Research Practices and Operations in Studying Debates and Documents

The chapter presents research practices and operations (or methods and techniques) that are useful in studying debates and documents as part, and as arenas and reflections, of political activity, political processes, strategies and actions. It contains first general considerations that are valid and helpful for most interpretative and textual analyses, with additional emphasis set on how to analyse political activity linked to texts: the research interest and research question target the moves, strategies, interests and actors involved in the political processes in question, rather than simply the contents of the text, and this in return crucially determines material selection, research que…

Rethinking Politicisation

Politicisation, in a broad and basic understanding, means to turn something – an issue, an institution, a policy – that previously was not a subject to political action into something that now is subject to political action. So far, most definitions of the concept would agree. But besides this basic approach, there is much discussion: Politicisation is a concept that is currently much used in the social sciences, and also a concept that is contested in its definitions and understandings. Several paths and subdisciplines contribute to the debate, but they are not necessarily connected to one another. Political theory or political economy discusses politicisation and also what can be termed t…

The micro-politics of parliamentary powers : European parliament strategies for expanding its influence in the EU institutional system

The European Parliament (EP) has gained considerable new powers since it was first established in 1952. Why has this happened, and how should the powers the EP possesses be assessed? This article suggests a novel approach that focuses on inter-institutional micropolitics and the processes in which the EP obtained its powers rather than treaty changes at IGCs. Interinstitutional micropolitics are carried out by institutions and their members who act politically and shape the EU’s system from within. The EP’s successes in interinstitutional micropolitics are shaped by (1) its existing powers that need to be assessed in their differentiation; (2) the interparliamentary setting and the power co…

Debating Citizenship

Understanding Debate as Politics

The book’s core idea is to present and explain how different actual and virtual debates can be understood and analysed as political actions. We want to provide tools and ways for grasping the complex phenomenon of politics by concentrating on debate, including debates carried out in, or reflected by, documents. The approach proposed allows for a nuanced and detailed understanding of politics, as it does justice to the aims of political actors, taking into account their actions, interests, moves and strategies, and situating them in relation to the different contexts in which their contributions make a difference. The first chapter presents the theoretical and methodological background by an…

Exit politics, enter politicization

A growing number of recent empirical studies such as the four contributions discussed here examine the politicization of the European Union, Europe, European integration or European governance. Two general research questions mark this emerging research field. A first one is how to theorize and conceptualize the politicization of the European Union (EU) and the reasons behind it. Does politicization have to do with a decline in EU support or Euroscepticism? Does it involve an increased salience of EU affairs within national and transnational public spheres? What are politicization’s repercussions on EU institutions? And how are political parties involved? A second question is whether or not …

Shaping Citizenship : A Political Concept in Theory, Debate, and Practice

Reading Debates Politically

This chapter focuses on the concept of debate, taking the concept of ‘political literacy’ as point of departure. The concept of political literacy means that it is crucial to be willing and competent to judge actions, situations, practices and institutions in terms of political struggle. What kinds of aims can we identify in various utterances, arguments or topoi, and how may we assess their consequences? Based on this idea of political literacy, our leading thesis in this chapter is that parliamentary debate, as it was formed and is practised in the British parliament at Westminster, forms an approximation to the ideal type of debate. The ideal type allows the classification of the structu…

Exit politics, enter politicization

Theorising Citizenship

Introduction: Shaping Citizenship as a Political Concept

Examples of Analysing Debates as Politics

This chapter presents eight concrete but different examples of research into the presence of politics or the political in texts and debates. They illustrate that politics can be examined in the various forms it takes and using a variety of approaches. First, politics is related to different actors, strategies, issues and media, all of which can be researched. Second, the researcher can develop different research questions and interests, and choose different material types. And third, the interpretative tools and strategies used will differ from study to study, and from researcher to researcher. The examples highlight how the interpretative analytical tools can be used with regard to differe…

Second chamber, ‘congress of ambassadors’ or federal presidency : Parliamentary and non-parliamentary aspects in the European Council's rules of procedure

SUMMARYThe development of the European Union (EU) regime, with the frequent changes of institutions and their competencies by treaty revisions, allows for new opportunities for parliamentary studies. This article discusses the role and competencies of the European Council (EC) in the EU regime, using the heuristic and methodological resources of procedural commentaries, parliamentary rhetoric, conceptual history and political regime analysis. This study is a textual analysis, based on the 2009 Lisbon Treaty and especially on the EC's rules of procedure. The Lisbon Treaty and the respective rules of procedure serve as key documents that fix the rules, the framework and the margin of manoeuvr…

Constructions of EU Europe and National EU Concepts – A Research Agenda

In the last years, European identity has become a key issue for theory development as well as for quantitative and qualitative research in the social sciences (see the contributions of Westle and Datler et al. in this volume). Analysing European identity touches upon three related areas: 1) people identifying with Europe/the European Union (EU) and attributing meaning to it (individual/micro-level), 2) the aggregate effects of these individual orientations (macrolevel), and 3) the shared meanings people associate with Europe/the EU and identify with (macro-level).

The Politification and Politicisation of the EU

Publication date: March 1, 2016 In this article, we suggest a novel conceptual framework for understanding and analysing EU politicisation. Recent studies on EU politicisation argue that the post-Maastricht era led to the politicisation of EU integration via an increasing citizens' dissatisfaction. Contrary to this account, we argue that European integration has been from the beginning linked to politicisation, but in an unusual way. To capture its uniqueness we introduce the concepts of politisation as a precondition of politicisation and of politification as a depoliticised modality of politicisation. Politicisation is then not something new to EU integration but rather it is constitutive…