Publication details
European Discourse and Changes in National Coordination Mechanism of the EU agenda
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2018 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | Since joining the EU national states need to coordinate European affairs and be able to not only manage inputs of European policy but also create quality strategy for negotiation at the European level. Coordination mechanisms of European agenda and their development have been mostly examined thought three traditional approaches of new institutionalism (historical, rational choice and sociological institutionalism) that all agree that ‘institutions matter’. Even though some changes in coordination settings have static character, there is a growing importance of European discourse and ‘talks about the EU’ in national state. Contrary to exogenous explanation of changes, discursive institutionalism perceives their endogenous causes and works with dynamic process of institutional changes. The aim of this paper is therefore to show how discourse explains development of coordination mechanisms and its influence on institutional settings. Discursive institutionalism has a potential to bring alternative explanation of institutional changes (e.g. salience of European agenda or its controversy) and to enrich theory of new institutionalism. The Czech Republic has been chosen as a proper case for those reasons: it represents a country which is indecisive in the matter of perceiving European agenda and continuously changing coordination setting (switching of coordination authority between Government office and MFA); the Czech Republic is still relatively new member state of the EU and finally, changes in political environment are obvious in this country (spectrum of political parties have changed significantly since 2004). Paper maps the influence of both – coordinative discourse (political discussion) and communicative discourse (communication towards public). Using discursive analyses paper assumes that increasing polarization of European discourse in national environment stimulate changes in coordination settings. |