Contemporary European Politics

A Comparative Introduction

José M. Magone

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351717144
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Revised throughout, the second edition of this comprehensive and highly respected textbook continues to provide a thorough introduction to European and European Union politics.

Pairing a genuinely comparative approach with in-depth analysis of the national, supranational, local and regional political systems of large and small countries across Europe, including Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans, this accessible book covers history, theory, institutions, parties and party systems, and interest groups, among others.

Key topics and features of this book:

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• Examines the European Union multilevel governance system and uses a regional cluster approach to highlight differences across Europe.

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• Contextualises European politics in a theoretical framework explaining the major political, social and economic transformations taking place in the information age.

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• A new chapter on the comparative political systems and cultures of wider Europe, particularly Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Belarus and Turkey.

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• Engages with the latest challenges and crises facing Europe, including new streamlined chapters on parties, elections, politics and policy-making of the European Union.

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• Extended coverage of hot topics such as finance and the Eurocrisis, immigration, populism and xenophobia.

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• Uses a wide range of pedagogical features including further readings and revision questions.

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• Includes a fully updated companion website containing rich reference data, chapter summaries and weblinks.

Richly illustrated throughout, this work is an indispensable resource for all students and scholars of European politics.

Chapter 1

Introduction to contemporary European politics

• The rationale of the book: the emergence of new European politics

• A comparative approach: cross-country differences, similarities and convergences

• Reducing complexity through the use of regional clusters

• The ‘great transformation’ of the late twentieth century

• The growing importance of the European integration process

• Constitutions and constitutionalism

• Suggested reading

The rationale of the book: the emergence of new European politics

The unification of the European continent since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe has changed the nature of European politics. This book seeks to address the new European politics that emerged out of this coming together of West and East. Accordingly, a pan-European approach towards contemporary politics is used in order to understand better the political, social and economic dynamics of Europe.

Although we focus on comparing the national political systems across Europe, this is contextualised within the overarching and growing importance of European integration. The European Union (EU) multilevel governance system approach will be used to show the relationships and interactions between the supranational, national, regional and local levels. Some references will also be made to the relationship between the EU and global governance (see later and also Chapter 10).

In this book we argue that European politics has changed since the 1970s from modern politics, in which the nation-state was still in command of domestic politics, to what the sociologists Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck called reflexive global modern politics, in which the nation-state lost full control of domestic processes due to growing global interdependence. Among such processes one may mention deterritorialisation (e.g. the impact of globalised financial markets), denationalisation (e.g. the questioning of the nation-state by secessionist movements for example in Catalonia, Flanders or Scotland) and internationalisation (e.g. the need to cooperate in matters of global climate change), all of which have considerably altered the national politics of individual member-states (Beck, 2008; Giddens, 2016: 145–6).

A comparative approach: cross-country differences, similarities and convergences

Since Aristotle’s book Politics, the comparative approach has been an excellent way to identify – out of the uniqueness of each political system, group or ‘families’ of countries – a method that clearly helps us to reduce the complexity of analysing all the political systems of Europe. The main aim of the comparative approach is not only to reduce complexity by showing similarities and differences but also to identify patterns of behaviour within institutions such as political parties, parliaments, governments and the judiciary (Aristotle, 2017 [1912]; Finer, 1970: 38–9).

If we take membership of the Council of Europe – the largest intergovernmental organisation in Europe, not to be confused with the EU, a much smaller supranational institution – there are forty-seven European member countries. This number includes Turkey, Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Only Belarus, which is the only dictatorship in Europe and which does not comply with the minimum standards of democratic order, is not a member. A more restricted definition of Europe includes: the twenty-seven members of the EU (post Brexit) plus the UK; the seven Balkan states (expected to become members at some stage in the future) plus Kosovo; and the European Economic Area countries Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein. Iceland was also a potential candidate country for joining the EU, but after the finance crisis the more nationalist Independence party led government withdrew the candidacy. So far, a solid majority of Icelanders is opposed to the EU, and only two smaller parties in parliament after the October 2017 elections, namely the social democratic party and Reform, are pro-European. Therefore, a membership application has been put on hold for the immediate future (Icelandic monitor, 7 November 2017). This would lead to a total of thirty-seven countries if we do not include micro-states like Liechtenstein, Andorra and San Marino. Kosovo remains in a limbo situation due to the split in the international community about its recognition; slightly over 100 out of 192 countries have recognised Kosovo, including twenty-two of the EU member-states. Within the EU, Greece, Spain, Romania, Slovakia and Cyprus are against Kosovo becoming a member (BBC News, 17 February 2018), and only the future will tell whether there can be a solution to this problem. Although the present Serbian government is quite pragmatic in relation to EU membership, nevertheless it continues to use its diplomatic channels to either discourage countries to recognise or withdraw recognition. Tensions between Serbia and Kosovo emerge regularly. Presently, the issue of ‘border corrections’ in the north of Kosovo, suggested by the EU, where a Serbian minority live, have led again to the rise of tensions (Euractiv, 16 January 2017, 17 September 2018, 1 October 2018; Balkan Insight, 31 October 2017).

We have excluded an in-depth consideration of Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, Turkey, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. However, in some chapters we still make reference to those countries. One of the main reasons is that they represent different political traditions and ‘families’, more on the side lines of core European politics. However, Chapter 11 is dedicated to these political systems of wider Europe.

In this regard, the EU cannot expand forever. A more realistic approach about core and wider Europe would certainly be advisable. In this volume, I support former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt’s wise advice that Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Turkey do not belong to this core Europe, but rather to wider Europe. Good neighbouring relations and cooperation should be central to the relationship between the EU and the wider Europe, maybe a privileged partnership, but no membership should be offered (Schmidt, 2000). It is overstretching which countries belong to Europe, if I even consider the three Caucasus countries Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Moldova is the only post-Soviet state that clearly has a good chance of becoming part of the EU, mainly due to its close historical legacy to Romania. However, this is certainly disputable by supporters of an independent Moldovanist identity. Geostrategist George Friedman characterised Moldova as a state without a nation, due to a very divided national identity (Friedman, 2011: 44).

