Rhetoric and Bricolage in European Politics and Beyond: The Political Mind in Action (Rhetoric, Politics and Society) 3030986314, 9783030986315

Citation preview

RHETORIC, POLITICS AND SOCIETY

Rhetoric and Bricolage in European Politics and Beyond The Political Mind in Action Edited by Niilo Kauppi · Kari Palonen

Rhetoric, Politics and Society

Series Editors Alan Finlayson, University of East Anglia, Norfolk, UK James Martin, Goldsmiths, University of London, London, UK Kendall R. Phillips, Syracuse University, Syracuse, USA

Rhetoric lies at the intersection of a variety of disciplinary approaches and methods, drawing upon the study of language, history, culture and philosophy to understand the persuasive aspects of communication in all its modes: spoken, written, argued, depicted and performed. This series presents the best international research in rhetoric that develops and exemplifies the multifaceted and cross-disciplinary exploration of practices of persuasion and communication. It seeks to publish texts that openly explore and expand rhetorical knowledge and enquiry, be it in the form of historical scholarship, theoretical analysis or contemporary cultural and political critique. The editors welcome proposals for monographs that explore contemporary rhetorical forms, rhetorical theories and thinkers, and rhetorical themes inside and across disciplinary boundaries. For informal enquiries, questions, as well as submitting proposals, please contact the editors: Alan Finlayson: [email protected] James Martin: [email protected] Kendall Phillips: [email protected]

More information about this series at https://link.springer.com/bookseries/14497

Niilo Kauppi · Kari Palonen Editors

Rhetoric and Bricolage in European Politics and Beyond The Political Mind in Action

Editors Niilo Kauppi SAGE/University of Strasbourg Strasbourg, France

Kari Palonen University of Jyväskylä Helsinki, Finland

Centre national de la recherche scientifique Strasbourg, France

ISSN 2947-5147 ISSN 2947-5155 (electronic) Rhetoric, Politics and Society ISBN 978-3-030-98631-5 ISBN 978-3-030-98632-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98632-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: © Duncan1980/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

This volume is the result of a collaborative effort that started in 2015 with the Academy of Finland funded research project TRACE, ‘Transformations of Concepts and Institutions in the European Polity’ affiliated with the University of Jyväskylä. The project included a Finnish Distinguished Professorship (Niilo Kauppi from 2015 to 2019), the authors of this book as project members as well as Kari Palonen as host from the University of Jyväskylä. The book’s title refers to a constellation of linked research topics that relate to higher education, knowledge production, transnational exchanges, the EU and European integration, concepts, debates, and conceptual and intellectual history. On the latter, TRACE continued the work of the Finnish Centre in Political Thought and Conceptual Change and other major Academy of Finland funded projects at the University of Jyväskylä. The project members analysed historical and contemporary forms of political thought and concepts, including the new geopolitics of conceptual and intellectual transfers; debates as the uniting theme of parliamentary and university cultures; and European Union politics with a focus on political agency and the rhetorical strategies used in power struggles. The focus was on the political aspect of the creation of new spaces for action and new interpretations of struggles and debates. The research connected three closely interrelated research fields: conceptual transfers between contexts, links between political and academic cultures, and the European Union as a new type of polity.

v

vi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä for hosting the project, and particularly Anna Björk, Jenna Grundström, Anitta Kananen, Marjo Kuronen, Lea Naumanen, Mira Söderman and Tuula Vaarakallio for their help in setting up the project and organising the events and yearly symposia. Thank you also to Timo Turja from the Parliament Library for hosting several workgroup meetings. The project owes a great deal to the keynote speakers and foreign participants who took part in our events and without whose input the project would have been considerably less stimulating. We wish to extend our warm thanks to Cristina Anderson, Caitriona Carter, Dimitris Chryssochoou, Alan Finlayson, Michael Freeden, Elena Garcia Guitián, Cornelia Ilie, Mika Pantzar, Simona Piattoni, Olivier Rozenberg, and Ingeborg Tömmel; Estelle Badie, Ruth Bevan, Ben Duke, Jaanika Erne, Laura Landorff, Anastasia Mitronatsiou, Jofre Rocabert and Neslihan Temelat. Helsinki, December 2021

The editors and project members

Contents

1

Introduction Niilo Kauppi and Kari Palonen

2

The Political Bricolage of EU Theories Niilo Kauppi

3

National Politics and Transnational Feminisms in Early Twentieth-Century Europe: Perspectives from the Francophone Sphere Anne Epstein

4

5

6

Saving European Democracy: British Debates on European Unification in 1948–49 Taru Haapala Between Conceptual Innovation and ‘There is no Alternative’: Conceptual Politics and the Building of the EU as a Polity Claudia Wiesner The Colonialism of Partisanship: Politics of National Interest and the National Science Foundation in the U.S. Congressional Debates Anna Kronlund

1 11

35

59

89

117

vii

viii

7

8

CONTENTS

Mapping Postmodern Patterns of Political Agency and Rhetoric: Established Politics Facing Bricolage Kim Zilliacus

145

Politics at Distance: Parliamentary Politics in the Face of New Challenges Kari Palonen

179

Index

203

List of Contributors

Anne Epstein University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland Taru Haapala Madrid Institute for Advanced Study (MIAS), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain Niilo Kauppi SAGE/University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France; Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Strasbourg, France Anna Kronlund University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland Kari Palonen University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland Claudia Wiesner Fulda University of Applied Sciences, Fulda, Germany Kim Zilliacus Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki, Finland

ix

List of Figures

Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2 Fig. 7.3 Fig. 7.4 Fig. 7.5

Fig. 7.6

Fig. 7.7

Fig. 7.8

Fig. 7.9

Classic concepts of social and technological change Castells’s (1996, 1998, 2000, 2004) concepts of informationalism The postmaterialism/materialism index of Inglehart (1977) Modes of political change: premodern, modern and postmodern politics Value dimensions of traditional, modern and postmodern society: defining postmodern instrumentalism and humanism through the core values of expressivism (Sources Inglehart [1997]; Gibbins & Reimer [1995]; Zilliacus & Puohiniemi [2019]) Mapping value change in traditional, modern and postmodern society according to five types of thinking: traditionalism, modern humanism, modern instrumentalism, postmodern humanism and postmodern instrumentalism (Sources Inglehart [1997]; Gibbins & Reimer [1995]; Zilliacus & Puohiniemi [2019]) Modern and Postmodern properties of ESTABLISHED and BRICOLAGE Politics with respect to the actors, interaction, resources and process of Political Agency Modern and Postmodern properties of ESTABLISHED and BRICOLAGE Politics with respect to the outlook, approach, means and ends of Political Rhetoric Political Rhetoric on a scale of modern vs. postmodern properties of ESTABLISHED and BRICOLAGE Politics

148 151 154 157

161

166

168

170 171

xi

CHAPTER 1

Introduction Niilo Kauppi and Kari Palonen

Academic political science seldom deals with the political aspect of thinking and judging. Through a wide set of empirical objects, this volume fuses sociological analysis of political thought and culture with conceptual, historical, and rhetorical approaches to thinking politically. In everyday speech, ‘political’ commonly alludes to partisanship or to expediency, as opposed to normative judgement. With the term political mind, we understand ‘political’ in a formal sense as a way of thinking and judging, leaving it to the actors to take a stand on phenomenon. The book explores both discursive and non-discursive power strategies in the EU and beyond. Instead of grounding their analysis in established and ossified theories like neofunctionalism or intergovernmentalism, the

N. Kauppi (B) SAGE/University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France e-mail: [email protected] Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Strasbourg, France K. Palonen University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 N. Kauppi and K. Palonen (eds.), Rhetoric and Bricolage in European Politics and Beyond, Rhetoric, Politics and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98632-2_1

1

2

N. KAUPPI AND K. PALONEN

chapters scrutinise how political actors engage in action at different polity levels, shedding light on the creative political mind in action. This point of view seeks to capture the dynamic contingency, reflexivity, and uncertainty of political action (Kauppi, 2018; Palonen, 2018; Wiesner, 2019). The contributions fuse theory and empirics, drawing inspiration from two sources. The first is a concept provided by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss in his book La pensée sauvage ([The Savage Mind] [1962], bricolage [2009, 568–593]). By bricolage, Lévi-Strauss meant the practical logic of the actors involved in various everyday activities such as collecting medicinal plants, classifying animals, or composing myths (intellectual bricolage). In this volume, the authors analyse bricolage as a logic of practice in relation to political action (for similar analysis, see Bailey, 1966; Bourdieu, 1977; Carstensen, 2011, 2017; Kauppi, 2005, 2016, 2018; Mérand, 2001; Mittelman, 2013) and taken-for-granted practical and ideological assumptions (cf. Freeden, 1996), the common sense that drives it and the conceptual and non-conceptual instruments that are available to the actors. Such a view of political bricolage as the ‘science of the concrete’ reflects the experiences of professional politicians and experts facing complex issues and heterogeneous audiences, making use of academic theories but combining and modifying them according to the situation, or even ignoring or discarding them when facing unprecedented situations. Another source of inspiration in the volume is Max Weber’s concept of Chance. It evokes another feature of political action: its contingency in the face of the multiple facets of possible, opportune, optional, or occasional outcomes. Weber interprets his key concepts such as power (Macht ), rulership (Herrschaft ), or the state (Staat ) through their different profiles of Chancen, thus leaving them to depend on the actors in each situation. Confronting more or less open situations that may provide them alternative power shares (Machtanteile), political actors must judge and choose between them, even when all are undesirable (Palonen, 1998, 2017; Weber, 1904/2012, 1922/2019). In this Weberian vision, political institutions such as the European Union differ in the type of chances and opportunities they offer for politicians acting through them. This research perspective enables the contributors to avoid both theoretical expositions devoid of empirical work and empirical studies that seek to explore reality without an ideal–typical view of what is possible in a specific situation. Both can be considered methodologically problematic, as the only way

1

INTRODUCTION

3

to adequately make sense of complex reality is to engage in theoretically informed empirical work. Although the concepts of bricolage and Chance have different origins, both present contingency and lack of control as inherent to the political aspect of human action. The everyday practice of parliamentary politics illustrates the link between Chance and bricolage. It is frequently said that a government’s policies should follow a coherent plan or programme. This idea is contrasted with another, namely allowing Parliament Chancen to thoroughly debate government proposals in the plenary and committee sittings and giving the opposition and backbenchers the right to alter, adjourn, or amend the proposals. Instead of pushing proposals through unchanged, wise governments use these opportunities for their own purposes. Periodic concessions to the opposition are not the only outcomes of the thorough parliamentary debate of motions, bills, budgets, plans, and programmes. Parliamentarians in the governing party can also judge the strengths and weaknesses of their proposal in detail and consider amendments or adjournments worth adopting as tacit ways of strengthening the proposal. The text that is finally passed by the Parliament tends to be less systematic and more complex than the original proposal. It is a bricolage-like product to which both government and parliamentary actors have contributed when the proposal was still—to use a Westminster term—‘in the possession of the parliament’. Analogous but even more complex problems appear at the EU level, when the Commission, the Council, the European Council, and the Parliament must reach agreement. Unexpected concessions and compromises are required. Different rhetorical genres and tools can be identified both in the debates and in the final EU-wide legislation. Accusations of slowness and incoherence in EU decision-making are all too easy and misleading. While ideas like second-order elections (Reif & Schmitt, 1980) minimise the political dynamics of European integration (Kauppi, 2021), established normative approaches impose a nation-centred framework to the study on the EU. As a result of this capacity to define reality and relevant knowledge, they hide, minimise, and delegitimise other possible, potential political developments and seek to ‘normalise’ and legitimise a certain interpretation of the current situation. Although well realised by many politicians participating in the early European integration debates, the original politicising momentum provided by European integration,

4

N. KAUPPI AND K. PALONEN

the introduction of a supranational polity level has not been fully understood as an opportunity to overcome the quasi-naturalised character of the nation-state. This volume offers a political perspective on the EU that explores the power struggles in which individuals and groups are involved. The focal points are political action, the evolving perimeters of political action, the possibilities these present, and the missed opportunities for politicised action in contexts that are subject to sustained structural change and contingency. Examples of the former include the deepening and expanding processes of EU integration, technological change, and nation-building that proceed by experimentation and through unforeseen developments such as Brexit and Covid-19. The focus of the contributions is on counter-powers and attempts to present critical elements that seek to build something politically new that does not yet exist. Some of the chapters deal with the political values and spaces of the possible that serve as background for political life that ‘sets the problems for political theorists’ (Skinner, 1978). Established theories appear as conservative straightjackets that prevent imagining alternative futures. The following chapters present historical approaches to analysing past debates that provide elements for creating new ideologies and institutions (cf. also Epstein & Fuchs, 2017; Haapala, 2016). Although all contributions of the volume do not use rhetorical language, in a broad sense all of them exercise a textual analysis of politics, as present in debates, documents, or scholarly publications. The chapters share with rhetorical traditions such common features as a critical distance from mainstream interpretations of European Union in the different academic disciplines, a willingness to explore less obvious alternatives and thus alter the entire agenda-setting in the study of European and EU politics. The problematics and perspectives of these chapters can be understood as rhetorical (Martin, 2014). The argumentation pro et contra or weighting the strengths and weaknesses of different views and approaches is common to all chapters. The same holds for the practice of rhetorical redescription that takes distance from common-sense assumptions and classifications and, through practical experimentation and bricolage, sometimes succeeds in introducing new perspectives that enable changes in scholarly agenda-setting. The volume is partially organised in chronological order, beginning with chapters on the turn of the twentieth century (Chapter 3) and the

1

INTRODUCTION

5

period after World War II (Chapter 4) to chapters on modernism/ postmodernism (Chapter 7) and the current challenges to parliamentarism (Chapter 8). Chapter 2 aims to bring conceptual unity to the volume. Most chapters deal with Europe or the EU (Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, and 8) or with the US (Chapter 6) and modernism/postmodernism (Chapter 7). All focus on rhetoric and political bricolage in different contexts and at different times. In Chapter 2, Niilo Kauppi analyses some of the knowledge dynamics and conceptual politics involved in EU theory building. It is said that outside the academic world little attention is paid to academic theories and concepts, and that practitioners in political and economic life ignore them. It is true that some practitioners (politicians, civil servants, activists…) conceptualise European integration history as a theory-free zone. However, for social scientists, various types of knowledge play into the construction of reality. This knowledge is not merely descriptive and backward-looking, but above all forward-looking and performative as it seeks to reinforce a certain political order. Politicians constantly build bridges between their political interests and academic knowledge. Kauppi explores political bricolage as the logic of practice in EU theorising, its taken-for-granted practical and ideological assumptions, the ‘common sense’ that drives it, and the conceptual and material instruments that are available to the actors who compete and collaborate while promoting their interests. He discusses the variety of EU theories, both academic and lay theories (i.e. common-sense explanations people give of the EU) as well as established and emergent theories, and continues with an exploration of strategies of legitimation and ‘theoretical warfare’. In Chapter 3, Anne Epstein explores the strategies used by a diverse group of French-speaking European women and men, proponents of expanded citizenship for women, to create common ground among emerging national feminisms at the turn of the twentieth century. This specific effort to ‘transnationalise’ so-called first-wave feminism in Europe and beyond, she argues, can be seen as an example of what anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss identified as bricolage, of a conceptual as well as practical nature: that is, a strategically improvised mobilisation and repurposing of existing intellectual networks, actions, expertise, and of course, ideas. At a time when both nationalism and internationalism were at a height, the rise of so-called first-wave feminisms benefited from the expansion of gender-inclusive intellectual networks and international political and cultural spaces—such as Universal Expositions, scientific and

6

N. KAUPPI AND K. PALONEN

cultural associations, and political movements—that encouraged knowledge exchange and practical cooperation across borders. Focusing on the French-speaking sphere (French being a language that continued to be widely spoken by educated elites at the time), Epstein looks at how national politics, shared values and social ideals, and the recognition of expertise across borders conditioned the incorporation of nation-specific information and debates about women and gender within evolving transnational feminist discourses. In Chapter 4, Taru Haapala focuses on the British debates on European unification that took place prior to the Hague Congress in May 1948, leading up to the founding of the Council of Europe in London a year later. Political bricolage is used here as an analytical approach to understand the rhetorical strategies of British Members of Parliament (MPs) in a political context full of uncertainties and calls for expediency. The author argues that the rhetorical tools available were more conducive to parliamentary than to plebiscitary democracy. Even though Britain was considered as the model in rebuilding parliamentary democracies in Europe, both government and opposition party leaders were uninterested in joining a European organisation that could undermine the Commonwealth. Despite their reluctance, British parliamentarians were instrumental in saving European democracy after the war. The chapter shows how that political bricolage in British debates on European unification can be located mainly in arguments against the Labour government’s foreign policy. Provoked by the party leaders’ intergovernmentalism, Labour backbenchers used the ideas of internationalism and federalism, which were also utilised by Winston Churchill’s United Europe Movement. In Chapter 5, Claudia Wiesner argues that the building of the EU as a polity has been and still is shaped by conceptual politics, and more specifically by conceptual innovations and controversies. Alongside the EU Treaties that were negotiated by heads of government and state, the building of the EU as a polity has been decisively conditioned by political conflicts and micropolitical struggles that were driven by actors based in EU institutions. Core conflicts centred on controversial interpretations of key concepts such as democracy, parliament, or citizenship. Conceptual politics and controversies are particularly fruitful objects of analysis, as they relate to the realms of political theory and institutional practice as well as to the functionality and normativity of new norms and institutions. She discusses two cases of such conceptual controversies, EU citizenship

1

INTRODUCTION

7

and financial crisis governance. The development of EU citizenship has been decisively influenced by the interaction between conceptual innovations, law-making, and their implementation into institutional practice. The impact of the financial crisis’ governance structures on the quality of democracy in the EU and at national levels has been significant. Chapter 6, by Anna Kronlund, analyses congressional debates on the National Science Foundation (NSF) and more specifically how the concept of ‘national interest’ is employed in those concerning the NSF. That items are put on the political agenda and discussed in Congress is already a political act, meaning that motions can be amended, and they can be delayed or voted against. Therefore, in parliaments and in legislatures such as the US Congress, items that are themselves considered ‘political’ and the very fact that something is argued to be political or apolitical should be seen as a political strategy or as a political act. In Chapter 7, Kim Zilliacus shows how the basic structures and functions of democracy are continuously challenged through the surging political role of digital disruption coupled with new divisions created by social, economic, and technological forces cross-cutting the public terrain of democracy. There are several key dimensions of politics that have been affected by the accelerating pace of technological change such as political participation, communication, decision-making, policy-making, legitimacy, agency, and rhetoric. The author maps the conceptual underpinnings of this dialogue between social and technological change using key theoretical concepts to catch the essence of the political aspects of these transformative dynamics. One of the main conceptual frameworks explored in the chapter involves the dynamics of different societal modes, notably the modern and the postmodern, which rather than replacing each other are interacting with one another to alter the grids of political life. In clarifying these properties of politics, the author defines bricolage politics as a conceptual tool that may be used to cast light on emerging dilemmas of sync between public preferences and policy on pressing issues such as Covid-19, shedding further light on political agency and rhetoric. L’enfer, c’est les autres, declared Jean-Paul Sartre. In the context of the corona pandemic, Sartre’s statement has gained a new level of existential significance. The proximity with others, possible bearers of the virus, is now a vice to be avoided. More prosaically Max Weber demanded from politicians Distanz zu den Dingen and Menschen. Combining Weber and Sartre requires a politics that cultivates distance and neutralises proximity. In Chapter 8, Kari Palonen compares the challenges of two ideal types

8

N. KAUPPI AND K. PALONEN

of political action, movement politics and signature politics, present to parliamentary politics as a paradigmatic example of politics-at-a-distance that still requires a certain proximity. While movement politics relies on proximity and identity, ‘signature politics’ cultivates distance but excludes debate, the main merit of parliamentary politics. All three share the principle that the persons supporting a policy or decision will be counted and not weighted. Combining presence and distance in parliaments, the author discusses the dangers proximity and action at a distance face in digitalised debates. Beyond spatial distance, Palonen analyses the parliamentary requirements of orality and visibility as well as the possibilities of presence of other debates. He also explores how parliamentary distance can be utilised as a medium to extend the politics of parliamentary presence. The perspective taken in this volume on agency in the EU contrasts with theories that take as their starting point either institutional (intergovernmentalism) or technocratic structures (neofunctionalism). Until recently, these emphasised the systemic character of the EU as a sui generis polity that cannot be compared to other political systems. Even today, dominant theories conceptualise the EU as either an institutional order or a playing field of high politics. It is clear, however, that these theories have become quite useless in the face of the growing complexity of both EU and national politics. More recent approaches like ‘postfunctionalism’ (Hooghe & Marks, 2009) introduce some form of agency through the concept of politicisation, understood as a sudden and historically unique intervention of the ‘people’ into European politics. But then politics and political action are not conceived as ongoing, regular phenomena but rather as an exceptional one (cf. Kauppi & Wiesner, 2018 for a critique, also Kauppi et al., 2016).

References Bailey, F. G. (1966). Stratagems and spoils. Routledge. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge University Press. Carstensen, M. B. (2011). Paradigm man vs. the bricoleur: Bricolage as an alternative vision of agency in ideational change. European Political Science Review, 3(1), 147–167. Carstensen, M. B. (2017). Institutional bricolage in times of crisis. European Political Science Review, 9(1), 1139–1160.

1

INTRODUCTION

9

Epstein, A., & Fuchs, R. (Eds.). (2017). Gender and citizenship in historical and transnational perspective. Agency, space, borders. Palgrave. Freeden, M. (1996). Ideologies and political theory: A conceptual approach. Oxford University Press. Haapala, T. (2016). Political rhetoric in the Oxford and Cambridge Unions, 1830– 1870. Palgrave. Hooghe, L., & Marks, G. (2009). A postfunctionalist theory of European integration: From permissive consensus to constraining dissensus. British Journal of Political Science, 39, 1–23. Kauppi, N. (2005). Democracy, social resources, and political power in the European Union. Manchester University Press. Kauppi, N. (2016, June 2). The bricolage approach to European integration. Presentation at the University of Jyväskylä. Kauppi, N. (2018). Toward a reflexive political sociology of the European Union. Palgrave. Kauppi, N. (2021). The European rescue of the Front National: From the fringes towards the centre of national politics through EU politicisation. In T. Haapala & A. Oleart (Eds.), Tracing the politicisation of the EU. The future of Europe debates before and after the 2019 elections (pp. 91–109). Palgrave. Kauppi, N., & Wiesner, C. (2018). Exit politics, enter politicization. Journal of European Integration, 40(2), 227–233. Kauppi, N., Palonen, K., & Wiesner, C. (2016). The politification and politicisation of the EU. Redescriptions, 19(1), 72–90. Lévi-Strauss, C. (2009). Oeuvres. La Pléiade. Martin, J. (2014). Politics and rhetoric: A critical introduction. Routledge. Mérand, F. (2001). Bricolage: A sociological approach to the making of CSDP. In X. Kurowska & F. Breuer (Eds.), Explaining the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy: Theory in action (pp. 136–161). Palgrave. Mittelman, J. (2013). Global bricolage: Emerging market powers and polycentric governance. Third World Quarterly, 34(1), 23–37. Palonen, K. (1998). Das ‘Webersche Moment.’ Westdeutscher Verlag. Palonen, K. (2017). A political style of thinking. ECPR Press. Palonen, K. (2018). Parliamentary thinking. Procedure, rhetoric, and time. Palgrave. Reif, K., & Schmitt, H. (1980). Nine second-order national elections – A conceptual framework for the analysis of European election results. European Journal of Political Research, 8, 3–44. Skinner, Q. (1978). The foundations of modern political thought I–II . Cambridge University Press. Weber, M. (1904/1973/2012). ‘Die “Objektivität” sozialwissenschaftlicher und sozialpolitischer Erkenntnis’. In J. Winckelmann (Ed.), Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre (pp. 146–214). Mohr.

10

N. KAUPPI AND K. PALONEN

Weber, M. (1922/2014/2019). Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, Part I: Soziologie. Unvollendet 1919–1920. In K. Borchert, E. Hanke & W.J. Schluchter (Eds.), Max-Weber-Gesamtausgabe I/23. Mohr. Wiesner, C. (2019). Inventing the EU as a democratic polity. Palgrave.

CHAPTER 2

The Political Bricolage of EU Theories Niilo Kauppi

‘Reality leaves a lot to the imagination’. John Lennon

As providers of knowledge and scientific legitimation, social scientists have played a key role in the development of the European nation-state (Beckert, 2016; Desrosieres, 1998). The same can be said of a more recent political innovation, the European Union (Kauppi, 2014; White, 2003). Both the European nation-state and the EU have been political and academic co-productions. Academics have provided the concepts and theories that have enabled rationalizing past political and economic reality, enabling planning and the anticipation of future developments. But in the scholarly literature on concepts and theories, social scientific knowledge is systematically disconnected from other types of knowledge (for the EU see for instance Rosamond, 1999; Wiener & Diez, 2009). The tendency of scholars has been to analyze academic theories and concepts as a

N. Kauppi (B) SAGE/University of Strasbourg, Strasbourg, France e-mail: [email protected] Centre national de la recherche scientifique, Strasbourg, France

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 N. Kauppi and K. Palonen (eds.), Rhetoric and Bricolage in European Politics and Beyond, Rhetoric, Politics and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98632-2_2

11

12

N. KAUPPI

self-sufficient, stable world, punctured by paradigm shifts. In the social scientific division of labour, theory is separated from empirics, and a good theory is one that succeeds in keeping them apart. Furthermore, scholars tend to see academic knowledge in a passive mode, as a descriptive and reactive symbolic activity rather than as a performative and proactive one. The ‘best’ theory would be the one that best reflects the pre-existing reality it supposedly describes. This chapter seeks to analyze some of the knowledge dynamics and conceptual politics involved in EU theory building (for previous analysis see for instance Adler-Nissen & Kropp, 2015; Kauppi, 2010). It is said that outside the academic world little attention is drawn to academic theories and concepts, and that ‘practitioners’ in political and economic life ignore them. It is true that some ‘practitioners’ (politicians, civil servants, activists…) conceptualize European integration history as a theory-free zone (Olivi, 1999). However, it is clear to social scientists that various types of knowledge interplay in the construction of reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). This knowledge is not only descriptive and backward-looking, but above all forward-looking and performative as it seeks to reinforce and build a certain political order (Merton, 1968). Politicians constantly build bridges between their political interests and academic knowledge. Climate change and COVID-19 are current issues that provide fertile ground for academic and political co-creation (Kauppi et al., forthcoming). Social scientific concepts and theories interact in multiple ways with non-academic knowledge and through these interactions shape public opinion, scholarly discourse and the horizon of possible political action. It is crucial to understand these knowledge dynamics and above all the interests of their social carriers as they provide the ideational and social frameworks for possible futures. What kinds of affinities (value judgments, finalities) exist between knowledge and practical interests? To what extent do they convergent or are relatively non-contradictory, enabling a peaceful coexistence? Reality is shaped by a variety of practices. By bricolage French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss meant the practical logic of agents involved in various everyday activities such as collecting medicinal plants, classifying animals or composing myths (Bourdieu, 1977; Lévi-Strauss, 1962). In this chapter, I will explore political bricolage as the logic of practice in EU theorizing, it’s taken for granted practical and ideological assumptions, the ‘common sense’ that drives it and the conceptual and

2

THE POLITICAL BRICOLAGE OF EU THEORIES

13

non-conceptual instruments that are available to the agents who compete and collaborate while promoting their interests. I will first discuss the variety of EU theories, academic and lay theories, that is common-sense explanations people give of the EU, as well as established and emergent theories, and continue with an exploration of strategies of legitimation and of ‘theoretical warfare’.

Knowledge Cultures and Varieties of EU Theory The relationship between knowledge and (intersubjective and physical) reality is not symmetrical. Their dynamic relationship means that certain conceptions of reality inform or condition political action, and through these actions succeed in shaping parts of reality, or to be more precise perceptions of reality. The more a belief or idea, be it correct or false like in the case of fake news, is shared by a variety of influential social groups, the more likely it is that this belief or idea as a form of embodied action can shape reality through the actions of the social carriers of this belief or idea. In contrast, beliefs or ideas that are shared only by restricted and relatively powerless social groups have, usually, little chance of providing realistic reality changing visions, at least in the immediate. However, social change does transform the value of certain theories and ideas. For instance, with the Fall of the Soviet Union ‘Kremlinology’ nearly disappeared from academe but has come back with a more assertive Russia. A necessary condition for performative effect is a substantial or formal connection between academic and lay knowledge. A substantial connection might be a similarity in goals or values such as when both a committed to promoting human rights, while a formal connection might be a similar position in a power constellation as when dominated interests find common ground in their fight against the establishment or a common enemy. This dynamism between various types of knowledge and political action might shed some light on why certain ideas and concepts succeed in impacting reality. A better understanding of the link between these knowledge cultures, academic or theoretical knowledge and lay or practical knowledge, the interests that inform them and the actions that follow, is crucial for the further development of the EU and liberal democracies in Europe as it enables pinpointing biases and shortcomings in knowledge production and use. This provides the basis for a better understanding of knowledge interdependencies and the constraints and opportunities they provide to

14

N. KAUPPI

the development of social scientific theories, including economic theories, and transformations in politics. Academic knowledge (which is composed of confirmed beliefs, concepts and theories) interacts in multiple ways with non-academic knowledge in shaping both scholarly discourse and the horizon of possible political action. These hybrid forms of knowledge/power and above all the interests of their carriers provide the frameworks for possible political action, weak signs of potential developments. Knowledge dynamics are multilinear and multi-layered, providing symbolic tools for different users. The same tools can be used by users with diametrically opposite interests, such as when resistance to global warming measures creates affinities between the pro-nuclear lobby and populist political parties. Both conservatives and radicals can mobilize elements of the same theory, but for different purposes. For instance, intergovernmentalists and some constructivists rely on a power political vision of the EU. Politics can make strange bedfellows. The literature distinguishes two types of theories: lay theories and academic theories (Pedler & Cheyronnaud, 2013). Academic theories do not draw their power only from the academic competition with other academic theories, but also from the ‘elective affinities’ to use Goethe’s term they have with lay theories, that is ‘ordinary’ constructions of the world and more specifically of the EU (Gaxie et al., 2013). The everyday life of politics constitutes a general climate of public opinion, the issues being discussed in the press and media as well as the everyday concerns of ordinary people (Statham & Trenz, 2013). These provide the implicit background for academic theories and for political action. However, academic theories are all partial in different ways. To paraphrase Marx, reality is overdetermined. And as Max Weber noted following Nietzsche, our point of view to the world is always just one perspective on the world. Theories do not aim to reveal just any part of reality, but that which counts or is considered as being important. This particularism that aims at universalism is a common feature of all theorizing. A second common feature is that theories are in competition with one another in their endeavour to define reality, or its relevant categories (Bourdieu, 1977; Kauppi, 2010; Palonen, 2003). In this symbolic activity, theoretical moves are always forms of symbolic action in relatively slowly evolving ideascapes. The aim is not just to pin down the legitimate building blocks of reality, but also to universalize one’s own perspective, and in the process the symbolic and material interests that

2

THE POLITICAL BRICOLAGE OF EU THEORIES

15

inform it. ‘Winners’ aim at ‘killing’ competition by being the most used and referred to theory, in more modern words the most clicked and liked, gathering support and legitimation from powerful actors, discrediting and delegitimizing competing visions. This expansive aim is a third feature of theoretical warfare. The goal is to depoliticize and ‘pacify’ one’s own position or stand that becomes as a result ‘natural’, ‘legitimate’, ‘taken for granted’ and thus ‘self-evident’, the ultimate prize in theoretical competition. The relationship between ideas or theories and ‘reality’ has been constant topic in philosophy and social science. Some, like John Maynard Keynes, following in this Plato and others, argued that ‘the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas’ (Keynes, 1936, 383–384). While Keynes differentiated interests from ideas, Marx famously maintained that ruling ideas are those of the ruling class, and that ideas were subordinate to the bourgeoisie’s material interests. Developing Goethe’s idea of causal and non-causal interactions, Max Weber formulated an intermediate position, in which ideas as ideal interests and material (economic and political) interests interacted. ‘Not ideas, but material and ideal interests, directly govern men’s conduct. Yet very frequently the “world images” that have been created by “ideas” have, like switchmen, determined the tracks along which action has been pushed by the dynamic of interest’ (Weber 1946/1958, 280). In this interpretation, men’s conduct is driven by material and ideal interests and is led into tracks (institutions and practices) by switchmen (theories, ideas). Weber had in mind religious worldviews. More broadly, theories or ideas can be interpreted as consisting of not only spiritual elements like representations (political worldviews like federalism) but also of embodied mental practices, habits and beliefs that trigger action. Political action can be caused by external or internal impetus, political schedule, urgency, a belief, or a conviction that something just must be done (cf. Kauppi, 2000; Strand & Lizardo, 2015).

16

N. KAUPPI

On Established EU Theories The main problem any social scientific research dealing with the European Union must face is that scholars are trying to make sense of a unique historical process by using theories and concepts that were invented in other historical contexts and circumstances. Concepts always carry with them previous semantic choices and empirical problems. When scholars reuse concepts in new circumstances, they redefine them. Conceptual change does not only refer to nominal changes but also to changes in the substance of the concept (see Palonen and Wiesner in this volume). Established theories are based on doxa, accepted belief, that is unexamined but generally accepted assumptions behind world visions. It has been argued that academic theories that have affinities with powerful lay theories and the non-academic interests that back them are more likely to be successful in theoretical warfare than those that do not have at their disposal extra-academic and implicit, taken for granted legitimation (Kauppi, 2010). Academic competition in the social sciences is symbiotically tied to extra-academic competition for the defining features of political reality. Developing an alternative academic theory of the EU must take as its initial or preliminary operation an analysis of existing lay and academic EU theories, or more specifically an analysis of the conceptual space of ideational interests or ideascape where this symbolic arms race takes place as well as actors’ strategies. The symbolic ideascape of EU theorizing has two levels, lay and academic theories, and two dimensions that structure these levels: politicizing-depoliticizing; pro-integration and integration critical. Academic and lay theoriesconceptualize EU integration in either politicized or depoliticized terms and are either favourable to or critical of EU integration. This is of course an ideal–typical simplification. Reality is more complex than this schematic description. The types of academic and lay EU theories currently existing range from established to emerging academic and lay theories. This setup is not static. One can observe for instance movements between the categories such as when populism and neonationalism are becoming mainstream lay positions in several member-states. With this development certain ideas, such as Renaud Camus’s rallying cry of right-wing populism the ‘great replacement’, are being increasingly discussed in European public spheres. Established academic theories include classical theories like functionalism, neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism. These approaches

2

THE POLITICAL BRICOLAGE OF EU THEORIES

17

have been codified in handbooks and textbooks and provide the canonical part in university courses on the EU. They view European integration as a sui generis process. While they all are pro-integration, they differ in terms of their analysis of the crucial political dynamics of integration. Functionalism and neofunctionalism emphasize the organizational, legal and economic aspects of integration, popularizing terms taken from economics such as ‘spill over effect’. They depoliticize the process by emphasizing that increasing cooperation and the pooling of resources are ‘natural’ processes. In contrast, intergovernmentalism focuses on the key role of national executive politicians in the dynamics of European integration. In this framework, depoliticization takes a different form as politics is not a public good but the monopoly of high-level executive politicians. A more recent example of a concept that has become part of taken for granted assumptions of EU integration is that of ‘normative power Europe’, developed by political scientist Ian Manners (Manners, 2000). His view of the EU not as a civilian or military power as in traditional IR scholarship but rather as a normative power has since then become an integral part of the self-perception and -understanding of the EU and an established trope in academic works. President of the European Commission from 2004 to 2014 José Manuel Barroso picked up the term. ‘In terms of normative power, I broadly agree we are one of the most important, if not the most important, normative powers in the world’ (Barroso quoted in Peterson, 2008). Barroso, a political scientist by formation, further developed the notion in several publications. In an article in The Guardian (Barroso, 2010), he saw the EU’s global role as being one of coordination. Barroso’s promotion of the concept led it to diffuse widely into academic and political circles. From 2002 to 2020, 8500 academic titles were published that had in its title or in the text the concept ‘normative power Europe’ (Google Scholar, 2021). The concept rimes with the general pro-EU, largely non-political view that European citizens have of the EU. A recent case in point of the ‘fit’ of the concept with real world political development is the EU’s GDPR. While these theories and concepts have been canonized in academic textbooks, a more recent literature started developing in the 1980s. The launching of social constructivism signalled the end of the neofunctionalist-intergovernmentalist oligopoly. According to Jeffrey Checkel, constructivism presents a new paradigm for the study of European integration (Checkel, 1999). According to its protagonists, it is a step forward in the process of construction of adequate theories

18

N. KAUPPI

and concepts to the study of European integration. By introducing Giddensian social theory into international relations theory and European studies, constructivism opens new paths to scholarly work that emphasize socialization and the social construction of reality (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). Constructivist approaches focus on norms, conventions, language and narratives. Constructivist theorizing has some links with popular perceptions of the EU as a social project (promoted by President of the European Commission Jacques Delors, 1994–2004) that emphasizes the role of civil society and NGOs in European governance. As far as lay theories go, most European citizens hold a positive view of the EU. A study by the Pew Research Center in 2019 shows that the EU median for those having a favourable view of the EU is 61%. A median of 59% think that their country’s membership in the EU has been a good thing, and a median of 56% that ‘the economic integration of Europe has strengthened their country’s economy’. These favourable opinions of the EU do not, however, extend to the political elites, as a median of 69% disagree with the statement ‘Most elected officials care about what people like me think’ (Pew Research Center, 2019). A distrust of elites is compounded with a distrust of political parties. These public perceptions provide a fertile ground for both a distant and hands off attitude towards the EU as well as critical views that can feed into a rejection of the EU. According to Pew Research (2019), ‘People who express a favorable opinion of right-wing populist parties are generally more likely to hold unfavorable views of the EU and to believe the economic integration of Europe has been bad for their countries’. While the political knowledge of the EU varies in terms of for instance age, gender and educational capital (Gaxie et al., 2013; Rapeli, 2014), public perceptions discussed here are not exclusive as opinions people have of the EU are often based on a weak knowledge basis and internally contradictory. Established academic theories of EU integration such as intergovernmentalism, neofunctionalism and more lately constructivism tend to be depoliticizing, pro-integration theories. Extra-academic political support for these theories has been massive as EU integration has fundamentally been a major political and academic co-production (Kauppi & Madsen, 2008). From the 1950s, European institutions as well as national executive politicians especially have been championing a depoliticized, technocratic and ‘scientific’ worldview of European integration that rimes with the ontological tenants of these dominant theories. Visible political actors in key member-states like French President General de Gaulle have

2

THE POLITICAL BRICOLAGE OF EU THEORIES

19

politically legitimized the intergovernmentalist approach, whereas NGOs and various social movements and legal integrationists have, starting from the 1980s, affinities with constructivist approaches, in the more recent intermediate space of EU theorizing.

Emergent Theories Since the 1980s, a host of emergent academic theories with for the moment weak visibility have developed. These range from Marxist approaches (van Appeldoorn 2002) and political sociology approaches (Kauppi, 2005) to politicizing theories (Kauppi et al., 2016; Palonen, 2003; Wiesner, 2019). More recently, even alternative economic theories have seen the light of day (Piketty, 2013; Varoufakis, 2017). These are theories that receive some backing in minor political groups but have not been able to pick up steam and influence in society. They explore the EU from a middle level theory perspective, focusing on the spaces and processes of political action and strategy, and criticizing established approaches. Some of them argue that while presenting an alternative to intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism, constructivism also has its weaknesses. A major one is the absence of a theory of agency (Checkel, 1999). This has to do with a neglect of political action as situated action. The concept of situated action connects action to symbolic and material activity, or praxis, discursive action being a subcategory of situated action. A second weakness of constructivism is that, despite its stated aims to study the social fabric of European and world politics, it is only weakly social in the sociological sense of the term. Social refers more to norms, convention than social structure for instance. More radical political sociologists (Adler-Nissen & Kropp, 2015; Kauppi, 2010) argue that the social construction of reality and, in this case, of the European Union, must be linked to the social characteristics of the individuals who, through their activities, practically construct this symbolic reality. Analysis should be empirical, social, situational and political action the locus of research. European construction is, and has been for nearly half a century, in an interregnum situation, in which the old is dying but the new has not yet been born, to paraphrase Antonio Gramsci. Nobody knows for sure to what all of this is going to lead. Mainstream political scientists have been busy trying to determine ‘the nature of the beast’ (RisseKappen, 1996). They assume that the process of European integration

20

N. KAUPPI

has an essence. However, as there is only movement towards something the telos of which is unknown, what might be needed is a focus on the convergence/divergence processes and the qualitative and quantitative transformations of European integration, not the supposed essence of a beast that keeps transforming itself. Naturalism, essentialism and substantialism prevent scholars from seeing the process-aspect of European construction. A concentration on ontology detracts scholars from more complex studies on the European Union as a dynamic topography, a complex set of transformations without a telos, transformations that are institutionalized to varying degrees. Due to an intricate political bricolage, a game of affinities and complicities and to synchronization of various actions, the research locus necessary for the understanding of a particular process is not always the nation-state (intergovernmentalism) or the supranational institution (functionalism). Sometimes research might have to examine individuals who occupy specific institutional locations. From his perspective on European integration, the European Union is a topographical landscape with actors, institutions and values that are embedded in different temporal structures, actualized through situated actions. These temporal structures are tied to, for instance, institutional time, electoral cycles, terms in offices, and, forming the longue durée, identities and values. The European Union thus forms a context for political action whose chronotopic—temporal and structural, or diachronic and synchronic—properties radically differ in terms of complexity from those of national political fields. From a politician’s point of view, the European Union is a set of institutions and temporalities that transforms the ideational or symbolic context of political action tied to national or regional contexts. Transformations are not teleological, and they contain elements of system change or system substitution. Theoretically speaking, an examination of situated action can reveal through a series of qualitative transformations the formal aspects of European integration. Sociological constructivism fuses French structural theories of politics (Bourdieu, 1981) and a ‘bottom up’—approach to European integration promoted by some anthropologists and political scientists (cf. for instance Abélès, 1990). In this alternative conception of EU integration, the shaping of Europe involves most of the time low politics, not high politics and individuals and groups embedded in various institutions and activating capacities in specific situations.

2

THE POLITICAL BRICOLAGE OF EU THEORIES

21

Contrary to constructivist accounts, this construction of Europe is not only discursive or symbolic but also material, realized through innumerable actions such as, for instance, in the case of an MEP, taking the bus to one’s office in Brussels, sitting in the cafeteria of the Strasbourg hemicycle with colleagues, discussing issues with lobbyists, composing a report on a specific issue, etc. To grasp what the construction of Europe means in practice, the scholar has to go down to the field and see for him/herself what is happening and what this changing reality means for politicians engaged in a web of activities and discourses. After all, political transformations involve changes in political meaning and value. At this level, the observer might find these transformations trivial. However, they might have a determining impact on the individuals taking part in them. For instance, the first ecological parade] organized by the European Green parties at the Bastille in Paris in June 1999 took part in the construction of a ‘green Europe’ through the synchronized activities (demonstrations, games, songs, etc.) of Green social movements from several European countries, inspiring its participants to imagine new forms of transnational political cooperation. The observer might have to try to unite micro and macro levels to understand European construction in its complexity. In contrast to Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of politics (cf. for instance Bourdieu, 1981), a sociological constructivist theory of European integration emphasizes the dynamics of political life. Bourdieu’s concept of field as a relational entity does not take sufficiently into account individual and situational factors. Relations between individuals cannot be reduced to a position in a social space, and political stances to the principle of sociomimesis, according to which social positions and political opinion are homologous and the former has the upper hand over the latter. Individuals do not have common interests only based on homological social positions. Often, common experiences draw people together and create a bond that transcends other considerations. Bourdieu’s theory also neglects situational factors. A key concept in the analysis of political action is that of kairos , or the opportune moment. For Stoic philosophers like Cicero, an art like politics requires from its practitioner a sense of the occasion. According to this conception of political action, a politician adjusts his anticipations and his actions to modifications in the larger political context. Hazard and chance are essential elements in the politics of the opportune moment and in a transformation theory of European integration.

