empirically sensitive research methods and designs are key to ‘good’ discourse analysis. If this author had to choose between the three research strategic ambitions, it would probably also be in that order, that is, attaching the most value to transparency followed by systematic and empirical sensitivity. However, obviously the ideal must be to aim high on all three ambitions. A second challenge facing discourse analysists is developing research designs that allow what may be termed ‘discursive scope mapping.’ There exists a substantial literature—much of which this book has engaged with—that is empirically rich illustrations of discursive twist and turns and the associated impacts on EU politics. What is less common, but potentially equally rewarding, is research directed at the scope of a given political discourse. Questions such as where the discourse(s) subject to investigation begins and end, and the boundaries of what is inside and outside of the discourse(s) at hand and the outreach of such discourse, not only temporally but also contextually, receive much less empirical research. Among other things, insight into such questions holds the promise of improving the understanding of the role of discursive entrepreneurship, which must be suspected to be located in vicinity of the very boundaries of discourses as well as understanding processes of translations occurring where different discourses come into contact with each other.

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Thirdly, in the past it has been claimed that discourse analysis is faced with the challenge of a shortage of engagement in ‘hard cases.’ That is, discourse analysis has, in the past, had a tendency at approaching the ‘softer issues’ (as understood by traditional political science discipline discourse) (Torfing 2005: 26). In EU studies, this includes the study of identity, legitimacy, ethnicity, gender and environmentalism. As far as can be seen, this is primarily, and perhaps only, a consequence of academic choices and interests of discourse analysists. To this author, there is really nothing to hinder discourse analysists approaching mainstream political science issues including the nature and role of the state, party politics as well as political sectors such as the economic, financial and agricultural sectors (as amongst others illustrated in this books’ Chapters 4–6) for. The questions, analysis and answers offered by discourse analytical approaches will no doubt differ from mainstream approaches. For this author, however, continuously striving at plurality in the research questions we pose and their potential answers is a necessity for ensuring a vibrant and evolving discipline. In that sense, the full potential for discourse analysis is hopefully still to be released. Fourthly, possibly strictly not a research design issue, but discourse analysis is also facing a presentation challenge: that is, how best to present the results of a discourse analysis. The analysis of discourse typically has a substantial temporal dimension of ten or more years, including any twists and turns over the course of time and often a perspective on conflictual discourses. It poses a challenge illustrating such sometimes fairly complex discursive developments is a challenge. The presentation of research results must be done in a way that, on the one hand, serves some level of justice to detail and actually empirically substantiates the conclusions drawn on the back of an analysis and, on the other hand, does not drown the reader in detail. In terms of the presentation of the results of discourse analysis, the place to strive for is neither a 1:1 map nor a caricature of the discourse(s) at hand. In the past, discourse analysts have been criticised for falling short in illustrating the actual empirical resonance of a claimed discourse and discursive development. Among other things, the critique has been directed at whether chosen and illustrative quotations are in fact representative and are not out-of-context statements. This is clearly a challenge for any more qualitative and empirically rich types of research including, for instance, sociological institutional studies of norms. Sociological institutional research, which both has a longer research tradition and is larger in its scope, may in fact well serve as

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inspiration. This area of research has seen, for instance, an increased usage of graphic illustrations of organisational networks, just as statistical measurements for long have been used for illustrative purposes in sociological organisational studies. This book has tried to present discursive analytical results qualitatively by means of figures, and quantitatively by means of various graphs and charts. Other means for illustrative purposes include ‘visual displays’ of key discursive elements, possibly including more quantitative indications of the frequency and scope of such elements. Yet, there is certainly room for further use of imagination in this area.