Box1.1 Why compare European countries?

• In order to understand the main features of European politics it is important to reduce complexity.

• The main task is to group countries into ‘families’ and compare these families so that the comparison of thirty-seven European countries becomes manageable.

• The comparative method allows us to classify, describe and analyse not only individual countries but also ‘families’ of countries using a vast number of political variables.

• The comparison of different political systems contributes to a better understanding of how institutions and processes work and helps identify which similarities and differences one can find between the various ‘families’ of countries.

In order to gain broader insights into contemporary European politics, we focus on the thirty-seven countries, which clearly represent different patterns of European politics (Table 1.1). The least developed region in terms of democracy and human rights is the Balkans, which are scheduled to join the EU at the end of 2020s. Although we include some references to these countries, they will be rather neglected in comparison to the core EU countries (twenty-seven), the UK, Switzerland, Iceland and Norway.

In this book, we follow Samuel E. Finer’s interpretation of the comparative approach. The main task is to group institutions, political systems or processes into ‘families’ or ‘types’ that are close to each other. Grouping countries that resemble each other into families and contrasting the countries both within the families and in relation to the countries within the other families helps us to understand why and how differences and similarities exist between countries (Box 1.1). The main questions in this book are: why European political systems, or at least families of countries, are different from or similar to each other; and how these differences and similarities are demonstrated (Finer, 1970: 38–9). In responding to these questions, we are able to learn a lot about some of the positive and negative aspects of institutions and processes, as well as understand why some political systems are performing better or worse than others. This process also allows the uniqueness of some political systems or ill-conceived institutional transfers from one country to another to be identified. Therefore, the book will mainly describe, classify and analyse comparatively the diverse political systems of Europe. In the end, comparing European politics depends very much on what the researcher believes is important to compare (Finer, 1970: 39)

One characteristic of this book is that it attempts to compare, at the least, all thirty-seven countries of Europe (although this is subject to how much information exists). In this sense, this reveals an ambition to overcome the bias of most comparative books on Europe that focus only on the larger countries plus, on occasion, the Netherlands. We have combined the comparative approach with detailed information about each of the European countries. Of course, such an enterprise will be stronger in some sections than others, but we considered it important to be distinctive from most comparative studies on European politics. In this book, both larger and smaller countries have been covered extensively in order to achieve a more balanced approach to the reality of European politics.

Reducing complexity through the use of regional clusters

In order to reduce the complexity of individually analysing all thirty-seven countries, we grouped them into regional clusters. This allowed us to simplify the comparison of countries (see Table 1.1), although we also kept some flexibility in using these regional clusters. Other categories at times superseded the importance of regional political cultures – for example, if countries clearly belong to a particular type such as majoritarian versus consensus democracies, weak or strong parliaments, federal or unitary states, then these regional clusters were only partially used or completely discarded. We differentiated at least twelve regions, some of them, such as France and Turkey, consisting of one country only.

The Benelux countries: Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have a common history. Belgium became independent from the Netherlands in 1830. Luxembourg became independent after the Vienna Congress, though it has strong historical links with both Belgium and the Netherlands. The union known as the Benelux was formed after 1944.

German-speaking/Drei-Sat Europe: This comprises Germany, Austria and Switzerland. ‘German-speaking’ is clearly a difficult label, but it refers to the common language of the three countries. In the case of Switzerland, there is also francophone Switzerland, influenced more by France; however, the vast majority of the population in Switzerland is German-speaking. There is a common television channel called 3Sat, established in 1984 by the public televisions of Austria (ORF), Switzerland (SRG) and Germany (ZDF, ARD) that broadcasts in all three countries.

Nordic Europe: This comprises the Scandinavian countries – Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Additionally Finland and Iceland are also included. The cooperation between the Nordic countries is intense, so this region has a strong common identity.

British Isles: This includes the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Although the UK is a monarchy and the Republic of Ireland is a republic, the historical legacy and the common language makes it sensible to group these two countries together. There is also the issue of Northern Ireland that has led to joint efforts by the two countries to achieve a peace settlement. There are considerable political institutionalised channels between the two countries.

Southern Europe: This comprises Portugal, Spain, Greece and Italy. They show many similar historical and structural features that allow us to speak of a regional cluster.

France: The uniqueness of France deserves a special place in the typology.

Mediterranean islands: The island status of Malta and Cyprus located in the Mediterranean is ideal for grouping them together.

Baltic Europe: The three former Soviet republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania gained independence in 1992. They work together through Baltic institutions, and all of them were independent between 1918 and 1939. They are also small democracies with small populations, which is clearly a good reason to group them together.

(East) Central Europe: According to Attila Ágh, a Hungarian political scientist, there are considerable differences in both development and political culture betw...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Praise
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Boxes
• Preface to the First Edition
• Preface to the Second Edition
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction to Contemporary European Politics
• 2 The Historical Development of European Politics
• 3 the Transformation of European Politics
• 4 Government in Multilevel Europe
• 5 The Diversity of Parliamentarianism in Multilevel Europe
• 6 Judicial Power in Multilevel Europe
• 7 Political Parties, Party Systems and Elections in Europe
• 8 Interest Groups and Systems of Interest Intermediation
• 9 Regional and Local Government in Multilevel Europe
• 10 National Politics and the European Union
• 11 The Political Systems of the Wider Europe: Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and Georgia
• 12 Conclusions: Reinventing Europe
• References
• Index