22

N. KAUPPI

The idea of situated action introduces temporality into the analysis of action. Action is not merely in an Aristotelian fashion an actualization of an individual’s potentialities but rather a complex, often conflictual process of actualization and reaction through improvization in a specific situation, a fusion of existing and emerging properties. A situation might create through windows of opportunity the possibility for certain actions which are not actualizations of a potential, but rather improvised creations of the moment. It can be difficult to separate one from another. In practice, individuals do not always activate a potential as the situation might require the bracketing of some potentialities. The idea of dynamic topography is also central to transformation theory. It keeps from Bourdieu’s theory the idea of social space as a structured entity. But in distinction to Bourdieu, and closer to Weber’s ideas of spheres of life, it emphasizes the role of non-teleological, qualitative transformations and of various temporalities. Bourdieu’s concept of field is too rigid, referring to a relatively closed arena of social activity. Through the idea of dynamic topography as an open structure, the analysis of political action is brought closer to the politician’s conception of a concrete situation (Abélès, 1990), while the scope of political action is connected to more general cleavages of often dislocated and unevenly developing institutional configurations, which are not totally reducible to the perception individuals have of a situation. The example of the Kohl-Mitterand-Delors entente is particularly revealing. With the nomination of Jacques Delors to the presidency of the Brussels Commission in 1995 at the instigation of French president François Mitterrand, the dynamic relationship between Delors, Mitterrand and German chancellor Helmut Kohl becomes, in many ways, the main engine of deepening European integration. Mitterrand’s close contact with Kohl and Kohl’s willingness to let Mitterrand take the initiative in European affairs makes the nomination of Jacques Delors to the post in Brussels possible. The synchronization of institutional time (the appointment of a new Commission) and the strategies of major players like Kohl enable Mitterrand, seeing a window of opportunity, to seize the moment and push forward major integration policies. Understanding that Socialism in one country is no longer an option, he realizes that Europe presents a political opportunity for Socialism and for France, and in this realization is on his way to becoming a European statesman. This event is simultaneous with the transformation of a subjective vision based on certain facts and a certain interpretation of reality into an objective situation, materialized in institutions and political programmes. This example highlights

2

THE POLITICAL BRICOLAGE OF EU THEORIES

23

the role of situational factors in the examination of political action and creative statecraft. Through the idea of kairos or the opportune moment, political action is related to codified, structured situations. Structured situations imply that all political resources cannot be utilized, but rather that some of these resources are ‘bracketed’. For instance, in an EU negotiation where all participants are fluent English-speakers but not native speakers, their native languages are bracketed and the possible advantage their knowledge might bring them is made void. The more a situation is structured, the more predictable behaviour will be. The concept of kairos enables the scholar to study statecraft while considering the structural and temporal constraints imposed by specific political situations (the electoral cycle, for instance) and the interpretations individuals themselves have of them. Topographical time is the basis of situated action, the opportune moment being situated at the intersection of temporal and spatial processes. Action at the opportune moment utilizes trends already existing and adds new dimensions to them. For instance, for intellectuals and social movement leaders the elections to the European Parliament present a window of opportunity for creative political action. Recent studies on EU politicization (de Wilde, 2011; Zürn, 2016) argue that the post-Maastricht era led to the politicization of EU integration via an increasing citizens’ dissatisfaction. Until then politics played a minor role in EU politics. Contrary to this account, it could be argued that European integration has been from the beginning a political process, but an unusual one. Politicization is thus not something new to EU integration but rather it is constitutive of EU integration itself. From this perspective, current accounts of politicization are inadequate for capturing the power dynamics involved in European integration. Understanding EU politicization requires a historical and actor-oriented perspective on the political. The initial politicizing momentum of integration consisted in opening a new dimension on the agenda of politics, namely the possibility of Europeanization and the denaturalization of the nation-state as a given and self-evident units of politics (see Kauppi, 2005). However, current social scientific vocabulary is insufficient to analyze this historically novel process. This possibility of engaging in creative political action beyond the nation-state can be described by developing three concepts, ‘politisation’ as a passive form and precondition of politicization, ‘politicisation’ as rendering something political, and ‘politification’

24

N. KAUPPI

as politicization through depoliticization (for a slightly different understanding of the concept see Duclos, 1961). The novelty of the initial politicizing momentum represents a radical break from doing politics at the ‘European’ level or at the state level. It tears down the closed shop character of ‘national’ politics as well as the traditional divide between foreign and domestic politics (politicization). While EU integration thus has been political from the beginning, at all levels, governing elites (academics included through theories like neofunctionalism) have presented it as being fundamentally non-political, for political reasons (politification). This is the second novelty of the process. Subjective political agency plays an important but neglected role in all institutional dynamics (a classical analysis is found in Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Weber, 1946). Taking this into account requires that political institutions are not presented as if they were free from human activity, as some intergovernmentalists or neofunctionalists do, thereby detaching the individual from institutions and transforming either one into a universal, context-free carrier of rationality. In this scenario, ordinary citizens, and their perceptions and evaluations of political reality (lay theories), are at most uninvited guest stars that interfere, with their rioting as with the Gilets jaunes or in terms of electoral behaviour (or more precisely its lack in European Parliament elections), with ‘normal’ political activity. Epistemological choices have far-reaching political implications. The objectification (they are like this and do not change) and personification (the institution is reduced to an individual) of political institutions are challenges for political science. Through these frameworks, the relationship between the EU and its policies is presented as being natural, inevitable and unproblematic. Options are considered as being illusions. However, there are always alternatives. Emerging theories rely on some affinities with politicized leftist Eurosceptic views of the EU. In French politics, for instance, these views have been expressed by former presidential candidate, Socialist politician Benoît Hamon. With the help of economists like Thomas Piketty, he sought to develop an alternative economic and political theory of the EU. Hamon got 6.2% of the votes in the 2017 presidential elections, and soon after disappeared from the French political scene. Increasingly visible EU lay theories are linked to nationalism and protectionism. Public discourse on ‘le grand remplacement ’ (Camus), that is a population being replaced by one or several other populations, has also picked up steam with Eric Zemmour’s increasingly aggressive media interventions. Marine

2

THE POLITICAL BRICOLAGE OF EU THEORIES

25

Le Pen’s Rassemblement National provides an electoral backing for these ideas that are today EU critical but do not reject the EU altogether like when Jean Marie Le Pen headed the party. For the moment the links with academic theories are weak, although in France Marion Maréchal, Marine Le Pen’s niece, has created in Lyon a university-level institution that aims at training future right-wing leaders. This activity might lead to a codification of right-wing academic theories.

Strategies of Delegitimation Constant theoretical warfare takes place between different rationalizations, theories, ideas and concepts on the one hand and their producers and users on the other hand. Politicized, integration critical theories such as some sociological and political approaches, including Marxist approaches (cf. for instance van Apeldoorn, 2002), are considered by mainstream scholars as obscure (Bomberg et al., 2008), illegitimate or both. According to some visible intergovernmentalist scholars (Moravcsik, 2002), they are not even credible scientific theories in the ‘real’ sense of the word. In contrast, from the perspective of some of the theories that challenge the status quo, established theories of the EU like neofunctionalism are not political theories or political science theories. The rationale for this critique is that they do not take as their starting point processes of political action which is the sine qua non condition for the existence of politics (Kauppi et al., 2016). From a politicizing perspective, politics does not exist without the questioning of current doxa and established interests. European democracy itself is dependent on this vigorous questioning and search for political alternatives. Instead of this, it is argued, due to their success established theories have monopolized the political imagination and prevent theoretical alternatives from developing. Emergent theories seek to redefine the rules of the competition by putting into question the very core beliefs of established theories, that is that they depoliticize European integration that they claim can be dealt with without democratic politics. Established theories and their protagonists use different strategies to assert their position and prevent critical alternatives from developing. These strategies aim at defining the features of theories that they consider important. The first, perhaps most common strategy is the monopolization strategy that aims to isolate politics into one sector of the EU, a

26

N. KAUPPI

sector monopolized by certain groups and their interests. Intergovernmentalism as a theory legitimizes the appropriation of EU politics by high-level national political leaders or executive politicians (Moravcsik, 2002). In this framework, political decisions are their prerogative and intergovernmentalism the best theory to explain them. Ontologically speaking the main actors are government leaders, and less relevant are supranational bureaucrats in EU institutions, NGOs or social movements, or regional and local politicians. This approach was originally developed by political scientists like Stanley Hoffmann at Harvard University, a world-dominant institution of higher education and research on Europe. A second theoretical strategy is that of depoliticization. The aim here is to depoliticize EU-level political decisions for instance through politification, that is by presenting politicized EU-level decisions as being depoliticized (Kauppi et al., 2016). Politification has been the primary modality of EU integration central in functionalist and neofunctionalist theories (White, 2003). It rimes with the way the European Commission sees its role, ‘natural’, ‘legitimate’, involving no partisanship. A third strategy is that of delegitimation, to delegitimize the search for alternatives by labelling these as populism, or by underlining their secondary character to EU integration. Delegitimation signals those alternatives represent an illegitimate point of view (Urbinati, 2016), even though for instance populism has always been an integral part of democracy and that it is being mainstreamed in EU politics. All established theories and other ‘theories’ such as multi-level governance seek to consolidate the legitimacy of their world view and to prevent alternative, political approaches from developing. Challengers argue that EU integration has been political from the beginning and that established theories have helped create the EU that exists today. It has never been a depoliticized process, as established theories maintain. More open political and democratic processes have been stifled by attributing a monopoly to executive political networks and agents that circulate in these as intergovernmentalism has done or by isolating alternative theories by arguing that they are disconnected from the real power relations in society. This theoretical closure is not unconnected to the current reinforcement of extreme right and leftist political approaches that aims at dismantling the EU in its current form. Monopolization, politification and delegitimation together provide the theoretical strategies used to prevent imagining other realities and democratic alternatives.

2

THE POLITICAL BRICOLAGE OF EU THEORIES

27

On Some Constraints in Theory Development The current academic doxa has developed symbiotically with European integration. Starting from the 1950s, functionalism and neofunctionalism and starting from the mid-1960s intergovernmentalism are approaches that evolved in relation to the study of international relations and political economy. Developed by American scholars some of which were originally from Europe, they provided politicians with powerful legitimation discourses. Integration evolved ‘naturally’ as in neofunctionalism or under the stewardship of executive politicians as in intergovernmentalism. Until the 1980s, the resulting quasi-monopoly prevented alternative EU theories such as constructivism from developing. But as academic theories were intertwined with key political and material interests, these obstacles were not just academic. Political reality fitted with these two theories, one emphasizing the role of supranational actors and the other that of national leaders. But once the EU expanded quickly in the 1980s with new policy areas, member-states and a new modality of decisionmaking, the Open Method of Coordination, these theories reflected less well changing circumstances and evolving interests. One effect of the dominance of these theories is that the EU is still seen as being an entity that is separated from the nation-state and ‘ordinary politics’. Not fitting into existing, common-sense categories that separate the national from the international, the EU is ‘out there’. The EU is both inside and outside the European nation-state, simultaneously indoors and outdoors. It is both international and national politics. It is neither a bird nor a fish, an ‘unidentified political object’ to use Jacques Delors’s coinage. This leads to a fundamental classification problem in lay theories that prevents the thorough politicization of the EU. Furthermore, since the beginning the promoters of European integration have mixed nation-state terminology with terminology developed in some memberstates, but not in all. Examples are ‘high authority’ (haute autorité) and ‘Commissioner’ (Commissaire), drawn from French bureaucratic vocabulary. This way the promoters and inventors of European integration like Jean Monnet sought to establish a conceptual and political distance between European integration and the nation-state. However, paradoxically 70 years of integration has led to the fact that the EU has increasingly embraced nation-state terminology and symbols, the national anthem, the flag and so on. The EU flag and member-state flags co-exist. One could

28

N. KAUPPI

say that the EU as a supranational entity is the highest achievement of the nation-state as an organizational political model. The second reason that partly explains the strength of the current depoliticized doxa relates to a widespread modernization myth, a kind of political catching up, which is the same type of mechanism as economic catch-up in explaining economic development. Influential interests have presented EU membership as a rare good that everybody wanted, the apex and benchmark of political development. The EU as a project had, despite its shortcomings, simply monopolized the political imagination, hijacked the future. The only alternative on the horizon is nationalism, which is current being revived in the form of right-wing populism in several member-states. EU-sceptics were and still are quickly branded in public debate as, first opponents of the EU, and then as retarded individuals who are simply not up to date on events. This unfortunate polarization means that any critique of the EU is taken as a sign of opposition to the EU. It follows from this polarized political and conceptual set up that at this moment and despite Brexit it would indeed be against ‘common sense’ if France wanted to seriously exit the EU or if Serbia for instance would not want to eventually join it. In the case of ascendant countries, this macro-level mechanism of ‘anticipated synchronization’ reminds us of bifurcation mechanism in world culture theory: the pressures to adopt certain political forms of organization such as EU norms are enormous, so that integration distinguishes certain sections of the national political order from other sectors. An extreme example is the so-called Potemkin façade effect. Potemkin, Catherine the Great’s advisor, created an artificial ‘model village’ which he presented to the empress. It was supposed to convince Catherine that Russia was indeed a bountiful society where everyone lived happily. Potemkin sought to create the impression that his artificial reality was true reality. Similarly, the pressures to be part of the EU are such that creating the illusion of integration (similar institutions with similar policies) is a must, irrespective of a genuine desire to belong to it. Another reason why it is difficult or nearly impossible to imagine alternative lay theories is that various powerful political and economic interests are tied to the EU. These steer the scope and depth of public discussion and lay theories. For instance, the ownership of national daily newspapers

2

THE POLITICAL BRICOLAGE OF EU THEORIES

29

and various political pressures influence the ways a relatively free European press must consider the interests of the political establishment and its legitimation discourses. This was particularly evident in June 2013 with the so-called Cahuzac case in France. The issue concerned European tax havens and the EU’s efforts to control them. The mainstream press (Le Monde, Libération, Le Figaro …) had for months failed to seriously investigate the allegations according to which the Socialist Budget Minister Jérôme Cahuzac had a secret bank account in Switzerland. The independent internet publication Mediapart instead continued publishing on the question for several weeks, with the result that finally Cahuzac had to resign, admitting publicly that he really had a secret account in Switzerland. The mutual interdependence of politics and publicity rarely leads to outright censorship and more commonly to self-censorship. To this problem of the freedom of the press must be added the relative isolation of EU decisionmaking. In the Council, politicians negotiate behind closed doors and report on these negotiations in their member countries. These stories do not always coincide. The danger is that the person speaking freely stands out from the crowd and even a slight deviation is labelled as Eurosceptic, a critique of ‘common sense’. Many political careers are directly dependent on the EU, which has become a ‘political war booty’ of member states (cf. Kauppi, 2005 for analysis). For instance, in Finland public discussions revolve around issues such as who is going to follow Jutta Urpilainen as Finland’s ‘representative’ in the EU Commission. And then what will happen to her, will she become Prime Minister or perhaps land on a major international post? What about the European Parliament? Among the Finnish political class, a seat in the European Parliament, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) are highly valued, for financial and political reasons. The EIB has seen on its board several important Finnish politicians such as the Bank of Finland’s Erkki Liikanen and the President of the Republic Sauli Niinistö. The problem is that critical discussion does not contribute to these political careers. In other words, scholarly independence and theoretical endeavours do not back the interests of the political establishment and their definition of the national interest. Therefore, integration critical politicized discourse and theory is not welcome. The dominance of these established interests has led to the absence of public discussion, while official economic thinking is still

30

N. KAUPPI

dominated by a variation of neo-classical theory, leaving little room for alternative approaches. The third reason why it is difficult to develop critical public debate and lay theories that do not fall into nationalism on the EU is dependent on the EU itself. In other words, the meta-language on the EU reproduced by the media is dependent on the object language, that is the EU’s and its institutions own discourses through policy documents and public statements. The distance between the two is often non-existent, and in addition, these two levels are continuously mixed. In some cases, such as the ECB, information on decision-making is impossible to obtain. To paraphrase Jürgen Habermas, the knowledge interest which is typical of scholarly work is mixed with the practical interest which is typical of government and politics (Habermas, 1972). Or, to use Kant’s concepts (Kant, 1935/1789), it is very difficult to distinguish between the freedom of independent knowledge and the authority which seeks to limit it. This can be seen in the EU’s science policy. The EU’s financial backing of research almost always serves political goals. What is financed is not so much independent study than reporting. For example, within the framework of studies funded by INTERREG the condition for funding is that they serve certain explicit goals. All EU funding is not of this type, but today pressures to instrumentalize science are great. This is reflected in for instance the fate of the European Science Foundation (ESF). A pioneer organization funded by national scientific agencies, it’s parameters of action and budget have been cut down. Today the main bulk of its operations have been transferred to a new, Brussels-based organization Science Europe which is more tightly controlled by the main funders.

To Conclude In this chapter, I explored EU theorizing in terms of a bricolage of lay theories, common-sense constructions of politics and academic theories. I have argued that the perspective scholars have had on EU theories has been too narrow. EU theories are not just about theory, they partake variably in the construction of political reality by legitimizing and naturalizing certain of its elements. The extent of this performative power depends on the influence of their carriers and broader future confirmability that crucially includes links with lay theories. The status of established academic theories like intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism partly depends on elected affinities with established

2

THE POLITICAL BRICOLAGE OF EU THEORIES

31

depoliticized, pro-European perceptions of the EU in various European and national political circles and in the mainstream media. These need to be further studied. With the recent polarization of public spheres EU critical lay theories have become more visible. While the effects of these real-life changes to academic theories are for the moment not visible, if political polarization persists and is institutionalized existing theories might be faced with increasing competition. A possible development could be that alternative, neonationalist academic theories would see the light of day, challenging neofunctionalism and intergovernmentalism and thus impacting the ideascape of EU theorizing.

References Abélès, M. (1990). La vie quotidienne au Parlement européen. Hachette. Adler-Nissen, R., & Kropp, K. (2015). A sociology of knowledge approach to European integration: Four analytical principles. Journal of European Integration, 37 (2), 155–173. Barroso, J. M. (2010, January 3). Europe’s rising global role. The Guardian. Beckert, J. (2016). Imagined futures. Harvard University Press. Berger, J., & Luckmann, T. (1966). The social construction of reality. Penguin. Bomberg, E., Peterson, R., & Stubb, A. (2008). The European Union: How does it work? Oxford University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice. Cambridge University Press. Bourdieu, P. (1981). La représentation politique. Éléments pour une théorie du champ politique. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 36–37 , 3–24. Checkel, J. (1999). Social construction and integration. Journal of European Public Policy, 6(4), 545–560. Desrosieres, A. (1998). The politics of large numbers: A history of statistical reasoning. Harvard University Press. De Wilde, P. (2011). No polity for old politics? A framework for analyzing the politicization of European integration. Journal of European Integration, 33, 559–575. Gaxie, D., Hubé, N., de Lassalle, M., & Rowell, J. (Eds.). (2013). L’Europe des Européens: Enquête comparative sur les perceptions de l’Europe. Economica. Google Scholar. (2021). Accessed November 15, 2021. Habermas, J. (1972). Knowledge and human interests. Beacon Press. Kant, E. (1935). Le conflit des facultés en trois sections. Vrin. Kauppi, N. (2000). The politics of embodiment: Habits, power and Pierre Bourdieu’s theory. Peter Lang. Kauppi, N. (2005). Democracy, social resources and political power in the European Union. Manchester University Press.

32

N. KAUPPI

Kauppi, N. (2010). The political ontology of European integration. Comparative European Politics, 8(1), 19–36. Kauppi, N. (2014). Knowledge warfare: Social scientists as operators of global governance. International Political Sociology, 8(3), 330–332. Kauppi, N., & Madsen, R. M. (2008). Institutions et acteurs: Rationalité, réflexivité et analyse de l’UE. Politique Européenne, 2, 87–113. Kauppi, N., Palonen, K., & Wiesner, C. (2016). The politification and politicisation of the EU. Redescriptions, 19(1), 72–90. Kauppi, N., Zilliacus, K., & Oleart, A. (Forthcoming). Curl, Nudge, Push, or Decree? Public values and government responses to COVID-19 in Finland, Sweden, France and Spain. Journal of Contemporary European Studies. Keynes, J. M. (1936). General theory of employment, interest and money. Harvest Harcourt Brace. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1962). La pensée sauvage. Plon. Manners, I. (2000). Normative power Europe: A contradiction in terms? Copenhagen Peace Research Institute. Merton, R. (1968). Social structure and social order. The Free Press. Moravcsik, A. (2002, March 4). If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Europe’s rhetoric and America’s fear. Newsweek. Olivi, B. (1999). L’Europe difficile. Gallimard. Palonen, K. (2003). Four times of politics: Policy, polity, politicking and politicization. Alternatives, 38, 171–186. Pedler, E., & Cheyronnaud, J. (Eds.). (2013). Théories ordinaires. Editions EHESS. Peterson, J. (2008). Jose Manuel Barroso: Political scientist, ECPR member. European Political Science, 7 (1), 64–77. Pew Research Center. (2019). European public opinion three decades after the fall of Communism. https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/10/15/eur opean-public-opinion-three-decades-after-the-fall-of-communism/. Accessed November 15, 2021. Piketty, T. (2013). Le capital au XXIème siècle. Seuil. Rapeli, L. (2014). Comparing local, national and EU knowledge: The ignorant public reassessed. Scandinavian Political Studies, 37 (4), 428–446. Risse-Kappen, T. (1996). Exploring the nature of the beast: International relations theory and comparative policy analysis meet the European Union. Journal of Common Market Studies, 34(1), 53–80. Rosemond, B. (1999). Theories of European integration. Routledge. Statham, P., & Trenz, H.-J. (2013). The politicization of Europe. Contesting the constitution in the mass media. Routledge. Strand, M., & Lizardo, O. (2015). Beyond world images: Belief as embodied action in the world. Sociological Theory, 33(1), 44–70. Urbinati, N. (2016). Democracy disfigured. Columbia University Press.

2

THE POLITICAL BRICOLAGE OF EU THEORIES

33

van Apeldoorn, B. (2002). Transnational class strategy and European integration. Routledge. Varoufakis, Y. (2017). Adults in the room: My battle with the European and American deep establishment. Farrar, Strauss and Giroux. Weber, M. (1946). From Max Weber: Essays in sociology. Routledge. White, J. (2003). Theory guiding practice: The neofunctionalists and the Hallstein EEC Commission. Journal of European Integration History, 9(1), 111–131. Wiener, A., & Diez, T. (2009). European integration theories. Oxford University Press. Wiesner, C. (2019). Imagining Europe. Palgrave. Zürn, M. (2016). Opening up Europe: Next steps in politicisation research. West European Politics, 39, 164–182.

CHAPTER 3

National Politics and Transnational Feminisms in Early Twentieth-Century Europe: Perspectives from the Francophone Sphere Anne Epstein

For Justice [Pro Justitia] Amongst the numerous ‘burning questions’ of our day, looming over our generation like the Riddle of the Sphinx, none is of greater importance than the problem of the moral and social relations between the sexes.

Parts of this chapter were originally presented in a session on ‘European Feminists’ International Cooperation, Late 19th–Early 20th Centuries: Limits, Meanings, Outcomes at the 12th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women in 2002. I am grateful to the audience and session participants for their invaluable feedback on that presentation. A. Epstein (B) University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 N. Kauppi and K. Palonen (eds.), Rhetoric and Bricolage in European Politics and Beyond, Rhetoric, Politics and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98632-2_3

35

36

A. EPSTEIN

The reciprocal rights and duties of man and woman, the obligations and prerogatives of each in the family and in society, and the regulation of their relations of coexistence: these are issues vital to the community as a whole and to each of its members. The well-being or misfortune of individuals, the prosperity or decline of nations, and the very future of the human race depend in large part on their resolution. (Revue de morale sociale, 1899a, 1–4. Transl. AE)

In public discussion today, feminism, as both a political concept and form of civic engagement, can seem to take on a timeless quality. Problems and remedies identified during what is often referred to as the ‘first wave’ (For a critical perspective on the metaphor of feminist “waves” cf. Offen 2000, 25) of pro-woman activism in the late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century West—such as international trafficking in women and children (then known as ‘the white slave trade’), reproductive rights and depopulation, violence against women and children, sexual morality, education, gender roles, and the economic, civil, and political inequality of the sexes—continue to grab media attention over a century later, reinforcing feminism’s apparent transhistoricity. Although the terms of the debates and the specific geopolitical, social, and cultural contexts that produced them have changed radically in what we today call the Global North, and white Western women’s main struggle then—to attain full legal citizenship—no longer tops the feminist agenda in Europe and the Americas, securing and retaining the fundamental rights and freedoms they are entitled to remains a priority for all women today. The continued repercussions of the #MeToo movement, together with the persistence of intersecting inequalities everywhere makes feminist engagement appear all the more necessary, timeless and universal. Yet the critical analyses, debates, concepts, and myriad forms of political agency that we identify today with feminism do have a history. Or rather, histories. And although those histories have arguably always been ‘transnational’—a contested concept which some reject as inappropriate or anachronistic for describing anything other than the globalized, postcolonial, postnational, digitized, post-1990s world—like many of the problems feminisms have addressed, the entangled ideas and forms of agency it encompasses have always been shaped, mediated, and appropriated or adopted in accordance with national and local political priorities, social conditions, and norms. Several scholars have offered different

3

NATIONAL POLITICS AND TRANSNATIONAL FEMINISMS IN EARLY …

37

perspectives on the uses and abuses of the concept of ‘transnational’ (cf. for instance DuBois et al., 2005; Moghadam, 2005; Offen, 2014). Patricia Clavin (2005) offers a more general reflection that does not focus specifically on women and gender, while others use the term transnational feminism to refer specifically to the increasingly institutionalized nature of gender equality, and policy, since the 1970s and 1980s (cf. for instance Blanchard et al., 2018). This chapter explores the strategies used by a diverse group of French-speaking women and men, proponents of expanded citizenship for women, to create common ground among emerging national feminisms at the turn of the twentieth century. This specific effort to ‘transnationalize’ so-called first-wave feminism, I will argue here, can be seen as an example of what anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss 1992 (Oeuvres, Ed. La Pléiade, 2009) identified as bricolage, of a conceptual as well as practical nature: that is, a strategically improvised mobilization and repurposing of existing intellectual networks, actions, expertise, and of course, ideas. At a time when both nationalism and internationalism were at a height, the rise of so-called first-wave feminisms benefited from the expansion of gender-inclusive intellectual networks and international political and cultural spaces—such as Universal Expositions, scientific and cultural associations, and political movements—that encouraged knowledge exchange and practical cooperation across borders. Focusing on the French-speaking sphere (a language that continued to be widely spoken by educated elites at the time), I look at how national politics, shared values and social ideals, and the recognition of expertise across borders conditioned the incorporation of nation-specific information about women and gender within evolving feminist discourses. Prosopographic analysis of intersecting French, Finnish, and Swiss intellectual networks sheds light on the social constitution of expertise in gender issues and on feminism as a broad spectrum of debates that took specific national forms. Context [was] all, to paraphrase feminist political theorist Mary G. Dietz (1998), and at the turn of the twentieth century, as I will argue here, the constitution of first-wave feminism as a trans-border ideology and movement exemplified conceptual and practical bricolage and provided new avenues for women’s political agency. However, national political imperatives and values soon imposed limits on the opportunities transnationalism had briefly presented.

38

A. EPSTEIN

Mobilizing Feminist Knowledge: Limits and Possibilities for Women Historians of international feminism such as Bonnie Anderson, Margaret McFadden, Karen Offen, Leila Rupp, Anne Cova, Françoise Thébaud, and numerous others have demonstrated that both networking and creating collective identity were crucial in establishing and maintaining international feminist networks and organizations. Western feminists began to forge transnational and transatlantic networks of personal contacts well before they created a formal infrastructure for promoting women’s interests and rights in the late nineteenth century (Gubin & Van Molle, 2005; McFadden, 1999; Offen, 2000; Rupp, 1998; Women’s History Review, 2010; Anderson, 2001). As national and international structures took shape, and as women organized to promote other aims such as peace, social purity, or the expansion of education and professional training, feminists and their allies, particularly activist scholars and educators, began to use international publications, associations, congresses, and other forums to turn empirical information about women and gender in national contexts into a body of specifically feminist knowledge, including information about the feminist movement itself. By increasing public awareness of women’s shared lot and of feminist activities across the world, they sought to constitute a transnational community of interest that in turn became the international women’s movement’s raison d’être. In laying the intellectual foundations for further practical cooperation, they also reinforced existing international feminist institutions, thereby ‘constructing internationalism’ (Rupp, 1994, 1998). Yet as timeless and borderless as the problems feminisms address may appear, recent scholarship and public discussion have also made clear how difficult it still is to speak of feminism as ‘global’, whether referring to contemporary society or the past. During the nineteenth century, partly in response to women’s increased presence in the workforce, and the moral and social problems raised by industrialization, European and North American social and natural scientists and intellectuals, including some women, began to turn their attention to the relations between the sexes, the family, maternity and childbirth, home economics, consumption, social organization, forms of inequality, sexuality, health, reproduction, and the natural world both in Europe and beyond. The result was a growing body of empirical social research that could be deployed in what historian of feminism Karen Offen has called the ‘knowledge

3

NATIONAL POLITICS AND TRANSNATIONAL FEMINISMS IN EARLY …

39

wars’ between politicians and reformers promoting different solutions to social problems, as electorates expanded (cf. Offen, 2000). Yet while the production and circulation of both knowledge and ideology were growing increasingly transnational, political decisions and legislation remained the province of the nation-state. When activists tried to integrate arguments and strategies from other national and even colonial contexts within their demands for improvements in women’s legal, economic, and political status that still appeared radical or politically untenable at home, they came up against the limits of the ‘transnational’. Even the existence of international feminist organizations, a body of critical thought about women’s place in mostly Western societies, and a imagined community of interest across borders was not enough to ‘transnationalize’ feminism as a complex of shared principles or to build a unified political movement. Participants in the reformist intellectual project described in the pages that follow aimed to weave together both francophone and other national narratives of societal problem-solving, legal remedies, political agency, and moral reform into a transnational conversation about ending specific forms of gender injustice at the turn of the twentieth century. Despite the shared worldview of the collaborators of this short-lived effort, the mixed results they obtained illustrate particularly well both the potential and the conceptual and practical impediments to the emergence of transnational feminism in the early twentieth century and beyond. Placing National Feminist Debates in a Transnational Context: The Revue de morale sociale [ Social Ethics Review] (1899–1903) As a Case Study of Intellectual Bricolage In the March 1900 issue of the French-language Revue de morale sociale [RMS or Social Ethics Review], Louis Wuarin, professor of sociology at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, reviewed a work about the unsuccessful crusade of Swiss abolitionists to end state regulation of prostitution in the canton of Geneva. In his article, Wuarin compared the defeat of the Geneva referendum to the notorious Dreyfus case in France, which had mobilized intellectuals to defend a Jewish army officer wrongly convicted of spying for Germany (RMS, 1900a). In France, ‘the very bases of morality had crumbled. The idea of respect for justice and truth no longer had any power over minds; it was replaced by respect for the judged thing’ (12). In Geneva, meanwhile, ‘one saw even educated people, occupying certain positions, enjoying a certain respectability, ready to make excuses

40

A. EPSTEIN

for anything the league of regulators might do: all the violence … all the systematic untruths, all the denials of justice. There were even those who declared that the interests of public health were above morality’ (13). For Wuarin, the Geneva affair and the Dreyfus affair, as well as Finland’s valiant struggle to maintain its autonomy, the Boer War, and the massacre of the Armenians all reflected the worldwide crisis in moral values: the Finns, Genevan prostitutes, and Alfred Dreyfus were all victims of grave moral wrong, as were the Boers and the massacred Armenians; and French writer Émile Zola, anti-regulation feminists, and other concerned public intellectuals appeared as martyrs with justice and moral right on their side. Professor Wuarin obviously felt confident that the implications of his skilled piece of bricolage would be immediately legible to his review’s enlightened, cosmopolitan readership. They would make the right mental leap from a miscarriage of justice grounded in ethnic prejudice in France, to the genocide in the Ottoman empire and the imminent threat to Finnish national sovereignty, and finally to gender injustice in a Swiss canton. Wuarin thus rendered the last issue—his own hobby horse— comprehensible to an international audience by presenting it as part of a familiar worldwide phenomenon, moral crisis. Genevan readers saw their pressing local concern take on worldwide significance, while comparison made the broader moral implications of a specific problem of gender injustice clear to feminist readers and revealed its feminist dimension to less convinced subscribers concerned primarily with moral reform. What Professor Wuarin had done, in effect, was to create a new, global context for a local concern, which in turn became part of a larger transnational phenomenon: gender injustice. From 1899 to 1903, the French-language Revue de Morale Sociale served as a vehicle for transforming local and national information and discussions about the moral and social dimensions of gender relations into transnational feminist knowledge. Edited in Switzerland, its correspondents included both men and women of diverse politics who claimed to share the broad aim of eradicating gender injustice. Published by the Parisian publishing house, Giard et Brière the Revue de Morale Sociale was not a strictly Francophone, feminist, or abolitionist project despite the predominance of French and French-speaking Swiss editorial staff, founding board members and contributors, and numerous veterans of the campaign to eradicate state-regulated prostitution among its founding members. According to Swiss historian Anne-Marie Käppeli, the review’s internationalism and feminism set it apart from earlier Swiss abolitionist

3

NATIONAL POLITICS AND TRANSNATIONAL FEMINISMS IN EARLY …

41

publications such as the Revue de Morale Progressive, an enterprise more clearly focused on moral reform and the abolitionist crusade (Käppeli, 1987, 1990). If it initially seemed to foreground the sexual double standard and the issue of state-regulated prostitution against which many of its Swiss and French founding members had earlier campaigned, the review ultimately developed into a space where contrasting and/or controversial international points of view could be presented. Although texts by international contributors often seemed geared towards enlightening Francophone readers about feminism ‘elsewhere’, publishing in a review of this kind also gave these foreign correspondents a chance to publicize their causes more widely and to contribute to the construction of a transnational feminist narrative by connecting it to emergent pan-European discourses of human rights and national sovereignty. In an era of polemics about the omnipresence of English, it is easy to forget that 100 years ago French was still the dominant international language, particularly among educated elites. Then, publishing an article in an international French-language review should have provided excellent publicity. Creating international feminist knowledge in a publication like the RMS meant making local and national information and discourses intelligible and legitimate before an international audience. Much more than a question of simple translation from one language to another, however, this meant articulation of a common programme, careful editorial choices, interculturally competent collaborators, and the construction of international feminist expertise to provide legitimacy. Both feminism and internationalism were integral to the review’s programme from the start. But even at the time, not all readers would have connected the journal’s title to feminism. The semantic field covered by the term morale sociale—translated by the review’s editors as ‘social ethics’ in a survey of its international board members in 1899—was much broader than the issues the review’s collaborators aimed to address, what they termed ‘the intersexual problem’, and was subject to local interpretation. Morale sociale had been for some time been a subject of debate for French politicians and intellectuals seeking a new secular Republican ethos to head off the society’s moral crisis. In this sense, the title represented a smart editorial choice, but the link with feminism would not have been automatic without other contextual indicators. The review’s editors thus faced two challenges: to cobble together a programme which reconciled the sometimes divergent interests of its international correspondents by linking

42

A. EPSTEIN

feminism with both moral and social improvement, and to create a body of international knowledge which reflected this programme. The editors used various strategies to construct an international vision. The programmatic statement in the first issue of the review clearly defined their priorities and perspective as moral, social, internationalist, and feminist. By morale sociale, they meant the moral and social relations between the sexes: ‘the reciprocal rights and duties of man and woman, the obligations and prerogatives of each in the family and in society, and the regulation of their relations of coexistence’. Not only were these issues ‘vital for the collectivity as a whole and for each of its members’ but ‘the well-being or misfortune of individuals, the prosperity or decadence of nations and the very future of the human race depended on their successful resolution’. At the core of the problem lay the ‘injustice of which woman is a victim’ which the sexual double standard fed. This injustice was both against nature and a threat to the global social order. Feminism, very broadly conceived, was part of its remedy (RMS, 1899a, 1–2). The review proposed a scientific and reformist approach: ‘on the one hand, in-depth study of everything concerning moral and social relations between the sexes; on the other hand the search for the best solutions to put into practice and their enunciation in the clearest and most precise terms’ (RMS, 1899a, 2). In the name of justice, the editors later affirmed having ‘adopted a scientific and critical method in the study of the great problem we address; for we believe that social science, like the exact sciences, cannot do without strict examination and method. Just because morals, sentiment, honour and conscience are at stake in these delicate questions doesn’t mean we can be content with vague affirmations, a priori precepts or oratorical ranting’ (RMS, 1903, 245–246). With Pro Justitia—For Justice—as their motto, the review’s founders gave readers a clear indication of its ideological positioning. Questions of justice and human rights were priorities to which Francophone readers would have been especially sensitive in the era of the Dreyfus affair. Though claiming openness to diverse perspectives, the review placed particular emphasis on the principle of the same moral standard for both sexes, ‘respect for the human person who must never be envisioned as a simple means for others’ and ‘recognition and guarantee of the rights of woman, as well as the rights of man, both having to be equally free and responsible’ (RMS, 1899a, 3).

3

NATIONAL POLITICS AND TRANSNATIONAL FEMINISMS IN EARLY …

43

To give legitimacy to their programme, the editors rounded up an internationally recognized group of supporters whose credentials could easily be repurposed. The opening issue featured a four-page list of the review’s international founding members, their professional qualifications, and place of residence. Because gender injustice ostensibly had both social and moral causes and the review’s aim was to examine the problem scientifically, the supporters of the project must exhibit social scientific, reformist, or feminist credentials. The editors made clear that the group must also include members of both sexes: hence, the editors this described the 166 founding members ‘[an] imposing group of men and women, all thinkers and workers, filling for the most part some important social function, who responded enthusiastically to our appeal’ (RMS, 1903, 246). The diversity of this groupe d’initiative and the review’s correspondents also reaffirmed the vast social dimensions and infinite implications of the problem of gender injustice. To solve it required expertise from all domains that could possibly have impact on it, from biology to pedagogy to law. The names of these sponsors boosted the credibility of the opinions and knowledge presented in the review; they also reinforced the legitimacy of the appeal it was making to its public. And as women suffered the most from the injustices that derived from flawed gender relations, social and moral conditions, feminists appeared as experts whose endorsement the project absolutely required for legitimacy (on women and expertise during this period cf. Epstein, 2011). Thus, the programmatic statement set the stage. At once a moral, social, and feminist issue, gender injustice became a question of human rights that must be addressed scientifically. Presenting themselves as scientists and reformers, the editors introduced feminism as a viable response to their conception of gender injustice. With an impressive roster of correspondents and supporters from Europe and beyond, their publication was well placed for analysis of a problem they had defined as universal, not national or cultural. The editorial choices and packaging of the review guided readers towards a particular understanding of feminism and transformed the review itself into a space of international exchange. Detailed reports on international congresses and organizations foregrounded those sections or events deemed relevant to the review’s programme. The divergent views revealed in surveys of international correspondents reinforced the review’s claims to openness. Reviews of plays and literary works with

44

A. EPSTEIN

sexual morality and gender relations as their themes served as springboards for trans-border conversation about these issues. Publishing in translation texts and opinions of heroic figures like Josephine Butler, who had spearheaded the international campaign against state-regulated prostitution, also helped define a perspective. Book reviews of foreign language works enhanced French-speaking readers’ awareness of the international dimensions of gender injustice and feminism by exposing them to new, un-translated research. Articles and reports by foreign correspondents on legal developments, women’s movements, and social conditions in their countries both informed readers and reinforced the impression that gender injustice was a transnational problem that required international cooperation to resolve. Like other social scientific publications during the period, every issue of the review ended with a list of books received, displaying for the reader the vast array of knowledge being produced about gender relations and suggesting its broader implications, while at the same time defining the review’s own brief. The book review (‘Bibliographie’) and ‘books received’ sections are particularly interesting if we read the review as an endeavour to define a new field of international social knowledge. Lengthy reviews enabled authors to present works on aspects of gender relations that could not otherwise be accommodated within by the review’s existing subject structure. In contrast to the articles and other regular features, these reviews and the lists of books received indicated the outer limits of ‘relevant’ knowledge about on gender injustice. They also reveal how those sending books interpreted the RMS mission. Juxtaposing different kinds of texts and features, focusing on diverse subjects and different parts of the world from a range of disciplinary perspectives within the same publication was a way of creating a new, international context for this mostly local and national feminist knowledge.

