Publication details
Euroskeptici, europeanisté, euroentuziasté, eurofobové - jak s nimi pracovat?
| Title in English | Eurosceptics, Europeanists, Euroenthusiasts, Europhobes - How to work with it? |
|---|---|
| Authors | |
| Year of publication | 2004 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Politologický časopis |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Political sciences |
| Keywords | European Union; European integration; Euroscepticism; Europeanism; cleavage; party families; quantitative methods; Czech parties |
| Description | This article presents the basic line of the discussion about party-based attitudes to European integration and European Union ('Europe'). Firstly, it focuses on typology of party approaches to 'Europe'. It deals with two negative attitudes - soft Euroscepticism and hard Euroscepticism made by Paul Taggart and Aleks Szczerbiak. They defined hard Euroscepticism as principled opposition to the EU and to the European integration. Soft Euroscepticism was specified as not-principled objection to the European integration or the EU witch in one (or number) of policy areas leads to the expression of qualified opposition to the EU or where there is a sense that 'national interest' is currently at odds with the EU trajectory. Afterwards, a critique of this approach made by Petr Kopecký and Cas Mudde is analysed and there is presented their typology, which distinguishes between diffuse and specific support of the European integration (i.e. support of the ideas of European integration and support of the EU). The article also reflects the progressive conceptualisation of Nicolo Conti and Luca Verzichelli, who developed three new categories of party positions to 'Europe'. Two of them are positive (identity Europeanism and functional Europeanism) and one is neutral. Identity Europeanism is based on a principle support of the EU and of the European integration, which is fundamental party goal. Functional Europeanism implies that European integration support is determined by serving specific domestic or party interests. Neutral position means that party has not clear attitude to the European integration. Simultaneously, the article shows current position of Czech political parties when there is debate on every of these three typologies. Secondly, there are briefly presented quantitative methods used for research of party attitudes to 'Europe' and advantages and disadvantages of these methods. Thirdly, there is discussed a question if the party approaches to the European integration created a new cleavage. Negative answer to this question is connected with Peter Mair explanation on limited and indirect impact of European integration on national party systems. Fourth, there are summed up attitudes to the European integration of individual party families and also reasons of these attitudes. Finally, the article introduces the possible future development of party-based Euroscepticism and Europeanism during ratification of European constitution in member states. |
| Related projects: |