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Beyond a constraining dissensus: The role of national parliaments in domesticating and normalising the politicization of European integration

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Comparative European Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

At the heart of the growing politicization of the EU lies a concern with how European integration potentially undermines forms of communal self-government linked to established political identities. This concern originates not from the much discussed democratic deficit of EU institutions but from a ‘democratic disconnect’ between domestic democratic institutions and processes and the decisions made at the EU level by national executives and EU officials. Our contention is that enhancing the role of national parliaments in EU decision making offers a way to reconnect the integration process with the communal self-rule of the member states. We ground this argument in an account of the normative basis of the EU that we dub ‘republican intergovernmentalism’. We argue that national parliaments offer a means for what we term the domestication and normalization of EU policymaking within the democratic processes of the member states. However, these effects will only occur if mainstream domestic parties employ these new parliamentary powers to develop competing EU policies that reflect their core ideological positions and those of their voters. We propose the introduction of a Parliamentary Legislative Initiative as a mechanism to provide an incentive for them to do so.

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Notes

  1. Although Schimmelfennig (2014) suggests that neo-functionalists could claim that there has been some supranational institution building in response to the crisis, such as the Fiscal Compact, it is noticeable that such initiatives have had to largely operate outside the established democratic framework of the EU and only been possible when supported by governments that have been more pro-EU than their populations, and as in Ireland, Italy and Greece, thereby risked rejection by voters once an election occurred.

  2. HoL EU Committee, 9th Report Session 2013–2014, The Role of National Parliaments in the EU, 24 March 2014, pp. 19–20; Questionnaire for the 23rd Bi-annual Report of COSAC, 23 February 2015, Section 2.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg in Delmenhorst for supporting the research for this article. Richard Bellamy also acknowledges the support of the Leverhulme Trust for a Research Fellowship RF-2012-368. The authors would also like to thank the anonymous reviewer, Ben Crum and Cristina Fasone for very constructive and helpful written comments as well as the participants of seminars in Delmenhorst, Ottawa, Zürich, Cardiff and Rome for their constructive discussions of earlier versions of this article.

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  1. Department of Politics, University of Exeter, Rennes Drive, Amory, Exeter, EX4 4RJ, UK

    Sandra Kröger

  2. Director of the Max Weber Programme, European University Institute, Via dei Roccettini, 9, San Domenico di Fiesole, FI50014, Italy

    Richard Bellamy

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Correspondence to Sandra Kröger.

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Kröger, S., Bellamy, R. Beyond a constraining dissensus: The role of national parliaments in domesticating and normalising the politicization of European integration. Comp Eur Polit 14, 131–153 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1057/cep.2015.40

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