An International Division of Labour? The rhetorical strategies of contributors from different countries were also important in creating this context. As the article by Louis Wuarin suggests, skilful writers could use internationally familiar points of reference to help cosmopolitan RMS readers interpret national and local issues. They then created unity by repeating themes from the programme. Progress, both moral and social, appeared as a positive value; balance must be achieved between freedom and social responsibility, individual

3

NATIONAL POLITICS AND TRANSNATIONAL FEMINISMS IN EARLY …

45

rights and the common good, state intervention and individual liberty; and truth and education were the means to more justice. Only solidarity between men and women, not a war between the sexes, would lead to social progress. Finally, improvements in the social, political, and legal position of women were necessary on both moral and social grounds, despite disagreement on the means to achieve them. The editors chose contributors who possessed the social resources and cultural credentials to transform national debates into a transnationally legible narrative. This meant cross-culturally literate intermediates to send, receive, interpret, and contextualize international information. Like the founding members who lent their reputations to the enterprise, the contributors to the review must be recognized as legitimate messengers. But in addition to having authority, non-Francophone contributors had to know how to make their cases to the Francophone audience, whereas French-speaking writers had to present their own national concerns as part of an international discourse. In the right hands, national specificities served to promote internationalism. Here, the national ‘division of labour’ among Swiss, Finnish, and French collaborators is illuminating. Swiss contributions centred, like Wuarin’s, on the problem of sexual morality, reflecting the background of Swiss associates in social Christianity and Josephine Butler’s Geneva-based International Federation for the Abolition of Regulated Prostitution. French-speaking Swiss affiliates, still smarting from the defeat of the Geneva referendum, shared with French Protestant contributors an interest in combating the double standard in sexual morality. The feminists among them, like editors Emma Pieczynska and Camille Vidart, saw in suffragism and the impending reform of the Swiss Civil Code hope for combatting the real solution to the problem of gender injustice. Four of the review’s five founding editors were Swiss, and the review’s founding members and contributors from Switzerland included academics, physicians, politicians, and journalists, the majority from French-speaking areas (on feminism in French-speaking Switzerland, cf. Käppeli, 1987, 1990, Woodtli 1977, on Butler’s International Federation see Summers, 2004, 2010). This tension between moral and social preoccupations characterized the relations between moral reformers with feminist leanings and feminists who believed social inequality as well as the sexual double standard. In contrast, like those from countries like Portugal, Italy, Germany, and the US, the four board members and correspondents from Finland, all women, presented French-speaking readers with a perspective on

46

A. EPSTEIN

women’s rights which was both familiar and exotic, a potential model to be emulated or rejected. Of them, Adelaïde Ehrnrooth, Maikki Friberg, and Helena Westermarck had connections with the Francophone world, and they knew how to make Finnish developments internationally relevant. Finnish women joined in the upsurge of associational activity connected with the Finnish national, or Fennoman, movement at the end of the nineteenth century. The temperance movement, popular education initiatives, and moral improvement campaigns aimed to promote Finnish culture and social progress in the face of intensifying Russification. Bourgeois women who got their start in the temperance movement moved on to found feminist organizations and reviews, housewives’ associations, and political organizations and took part in polemics on sexual morality beginning in the late nineteenth century (cf. Sulkunen, 1986, 34; 1987, 1989, on debates on sexual morality and prostitution see Rajainen, 1973). For example, as Wuarin’s text suggests, enlightened French-speaking RMS readers knew about the Finns’ struggle against Russian oppression. The editorial office had even received a copy of the Pro Finlandia petition Finnish intellectuals circulated in Europe in 1899 and submitted to the Tsar, as well as other documents relative to Russification efforts (RMS, 1900b, 144). The Finns’ feminism thus became logically connected with the nationalist effort to strengthen Finnish cultural identity and maintain their autonomy from Russia. Writing on co-education and municipal suffrage and eligibility for women, two areas in which Finland was well ahead of many European nations, Westermarck, Friberg, and Lucina Hagman, all active in the Finnish national movement, had no trouble connecting Finland’s advances towards gender equality with the more general issue of women’s role in the fostering moral and social progress of the nation (Hagman, 1899; Westermarck, 1899, 1900). Lucina Hagman, a prominent educator and proponent of co-education, was the president of the Union of Finnish Feminists and the motor behind other major women’s enterprises. She would be one of the 19 women elected to the Finnish parliament in 1907. Maikki Friberg was a teacher, feminist, and editor of an important Swedish-language journal, Nutid, who had earned her doctorate at the University of Bern. Helena Westermarck, artist, feminist journalist and essayist, and sister of Finnish social scientist Edward Westermarck, was secretary of the Union of Finnish Feminists. Adelaïde Ehrnrooth, a journalist and writer credited with introducing J. S. Mill to Finland, had also translated articles from the French feminist review La Fronde into Finnish (cf. Konttinen, 1988, 50–53; National Biography of

3

NATIONAL POLITICS AND TRANSNATIONAL FEMINISMS IN EARLY …

47

Finland, 2020; Ollila, 1997, 262–277; 1998; Sulkunen, 1997). For them, publishing articles in an international, French-language review no doubt served as both a feminist and a nationalist gesture, providing excellent PR for both causes in a language understood by elites in the Russian empire as well. The French contributors and supporters brought with them « specialist» expertise in government service, feminism, law, social science, and moral reform. Among the original 166 founding members, 43 hailed from France, of whom 11 were women. The rest were Swiss, Italian, British, German, Finnish, Norwegian, and American (cf. RMS, 1899b, 5–8). Thirteen correspondents listing their place of residence as France were women, compared to approximately 25 men. Not all the founding members ever published articles in the review, but it is significant that they put their reputations behind the enterprise. Considering their rather limited professional choices at the time, the profiles of the Frenchwomen who contributed to the RMS are noteworthy: editors of feminist publications, journalists of diverse leanings, lawyers, a child welfare inspector, a well-known educator and nursery school inspector, the director of a social programme to keep released female convicts from turning to prostitution, activists in the campaign to end state-regulated prostitution, leaders of feminist organizations, and a schoolteacher. Maria Martin and Marie Maugeret both edited feminist newspapers, respectively, the moderate Journal des Femmes, and Féminisme chrétien, a Catholic feminist publication. Jeanne Oddo-Deflou and Jeanne Chauvin had been among the first women to obtain law degrees. Olympe GevinCassal served in the Interior Ministry as Inspectress General of Children’s Services and wrote children’s books (cf. Clark, 2000). Pauline Kergomard, Inspector General of Nursery Schools, was the first woman to serve on the Conseil supérieur de l’instruction publique and an advocate of expanded roles for women in public services (ibid.). Ghénia de Sainte Croix, who wrote as Savioz, was a widely published journalist, essayist, and international activist, and a co-founder and secretary-general of the Conseil national des femmes françaises (CNFF) (cf. Offen, 2005, 2008). Savioz also campaigned actively against state-regulated prostitution, a cause she had in common with such male compatriots as M. J. Gaufrès, general secretary of the Ligue française de la moralité publique, as well as with Swiss co-collaborators who had been followers of Josephine Butler. Isabelle Bogelot, also active in the Protestant women’s movement, had since 1881 directed l’Oeuvre des Libérées de Saint-Lazare, a philanthropic

48

A. EPSTEIN

work aimed at helping female criminals released from prison get back on their feet and avoid slipping into prostitution (Rochefort, 2010). Marie Bonnevial, a schoolteacher who wrote on women’s economic position and education, was involved in socialist politics, served as secretary-general and then president of the French League for Women’s Rights, and eventually became the first woman to sit on the Conseil supérieur du travail. Maria Pognon—feminist, pacifist, suffragist—was president of the Ligue française pour le droit des femmes and a member of the Ligue pour l’arbitrage international. A number of the women wrote for La Fronde, a pro-Dreyfus feminist daily founded two years before, produced entirely by women and sympathetic to feminism. These included Savioz, Maria Martin, Marie Maugeret, Louise Georges-Renard, Elisabeth-J. Hudry-Menos, and Olympe Gevin-Cassal. Jeanne Oddo-Deflou contributed to both publications and fellow RMS collaborator Maria Martin’s Journal des Femmes. Male contributors from France included political economists, legal scholars, theologians, physicians, leading members of the newly formed Ligue des droits de l’Homme, as well as moral reformers, journalists, editors, and philanthropists. French members of the advisory board included professors from Parisian and provincial faculties of law, theology, and medicine, from the Collège de France, and from the Sorbonne, as well as editors and directors of high-visibility reformist, political, and scientific periodicals. Yves Guyot (the political journal Le Siècle), Gabriel Monod (Revue historique), F. Pillon (L’Année philosophique), George Renard (just retired from the Revue socialiste), Édouard Toulouse (Revue de psychiatrie), and Louis Comte (Le Relèvement social ). Numerous academic contributors and sponsors had links to social science milieux. Among them were political economist Charles Gide, anthropologist Léonce Manouvrier, and social economist Alexis Delaire. Many, though not all, of the French affiliates of the review also belonged to the Protestant minority. Trans-border cooperation in Protestant social action and moral reform from the 1880s onward, particularly in the context of campaigns by Josephine Butler and French pastor Tommy Fallot, cemented the links between French and French-speaking Swiss members (Hause, 2010; Rochefort, 2008, 2010). Concerned like their Swiss colleagues with state-regulated prostitution, French writers saw it in a broad legal, moral, social, economic,

3

NATIONAL POLITICS AND TRANSNATIONAL FEMINISMS IN EARLY …

49

and/or medical context. The sexual double standard, economic conditions, education, and the French Civil Code all contributed to the injustices French women, whether married women or prostitutes, experienced: in the case of prostitutes, being driven to their trade by a combination of economic and social factors, and in the case of married women, being forced because of their legal incapacity to put up with the consequences of their husbands’ indiscretions. But here also the political and cultural background complicated the French search for solutions: the deep rifts caused by the Dreyfus affair; the convergence of Republican anticlericalism, familialist Catholic moral norms, and traditional leftist misogyny in a deeply patriarchal political culture; and the appeal among educated, middle-class women of the dominant political philosophy of Solidarism (or Solidarité) founded by Radical politician Léon Bourgeois, which proposed an active, complementary, but not equal, female social role; and above all fears of depopulation. Even some of the high-profile French intellectuals who supported the overall aims of the RMS (to combat sexual double standards) remained ambivalent about complete gender equality and feminism, preferring to maintain gender complementarity within what Anne Verjus has called a familialist conception of citizenship (RMS, 1899c). However, French contributors and founding members added value to the endeavour in other ways. The Dreyfus case had fed the international image of French intellectuals, particularly the members of the Ligue des droits de l’Homme (French League of Human Rights), as champions of human rights and justice. Members of the Ligue became soughtafter partners for foreign intellectuals: for example, the Senator Ludovic Trarieux, president of the Ligue, was asked to head the six-member European delegation that travelled to St. Petersburg in June 1899 to protest the threat to Finnish sovereignty (Van der Vlugt, 1900, 19–27). Four female and eight male French associates of the RMS were members of the organization. These included: Ghénia de Sainte Croix, Maria Pognon, Marie Bonnevial, Jeanne Schmahl, Charles Gide, Maurice Bouchor, Ferdinand Buisson, Yves Guyot, Joseph Reinach, Gabriel Séailles, Gabriel Monod, and Frédéric Passy (RMS, 1899b). Having them on board boosted the moral authority of the RMS, also confirming Louis Wuarin’s message (a message that was in line with the Ligue’s platform at home): that fighting gender injustice formed part of a universal quest for truth, justice, and human rights. Less symbolic but perhaps more important, as editors, journalists, and scientists, the French contributors

50

A. EPSTEIN

and founders provided access to important French-language scientific and popular channels of transmission. This meant publicity for the review’s individual correspondents and also for the transnational feminist synthesis the publication strove to incarnate. Contributors and supporters from different national groups thus brought various kinds of social and cultural resources to the project, creating a sort of international division of labour. Cooperation had its limits, though. An issue raised during the third year of the review’s existence was too divisive in France to be accommodated. In 1901, true to its aspiration to be scientific, fair, and objective, the review began to present divergent international perspectives on a controversial issue it felt was relevant to its programme: neo-Malthusianism (i.e. the birth control movement). But readers were ‘shocked’: many saw the neo-Malthusians as advocating free love. Even feminists held divergent views on the question. Proponents argued that contraception would free married women of the undesired and even life-threatening burden of repeated pregnancies, giving them control of their own bodies. See RMS 1901–1903, especially contributions by Drysdale, Robin, Pieczynska. By early 1903, subscriptions had declined, and the review had to suspend publication for what the editors initially thought would be a limited time (RMS, 1903, 245– 250). Ultimately, national concerns about depopulation, morality, and local intellectual politics won out over the liberal internationalism of the review’s editorial board, and the publication closed down its operations. At the crossroads of French-speaking intellectual and reformist networks, the RMS briefly exemplified truly international—and gender inclusive—collaboration. It provides a unique window on the circulation of knowledge about gender and feminism across European borders at a time when both nationalism and internationalism were in vogue. It shows how women, also, had begun to accumulate credentials that could be repurposed in pursuit of gendered authority and specific forms of political agency. Yet the short life of the project also reveals the contemporary limits of feminism as a transnational ideology. International contributors understood feminism in different ways and had their own national and local axes to grind. Despite the shared liberal Protestant background of the Revue’s correspondents and contributors of different nationalities, and their active promotion of the principles of human rights and national sovereignty, the deeply rooted Catholic and patriarchal underpinnings of French republican political culture became an obstacle to

3

NATIONAL POLITICS AND TRANSNATIONAL FEMINISMS IN EARLY …

51

wholehearted French endorsement of the review’s promotion of neoMalthusian ideology. Divergence in national political cultures and debates affected the reception of the most progressive feminist goals, such as coeducation, as well. But association with an international project supported by a transnational network of recognized intellectuals also reinforced the expert status of individual contributors. Linking their local demands with a larger, universal cause, they created a new synthesis—while promoting their national causes. In this sense, the review bears a striking resemblance to the form of action favoured by intellectuals throughout Europe at this time: the petition. The key difference here was that both male and female ‘signatories’ and credentials were needed to appeal for gender justice.

Legibility, Expertise, and Agency in the Making of a Transnational Concept The example of the short-lived Revue de morale sociale illustrates how delicate the process of importing, recombining, and exporting national debates about forms of gendered injustice across borders could be. Cobbling together a transnationally legible feminist discourse could be delicate, even at a time when international cooperation and collaboration had become a counterforce to rising nationalism. In both Europe and North America, the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed various social and political developments that would promote the production and dissemination of feminist knowledge. The degree of institutionalization and professionalization of the social and natural sciences as academic disciplines, varying levels of participation by women in the production of empirical research, their restricted access to university study and the liberal professions, and the limits on their overall integration within intellectual and political culture at home and internationally also regulated the circulation of this kind of knowledge. As the above case attests, national politics—including cultural politics—created the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ factors that most conditioned the transnational circulation of feminist knowledge. Recent research confirms that late nineteenth-century Western feminisms remained fully embedded in national political and social discourses that could be difficult to reconcile with international developments. The varying results obtained by national affiliates of Josephine Butler’s international campaign to eradicate state-regulated prostitution constitute an emblematic case: repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts in Britain, dismantling of the system

52

A. EPSTEIN

in the Netherlands; defeat of the Geneva referendum to end regulation; and continued debate and regulation in France (cf. De Vries, 2008; Summers, 2010; Women’s History Review, 2008). The controversy over neo-Malthusianism and depopulation that brought publication of the RMS to a halt provides another. Constructing new, transnational contexts for national narratives in an international forum did not always lead to eager reception at home, nor could it establish common intellectual ground on an international scale. Consequently, even if internationalist feminists perceived that all women faced similar challenges and injustices, their descriptions, interpretations, and diagnoses of women’s condition and problems worldwide reflected local assumptions, prejudices, logics, and preoccupations. Attempts to create ‘international’ knowledge about problems and their solutions sometimes highlighted what women did not have in common, creating or reinforcing hierarchies and difference. The limits of internationalism came sharply into evidence when Europeans turned information about women or gender relations in traditional or colonial societies into arguments to support their own claims, for example (cf. Burton, 1990; Eichner, 2009). Ostensibly neutral, empirical research about gender and feminism also reflected national—and individual researchers’—agendas regarding women’s rights, morality, or politics. At times feminists simply seemed to be seeking international solutions to local problems. Thus, ‘transnational’ feminist knowledge, ideals, and action had to be a compromise reflecting constant tension between transnational, national, local, and even personal concerns, both feminist and not. The problem of political context also raises the issue of temporality. Temporality does not necessarily refer to how ‘progressive’ or ‘modern’ a society is, how ‘late’ or ‘early’ in providing rights, opportunities, or access to women. What it refers to is timing: when and/or under what conditions does the transmission—and especially the reception— of a specific kind of feminist knowledge become possible in different cultural or linguistic settings? Why is a certain kind of change or demand accepted in one nation at a certain time, whereas it cannot even be discussed in another? Here, the example of co-education at the turn of the twentieth century comes to mind: when pioneering Finnish educator Lucina Hagman contributed a piece on co-education in Finland to the RMS (Hagman, 1899), schooling boys and girls in the same classroom still remained ‘unthinkable’ in practice in France during the period (cf. Karnaouch, 2003; Rogers, 2004), even if certain female educators

3

NATIONAL POLITICS AND TRANSNATIONAL FEMINISMS IN EARLY …

53

supported it in theory. As the example of the RMS also attests, the circulation of feminist knowledge at the turn of the twentieth century depended, among other things, on politics (political culture, institutions, transitions, crises) and society (family life, gendered access to different fields of social activity, restructuring of public space), as well as on cultural readiness. Temporality and politics regulated transnational feminist bricolage not only through mechanisms of introduction and reception of information about instances of gender injustice in other national contexts. How and by whom they were recombined, interpreted, and re-used was equally determinant. Particularly during this period, when feminism as a body of ideas and movements remained fluid and heterogeneous, and selfproclaimed feminists and anti-feminists shared many of the same basic assumptions about male–female complementarity and sexual morality, information and ideas about gender could often be equally well mobilized by defenders as by opponents of feminist demands. How texts were received in a particular national or linguistic sphere thus depended on contemporary national intellectual and political debates, what specific reform projects on behalf of women were in the works at the time, and on the professional and political opportunities available to women at that time. For example, could women occupy positions or exercise professions that would give them both the opportunity and the public authority to circulate and publicize texts strategically themselves? What were the relations between different potential forums for transmitting information and knowledge? Did women have access to these forums (scientific, political, or literary reviews; the press: intellectual discussion circles, scholarly societies; universities; university extension or other educational institutions), and on what terms? Could the feminist knowledge in question be integrated in larger contemporary political and social debates about political institutions, population decline, colonial expansion, education reform, etc.? The timing of translations obviously depended on many factors, but the quite variable temporality of the circulation of feminist knowledge across linguistic and national frontiers was definitely linked to that of the structure of political and social opportunity women had. The example of the international reception of the controversial Swedish author Ellen Key’s work illustrates well the effects of temporality, as well as the importance of finding individuals or groups with just the right credentials to bring ideas across borders. As Tiina Kinnunen’s work has shown, radical materialist feminists in Germany eagerly appropriated Key’s works by the turn of the twentieth century, while German moderates

54

A. EPSTEIN

interpreted her ideas as immoral and in other contexts, she was reviled as an anti-feminist (Kinnunen, 2011). Her work Love and Marriage, published in Swedish and in German in 1906, appeared in French in 1907 with a preface by the noted Protestant historian, Collège de France professor, and RMS contributor Gabriel Monod just as the question of suffrage reform appeared on the public agenda. It finally appeared in an English version in 1911, with a critical introduction by British sexologist and proponent of eugenics Havelock Ellis (giving a good idea of its expected audience and interpretation in the Anglophone world) (Key, 1911). Key’s synthesis of radical individualism and social consciousness, her exaltation of love, sexuality and motherhood with or without marriage, and her approving stance on eugenics could seduce or alienate feminist and anti-feminist contemporaries alike, depending on their own political and religious and/or ethical stance, and on the political and social conditions in which they operated. To appropriate and circulate one of Key’s works in another linguistic or national field was probably a risky undertaking. Already controversial at its Swedish point of origin, her works’ reception as feminist knowledge—or as any other kind—could not be assured, regardless of who introduced them, and even taking into account the transnational political and cultural elements that had shaped them and travelled with them from Protestant Northern Europe. These two examples, the RMS and the circulation of Ellen Key’s work, raise a final, critical dimension in the circulation of feminist knowledge at the turn of the twentieth century: the importance of gender-integrated, transnational intellectual networks. The persistence of gender hierarchies in intellectual and professional life, women’s continued exclusion from formal political participation and political parties, even in countries where they had long access to the professions and universities (as in the UK and the US), meant that reappropriating male authority of the kind provided by Monod or Ellis immediately added a crucial boost to any transfer of gender-related information. It was more complex than that however, because the emergence of specifically feminine expertise in a gender-segmented professional landscape and women’s increasing presence in civil society (the workplace, associational life, intellectual culture, informal politics, the press, philanthropy and provision of social welfare services, etc.), coupled with the rise of feminism, had modified the gendered structure of the public sphere. Women now had access to a kind of gender-specific authority, so while they continued to benefit from male mentoring, their male associates also saw strategic advantage in

3

NATIONAL POLITICS AND TRANSNATIONAL FEMINISMS IN EARLY …

55

collaborating with them in certain gender-related (pro- or anti-feminist) enterprises. Even if the vast majority of social and scientific knowledge continued to be produced and circulated by men well into the twentieth century, as issues with a strong moral dimension such as depopulation, social welfare, poverty, industrialization, and criminality moved to centre stage and their gender dimension was revealed, the trans-border cooperation of male and female authorities in producing and circulating feminist knowledge became an integral part of making feminisms transnational. Although male authority was easier to repurpose for effective transnational cooperation of all kinds, its scope being nearly ‘universal’ (Epstein, 2011), this example contributes to our understanding of how women’s expertise functioned in the conceptual bricolage that produced transnational feminism: specifically, how the emergence of gender-specific expertise in areas such as health, social welfare, moral reform, antislavery activism, the abolition of state-regulated prostitution and ‘white slavery’, education, gendered violence, and of course, the law contributed to transnational efforts to promote expanded citizenship for women at the turn of the twentieth century.

References Anderson, B. S. (2001). Joyous greetings: The first international women’s movement, 1830–1860. Oxford University Press. Blanchard, S., Jacquemart, A., Perrin, M., & Romerio, A. (2018). La cause des femmes dans les institutions. Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 3(223), 4–11. Burton, A. M. (1990). The white woman’s burden: British feminists and the Indian woman, 1865–1915. Women’s Studies International Forum, 13(4), 295–308. Clark, L. L. (2000, Spring). Feminist maternalists and the French state: Two inspectresses general in the pre-world War Third Republic. Journal of Women’s History, 12(1), 32–59. Clavin, P. (2005). Defining transnationalism. Contemporary European History, 14(4), 421–439. De Vries, P. (2008). Josephine Butler and the making of feminism: International abolitionism in The Netherlands (1870–1914). Women’s History Review, 17 (2), 257–277. Dietz, M. G. (1998). Context is all: Feminism and theories of citizenship. In A. Phillips (Ed.), Reprinted, feminism and politics. Oxford University Press.

56

A. EPSTEIN

DuBois, E., et al. (2005, May 18). Transnational feminism: A range of disciplinary perspectives. Center for Modern and Contemporary Studies, UCLA. https://history.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/u184/dubois/transnati onal_feminism.pdf Eichner, C. J. (2009, Winter). La Citoyenne in the world: Hubertine Auclert and feminist imperialism. French Historical Studies, 32(1), 63–84. Epstein, A. R. (2008). Gender and the creation of the French intellectual: The case of the Revue de morale sociale, 1899–1903. In K. J. Callahan & S. A. Curtis (Eds.), Views from the margins: Creating identities in morden France (218–250). University of Nebraska Press. Epstein, A. (2011, mai–août). Gender and the rise of the female expert during the Belle Époque. Histoire@Politique: Politique, culture, société (14). http:// www.histoire-politique.fr/index.php?numero=14 Gubin, E., & Van Molle, L. (Eds.). (2005). Women changing the world: A history of the International Council of Women, 1888–1988. Éditions Racine. Hagman, L. (1899). La coéducation des sexes en Finlande. RMS, 1, 35–42. Hause, S. C. (2010). Social control in late nineteenth-century France: Protestant campaigns for strict public morality. In C. E. Forth & E. Accampo (Eds.), Confronting modernity in Fin-de-Siècle France: Bodies, minds and gender (pp. 139–142). Palgrave Macmillan. Käppeli, A.-M. (1987). Le féminisme protestant de Suisse romande à la fin du XIXe et au début du XXe siècles (Thèse de doctorat). Université de Paris VII-Jussieu. Käppeli, A.-M. (1990). Sublime croisade: Éthique et politique du féminisme protestant, 1875–1928. Éditions Zoé. Karnaouch, D. (2003). Féminisme et coéducation en Europe avant 1914. Clio: Histoire, Femmes, et Sociétés, 18, 21–41. Key, E. (1911). Love and Marriage, with a critical and biographical introduction by H. Ellis. G.P. Putnam’s Sons. Original Über liebe und ehe (S. Fischer, 1906); French version De l’amour et du mariage, preface by G. Monod (E. Flammarion, 1907). Kinnunen, T. (2011, September). Debating individualism and altruism: Gertrud Bäumer, Ellen Key and the ethical foundations of modern life. Women’s History Review, 20(4), 497–507. Konttinen, R. (1988). Suomalaisia naistaiteilijoita 1880-luvulla. Otava. McFadden, M. H. (1999). Golden cables of sympathy: The transatlantic sources of nineteenth century feminism. University of Kentucky Press. Moghadam, V. (2005). Globalizing women: Transnational feminist networks. The Johns Hopkins University Press. National Biography of Finland. (2020). http://www.kansallisbiografia.fi Offen, K. (2000). European feminisms. Stanford University Press.

3

NATIONAL POLITICS AND TRANSNATIONAL FEMINISMS IN EARLY …

57

Offen, K. (2005, décembre). “La plus grande féministe de France”: Mais qui est donc Madame Avril de Sainte-Croix ? Bulletin des Archives du Féminisme, 9. Offen, K. (2008). Madame Ghénia Avril de Sainte Croix, the Josephine Butler of France. Women’s History Review, 17 (2), 239–255. Offen, K. (2014). Understanding international feminisms as “transnational”—An anachronism? May Wright Sewall and the creation of the International Council of Women, 1889–1904. In O. Janz & D. Schönpflug (Eds.), Gender history in a transnational perspective: Networks, biographies, gender orders (pp. 25–44). Berghahn. Ollila, A. (1997). Vahvojen naisten puolestapuhujat: Lucina Hagman ja Alli Nissinen. In P. Markkola & A. Ramsay (Eds.), Yksi kamari-kaksi sukupuolta: Suomen eduskunnan ensimmäiset naiset (pp. 262–277). Eduskunnan kirjasto. Ollila, A. (1998). Jalo velvollisuus. Virkanaisena 1800-luvun lopun Suomessa. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura. Rajainen, M. (1973). Naisliike ja sukupuolimoraali: Keskustelua ja toimintaa 1800-luvulla ja nykyisen vuosisadan alkupuolella noin vuoteen 1918 saakka. Suomen Kirkkohistorialllinen Seura. Revue de morale sociale. (1899a, janvier–mars). Programme. 1, 1–4. Revue de morale sociale. (1899b, janvier–mars). Groupe d’initiative. 1, 5–8. Revue de morale sociale. (1899c, avril–juin). De toutes parts. 1(2), 197–208. Revue de morale sociale. (1900a, mars). Histoire d’un plebiscite. 2(5), 4–25. Revue de morale sociale. (1900b, mars). Ouvrages reçus. 2(5), 144. Revue de morale sociale. (1903, février). A nos abonnés, lecteurs et amis. 15, 245–250. Rochefort, F. (2008). The abolitionist struggle of Pastor Tommy Fallot: Between social Christianity, feminism and secularism (1882–1893). Women’s History Review, 17 (2), 179–194. Rochefort, F. (2010). Feminism and protestantism in nineteenth-century France: First encounters, 1830–1900. In K. Offen (Ed.), Globalizing feminisms 1789– 1945 (pp. 67–77). Routledge. Rogers, R. (2004). L’Impensable mixité de l’enseignement secondaire féminin en France au XIXe siècle. In La mixité dans l’éducation: Enjeux passés et présents (pp. 101–114). ENS Éditions. Rupp, L. (1994, December). Constructing internationalism: The case of transnational women’s organizations, 1888–1945. American Historical Review, 99, 1571–1600. Rupp, L. (1998). Worlds of women: The making of an international women’s movement. Princeton University Press. Sulkunen, I. (1986). Raittius kansalaisuskontona: Raittiusliike ja järjestäytyminen 1870-luvulta suurlakon jälkeisiin vuosiin. Suomen Historiallinen Seura, Historiallisia Tutkimuksia 134.

58

A. EPSTEIN

Sulkunen, I. (1987). Naisten järjestäytyminen ja kaksijakoinen kansalaisuus. In R. Alapuro et al. (Eds.), Kansa liikkeessä (pp. 147–175). Kirjayhtymä. Sulkunen, I. (1989). The women’s movement. In M. Engman & D. Kirby (Eds.), Finland: People-nation-state (pp. 178–191). Indiana University Press. Sulkunen, I. (1997). Näisten äänioikeus meillä ja muualla. In P. Markkola & A. Ramsay (Eds.), Yksi kamari-kaksi sukupuolta: Suomen eduskunnan ensimmäiset naiset (pp. 11–25). Eduskunnan kirjasto. Summers, A. (2004). “Lay experts”: Women’s social purity groups and the politics of sexuality in Switzerland, 1890–1915. Women’s History Review, 13(4), 585–610. Summers, A. (2010). Liberty, equality, morality: The attempt to sustain an international campaign against the double sexual standard, 1875–1906. In K. Offen (Ed.), Globalizing feminisms, 1789–1945 (pp. 26–35). Routledge. Van der Vlugt, W. (1900). Pour la Finlande. Éditions de l’Humanité Nouvelle. Westermarck, H. (1899, avril–juin). De toutes parts. RMS, 1(2), 200. Westermarck, H. (1900). Finlande. Droit de suffrage communal des femmes. RMS, 2(7), 377–383. Women’s History Review. (2008). Gender, religion and politics; Josephine Butler’s campaigns in international Perspective (1875–1959). 17 (2). Women’s History Review. (2010). Special issue International feminisms. 19(4). Woodtli, S. (1977). Du féminisme à l’égalité politique: Un siècle de luttes en Suisse, 1868–1971. Payot.

CHAPTER 4

Saving European Democracy: British Debates on European Unification in 1948–49 Taru Haapala

Introduction As the United Kingdom was negotiating to leave the European Union (EU), those arguing for leaving defended the claim that it was the surest way of saving democracy. For a long time, the EU was criticised for undermining the country’s sovereignty, and thus leaving the Union via referendum was framed as the remedy to restore democracy. Coinciding

This chapter has been written in collaboration with Dr Haapala’s project EurPluraWorld within the InterTalentum-Marie Curie MSCA-COFUND programme hosted by the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the Autonomous University of Madrid. The project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 713366. T. Haapala (B) Madrid Institute for Advanced Study (MIAS), Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 N. Kauppi and K. Palonen (eds.), Rhetoric and Bricolage in European Politics and Beyond, Rhetoric, Politics and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98632-2_4

59

60

T. HAAPALA

with the ideas of direct and plebiscitary democracy, which in this way came to dominate British politics, scholarly analyses of the state of democracy and the role of parliament appeared (e.g. Bellamy, 2019; Chalmers, 2017; Copus, 2018; Seidler, 2018; Weale, 2016) and, by the 2019 general elections, all major political party manifestos in the UK called for constitutional reform. Against this background, the aim here is to provide historical perspective to saving democracy and examine British political debates in the late 1940s. Approaching democracy as a normative-descriptive concept (e.g. Dunn, 2005; Skinner 1973), it will be illustrated that, despite having been equally dominated by the idea of independence from foreign influence, the post-war debates were more constructive regarding parliamentary democracy in the context of European unification than is the case in the recent debate. The conclusion of the analysis is that, from the point of view of political rhetoric, which will be here approached as bricolage, the tools for constructing meaning were more favourable towards parliamentary democracy than plebiscitary interpretations of the concept. The chapter focuses on analysing the British debates on saving European democracy in the context of the Congress of Europe, which met in The Hague on 7–10 May 1948 and was a crucial step for the founding of the Council of Europe in London in 1949. In the emerging European political alliance, the role of the United Kingdom was generally construed as that of arbiter, rather than obstructer. Even though the country was not going to become a member, it was nonetheless a key actor promoting parliamentary democracy, helping to create the Council of Europe. As the first post-war political institution in the continent, the Council of Europe was realised under British leadership, specifically due to the country’s democratic credentials. A common perception among European leaders at the time was that Britain should take the lead in the negotiations about a political alliance between European countries. The British involvement in the effort for European unification was considered especially important because there were not many other countries in the continent who had survived the war without damage to their democratic systems (Lipgens, 1982). The assumption was that the British parliamentary democracy could serve as a model for the benefit of the continent. It has been previously noted, however, that the ‘unlikely winner’ of the war was the idea of parliamentary democracy. The general trend in Europe had rather indicated towards communitarianism and direct democracy, not representative forms of democracy (Conway, 2002, 61). In interwar

4

SAVING EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY …

61

years, the parliamentary model of democracy had been declared obsolete by various European movements, including socialism (see Ihalainen et al., 2016; Kurunmäki et al., 2018; Müller, 2011). For example, one of the leading figures of British socialism, Harold Laski, had doubts whether socialism could be realised through constitutional means in the British parliamentary setting of the 1920s and 1930s (Berger, 2002, 26). In the 1930s, the Labour Party had been close to renouncing parliamentary institutions and becoming an extra-parliamentary mass movement (Loewenberg, 1958). During the war, however, the party had embraced the principles of parliamentarism. Britain had an early general election in July 1945 the result of which greatly affected the country’s relation to post-war Europe. The elections were called after Labour had refused to form another coalition with the Conservatives until the war with Japan was over (Laybourn, 2005). The election result was that Winston Churchill lost the British premiership to Labour Party’s Clement Attlee. The election campaign of the Conservative Party had centred around criticising the leadership inside Labour. Indeed, the inner struggles had left the party vulnerable to criticism. During the war, the Labour Party had sought to find a common policy of post-war settlement which created controversy between the left-wing of the party and the trade unionists. The party’s ‘International Post-War Settlement’ was drafted by Hugh Dalton who became the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Attlee government. Dalton prepared the policy for the annual meeting of the National Executive Committee who met in December 1944 to decide upon the new policy. Dalton’s proposal differed from previously drafted documents, for example, in the way it diverged from the internationalist principle of pooled sovereignty. The aim of creating an international organisation based on socialist principles, which previously had been a priority for Labour, was abandoned for securing peace through ‘national economic self-sufficiency’ (Douglas, 2004, 65). In this way, the leaders of the party took distance from previous Labour principles. Clement Attlee moved the resolution in favour of the policy in the National Executive Committee meeting where it was approved with little opposition. The landslide electoral victory in 1945 marked a political momentum for the party. The Labour election manifesto focusing on post-war reconstruction and reform had appealed to many. The ‘International Post-War Settlement’ was used by Attlee’s government advocating a new foreign policy for Britain. Ernest Bevin, a former trade union leader who had

62

T. HAAPALA

overseen wartime coalition foreign policy with Attlee, became the new Foreign Secretary in charge of the implementation of the so-called EdenBevin reforms that restructured the foreign service in 1947. It was designed as an ‘independent’ foreign policy (Adamthwaite, 1985, 224). To retain the independence of the country’s foreign policy, Bevin started to negotiate a new alliance with Western European democracies. In 1947, the Foreign Office analysed British post-war prospects as a world leader. Unlike immediately after the end of the war, it did not think it realistic that the British Empire would be able to recover to its pre-war condition. The report concluded that the country had to rely on cooperation with the United States, both economically and politically. The Foreign Office recommended British leadership of Western democratic states by showing ‘good example of a successful Labour government’, an alternative for Communism that might provide a ‘useful pattern’ for Europe (Adamthwaite, 1985, 227). This chapter examines the political bricolage of the British debates regarding the realisation of European political alliance. The focus will be on the rhetorical tools of the European movement led by Winston Churchill and the opposition against Labour government in the European unification context. The political bricolage approach refers to the ways in which actors use rhetorical means that are available to them in the context to pursue their own political agendas (cf. Wiesner et al., 2017). According to Lévi-Strauss, who first coined the term, bricolage is a way of acting while the tools at one’s disposal for intellectual inquiry are limited (LéviStrauss, 1962/1966, 11). At the conceptual level, it refers to grasping at ideas and meanings available in the moment. In rhetorical terms, the situation requires rhetorical invention from available sources, such as preexisting topoi or tropes (Wiesner et al., 2017, 72). In political bricolage, as understood in this chapter, rhetorical commonplaces serve as a repertoire for the invention of arguments. The outcome of bricolage is contingent based on the interpretation that derives from the presented project and all the previous occasions which have enriched the intellectual repertoire of political actors (cf. Lévi-Strauss, 1962/1966, 11).

European Unification as Political Bricolage in the British Post-War Context Bricolage takes place with a reference to ‘some extraneous movement’ (Lévi-Strauss, 1962/1966, 11). In the post-war context, the rapidly

4

SAVING EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY …

63

changing situation in Europe in which actors were trying to find a new position prompted the use of political bricolage. The main rhetorical commonplaces in British debates included the ‘United States of Europe’, ‘regional alliance’ and ‘federalism’. They were used, for example, by Winston Churchill who aimed at persuading other British MPs and European leaders while maintaining political authority in European issues after having lost the British premiership. From the perspective of British political leaders, the proposal to create a European assembly to safeguard democracy was a form of bricolage. The decision to begin European unification based on liberal democratic values was not an organic and natural process, but a political project itself that was actively created after 1945 (Llanque, 2018). The British post-war debates show very clearly that European unification was not a self-evident chain of events. There were contingent matters requiring redefinition, such as the international order and Britain’s place in it (cf. Rosenboim, 2017). In this context, post-war British politicians used rhetorical commonplaces, such as ‘federalism’ and ‘European unity’, without any definite meaning attached to them. It was only by the 1950s that federalism started to become a pejorative term for British politicians (Pinder, 1998, 4). Moreover, the idea of a European ‘union’ had a rather formal connotation for the British, implying binding structures, whereas ‘unity’ implied more room for negotiation, allowing changing circumstances. To compare, in the English translations of the articles of Council of Europe, the phrase ‘closer unity’ was found in French texts ‘une union plus étroite’ (Crowson, 2011, 4). After losing the 1945 elections, Churchill started his own European movement based on the idea of unity independent of the Labour government policy. In the famous speech on the ‘United States of Europe’, delivered at the University of Zürich on 19 September 1946, Churchill used internationalist rhetoric to introduce an idea of British exceptionalism. He asserted that the League of Nations, which had been an internationalist effort, did not fail due to its principles but because the states involved had governments that did not abide by them. His message was that future alliances had to be upheld with common principles. He argued, however, that the principles were best enforced through ‘regional alliances’ (Churchill, 1946). This rhetorical commonplace suggested an international setting in which the United Nations served as the higher-level institution for several ‘local’ political arrangements. While

64

T. HAAPALA

Britain had its Commonwealth, Churchill maintained, democratic European countries should have their own ‘regional alliance’. This European political institution, according to him, should include West Germany. Churchill’s idea of the creation of the ‘United States of Europe’, with the first step towards it being the founding of the Council of Europe, was a prime example of political bricolage. The idea referred directly to a federal system like the United States, whose financial support Europe required for restoring democracy. Churchill managed to form a proposal of collaboration between post-war European democracies through the ideas of internationalism and federalism while leaving Britain outside of the arrangement. Referring to the League of Nations, he evoked ideas of Wilsonian liberal internationalism of which basic tenets were democratic self-determination, collective security, and peace through integrated world economic system (Smith, 1999, 174). Simultaneously, however, he suggested that much like the United States, Britain was an exception that was a self-sufficient leader with no need to commit to the emerging democratic European alliance. In this way, Churchill managed to include the idea of British self-sufficiency. Churchill’s proposal included ideas that had been previously laid out by William Beveridge1 in his federal tract Peace by Federation? published in May 1940. Beveridge was the chairman of the Federal Union Research Institute while also active in the Federal Union2 in the first months of the Second World War. During the war, federalism was re-introduced to the British public debate by advocates of the Federal Union who aimed at separating its agenda from imperialist connotations. The constitutional lawyer, Sir Ivor Jennings, was asked to consider the practical possibilities for creating a European federation. In his A Federation for Western Europe (1940), Jennings put forward a federal plan that was designed to frame the ongoing debates about federalism both in Britain and abroad. He mentioned that the ‘desirability of replacing international anarchy by international government’ was so commonly accepted in Britain that it required no illustration. To compare with the International Post-War 1 Known later as Lord Beveridge whose report Social Insurance and Allied Services (1942) served as a blueprint for the post-war welfare state created by the Labour government elected in 1945. Beveridge was a Liberal politician and a renowned economist. 2 The Federal Union was founded in 1938. It was ‘a movement among radical intellectuals for prevention of future wars by the creation of some form of international government among the European and English-speaking countries’ (Harris, 1997, 355).

4

SAVING EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY …

65

Settlement policy adopted by the Labour Party in 1944, it seems that the British debates had been more open to the founding of an international government when Jennings wrote his book. The solution Jennings promoted in his book was ‘the establishment of a democratic federation in Western Europe’. Its realisation was dependent on the successful persuasion of European nations to send their representatives to an international conference ‘with instructions to prepare a constitution’ and their citizens who would be involved in urging their governments to form a federation. But, according to him, it required a constitution that does not require ‘too great a sacrifice from the federating states’ (Jennings, 1940, x). Although Churchill’s speech on the ‘United States of Europe’ used some of the internationalist principles that were also found in Jennings’ plan, he was not willing to accept the constitutional reform implied by it. Beveridge (1940) envisioned the creation of a federation of European democracies, including a democratic post-war Germany, the idea of which Churchill introduced in his Zürich speech. The powers of the federation included security, trade, and the protection of human rights, and it would have institutions based on the rule of law and representative government. The proposal followed the two-level democratic government of the American political system with its origins in the British political tradition, but the federal government structure followed the British model of a parliamentary, not a presidential executive (Pinder, 1998, 4– 5). Beveridge argued that in ‘laying the foundations of international order in Europe’ at the end of the war, ‘it must end by a union in which Britain, France and Germany shall at last make war between them impossible for ever’. In other words, ‘[p]eace must come by their federation’ (Beveridge 1940/1998, 19). In Beveridge’s federal plan, Britain’s membership was inherently included. The idea of democracy was a key question, not in terms of a shared value or principle, but on a constitutional level: ‘The working of a federal legislature as a super-national authority would become impossible if all the representatives of a particular nation were the nominees of one man: very rapidly it would become a cockpit for national interests’ (Beveridge 1940/1998, 30). In his view, it was vital for a federation to ensure ‘effective democracy’ and not let undemocratic states take advantage of the international institutions. Federalism, he argued, was about division of democratic powers. Each individual citizen, ‘if he wants effective super-national government for [peaceful] world order, as well as a

66

T. HAAPALA

national government for internal order, must secure that the powers of government are divided from the start’ (ibid., 32). Churchill’s United States of Europe speech relied heavily on the narrative about common European values and heritage. Leaving the constitutional dimension aside, Churchill advocated for a ‘regional organisation of Europe’ which is a ‘natural grouping’, in the same vein as the British Commonwealth (Churchill, 1946). In other words, Churchill used ‘regional alliance’ as a rhetorical commonplace to disengage himself from any plans for constitutional reforms which would include the reform of the British constitution to allow British membership in international government. Whereas Beveridge had insisted upon the basic requirement of democratic government for the political union, Churchill’s speech focused on the values and principles as well as the willingness or ability to the unification of Europe led by Franco-German partnership. In other words, Churchill did not put emphasis on the constitutional arrangement of the envisioned democratic government of Europe. By the end of the war, the Federal Union lost its support among leading politicians. Ernest Bevin, who had previously been collaborating closely with the Federal Union taking part in its committee work, had since asked to remove his name from their records (see Haapala & Häkkinen, 2017). The lack of interest to promote federalism was partly connected to the Labour government’s modernisation plans as a way of distancing from the past. The Federal Unionists’ constitutional discussions about European federation were eclipsed by Winston Churchill’s prominent European unification agenda. Thus, Churchill was able to utilise the terminology of federalism for his own political purposes which aimed at leaving the UK out of the alliance. Churchill’s efforts to replace the meaning of federalism with new content serving his purposes were conducted through the United Europe movement. It was designed to show his international prestige and undermine the foreign policy of the Labour government. Before his United States of Europe speech in 1946, he was in contact with the PanEuropean movement’s leader, Count Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi (Klos, 2016, 28). Coudenhove-Kalergi had produced major scholarship on the topic of European integration based on collaboration at the New York University during his exile in the United States. He had focused specifically on the concept of unity with the aim of clarifying the meaning of United States of Europe, which Churchill later took to serve as a slogan in his Zürich speech in 1946 (Zurcher, 1958, 13). The idea of

4

SAVING EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY …

67

European unity related to the formation of a federation, which appealed to the American audience. Maintaining his Pan-European organisation in exile during the war, Coudenhove-Kalergi managed to keep in touch and promote the idea of unity among emigrated European scholars and political leaders. To this end, the Fifth Pan-European Congress was organised at the New York University in spring 1943 which led to a declaration on the basic aims of European unity: the creation of a common European defence system, the drafting of a European bill of rights, an economic union including European states’ colonies, and the negotiations towards a European constitution. Ultimately, it became a blueprint for post-war European integration. Winston Churchill contacted Coudenhove-Kalergi after the war to join forces with the Pan-European Union. But he was only willing to give the count a non-executive role in the joint organisation, while CoudenhoveKalergi had planned to position Churchill as Honorary President of the Pan-European Union (Klos, 2016, 33–34). Finally, Churchill became known as the second major Western leader, after Aristide Briand, to propose the creation of European federation based on CoudenhoveKalergi’s ideas. Without committing to the constitutional dimension of either Beveridge’s or Pan-European movement’s plan, Churchill managed to use the previous blueprints for his own political purposes. His political bricolage took advantage of previously drafted ideas of European post-war unification. Even though Churchill did not envision British participation in the European integration, he managed to become a key figure in organising a European unity movement in Britain.3 Four months after the Zürich speech, Churchill’s United Europe Movement was formed of members from all political parties in Britain. Together with the Parliamentary Labour Party’s Europe Group, it organised an All-Party Parliamentary Group on European Unity in the British House of Commons. It was formed on 18 February 1948. The idea came from a federalist Labour backbencher, Ronald Mackay (Grantham, 1981,

3 The French counterpart of the British organisation was the French Council for United Europe (Conseil Français pour l’Europe Unie) which was formed of French parliamentary and governmental supporters of the unification movement. There was also a FrenchBelgian organisation called the Nouvelles Équipes Internationales.

68

T. HAAPALA

446).4 Mackay became the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group, and he was also responsible for arranging British delegation to The Hague Congress. On 17 December 1947, the prospective group met to plan for its establishment and functions. The most important purpose of the group was to appoint and send British representatives to the European Parliamentary Union (EPU), a private organisation established by CoudenhoveKalergi.5 The EPU was directly involved in organising the Congress of Europe which was convened by the umbrella organisation called the Joint International Committee of the Movements for European Unity comprising of various national and international societies and associations. They did not share a common policy but were joined by the idea of preserving democracy and the pursuit of European unification (Loveday, 1949, 620). It was directed by an International Council and Executive Committee and had international study groups. The International Council included parliamentary representatives from all pro-European groups in national parliaments. In the beginning of the All-Party group’s meeting, Sir Peter Macdonald6 delivered a report of the proceedings of the EPU’s Gstaad conference which he had attended as the vice-chair of the InterParliamentary Union (IPU). The declaration of the conference stated that ‘transforming Europe into an unbreakable and federal community’ was its main objective.7 With the promotion of a resolution on the creation of European federation in national parliaments, the goal was the preservation of ‘the political existence of free Europe’ (Loveday, 1949, 628–632). In the meantime, the Labour government was preoccupied with executing its modernisation policies, including the National Health Service (NHS). Rather than engaging in the plans of the EPU, the Attlee 4 Ronald W. G. Mackay (1902–1960) was an Australian-born lawyer who had been elected to the British Parliament in 1945. Mackay had also been a key figure in the Federal Union, together with William Beveridge, Lionel Robbins, and Barbara Wootton. 5 The EPU had its first conference at Gstaad, Switzerland, on 4–7 July 1947, to which were invited 400 members of parliament from 13 European countries. 6 Macdonald was a Canadian-born Conservative MP from 1924 to 1959. He had been vice-chair of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) from 1945 to 1947. 7 See Déclaration de Solidarité Européenne adoptée à l’unanimité par la Conférence de Gstaad, mardi le 9 septembre 1947, https://www.cvce.eu/en/education/unit-con tent/-/unit/7b137b71-6010-4621-83b4-b0ca06a6b2cb/f4021768-7823-4239-bb8b5206cc1ce07c/Resources#ca773266-2eaf-45d9-915f-4f7b03078556_en&overlay.

4

SAVING EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY …

69

government’s foreign policy set out to strengthen Britain’s role in Europe and in the world through intergovernmental, transatlantic alliance. To this end, Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin negotiated the framework for Western Union in January 1948. The idea was to join Western European countries together for the purposes of military cooperation and to pool their colonial territories for the benefit of the Continent. The Western Union was formed based on the so-called Brussels Pact between Britain, France, and the Benelux countries on 17 March 1948. Simultaneously, Bevin was a key figure in organising the Atlantic alliance which paved way for the founding of the North Atlantic Alliance (NATO). The main critics of Bevin’s foreign policy were the left-wing Labour Party members who did not endorse the idea of creating alliance with the United States. For democratic socialists, the emerging superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, represented only their own political gains which meant that they would not be truly invested in the European unification. The way forward for Britain, in their view, was to become the leader of the so-called Third Force in between the two superpowers, a third grouping that would unify a democratic Europe. The democratic socialists mobilised under the Third Force movement as a counterforce against Attlee government’s foreign policy between 1945 and 1949, and they were a significant force in the House of Commons (Schneer, 1984, 199). They shared the commonly held view across the political spectrum that Britain should have an independent voice in world affairs. The ideological basis of the movement stemmed from social democratic internationalism. The key figures of the movement included Michael Foot, Richard Crossman, and Ian Mikardo who had been elected to the House of Commons in 1945. The Third Force meetings were regularly attended by 12 backbenchers, including Leslie Hale (MP for Oldham), Harold Davies (MP for Leek), and R. W. G. Mackay (MP for North West Hull). In January 1947, a month before the annual Labour Party conference in Margate, they released a pamphlet entitled Keep Left. An entire chapter written by Crossman was about the foreign policy of the movement. In the conference, Bevin declared the pamphlet an outrage and a sign of disloyalty (Schneer, 1984, 203–208). However, the Third Force activists continued to formulate their alternatives for government policies. The movement called for Britain’s engagement in alliance by creating a ‘Western European Region’ of socialist Britain and France which ‘could

70

T. HAAPALA

provide the world with a working example of a “supra-national” organisation. By taking the lead in reviving a vigorous International Labour Movement they could create a bloc of political power which could exert its influence in every sphere of international policy’ (William Warbey in Tribune, October 27, 1944; quoted in Schneer, 1984, 201). In using the rhetorical commonplace of ‘regional alliance’ for their political purposes, the Third Force movement was engaging in a debate with party leaders that evoked ideas promoted by Churchill’s United Europe Movement. Rather than discussing the alternatives proposed by the activists, Bevin and other party leaders dismissed their internationalist ideas. The backbenchers in the Parliamentary Labour Party, who belonged to the Third Force movement, created their own Europe Group which met for the first time on 2 December 1947. The Europe Group was eventually divided into three factions which had very different approaches to European unification: first, the ‘functionalists’ who were interested in immediate economic collaboration with non-Communist Western European countries without the need to form a European federation; second, the ‘federalists’ who advocated for the creation of a new state of federation which would eventually incorporate Eastern European countries as well; and third, ‘fundamentalists’ whose main aim was to promote the original Third Force idea of creating a third grouping between the United States and the Soviet Union which would not form alliance with either of the two (Schneer, 1984, 222). The Europe Group was not unified in their efforts, which finally resulted in its dissolution. However, the Third Force movement’s internationalist vision remained influential in the Labour Party during the Cold War. The British debates on the foundation of a European political union were closely connected to the European movement, on the one hand, through Churchill’s United Europe Movement, and on internationalism, on the other hand, through the Labour Party’s pro-European backbenchers. In both cases, political bricolage appears in situations in which to act in a creative way was required. In Churchill’s case, losing the premiership meant that he used the internationalist ideas, including federalism, available to him and turned them to his advantage to influence European post-war politics. The Third Force movement, in its turn, was formed of the left-wing inside the Labour Party who were disappointed with the government’s abandonment of social democratic internationalism in favour of imperial intergovernmentalism. Their bricolage took place as the Labour government advocated a programme that abandoned

4

SAVING EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY …

71

internationalism and gave way to formulating foreign policy that, for the Third Force activists, resembled Tory nationalism (cf. Douglas, 2004, 67).