Revisiting a General Analytical Framework The general analytical framework forming the basis of this book takes its point of departure from a sequence linking ideas, discourse and institutions. This sequence allows for the study of how ideas through processes of articulation may progress into a discourse and how discourse, through processes of institutionalisation, may turn into institutionalised discourse. From this perspective, a discourse is a meaning system guided by a set of identifiable and systematic rules. When such rules have been authorised and become attached to sanctions, we may talk of institutionalised discourse. What political discourse does is then to create expectations about the viability of future political activities. C. Hay (2002: 205–208) would probably claim this perspective to the ‘idealism’ category of ideational research, which he contrast to materialism (a category where any ideational attention is limited to ideas being a reflection of actors material interests) and constructivism (which in various forms adheres to a dialectic relationship between the material and ideational). This may be the case. The sequence of ideas, discourse and institutions operates on the ideational level, yet with different degrees of systemic and authority attached to the ideational as we move from ideas to discourse to institutions. This is the framework and level of analysis for discursive mapping, or the 1st order analysis (see Chapter 2, section ‘Ideas, Discourse, and Institutions: A General Analytical Framework’). However, the 2nd order analysis open up for engagement with a broader literature by means of a multi-theoretical analysis (see Chapter 2, section ‘Multi-theoretical Analysis and Counterfactual Reasoning’). Essentially, this move is allowed by viewing theoretical and analytical conceptions of EU politics as ‘academic discourse’ in themselves. Clearly, a concern here is that the methodological positions of scholarly work used for multiple theoretical

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interpretations is read through the perspective of discourse analysis, rather than on their own terms. In other words, methodological positions are viewed as social constructs (Manners et al. 2015: 310–314) and elevated from the level of ontology to the level of epistemology. From this follows a need to explicate what may happen to a given theoretical concepts when carried into the auspice of discourse analysis and acknowledge that the analytical results may not match the original purpose and thinking behind of the traveling concept. However, to this author, this seems a small price to pay for inter-methodological dialogue. Using this basic analytical framework, the hope with this book has been to advance the discursive institutional approach to the study of politics, especially focussing on EU politics. First, a conceptual framework for the study of EU policy-making conceptualising mechanisms of discursive stability (discursive path-dependency) and change (translation, ambiguity, discursive entrepreneurship, and expertise) is put forward. In various ways, such mechanisms hinder or promote ideational change affecting processes of inclusion and exclusion in policy-making (see Chapter 4). Second, the study of emotional discourse and, by association, political myths are carried into the discursive institutionalism (see Chapter 6). The claim is that emotional appeals are not only significant in ensuring support for political institutions, but also play a role in dayto-day politics promoting policy positions and, arguably, in ensuring organisational survival. Emotional appeals almost certainly play a role in elite political actors’ communicative discourse and in legitimising political initiatives. Yet, it also appears that emotional discourse plays a coordinating role in justifying policy positions among political elites and in the mobilisation of desires around utopian organisational ideals. In that sense, the study of emotional discourse holds the promise of pushing the current largely functional understanding of communicative and coordinative discourse distinction by qualifying their nature and content. Third, the book claims visual discourse serves the role of identity building, but also illustrates how visuality permits a terse communication of organisational interests in day-to-day politics (see Chapter 7). At first, visual discourse may appear as the study of any political discourse, just by means of different methods and data. However, it also appears that the visual side of political discourse has a distinct role in day-to-day politics. In that sense, imagery contributes to visualising opposition among otherwise close political collaborators—opposition that may, more than anything, serve internal organisational purposes by mobilising supporters

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around common ideals. Emotional and visual discourse have, in recent years, entered and developed as a research agenda in international relations, yet it is still early days for this type of research in EU studies and in the study of day-to-day EU politics.