Parliamentary Debates on the Foundation of a European Political Union in 1948–49 The United Europe and Third Force movements were collaborating on the parliamentary level which was a crucial part of the British effort of saving European democracy. The different approaches to promote European unification were rallied together to pursue an internationalist agenda in contrast to the intergovernmentalism advocated by the Labour government. In this way, the political bricolage of British debates on European unification can be mainly located in arguments against Attlee government’s foreign policy. Preparations for the Congress of Europe in The Hague, which was the first meeting after the Second World War of eminent political and other public figures in Western European countries and initiated by the International Committee of the Movement for European Unity, included a resolution drafted by the All-Party Parliamentary group on European Unity which was to be moved in the House of Commons. Similar initiatives were proposed in various other countries that were sending delegates to The Hague Conference.8 The wider European movement was independent of national governments but under the ‘patronage’ of prime ministers of all member countries (Loveday, 1949, 622). The All-Party Group led by Mackay was under pressure to bring the motion to the House of Commons as similar initiative was put forward in other European parliamentary democracies planning to send delegated to The Hague Conference. For Mackay, this was a turning point in his advocacy for federalism in Europe. In 1940, he had published a proposal for the ‘United States of Europe’ with a draft constitution. He had suggested,

8 The International Committee of the Movement for European Unity was founded

under the joint presidency of Léon Blum (France), Winston Churchill (the UK), Alcide de Gasperi (Italy), and Paul-Henri Spaak (Belgium). Its National Councils were constituted in all post-war European democracies, including Western Germany. Representatives of Eastern European countries were also elected by provisional councils comprising of leaders in exile.

72

T. HAAPALA

along the lines of Beveridge and Jennings, the formation of a new European state, a federation that would be governed through a representative assembly based on the framework of British parliament and adult franchise. Resembling of what William Beveridge had proposed in his federal tract, Mackay proposed the creation of a federated state with a parliament that was to be directly elected. He argued that the elections would guarantee contact with electors and the parliament, even if it meant very large constituencies (Mackay 1940, 145). Inside the Labour Party, there was a clear dividing line between a group of backbenchers who were in favour of Britain participating in the forming of European political union and those who sided with the party leaders who had different plans for the country (Grantham, 1981, 447). On the eve of The Hague Congress, the Labour Party leadership circulated a letter within its parliamentary group, stating that participating in the event was against the interests of the party and the government. It was maintained that members should not attend The Hague conference and be exposed to ‘anti-socialist elements’. In the rhetoric of the party leadership, joining the European movement’s campaign against the government’s line of foreign policy was not in the interest of socialism. In sum, it tried to persuade the left-wing social democratic internationalists to abandon their political alliance with Churchill’s United Europe Movement by reminding them of their common socialist principles. In their meeting on 21 April 1948, Mackay reminded the members of the All-Party group that they were not going to represent the EPU, but the British delegation in The Hague. The total number of British delegates was calculated to be 120 representatives, of which 70 were Members of Parliament. In the same meeting, the group also agreed to make every effort to move their motion in the House of Commons. But, in case a vote on the motion would be insisted on, the group risked embarrassing the government if the motion was lost. The group members also agreed that, in case the motion was not moved, the debate might prove too difficult to conduct. Thus, the group unanimously decided to make sure that no vote on the motion was to be taken (Minutes of the All-Party group meeting for European Unity, 21 April 1948 / Mackay papers, LSE, doc. 59). In the motion, it was asserted that the founding of European federation should be based on a constitution. This was an area, however, on which the All-Party group had differing views, especially regarding Britain’s membership. The idea of combining unification of Europe

4

SAVING EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY …

73

with the preservation of British Empire was characteristic for Winston Churchill’s United Europe Movement, and it could not reconcile this without keeping Britain outside the envisioned alliance. While also Mackay took it for granted that the British colonies should be included in a European federation, he supported Britain’s membership in the European alliance. Anticipating the motion of the All-Party group that was to be raised the following day, Foreign Secretary Bevin addressed the House of Commons on foreign policy on 4 May 1948. He reminded that Britain had already entered Western Union with the signing of Five Power Treaty in Brussels on 17 March. The Treaty formed a security and defence alliance that did not lead to any other commitment such as a ‘regional pact’ as outlined by the United Nations Charter (Baylis, 1984, 624). He argued that the collaboration meant ‘a fresh departure’ for Britain, making the country ‘really a part of Europe’, without the need to pool sovereignty or to create a European federated state: ‘Any controversy now over theoretical issues of sovereignty would only set back the whole movement which has now begun’. Arguing that debates over federalism were only counterproductive, he further stated that the ‘only course open to us’ was to merge national interests: ‘We have no intention, however, of being diverted from the great practical task to which we have set our hands by any academic discussions about sovereignty’. (Bevin: HC Deb 4 May 1948, vol. 450, col. 1108) in other words, the government made it clear that it was not willing to reconsider the idea of European federation as it was not ‘practical’ considering the government policy leaning on intergovernmental cooperation. On 5 May 1948, Anthony Eden9 addressed the House on behalf of the All-Party Group. Eden urged the government to join in a long-term effort with other democratic states of Europe to form ‘a democratic federation’ of Europe. The foundations of such a venture were to be laid out in a constitution that would be ‘based on the principles of common citizenship, political freedom, and representative government, including a charter of human rights’ (Eden: HC Deb 5 May 1948, vol. 450, col. 1270). Eden did not mention, however, anything about Britain’s membership in the federation to be formed. Rather, he announced that the priority should always be ‘the welfare of the Commonwealth and the 9 Eden (1897–1977) was Conservative MP for Warwick and Leamington. He served as Foreign Secretary in Churchill’s wartime coalition government 1940–1945.

74

T. HAAPALA

Empire’ (Ibid., col. 1272). The preservation of Britain’s imperial powers was an idea shared by the majority of British MPs, even those who were in favour of Britain’s future membership in the European federation. In his turn, Mackay blamed Bevin for having provided an ‘inconsistent’ account of the government’s plans to engage in the planning of the European political union. He specifically drew attention to what Bevin had called ‘the idealistic approach’ and reminded that ‘there was a day when anyone asking full employment would have been regarded as an idealist’ and that ‘it happens to be considered today a practical idea, by people on this side of the House’ (Mackay: HC Deb 5 May 1948, vol. 450, col. 1286). With this argument, Mackay was appealing to left-wing Labour MPs, the backbenchers, by revealing Bevin’s figure of the ‘idealists’ as a rhetorical device. Bevin’s branding of federalist supporters as ‘idealists’ in contrast to the government’s supporters as ‘pragmatists’ was a political strategy. The rhetorical figure of ‘pragmatism’ was used to dismiss alternatives for the sake of getting things done. The Labour government dismissed debate on a European federation which it didn’t see practical for its modernisation plans. But simultaneously, the alternatives were abandoned as ‘idealism’. In Attlee’s reply to the motion, he maintained that European federalism could not be solved by such abstract discussions as the creation of a constituent assembly which was going to be under discussion in The Hague Congress. Instead, he opted for the ‘practical way’ of ‘working out our plans on the economic field, on the social field and on the defence field’. By rejecting the idea of having discussion and debate on federalism at the European level, Attlee was distancing his government policy from the concept. According to him, the motion proposed on federalism was ‘an ideal to work towards’, but it did not apply to the government’s goals in the international level and the maintenance of the Commonwealth: ‘I was disturbed by the suggestion in the Motion that we might somehow get closer to Europe than to our Commonwealth’. He continued that he hoped ‘in this Debate we shall get the largest possible amount of unity, not for some specific proposals which I do not think are practicable at the moment, but for the general ideas for which we are working, for a closer union between all the Western countries with the countries overseas’ (Attlee: HC Deb 5 May 1948, vol. 450, col. 1318). Attlee’s main concern was that engaging in the debate on creating a European federation would undermine the unity of the newly founded Western Union.

4

SAVING EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY …

75

Mackay challenged Prime Minister Attlee to explain in front of the House the Labour government’s vision regarding Europe. Instead of dismissing discussion on European federation, Mackay wanted Attlee ‘to indicate whether the Government generally approve of the ideas in the Motion. […] I want him to say whether the ideas in it are such as the Government consider would be for the benefit not only of this House and of this country, but of Europe, and whether he is able to say that it is the sort of idea upon which we should be working’ (Mackay: HC Deb 5 May 1948, vol. 450, col. 1283). In this way, Mackay was persuading the prime minister to engage in the debate on the question of creating a European federation. He was also trying to get the government to publicly discuss its justifications for not endorsing federalism, albeit unsuccessfully. Another All-Party group member, Leslie Hale (Lab. for Oldham) who was a partner in Mackay’s law firm, publicly criticised Mr Levy, a fellow party member, of boycotting the Congress and, at the same time, rallying support for Britain being the leader at the European stage (Hale: HC Deb 5 May 1948, vol. 450, col. 1348). Hale declared that he was joining Mackay and other Labour MPs who were defying the party line and going to participate in The Hague Congress. He argued that ‘United Europe means something more. It means a United Africa. It means the possibility of a trading federation stretching from the North Cape to Capetown’. He emphasised that it meant ‘developing’ the African continent and ‘extending the life and wealth of its people […] into the service of the peoples of the world’ (ibid., 1350–1351). This rhetoric of progress connected to preservation of colonies was also used by the Pan-European Movement. Writing about Europe’s hegemonic position in the world, Count von Coudenhove-Kalergi characterised it as ‘unreturnably lost’ but ‘not yet its independence, not yet its colonial realm, not yet its culture, not yet its future’ (Coudenhove-Kalergi, 1923, 24; translation by TH). By uniting all these elements, he argued, Europe could become one of the great powers again. To compare to what Hale was arguing, it seems that it touched upon a similar idea of European unity: that the Europe’s colonial resources were of benefit to the future greatness of the continent. Most of the British parliamentarians considered it important to develop a new colonial policy for Britain after the Second World War. As the leader of the Liberal Party, Maclay (Lib. for Montrose Burghs) pointed out, one or two MPs were debating the question of Europe and the Empire as separate matters, which he considered problematic: ‘[I]f Western Europe means anything it must mean the countries with colonial dependencies

76

T. HAAPALA

working together and developing a colonial policy reasonably integrated and worked out together’ (Maclay: HC Deb 5 May 1948, vol. 450, col. 1341). The integration of these questions was also sought after by Bevin who had participated in the Anglo-French colonial talks (GrobFitzgibbon, 2016, 73–74). The aim was to ensure that Britain would be able to free itself from the financial support of the United States by making a colonial alliance with France, which had also been envisioned by the Pan-Europa movement (for a discussion, see Hansen & Jonsson, 2014). Maclay supported the government’s policy of pursuing a new colonial policy in the framework of the Western Union: ‘Quite frankly, I am very nervous about the extreme idealist advocates of the federal idea. I agree with what the Prime Minister said this afternoon about the stages through which we have to go in working towards the proper widening of Western Union until we can achieve some form of federal union’ (Maclay: HC Deb 5 May 1948, vol. 450, col. 1344). He joined in the government’s rhetoric strategy by calling federalist MPs idealists. One of the ‘idealists’ that he was referring to was Henry Usborne (Lab. for Birmingham, Acocks Green) who was a former vice-president of the Federal Union and advocate of world federal government. Usborne was active in the British branch of the World Federalist Movement which had come into being in 1946 at Montreux, Switzerland, and its aim had been to create a political union in Europe inside the United Nations. Usborne shared the opinion with Mackay that peace could only be secured by creating an international government. But, unlike Mackay, Usborne was not going to attend The Hague Congress because he did not consider it adequate for establishing a federation. In the House of Commons debate, Usborne called for an ‘effective world organisation’ with a constitution that banned national armament under a ‘strong federal authority’ and other supra-national institutions, including a world bank. He maintained that the most efficient way of founding a federal world authority was not through governmental action or legislatures immediately, but through a constituent assembly drafting a charter of world government with representation from all the nations invited to attend that was to be held in Geneva in 1950. It was based on the observation that all previous ‘federal conventions had failed on every occasion when they were sponsored by the State Legislatures, but at the Convention of 1898 which consisted of popularly elected representatives the present constitution was created’ (Usborne: HC Deb 5 May 1948,

4

SAVING EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY …

77

vol. 450, col. 1369–1370). Usborne referred to the Australian constitutional convention that for the first time in 1898 had delegates elected by popular vote. He was thus suggesting that democratic support was needed for the constitution of an international government before legislative ratification in all member countries, and it could not be accomplished by mere imposition by existing governments. In this manner, Usborne proposed that democracy had been abandoned in much of the previous intergovernmental agreements. On the Conservatives’ side, Robert Boothby10 (Cons. for Aberdeenshire and Kincardineshire Eastern) argued that the Western Union had to be based on long-term goals to be effective: ‘[I]f it is to be of any use at all, this Union must be positive, not negative. If it is merely an expedient designed for immediate political or economic ends, it will fail; if it is merely a defensive alliance against the Soviet Union, not only will it fail, but it will almost certainly lead to war’ (Boothby: HC Deb 5 May 1948, vol. 450, cols. 1372–1373). In this way, Boothby was criticising the Labour government of its lack of a long-term plan while, at the same time, promoting Churchill’s promotion of European unity. He argued that the union needed to be based on ‘a conception of life held in common, and a sense of mission’ in order for it to have any meaning at all. In other words, he put weight on the common values rather than constitutional approach which was characteristic to Churchill’s plan. However, unlike Churchill, Boothby argued that sovereignty had to be pooled because ‘war is inherent and endemic in a world of completely sovereign States’ (Boothby: HC Deb 5 May 1948, vol. 450, cols. 1372– 1374).11 He supported a long-term settlement for Europe including economic integration of Western Europe and the colonial territories. The realisation of this goal meant the founding of a ‘regional international organisation’ as a ‘prelude to any kind of global international organisation’ (ibid., cols. 1376–1379). The regional collaboration through

10 Boothby had been Churchill’s Private Secretary and he was going to become appointed as one of the British delegates to the Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe from 1949 to 1957. He was to advocate for the United Kingdom’s entry to the European Economic Community that later evolved into the European Union. 11 He told the House that this was originally the idea of late Lord Lothian, also known as Philip Kerr (1882–1940), the former Roundtable movement member who had supported the founding of the Federal Union in 1938.

78

T. HAAPALA

European unification was an inherent part of the plan of Churchill’s United Europe Movement. Boothby further argued that he supported a ‘functional and therefore empirical’ method to create ‘something less than a single sovereign State’ and made a clear distinction between ‘empiricists’ like himself and those whom he called ‘fanatics’: ‘I admire the fanatics. … I regard the hon. Member for Acock’s Green [Mr. Usborne] as the ultimate fanatic, and I regard the hon. Member for North West Hull [Mr. Mackay] as a moderate fanatic. I say God’s speed to them. I am all for them. They light the way. The world would never have got very far but for its fanatics’ (Boothby: HC Deb 5 May 1948, vol. 450, col. 1379). By following the government’s rhetorical strategy, his rhetorical aim was to reduce the authority of federalist Labour backbenchers and support Churchill’s European unification plan. The Labour Party backbenchers who Boothby called ‘fanatics’ both appreciated that Britain’s role in the world had undergone a fundamental change and it meant that the country was merely another state in Europe. Mackay argued that the country should lead the way to a European federation: ‘Our opportunity now is to free Europe by our example, … by saying to the European people that we realise we are one of the States of Europe, … that we are prepared to modify our sovereignty and to build up a federation of Western Europe’ (Mackay: HC Deb 5 May 1948, vol. 450, cols. 1291–1292). Usborne went a step further and saw that Britain was merely one country to join the constitution of a world federation: ‘If … we design a constitution of effective world government containing within it provisions for regional federations, one of which must surely be a United States of Europe, we could then say to all the nations, including our own: “Will you come into this union, on these terms?”’ (Usborne: HC Deb 5 May 1948, vol. 450, col. 1371). They both suggested that Britain’s position was diminished after the war but, nevertheless, gave it a leading role for other countries to follow. They advocated for a political union that was not realised by the Brussels treaty alone: ‘If we talk about Western Union, do not let us think that a co-ordinating committee is a union, because it is not, though it may be a step towards it’ (Mackay: HC Deb 5 May 1948, vol. 450, col. 1282). Even though Mackay was not critical of the colonial system as such and saw the British colonies as a part of the country’s future, he argued that creating a European federation involved facing the problem of the British Commonwealth. For him, it presented an ‘opportunity to work out a

4

SAVING EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY …

79

form of political organisation different from any which has previously existed’ (Mackay: HC Deb 5 May 1948, vol. 450, col. 1291). Boothby rejected the argument as a way of treating the British Empire and European unity as separate projects, saying that it was ‘nonsense [to claim] that the idea of the British Empire and Commonwealth, and of a United Europe, are contradictory or clashing ideas’. To him, they were ‘entirely complementary’ (Boothby: HC Deb 5 May 1948, vol. 450, col. 1382). In this way, Boothby was taking the side of the prime minister in the debate who had expressed his concern over the suggestion that Britain should be aligning itself more closely with European countries rather than with the Commonwealth. While Boothby’s political allegiance was with Churchill, he supported the government’s position of not opening discussion on British membership in European federation. Churchill had used internationalist rhetoric to persuade left-wing Labour parliamentarians to support his United Europe Movement. But the alliance did not endure for long, as the Labour MPs realised that their goals were exactly the opposite. Mackay wrote a pamphlet, Britain in Wonderland (1948), where he criticised Churchill’s view of a united Europe and argued that it was misleading. He claimed that Churchill’s United Europe Movement’s aims were not compatible with those of the movement for a European federation because there was no willingness to surrender any sovereignty. Churchill’s plan to unite Europe was, he argued, only serving for the purpose of fending against Soviet Russia. Despite his disappointment with Churchill’s political agenda, Mackay did not have other political allies in Britain. The Labour Party’s official policy towards European unification rejected federation as an option, with the claim that the idea was impracticable and simply not worth pursuing in the economic and political context of post-war Europe. The political move was to promote more ‘pragmatic’ intergovernmental solutions. In this way, paradoxically, the Labour government’s modernisation scheme in the field of foreign policy illustrated a return to intergovernmental models.

The British Involvement in European Unification and Saving European Democracy As illustrated in previous sections, the British delegation to The Hague Congress on 7–10 May 1948 was deeply divided on policy towards European unification. The Congress was held under the honorary chairmanship of Winston Churchill. Along with the French Le Conseil français

80

T. HAAPALA

pour l’Europe unie led by Edouard Herriot,12 his United Europe Movement was one of the most influential national organisations promoting European federation (Loveday, 1949, 621). As shown by the House of Commons debate prior to The Hague Congress, the Attlee government promoted intergovernmental cooperation and its priorities were with the Western Union that it had recently founded. For the government, The Hague Congress represented a competing approach to European unification against the principles of the Western Union. The ambivalence inside the British socialists was noticed in Le Monde that reported on the International Socialist Conference held in Paris in April 1948. It was noted that among the 14 socialist parties in Europe that were represented in the conference all showed signs of reserve against the idea of European federation, especially in Britain, where the Labour Party was in government and opposed by the ‘great hero of Federalism’, Winston Churchill (Le Monde, 27 April 1948). In the European context, Churchill’s authority on federalism was supported by his political bricolage, of assembling rhetorical commonplaces serving his own political interests. The left-wing Labour parliamentarians were using the same rhetorical strategy, but they did not have the same authority for saving European democracy as Churchill. Due to the absence of most of the Labour MPs in the British delegation, Churchill’s United Europe Movement became instrumental in propounding the British European vision (Niess, 2001, 67). The Congress produced a joint resolution creating the Council of Europe which was finally established by the Treaty of London on 5 May 1949.13 The resolution adopted called for ‘greater unity’ in the continent. The British delegates promoted European federation but were divided on British membership. After the Congress, the treaty negotiations began and prompted the Attlee government to formulate its view on the future formation of the European political institutions. A FrancoBelgian proposal to form a European parliament under the Council of

12 Herriot (1872–1957) was the former mayor of Lyon and had been the prime minister of France, representing the Radical Party. 13 The founding member states were Belgium, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Three months after the treaty was signed, Greece and Turkey joined.

4

SAVING EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY …

81

Europe suggested that the assembly be assigned a deliberative and consultative role pending a transfer of sovereignty from the governments, which would include: ‘[T]he authority to express the commitment of the peoples of Europe to unity and peace; to examine practical measures designed to bring about progressively the political and economic integration of Europe; to analyse the constitutional, economic and social problems arising from the creation of a European union; to consider by what means the European peoples could be brought to a deeper understanding of the principles forming the basis of their shared civilisation; and how the level of cultural exchange between them could be raised; to adopt a human rights charter and draw up plans for a European Court of Justice; and to make recommendations to the Member States’ (cvce.eu Towards the European Assembly and the Council of Europe). The Labour Party’s policy towards European unification was announced in a manifesto called Feet on the Ground: A Study of Western Union (1948), published only a few months after the Congress of Europe in The Hague. In the manifesto, it was declared that a suggestion to form a federal government in Europe would mean that it would be left without ‘real’ powers as the result would be that the member countries would not let it interfere with domestic policies: ‘Federation depends on a division of powers between the central federal authority and the participating states. When the existing federations like the U.S.A. were formed, the federal government was given mainly the right to decide foreign policy and defence arrangements for the group. […] But today a nation’s economic activities are so complicated and interwoven, and the part played in them by the government so greatly increased that any attempt to disentangle separate spheres of competence for federal and state governments would involve serious dislocations in the economic and political life of the states concerned’ (Feet on the Ground 1948, 20). The creation of a federation was portrayed as old-fashioned and illsuited for the challenges the country was facing. While federalists argued that a European federation would provide security and prosperity to the continent with a plurality of nations, the Labour leaders proposed a complete re-description of the concept. On the one hand, the Labour Party’s manifesto acknowledged the plurality of nation states and the increased difficulty in finding common ground, and yet, on the other hand, it warned that forming a European federation would only serve

82

T. HAAPALA

to disperse the powers of national government and create problems of governing. In other words, creating a European federation would destroy government’s abilities to control the implementation of its policies. The British government’s proposal was to form ‘an entirely novel type of body’ with governmental and ‘non-governmental’ characteristics. The argument was that: ‘If we push ahead too fast, we might find that the pressures engendered by the new machine may be too great and that the Council from which we all hope so much, may actually retard the cause of European Unity rather than advance it. If on the other hand we set up a workable machine and more especially one in which the various Governments will have confidence, we may […] be helping our Ministers to take a historical decision which may influence for the better the development of Europe for generations to come’ (Statement by the United Kingdom delegate, 28 March 1949). The body suggested was to be created under the Council of Europe as a novel type of ‘machinery’ which should not be allowed to operate without governmental supervision. But the organisation was to be laid on the foundations of common European roots: ‘The Council of Europe as we conceive of it, is a machine primarily designed to bring ever closer together, those European States, who to a large extent, share a common historical background and a common way of life sometimes referred to as a civilization’ (Statement by the United Kingdom delegate, 28 March 1949). In this way, the Labour government referred to common values as Churchill had done in his Zürich speech in 1946. It was framing the creation of European political union on old principles: ‘[T]here are certain traditions, principles and standards which are associated with our respective countries and which in the world of today are increasingly threatened. The Council of Europe will, we hope, be chiefly engaged in preserving these principles’ (Ibid.). In this way, while the British government gave the impression that European federalism was ‘inapplicable to the modern world’, it also launched a re-definition of what ‘realistic’ European unity should look like, which was essentially the same as that of Churchill’s United Europe Movement. As the UK government was directly involved in the treaty negotiations of the Council of Europe, it played a major role in setting the vision for future political union in the continent. The treaty was finally signed in London on 5 May 1949, with the statute declaring:

4

SAVING EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY …

83

‘[The signatory states reaffirm] the common heritage of their peoples and the true source of individual freedom, political liberty and the rule of law, principles which form the basis of all genuine democracy; Believing that, for the maintenance and further realisation of these ideals and in the interests of economic and social progress, there is a need of a closer unity between all like-minded countries of Europe’ (Statute of the Council of Europe, 1949). It included the idea of sharing a common heritage through closer unity which would serve as the basis of ‘genuine’ democracy. However, it left the decision regarding the choice of a form of government (federation, confederation, etc.) to the newly created bodies of the Council of Europe, the Consultative Assembly, and the Committee of Ministers. The Consultative Assembly was only given an advisory role, which was a condition set by the British delegation, subordinating it under the Committee of Ministers who represented the executive branch. The Assembly was to give recommendations (Article 22 of the Statute), and it was not in charge of its own agenda, which was set by the Committee of Ministers (Article 23 of the Statute).

Conclusion According to Lévi-Strauss (1962/1966, 11), bricolage takes place with a reference to ‘extraneous movement’. In the post-war European context, the rapidly changing situation in which political actors were trying to find a new position prompted the use of bricolage. The political bricolage of the United Europe and the Third Force movements in Britain took stock from ideas deriving from liberal internationalism and Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Pan-Europa movement using them for their own political purposes. Churchill used Coudenhove-Kalergi’s ideal of united Europe for his own political agenda, both domestically and internationally, and he managed to receive support from left-wing Labour Party members who were in favour of internationalism and united Europe. In this context, the political bricolage included such rhetorical commonplaces as ‘United States of Europe’, ‘regional alliances’ and ‘European federation’. Churchill’s United Europe Movement, however, prioritised the creation of a ‘regional’ organisation for Europe matching it with the preservation of British Commonwealth. The relationship between the British Commonwealth and the regional organisation was that of two autonomous entities operating under the United Nations. The

84

T. HAAPALA

Churchillian vision had competition from backbench Labour MPs such as Mackay and Usborne who advocated for a constitutional reform and spoke about the need for Britain to become a member of the European political union. However, they were not able to successfully challenge the Attlee government’s foreign policy. Britain was the most influential actor in the formation of the Council of Europe to save European democracy, Churchill’s United Europe Movement being at the centre of its founding. The British MPs were taking part in various groups, including socialist and federal, promoting European unity. They seemed to be operating on different levels, some with connections to national and/or international movements. All these factors combined with Britain’s weakened global role after the Second World War meaning that the British were heavily invested in the European unification. The British debate on the formation of European political union in 1948 and 1949 shows that empire and federalism were dominant concepts and treated as inextricably conjoined in the plans to save European democracy. Federalism finally became the controversial issue, as the Labour government announced that federalism was an old-fashioned, ‘utopian’ political concept. Previously, it had not been a dividing question in British politics. The British post-war debates turned federalism into a politicised issue, which continued to frame future debates on European unity and Britain’s role with Europe. The role of post-war Britain was to provide a model and framework for the European democracies to collaborate and prosper in the future. This is largely what the country delivered, albeit without governmentled debate about European democracy. In comparison with the recent Brexit debates, in which the concept of democracy and sovereignty of the country have become key questions, constructive arguments about European parliamentary democracy were nevertheless considered as part of the European discussion after The Hague Congress. As a moment of ‘extraneous movement’ and unexpected occurrences, the Brexit context can equally well be considered in terms of political bricolage which could well serve as a topic for further research. However, the rhetorical tools available for providing meaning to the concept of democracy in recent debates have been very different in terms of constructive reform of parliamentary democracy.

4

SAVING EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY …

85

References Primary Sources Archives CVCE.eu, University of Luxembourg: Statement by the United Kingdom delegate (London, 28 March 1949). https://www.cvce.eu/en/collections/unit-con tent/-/unit/02bb76df-d066-4c08-a58a-d4686a3e68ff/304a94a5-251d414a-93d0-f71c4a78118c/Resources#d663f3e7-4514-4970-9732-eab1ece68 bb4_en&overlay Towards the European Assembly and the Council of Europe. https://www.cvce. eu/en/recherche/unit-content/-/unit/04bfa990-86bc-402f-a633-11f39c 9247c4/9c546388-b1f1-43d5-a961-e084af7d571d Mackay papers, LSE archive, doc. 59: Minutes of the All-Party group meeting for European Unity, Wednesday, 21 April, 1948, House of Commons.

Books and Other Publications Beveridge, W. (1940/1998). Peace by federation? In J. Pinder (Ed.), Altiero Spinelli and the British federalists: Writings by Beveridge, Robbins and Spinelli, 1937–1943 (pp. 19–43). The Loathian Foundation Press. Coudenhove-Kalergi, R. [Count] (1923/1982). Pan-Europa. Vorwort zur Neuauflage von Otto von Habsburg. Pan-Europa-Verlag. Feet on the Ground: A Study of Western Union. (1948). London. https://www. cvce.eu/en/recherche/unit-content/-/unit/04bfa990-86bc-402f-a63311f39c9247c4/5f92e123-862b-489c-a6cc-59755eb5c0f5/Resources#bca 1b6d1-e7b0-4967-abc1-e1390852c875 Jennings, W. I. (1940). A federation for Western Europe. Cambridge University Press. Le Monde, dir. de publ. Beuve-Méry, Hubert. 27.04.1948, n° 1011; 5e année. Paris: Le Monde. ‘Socialisme et fédéralisme’, p. 1. Transl. By CVCE.eu. Mackay, R. W. G. (1940). Federal Europe. Being the case for European federation together with a draft Constitution of a United States of Europe, etc. M. Joseph. Mackay, R. W. G. (1948). Britain in wonderland. Gonnacz.

British House of Commons HC Deb, 4 May 1948: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1948/ may/04/foreign-affairs#S5CV0450P0_19480504_HOC_358 HC Deb, 5 May 1948: http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1948/ may/05/foreign-affairs-western-union#S5CV0450P0_19480505_HOC_296

86

T. HAAPALA

Council of Europe Treaty of London (Statute of the Council of Europe): https://www.coe.int/en/ web/conventions/full-list/-/conventions/treaty/001

Speeches Churchill, W. (1946). United States of Europe. https://winstonchurchill.org/ resources/speeches/1946-1963-elder-statesman/united-states-of-europe/

Secondary Literature Adamthwaite, A. (1985). Britain and the world, 1945–1949: The view from the Foreign Office. International Affairs, 61(2), 223–235. Baylis, J. (1984). Britain, the Brussels Pact and the Continental Commitment. International Affairs, 60(4), 615–629. Bellamy, R. (2019). Was the Brexit referendum legitimate, and would a second one be so? European Political Science, 18(1), 126–133. Berger, S. (2002). Democracy and social democracy. European History Quarterly, 32(1), 13–37. Chalmers, D. (2017). Brexit and the renaissance of parliamentary authority. The British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 19(4), 663–679. Collins, M. (2013). Decolonisation and the “federal moment.” Diplomacy & Statecraft, 24(1), 21–40. Conway, M. (2002). Democracy in Postwar Western Europe: The triumph of a political model. European History Quarterly, 32(1), 59–84. Copus, C. (2018). The Brexit referendum: Testing the support of elites and their allies for democracy; or, racists, bigots and xenophobes, oh my! British Politics, 13(1), 90–104. Crowson, N. J. (2011). Britain and Europe: A political history since 1918. Routledge. Douglas, R. M. (2004). The Labour Party, nationalism and internationalism, 1939–1951. Routledge. Dunn, J. (2005). Setting the people free: The story of democracy. Atlantic Books. Grantham, J. T. (1981). British Labour and the Hague Congress of Europe: National sovereignty defended. The Historical Journal, 24(2), 443–452. Grob-Fitzgibbon, B. (2016). Continental drift: Britain and Europe from the end of Empire to the rise of Euroscepticism. Cambridge University Press. Haapala, T., & Häkkinen, T. (2017). Debating Federal Europe in the British Parliament, c. 1940–49. European Review of History – Revue européenne d’histoire, 24(5), 801–816.

4

SAVING EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY …

87

Hansen, P., & Jonsson, S. (2014). Eurafrica: The untold history of European integration and colonialism. Bloomsbury. Harris, J. (1997). William Beveridge: A biography. Oxford University Press. Ihalainen, P., Ilie, C., & Palonen, K. (Eds.) (2016). Parliament and parliamentarism: A comparative history of a European concept. Berghahn. Klos, F. (2016). Churchill on Europe: The untold story of Churchill’s European project. I.B. Tauris. Kurunmäki, J., Nevers, J., & te Velde, H. (Eds.) (2018). Democracy in modern Europe: A conceptual history. Berghahn. Laybourn, K. (2005). England arise! The general election of 1945. The Historian, 86, 8–15. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1962/1966). The Savage Mind (G. Weidenfield & Nicholson, Ltd., Trans.). The University of Chicago Press. Lipgens, W. (1982). A history of European integration. Volume 1: 1945–1947 . The formation of the European Unity Movement, with contributions by Wilfried Loth and Alan Milward (P. S. Falla & A. J. Ryder, Trans.). Clarendon Press. Llanque, M. (2018). The edges of democracy: German, British and American debates on the dictatorial challenges to democracy in the interwar years. In J. Kurunmäki, J. Nevers, & H. te Velde (Eds.), Democracy in modern Europe: A conceptual history (pp. 182–207). Berghahn. Loewenberg, G. (1958). The British constitution and the structure of the Labour party. The American Political Science Review, 52(3), 771–790. Loveday, A. (1949). The European movement. International Organization, 3(4), 620–632. Müller, J.-W. (2011). Contesting democracy: Political ideas in twentieth-century Europe. Yale University Press. Niess, F. (2001). Die europ¨aische Idee. Aus dem Geist des Widerstands. Suhrkamp. Pinder, J. (Ed.) (1998). Altiero Spinelli and the British Federalists. Writings by Beveridge, Robbins and Spinelli 1937–1943. The Lothian Foundation Press. Rosenboim, O. (2017). The emergence of globalism. Visions of world order in Britain and the United States, 1939–1950. Princeton University Press. Schneer, J. (1984). Hopes deferred or shattered: The British Labour Left and the Third Force Movement, 1945–49. The Journal of Modern History, 56(2), 197–226. Seidler, V. J. (2018). Making sense of Brexit: Democracy, Europe and uncertain futures. Policy Press. Skinner, Q. (1973). The empirical theorists of democracy and their critics: A plague on both their Houses. Political Theory, 1(3), 287–306. Smith, T. (1999). Making the world safe for democracy in the American century. Diplomatic History, 23(2), 173–188.

88

T. HAAPALA

Weale, A. (2016). Nostalgic democracy triumphs over democratic internationalism. The Political Quarterly, 87 (3), 352–354. Wiesner, C., Haapala, T., & Palonen, K. (2017). Debates, rhetoric and political action: Practices of textual interpretation and analysis. Palgrave Macmillan. Zurcher, A. J. (1958). The struggle to unite Europe, 1940–1958. New York University Press.

CHAPTER 5

Between Conceptual Innovation and ‘There is no Alternative’: Conceptual Politics and the Building of the EU as a Polity Claudia Wiesner

Introduction: Conceptual Politics and the Building of the EU as a Democratic Polity The EU as a democratic polity is permanently invented (Wiesner, 2019). More than most other democratic polities, the EU is a product of creative and innovative actors and thinkers who conceptualised and helped realise what for a long time had been a utopia, the unification of Europe. When after World War II European unification began, thinkers, politicians, and activists had long prepared it in their books and pamphlets, in their speeches and campaigns, and finally in their struggles, their grassroots work, and their opposition to fascism and national socialism. They had pushed forward ideas and concepts on how to integrate Europe. Many of their ideas and inventions were gradually transformed into practice and

C. Wiesner (B) Fulda University of Applied Sciences, Fulda, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 N. Kauppi and K. Palonen (eds.), Rhetoric and Bricolage in European Politics and Beyond, Rhetoric, Politics and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98632-2_5

89

90

C. WIESNER

led to building the EU as a new polity with new institutions. Thinkers, politicians, and activists addressing these matters mutually influenced one another. In thus inventing the EU and in building the EU’s institutions, some of the contested understandings of key concepts were transformed into institutional realities. In practical politics new types of issues and disputes were encountered for which no model pre-existed—political bricolage was then required. Grasping European integration requires understanding these processes of conceptual intervention and contestation—the conceptual politics of European integration, understood as the innovations and controversies related to interpretations and practices of political concepts in EU integration, and the actors, processes, and success factors that helped institutionalise some of the concepts and interpretations (see Wiesner, 2019). In contrast to approaches that search for clear dichotomies, decisions, and definitions about the EU, the point of departure in this chapter is that conceptual politics and the related conceptual controversies are both symbolical for the state of the EU and part of the interpretative and symbolic struggles over EU integration. Controversies are closely related to the hybrid character of the EU which makes it difficult to find clear-cut definitions. The core argument is that conceptual politics and controversies should be taken as a resource as they illustrate, by highlighting the controversies about the EU and by considering its ambivalences and pitfalls, the nature of a changing object—the EU. Against this backdrop, this chapter proposes a perspective to European integration that concentrates on political concepts and conceptual politics as its driving factor. Specific usages and understandings of political key concepts such as democracy, parliament, representation, freedom, or citizenship associate meaning to a newly developing polity, create visions and goals for integration and shape the new institutions themselves. But such concepts are essentially contested. Political actors interpret them differently because they have different interests which they pursue in their respective interpretations of the concepts. A crucial problem in building an integrated EU polity has been to conceptualise supra-national institutions beyond the level of the nationstate, beyond the logic of mere international organisations but below the integration level of a federal state. The history of building the EU as a polity and an arena of controversies is closely related to finding solutions to this problem. The evolution of the European Parliament (EP) is illustrative of this problem. From its beginnings, the EP as a parliamentary

5

BETWEEN CONCEPTUAL INNOVATION …

91

assembly acted as a ‘real parliament’ (see Tiilikainen & Wiesner, 2016; Wiesner, 2019). This was partly because its members knew how parliaments acted and partly because they knew historically parliaments have gained power not by constitutions but through imposing their powers against monarchs, courts, bureaucracies, governments, legal institutions, experts, and specialists of different kind, i.e. by their political actions. Little by little, parliamentary elements of deliberation and control were introduced. They went along with governmental elements of initiative and routine administration, as well as presidential elements. This process is a long-term historical and political process , marked by conflicts, controversies, and contingencies, and changing institutional realities and practices. Since the course of integration has been contested rather than a straight path of historical development, there are different histories of European integration. Conceptual politics, and the related conceptual innovations and controversies, links to both theory and practice. A concept such as ‘European Parliament’ can be either theorised or invented ‘on paper’ first and then enacted and implemented, and hence put into political and institutional practice. Conceptual innovation can take place when new concepts are invented such as in the case of ‘the area of freedom, Security and Justice’ and ‘Union Citizenship’. Conceptual politics can also take place the other way around. Political and institutional changes can affect the practice of a concept such as in the case of the ‘state’ in such a way that established interpretations no longer work. In both cases, controversies on the usage, meaning, and practice related to a concept occur. Accordingly, conceptual politics relates to institutional and political inventions as well as practices in the EU, and to their analysis and categorisation by political science and EU studies. Conceptual controversies are intertwined with struggles for defining political reality, and hence they are always entangled with other kinds of controversies or disagreements that have to do with not only ideational or conceptual interests but also material and practical ones. The EU then appears as an arena of controversies that involve both ideational and practical interests (cf. Kauppi in this volume). Long-term conceptual and political controversies do not disappear but re-emerge and continue to have an impact. Consequently, rather than trying to define the EU using pregiven definitions at a given moment in time, it is important to focus on analysing long-term processes, dynamics, and the making of the EU polity in a multilevel system. The actors behind this process, their rationales, moves, and strategies must be considered.

92

C. WIESNER

As there has never been a predefined path in integration, the conflicts, controversies, and contingencies come into focus, as do the winners and losers. The activities that have led to the invention and shaping of the EU as a democratic polity have taken place via different channels: political activism, political controversies, conceptual inventions that have been implemented silently in a depoliticised way, and top-down decisions such as Treaty changes and the implementation of EU law.

The EU as an Arena of Controversies I thus want to suggest enlarging the focus of analysis on the EU’s political regime by studying the conceptual politics and controversies that shaped the EU and the actors that have driven them. This approach connects to other approaches that suggest inclusive and reflexive frameworks beyond established dualisms in EU research (objective–subjective, individual–institution, socialisation–calculation, interest–norm, supranational–national) and relational approaches that consider the interactive character of institutions and the individuals and groups inhabiting them (Kauppi, 2010; see also the argument in Kauppi, 2018). Scholars have highlighted the role of ideas and interests in shaping the EU (Christiansen et al., 2002), the importance of bottom-up and sideways dynamics (Kreppel, 2010), and of interinstitutional power relations and struggles (Farrell & Héritier, 2007). Several approaches have focused on contestations of European unification and of the concepts and ideas that have driven it (see e.g., Krotz & Schild, 2015, Lacroix & Nicolaïdis, 2010, Tömmel, 2014, 34, Triandafyllidou & Gropas, 2015, Wiesner & Schmidt-Gleim, 2014). Some studies also have focused on the controversies of integration and the role of concepts and ideas (see e.g. Jachtenfuchs, 2002; Parsons, 2003; Schmidt, 2006; Sternberg, 2013). They concentrate on the EU and/or national political elites and study two different possible paths of integration. Schmidt and Sternberg focus on a top-down path, on how national elites or EU elites and governments interpret and legitimise EU integration vis-à-vis citizens. Jachtenfuchs and Parsons focus on a bottom-up path, i.e., national traditions and ideas, their party origins, on how elites use them in polity-related decisions (Jachtenfuchs, 2002) and how integration ideas succeed (Parsons, 2003). These studies point at two different moments when politicians conceptualise EU integration. A first moment is before institutional change occurs, and the ways they

5

BETWEEN CONCEPTUAL INNOVATION …

93

(possibly) influence these changes. A second moment takes place after changes have occurred and politicians start using legitimisation strategies to justify their positions. Scholars have adopted specific approaches and analytical perspectives. Schmidt focuses less on the bottom-up path as well as the dimension of internal conflicts in member states and sticks to a top-down model of spread in which elites must argue convincingly to legitimise the effects of EU integration. Sternberg concentrates on EU thinkers and politicians and hence also on the top-down path. For his part, Jachtenfuchs investigates bottom-up processes. While he even includes differences in national parties’ positions, he tends to leave aside the top-down paths of influence. In contrast to these approaches, my goal is broader and focuses not only on the ideas and concepts that have helped invent the EU as a democratic polity, but also on the conceptual realities and practices that have developed, i.e., the way, for example, parliamentarism is practised under conditions of financial austerity (see below), and especially on the linkages between the processes of invention and the shaping of institutional and political practice. The conceptual politics, innovations, and controversies represent a crucial part of these linkages. Building on a dictum by Reinhart Koselleck, concepts can be considered as pivots (Koselleck, 1996, 65) of key controversies, conflicts, and changes under way in the material, social, and political reality that they interpret and modify.

What is a Concept and Why is It Useful to Study Concepts in European Integration? But what is a concept? In the most common understanding in political science, a concept is taken as an analytical category or an analytical tool (see Sartori, 1970, even if he does not define the term). In a broader philosophical and linguistic tradition, a concept functions as an analytical category. Concepts can be defined as mental representations in the Fregean sense and as abilities. There are word-sized concepts or lexical concepts (Margolis & Laurence, 2005) and clusters which share a similar meaning. The tradition of conceptual history, of Begriffsgeschichte, opens up a broader perspective on concepts. It focuses on the meanings that are associated with concepts and the ways concepts transport these. A concept in this sense is a word, or a cluster of words, that is marked by its discursive function. The notion of cluster refers to the fact that conceptual

94

C. WIESNER

controversies are not linked to single keywords but build broader clusters of interconnected concepts, which allow variation of emphasis both within and between the clusters. In a Koselleckian sense, a concept is characterised by the fact that it is central to a discourse, a controversial nodal point in which meanings are associated to one another. It is precisely because of their function as nodal points that key concepts become controversial—they are factors and indicators of the reality they describe (Koselleck, 1996). Political interests, strategies, and processes are reflected in the usage of concepts. This also means that a concept is a key concept because it is controversial (Palonen, 2002, 2010). Concepts in this view are both—they serve as analytical categories in the social sciences and they are factors and indicators of the reality they describe, and hence objects of controversy and nodal points of discourses. The core characteristic of concepts is that they transport meaning. Concepts’ functions as categories and as factors and indicators of debates and changes are related to one another. An analytical category can never be entirely separated from how the concept has been understood, debated, and contested (Koselleck, 2006b, 375; Palonen, 2012). Koselleck underlines two other key aspects: every concept depends in its usage on a specific context and a concept is never neutral but attached to older meanings and normative judgements (Koselleck, 1996, 59–60). The history of a concept therefore includes not only changes in the meaning of a word but also changes of the meanings associated with it. In this sense, concepts are highly complex (Koselleck, 1967, 85, 94, 1996, 61, 2006a, 120). In their discursive function, concepts always relate to different levels of meaning (Wiesner & Harfst, 2019). These reflections lead to the following understanding of concepts: concepts are words, or they consist of several words. Concepts are linked to a certain meaning, and this meaning can be potentially changing and contested. Conceptual clusters are clusters of terms that share the same meaning and functions, or parts of them. The meaning of concepts, then, has a decisive function in ordering the world around us. But the very meaning that is associated with a concept is not fixed. A concept is always potentially subject to change, debate, and controversy, explicitly or implicitly (Wiesner, 2019, 46). This reflexive and constructivist perspective on concepts builds on several heuristic ideas developed in the field of conceptual history. This label marks both a theoretical and methodological perspective on

5

BETWEEN CONCEPTUAL INNOVATION …

95

concepts and their evolution, as well as a research field (Palonen, 1997, 45). The field of conceptual history has developed in political theory and history around the works of Reinhart Koselleck (1967, 82) and Quentin Skinner (Palonen, 2003; Skinner, 2002b, 179, 182). The added value of this approach in analysing the EU can be summed up in four points. First, European integration poses a number challenges to concepts that a conceptual-historical perspective helps to grasp. European integration decisively affects key concepts as analytical and theoretical categories since it brings about changes to the political practices they refer to. Parliaments, citizens, governments, and states increasingly become part of a multilevel regime: national parliaments lose competencies and develop new institutional working routines, while the European Parliament has gained more and more formal and informal influence. Citizenship has evolved into multilevel citizenship, shared between the member states and the EU. National governments are becoming part of a multilevel EU regime where governmental institutions have developed on the EU level. Key analytical and theoretical concepts thus refer to a changing world in two respects. The first one is usual in political science: its objects change over time. The second aspect regards the established methodological framework of the nation-state. In the multilevel EU regime, nation-states no longer are the only reference frame for parliamentarism, citizenship, or government. Even if nation-states are still central, the EU and sometimes sub-national entities have become other reference frames. The conceptual-historical perspective provides the heuristic tools and techniques to classify, structure, and analyse these conceptual changes. At the same time, concepts are factors and indicators of the social, institutional, and political changes brought about by European integration (see the contributions in Wiesner & Schmidt-Gleim, 2014). Moreover, key concepts link meaning to the legitimacy of ideas and institutions (Skinner, 1999, 66–67). The conceptual historical approach focuses especially on the linkages of institutional changes and their conceptualisations. Concepts both trigger and express change and the related controversies are hence situated at the intersections of empirical changes and changes of meaning (Koselleck, 1996, 61, 65), both influencing the changes in question before they occur and legitimising them afterwards (Koselleck 1967, Skinner, 2002c). Second, while conceptual history has not been systematically applied to the EU, it offers a methodology for studying the consequences of

96

C. WIESNER

the establishment of new political spaces. According to the conceptualhistorical approach, the establishment of new political spaces can be studied by grasping their mental and linguistic conceptualisation (Koselleck, 1967, 81). European integration can be considered as a formation of a new political space. Third, the conceptual-historical approach presents several advantages over other language-oriented approaches such as Discourse Analysis and related approaches. It explicitly focuses on the interrelations of linguistic activities and institutional changes, which are especially virulent in European integration. In comparison to discursive institutionalism (Schmidt, 2006) and the approaches by Parsons (Parsons, 2003) or Jachtenfuchs (2002), conceptual history provides a more complex framework. While discursive institutionalism takes a top-down perspective on patterns of meaning in the EU as used by governments to legitimise integration in the eyes of their citizens, the other two approaches analyse how national governments and political elites seek to apply their respective conceptualisations of integration in building the EU as a polity. In contrast to these views, the conceptual politics of European integration analyses political actions as taking place in a dynamic spider web where paths and connections of conceptualisations by different kinds of actors and their activities spin into different directions, i.e., topdown, but also bottom-up and sideways. Key concepts as nodal points enable studying this web of conceptual politics and institutional change. Concepts are nodal points because they both influence and indicate institutional, political, and social changes. To focus on the ‘conceptualisation spider web’ is particularly promising, since in the EU multilevel system, institutional and conceptual changes are closely related. Foruth, Koselleck has suggested a taxonomy that enables grasping and categorising these different patterns of conceptual politics. He distinguished four possible interrelations between institutional and conceptual changes (Koselleck, 2006c, 62), adapted here to EU integration. Before discussing his scheme, four remarks are important: First, the scheme does not imply a causal relation between institutional change and conceptual change, but mainly a temporal one. It enables examining whether a concept was first invented and followed by institutional change or vice versa. Second, the interrelations between conceptual and institutional change can be of different character: (a) they can be direct, when a concept is invented and then put into practice such as in the case of the ‘citizenship of the Union’; (b) they can be mediated, when concepts are

5

BETWEEN CONCEPTUAL INNOVATION …

97

factors of change or influence institutional change; or (c) they can be indirect, when conceptual change indicates institutional changes. Third, it is of course difficult to fix the exact moment that marks a ‘change’. Conceptual history and qualitative or interpretative techniques of analysis provide the means to study dominant interpretations as well as changes in institutional practice. To estimate to what degree a conceptual change takes place, e.g., is supported by the citizens, it would be necessary to use microdata (see Zvereva, 2014 for an exemplary study). Fourth, in addition to the types of temporal interrelations between institutional and conceptual change, different directions of the interrelations can be distinguished, as has been previously discussed (top-down, bottom-up, and sideways). 1. Political, institutional, and social reality and the meaning of the respective concepts stay the same. This case is rarely, if Ever, Found in EU integration. 2. There is change of political, institutional, and social reality before conceptual change. The changes brought about by European integration affect the practices of classical key concepts. For instance, a ‘state’ in the EU multilevel regime no longer fulfils all classical characteristics of a ‘sovereign state’. This does not mean that conceptual change must follow. It can also mean that reality and the established meaning of a concept diverge. 3. There is conceptual change before change of political, institutional, and social reality. This case mainly occurs when concepts are invented with the purpose of transporting a certain meaning or of creating legitimacy. Conceptual innovation is often shaped by key actors, ‘innovating ideologists’ (Skinner 2002a, 148) who aim to create positive expectations about future developments (Vorgriffe, Koselleck 1997). In this sense, EU politician and civil servant led symbolic and conceptual politics aimed at forging a new conceptual lexicon (i.e., ‘the area of freedom, security and justice’) and symbolism (i.e., the flag, anthem, Europe day…) regarding the EU. Such strategies can be successful as in the case of ‘Citizenship of the Union’ or they can fail, as with the concept of ‘Constitutional Treaty’, which explicitly gave rise to strong criticism and (conceptual) controversies in several member states (Wiesner, 2014).

98

C. WIESNER

Both type 2 and 3 often lead to political-conceptual struggles around EU integration, mostly when apparent conflicts to existing political and social situations and/or dominant interpretations in national political cultures emerge, for instance, when the French intensively discussed the role of the services publiques versus the notion of free market economy in the debate around the Constitutional Treaty in 2005 (see Wiesner, 2014). 4. Political, institutional, and social reality and concepts can go into opposite directions. This can be the case when EU institutions coin new, artificial concepts that are not yet related to reality or when reality changes, old concepts no longer fit and new concepts are not yet developed. An example of the first one is the concept of ‘area of freedom, security, and justice’, coined by the European Commission and widely used in EU communications but to which citizens did not associate any practical meaning. An example of the second one is multilevel citizenship and cross-border mobility in the EU, phenomena that are practised but not conceptualised either in theory or vernacular language. Based on an analysis of EU documents as sources of European integration, I will next outline two cases of conceptual politics and related controversies. The first case regards an example of conceptual innovation and its implementation (type 3), the second one an example of institutional change before conceptual change (type 2).

The Conceptual Politics of Citizenship and Antidiscrimination The case of EU citizenship rights and in particular the implementation of antidiscrimination laws is an example of Koselleck´s case 3. Concepts are invented to convey a positive, future-oriented meaning that impacts political practices. Declarations, policy documents, and laws were used to create EU citizenship rights (see in detail Wiesner, 2007). This process of conceptual politics affected established meanings and practices of citizenship in the EU and its member states. Citizenship is a political key concept in modern representative democracies in several respects. It links a polity to the individuals, defines the electorate, and fixes core rights that are essential for participating in the

5

BETWEEN CONCEPTUAL INNOVATION …

99

social and political life of a country. But the concept of citizenship has always been contested in theory and political practice in different cultural contexts and nation-states (Koselleck, 2006d, Skinner, 1993). Citizenship practice has also changed over centuries (Pocock, 1998). In the history of Western nation-states, citizenship rights have been at the core of democratisation processes and citizen rights have been fought over in political struggles (Wiesner, 2008). Despite national specificities, a few generalisations on national citizenship can be made. There are four sub-dimensions that shape nation-state citizenship in theory and practice: access, rights, duties, and the active content of citizenship (which can be termed ‘political activity’). These four dimensions are covered by most national concepts of citizenship, which define conditions of access (e.g., mostly nationality rules and related laws), the legal consequences of citizenship in the sense of a citizen’s rights and a citizen’s duties, and how citizen´s political activity is carried out (see also Wiesner & Björk, 2014; Wiesner et al., 2018). European integration has challenged nation-state-related concepts of citizenship. Today, nationals of one of the member states are also ‘Union Citizens’ and possess other EU-related rights. But EU citizenship differs in many decisive respects from the established form of nation-state citizenships. There is no proper EU nationality, no EU citizen duties, and a relatively low level of EU citizen activity. EU-related rights play a key role. These rights are put into practice within the EU’s multilevel system (Wiesner, 2007). Moreover, the political processes that created EU-related citizenship rights took a very different shape than in the nation-states (on the following see in detail Wiesner, 2007, 2018). Rather than by political struggles, EU-related citizenship rights were introduced top-down by policy documents and laws that were drafted by the EU Commission, voted upon by the Council, i.e., the EU member states’ ministers, and interpreted by the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). The introduction of EU citizenship rights is a case of future-oriented conceptual innovation.

Citizenship Rights in the Treaty of Rome The Treaty of Rome, which was concluded by six EEC member states in 1957, not only founded the European Economic Community. It was also the starting point for the development of EU-related citizenship rights. It defined several rights such as the free circulation of persons and other

100

C. WIESNER

rights concerning the inner-EEC market, among others the right to the free movement of employees and service providers. Article 48 states: 1. Freedom of movement for workers shall be secured within the community by the end of the transitional period at the latest. 2. Such freedom of movement shall entail the abolition of any discrimination based on nationality between workers of the Member States as regards employment, remuneration and other conditions of work and employment. (European Council, 1957).

Article 49 of the Treaty of Rome also accords to the European Council the capacity to act as a conceptual innovator to push forward free movement rights in the future: As soon as this treaty enters into force, the Council shall, acting on a proposal from the Commission and after consulting the Economic and Social Committee, issue directives or make regulations setting out the measures required to bring about, by progressive stages, freedom of movement for workers, as defined in Article 48. (European Council, 1957)

Another innovation is the right to equal payment for women and men, which was new to legal practice in most EEC states in 1957. It is defined in Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome: Each Member State shall during the first stage ensure and subsequently maintain the application of the principle that men and women should receive equal pay for equal work. (European Council, 1957)

These rights were to be implemented throughout the EEC. In other words, the Council as the body concluding the EEC Treaty bound itself—in its function as representative of the governments of the member states—to the rules it had itself fixed in the Treaty. But these EECrelated rights only concerned market participants. For example, the right to free movement was related only to market participation by working or providing services in another member state, and it was part of the inner market’s four main freedoms (free circulation of goods, services, capital, and labour force). Several of the rights in the Treaty of Rome were necessary for regulatory purposes and to guarantee minimum standards for the inner market. Hence these rights were not citizenship rights in the proper

5

BETWEEN CONCEPTUAL INNOVATION …

101

sense since they did not apply to citizens in their status as citizens of a polity. But still, they created a direct link between EU citizens (in their role as market participants) and the EU, since these rights were (and are until today) directly applicable and EU citizens could claim them before the CJEU. In the following years, based on this Treaty, EU Commission, and the Court of Justice of the European Union (today´s CJEU) continued acting as conceptual innovators as assigned in the Treaty of Rome. By interpreting existing EU laws in the broadest possible way, they developed into actors of proactive non-discrimination policy. A crucial legal case was ‘Defrenne’. In 1976, the CJEU judged that equal payment and treatment of women and men had to be enacted in practice. Gabrielle Defrenne, a Belgian stewardess, successfully claimed her right to equal treatment regarding retirement age and pension level. The Court’s Article 119 would be directly applicable with immediate consequences for the member states. In the Court’s conceptual controversy with the state of Belgium on the interpretation of article 119 and the right to equal pay, the following judgement was directed against Belgium’s government and its non-compliance with article 119: The principle that men and women should receive equal pay, which is laid down by Article 119, may be relied on before the national courts. These courts have a duty to ensure the protection of the rights which that provision vests in individuals, in particular in the case of those forms of discrimination which have their origin in legislative provisions or collective labour agreements, as well as where men and women receive unequal pay for equal work which is carried out in the same establishment or service, whether private or public. (Court of Justice of the European Union, 1976, 481–482)

Shaping the Principle of Antidiscrimination In the decades that followed, the EU Commission and the CJEU further acted as conceptual innovators and agents of proactive non-discrimination policy by interpreting the existing EU laws in the broadest possible way. Thereby they forced member states as well as employers to comply to the largest possible extent with the principle of equal treatment enabled by EU law. The rights thus developed reached further than most national citizenship rights. What is more, they had to be applied in the member

102

C. WIESNER

states like all other EU legislation. Treaties, policy documents, laws, and declarations were the tools in this conceptual politics (see also in detail Wiesner, 2007). In 1999, the Amsterdam Treaty defined the political goal of equal treatment and non-discrimination: Without prejudice to the other provisions of the Treaties and within the limits of the powers conferred by them upon the Union, the Council, acting unanimously in accordance with a special legislative procedure and after obtaining the consent of the European Parliament, may take appropriate action to combat discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation. (TFEU, Art. 19, European Union 2010)

On this newly coined legal base, the Commission further acted as conceptual innovator. It defined the principle of antidiscrimination in a communication (European Commission, 1999) that included, putting Article 19 into political practice, two EU-directives. Referring to the principles of freedom, democracy, human rights, rule of law, as well as the four freedoms of the inner market, the following statement underlines very clearly that the Commission wanted to create a political practice that was further reaching than in the member states, forcing the member states to change their legal and political practices: In more general terms, a number of Member States do not have comprehensive legislation (other than isolated provisions contained in various labour or criminal codes) to combat discrimination on the grounds of racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, age and sexual orientation. (European Commission, 1999, 4)

As the initiative was not subject to co-decision, the Council followed the Commission’s initiative and voted two new antidiscrimination directives in 2000. Council Directive 2000/78/EC forbids any discrimination on ethnic grounds and fixes equal treatment regarding employment, education, social security, and access to products and services (European Council, 2000b). Council Directive 2000/43/EC (29 June 2000) forbids any discrimination in employment and profession that is based on race, ethnic origin, religion, ideology, age, or sexual orientation (European Council, 2000a). The first part of the directive consists in a declaration which lists 28 arguments on why Council and EP adopted the directive. The list makes up a strong link between the EU and concepts

5

BETWEEN CONCEPTUAL INNOVATION …

103

and ideas that are normatively loaded and positively connotated. Among the arguments is a reference to the values of the European Union: The European Union is founded on the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law, principles which are common to the Member States, and should respect fundamental rights as guaranteed by the European Convention for the protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms and as they result from the constitutional traditions common to the Member States, as general principles of Community Law.

There is also a reference to other international Treaties and human rights: The right to equality before the law and protection against discrimination for all persons constitutes a universal right recognised by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women, the International Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination and the United Nations Covenants on Civil and Political Rights and on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, to which all Member States are signatories.

The Commission and the Council thus once again took on the role of proactive conceptual innovators. However, the member states did not always voluntarily follow. We encounter here a classical controversy in European integration. Despite having voted for a Directive in the Council, member states were reluctant to implement the same directive at home. Conceptual controversies thus were carried out by slowing down or opposing legal implementation. The Commission counteracted such obstacles by infringement procedures. In other words, the concept of antidiscrimination as understood by the Commission was not shared by all member states, because some member states were reluctant in transferring these directives into national legal practice. Germany was one of the last states to do so, and only after the Commission had threatened to start an infringement procedure before the CJEU. This pressure made Germany adopt the directive (Wiesner, 2007).

104

C. WIESNER

Financial Aid Financial crisis governance and the effects it has had on parliamentary governance in the EU and its member states is a case of a Koselleckian controversy of type 2—political reality changes before concepts change. The mechanisms created to grant financial aid to member states severely changed former institutional and democratic standards and practices in the member states concerned. This situation was the result of an institutional gap in the EU’s economic and monetary union. While creating a common currency and monetary politics, the EU Treaties had not conferred the powers on EU institutions to impose economic policies on member states. When the sovereign debt crisis hit Europe from 2009 onwards, the Euro zone member states had to cope with the absence of institutions and mechanisms. They reacted to the crisis by conceptual innovations, the budgetary control provided by the so-called six-pack and two-pack regulations, and an unspoken emergency legislation (see Wiesner, 2021b). The actors in the conceptual politics of financial aid that shaped a new political and institutional reality were the heads of state and government and the ministers of finance of the 19 Euro states, seconded by the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund. As in the case of antidiscrimination policy that was outlined earlier, they operated via Treaties and legal acts. To analyse the setting up of financial aid, it is crucial to understand the role of one player, the Euro Group. Article 137 of the Treaty on Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) states that: Arrangements for meetings between ministers of those Member States whose currency is the euro are laid down by the Protocol on the Euro Group. (European Union, 2016, 107)

The Euro Group created an internal differentiation in the EU institutions. Its members are closely related to the Council, as the respective ministers of finance are members of the Council of Ministers and the respective heads of states and governments to the European Council. But, as the Protocol on the Euro Group states, Euro Group meetings are informal (European Union, 2016). This leads to a decisive difference in transparency. While Council meetings are public when the Council is acting in its legislative function, this is not the case for the Euro Group, as laid out in article 1 of the protocol on the Euro Group:

5

BETWEEN CONCEPTUAL INNOVATION …

105

The Ministers of the Member States whose currency is the euro shall meet informally. Such meetings shall take place, when necessary, to discuss questions related to the specific responsibilities they share with regard to the single currency. The Commission shall take part in the meetings. The European Central Bank shall be invited to take part in such meetings, which shall be prepared by the representatives of the Ministers with responsibility for finance of the Member States whose currency is the euro and of the Commission. (European Union, 2016, 283)

In May 2010, financial crisis governance started with the Euro Group setting up financial assistance for Greece. The basis for this activity was an intergovernmental declaration of the heads of states and governments of the Euro Group. Shortly afterwards, the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM) and the European Financial Stabilisation Facility (EFSF) were created. EFSF is the predecessor of today’s ESM, guaranteeing the larger part of the financial aid programmes (440 bn Euro) by member state and IMF bonds. While EFSF was linked to the Euro Group, EFSM was based on EU Treaties. However, it guaranteed loans only up to 60 bn Euro (Müller-Graff, 2011). This institutional set-up reorganised EU’s institutions and Treaties with a newly created structure, adding to it a new player exterior to the EU, the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The European Stability Mechanism ESM, which officially started on October 8th, 2012, is also based on an intergovernmental Treaty. The ESM is an Intergovernmental Financial Institution (IFI) subject to international law (Bundesfinanzministerium, 2015). But despite this intergovernmental set-up, the ESM de facto is closely linked to the EU’s institutions, as stated in article 2,1 of the ESM Treaty: Membership in the ESM shall be open to the other Member States of the European Union […]. (European Council, 2012)

The ESM was founded during a European Council meeting in December 2010 (ESM, 2015) via a new third paragraph in article 136 TFEU: The Member States whose currency is the euro may establish a stability mechanism to be activated if indispensable to safeguard the stability of the euro area as a whole. The granting of any required financial assistance under the mechanism will be made subject to strict conditionality. (European Union, 2016, 106)

106

C. WIESNER

This means that the ESM Treaty created an intergovernmental parallel structure to the EU’s institutions regarding financial aid, as the institutions figuring in the ESM Treaty are largely identical to those in the EU Treaties—Commission, Council members, and European Central Bank (Article 5,3, ESM Treaty): Each ESM Member shall appoint a Governor and an alternate Governor. […] The Member of the European Commission in charge of economic and monetary affairs and the President of the ECB, as well as the President of the Euro Group (if he or she is not the Chairperson or a Governor) may participate in the meetings of the Board of Governors as observers. (European Council, 2012)

The Court of Justice can be called upon in cases of conflict (Article 37) (European Council, 2012). The listing of institutions in the ESM reveals three crucial gaps. The ESM is not part of the EU Treaties. Non-Euro member states and the EP are excluded. And as far-reaching competencies have been transferred to the informal Euro Group and the oft-cited ‘Troika’, which operates financial aid and consists of representatives of the Commission, the ECB, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), responsibilities are more unclear than under the ordinary legislative procedure. Formally, the Troika is the EU’s agent. It negotiates the conditions of financial aid, lays them down in a ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ (MoU) and controls that these conditions are kept. All these procedures are defined in the ESM Treaty, which has been concluded by the heads of state of the Euro States in a self-binding procedure, just as other EU Treaties.

No Alternative? What are the effects of this self-binding ESM Treaty in the member states and their representative democracies? The governance of financial aid entails crucial changes in power relations in the EU’s multilevel system: financial aid opposes debtor and creditor states in a strong power asymmetry. In the member states, parliamentary decision-making and parliamentary powers have been cut down in both debtor and creditor states (Wiesner, 2021b). This is due to the procedure for granting financial aid as explained in article 13 of the ESM Treaty:

5

BETWEEN CONCEPTUAL INNOVATION …

107

1. An ESM Member may address a request for stability support to the Chairperson of the Board of Governors. Such a request shall indicate the financial assistance instrument(s) to be considered. On receipt of such a request, the Chairperson of the Board of Governors shall entrust the European Commission, in liaison with the ECB, with the following tasks: (a) to assess the existence of a risk to the financial stability of the euro area as a whole or of its Member States, unless the ECB has already submitted an analysis under Article 18 (2); (b) to assess whether public debt is sustainable. Wherever appropriate and possible, such anassessment is expected to be conducted together with the IMF; (c) to assess the actual or potential financing needs of the ESM Member concerned. 2. On the basis of the request of the ESM Member and the assessment referred to in paragraph 1, the Board of Governors may decide to grant, in principle, stability support to the ESM Member concerned in the form of a financial assistance facility. 3. If a decision pursuant to paragraph 2 is adopted, the Board of Governors shall entrust the European Commission – in liaison with the ECB and, wherever possible, together with the IMF – with the task of negotiating, with the ESM Member concerned, a memorandum of understanding (an ‘MoU’) detailing the conditionality attached to the financial assistance facility. The content of the MoU shall reflect the severity of the weaknesses to be addressed and the financial assistance instrument chosen. In parallel, the Managing Director of the ESM shall prepare a proposal for a financial assistance facility agreement, including the financial terms and conditions and the choice of instruments, to be adopted by the Board of Governors. The MoU shall be fully consistent with the measures of economic policy coordination provided for in the TFEU, in particular with any act of European Union law, including any opinion, warning, recommendation or decision addressed to the ESM Member concerned.

108

C. WIESNER

4. The European Commission shall sign the MoU on behalf of the ESM, subject to prior compliance with the conditions set out in paragraph 3 and approval by the Board of Governors. 5. The Board of Directors shall approve the financial assistance facility agreement detailing the financial aspects of the stability support to be granted and, where applicable, the disbursement of the first tranche of the assistance. 6. The ESM shall establish an appropriate warning system to ensure that it receives any repayments due by the ESM Member under the stability support in a timely manner (European Council, 2012). This means that the ministers of finance and economics of the Euro states decide on financial aid and its conditions (Art. 5, 5f). After that, the MoU is signed by representants of the Commission in the name of the ESM as stated in Article 13, 3 quoted above (European Council, 2012). In this scenario, it is the Troika that negotiates these conditions and fixes the MoU. This means that the Troika not only is the agent that controls all conditions linked to any financial assistance, but it is also in charge of negotiating these terms and putting them down in MoU. Accordingly, the Troika has a high degree of independence and considerable power while it is subjected to a low degree of accountability and transparency. The ESM Treaty defines the members and the general tasks of the Troika, but neither sets limits to its competencies nor establishes standards for its accountability. As financial aid governance is not subject to the Lisbon Treaty, the degree of involvement of national parliaments in these decisions is determined by the respective national constitutions and balances of powers. Another decisive criterion is whether the parliaments are situated in debtor or in creditor states of financial aid. The case of the debtor state Greece demonstrates how the balance of powers in financial aid governance has shifted towards the Troika and the Euro Group. The MoU and the related economic recovery programmes defined very detailed measures and spending cuts, naming percentages and areas or programmes where the cuts needed to be carried out in the public sector, especially regarding pensions and in labour market policies (European Commission, 2012, 2015). Large cuts in public wages and pensions are inevitable. […] Cuts in wages consist of the abolition of the Easter, summer and Christmas bonuses and their replacement by a flat bonus (EUR 1000) for those earning less than

5

BETWEEN CONCEPTUAL INNOVATION …

109

EUR 3000 per month (gross). Moreover, the allowances (wage top-ups) paid to the highwage earners are also reduced. (European Commission, 2010, 15)

As a result of this Troika control, the budgetary competencies of the Greek parliament were severely impeded. The parliament was reduced to approve or decline the MoU framework. When consulted, the Greek parliament in its majority approved the austerity programmes. But when the Greek Minister for finance signed the first MoU in 2010, he did not previously consult parliament. This was a breach of the Greek constitution. The next MoU in 2012 was discussed only as an emergency law, i.e., in a short track procedure (Malkopoulou, 2014). Germany is a creditor state and presents an opposite example in this respect, as parliament was strengthened while adapting to financial aid governance. The German government first tried to keep the Bundestag involvement limited. But Article 59, 2 of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz or GG) defines that intergovernmental Treaties must be ratified in parliament. Consequently, several MPs carried out constitutional complaints, and the resulting judgements of the German Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht, BVG) underlined that the Bundestag had to be regularly, clearly, and strongly involved (Bundesverfassungsgericht, 2011, 2012a, 2012b). Interestingly, the Constitutional Court stressed the importance of parliamentary budgetary rights—the very rights that were cut down by the Troika’s interventions in Greece: Article 38 of the Basic Law protects the citizens with a right to elect the Bundestag from a loss of substance of their power to rule, which is fundamental to the structure of a constitutional state, by far-reaching or even comprehensive transfers of duties and powers of the Bundestag, above all to supranational institutions […]. The decision on public revenue and public expenditure is a fundamental part of the ability of a constitutional state to democratically shape itself […]. The German Bundestag must make decisions on revenue and expenditure with responsibility to the people. In this connection, the right to decide on the budget is a central element of the democratic development of informed opinion […]. As representatives of the people, the elected Members of the German Bundestag must retain control of fundamental budgetary decisions even in

110

C. WIESNER

a system of intergovernmental administration. (Bundesverfassungsgericht, 2011)

In the conceptual controversy around parliamentary rights in the financial crisis, the BVG thus took a clear stance in favour of defending a strong parliament at the same time as both the German Parliament and the German government accepted the competencies of the Greek parliament being severely restrained. Because of several such BVG judgements, the Bundestag obtained considerable co-decision rights in the areas of ESM and financial aid. In September 2011, the Constitutional Court judged that financial assistance must be voted first in parliament’s budgetary committee (Bundesverfassungsgericht, 2011). In a kind of anticipatory obedience, the ratification laws for fiscal compact and ESM foresaw a strong role for parliament. Both the budgetary committee and the plenary of the Bundestag had to give their approval (see in detail Kneip, 2016; Wimmel, 2016). In sum, the Bundestag received considerable new competencies in the financial aid policies, but it earned those competencies via constitutional complaints and Constitutional Court judgements. In contrast to what happened in Greece, in Germany the judiciary defended and even strengthened the legislative.

Dismantling Representative Democracy The effects of financial aid governance on representative democracy in the Euro zone states have been critical, to say the least. The institutional changes that took place via the ESM Treaty and the implementation of financial aid conditions as carried out by the Troika and its principals (Commission, ECB, IMF, Euro Group) have been significant. The most decisive change in the debtor states is that key standards of representative democracy are not followed anymore, and decision-making power is handed over from the bodies that have been directly legitimised by the sovereign national parliaments and governments to bodies that either are only indirectly legitimate such as the Euro Group, international non-majoritarian bodies such as the IMF, and expert groups like the Troika. But budgetary rights are for good reasons understood as one of the crown jewels of parliament. As it was very well put by the BVG, a budget symbolically and materially expresses the will of the parliamentary majority by defining the policies to be carried out in a country. A parliament that in

5

BETWEEN CONCEPTUAL INNOVATION …

111

the end cannot decide on details and between true alternatives regarding the budget has lost the core of its role as parliament. Decisions then are not only depoliticised, but also void of the substance of parliamentarism. In such cases, parliament takes on a referendum role (voting ‘yes’ or ‘no’) rather than the normal parliamentary function of deliberation and vote. This shift also reduces the role and weight of input legitimation given to the sovereign in domestic elections, the legitimised national parliaments, and governments whose decision-making powers have been cut down in substance. In other words, the conceptual innovation of financial crisis governance decisively transformed the practice of the concept of parliamentarism. In debtor states, this change was detrimental to the substance of parliamentarism.

Concluding Discussion The two examples sketched above illustrate two different types of conceptual innovations and related controversies in the EU multilevel system. While the citizenship case is a Koselleckian type 3 case of conceptual innovation before institutional change, the financial aid case demonstrates how institutional realities deteriorated before concepts that could grasp this change were developed. The two cases also show similarities. In the EU, decisive conceptual moves are carried out via new Treaties, laws, and declarations. Institutions are built to fit with a new policy constellation. The actors, be it the Commission, the Court, the Council, or the Euro Group, express their interests in legal documents. Both cases describe a system of legal bricolage that creates and establishes new concepts and institutions. The decisive difference between the two cases was that the antidiscrimination law passed through the EU’s regular legislative procedures, which was not the case for financial aid governance. Financial aid regulations were not only negotiated behind closed doors in a depoliticised manner. They were also based on an intergovernmental parallel structure to the existing EU polity and its democratic institutions. Moreover, they were marked by transparency and legitimacy problems and by expert dominance in policy areas that should be subject to representative-democratic decision-making. The governance of financial aid appears as an emergency legislation without the necessary legitimisation mechanisms, a change of political reality that remained unnamed. A frequent argument for action was that ‘there was no alternative’, especially in the Greek case. And

112

C. WIESNER

indeed, a logic of path-dependency that considers the actors involved, their interests, as well as the existing institutional constraints at the time leaves little room for alternative solutions in the bricolage puzzle of financial aid. All this speaks in favour of studying more in depth the conceptual controversies that (re)build the EU as a polity. It also calls for studying the EU’s democratic legitimacy and the democratic quality of its decisionmaking processes. Finally, it underlines the validity of the criticism of the EU’s democratic deficit: the EU badly needs politicisation and democratisation (see in detail Kauppi et al., 2016; Kauppi & Wiesner, 2018; Wiesner, 2021a).

References Bundesfinanzministerium. (2015). Fragen und Antworten zum Europäischen Stabilitätsmechanismus (ESM). http://www.bundesfinanzministerium.de/ Content/DE/FAQ/2012-08-16-esm-faq.html. Accessed March 24, 2015. Bundesverfassungsgericht. (2011). Headnotes to the Judgment of the Second Senate of 7 September 2011 – 2 BvR 987/10 – – 2 BvR 1485/10 – – 2 BvR 1099/10 –. https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/ Entscheidungen/EN/2011/09/rs20110907_2bvr098710en.html Bundesverfassungsgericht. (2012a). Application in Organstreit Proceedings Regarding the Bundestag’s Right of Participation/EFSF Successful for the Most Part: Press Release No. 14/2012a of 28 February 2012a. https:// www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/EN/ 2012a/bvg12-014.html;jsessionid=B2F532D6E318D48D1BB7EE3D90D 4657B.2_cid377 Bundesverfassungsgericht. (2012b). Successful Applications in Organstreit Proceedings Regarding the ‘ESM/Euro Plus Pact’: Press Release No. 42/2012b of 19 June 2012b Judgment of 19 June 2012b 2 BvE 4/11. https://www.bundesverfassungsgericht.de/SharedDocs/Presse mitteilungen/EN/2012b/bvg12-042.html. Accessed June 29, 2021. Christiansen, T., Falkner, G., & Jørgensen, K. E. (2002). Theorizing EU Treaty reform: Beyond diplomacy and bargaining. Journal of European Public Policy, 9(1), 12–32. Court of Justice of the European Union. (1976). Judgment of the Court of 8 April 1976. Gabrielle Defrenne V Société Anonyme Belge de Navigation Aérienne Sabena. Reference for a Preliminary Ruling: Cour du Travail de Bruxelles - Belgium. The Principle That Men and Women Should Receive Equal Pay for Equal Work. CASE 43/75. http://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste. Accessed October 09, 2015.

5

BETWEEN CONCEPTUAL INNOVATION …

113

ESM. (2015). European stability mechanism. http://www.esm.europa.eu/. Accessed March 24, 2015. European Commission. (1999). Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament, the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions on Certain Community Measures to Combat Discrimination. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ. do?uri=COM:1999:0564:FIN:EN:PDF. Accessed February 12, 2013. European Commission. (2010). The Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece. Accessed July 19, 2021. https://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/pub lications/occasional_paper/2010/pdf/ocp61_en.pdf. European Commission. (2012). Memorandum of Understanding. http://ec.eur opa.eu/economy_finance/eu_borrower/mou/2012-03-01-greece-mou_en. pdf. Accessed October 30, 2012. European Commission. (2015). Memorandum of Understanding between the European Commission and the Hellenic Republic and the Bank of Greece. http://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/assistance_eu_ms/greek_ loan_facility/pdf/01_mou_20150811_en.pdf. Accessed October 18, 2016. European Council. (1957). The Treaty of Rome. http://ec.europa.eu/eco nomy_finance/emu_history/documents/treaties/rometreaty2.pdf. Accessed February 11, 2013. European Council. (2000a). Council Directive 2000a/43/EC of 29 June 2000a Implementing the Principle of Equal Treatment Between Persons Irrespective of Racial or Ethnic Origin. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUri Serv.do?uri=OJ:L:2000a:180:0022:0026:EN:PDF. Accessed November 19, 2013. European Council. (2000b). Council Directive 2000b/78/EC of 27 November 2000b Establishing a General Framework for Equal Treatment in Employment and Occupation. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do? uri=OJ:L:2000b:303:0016:0022:EN:PDF. Accessed November 19, 2013. European Council. (2012). Treaty Establishing the European Stability Mechanism. http://www.european-council.europa.eu/media/582311/05-tesm2. en12.pdf. Accessed October 30, 2012. European Union. (2010). Consolidated Treaties. Charter of Fundamental Rights. http://bookshop.europa.eu/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/WFS/EU-Boo kshop-Site/en_GB/-/EUR/ViewPublication-Start?PublicationKey=QC3 209190. Accessed February 05, 2013. European Union. (2016). Consolidated Version of the Treaty on European Union. European Union. 2016. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/ EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:12016M/TXT&from=EN. Accessed May 10, 2019. Farrell, H., & Héritier, A. (2007). Codecision and institutional change. West European Politics, 30(2), 285–300.

114

C. WIESNER

Jachtenfuchs, M. (2002). Die Konstruktion Europas: Verfassungsideen und Institutionelle Entwicklung. Nomos. Kauppi, N. (2010). The political ontology of European integration. Comparative European Politics, 8(1), 19–36. Kauppi, N. (2018). Toward a reflexive political sociology of the European Union: Fields, intellectuals and politicians. Palgrave. Kauppi, N., Palonen, K., & Wiesner, C. (2016). The politification and politicisation of the EU. Redescriptions, 19(1), 72–90. Kauppi, N., & Wiesner, C. (2016). Exit politics, enter politicization. Journal of European Integration, 40(2), 227–233. Kneip, S. (2016). Mehr (Nationale) Demokratie wagen? Die Europarechtsprechung des Bundesverfassungsgerichts im Lichte des Demokratie- und Gewaltenkontrolldefizits im EU-Mehrebensystem. Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, 131–148. Koselleck, R. (1967). Richtlinien für das Lexikon Politisch-Sozialer Begriffe der Neuzeit. Archiv Für Begriffsgeschichte, 11, 81–99. Koselleck, R. (1996). A response to a comment on Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe. In The meaning of historical terms and concepts. New studies on Begriffsgeschichte (pp. 59–70), Lehmann, H. & Richter, M. (Eds.), German Historical Institute. Koselleck, R. (1997). The temporalisation of concepts. Redescriptions, 1(1), 16– 24. Koselleck, R. (2006a). Begriffsgeschichte und Sozialgeschichte. In Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik Geschichtlicher Zeiten, Suhrkamp. Koselleck, R. (2006b). Begriffsgeschichten: Studien zur Semantik und Pragmatik der Politischen und Sozialen Sprache, Suhrkamp. Koselleck, R. (2006c). Begriffsgeschichtliche Probleme der Verfassungsgeschichtsschreibung. In Begriffsgeschichten: Studien zur Semantik und Pragmatik der Politischen und Sozialen Sprache (pp. 365–401), Suhrkamp. Koselleck, R. (2006d). Die Geschichte der Begriffe und Begriffe der Geschichte. In Begriffsgeschichten: Studien zur Semantik und Pragmatik der Politischen und Sozialen Sprache (pp. 56–76), Suhrkamp. Koselleck, R. (2006e). Drei Bürgerliche Welten. Zur Vergleichenden Semantik der Bürgerlichen Gesellschaft in Deutschland, Frankreich und England. In Begriffsgeschichten: Studien zur Semantik und Pragmatik der Politischen und Sozialen Sprache (pp. 402–463), Suhrkamp. Kreppel, A. (2010). Looking up, down and sideways: Understanding EU institutions in context. West European Politics, 34(1), 167–179. Krotz, U., & Schild, J. (2015). Shaping Europe: France, Germany, and embedded bilateralism from the Elysée Treaty to twenty-first century politics. Oxford University Press.

5

BETWEEN CONCEPTUAL INNOVATION …

115

Lacroix, J., & Nicolaïdis, K. (2010). European stories: Intellectual debates on Europe in national contexts. Oxford University Press. Malkopoulou, A. (2014). Eurozone crisis and parliamentary democracy: The Greek case. In Wiesner and Schmidt-Gleim, 160–177. Margolis, E., & Laurence, S. (2005). Concepts. In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/concepts/. Accessed November 7, 2017. Müller-Graff, P. C. (2011). Euro-Budgethilfenpolitik im Rechtlichen Neuland. Integration, 4, 289–307. Palonen, K. (1997). An application of conceptual history to itself: From method to theory in Reinhart Koselleck´s Begriffsgeschichte. Redescriptions, 1, 39–69. Palonen, K. (2002). Begriffsgeschichte und/als Politikwissenschaft. Archiv für Begriffsgeschichte, 44, 221–234. Accessed August 27, 2013. Palonen, K. (2003). Quentin Skinner: History, politics, rhetoric. Polity. Palonen, K. (2010). Begriffsdebatten und Debattenbegriffe. Das parlamentarische Paradigma des Begriffsstreits und -wandels. ZPTh – Zeitschrift für Politische Theorie, 1(2). Palonen, K. (2012). Reinhart Koselleck on translation, anachronism and conceptual change. In Why concepts matter? Translating social and political thought (pp. 73–92), Burke, M. & and Richter, M. (Eds.), Brill. Parsons, C. (2003). A certain idea of Europe. Cornell University Press. Pocock, J. (1998). The ideal of citizenship since classical times. In The citizenship debates: A reader (pp. 31–41), Shafir, G. (Ed.), University of Minnesota Press. Sartori, G. (1970). Concept misformation in comparative politics. AJPS, 64 (4), 1033–1053. Accessed November 28, 2014. Schmidt, V. A. (2006). Democracy in Europe: The EU and national polities. Oxford University Press. Skinner, Q. (1993). Two concepts of citizenship. Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie, 55, 403–419. Skinner, Q. (1999). Rhetoric and conceptual change. Redescriptions, 60–73. http://www.jyu.fi/yhtfil/redescriptions/Yearbook%201999/Skinner%20Q% 201999.pdf. Accessed October 5, 2012. Skinner, Q. (2002a). Moral principles and social change. In Visions of politics. Vol. 1. Regarding method (pp. 145–157), Cambridge University Press. Skinner, Q. (2002b). Retrospect: Studying rhetoric and conceptual change. In Visions of politics. Vol. 1. Regarding method (pp. 175–187), Cambridge University Press. Skinner, Q. (2002c). The idea of a cultural lexicon. In Visions of politics. Vol. 1. Regarding method (pp. 158–174), Cambridge University Press. Skinner, Q. (2002d). Visions of politics (Vol. 1). Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, C. S. (2013). The struggle for EU legitimacy: Public contestation, 1950– 2005. Palgrave.

116

C. WIESNER

Tiilikainen, T., & Wiesner, C. (2016). Towards a European Parliamentarism? In Parliament and parliamentarism. A comparative history of disputes on a European concept (pp. 292–310), Ihalainen, P., Ilie, C. & Palonen, K. (Eds.), Berghahn. Tömmel, I. (2014). The European Union: What it is and how it works. Palgrave. Triandafyllidou, A., & Gropas, R. (2015). What is Europe? Palgrave. Wiesner, C. (2007). Bürgerschaft und Demokratie in der EU. Lit. Wiesner, C. (2008). Womens’ partial citizenship. In The Ashgate Research Companion to the Politics of Democratization in Europe: Concepts and Histories (pp. 235–250), K. Palonen, T. Pulkkinen, & J. M. José Rosales (Eds.), Ashgate. Wiesner, C. (2014). Demokratisierung Der EU Durch Nationale Europadiskurse? Strukturen Und Prozesse Europäischer Identitätsbildung Im DeutschFranzösischen Vergleich. Nomos. Wiesner, C. (2018). Shaping citizenship practice through laws: Rights and conceptual innovations in the EU. In Wiesner, Björk, Kivistö & Mäkinen 2018. Wiesner, C. (2019). Inventing the EU as a democratic polity: Concepts, actors and controversies. Palgrave. Wiesner, C. (2021a). Politicisation, politics, and democracy. In Rethinking politicisation in politics, sociology and international relations, C. Wiesner (Ed.), Palgrave. Wiesner, C. (2021b). Representative democracy in financial crisis governance: New challenges in the EU multilevel system. In Recalibrating legislativeexecutive relations in the European Union, D. Fromage, A. Herranz-Sualles, & T. Christiansen (Eds.), Hart. Wiesner, C., & Björk, A. (2014). Introduction: Citizenship in Europe after World War II. Contributions to the History of Concepts, 9(1), 50–59. Wiesner, C., Björk, A., Kivistö, H-M. & Mäkinen, K. (Eds.) (2018). Shaping citizenship: A political concept in theory debate, and practice. Routledge. Wiesner, C., Björk, A., Kivistö, H.-M., & Mäkinen, K. (2018). Shaping citizenship as a political concept. In Wiesner, Björk, Kivistö & Mäkinen, 2018, 1–16. Wiesner, C. & Harfst, P. (2019). Legitimität als esssentially contested concept. In Legitimität und Legitimation, C. Wiesner, & P. Harfst (Eds.), Springer VS. Wiesner, C., & Schmidt-Gleim, M. (Eds.) (2014). The meanings of Europe. Routledge. Wimmel, A. 2016. Verhandeln im Schatten von Vetomacht: Der Einfluss der Opposition im Bundestag auf die Euro-Rettungspolitik. Zeitschrift für Politikwissenschaft, 195–214. Zvereva, G. 2014. Shaping new Russian identity: Discourses of ‘inclusion/exclusion in Europe’. In Wiesner and Schmidt-Gleim, 221–235.