References Adler-Nissen, R., Galpin, C., & Rosamond, B. (2017). Performing Brexit: How a Post-Brexit Worl Is Imagined Outside the United Kingdom. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 19(3), 573–591. Börzel, T. A., & Risse, T. (2018). From the Euro to the Schengen Crises: European Integration Theories, Politicization, and Identity Politics. Journal of European Public Policy, 25(1), 83–108. Hay, C. (2002). Political Analysis: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Jachtenfuchs, M., Diez, T., & Jung, S. (1998). Which Europe? Conflicting Models of a Legitimate European Political Order. European Journal of International Relations, 4(4), 409–445. Manners, I., Lynggaard, K., & Löfgren, K. (2015). Research Strategies in European Union Studies: Beyond Dichotomies. In K. Lynggaard, I. Manners, & K. Löfgren (Eds.), Research Methods in European Union Studies (pp. 309– 321). Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. Schmidt, V., & Thatcher, M. (2013). Resilient Liberalism in Europe’s Political Economy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Torfing, J. (2005). Discourse Theory: Achievements, Arguments, and Challenges. In D. Howarth & J. Torfing (Eds.), Discourse Theory in European Politics (pp. 1–32). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Index

A Agency–structure, 22–25, 40, 163 Alternative discourses, 27, 66, 70, 96 B Banking, 15, 92, 97–105, 107–109 Businesseurope, 94, 121, 122, 124, 125, 128, 134 C Causality, 11, 14, 22, 28–30, 163 Central Bank and Financial Services Authority of Ireland (CBFSAI), 101 Central Bank of Ireland (CBI), 100–102 Commission: European Commission, 16, 67 Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), 8, 15, 66–69, 71–77, 81, 82 Computer-assisted text analysis, 14, 46, 56, 57, 97, 121 Content analysis, 14, 30, 46, 56–61

The Copenhagen school, 6, 161 Corporatism, 36 Council: Council of the European Union, 9 Counterfactual reasoning, 12, 35, 36, 55, 97, 166 Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), 6–8 D Danmarks Nationalbank (DNB), 104–106 Decision-making, 2, 13, 14, 31, 32, 52, 56, 67, 77, 80, 95, 96, 117, 118, 129, 149, 153 Denmark, 15, 92, 97–99, 103, 105–108 Desire, 53, 79, 92, 132, 134, 149, 167 Directorate-General (DG), 69, 81, 82 Directorate-General (DG) for Environment, 141, 145–147, 149–153, 155 Discursive ambiguity, 30, 66, 70, 72

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019 K. Lynggaard, Discourse Analysis and European Union Politics, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39326-5

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170  Index Discursive consensus–conflict, 11, 14, 22, 25–28 Discursive entrepreneurship, 15, 48, 66, 70, 74–77, 84, 92, 93, 164, 167 Discursive Institutionalism (DI), 3, 6, 8–13, 15, 16, 37, 38, 65, 79, 116, 120, 134, 144, 161, 167 Discursive path-dependency, 68, 167 Documents, 14, 46, 47, 49–52, 54, 55, 57, 58, 60, 68, 97, 121, 122, 125 Domination, 141–144, 147, 152, 155, 156 E Emblems, 141, 142, 147, 151, 155, 156 Environmental policy, 74, 81, 93 Epistemology, 167 EU member states, 6, 15, 28, 36, 47, 57, 92, 97, 107, 162 European Environmental Bureau (EEB), 16, 121, 122, 124–126, 130–134, 141, 145, 147–153, 156 European integration, 3, 6, 7, 15, 24, 26–28, 34–36, 50, 56, 83, 92, 94, 96, 98–105, 107–109, 115–117, 121, 141, 144 Europeanisation, 5, 7, 33–36 European Monetary Union (EMU), 34, 81, 99, 100 European parliament (EP), 47, 67, 72, 76–78, 82, 83, 91, 94, 95, 122, 123, 140, 159 European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), 121, 122, 124, 125, 127, 130, 132–134 Europe 2020, 116, 120–126, 131, 133

Expertise, 2, 8, 13, 15, 66, 70, 78–84, 94, 95, 101, 167 F Financial crisis, 98, 99, 102, 103, 120 Frame analysis, 6, 8 Friendly ‘othering’, 150, 153 G Globalisation, 15, 36, 91, 92, 96–99, 102, 104–109 Governance, 3, 7, 8, 27, 54, 59, 71, 73, 76, 123, 131 The governance school, 6, 7 Green Europe, 15, 16, 116, 120, 123, 130–133, 144, 145, 147, 152, 154 Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 98 H Historical institutionalism, 97, 98 I Ideas, 2, 3, 5–7, 9, 10, 12–15, 21, 22, 27, 29, 35, 37–39, 52, 54, 66, 69–75, 77, 79–81, 83, 84, 116, 117, 142–144, 152, 162, 166, 166 Ideational crisis, 66, 70 Ideational sequence, 22, 37–39 Identity, 1, 7, 16, 28, 115, 116, 132, 139, 140, 143, 144, 147, 149, 150, 154, 165, 167 Imagery, 11, 13, 16, 40, 54, 60, 140, 141, 143, 144, 146, 147, 149, 150, 152, 154, 167

Index

Institutionalisation, 10, 27, 30, 34, 39, 69, 71, 75–77, 92, 93, 96, 119, 120, 166 Institutional layering, 32 Institutionally embedded discourse, 15, 93 Institutional reform, 15, 65 Intergovernmental, 27 Interviews, 14, 46, 47, 49–55, 58, 60, 134, 145 Ireland, 15, 92, 97–99, 101, 102, 108 L Legitimacy, 3, 7, 27, 28, 52, 79, 115, 116, 129, 163, 165 Liberalisation, 69, 97–99, 106 M Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), 8, 82, 83, 94 Meso-level, 8, 144 Methodology, 12, 13, 29 Multi-theoretical analysis, 12, 13, 22, 35, 36, 55, 97, 163, 166

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Organised interest, 47, 57, 78, 79, 81–83, 94, 98 P Pluralism, 37 Policy-making, 2, 3, 11, 13–15, 24, 40, 60, 65–72, 74, 78–81, 83, 84, 92, 95, 98, 99, 107, 120, 121, 131, 161, 163, 167 Policy reform, 74, 92 Political emotions, 11, 13, 15, 40, 115, 117–119, 129–132, 134 Political myths, 15, 115–117, 119– 121, 123, 129, 130, 132–134, 167 Positivist, 21 Postpositivist, 21 Punctuated equilibrium, 31, 32 Q Qualitative, 45, 46, 58, 59, 131, 165 Quantitative, 21, 45, 46, 59, 122, 128, 129, 166

N Neo-functionalism, 116 Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), 2, 15, 116, 120–127, 129, 130, 132–134 Non-linguistic data, 46, 48–50, 52, 54, 55, 60 Norms, 68, 69, 77, 165

R Rational choice institutionalism, 8, 21, 31, 38, 68, 97, 144 Representation, 94, 133, 139, 141– 143, 147, 151, 155, 156 Research strategy, 14, 22, 26, 28, 29, 31, 36, 40, 163, 164

O Ontology, 21, 29, 30, 40, 167 Ordering, 141, 142, 147, 150, 153, 155, 156

S Self-blockage, 132 Social Europe, 15, 116, 120, 123, 125, 126, 129, 130, 132–134

172  Index Social Platform: Platform of the European Social NGOs, 121, 124–126, 130, 132–134 Sociological institutionalism, 3, 5, 144 Strategic usage, 6, 9, 13, 15, 92, 93, 95, 97, 99–101, 104, 115, 119, 163 Survey questionnaires, 46, 48, 49, 53, 60 Sustainability, 93, 94, 128, 131, 133, 144 Symbols, 16, 48, 50, 54, 140–144, 154–156

T Temporal comparisons, 31, 34, 150 Translation, 15, 30, 66, 70, 73–75, 83, 84, 164, 167 V Visual discourse, 11, 13, 16, 40, 48, 54, 60, 118, 140, 141, 144, 149, 154, 167, 168