CHAPTER 6

The Colonialism of Partisanship: Politics of National Interest and the National Science Foundation in the U.S. Congressional Debates Anna Kronlund

Introduction The concept of ‘national interest’ is commonly employed in U.S. foreign policy discussions to describe the vital interests of the nation and the actual elements of foreign policy (see e.g., Rice, 2008). The U.S. Congress members have also frequently used the concept during the debates on policy for science and specifically regarding science funding through federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF). The Foundation was originally set forth: ‘To promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defence; and for other purposes’ (United States

A. Kronlund (B) University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 N. Kauppi and K. Palonen (eds.), Rhetoric and Bricolage in European Politics and Beyond, Rhetoric, Politics and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98632-2_6

117

118

A. KRONLUND

Congress, 1950). The idea of connecting the progress of science with national interest is thus built into the whole idea of the National Science Foundation. The members of Congress have had a habit to employ the national interest conception strategically to describe the relationship between science and government and it has been attributed specifically with the NSF. The conception of national interest has been adopted in the discussions at least in three different ways: first, it has been employed to discuss on whether the science policy should be organized keeping the best interest of science rather than society in mind. Secondly, it has been used as a parallel for certain criteria or merits that the federally funded research should meet or to indicate the research fields which are considered worthy of federal support in providing for technological innovations, health, and national defense. Thirdly, it can refer to the efforts of securing and maintaining the U.S. leadership globally in science. The three usages of national interest conception are not separate from each other but rather partially overlapping. For example, the maintenance of U.S. leadership has been one of the fundamental reasons to organize the relationship between government and science in the first place. While the Covid-19 pandemic has brought NSF and its organization in front, Congress has discussed it at regular intervals. In particular the discussion has taken place when the need and purpose of federal funding for basic research has been in the agenda of either of the two parties in the United States. The Foundation is a motivating case to study when the interest lies in examining the relationship between science and politics, because it has attracted debates and controversial views on government sponsored scientific research. It also reflects a larger debate on the overall relationship between science and the government. Debates on politics and science have become interrelated issues because of science regulation and funding policies. For example, in the 115th U.S. Congress (2017–2018), 240 resolutions or bill proposals were introduced, which claimed that more academic research is needed or referred to the existing research conducted by the National Science Foundation (McNutt, 2019). Political in relation to science can be understood, however, in many ways. According to Mark B. Brown, the word ‘political’ has at least two different meanings. First, it can refer to issues that have relevance to politics or have political origins, implications, or effects.’ The other meaning for Brown (2015, 2017) is political in terms of political activity, which is also the approach adopted in this article. Following Brown, the idea is that by concentrating

6

THE COLONIALISM OF PARTISANSHIP: POLITICS OF NATIONAL …

119

on the activity-conception of politics, it is possible to track down and to explicate controversies on what is considered ‘politics’ or ‘political’ in the congressional debates regarding the National Science Foundation. The aim of this article is to examine congressional debates on the National Science Foundation and more specifically how the concept ‘national interest’ is employed in the debates concerning the NSF.1 The fact that items are put on the political agenda and are discussed in Congress is already a political act, meaning that motions can be amended; they can be delayed or voted against. Therefore, in parliaments and legislatures such as in the U.S. Congress, items that are themselves considered ‘political’ and the fact that something is argued to be political or apolitical should be seen as a political strategy or as a political act itself. The broader perspective for this article is the relationship between the government and science in the United States and the politicians’ efforts to define it through their usages of national interest conception in the debates. The starting point is that political debates include competing narratives and discourses. One way to approach these competing views is to examine the elements to which the politicians are referring to as a part of their argumentation to address an issue on the agenda. To unpack these elements, the author has absorbed the idea of bricolage as an inspiration. A concept, originally introduced by Claude Lévi-Strauss in his The Savage of Mind (1962), refers to the idea of how responses to differing situations are gathered by relying already existing tools or methods to create something new. Gerald Garvey has adopted this kind of approach in his book Constitutional Bricolage originally published in 1971. He describes how ‘Constitutional bricolage, the art of judges reflects the larger process by which society tries to maintain its syntax—its consistency and identity over time—by selecting responses to the problems as they arise from a limited cultural reverse’ (Garvey, 2015, 5). In this article, however, bricolage is understood rather in terms of an enabler to examine the politicians’

1 The focus of this article has been mainly in the House of Representatives in the 114th Congress (2015–2016). At the time, Republicans controlled most of the House with 247 seats of 435 total. The main sources for analysis are the debates on the following bills: ‘the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015 and 2016’; ‘the Reauthorization of America’s Compete Act 2015’; ‘the American Research and Competitiveness Act of 2015’; and ‘the Scientific Research in the National Interest Act 2016.’ These materials were selected because they involved a specific corpus of discussion on the National Science Foundation, its role and funding.

120

A. KRONLUND

(‘bricoleurs ’) reflections on the narrative’s elements, namely the bricolage, in times of partisan politics. The debates on the relationship between government and science in the United States are by no means immune to partisan views and attitudes. Kauppi and Wiesner (2018) have studied politicization together with polarization in the context of the European Union. It refers to certain controversies in public debates, political parties, elections, and institutions. In this article, politicization is considered in terms of how controversies over science are brought up into the political debate and how these are discussed. Brown argues that politicizing as an issue indeed refers to a situation when some issue becomes a ‘topic of politics and public concern.’ Brown gives an example, of how President Barack Obamas’ former science advisor John P. Holdren used the term when he argued: ‘science is already politicized because decisions about public funding for science are made through a political process’ (Quoted in Brown, 2017). Science is also politicized because it is not only funded by but also applied by political agents. To sum up Brown’s argument, ‘science is political because it shapes politics, and it is shaped by politics’ (Ibid.). This point by Brown is aptly illustrated in the U.S. Congressional debates on the NSF in terms of funding but also in reviewing how the NSF should give grants and to which research fields. This could also be viewed in terms of what Kari Palonen (2016, 159) has defined as ‘governmentalization of research,’ meaning that certain criteria are set with a very limited view on how scholarly world and researchers operates. For example, by focusing on certain preferable methodological and theoretical frameworks, the politicians tend to bypass the fact that debates are relevant part of the academia as well. The article will contribute to the ongoing discussions on the relationship between science and politics by examining empirical debates: how political agents play a role in addressing science instead of focusing theoretical discussions on the conceptions of science and politics (see e.g., Brown, 2009, 2015; Jasanoff, 2004). The article is divided into four parts. The first part will dwell into the origins of the National Science Foundation and its particularities. The second part will concentrate on the debates of science in the two-party system, which creates a certain framework for understanding science and politics argumentation in the United States. The third part will focus on to the actual analysis of related debates on the National Science Foundation. The last fourth part will shortly

6

THE COLONIALISM OF PARTISANSHIP: POLITICS OF NATIONAL …

121

glimpse the debates on the NSF originated by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the conclusion part, different parts will be brought together.

The Origins and Politics of the National Science Foundation The role of Congress in providing for science is established in the Constitution (Article 1, Section 8). During the debates on founding the Constitution, different proposals were made to ensure that Congress could have power to establish both seminars and a university in purpose of promoting science and the ‘advancement of useful knowledge and discoveries.’ These proposals were not included, however, in the final language of the Constitution (Stine, 2009, 2). Historically, science funding in the United States has focused on both science and technology for policy purposes. The emphasis was first on geography, health, and agriculture related research, later also on welfare and military issues. At the beginning it was mainly wealthy public supported research, but this eventually changed because of the Civil War and when the military began to adopt research for its own purposes. The question was raised how science could be a part of the Federal Government. In 1884, Congress had a joint commission discussing different proposals of Department of Science and national university in addition to cooperating with the existing universities. As a result, no structural changes were made but the role of the federal government was strengthened. The two World Wars eventually changed the situation. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt established a new office of Scientific Research and Development. Increasingly, the focus also shifted from science and technology for policy purposes, to policy on science and technology (Stine, 2009). How to organize American science policy after the Second World War raised discussions and brought up versatile proposals? Between the years 1945 and 1950, various legislative proposals were introduced to have a new science agency at the federal level, namely the National Science Foundation (see more i.e., Kevles, 1977). Creating the agency was accompanied with numerous scholarly and political debates. Many scholarly works have been written on the NSF and Vannevar Bush’s report ‘Science - the Endless Frontier,’ which was published in 1945 regarding how to best organize science in the post Second World War context in the United States (i.e., Dennis, 2004; Kevles, 1977). The report has become a foundation for American science policy (Dennis, 2004). Donald Stokes has

122

A. KRONLUND

explained the report’s success with its language and in particular with the concept of ‘basic research’ that effectively influenced the post-war development and scientific research in the United States (referred in Dennis, 2004, 225). At the time, a central political problem was what kind of role U.S. military would take in the post-war United States and how both engineers and scientists would take part in this ‘new political configuration’ (Ibid., 229). The argument put forward by Bush in his report was that the war winning science could also secure peace and prosperity for Americans in the future (Lane, 2006, 863). The problematic lied in how to organize the relationship between science, universities, federal government, and big businesses. Since the establishment of NSF, Congress has been debating about its accountability, scientific independence, and the role of Congress in terms of providing oversight (see e.g., Gonzales, 2014). This tension of scientific freedom versus accountability of federally funded research is a central part of the NSF as a federal institution and builds into it many different debates regarding NSF’s policy and how it is expected to work (See e.g., Bianco, 2019). Certain structural characteristics differentiate the NSF from other federal agencies and has had an effect to its relationship with Congress. In comparison to other agencies, the NSF is seen as ‘independent.’ The NSF is not part of any executive department and leadership. However, the president appoints both its 24-member board and Director for a six-year term. Both the president and Congress can aim to govern NSF through the budget appropriations, and oversight processes (Gonzales, 2014, 3). The NSF is only one of the federally funded organizations having to do with science funding and its share of the total share of funding is considerably small.2 The NSF receives approximately 40.000 grant proposals annually, and of those 11.000 are funded (see National Science Foundation—about funding). The merit of the proposals is evaluated through external review process from two different perspectives: intellectual merit and broad impact merit. (See NSF’s proposal and award process).3 2 In the president’s budget proposal for FY2021, the share is 4.5% in contrast to the Department of Defense 42.1% and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and specifically the National Institute of Health (NIH) 26.6% (See Sergeant, 2020). 3 There are different phases in the process. After the peer-review, the programme director first and then the division director makes the final decision about the grant proposals. In case the proposal survives the first step of the programmatic review, it then

6

THE COLONIALISM OF PARTISANSHIP: POLITICS OF NATIONAL …

123

The debates on the science funding can be better understood against the backdrop of the overall science funding trends in the United States. The two most important sources for science funding are both business and government. Since 1953, the amount of business R&D funding has grown almost every year in the United States. Federal government funding, however, has not been following the same trend. For example, between 2011 and 2014, federal funding (as measured in current dollars) fell by 6.8% (U.S. Congressional Research Service Fact Sheet Jan. 24, 2020).4 In comparison, the United States invests more in R&D funding, but many other countries have a higher number of R&D intensity (The State of U.S. Science and Engineering, 2020).

Two-Party System and Politics of Science In the United States, like other liberal democracies, decisions about the amount of taxpayer’s money that will be given to science and how it will be distributed is conducted through political process. Further, the twoparty system in the United States fosters specific tendencies in the debates on science and related policies. However, even when considering that changing nature of science and technology are not ‘risk-free,’ most Americans consider that the federal government should play a role in scientific research funding followed by gains and achievements in technology, and science legitimatizing these expenditures (NSB, 2020, referred to the State of U.S. Science and Engineering 2020 report). Up until the 1980s, two basic assumptions were prevalent in the U.S. science policy. Namely, that the scientific community is qualified of regulating itself and if it is enabled to do just that, it will produce technological results to benefit the society. (Brown, 2009, 10) The aftermath of the Second World War consensus persisted until the end of the Cold War. It faced some challenges, however, and began to fracture, most remarkably during the Vietnam War and excessive inflation in the 1970s (Kevles, 2006, 769). The point of politicization of federal science followed by

goes to the business review in which the financial, business and policy implications of the proposal are once more reviewed (See NSF’s proposal and award process). 4 Democrats were the majority party in the Senate House between 1987–1994 and 2009 until 2011 when the Republicans gained the majority in the House of Representatives.

124

A. KRONLUND

the Second World War can be traced to the relationship between bigtechnology and national security projects. According to Kevles what has been different in more recent times, specifically regarding to politicization of science in the sense of a growing government-dependence during the George W. Bush’s administration (Kevles’s article was published in 2006), is that politicization has extended to new areas outside of defence including stem cell research and global warming (Kevles, 2006, 763). Kevles’s (Ibid., 776) argument is that the new politics of science is not hostile towards science per se. But it is strengthened by the willingness of different interest groups to employ only science—or what they define as science—that suits for their own (ideological) purposes. In an article published in Science by Hilgartner et al. (2021), a useful anecdote is mentioned when the authors describe how and when the 2020 election results have been confirmed and before the victory speeches of President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris, the screens at the stage blinked the message: ‘The people have chosen science.’ The Donald J. Trump’s administration was by many scholars considered as unfortunate because of its approach to science and its funding. However, the example mentioned by Hilgartner et al. (2021) in their article, is not very helpful in bridging the gap between those who believe in science and those who do not, if this is even the reality in the first place. For Hilgartner et al. (2021), ‘What looks like an attack on science may simply be the pursuit of politics by other means.’ According to Hilgartner et al. (2021, 893), what divides Americans is not so much about the science versus antiscience views but rather it is about ‘competing understandings of how to balance collective responsibility and individual liberty.’ Overall, Americans appreciate science and its findings, respectively. Studies show, however, that public opinion on many current technology and science issues is polarized along political and religious lines and geographical location (Drummond & Fischoff, 2017; Krause et al., 2019). Grossman and Hopkins (2016, 196) have written how the two main parties both rely on ‘research and expertise in policy debates’ but they have differing views in trusting scholarly outputs and scientists, not to mention the sources of information. There are also different views regarding what kind of role science should play in political decisionmaking. According to a survey by Pew Research Center (Kennedy and Funk, 2019), most Democrats and independent leaning Democrats (73%) consider that scientists should play more active role in debates on policy. However, most independents leaning Republicans and Republicans (56%)

6

THE COLONIALISM OF PARTISANSHIP: POLITICS OF NATIONAL …

125

claim that ‘scientists’ should stay away from policy debates and just focus on creating ‘sound scientific facts.’ In a study on Americans’ trust on science and scientists, Krause et al. (2019), however, have pointed out that the overall support of Americans has remained relatively stable over the years. Events, such as the ‘March for Science’ in 2017, have turned focus on public’s attitudes towards scientists and science. According to Krause et al. (2019), the difference between political partisans has not been that significant previously but it has ‘spiked’ in the last years. It is therefore relevant to explicate how partisanship and partisan politics is discussed with science and related topics. Based on historical and societal trends, Democrats are considered to support a larger government including funding for science, whereas Republicans are portrayed as more supportive for a smaller government and not so supportive for funding public science and R&D, especially in certain fields including climate change, environment, and biomedical research (Kushi, 2015). Regarding the stereotypes of Republicans’ being ‘anti-science’ and Democrats being ‘pro-science,’ we could mention Barack Obama’s suggestion to increase R&D funding and his scientific integrity proposal (See the White House memorandum, 2009). During the George W. Bush administration, the minority party prepared report criticized administration’s interference to the scientific process or the independence of the researchers (Committee on government, minority staff 2003). However, the overall picture is not necessarily that straightforward (see e.g., in terms of amount of granted funding in Kushi, 2015). Members of Congress have also noticed possible partisan polarization of science. For example, Representative Paul Tonko (D-NY) introduced a bill requiring that ‘a scientific integrity policy must at minimum, ensure that scientific conclusions are not made based by political considerations,’ in other words in a partisan way, in the 115th Congress (2017–2018). Similar bill was introduced also in the Senate.5

Science that Serves the ‘National Interest’ From time to time, Congress has taken a more active role in defining the role of science and politics in particular regarding the NSF. By claiming

5 See, https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/1358.

126

A. KRONLUND

that federally funded research should benefit the United States, that it should serve the ‘national interest,’ members of Congress have legitimatized the need for congressional oversight. The members of Congress have a habit of using the concept of national interest strategically to highlight their own views not only regarding the relationship between science and politics but also more specifically between science and government.6 Then the Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology,7 Lamar Smith (R-TX) with other House Republicans had an effort to define certain standards of national interest through legislation that the federally granted research funding should meet. This requirement was possible to be understood in a twofold way: (1) the NSF should apply certain requirements of securing national interests when making the grant decisions and/or; (2) the NSF funding is directed on specific research areas only. The House Science Committee report to accompany the bill ‘America Competes Reauthorization Act of 2015,’ for example, included a claim that the ‘committee prioritizes funding’ on natural science fields including math and physics. In the same report, it was also expressed that within Congress, there has been a ‘longstanding […] concern’ about the merits of grants given by the NSF’s Social, Behavioral, and Economic (SBE) Sciences section. For that reason, the NSF should ensure that SBE grants meet the ‘quality standards’ and they are ‘aligned to national interests’ (see sec. 106 of the bill proposal). These requirements included potentiality in achieving an ‘increased economic competitiveness’ and ‘support for the national defense,’ just to mention a few (See House report 114–107, 114th Congress, 66).8 6 The National Science Foundation is not, however, the only federal institution grappled with government oversight. For example, the National Health Institution (NIH) faced a congressional review of institution’s objectives in the late 1990s. Congress was concerned that the NIH’s research programme funding might be based more on the views of a particular advocacy group than on the ‘scientific merit’ (Science Committee 1998, 24–25). 7 The relevant committee for the NSF oversight in the U.S. House of Representatives is the committee on Science, Space and Technology. In the Senate, the corresponding committee is the committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. Not to forget, the Appropriations committees in both Houses. Other than that, science policy is institutionally fragmented in the United States. 8 The bill concerned not only the NSF and its specific programmes but also the Department of Energy and its R&D activities. In contrast to the House passed version, the final bill version that became the public law in 2017, these requirements were not included as the main category of grant review (the merit-based peer-review is) but they were part of broader impact review part of the proposals.

6

THE COLONIALISM OF PARTISANSHIP: POLITICS OF NATIONAL …

127

Quality of research or science does not automatically correlate, however, with the purpose of using research. In contrast to policy on science as described above, Max Weber has argued through the concept of ‘value freedom’ that research and scholarship are always following some values when ‘selection and formation’ of research subjects is made but the content of research is ‘value-free’ and not bound to any specific values (Weber, 1973, see Palonen, 2016). The government-dependent research as supported by the members of Congress, however, would not only define the values in setting the research agenda but also in securing that the research itself would provide for the national interest. The minority view of the committee (Democrats) argued in the report that the previous versions of the bill (The Competes Acts of 2007 and 2010) focused on the overall scientific renewal. The now proposed bill ‘seeks to pit different scientific disciplines against one another and to prevent research in fields to which the Majority is ideologically opposed’ (House report 114–107, 114th Congress, 244). They also pointed out the suggested decrease of funding for the SBE (social, behavioral, and economic) sciences, even when the NSF is the main federal supporter for these fields of science. The national interest section of the bill was considered imposing a ‘political review’ instead of a ‘gold standard’ merit review conducted by the NSF in its grant decision-making process. The ‘political’ is used in two senses here, namely regarding both partisan and government-dependent. Democrats claimed that the Republicans encouraged scientists to ‘play safe,’ avoiding proposing ‘high-risk research and out-of-the-box thinking’ that was in the heart of the scientific progress (Ibid., 246). The government-dependent research supported by the Republicans was expressed, however, in terms of fulfilling the national interest rather than speaking directly about political guidance. Solovey (2019) has argued how distrust to social science has deep roots in American politics, culture, and science and it has been a concern for the funding institutions previously. He has divided this distrust in two: ‘epistemological distrust,’ as a questioning of social sciences’ ‘scientific status’ and ‘social distrust,’ as a questioning of ‘social relevance and policy uses’ of social sciences (Ibid.). Other authors have also acknowledged this phenomenon, i.e., Wells wrote in his article ‘Politicians and Social Scientist: An Uneasy Relationship’ (1982) how social and behavioural scientists have faced certain biases and problems compared to the researchers in other fields. More recently, for example, Lupia (2014) has noticed how

128

A. KRONLUND

the public value of social science research and its funding have become a focus of attention and debates. The America Competes Reauthorization Act of 2015 was mainly supported by the arguments in the House that strategic funding is needed in the basic R&D to ensure country’s position as the world leader in innovation and science (see the argumentation of Smith, U.S. House of Representatives May 20, 2015, H3419). Representative Smith himself considered the bill as essential to restore ‘the original intent of the NSF and ‘requiring that all the funded grants serve’ “national interest”.’ Smith gave examples of grants including a climate change musical, which he considered did not fall into this category, because they failed to meet the ‘highest standards of scientific merit’ (Ibid.). Democratic committee ranking member at the time, Eddie Bernice Johnson, opposed the bill arguing how ‘It abandons that legacy by politicizing the scientific grant-making process and pitting different research disciplines against each other.’ She argued that the National Science Foundation is not a ‘political organization.’ Here ‘political’ namely refers to the political guidance regarding what kind of research NSF should be supporting and its scientific independence. Johnson seems to accuse Republicans of politicizing science that according to Brown could simply mean deliberate efforts to define science through politics (Brown, 2016, 492). Previously, however, some of the Democrats have also supported measures aiming at cutting funding from political science (Uscinski & Klofstadt, 2013). The claim made by the Democrats can be viewed also from the perspective of Carl Schmitt (2007/1932). According to Schmitt, acting politically takes place in the specific moment when accusing the other of acting politically while presenting your own view as ‘neutral’ or ‘objective.’ A view of how science is used for ideological purposes was also brought up during the House debate on H.R.880 American Research and Competitiveness Act of 2015. Then the Representative Nancy Pelosi (DCA) argued how ‘Republicans are attacking science they don’t even want to hear. Just because you don’t want to hear it doesn’t mean it isn’t true.’ According to Pelosi, Republicans are ‘trying to silence’ social, climate, and environmental sciences (U.S. House of Representatives May 20, 2015, H3417). During the same discussion, Representative Steny Hoyer (DMD) argued how both parties are claiming to support research and it must be very confusing for the public. He, however, specifically referred

6

THE COLONIALISM OF PARTISANSHIP: POLITICS OF NATIONAL …

129

how numerous ‘interest groups’ do not agree with the Republicans (Ibid., H3422). In his remarks, Representative John Moolenaar (R-MI) emphasized that Congress should impose oversight of NSF to ensure that the funded research meets the national interest standard. The bill would therefore increase ‘government accountability.’ The key for Moolenaar is the taxpayer’s dollars and the public justification for their use. According to the Representative, the criteria of requiring federal agencies ‘to prioritize the national interest is common sense’ (U.S. House of Representatives May 20, 2015, H3424). By referring to national interest, Moolenaar legitimatizes his view about prioritizing research but is not really specifying what national interest means in this context. The main concern was that the NSF’s peer-review is not public and thus it lacks ‘accountability.’ Similar type of discussion appeared in Congress regarding the publicity and access of studies (including health records) that the Environmental Protection Agency has used as a part of its decision-making when a proposal entitled Secret Science Act (H.R.1030) was considered in the House in 2015.9 The dimension of ‘accountability’ as used by the members of Congress includes the requirement of transparency and public justification. The accountability is thus needed not only for the government but also for the American people. The national interest is used to emphasize that the research results should be measured in providing for wealth, defence, and well-being as originally pointed out when the NSF was founded in the 1950s. The other example of prioritizing science can be found in the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2015. One of the amendments concerned reductions to the National Science Foundation’s funding and in particular SBE sciences against the request of the president. Representative Smith supported the amendment and pointed out that research granted by the SBE directorate has ‘obvious scientific merit’ and it thus serves the national interest. At the same time, ‘dozens, perhaps hundreds, of questionable grants’ has been funded by the SBE directorate (U.S. House of Representatives May 29,

9 See, https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/1030. See also a discussion of the peer-review and its merits in Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1430, Honest and Open New EPA Science Treatment Act of 2017. vol. 163, No. 54, March 28, 2017. https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2017/03/28/house-section/ article/H2471-5.

130

A. KRONLUND

2014, H4958). Members of Congress tend to use ‘science’ selectively to legitimatize their argument but not specifying its meaning more in detail. During the discussion, Representative David Price (D-NC) raised his opposition by noticing his disagreement with the intentions to target specific NSF programmes. Price continued how ‘The world is changing rapidly, and we need quality research to help us understand how imminent and unforeseen changes in areas such as technology, climate, immigration, and the economy will affect our society and our future. And these things do have policy implications’ (U.S. House of Representatives May 29, 2014, H4960). Price’s argument emphasizes scientific advice, which benefits political decision-making: ‘Helping policymakers make informed decisions is what NSF’s Political Science Program (PSP), in particular, is all about. [….] The PSP has consistently produced valuable, practical research that informs policymakers and government agencies on issues as vital as natural disaster response, environmental regulation, and foreign policy’ (Ibid.). Price is emphasizing the practicality and adaptability of political science in advancing national interest. The essence of political science for Price, however, is in studies with focus on policy rather than highlighting the need for new openings or horizons of possibilities (politicization), how decisions are made (politicking) or the polity itself (about four times of politics, see Palonen, 2003). Price’s argument, however, stresses how science can provide on policy following the traditional idea of the relevance of political science in the United States since the beginning of the discipline (see e.g., Easton, 1993). Similar kind of discussion about the relevance of the federally funded science seemed to appear again a year later in the context of Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Appropriations Act. Representative Mike Honda (D-CA) pointed out the aim of Congress to control the relevant research and how the bill ‘seeks to micromanage the NSF by singling out earth science and social sciences as lesser research priorities.’ For Honda, this was an example of ‘political meddling into scientific research’ (U.S. House of Representatives June 2, 2015, H3669). Again, ‘political’ is used here in the meaning of political oversight and how science is approached through the lenses of partisanship. The role of Congress in providing oversight is not contested as such, but that the specific research fields of research are contrasted to others. There have been other efforts than appropriation bills to define ‘science’ that meets the ‘national interest.’ The House of Representatives passed Scientific Research in the National Interest Act (H.R.3293)

6

THE COLONIALISM OF PARTISANSHIP: POLITICS OF NATIONAL …

131

in 2016. The aim of the bill was to secure ‘greater accountability’ for the federally funded scientific research and to ‘promote the progress of science that serves the national interest.’ The specialty of the bill was to ensure that the National Science Foundation passed grants would meet in minimum one of the seven criteria established in the bill.10 These requirements were very similar to those included earlier in the America Competes Act in 2015. Chairman Lamar Smith emphasized how the bill enables ‘Scientists still make the decisions’ but that ‘They just do not get a blank check signed by the taxpayer.’ Ranking member, Eddie Bernice Johnson responded by saying how the core of the bill is ‘about second-guessing’ scientists and their grant decisions (U.S. House of Representatives Feb. 10, 2016a, H678–H679). Johnson’s argument suggested support not only for the scientific ‘independence’ but also to the whole NSF’s research portfolio. Democrats seem to act ‘apolitically’ when defining the national interest in terms of academic freedom and the peer-review process. This is not completely a new phenomenon. For example, Brown (2009, 6) has referred to a case in which Susan F. Wood, the director of Women’s Health Office at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), resigned in 2005. Her reason to resign was to oppose the agency’s decision against its own scientific committee advice to delay further the Plan B—the sale of the emergency contraceptive without prescription. The decision raised some party-political controversies, in which arguments were given that the decision has nothing to do with science but with politics (see e.g., Senator Tom Coburn’s argument quoted in Brown, 2009, 2). The opponents claimed that the government is politicizing science. The assumption is, however, problematic from the beginning. Different methodologies, disciplines, and viewpoints generate diverse views often resulting to various conflicting political implications. Concerning Wood’s resignation, Brown (Ibid.) has pointed out that those of who were 10 The grants should be ‘worthy of federal funding,’ they should be ‘consistent with established and widely accepted scientific methods applicable to the field of study,’ they should be ‘consistent with the definition of basic research,’ and be in the ‘national interest,’ ‘as indicated having the potential to achieve: ‘increased economic competitiveness,’ ‘increased scientific literary and public engagement with science and technology,’ ‘increased partnership between academia and industry,’ ‘support for the national defense,’ ‘advancement of the health and welfare of the American Public,’ ‘development of an American stem workforce,’ and ‘promotion of the progress of science’ (U.S. House of Representatives Feb. 10, 2016a, H678).

132

A. KRONLUND

claiming Bush administration to politicize science did not reveal their own positions, values, or interests. Rather they acted as defenders of ‘pure science.’ However, the position of ‘pure science’ is a political value itself and abstaining from government intervention could be similarly seen as a political decision. According to Brown (2009, 3), when the political appointees at the FDA made the decision to override their own scientific committee, they did not only serve their own views, but acted as the representatives of the social conservatives, key constituent of the Bush administration. These types of efforts trying to forbid or enable certain types of research have not been that exceptional. Often referred example is President George W. Bush’s ban on government-funded embryonic stem cells research (i.e., Matthews & Yang, 2019). Regarding the FDA’s decision, the politicians legitimatized their views by referring to the scientific knowledge concerning the possible Plan B’s behavioural effects instead of their constituents (see Brown, 2009, 3). Similarly, during the discussions on the NSF, the members of Congress use the merits of science to discuss their views of the NSF and its funding. However, the members of Congress tend to speak about their constituents’ view (‘tax payers’) in legitimatizing their own stands rather than referring to any specific scientific knowledge. Representative Frank Lucas (R-OK), while announcing his support for the Scientific Research in the National Interest Act (H.R.3293), emphasized how the aim of the bill was to increase the knowledge of NFS granted research and communication. In addition to the scientific community, also the taxpayers should understand what the funded research is about. For Lucas, it was important to explain ‘to the folks back home’ specifically ‘in a time of distrust and suspicion of the Federal Government and of all institutions’ (U.S. House of Representatives Feb. 10, 2016a, H679). Lucas is speaking about his constituents, rather than pointing out why the scientific criterion is not enough in legitimatizing the research funding. The ‘taxpayer’ is the paradigmatic figure adopted in the U.S. politics. The first precondition for government-funded research is that it is rooted to certain conventions and prejudice about science and the role of government in providing it. These conditions for decisionmaking are evident when the governments are changing and discussions about passing budgets and enacting policies take place. Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) considered the scientific research and national interest bill arrogant ‘that sorts of says we know best, not the scientist who are doing peer reviews of what grants to fund.’ In a similar

6

THE COLONIALISM OF PARTISANSHIP: POLITICS OF NATIONAL …

133

vein, Representative Paul Tonko (D-NY) pointed how ‘the sheer number of amendments to this legislation demonstrates the flawed methodology of trying to define which research is in the national interest’ (U.S. House of Representatives Feb. 10, 2016a, H680). However, some of the representatives aimed to do just that. By bringing up some examples of the NSF-funded projects, Randy Weber (R-TX) stated: ‘Mr. Chairman, I have a list of 41 studies and programs that, if taxpayers knew, they would rise up and revolt’ (Ibid.). Debates referred not only to science but also to scientists. Representative Don Beyer (D-VA) noticed that it was his impression that there was only one representative with a PhD in the House (Rep. Bill Foster)11 and found that members of Congress from either party should not make scientific decisions because they do not qualify, apart from him.12 By referring to the seven criteria of what kind of science is in the U.S. national interests, politicians are making, however, the decision on what is worth of scientific research (U.S. House of Representatives Feb. 10, 2016a, H682). The problem is not so much in providing policy on science but trying to define science for policy. Chairman Smith responded to the criticism by arguing how the bill tries to ensure that both the peer-review process and the ‘broader societal impact’ are transparent and better communicated. A more critical view was provided by Representative Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) who commented the bill as ‘another in a line of Republican efforts to politicize science and jeopardize discovery and innovation’ (U.S. House of Representatives Feb. 10, 2016a, H684). The economical aspect of research was the overall framework. In a discussion related to the amendment of the bill provided by Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), explained it as follows: ‘If you 11 In the 114th Congress (2015–2016), according to the statistic of occupations, 100 members have worked in education, including teachers and professors in addition to one physicist, microbiologist, chemist, and eight engineers in the House. Regarding education statistics, one Senator and 23 Representatives had a doctoral degree (Ph.D., D.Phil, Ed.D., or D.Min.) (See CRS member profile, 114th Congress). 12 When answering the question during an interview of what the most significant science-related issues is facing Congress now, Representative Foster answered: ‘Aside from evidence-based political debate, I think it is understanding that technology is changing our society, our country and our world at an unprecedented rate’ (Maron, 2018). Foster also referred to the position of the chairman of the relevant committees when asking witnesses: ‘When you look at simple reforms that would make [Congress] work in a more bipartisan, fact-based way, just having an equal number of witnesses from both sides would be a real step forward’ (Ibid).

134

A. KRONLUND

create in science, innovation, products, and research, you create opportunities for jobs and products to be sold. This is what good science is all about and why basic research relies on the scientific method in the routine practice of scientists and researchers around the world’ (U.S. House of Representatives Feb. 10, 2016a, H686). Both party members had, however, very different views on whether oversight would produce more scientific innovations and national interest.

Covid-19 and the Politics of Science Political decision-making is naturally not only about ‘facts’ but also about values and political orientations. It is often accompanied with scientific results, data, and advisors. The Covid-19 pandemic, similarly to other crises, has sought for a quick action and raised questions of how expertise, knowledge, and science should be used strategically when there are still many ‘unknown unknowns.’13 Reliance on expert knowledge and science can easily lead to an impression of de-politicization and technocratic decision-making. Both politics and science involve, however, argumentation (Palonen, 2018). The Covid-19 pandemic has illustrated how politicians and citizens alike rely on different categorizations, narratives, and previous examples to deal with crises (Patomäki, 2020). Scientific facts and political strategies do not always go hand in hand. The response to Covid-19 has highlighted the partisan views on scientific facts and their usefulness on the one hand and political strategies on the other hand. For example, the use of masks, social distancing, and demonstrations requiring opening up the states have raised polarized responses in the United States (i.e., Khan, 2020, see also difference in views on Corona virus at the Pew Research Center Study, 2020). The political decision-making in times of crisis in the United States, exposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, could be approached at least from two different perspectives, namely institutional and procedural, which are considered here from the congressional perspective. First, the U.S.

13 Donald Rumsfeld, a Secretary of Defense in the George W. Bush administration mentioned in a speech in 2002 when referring to the situation in Iraq and possible WMD’s that there are things, which we know (‘known knowns’), things we know that we do not know (‘known unknowns’), and things we do not know that we do not know (‘unknown unknowns’).

6

THE COLONIALISM OF PARTISANSHIP: POLITICS OF NATIONAL …

135

Congress discussed its own procedures of how to work during the pandemic. For example, the Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi established a select subcommittee on Coronavirus crisis, which held its first hearing in May 2020.14 The House of Representatives allowed voting and organizing hearings remotely for the first time in its history. Democrats ‘voted-in-proxy’ meaning that one representative could vote on behalf of maximum 10 other representatives in the House (Grisales, 2020). The new rule change was adopted with mainly partisan votes, when only three Democrats voted against it with the Republicans.15 A bipartisan effort to address remote voting in the Senate also appeared and some committees organized committee hearings online (See Robert Portman’s (R-OH) and Senator Tom Carpenter’s remarks during the Senate hearing on Remote voting and Covid-19, April 30, 2020). The previous time when Congressional meetings, Capitol Hill, and the continuity of Congress were discussed in this depth was in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The second approach, mainly the legislative response to address the pandemic raised some concerns. Senator Portman, for example, noted how Congress passed a stimulus package without really debating it and that Congress member could not weight in because at the time the Senate had no procedures for remote debating and voting (See U.S. Senate May 6, 2020, S2280). While the Covid-19 pandemic has created new congressional procedures and legislation, the measures have partly also been relying on already existing institutions and policies. As a part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), Congress agreed funding for the National Science Foundation (NSF) to ‘prevent, prepare, and respond’ to the Covid-19 pandemic. The NSF has a funding mechanism called Rapid Response Research, which has been used to give funding for the Covid-19-related research projects. The NSF grants this specific research funding without external review, but it is only limited in terms of time and the amount of funding (See National Science Foundation Announcement, 2020). The Covid-19 pandemic has also raised a more ambitious discussion on reforming the National Science Foundation. The bill proposal (at the

14 https://coronavirus.house.gov/. 15 See Roll Call 107, http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2020/roll107.xml.

136

A. KRONLUND

time when this article was written) is called the Endless Frontier Act and it is a bipartisan and bicameral effort to renew the Foundation.16 The name of the proposal refers to the Vannevar Bush’s ‘Endless Frontier’ report, published in 1945. According to one of the sponsors of the bill, Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA), the Corona virus caught ‘the United States inadequately prepared and exposed the consequences of our long-term failure to sufficiently invest in scientific research’ (Khanna, 2020). Democratic Senator and sponsor of the bill, Dick Schumer (DNY) formulated how science is a national security priority (Schumer, 2020). The bill would rename NSF to become the National Science and Technology Foundation. The idea would be to ensure U.S. leadership regarding other emerging great powers, including China. The reasoning is that the NSF-funded basic research is what both drives U.S. economy and enhances the U.S. national security. The novelty of the bill would be adding a new technology division at the NSF as the name emphasizes (See Schumer et al., 2020). The bill was passed in the Senate in August 2021 with bipartisan votes of 68 to 32. It is interesting that the new legislative effort to reorganize the NSF has been entitled following the Vannevar Bush’s report. Mainly because the report relied on the idea that a government agency, with no other purpose than unspecific research funding, could operate without having any contact to the conventional political processes. The Bush embraced the idea of ‘government policy in support of scientific activity, not science for government policy’ (Blanpied, 1998). The lack of political oversight was one of the reasons, for example, why the earlier version of NSF bill failed to pass.17 The final product—the National Science Foundation in the 1950s—reminded more about the proposal put forward by Senator 16 See U.S. Senate, Statements on introduced bills and resolutions, May 21, 2020, S2588–S2605. 17 After the Bush’s report was published in 1945, a corresponding bill in the 79th Congress was introduced, in addition to other measures. President Harry S. Truman called Congress to enact a new domestic programme, including a federal research agency and the Senate began to have hearings on several bills on the National Science Foundation. In 1946, the Senate passed S.1850 but the House took no action on the bill. The bipartisan bill (S.526) passed after both houses resolved their differences at the conference committee in the 80th Congress but President Truman pocket vetoed it because of the lack of presidential control. The bill faced some setbacks still before it was finally passed in 81st Congress in 1950 (On the legislative history see, i.e., Kevles, 1977; appendix II Legislative History of the National Science Foundation Act of 1950; Committee on Science and Technology. Task Force on Science Policy, 1986).

6

THE COLONIALISM OF PARTISANSHIP: POLITICS OF NATIONAL …

137

Harley M. Kilgore from West Virginia than Bush’s proposal (See the differences in Kevles, 1977). The selected bill title—frontiers—could also refer to the excursions or horizons of science and new openings. Senator Todd Young (R-IN) described the bill proposal in the Senate: ‘We Americans have always been drawn to the frontier—yes, the natural frontier of wildernesses and unfamiliar territories from which States such as mine spring, but also the frontier that bounds what we as humans were once imagined to be capable of accomplishing after our forbearers settled across this great continent’ (U.S. Senate June 11, 2020, 2908–S2909). He further explained the title: ‘Bush originally articulated the importance of science to the Nation’s fortunes in a time of peril. While the challenges we face today are of a different nature, we are again in such a time’ (U.S. Senate June 11, 2020, 2908–S2909). The bill, when emphasizing the ‘premarket’ support for science and technology research, is considered resembling the idea of Bush’s ground-breaking idea of the basic research in the need of public support. In the near term, the bill would provide Covid-19related research funding. In the longer term, the purpose is to secure the maintenance of the global leadership by investments ‘on the frontiers of modern science and technology’ (See Schumer et al., 2020).

Concluding Remarks ‘[D]esignating the adversary as political and oneself as non-political (i.e., scientific, just, objective, neutral etc.) is in actuality a typical and unusually intensive way of pursuing politics’ (Schmitt, 2007/1932), 21, fn. 2). Science has a political aspect when it involves different debates, methods, views, schools of thoughts, and controversies. Therefore, it is interesting to examine why politicians are interested in defining it either political or apolitical and where the ‘political’ is located. Instead of enumerating political preferences, the effort was made to fade it out from the discussions by arguing in terms of national interest. Members of Congress tend to adopt a very narrow definition of politics mainly indicating it in terms of ideological differences or trying to avoid ‘political’ at all. According to traditional or modern idea of science, it is essentially nonpolitical or free from politics (see Brown, 2015, 9). This seemed to correlate with some members’ views. Democrats, by defending the scientific integrity, could portray themselves as defenders of science and its integrity

138

A. KRONLUND

claiming that politics should not be involved in science. At the same time, however, they were able to hide their own ideological commitments regarding science and politics. Instead of considering what is political in relation to science, Democrats brought up a very specific meaning of politicization, namely accusing Republicans of imposing political agenda where it previously did not exist. In the remarks, Congressional oversight was not contested per se but the fact that one party is imposing its preferences, conducting thus ‘political review’ instead of peer-review. However, for example, regarding the SBE directorate funding, its scientific status was not questioned but the peer-review system, which has enabled the NSF to fund grants were considered problematic by the politicians.18 The national interest conception provided a way for the Republicans to claim that they were not acting ‘politically’ but simply taking care of their constituents and that their tax-payers’ money are directed to ‘sound science.’ To sum up, both parties’ members could present themselves as the ‘spoke persons of science.’ They acted as they had the best interest of nation in terms of securing the national interests in mind. The debates examined in this article can be seen as the continuum of the debates that evolved when the NSF was founded in the 1950’s. The relationship between science, government, and politics, is still in the core of the discussions. However, the division between Kilgore and Bush’s views about what is best for the nation and science has been replaced by the partisan argumentation about what kind of science best serves the national interests and how it should be decided. Interestingly, the members of Congress tend not to be aware of more historical debates on the NSF or they refer to them selectively. The new bill proposal to reform the NSF referring to the idea of ‘Endless Frontiers’ seem to point out to the organizing part of the relationship between science and government and scientific progress as discussed in the 1950s but is not really otherwise building up into the idea of Bush regarding the scientific independence. To return the title of this article, polarization is not only about the two parties’ differing view on science and about its usability but rather how

18 Polarization is evident not only in the argumentation but also in concrete political

action. For example, Scientific Research in the National Interest Act bill passage was supported by 229 Republicans and 7 Democrats and opposed by 174 Democrats and 4 Republicans (see roll call 70 10 February 2016b). American Research and Competitiveness Act of 2015 was supported by 237 Republicans and 37 Democrats and opposed by 1 Republican and 144 Democrats (See roll call 260 20 May 2015).

6

THE COLONIALISM OF PARTISANSHIP: POLITICS OF NATIONAL …

139

science and politics should be interrelated and of which type are the relations between science and politics. Politicization of science has extended not only to the new fields like climate or stem cells, as pointed out by Kevles (2006) but also the whole conceptions of science are adopted in the political discussions and partisan political argumentation. Instead of making science through politics, it is now argued that politics is made through science. While the foundations of the relationship between science and government were laid in the United States in the 1950s, the relationship especially in terms of the national interest continues to be reinterpreted and redefined in the Congressional discussions. Rather than merely examining or categorizing how science is political, more focus should be on examining rhetorical strategies and common places when science is defined in terms of political activity. For Schmitt (2007/1932, 23), scientific is frequently used by political actors as an antithesis of ‘political.’ By claiming to act non-politically, mainly referring to science and objectivity was a particularly intense form of politics in Schmitt’s account. By following Schmitt’s dictum, both parties seemed to be accusing the other party of acting politically but not by using the term to understand ones’ own activities. The question is whether the U.S. Congress seems to have its own Sonderweg regarding relationship between science and politics. In other words, is science to be meddled with politics when it is masked with claims of ‘national interest.’ It is possible to identify a blind spot for both the parties that enables each of them to accuse the other of meddling with science and politics. For the Democrats, it is in avoiding admitting that the decision to support scientific integrity and government non-intervention regarding the autonomy of science is similarly political as the alleged intervention. In contrast, the Republicans tend to consider ‘the national interest’ as being beyond politics, in the style of the classical state reason. Acknowledgments The author would like to thank the editors of this volume Niilo Kauppi and Kari Palonen for their insightful comments regarding this article.

140

A. KRONLUND

References Blanpied, W. (1998). Inventing US Science Policy. Physics Today, 51(2) (February), 34–40. https://www.nsf.gov/about/history/nsf50/science_poli cy.jsp Brown, M. B. (2009). Science in democracy: Expertise. The MIT Press. Brown, M. B. (2015). Politicizing science: Conceptions of politics in science and technology studies. Social Studies of Science, 45(1), 3–30. Brown, M. B. (2016). Environmental science and politics. In T. Gabrielson, C. Hall, J. M., Myer, & D. Schlosberg (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of environmental political theory (pp. 491–504). Oxford University Press. Brown, M. B. (2017, June 2). Not everything political is politics. Reflection on March for Science. In Public Seminar. http://publicseminar.org/2017/06/ not-everything-political-is-politics/#.WUxOklqQxAY Bianco, W. (2019, March 6). Republicans don’t like the National Science Foundation, and there’s a perfectly good reason for that. Vox. https://www.vox. com/mischiefs-of-faction/2019/3/6/18252793/why-republicans-hate-nsf. CRS report for Congress. (2020). Membership of the 116th Congress: A profile. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45583.pdf Dennis, M. A. (2004). Reconstructing sociotechnical order. Vannevar Bush and US science policy. In S. Jasanoff (Ed.), States of knowledge: The co-production of science and the social order (pp. 225–253). Routledge. Drummond, C., & Fischhoff, B. (2017). Individuals with greater science literacy and education have more polarized beliefs on controversial science topics. In Proceedings for the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. https://www.pnas.org/content/114/36/9587 Easton, D. (1993). Political Science in the United States: Past and present, in J. Farr and R. Seidelman (Ed.), Discipline and History. Political Science in the United States (Ann Arbor), (pp. 291–309). Garvey, G. (2015/1971). Constitutional Bricolage. Princeton UP. Gonzales H. B. (2014, June 5). The National Science Foundation: Background and Selected Policy Issues. Congressional Research Service Report. https:// sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R43585.pdf Grisales, C. (2020, May 27). House casts its 1st remote votes, with parties still divided on the issue. NPR. https://www.npr.org/2020/05/27/863055 639/house-moves-to-cast-its-1st-remote-votes-with-parties-still-divided-onthe-issue Grossman, M., & Hopkins, D. A. (2016). Asymmetric politics: Ideological Republicans and group interest Democrats. Oxford University Press. Hilgartner, S., Hurlbut, J. B., & Jasanoff. S. (2021, February 26). Was “science” on the ballot? Science, 371 (6532), 893–894. Jasanoff, S. (Ed.) (2004). States of knowledge: The co-production of science and the social order. Routledge.

6

THE COLONIALISM OF PARTISANSHIP: POLITICS OF NATIONAL …

141

Kauppi, N., & Wiesner, C. (2018). Exit politics, enter politicization. Journal of European Integration, 40(2), 227–233. Kennedy, B., & Funk, C. (2019, August 9). Democrats and Republicans differ over role and value of scientists in policy debates. Pew Research Center. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/08/ 09/democrats-and-republicans-role-scientists-policy-debates Khan, S. (2020, May 12). Coronavirus: New survey shows how Republicans and democrats are responding differently. The Conversation. https://theconversat ion.com/coronavirus-new-survey-shows-how-republicans-and-democrats-areresponding-differently-138394 Kevles, D. J. (1977). The National Science Foundation and the debate over postwar research policy, 1942–1945: A political interpretation of science–The endless frontier. Isis, 68(1) (March), 4–26. Kevles, D. J. (2006). What’s new about the politics of science? Social Research, 73(3) (Fall), 761–778. Kushi, S. (2015). Breaking science stereotypes: Examining the effects of party politics on Federal R&D funding. Journal of Science Policy and Governance, 7 (1), 1–15. Krause, N. M., Brossard, D., Scheufele, D. A., Xenos, M. A., & Franke, K. (2019). American’s trust in science and scientists. Public Opinion Research, 83(4) (Winter), 817–836. Lane, N. (2006). Politics and science: A series of lessons. Social Research, 73(3) (Fall), 861–874. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1962). The Savage of mind. University of Chicago Press. Lupia, A. (2014). What is the value of social science? Challenges for researchers and government funders. PS, Political Science & Politics, 47 (1) (January), 1–7. Maron, D. F. (2018, July 31). A Conversation with One of the Few Scientists in Congress. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ a-conversation-with-one-of-few-scientist-in-congress/ Matthews, K. R. W., & Yang, E. H. (2019). Politics and policies guiding human embryo research in the United States. Baker Institute for Public Policy. https://www.bakerinstitute.org/media/files/files/a9096889/ chb-pub-greenwall-hesc-011519.pdf McNutt, M. (2019, March 6). Maintaining U.S. leadership in science and technology. Statement before the Committee on Science, Space and Technology U.S. House of Representatives. https://science.house.gov/sites/democrats. science.house.gov/files/documents/Dr.%20McNutt%20Bio%2C%20CV%2C% 20Testimony.pdf National Science Foundation. Legislative history of the National Science Foundation Act of 1950. https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1952/b_1952_8.pdf

142

A. KRONLUND

National Science Board (NSB). (2020). The State of U.S. Science and Engineering 2020 report. Available at https://ncses.nsf.gov/pubs/nsb20201/pre face National Science Foundation. (2020). Announcement National Science Foundation awards rapid response grants to support Coronavirus/Covid-19 research. https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/announcements/041720.jsp Palonen, K. (2003). Four times of politics: Policy, polity, politicking and politicization. Alternatives, 28, 171–186. Palonen, K. (2016). The politics of academic freedom: Weber, Westminster and contemporary universities. Max Weber Studies, 16(2), 149–174. Palonen, K. (2018). Submitting ‘alternative facts’ to debate: A Weberian perspective on post-truth politics.’ Redescriptions: Political Thought, Conceptual History and Feminist Theory, 21(2), 112–127. Patomäki, H. (2020). Pukekaamme keisarille kansalaisen vaatteet. Kriittisiä huomioita asiantuntijakäytäntöistä koronakriisissä. Kosmopolis, 50(2), 116– 127. Pew Research Center. (2020, June 5). Republicans, Democrats more even further apart in coronavirus concerns. Growing share of Republicans say “the worst is behind us”. https://www.people-press.org/2020/06/25/republicans-dem ocrats-move-even-further-apart-in-coronavirus-concerns/ Rice, C. (2008). Rethinking the national interest. Foreign Affairs, 87 (4), 2–14, 16–26. Rumsfeld, D. (2002, February 12). DoD news briefing—Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Myers. https://archive.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?Tra nscriptID=2636 Sargent, J. F. Jr. (2020, April 30). Federal research and development/R&D) funding: FY2021. CRS Report for Congress. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/ R46341.pdf. Schmitt, C. (2007). The concept of the political: Expanded version. University of Chicago Press. (Original 1932). Schumer, C., Young, T., Khanna, R., & Gallagher, M. (2020, May 14). US needs bipartisan push for scientific research after coronavirus: Congressional leaders. USA Today, opinion. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/opinion/ 2020/05/14/coronavirus-exposes-danger-of-underinvesting-in-scientific-res earch-column/3115013001/ Severo, R. (2005, December 15). William Proxfire, Senator who abhorred waste, dies. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/15/ national/william-proxmire-senator-who-abhored-waste-dies.html. Solovey, M. (2019). The impossible dream: Scientism as strategy against distrust of social science at the U.S. National Science Foundation, 1945–1980. International Journal for History, Culture, and Modernity, 7 (1), 209–238.

6

THE COLONIALISM OF PARTISANSHIP: POLITICS OF NATIONAL …

143

Stine, D. S. (2009, May 7). Science and technology policymaking: A primer. CRS Report for Congress. https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34454.pdf. United States Congress. (1950). P.L. 507–81 National Science Foundation. https://www.nsf.gov/about/history/legislation.pdf United States Congress. (1986). House Committee on Science and Technology, Task Force on Science Policy. A history of science policy in the United States, 1940–1985 report. http://www.archive.org. Uscinski, J. E., & Klofstadt, C. A. (2013). Determinants of representatives’ votes on the Flake Amendment to end National Science Foundation funding of political science research. PS, Political Science & Politics, 46(3), 557–561. U.S. House of Representatives. (2014, May 29). Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2015. H4927–H5016. U.S. House of Representatives. (2015). H.Rept. 114–107, part 1, 114th Congress, 66, 1st session, America Competes Reauthorization Act of 2015. U.S. House of Representatives. (2015, March 20). Roll Call 260. http://clerk. house.gov/evs/2015/roll260.xml U.S. House of Representatives. (2015, May 20). America Competes Reauthorization Act of 2015. H3419–H3490. U.S. House of Representatives. (2015, June 2). Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Appropriations Act. H3660–H3694. U.S. House of Representatives. (2016a, February 10). Scientific Research in the National Interest Act/H.R.3293) H677–H690. U.S. House of Representatives. (2016b, February 10). Roll Call 70. http:// clerk.house.gov/evs/2016/roll070.xml U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science. (1998). Committee print 105-B unlocking our future: Toward a new national science policy. https:// www.aaas.org/sites/default/files/s3fs-public/GPO-CPRT-105hprt105-b.pdf U.S. Senate. (2020, April 30). Hearing on remote voting and Covid-19. https:// www.c-span.org/video/?471631-1/senate-hearing-remote-voting-covid-19 Weber, M. (1973). Der Sinn der ‘Wertfreiheit’ in sozialen und ökonomischen Wissenschaften, 1917. In J. Winckelmann (Ed.), Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftlehre (pp. 489–540). http://www.zeno.org/Soziologie/M/Web er,+Max/Schriften+zur+Wissenschaftslehre/Der+Sinn+der+»Wertfreiheit«+ der+soziologischen+und+ökonomischen+Wissenschaften Wells, W. Jr. (1982). Politicians and social scientist: An uneasy relationship. The American Behavioral Scientist, 26(2) (November–December), 235–249. White House. (2009, March 9). Memorandum for the heads of executive departments and agencies. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/ memorandum-heads-executive-departments-and-agencies-3-9-09

CHAPTER 7

Mapping Postmodern Patterns of Political Agency and Rhetoric: Established Politics Facing Bricolage Kim Zilliacus

Introduction The challenges of digital disruption to democratic institutions and governance constitute a major concern for various social scientific research with the common conceptual point of departure of grappling with the ambiguously lucid relationship between social, technological and political change. One of the overarching factors of this relationship concerns the transformation of values in relation to the constantly evolving communication technologies, and the accelerating pace at which they are growing more personal, social and interactive. The pace of change is that overwhelming that the infinite amounts of data produced and consumed have overshadowed the momentum of theoretical reflection to consider the

K. Zilliacus (B) Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki, Finland e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 N. Kauppi and K. Palonen (eds.), Rhetoric and Bricolage in European Politics and Beyond, Rhetoric, Politics and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98632-2_7

145

146

K. ZILLIACUS

undercurrents of the political repercussions from a subterranean conceptual overview. There are indeed all-encompassing ventures of dwelling into the conceptual depths of this wave of information and communication disruption, which are the natural point of departure for illuminating this key relationship between technological and political change. Some conceptual paths are obviously more promising than others depending on the level of analysis. If we are to adapt the wide coverage of the most wholesome range of social transformation, the broad conceptual framework of the modern and postmodern society are found to be sufficiently broad to catch the more fundamental value implications of this key relationship with respect to other corresponding theories of social and technological change. Furthermore, we are specifying the postmodern concept to the extent of being able to define the properties of bricolage politics as a conceptual elaboration to distinguish the disruptive transformations of especially Western democracies regarding currently significant reconstructions of political agency and rhetoric. Accordingly, this conceptual study serves the goal of clarifying the patterns of distinct modern/postmodern values and bricolage politics as useful conceptual tools to illuminate the current dilemmas of technological and political change in terms of the agency and rhetoric of both citizens and decision-makers. The ultimate purpose of such a conceptual platform is to provide an analytical intermediary map for further studies of the (dis)connection between public preferences and policy along with the apparent dilemmas of sync, which seem all too evident in the present light of climate change, migration and pandemics crises. These challenges of finding applicable conceptual tools, and overcome the shortcomings of standard approaches of studying very specific and contextually isolated issues of disruption, become even more evident when analysing, e.g. the rise (and rapid fall?) of movements such as the Gilets Jaunes along with other more recently evolving myriads of political actors defying the established cleavages of politics with their highly personalised social media use. The aim of this paper is to discuss how these kind of changes commonly have been explained as in what kind of theoretical explanations there are to both social and technological change, thus connecting the broader trends of value change and the political impact of ‘new’, or rather digital, communication technologies individualising the use of media. Accordingly, our point of departure lies in an overview of previous theories of social and technological change

7

MAPPING POSTMODERN PATTERNS OF POLITICAL …

147

before arriving at some relevant aspects of postmodern politics as one of the more promising perspectives to bridge the gap between political and technological change. Our approach to framing the analysis of current political dilemmas would thus involve focusing on the ‘postmodern’ shift of society and its specific political characteristics, instead of staring us blind on the indefinite flow of information hype embodied by, for instance, the informational ‘network’ (Castells, 1996, 2000) society. Accordingly, the change of politics would firstly be defined in terms of modern and postmodern features, in order to pinpoint the central features of political change onto a map, which, secondly, is used as a drawing board for colouring in more specific contrasts with respect to political agency (cf. Bradford, 2002; Pulkkinen, 2000) and rhetoric. These conceptual elaborations on the various interpretations of the politically vague original concepts, such as the ‘information society’ (Masuda, 1980), in turn lead up to the more concrete, and hopefully more durable and applicable, conceptualisation of bricolage politics. In other words, our strategy is to avoid a headon collision with the unruly ‘hippopotamus’ of digital disruption, but instead approach it from behind and take samples of its droppings in the specific research areas of political agenda and rhetoric. Thus, we will embark on this conceptual journey by beginning to disentangle the partly overlapping layers of theoretical definitions of social and technological change.

Classic Concepts of Social and Technological Change The following concepts have been widely used to describe the dynamics of social and technological change in Western societies since the late 1960s (Fig. 7.1): The concept of the information society is one of the older terms to catch the massive growth in information and communication that has characterised the end of the twentieth, and start of the twenty-first centuries. Informatisation, information technologies and the information society, were debated in primarily by Japan as well as the US already in the early 1960s. Yoneji Masuda (1968) has been coined as one of the main pioneering architects of the information society concept launching his ideas of a ‘computopia’ as a global network of information and knowledge leading to a global consciousness appeasing cultural and national

148

K. ZILLIACUS

Fig. 7.1 Classic concepts of social and technological change

differences (Masuda, 1980; Umesao, 1963; Yujiro, 1969). Masuda wrote the first national plan for the Japanese information society with a national goal for 2000 already in 1972 (Masuda, 1980), which was far ahead of other corresponding national strategies that, however, were swiftly picked up by France and the US where ideas of the knowledge economy had been discussed already by the early 1960s by the American knowledge/information pioneers (Drucker, 1959; Lane, 1966; Machlup, 1962; Wiener, 1948). This interest for the information society grew throughout the 1970s and 1980s, but interestingly it was only in the late 1990s that these ideas on the knowledge economy were picked up on the more established global level of the UN, OECD and EU launching their strategies and reports of the ‘knowledge society’, which by then had surpassed the ‘information society’. Knowledge and especially its economic importance had been discussed much earlier by the American pioneers of the information society concept, but the knowledge society as such grew more important with the UN and EU launching their strategies for the development of knowledge in the late 1990s (Ampuja & Koivisto, 2014;

7

MAPPING POSTMODERN PATTERNS OF POLITICAL …

149

Böhme & Stehr, 1986; Innerarity, 2012; Philips et al., 2017; Stehr, 2016; Stehr & Ruser, 2017). The main conceptual difference between these two types of societies was the focus on information technologies, resources and economic providers in the information society strategies, whereas the knowledge society concept more directly took on the social qualities and capacities of scientific knowledge as well as the data creation and dissemination including human development. Importantly all of these elements were part of the visions of the post-industrial society, which was launched in the West in the late 1960s to the early 1970s as a contrast to the previous industrial society and agrarian society.

Post-industrial Society The social structure approach of ‘post-industrial society’ refers to the shift in the size of social classes and the increasing differentiation of work tasks and categories that take place when the industrial society gives way to post-industrial structures. The traditional industrial work force shrinks considerably, whereas tertiary, service-based, white-collar occupations grow in numbers. The emerging, predominantly urban and well educated, new middle classes produce a new set of interests and values of their own, which to a less degree are anchored in the industrial class-based cleavage. The diminishing importance of once key institutions—e.g. the church for conservatives and trade unions for social democrats—compliments the change. Shifting social classes have redefined the winners, as in the new middle classes, and losers in society. Thus the changes in social structure provide fertile ground for the growth of new political orientations and alignments (Bell, 1973; Chandler & Siaroff, 1985, pp. 303–304; Hildebrandt, 1979, pp. 61–67; Huntington, 1973, pp. 163–164, 172–189; Hooghe & Marks, 2018, pp. 115, 126; Kriesi et al., 2012, pp. 277–278). Daniel Bell launched the concept of post-industrial society already in the early 1960s as the emerging contrast to the industrial and agrarian societies. The concept was elaborated in the late 1960s to early 1970s by, e.g. Bell (1973), Lasch (1972), Huntington (1973) and Brzezinski (1970) who labelled it the ‘technetronic society’. Huntington stresses that the post-industrial theorists define post-industrial society by its economic, social and cultural characteristics rather than political institutions, and that for instance, Bell did not consider the political implications of

150

K. ZILLIACUS

these changes in social structures. Bell, indeed, argued that the postindustrial social change did not predict any specific political change even if he suggested, ‘individual post-industrial societies “will have different political and cultural configurations”’ (Bell, 1973, p. 164; Huntington, 1973, p. 166). Huntington, on the other hand, did specify the politics of post-industrialism and predicted that ‘political values prevalent in post-industrial society are likely to be significantly different from those dominant in industrialism’ (ibid., 186), and that they provide the basis for a new ideological cleavage drawing on Inglehart’s (1971) early work on value change. It should, however, be noted that Huntington’s visions of post-industrial politics are less benign than the postmaterialist visions of Inglehart. In fact Huntington predicted that ‘A more rationalized society could generate less rational political conflict, with politics becoming the arena for the expression of emotional frustration and irrational impulse, both of which find little outlet elsewhere in society. Post-industrial politics, in short, could be the darker side of post-industrial society’ (Huntington, 1973, p. 166). This consideration of politically negative effects associated with the envisioned transition to post-industrial structures stands as quite a stark contrast between Huntington and the main proponents of post-industrial theory. In fact, Huntington’s visions of more emotional and irrational impulses of future political conflicts are not too far from the political chaos that has marked much of, e.g. US politics in more recent years. Importantly, though, all the post-industrial theorists regarded post-industrial society to be the consequence of continuing social and economic processes rather than the product of any specific post-industrial political ideologies (ibid. 187). Accordingly, the main elements of the post-industrial society, as contrasted to the industrial and agrarian societies, were limited to strictly social/economic structures devoid of any specific references to political institutions or processes. In addition, these post-industrial characteristics listed by, e.g. Huntington were rather idealistic as in emphasising ‘a central role in the economy and society of theoretical knowledge, technology, research and development as opposed to physical capital and, consequently, the predominance not of factories but of institutions, such universities, think tanks, and media devoted to the creation and transmission of information…’ (ibid. 163–164). Particularly, the predictions of ‘high and widespread levels of economic well-being and affluence, leading to increased leisure for the bulk of the population, with a few isolated “pockets” of poverty’ (ibid. 163) are

7

MAPPING POSTMODERN PATTERNS OF POLITICAL …

151

rather naïve considering the consistent growth of inequality and high concentration of wealth to a very small elite since the 1980s in especially the US. Importantly, post-industrial theory emphasised the changes in social structures rather than the driving force of technology in itself, not to mention any dynamics of the digital divide. In comparison then, the information society concept went beyond these post-industrial structures and brought in the role of new information and communication technologies and their direct significance for the changes that the Western societies experienced from the 1970s and onwards.

Informationalism Continuing on the paths of the significance of information technology, Manuel Castells (1996, 1998, 2000) became one of the main authorities of the information society, or what he termed the new information age, during the late 1990s (Fig. 7.2). Castells proposed that the analytical focus on theories of postindustrialism should instead be about informationalism as the reason for societies becoming informational is not that they would have a certain social structure, which was the old post-industrial argument, but that they have a certain production system, which is dominated by knowledge-based productivity, information technology and communication infrastructure. Castells considered the revolution in new information technology as important to the transformation of post-industrial society as the steam engine, fossil fuels and nuclear energy were to the industrial society, which was focused on the production of energy rather than

knowledge-based productivity + information technology + communication infrastructure = domination of informational production as the informational economy behind the information society Fig. 7.2 Castells’s (1996, 1998, 2000, 2004) concepts of informationalism

152

K. ZILLIACUS

information as such. Accordingly, Castells argues that the information society should be distinguished as the informational society emphasising the domination of informational production as information itself becomes the main source of productivity in distinction to all kinds of societies where the role of general information and communication of knowledge obviously has been vital. This shift from old material production to new communication production is the essence of the so-called informational economy that Castells sees as the engine or production system behind the information society. The more dominating and powerful this engine becomes, the more important it becomes for defining both economic and political power in the informational society (Castells, 2000, pp. 5–6, 13–14, 18, 62, 77).

Postmaterialism Postmaterialism constitutes another classic concept of social, rather than technological, change that specifically encompasses political change as in explaining the rise of new social movements and parties that challenged the established political order of Western democracies at the end of the 1960s. This was indeed the first wave of widespread public questioning of the social, political and economic structures of the Western establishment along with its norms and values. It marked a point of cultural and political meltdown, which stands as a point of departure for the recurrence of various waves of mass protests since these heydays of a new politics blending individual liberties and identities with a highly diverse range of issues. However different the ideological slogans of students protesting in the streets of Paris in 1968 are to the multiple demands of Gilets Jaunes on those same streets in 2019, one common denominator of their challenging of the establishment boils down to the creative bricolage of political means calling out for direct actions and mass demonstrations. The underlying changes in political values and behaviour implicated a surge of so-called ‘new politics’ along with a process of partisan dealignment (Dalton, 2019), the effects of which are still visible today across much of Europe’s political scenery with the continuity of the green movement as the most quoted carriers of a postmaterial agenda (van Haute, 2016, p. 261). The two major approaches to explain this emergence of new politics are indeed complementary as in the post-industrial changes of social structure and postmaterialist changes of core values (Chandler & Siaroff, 1985, pp. 303–304; Poguntke, 1989, p. 177).

7

MAPPING POSTMODERN PATTERNS OF POLITICAL …

153

Inglehart’s theory of postmaterialism (Inglehart, 1977) is focused on the shift of values as a basis for changing political orientations, and provides the most comprehensive approach to explaining new politics. Drawing on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs (Maslow, 1954), Inglehart argues that the living standards stand in direct relation to the adapted values—those growing up under insecure and poor conditions tend to gravitate towards more materialist values, while economic and physical security throughout the formative years encourage postmaterialist values (Inglehart, 1977, pp. 21–23, 137, 1990, pp. 66–70; Norris & Inglehart, 2019, p. 42). The shift in values is therefore a result of the economic conditions prevailing during an individual’s early years of socialisation. The post-war era of economic affluence and security has thus provided favourable conditions for an intergenerational value change towards postmaterialist issues concerning the quality of life, rather than the quantity of economic rewards (Inglehart, 2018, p. 23; Norris & Inglehart, 2019, pp. 92–94). Inglehart’s theory has been the subject to a flood of debate revealing both its strengths and weaknesses (Fig. 7.3).1 The main features of the two contrasting values systems of old and new politics (Baker et al., 1981, pp. 139–142) can be summarised in terms of the polarised, rather simplified, although clear-cut, definitions that have been used in central studies of new politics (Zilliacus, 2001a). The materialist values of the old politics are firmly rooted in the traditional bourgeois/proletariat cleavage, according to which both sides strive for economic gain and security. The concerns of old politics include economic growth, public order, national security, domestic tranquility and traditional lifestyles (ibid., 140–141; Müller-Rommel, 1989, p. 5). The value system of new politics is focused upon issue demands concerning environmental quality, gender equality, social equality, human and minority rights, individual self-expression, peace and direct participation (ibid., Poguntke, 1989, pp. 177–181; Inglehart & Welzet, 2005, p. 54). The diversity of issues raised implies that the new value cleavage cuts across the traditional cleavages of class, religion, ethnicity and centre/periphery. This new dimension of conflict has been labelled by various terms: the postmaterialist/materialist dimension (Inglehart, 1977, 1997; Norris & Inglehart, 2019), established vs. non-established 1 For an elaborate account of the weaknesses of Inglehart’s postmaterialist theory, see e.g. Flanagan (1982, 99–128, 1987, 1289–1319); Flanagan & Lee (2003); van Deth (1983, 63–79); Duch & Taylor (1993, 747–779); Brym (2016); Abramson (2011).

154

K. ZILLIACUS

Fig. 7.3 The postmaterialism/materialism index of Inglehart (1977)

interests (Bürklin, 1985), realists vs. idealists (Bürklin, 1984), values vs. norms (Klingemann & Pappi, 1972), new vs. old politics (Baker et al., 1981) (Bürklin, 1985, p. 468), authoritarian vs. libertarian values (Flanagan & Lee, 2003), traditional vs. secular-rational values, or survival vs. self-expression values (Inglehart & Welzel, 2005). According to Inglehart, the political orientations of the Western publics are shaped by the party loyalties of the past and an issue polarisation reflecting the new non-economic issues. Both of these dimensions of political polarisation have widely been described by the useful but simplifying left/right concept, which tends to absorb most political conflicts. Inglehart alternatively argues that the left/right dimension is made up of two distinct components: the traditional left/right polarisation, linked with long-established party loyalties, and the new politics dimension. Furthermore, he concludes that the postmaterialist/materialist issues of the latter dimension today are the stronger indicators of the left/right

7

MAPPING POSTMODERN PATTERNS OF POLITICAL …

155

position, as compared to issues concerning the old class conflict (Inglehart & Rabier, 1986, pp. 469–472; Inglehart, 1990, pp. 273–277). The emergence of the new politics axis has thus transformed the meaning of left and right, and furthermore it has produced a split between the industrial old left and the post-industrial ‘new left’. The decline in class voting and increasing polarisation according to postmaterialist/materialist values have considerably weakened the support of traditional labour policy based on economic redistribution. Slogans of the old left adhering to class issues concerning the interests of trade unions, employees’ rights and income inequality form a sharp contrast to the emphasis of the new political movements on quality-of-life issues (Kriesi et al., 2006, pp. 927–928). The strive for higher economic standards for the working class is not very compatible2 with the new politics rejection of economic growth and ever-increasing consumption as goals in themselves. The new demands for direct participation are also contradictory to the old leftist acceptance of organisational discipline and hierarchy as a means of political change and economic progress. The reliance on state and party bureaucracy is sharply contrasted to the new politics promotion of direct democracy, decentralisation and individual self-expression and lifestyle (Inglehart, 1977, p. 240, 1990, p. 259; Müller-Rommel, 1989, pp. 7, 17–18; Siisiäinen, 1985, pp. 206–208) . There are mainly two types of political parties that have represented the radical, or simply alternative, vanguard of the new politics as in variations of left-wing parties and green parties (cf. Kriesi et al., 2006, p. 926).

Postmodern Society Inglehart’s conception of the postmodern lies very close to his theory of postmaterialism (Inglehart, 1971, 1977, 1990) and postmaterialist values that he includes as ‘only one component of a broader cultural

2 It must be noted, though, that the goals of the old left are not totally incompatible with those of the new left (Inglehart 1977, 243). There are of course broad mutual goals such as social equality and peace, and even if the motives of the old and new left differ, the political implications are in some areas similar. For instance, the goals of individualism and participatory orientation are highly likely to imply increasing co-determination at the workplace. The old emphasis on economic redistribution and the new demand on an ecologically motivated restructuring of the economy, both require relatively extensive mechanisms of control over the economy (Poguntke 1989, 181).

156

K. ZILLIACUS

shift toward Postmodern values’ (Inglehart, 1997, p. 325, 1999, pp. 239– 240). Empirically, survey data over recent decades confirms such a shift (Norris & Inglehart, 2019, pp. 92–94). Inglehart’s use of the postmaterial and the postmodern concept is largely interchangeable (Inglehart, 1999, pp. 31–36), even if the broadness of postmodernity is emphasised, and his distinction between the two lies somewhere between the quote above and the following specification: ‘The shift from Materialist to Postmaterialist priorities is a core element of the Postmodernization process’ (ibid., 35). There are, however, some distinct differences between postmaterial and postmodern orientations, which have been distinguished in detail by, e.g. Gibbins and Reimer (1995, pp. 302–303). The point is that postmodern goals are much more than positively postmaterial, and include both hard and soft features of an emerging technoculture. We will attempt to proceed one step further in defining the specifically political postmodern elements that go beyond Inglehart’s very general and postmaterialist-centred description of postmodern society. When defining postmodern politics by means of contrasting it to the modern elements of politics, one should of course point out the existence of the preceding traditional era. In the premodern or traditional era of politics, political power was contingent upon religious and traditional authority before it was rationalised and democratised into rational/legal state authority and the modern political system. Inglehart has distinguished these three eras as in the traditional, modern and postmodern society, and described this division in terms of the goals, values and authority systems of each era in Table 7.1. Table 7.1 Societal goals and individual values, traditional, modern and postmodern society as defined by Inglehart (1997, p. 76)

Core Societal Project

Individual Values

Authority System

Traditional

Modern

Postmodern

Survival in a steady-state economy Traditional religious and communal norms Traditional authority

Maximize economic Growth

Maximize subjective well-being

Achievement Motivation

Postmaterialist and Postmodern values

Rational-legal Authority

De-emphasis of both legal and religious authority

7

MAPPING POSTMODERN PATTERNS OF POLITICAL …

157

Accordingly, the traditional society would be characterised by striving for survival, and traditional or religious authority, while modern society is about maximising economic growth and developing a rational-legal authority. The third era as in the postmodern society, is about maximising subjective well-being, and implies the rejection of both legal and religious authority. The shift from traditional to modern to ‘post-industrial’ society has also explicitly been described by, e.g. Huntington in terms of its consequences for changing cleavages of political values and ideologies. Huntington’s (1973, pp. 186–187, 191) earlier predictions of ‘modernization’ and the society of the future included a mixture of industrial and post-industrial components just as the modern society is situated in the seam between conflicting traditional and modern values.

Premodern, Modern and Postmodern Politics The shift of the political dimensions of the premodern, modern and postmodern society, is pictured in Fig. 7.4. These modes of political change are illustrated from a very broad view incorporating the essence of the discussion above into the interaction of elements of politics, as in units of power, and technology, as in modes of production. The main units of power of the premodern politics consist of clans and various forms of monarchs and more or less absolute rulers. The premodern pole of politics corresponds to the prevalence of pre-industrial

Fig. 7.4 Modes of political change: premodern, modern and postmodern politics

158

K. ZILLIACUS

technology, which mainly constituted some basic mechanisation of the agricultural sector. Modern politics emerges from the premodern point of departure with a strong state and bureaucracy at its core. The modern pillar of change corresponds to the grand period of industrial technology and industrialisation. The build-up of the Soviet Union constitutes one of the most striking examples of the birth of a modern state on the basis of industrialisation and the systematic breaking down of traditional society. The next major upheaval in the field of technology involves the emergence of the informational post-industrial technology as in new ways of producing and communicating information. This marks the beginning of the age of postmodern politics as the new means and modes of communication surpass the control of the modern state, the power of which is decentralised into various organisations and networks. The new power relations within the ‘network society’ are dominated by, e.g. the interests of autonomous global corporations and new social movements, which are played out in the expanding space of media and unlimited information. The bi-directional arrows between the forces of change, underline our view that the change, rather than development, is non-linear and nondeterministic, emphasising the free movement between the three pillars of concepts. A specific political activity such as environmental protest is thus not limited to any of the pillars, although its role is most prominent in the third pillar. Importantly the pillars, phases or periods are not mutually exclusive, and can be regarded as areas of tension where combinations of certain political activity are less or more likely to occur. The main essence of the transition from one pillar to another is that the patterns of conflict are redefined as we move along from left to right. If we were to illustrate this force that sweeps through the entire field of Fig. 7.4, it could be seen as a stone which is rolled across a field of grass, and as the stone rolls through the field, the vegetation is actually changing, and so is the stone and force itself, as it is picking up the ground that it goes through (cf. Thompson et al., 1990). If we are to locate current political changes in the Western societies, they are naturally taking place in the joint of the modern and postmodern pillars where the main forces of change consist of decentralisation, autonomisation and algorithmatisation. In the domain of technology, autonomisation is related to the accelerating speed of innovation, which is so fast that standardised formats cannot keep up with the pace, giving way to increasingly tailor-made and personalised formats of informational technology open for creative bricolage by the most

7

MAPPING POSTMODERN PATTERNS OF POLITICAL …

159

driven players. Progressively autonomous networks are in the long run related to the growing invisibility of power as the major, discernible lines of conflict are disappearing into the increasingly dispersed networks of specialised interests. Algorithmatisation refers in this context to the increasingly parallel lines between economic algorithms of forecasted profits/losses orchestrating the share market and the traditional institutions of, e.g. political participation, public communication, decision-, and policy-making that are growing steadily more dependent on the access, ownership and innovative use of social and political data. The policy process and its overarching goals are to a growing extent legitimised by means of extending all kinds of digital data into selected indicators for achieving ‘successful outcomes’ within increasingly autonomous networks.

Postmodern Perspectives on Postmaterialism, the Network Society and Expressivism How could we catch the essence of postmodern politics more precisely, or is it just a wider conception of postmaterialist new politics as Inglehart (1997, 1999, 2018) assumes? We would agree that there certainly exists a clear link between postmaterialism and postmodernism, with the notable exception that the postmodern concept reaches much further into the fabrics of the society as a whole. If the perspective of new politics is limited to changes in specifically political behaviour, cleavages and movements, the postmodern perspective includes the political/social implications of the restructuring of modern capitalism, dominated by centralised, rigid, large-scale mass production factories, into the postmodern economy of decentralised, flexible, globally dispersed high technology units (Kaase & Newton, 1995, p. 28). The consumption of media, information and technology plays a major role in the postmodern society (idem: 30; Gibbins & Reimer, 1995, p. 302) and moulds the increasingly popularised and entertainment-based political interaction between image rich leaders and the rapidly shifting fancy of a floating electorate. In other words, the postmodern concept also covers the key changes of the steps into a global information society along with the new rulers of global informational capitalism, mediatisation, technocratisation, new meanings of consumption and the commercialisation of the political self, which according to

160

K. ZILLIACUS

the dynamics and social penetration of the ‘new economy’ have increasingly political implications. The switch to the postmodern concept in fact completes the view of new politics as well as changes some of its content. There is, however, a clear difference between postmaterialists and postmodernists. It is linked to the postmodern exposure to the information and consumer society of the ‘new’ global capitalist economy and its high rate of simulation turnover implying a self-expressive, hedonist postmodernist leaning towards immediate image gratification as compared to the self-realising, developmental dedication to the natural and authentic of the postmaterialist. Accordingly, the postmodernist can be very materialist in his/her accumulation of any type of capital unlike the postmaterialist who on the other hand can use postmodern means to realise postmaterial goals. In fact, Gibbins and Reimer (1995) differentiate postmodernists on the basis of their material vs. cultural accumulation into instrumental vs. humanist postmodernists, and found the value orientation of the latter group to be strongly related to postmaterialism. There is a sceptical, ironic and less idealistic streak of the postmodern lack of moral commitment, which does complement and differentiate the rather one-sided picture of the positively postmaterialist dedication to the long-term developmental cause (Gibbins & Reimer, 1995, pp. 301, 302, 328). Expressivism constitutes the key criteria to defining the postmodernist identity according to Gibbins and Reimer: ‘Postmodernists are characterized by a high level of cultural capital, and they are directed towards leisure, life-style, and image. Expressivism is the core notion of postmodernism, measured by such indicator as the high priority given to individual development and restlessness’ (Gibbins & Reimer, 1995, p. 301). In Fig. 7.5, we have emphasised expressivism as a core postmodern value (Gibbins & Reimer, 1995, pp. 302–303) in relation to Inglehart’s (1997, p. 76) definition of the values, societal project and authority systems of traditional, modern and postmodern society as a point of departure for distinguishing postmodern instrumentalism vs. humanism. Expressivism is also becoming part of the working process in itself as the reproduction of consumable and indulging cultures involves expressive innovation on the producing end of the line as well. Digital access is instrumental in attaining the necessary creativity of this reproduction process, and equally crucial for enabling workers to include elements of individual play into their work tasks, through, e.g. the more private setting of their personal devices, as well as personal vibes into their work environment through non-stop mobile access to their private lives. In

7

MAPPING POSTMODERN PATTERNS OF POLITICAL …

161

Fig. 7.5 Value dimensions of traditional, modern and postmodern society: defining postmodern instrumentalism and humanism through the core values of expressivism (Sources Inglehart [1997]; Gibbins & Reimer [1995]; Zilliacus & Puohiniemi [2019])

a similar vein ‘the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism’ (Weber, 1970) is being transformed and challenged by more flexible elements of hedonist leisure, which sneak in as a central motivating force, both as in the ends of private life and the means of working life. The focus on quantitative achievement maximisation is faded into an equally motivating achievement differentiation, which is equipped with a higher emphasis on well-being and expressivism rather than the pure status of production output. The essence of the emerging postmodern identity and its key feature of the expressive self is elegantly summed up by Gibbins and Reimer in their conception of postmodern culture: ‘The latter [postmodern culture] involves the emergence of hyperdifferentiation and de-differentiation; the reorganization of leisure, the life world, and habitus; the commodification and mass production of a plurality of images, cultures, and life-styles. These developments entail the creation of new expressive selves which are mosaics of subjectivities and new attitudes, both local and universalized, stressing immediate gratification, novelty, play, hedonism, consumption, and style. (Gibbins, 1989; Reimer, 1988, 1989; Featherstone, 1991; Crook et al., 1992)’ (Gibbins & Reimer, 1995, p. 303).

162

K. ZILLIACUS

The libertarian idealism inherent in the postmaterial ethos in fact makes up one of the founding factors of Castells’s informational ‘network society’ as in the ‘culture of freedom’ and ‘spirit of libertarianism’ that plagued the ‘countercultural character’ of the significant micro-computer and software innovators in the mid-1970s (e.g. Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates), who led the information revolution against the centralised hierarchy of the corporate world symbolised by IBM before turning into big multinational corporations themselves (Castells, 2000, pp. 5–6; Freiberger & Swaine, 1999; Isaacson, 2011, pp. 31–41). Importantly, though, the other significant founding factors of the network society were material indeed as in the technological infrastructure of Silicon valley, the ‘collapse of statism’, the ‘restructuring of the capitalist mode of production’ into ‘informational capitalism’ and its increasing dominance in the ‘new economy’ of ‘informationalism, globalisation and networking’ (Castells, 2000, pp. 5–6, 13–14, 18, 62, 77).3 This picture of change reflects the economic coverage of the postmodern concept described above, in the sense of the increasingly technological reality and economic arguments blending in with the shrinking, or rather changing, political reality as the reorganised capitalist elements break up the structures of the state-centred modern society. In fact, Castells’s visions of the build-up to the emerging network society fits well into some key elements of Gibbins and Reimer’s description of the factors of change explaining the shift from the modern to the postmodern world: The key changes include the transfer to a postindustrial information and consumer society; the disorganization of capitalism, socialism, and bureaucracy; transnationalism and globalization processes; the reorganization of employment along post-Fordist lines; the arrival of new classes or segments within classes; heightened conflict between the public and private worlds; and the emergence of a postmodern culture. (Gibbins & Reimer, 1995, p. 303)

Accordingly, the postmodern concept, as used by, e.g. Gibbins and Reimer (1995) and Frissen (1999), would cover some of the main theoretical territories used by Castells and others in their visions of the ‘new

3 The libertarian elements of the personal computer pioneers are described quite vividly by the following review comment on Freiberger and Swaine’s (1999) story of this ‘… ragtag group of college dropouts, hippies, and.

7

MAPPING POSTMODERN PATTERNS OF POLITICAL …

163

information age’, the political content and implications of which could be concretised and defined within the framework of modern vs. postmodern politics (Zilliacus, 2001b).

Mapping Value Change According to Five Types of Thinking One goal here is to elaborate on various theoretical definitions of postmodern society by various authors, and sum up these broad definitions in terms of their more specific implications in a political context as in features of postmodern and modern politics. The challenge is, indeed, to define the make-up of this joint between the modern and the postmodern, and thus distinguish the new dimensions of conflict that emerge through the accelerating use of digital technologies. The modern vs. postmodern characteristics are in no way mutually exclusive nor absolute as electronics hobbyists…’ and their informal think tank called the Homebrew Club: ‘Its technically gifted community, comprising sci-fi aficionados and Berkeley counterculturists, believed computers could usher in an age of human empowerment, perhaps even a utopia’ (McLean, 2001). Especially Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak are pictured as the flower-power hippies of the 1960s consciousness experimenting with communitarian sub-cultures and rebelling against the bureaucratic monster of IBM (Isaacson, 2011, pp. 31–41). As the story unfolds, however, their postmaterial features are gradually fading with the Apple corporation becoming part of the established business sector, and when Wozniak questions the lack of fun in Jobs’ manic entrepreneurial zeal, Jobs replies have a certain postmodern ring to them as in ‘maybe fun is just fragments with better packing’ and ‘creation is messy’ (Burke, 1999). Most political activity float in-between the two pillars of characteristics, and include various aspects and combinations of these. In other words, we see change as the equation of the dialectic between the modern and postmodern, rather than as a specific developmental process towards the postmodern society (cf. Gibbins & Reimer, 1995, p. 330) leaving the modern and premodern behind, which plagues, e.g. Gibbins’s and Reimer’s more absolute view. We argue that the modern will remain with us just as some aspects of premodern politics such as hereditary rule and

164

K. ZILLIACUS

leadership do4 ; in fact, many of these premodern aspects are still with us even in most advanced forms of informational organisations with, for instance, the Murdoch media empire as a case in point regarding the practice of traditional inheritance of the throne. The change, rather than development, takes place in the configurations in-between the modern and postmodern, whereas the actual pillars of the modern/postmodern temples remain intact—it is the movement between the pillars envisioned in Fig. 7.4, which is significant. There is not any assurance either that change moves towards the postmodern pole as in development— it might also turn the other way as in the case of Gates’ monopolised corporate empire or the corporatisation of Zuckerberg’s initially playful student network of Facebook (Kirkpatrick, 2011, pp. 39–45). Another example of this change in the opposite direction is the re-centralisation of Russia under the increasingly authoritarian and hierarchic rule. As Castells concludes: ‘After all, we now have concluded (I hope for ever) that there is no predetermined directionality in social evolution, that the only sense of history is the history we sense’ (Castells, 1997, p. 70). In establishing which characteristics can be considered modern or postmodern from a theoretical point of view, and thus be able to pinpoint specific political activity for empirical examination, we agree with Gibbins and Reimer ‘that the concept of postmodernism can be operationalized and put to empirical use’ (Gibbins & Reimer, 1995, p. 301). However, there is no doubt that ‘it is difficult to encapsulate the theory of postmodern politics. Writing on the subject tends to be loose, ambivalent, fragmentary, fluid, and illusive – like postmodern society and politics, in fact’ (Kaase & Newton, 1995, p. 28). The reservations regarding the ‘kaleidoscopic array of notions’ that postmodernism consists of (ibid., 28), seem at least partly to be a reaction against the free-floating, utterly unconstrained relativism of some of the original postmodern theorists (e.g. Baudrillard, 1983; Lyotard, 1984) (Cf. Inglehart, 1997, p. 21; Thompson et al., 1999; Castells, 2000, p. 499; Frissen, 1999, pp. 187– 188). In fact, this reservation provides the challenge we are taking on 4 Cf. Huntington’s description of the shift from the traditional to modern society: ‘Social science analysis of the transition from agrarian to industrial society began with a clear-cut dichotomy between the modern and the traditional. It soon became clear, however, that the process of modernization did not involve the displacement of the latter by the former, but rather the addition of modern elements to a society which still retained many of its components…. The society of the future, in any event, will be a mixture of industrial and postindustrial components’ (Huntington 1973, 191).

7

MAPPING POSTMODERN PATTERNS OF POLITICAL …

165

when continuing on Gibbins’s and Reimer’s empirical concretisation of the postmodern self and developing it further into a postmodern index covering the range of five distinct ways of thinking within the traditional, modern and postmodern frameworks. As the theoretical scene of the postmodern concept has been cleared from its thickest layers of kaleidoscopic backdrops, the empirical question of accurately distinguishing expressivism as a key postmodern property remains. Gibbins and Reimer (1995, p. 315) used a limited number of variables to tap the postmodern concepts, but importantly the items did catch the theoretically defined existence of a postmodern cleavage and implied an important breakthrough in defining the human vs. instrumental postmodernism. However, the survey used ‘did not include questions specifically framed to capture our concepts’ (ibid., 315), so it was not adapted to cover a more substantial range of relevant variables, which indeed were too limited in their reach to provide a more cohesive match of the elaborate theoretical underpinnings of the modern vs. postmodern modes of thinking. A thorough distinction of the postmodern value dimension does require a tailor-made set of survey questions matching the defined components of the postmodern way of thinking. Such a battery of postmodern items were incorporated into our Finnish survey (Zilliacus & Puohiniemi, 2019) along with other social and political stands that can be related to the traditional and modern identities as well. Importantly, the distinguishing of the postmodern also requires a corresponding definition of the preceding modern and indeed traditional ways of thinking if we are to grasp the complete dynamics of value change. Accordingly, we have, in Fig. 7.6, distinguished five types of thinking on a horizontal axis of expressivist vs. traditionalist priorities and a vertical axis of humanist vs. instrumentalist priorities. The five types of (1) traditionalism, (2) modern humanism, (3) modern instrumentalism, (4) postmodern humanism and (5) postmodern instrumentalism are defined in terms of relevant items reflecting the core values, societal projects and authority systems presented in Table 7.1 and Fig. 7.5.

Defining the Modern/Postmodern Properties of Established and Bricolage Politics The Lévi-Straussian (1962, pp. 30–36) concept of bricolage denotes creative activity and practice that is mediated by various second-hand instruments and tools that happen to be readily available. In the digital

166

K. ZILLIACUS

Fig. 7.6 Mapping value change in traditional, modern and postmodern society according to five types of thinking: traditionalism, modern humanism, modern instrumentalism, postmodern humanism and postmodern instrumentalism (Sources Inglehart [1997]; Gibbins & Reimer [1995]; Zilliacus & Puohiniemi [2019])

reality, these tools are evolving at such a rapid pace that both providers and users of digital services are subject to improvising in order to reach their social, political and economic goals that increasingly are depending on speedy digital manoeuvres and indeed the cunningness of bricolage. The methods of postmodern politics are very much about bricolage, i.e. improvising the reused images of the day in a way that reformats the issue of the moment to your short-term advantage. The bricolage type of politics has obviously always existed as the backflip of established politics—there are certainly ingredients of bricolage in all ‘eras’ of politics as bricolage indeed is a basic way to renew various elements of politics. When it comes to postmodern perspectives on bricolage, one of the key points is about the avenues and space for bricolage expanding as the postmodern types of individualised thinking become more common and find new expressions through more personal use and spread of online media channels.

7

MAPPING POSTMODERN PATTERNS OF POLITICAL …

167

The concretising of the theoretical underpinnings of postmodern politics in terms of more distinct properties of political modes of thinking and behaving serves as a promising point of departure for defining related concepts such as bricolage politics challenging Established politics. The more articulate patterns of postmodern politics can contribute to discern new concepts to shed much needed light on recent political phenomena such as the Gilets Jaunes movement as a representative of a poignant case of the bricolage kind of political agency. If we assume that bricolage Politics would reflect some features of the postmodern disorder of ‘simulation and signs’ (Baudrillard, 1983, 2001) as a contrast to the modern political order, we could discern the postmodern properties of bricolage politics against the backdrop of the modern properties of established politics depicted in Fig. 7.7. The arrows between the established and bricolage politics emphasise that this is not about an exclusive dichotomy between these concepts indicating any kind of development from established to bricolage politics or replacement by one of the other—instead they co-exist as parallel tensions on a fluid scale of any political activity floating between these two properties. Accordingly, a certain political situation can imply more, or less, ingredients of bricolage or established politics in the (a) political actors and their ways of (b) interacting in the (d) current political process while using (c) various resources. The first category of political agency in Fig. 7.7 refers to the main (a) actors on the political scene, which have shifted from national governments to transnational organisations, and of course increasing tensions between them. An increasing proportion of major political conflicts are taking place between social movements and business corporations—for instance between Greenpeace and Shell—instead of between the political parties, which to a large degree have been reduced to general election machines rather than playing their traditional role of mobilising people around specific issues and interests. In general, more recently rising actors have been much more efficient than governments and parties at applying newer information technology in gathering public support for their political cause, although public institutions have made huge investments and progress at utilising especially websites for public administration services and social media for information campaigns. When it comes to (b) interaction as a feature of political agency, the old clear-cut dividing lines of modern politics between, for instance, Social

168

K. ZILLIACUS

Fig. 7.7 Modern and Postmodern properties of ESTABLISHED and BRICOLAGE Politics with respect to the actors, interaction, resources and process of Political Agency

Democrats and Conservatives have been blurred as new patterns of political interaction have driven the old homogeneous political camps into a multitude of intertwined liaisons and networks of mutual interest. The new diverse and diffusive networks increasingly consist of heterogeneous cliques temporarily united in a particular issue. At the very general level of political, economic and social interaction, the state-empowered legislation machinery and its rules based on absolute conformity, are losing their situational relevance as new realities are produced at an accelerating rate by means of various digital applications. As previously separated realities collide, intertwine and lose their specific normative contexts, the

7

MAPPING POSTMODERN PATTERNS OF POLITICAL …

169

actors are left to situational ethics and individual reflection in coping with new combinations of mediatised (Brants & Voltmer, 2011; Strömbäck & Esser, 2014) realities. One of the most distinct clichés of the ‘information society’ involves knowledge and information emerging as the prime (c) resources of political agency as compared to status and hardware. The boundless use of digital media challenge the power of resources involving the ownership of physical assets and subject matter in itself. As for organisational resources, the communication-driven change implies a shift from the pyramid to the archipelago structure as in networks floating around on a horizontal axis rather than a solid, vertical bureaucracy. Accordingly, there are decentralised links and nodes taking over centralised and strictly organised structures (cf. Repo et al., 2009), and a chaos of overlapping connections rather than isolated functions. The postmodern type of organisation is more prone to customise tasks according to the interests and abilities of the staff, rather than setting depersonalised interchangeable roles of duty. The distribution of power is less tightly disciplined by the elite, which gives more responsibility to the subordinates implying more elitechallenging flexibility. Legitimate authority and normative compliance is challenged by anarchistic spontaneity and professional autonomy, and vertical promotion is being side-stepped by more horizontal mobility. The greater availability of information and faster pace in moving up/down and in/out of organisations, in combination with personal communication improvisation, also imply a competitive inherent distrust as compared to the more static and stable hierarchical kind of customary allegiance. The speed and chaos of information constantly bordering on information overload, as compared to straightforward direct communication following a mechanistic logic, also contribute to the uncertainty and incongruity of the virtual flux accelerating the (d) processes of political agency. The rhetoric of the political actors in their interaction with the public and other actors is more specifically mapped in Fig. 7.8 in regard of modern and postmodern properties of established and bricolage politics. Modern political rhetoric reflects the ‘objectivity’ of the corresponding political outlook within the perceived reality of a defined worldview as contrasted to the postmodern subjective variety of multiple issue stances, which float around in a personalised universe of very different and conflicting perspectives on life. The approaches of the modern rhetoric are in one way or another directed by economic determinism and instrumental rationality, whereas the postmodern rhetoric sticks to a social

170

K. ZILLIACUS

Fig. 7.8 Modern and Postmodern properties of ESTABLISHED and BRICOLAGE Politics with respect to the outlook, approach, means and ends of Political Rhetoric

choice of preferences in grappling with the boundless anticipations that make up the all too rich postmodern approach. Accordingly, the modern means are pictured as a logical and linear development towards the material prospects of upward mobility and raised standards of living. The postmodern multiplicity, on the other hand, implies a contradictory process marked by disruption and the side-tracks of the creative flow. The postmodern ends are also less specific awards as in infinite personal opportunities and more expressive qualities of life. In Fig. 7.9, the established and bricolage politics are illustrated on a scale of modern vs. postmodern properties of the above elements of political rhetoric, which can be used to specify the respective balance of the corresponding characteristics in specific cases. The rhetoric used by, for example health administration officials during the Covid-19 crisis could be clarified by positioning the emphasis of each rhetorical elements in terms of its leaning towards established or bricolage politics. This snapshot of the dominant ingredients of these rhetorical positions taken by, e.g. the health authority officials could be weighed against the corresponding slogans of, for instance, anti-vaccination campaigners in order to illustrate and pinpoint the main axes of conflict that are exacerbating

7

MAPPING POSTMODERN PATTERNS OF POLITICAL …

171

Fig. 7.9 Political Rhetoric on a scale of modern vs. postmodern properties of ESTABLISHED and BRICOLAGE Politics

the communication between these two opposing political actors thrown into the political bricolage of pandemic politics. Discussion As we move towards the use of more individualised social media platforms, there is more wiggle room for the bricolage kind of political agency and coming up with all kinds of contradictory action to achieve increasingly value-based varieties of subjective preferences. The personalised patterns of postmodern values along with their respective instrumentalist or humanist goals contribute to expanding the political space for creative bricolage. Accordingly, political agency and rhetoric is offered increasingly bricolage denoted means of politics while established politics still thrives at the modern end of the more institutionally bound actors, although the ever accelerating interaction in social media is mixing up the modern political system bringing in the postmodern game changers along with globally resonating challenges. The pressing global issues of, e.g. climate change and pandemic crisis contribute to redirecting the public energies

172

K. ZILLIACUS

of the day into diverse patterns of political disruption along the axes of the modern/postmodern instrumentally and humanist types of core values. The specified properties of bricolage seem to catch the improvising state of current politics that all nations have been thrown into in the face of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, which brings forth today’s challenges of incoherence regarding both factual and strategic realities of political life. The political cultures and cleavages underlying national strategies have seldom been exposed to such a vividly comparative extent as during the Covid-19 pandemic. This crisis is extreme to the point of providing a huge social experiment in our times demonstrating the various responses to a very factual disaster that demands specific action—be it social, political or economic action. As we have seen, these actions differ very clearly according to political cleavages, beliefs and institutional cultures that are independent from the factual threat they are to solve. In other words, we have suddenly ended up in this very unexpected situation where political actors have to pick any tools from their traditional policy arsenal to protect their citizens from the pandemic. Above all, their intuitive choices of tools and methods to solve this unexpected problem will determine their success, the criteria of which are unusually clear—i.e. to limit the number of citizens becoming victims of the pandemic. Accordingly, we are watching quite a rare political experiment of how and which tools and strategies every nation reach out for in this hasty call for whatever policy or recommendation feels appropriate to grab hold of. The forced rush and speed of it all means that the democratic and institutional processes struggle to keep up with the pace required leaving the political arena up for any bricolage kind of grabs. Bricolage has, of course, always been an alternative to manage any political issue, not to mention emergency situations, but the scale of the crisis is now more urgent than previous more gradual crises, which open up the playing field to bricolage politics in quite an extraordinary way. Above all, this exposes the political cultures and ways of institutional behaviour ingrained in all the national contexts, the nature of which indeed has proven to be surprisingly national rather than international considering responses to an overwhelmingly global problem according to the international recommendations of World Health Organisation. However, the responses to the pandemic and their success/failure also expose the limits to bricolage politics in extreme cases of constant users of day-to-day improvisation as standard means of carrying out policies such as administrations guided by spontaneous Trumpian tweets hunting

7

MAPPING POSTMODERN PATTERNS OF POLITICAL …

173

the random political beef of the day. The most successful responses have indeed been led by political leaders and administrations adhering to a balanced mix of improvised policies and institutionalised stability of the established kind of politics. Defining the inner logic and values of bricolage and established politics, along with the space for political agency and rhetoric that their properties entail, provides an intermediary map to identify crucial factors for linking the dynamics of values to policy- and decision-making.

References Abramson, P. R. (2011). Critiques and counter-critiques of the post-materialism thesis: Thirty-four years of debate. Centre for the Study of Democracy. Ampuja, M., & Koivisto, J. (2014). From “post-industrial” to “network society” and beyond: The political conjunctures and current crisis of information society theory. Triple C, 12(2), 447–463. Baker, K. L., Dalton, R. J., & Hildebrandt, K. (1981). Germany transformed: Political culture and the new politics. Harvard University Press. Baudrillard, J. (1983). Simulations. The MIT Press. Baudrillard, J. (2001). Selected writings (2nd ed.). Polity Press. Bell, D. (1973). The coming of post-industrial society: A venture in social forecasting. Basic Books. Böhme, G., & Stehr, N. (1986). Knowledge society. D. Reidel Publishing. Bradford, V. (2002). ’Style, rhetoric, and postmodern culture’. Philosophy & Rhetoric, 35(3), 223–243. Brants, K. & Voltmer, K. (2011). Political communication in postmodern democracy: Challenging the primacy of politics. Palgrave Macmillan. Brym, R. (2016). ‘After postmaterialism: An essay on China, Russia and the United States’. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 42(2), 195–212. Brzezinski, Z. (1970). Between two ages. America’s role in the technetronic era. The Viking Press. Burke, M. (Director). (1999). Pirates of the silicon valley (Film). Turner Network Television. Bürklin, W. P. (1984). Grüne Politik: Ideologische Zyklen. Westdeutscher Verlag. Bürklin, W. P. (1985). The German greens: The post-industrial non-established and the party system. International Political Science Review, 6(4), 463–482. Castells, M. (1996). The rise of the network society. Blackwell. Castells, M. (1997). The power of identity. Blackwell. Castells, M. (1998). End of millennium. Blackwell. Castells, M. (2000). The rise of the network society. 2nd edition. Blackwell.

174

K. ZILLIACUS

Castells, M. (2004). The network society: A cross-cultural perspective. Edward Elgar. Chandler, W. M., & Siaroff, A. (1985). Postindustrial politics in Germany and the origins of the Greens. Comparative Politics, 18(1), 303–325. Crook, S., Pakulski, J., & Waters, M. (1992). Postmodernization: Change in advanced society. Sage. Dalton, R. J. (2019). Citizen politics. Public opinion and political parties in advanced industrial democracies. 7th edition. University of California Press. van Deth, J. W. (1983). The persistence of materialist and post-materialist value orientations. European Journal of Political Research, 11, 63–79. Drucker, P. F. (1959). The landmarks of tomorrow. Harper and Row. Duch, R. M., & Taylor, M. A. (1993). Postmaterialism and the economic condition. American Journal of Political Science, 37 (3), 747–779. Featherstone, M. (1991). Postmodern sociology. Sage. Flanagan, S. C., & Lee, A.-R. (2003). The new politics, culture wars, and the authoritarian-libertarian value change in advanced industrial democracies. Comparative Political Studies, 36(3), 235–270. Flanagan, S. C. (1982). Measuring value change in advanced industrial societies: A rejoinder to Inglehart. Comparative Political Studies, 15(1), 99–128. Flanagan, S. C. (1987). Value change in industrial societies. American Political Science Review, 81(4), 1289–1319. Freiberger, P., & Swaine, M. (1999). Fire in the valley: The making of the personal computer. 2nd edition. McGraw-Hill Professional Publishing. Frissen, P. H. A. (1999). Politics, governance and technology. Edward Elgar. Gibbins, J. R., & Reimer, B. (1995). ‘Postmodernism’. In van Deth, J. & Scarbrough, E. (Eds), The impact of values. Oxford University Press. Gibbins, J. R. (Ed.) (1989). Contemporary political culture. Politics in a postmodern age. Sage. van Haute, E. (2016). Green parties in Europe. Routledge. Hildebrandt, K-G. (1979). ‘The new industrial structure—The Scandinavian experience’. In Gustafsson, B. (Ed.), Post-industrial society. St. Martin’s Press. Hooghe, L., & Marks, G. (2018). Cleavage theory meets Europe’s crises: Lipset, Rokkan, and the transnational cleavage. Journal of European Public Policy, 25(1), 109–135. Huntington, S. P. (1973). Post-industrial politics: How benign will it be? Comparative Politics, 6(1), 163–191. Inglehart, R. (1971). The silent revolution in Europe: Intergenerational change in post-industrial societies. American Political Science Review, 65(4), 991– 1017. Inglehart, R. (1977). The silent revolution. Princeton University Press. Inglehart, R. (1990). Culture shift in advanced industrial society. Princeton University Press.

7

MAPPING POSTMODERN PATTERNS OF POLITICAL …

175

Inglehart, R. (1997). Modernization and postmodernization. Cultural, economic, and political Change in 43 societies. Princeton University Press. Inglehart, R. (1999). ‘Postmodernization Erodes respect for authority, but increases support for democracy’. In Norris, P. (Ed.), Critical citizens: Global support for democratic governance. Oxford University Press. Inglehart, R. (2018). Cultural evolution: People’s motivations are changing, and reshaping the world. Cambridge University Press. Inglehart, R. & Rabier, J.-R. (1986). ’Political realignment in advanced industrial society: From class-based politics to quality-of-life politics’. Government & Opposition, 21(4), 457–479. Inglehart, R. & Welzel, C. (2005). Modernization, cultural change and democracy: The Human Development Sequence. Cambridge University Press. Innerarity, D. (2012). Power and knowledge: The politics of the knowledge society. European Journal of Social Theory, 16(1), 3–16. Isaacson, W. (2011). Steve jobs: A bibliography. Simon & Schuster. Kaase, M., & Newton, K. (1995). Beliefs in government. Beliefs in Government Volume 5. Oxford University Press. Kirkpatrick, D. (2011). The facebook effect: The inside story of the company that is connecting the world. Simon & Schuster Paperbacks. Klingemann, H. D., & Pappi, F.U. (1972). Politischer Radikalismus. Oldenbourg. Kriesi, H., Grande, E., Dolezal, M., Helbling, M., Höglinger, D., Hutter, S., & Wüest, B. (2012). Political conflict in Western Europe. Cambridge University Press. Kriesi, H., Grande, E., Lachat, R., Dolezal, M., Bornschier, S., & Frey, T. (2006). Globalization and the transformation of the national political space: Six European countries compared. European Journal of Political Research, 45(6), 921–956. Lane, R. E. (1966). The decline of politics and ideology in a knowledgeable society. American Sociological Review, 31(5), 649–662. Lasch, C. (1972). ‘Toward a theory of post-industrial society’. In Hancock, D. M. & Sjöberg, G. (Eds.), Politics in the post-welfare state. Columbia University Press. Lash, S. (1990). Sociology of postmodernism. Routledge. Lévi-Strauss, C. (1962). La pensée sauvage. Plon. Lyotard, J-F. (1984). The postmodern condition: A report on knowledge. University of Minnesota Press. Machlup, F. (1962). The production and distribution of knowledge in the United States. Princeton University Press. Maslow, A.K. (1954). Motivation and personality. Harper & Brothers. Masuda, Y. (1968). Jouhou Shakai Nyumon [Introduction to the study of information society]. Perikan-sha.

176

K. ZILLIACUS

Masuda, Y. (1980). The information society and post-industrial society. World Future Society. McLean, D. (2001). Review of Freiberger & Swaine (1999). Amazon.com. https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Valley-Making-Personal-Computer/dp/007 1358927 Müller-Rommel, F. (Ed.) (1989). New politics in Western Europe: The rise and success of Green parties and alternative lists. Westview Press. Norris, P. & Inglehart, R. (2019). Cultural backlash: Trump, brexit, and authoritarian populism. Cambridge University Press. Philips, F., Yu, C.-Y., Hameed, T., & El Akhdary, M. A. (2017). The knowledge society’s origins and current trajectory. International Journal of Innovation Studies, 1, 175–191. Poguntke, T. (1989). ‘The “new politics dimension” in European Green parties’. In Müller-Rommel, F. (Ed.), New politics in Western Europe: The rise and success of Green parties and alternative lists. Westview Press. Pulkkinen, T. (2000). The postmodern and political agency. University of Jyväskylä. Reimer, B. (1988). ‘No values—new values? Youth and postmaterialism’. Scandinavian Political Studies, 11(4), 347–360. Reimer, B. (1989). ‘Postmodern structures of feeling: Values and life-styles in the postmodern age’. In Gibbins, J. R. (Ed.), Contemporary political culture: Politics in a postmodern age. Sage. Repo, P., Timonen, P., & Zilliacus, K. (2009). Alternative regulatory cases challenging consumer policy. Journal of Consumer Policy, 32, 289–301. Siisiäinen, M. (1985). ‘Interest, voluntary associations and the stability of the political system’. Acta Sociologica, 28(4), 293–315. Stehr, N. (2016). Knowledge politics: Governing the consequences of science and technology. Routledge. Stehr N. & Ruser, A. (2017). ‘Knowledge society, knowledge economy and knowledge democracy’. In Carayannis E., Campbell D., Efthymiopoulos M. (Eds.), Handbook of cyber-development, cyber-democracy, and cyber-defense. Springer. Strömbäck, J. & Esser, F. (2014). ‘Mediatization of politics: Transforming democracies and reshaping politics’. In Lundby, K. (Ed.), Mediatization of communication. Handbooks of communication science, vol. 21. De Gruyter Mouton. Thompson, M., Ellis, R., & Wildawsky, A. (1990). Cultural theory. Westview Press. Thompson, M., Grendstad, G., & Selle, P. (1999). Cultural theory as political science. Routledge. Umesao, T. (1963). ‘Information industry theory: Dawn of the coming era of the ectodermal industry’. Hoso Asahi, January, 4–17.

7

MAPPING POSTMODERN PATTERNS OF POLITICAL …

177

Weber, M. (1970). The protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. Unwin. Wiener, N. (1948). Cybernetics, or control and communication in the animal and the machine. MIT Press. Yujiro, H. (1969). Jouhouka Shakai (Informatized society): Hado na Shakai kara Sofuto na Shakai e. Koudanhsa. Zilliacus, K. & Puohiniemi, M. (2019). ‘Postmodern patterns of values and (dis)beliefs. Setting up an index of postmodern thinking to explore the political challenges of technological change’. Paper presented at the 5th TRACE Symposium, 22–23 August, University of Jyväskylä. Zilliacus, K. (2001a). The Greens and the left wing of the 1990s—Profiles of ‘new politics’ in Finland. West European Politics, 24(1), 27–54. Zilliacus, K. (2001b). Modern vs postmodern politics: Theoretical perspectives. SSKH Reports and Discussion Papers 3. Research Institute. Swedish School of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki.

CHAPTER 8

Politics at Distance: Parliamentary Politics in the Face of New Challenges Kari Palonen

The Others as a Threat L’enfer, c’est les autres, announced Garcin to two women doomed to stay in hell with him in Jean-Paul Sartre’s wartime play Huis clos, presented for the first time in occupied Paris in May 1944 (Sartre, 1944, 128). In 2020, the formula suddenly gained a political actuality that Sartre would hardly have been able to imagine: the coronavirus obliges us to take this formula very literally. Every person must be regarded as a danger, as a possible bearer of the virus. The hell of the others must be avoided. Max Weber put a similar point more prosaically, when he qualified Augenmaß as one of the three criteria required from the politician: Distanz zu den Dingen and Menschen (Weber, 1919, 75). The common point in Sartre and Weber, could be formulated as follows: to act politically, we must cultivate a distance both to other persons and to the issues dealt with.

K. Palonen (B) University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 N. Kauppi and K. Palonen (eds.), Rhetoric and Bricolage in European Politics and Beyond, Rhetoric, Politics and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98632-2_8

179

180

K. PALONEN

As a Weberologist and former Sartrologist (see Palonen, 1992), in this chapter I will speculate with the political consequences and chances of the requirement of distance to a parliamentary style of politics. This style combines a detached, procedural, and time-consuming style of doing politics and a respect for adversaries with a physical proximity of members sitting and debating orally as the primary audience. The common accusations against parliamentarism tend to emphasise its distance from the experiences of ‘ordinary people’. According to these accusations, parliamentarism is too formal and procedural, too slow in its decision-making, and wastes precious time to bavardage. My point is, on the contrary, that these distance-creating qualities are major advantages of parliamentary-style politics. The demand for spatial proximity between MPs seems to illustrate a weakness of the parliamentary style of politics as actualised by the corona regime. I shall here discuss the concept of proximity in relation to two ideal–typical styles of ‘politics from below’ present in Sartre’s work. Furthermore, I will explore the risks and Chancen of a new procedural style that the corona regime has provoked, namely digitalisation. Digitalisation as a distance-creating medium has been practised in parliaments at least since the 1990s. During the corona regime, the claims regarding an exceptional situation that marks the ‘hour of the executive’ have been repeated ad nauseam. Indeed, opinion polls support the assumption that incumbent governments of whatever political colour have gained ground among the voters. Following this line, emergency parliaments of a committee size have reduced, postponed, or replaced parliaments. Online sittings have replaced live sittings. To the common reasons of urgency is now added the danger of proximity. The presence of numerous persons in the same audience, including the plenary sittings of parliaments, is experienced as a health threat. Nationalists and populists of all countries have revived old arguments against bavardage in parliamentary ‘talking shops’. The digitalisation of politics raises the following questions: in what way does digital presence in a parliamentary sitting form an alternative to personal presence? Can the proximity criterion of parliamentary politics be reinterpreted in digital terms? In this new situation, politicians in parliaments and governments have exercised their imagination and proposed or accepted devices that

8

POLITICS AT DISTANCE: PARLIAMENTARY POLITICS …

181

combine different or opposed principles. In rhetorical terms, such practices can be called oxymoronic, or in terms used in other chapters of this volume, bricolage.

Movement Politics: Number and Proximity As possible competitors to parliamentary politics, I shall take up two ideal–typical cases of politics operating with identity and proximity. In the 1980s and 1990s, I analysed the work of Jean-Paul Sartre who today is largely forgotten and badly understood as a political theorist. But in his writings, we can identity several politically interesting figures, including extensive presentations of two types of political action that I will call movement politics and signature politics. Sartre hardly was a political theorist by academic criteria. He was rather a detached observer or a sympathetic critic of political reality. As a wellknown non-voter (Sartre, 1973) who nonetheless was an ‘internal’ critic of electoral and parliamentary politics (see his critiques of two Gaullist referenda, Sartre, 1958, 1961), he would hardly share my use of his ideas in favour of parliamentary politics. Nonetheless, his work is so rich that even such unconventional uses appear to me as fully legitimate. In Critique de la raison dialectique (1960), Sartre presents the ideal type of groupe-en-fusion with a famous example, the capturing of the Bastille. Sartre’s description was based on a study by Georges Lefebvre, whose work has been criticised by some historians (see Lüsebrink & Reichardt, 1990). Sartre’s groupe-en-fusion is an exemplary description of politics in which distance is ideally abolished and the identity of the actors is bound together. The inhabitants of a poor Parisian quartier had heard rumours of weapons in the Bastille, and by gaining access to these weapons, they expected to become able to defend themselves against the forces of order. Sartre’s point with this ideal type is to illustrate how the passive collectif of the quartier’s inhabitants transforms itself into an active and spontaneous groupe-en-fusion. In this idealised presentation, the group has no leader, but everyone can take the initiative and keep the group moving towards the target. In such a group, the difference between myself and my neighbour loses its significance, and the participating individuals experience themselves as mutually exchangeable. Such a situation cannot last beyond achieving the target (Sartre, 1960, 453–468). Contrary to what many early interpreters have claimed, for Sartre the groupe-en-fusion is a formal and not a normative ideal type. It shows the

182

K. PALONEN

limits of fusion and the impossibility of the human group of becoming a living organicism. Like Weber, Sartre is a strict methodological individualist. With the groupe-en-fusion and its modification into a groupeassermenté, an extremely egalitarian group ruled by another famous formula of Sartre, the fraternité-terreur, he is referring to limit situations of political action that discard procedures and stabilising organisations. Indeed, these two extreme human group types have been given an entirely negative connotation in another figure of Sartre, namely the lynching group, as caricatured in his Réflexions sur la question juive where he already used the term fusion (1946, 34–38). The group’s spontaneous and internally egalitarian forms can thus also be directed against an outside target of persons, against which the spontaneous group can act unscrupulously. I call Sartre’s extreme versions of joint human action examples of movement politics. Even more pragmatic and instrumental forms of movement politics rely as the source of their power shares (Machtanteile in Weber’s sense, 1919, 36) the identity between participants and their tight proximity. Strikes, street demonstrations, occupations, blockades, and so on operate by maximising not only the number of participants but also the identity between them, achieved through their proximity. The tight coverage of space is seen as both a defensive and offensive force: nobody can go through such a tight chain of human beings and with the participants’ joint forces both physical and personal obstacles are easier to break down. The sheer number of participants alone cannot, however, compensate their proximity as a source of power, applicable to both resistance and expansion. In Sartrean terms, serial collectives—today visible in the food queues that maintain a 1,5-m distance, the specific virtù of the corona regime—make it difficult for persons slowly moving in a queue to become a group and therefore for any kind of movement politics to develop. At least a lot of imagination will be required from politics based on numbers and proximity to develop a form of movement politics. The picture of the Finnish five female ministers-party leaders of Sanna Marin’s government illustrates an ingenious use of such possibilities to act as a group (Luukka, 2020).

8

POLITICS AT DISTANCE: PARLIAMENTARY POLITICS …

183

Joint Action at Distance---Signature Politics There are well-known precedents for the politics of joint action at distance. They retain in principle the idea of the greatest number and the identity of the participants. An old parliamentary model consists of citizens’ petitions that enable intervention in agenda-setting or, analogously, participation in elections or in a referendum through a quota. There are political institutions that render such political moves possible by collecting enough signatures among the citizens. In Finland, registering a party list that has in the elections more rights than non-party candidate list requires 5,000 valid signatures from the citizens, whereas a citizens’ initiative to parliament requires 50,000 valid signatures. The EU’s Lisbon Treaty requires 500,000 valid signatures for a citizens’ initiative. In semi-plebiscitarian Switzerland, the legislative initiative is complementary to the requirement that certain vital parliamentary decisions be ratified by referenda, whereas the initiation of legislation by citizens’ initiative requires 100,000 confirmed signatures. Nowadays, signatures for such petitions can be given and registered online, without a need for personal proximity. Both registering parties and citizens’ initiatives are legitimate parts of parliamentary procedure, for which there has been for a long time regular parliamentary practice. The ‘politics of intellectuals’ is another type of politics of signatures. With the 1898 Dreyfus affair as its historical paradigm, this type of politics contains a famous practice of public action that requires individual signatures (see, e.g. Sirinelli, 1990; Bering, 2010). Such signing action differs from parliamentary petitions in so far as no rules require parliament or government to take them into account. However, the ‘politics of intellectuals’ also differs from strikes or street protests, in so far as the only political move required from the supporters is a signature. The maximisation of signatures is the aim, and the public attention garnered provides a political point of pressure towards governmental authorities. The common point of both signed online petitions and voluntary joint signatures to a document lies in the separation of the force of numbers and the personal proximity of the participants. Public protest with online signatures allows the participants to transcend borders and to become part of a worldwide phenomenon. Like lobbying, the politics of signature operates with pressure, focusing on the number of signatures, combined with their collection in the shortest time possible, without any organised power to negotiate with governments or to set parliament’s agenda.

184

K. PALONEN

Unlike in the case of citizens’ initiatives, in the signature politics of intellectuals, the sheer number of signatures is not decisive. The signature politics of intellectuals is by no means egalitarian. Signatures are not votes that are counted but statements that must be weighed, like votes in a plural voting system, practised, for example, in Belgium for some decades after 1893. The aim is to collect signatures from persons who count more than the average citizens, from ‘intellectuals’, today also from ‘celebrities’. In the Dreyfus affair, there was an appeal to scholars, artists, and other luminaries, a move to combine the rationality of facts and moral indignation over injustice, aiming to pressure the military court to revise its decision to condemn Captain Alfred Dreyfus, which, indeed, happened some years later. Signature politics creates a second-order proximity between the signing persons, a ‘signature-we’. Every motion or declaration based on signatures creates a division between insiders and outsiders and operates with a rhetoric of inclusion and exclusion. This ‘we’ is stronger if the signatures are made public. In Dreyfus’s times, a certain deference towards intellectuals existed that made the dreyfusards identifiable as public persons. Today, academics and literati are frequently regarded with suspicion, and many prefer not to appear on public lists. More plausible is now showing oneself with entertainment and sports stars. The question is whether individual signatures are any more a suitable form of identification, as compared to the fan-clubs of artists or of football teams. Jean-Paul Sartre was a famous signature-politician and allowed all kinds of protesters (mis-) use his name. Protesting the Moscow Olympics was among his last moves a few weeks before his death in 1980. His justification for his interventions is interesting. For him, the intellectual offers a countertype to the representative of one’s immediate interests: ‘l’intellectuel est quelqu’un qui se mêle de ce qui ne le regarde pas ’ (Sartre, 1966, 377). The rhetorical point is an attention to a neglected or misunderstood cause that surprises the audience, what Quentin Skinner discusses in terms of cause admirabilis (Skinner, 2014). In such cases, the names of the signers are frequently more important than their number. In Arendtian (1960) terms, the signers need to be ‘somebodies’ rather than ‘nobodies’. While mass movements and parliamentary debates are oral, protest petitions are written. They suit intellectuals who quarrel about exact formulations, although the point is, as Sartre well understood, to subscribe to a text, independently of its authors and its exact content. The

8

POLITICS AT DISTANCE: PARLIAMENTARY POLITICS …

185

inflationary use of signature politics has weakened its weight: the power shares of such protests paradoxically depend on the rarity and spontaneity of signature actions. Only then, and not as parts of a planned campaign, can they gain visibility. Although signatures were initially collected to protest, the supporters of the authorities from the anti-dreyfusards to the present day have used the same device (on the loyalty fans after ‘9/11’ in the US see Llanque, 2008). Many academics, including myself, remain reluctant to give their name to support any protest actions even when one sympathises with them. This posture has partly to do with the insight that a protest by signature as a plebiscitarian form of politics operates with the epideictic genre of rhetoric, a politics of ‘yes or no’, which is politically expressed in terms of acclamation, a pro or contra relative to the item to be acclaimed (see Palonen, 2019). It would be easy to argue that the politics of signatures has come to its end, except in rare cases of spontaneous protests like when Greta Thunberg et al. submitted a signed statement to the EU summit in July 2020. The politics of signatures could still have chances of success as petitions or as citizens’ initiatives that are prepared professionally in the style of parliamentary motions. These could also include the possibility of amendments. Online signatures could allow amendments that could be voted among the signers. Those discontent with the amendments could withdraw their signature. Citizens’ initiatives could become a genuinely proto-parliamentary phase of agenda-setting.

Parliamentary Politics of Distance Frank Ankersmit has convincingly argued that the concept of political representation marks an action that creates both represented and representatives through an ‘aesthetic gap’ that separates them (1996, 2001, 2002). As opposed to the widespread view that a ‘people’ precedes the election of its representatives, for Ankersmit representation itself is a political act that conceptually precedes the represented as well as the representatives. In contrast to the identitarian views of the Rousseauvian (1762) and Schmittian (1928) tradition as well as that of movement and signature politics, Ankersmit is a theorist of politics of distance. Analogically to the aesthetical model of viewing a work of art from a distance, Ankersmit regards representation as a thoroughly political action. Politics is marked by distance and the representatives are equally indispensable as the represented for understanding it. Historically, the

186

K. PALONEN

model for a political act of this kind can be found in ancient Athens. In 508/507 BC, Cleisthenes fought against ruling tribes with a reform that created artificial, political demoi or ‘electoral districts’. This political move could be regarded as a major step in the politicisation of the Athenian polis (see Meier, 1980). Inspired by Ankersmit, I published an article titled ‘Parliamentarism: A politics of temporal and rhetorical distances’ (Palonen, 2004). I shall now speculate with the distinct Chancen for adopting a more conscious politics of distance and discuss how parliamentary procedures and practices could be reconsidered in terms of required distance but diminished proximity. I have replaced the termini in the article (for clarifications, see Palonen, 2008) with those of my recent parliamentary studies (Palonen, 2014, 2016, 2018). My point is that ‘parliament’ is not an arena in which politics takes place but an ideal–typical way of doing politics of dissensus and debate (see Palonen, 2018). Procedurally and rhetorically, dissent constitutes parliamentary politics: it is contingent and controversial in its very ‘roots’. The rhetorical distance that characterises parliamentary politics, the openness of the questions coming to the agenda, as well as the debate pro et contra makes up the very core of politics. The procedural style of politics has shaped Westminster parliament since the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century onwards. In parliament, procedure forms a political condition for confronting opposed perspectives, in utramque partem disputare (see Skinner, 1996; Peltonen, 2013). Whereas rhetoric deals with items on the agenda, procedure presupposes that agenda-setting itself is controversial. A question can be properly understood only when evaluated from opposite points of view. A condition for parliamentary distance is the status of freedom and equality of members, in the neo-Roman sense of not being dependent on the arbitrary power of government or on any extra-parliamentary powers (Skinner, 1998, 2002). Parliamentarians’ freedom to debate contains four classical dimensions: freedom of speech, free mandate, freedom from arrest (parliamentary immunity), as well as free and fair elections. Quasimandates on constituency or party basis, unfair electoral systems, or the lack of financial fair play in the campaigns or in the control of members’ extra-parliamentary revenues can threaten these regulative ideas. Parliaments are elected to a definite or maximal time, and the mandate of their members is limited by regular elections. The equality of the members of parliament as debaters and voters is based on the principle

8

POLITICS AT DISTANCE: PARLIAMENTARY POLITICS …

187

that in parliaments as well as in democratic elections votes are counted and not weighed (see Weber, 1917, 167–169). Ministers, presidium members, committee chairs, or members of the shadow cabinet can gain some additional benefits in the proceedings of the parliament, which, however, do not affect the members’ equal status in debates and votes. Due to the equality and mutual replaceability of members, votes are always contingent. Procedural interventions in parliamentary debates—amendments, adjournments, questions of order, informal interjections, and so on—indicate how playing with temporal distances lies at the core of parliamentary style of politics. As a rule, the items on the agenda are debated in several rounds, in plenum (three readings), and in committees. The single moves, including amendments and adjournments, have their own past, present, and future. Parliamentary politics operates with a double presence, of an item on the agenda at any stage of the debate and of an item momentarily debated. However, parliaments have from early on recognised that debate time is always limited. The parliamentarisation of government and the democratisation of parliament have brought a striking growth of items on the agenda and of a new expectation that every member speaks in the plenum. All this resulted in new types of scarcity of parliamentary time. In the 1870s and 1880s, Irish members used in Westminster this scarcity to obstruct and even paralyse the entire parliament. New devices that enabled a fair distribution of parliamentary time were found necessary but remained controversial due to their tendency to weaken parliament’s chances to take the political initiative and to control government and administration. In the parliamentary control of government and administration, the thorough and frequent meetings of the committees are of special value. Max Weber’s argument was that officials claim to possess a superior knowledge over parliamentarians in three respects, which he labelled Fachwissen, Dienstwissen, and Geheimwissen. Weber disputed this superiority with the procedural and rhetorical principle that ‘knowledge’ is always a matter of debate. Parliamentarians can better judge knowledge claims and, contrary to officials, require alternative views and interpretations as well as instruments for controlling them (Weber, 1918, 235–248; see Palonen, 2010, ch. 8). Of course, parliaments are not immune to misuse. They can absolutise the majority principle, reduce the occasions for debate, and use

188

K. PALONEN

different measures against the opposition’s Chancen. The result might be that parliaments can only ratify the government motions or refuse to do so. Another misuse lies in the manipulation of electoral fair play by making the dismissal of government difficult or in privileging the reelection of incumbent members (see Borchert, 2003). A third misuse lies in tendencies to a déformation professionnelle among members to elevate their election from a contingent event to a quasi-religious one, thereby strengthening their status or at least forging common interests that are independent of the government versus opposition divide. The former French Prime Minister André Tardieu (1937) spoke of the trade union of parliamentarians. After World War II, the professionalisation of parliaments in Western Europe has strengthened criteria against the misuse and the control of members’ extra-parliamentary revenues and of electoral campaigns, although there is still much to do in terms of financial fair play.

Parliamentary Sittings: Proximity and Distance Besides the politics of distance, parliamentary-style politics relies on the principle of proximity between the members in sittings. A condition for the regularisation of parliaments in medieval England was fixing London as the site of meetings and locating them to a definite parliament building in the borough of Westminster, today a metonymy for British-style parliament (see Vieira, 2015). A parliament is based on an elected membership for a regular term. Since the Glorious Revolution of 1688/1689, the annual meetings of parliament have been practised in Westminster. Powerful parliaments rely on a relatively large number of members. In the House of Commons, there were 296 members in 1491 and 460 members in 1586 (see Fryde, 1970). There are good grounds for holding parliaments clearly larger than ministries. John Stuart Mill argued for a large parliament on the grounds of debate. ‘Representative assemblies are often taunted by their enemies with being places of mere talk and bavardage. There has seldom been more misplaced derision. I know not how a representative assembly can more usefully employ itself than in talk, when the subject of talk is the great public interests of the country, and every sentence of it represents the opinion either of some important body of persons in the nation, or of an individual in whom some such body has reposed their confidence. A

8

POLITICS AT DISTANCE: PARLIAMENTARY POLITICS …

189

place where every interest and shade of opinion in the country can have its cause even passionately pleaded, in the face of the government and of all other interests and opinions, can compel them to listen, and either comply, or state clearly why they do not, is in itself, if it answered no other purpose, one of the most important political institutions that can exist anywhere, and one of the foremost benefits of free government’ (Mill, 1861). Reducing the number of parliament members is an old populist demand against bavardage and the greatest variety of opinions. In the Westminster tradition, the practice to debate motions and bills first in the plenum provides an additional guarantee for the diversity of views as an inherent part of the debate. As a corollary of large membership, limited time is assigned for plenary debates. As the earliest procedural guides recognise, limited time requires a fair distribution of parliamentary time between the motions and the speaking members. The power of parliaments further depends on their sitting time. ‘Vacations’ still tend to be extensive and justified by the presence of local members among voters. However, with the transition to fulltime professional parliamentarians in the second half of the twentieth century, the members are treated as parliamentarians also outside the sitting periods. There are different ways of dividing the parliamentary term, year, and week between parliaments (see Ridard, 2018). In West European countries, the ever-growing parliamentary agenda has resulted in accepting professional and full-time membership in parliament (see Borchert, 2003), with the partial exception of Switzerland with its semiplebiscitarian system (see Vatter, 2018, esp. the chapter by Bundi, Eberli and Bütikofer). A key aspect in parliamentary debates is their oral character: in a Westminster debate, it is forbidden to read pre-written speeches. Orality emphasises the role of debate as the link between speeches. Reforms to introduce more debate to the plenary sittings, such as allowing replies or questions from the floor in the middle of the speech as well as references to previous speeches, have been promoted in Continental parliaments. Parliamentary speeches differ from academic presentations, and professors elected to a parliament change their speaking style from that of lectures (see, e.g. Süßmuth, 2000). In academic debates, oral presentations are shorthand expositions of a point, which is then presented in detail in written form.

190

K. PALONEN

As a condition of debate, the orality of debates has as its corollary proximity, the sitting of members in a plenary hall in which they can easily hear and see each other. The conditions of parliamentary debate depend on the acoustics in the plenary hall, which differ whether the plenary hall consists of opposed benches or of a hemicycle, as in most Continental parliaments. Nonetheless, front seats are used not just for a tacit ranking of members but also for practical reasons that have to do with hearing better what is being said. The traditions of parliamentary architecture for seating the members contain different visions of proximity. In Westminster, there are no permanent seats or, indeed, not enough seats for everyone to listen to the debates in the plenary hall. Voting takes place by means of a physical movement of members. In Continental parliaments, members have their own places, sitting either according to their electoral district (Sweden, Norway) or according to the left–right scale of the parties in the French revolutionary tradition (Germany, Finland). In Westminster, the divide between front and backbenchers—in terms of their political strength in their factions—is institutionalised into the procedure as a second dividing line besides that between government and opposition. This divide enables backbenchers to formulate cross-party initiatives with a privileged speaking time of their own (see, e.g. Wright, 2012; Flynn, 2013). Blaming the ‘empty parliament’ is an old anti-parliamentary topos (for the Weimar Republic see Mergel, 2002). The members are, of course, not expected to sit in the plenary hall the whole time. What is required is a quorum. In Westminster, the quorum used to be low (40 members) but can be up to half of the membership in some Continental parliaments. According to an old convention between parliamentary parties, occasional majorities in the plenary hall shall not be used to overthrow governmental motions.

Parliaments in the Corona Regime Parliaments were expected to be one of the ‘victims’ of the corona regime. The lockdowns and travel restrictions have made the regular presence of MPs in parliamentary sittings difficult. Such measures have de facto limited the MPs’ free travel in trains and other forms of public transport. While a hectic and improvised activity has been required from

8

POLITICS AT DISTANCE: PARLIAMENTARY POLITICS …

191

governments and officials, the pandemic has even been used to justify interrupting the rhythm of parliamentary sittings. Against the suddenly increased power of medical experts, whose judgements of the situation and expectations, fortunately, differ as much as between scholars in the humanities, parliaments have been deprived of counter-expertise. A parliamentary debate pro et contra on expert judgements, on the political aspects of their presuppositions, and their consequences during these exceptional times, appears in such a situation more important than ever. This idea requires a shift of self-understanding of MPs from party or constituency representatives into independent parliamentarians, for whom the debate and the scrutiny of government and officials appear as their main activity (see Weber, 1918). When looking at the actual responses of parliaments in the Spring 2020, it is easy to note their differences (IPU, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c). The quotes in this section are taken from IPU documents and from a few commentaries. The measures that parliaments around the world took in the first weeks of the ‘corona emergency’ correspond to certain ideal–typical alternatives, which, however, do have different political consequences. The suspension of parliament’s sitting sine die in Hungary is an extreme case approaching a coup d’état that leaves government and administration without any parliamentary control. The ‘corona emergency’ has reduced the presence of members in both the plenary and the committee debates. Keeping the 1,5 mdistance between parliamentarians (and others present in parliament buildings) is not easily realisable. Different moves have been adopted. For example, in the Finnish Eduskunta, the number of members allowed to be present in the plenary hall was temporarily reduced from 200 to 74 (Eduskunta, 2021). In Serbia, a ‘protective plexiglass partition for each MP’s seat’ was set up, in Croatia ‘voting in the plenary session was held in three different halls’, and in Switzerland an extraordinary plenary session was ‘held at the Bern Expo exhibition centre’ (see Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2020b). Additional means could have been the rotation of members present in the plenary hall. The proposals illustrate parliamentary innovativeness to maintain the parliamentary powers while reducing the dangers of proximity. A measure provided for previous emergency situations is the selection of a committee, a Notparlament, to replace parliament for the period of emergency. Wolfgang Schäuble, the President of the German Bundestag, suggested such an emergency parliament, but the parties rejected his

192

K. PALONEN

proposal. The law professor Christoph Möllers regarded this as a false answer and opted for an emergency Bundestag with a proportionally reduced number of members (quoted in Geuther, 2020). The historian Tobias Kaiser emphasised that—in contrast to parliamentary disinterest in the pandemics of the 1950s and 1960s—the Bundestag has acted well: ‘Das parlamentarische System hat—Stand heute—den Stresstest bestanden. Es ist funktionsfähig geblieben, hat erstaunlich schnell reagiert und somit die Feuerprobe bestanden’ (Kaiser, 2020).

The Digital Momentum The demand for proximity for parliamentary debates can be relativised when set in relation to the ongoing processes of digitalisation. Under the corona regime, the ‘Belgian House of Representatives amended its Rules of Procedure to allow Members, under certain conditions, to be considered as “present” at selected committee and plenary meetings even when they are not physically in the chamber, and to vote electronically’ (Inter-Parliamentary Union, 2020b). The digitalisation of politics almost hampers movement politics based on the pressure created by numbers and proximity, although we could think of digital boycotts, etc. In contrast, for the politics of signatures, geographical and state border obstacles have been removed and a growing number of manifestos are supranational, addressed to the EU in particular. In his new study Post-Pandemic Legislatures, Olivier Rozenberg discusses the performance of parliament in facing pandemics and the possibilities of virtual debates (Rozenberg, 2020). Pandemics present a challenge to the principle of proximity: ‘Legislatures have indeed been thought of as physical places where human beings sit, talk, and decide together. … Is it possible for legislatures to become virtual without losing their soul?’ (Rozenberg, 2020, 6). He points out that legislation is more difficult to put into virtual form than oversight, and that lively plenary debates in the Westminster style might suffer under virtual conditions (ibid., 6–9). He suggests some devices for improving virtual debatesand sees Chancen of improvement in the consideration of multiple parliamentary levels (ibid., 10–11). I could add that the government vs. the opposition is not the only politically significant parliamentary dividing line. Westminster scholars emphasise a second divide between front- and backbenchers across the parties (see Griffith & Ryle, 2003; Flynn, 2013). With Rozenberg, we

8

POLITICS AT DISTANCE: PARLIAMENTARY POLITICS …

193

could further speak of a ‘parliament-we’, not in the sense of interest representation of their members but by contrasting the parliamentary style of doing politics—characterised by agreeing to disagree—to governmental, presidential, administrative, judicial, plebiscitarian, interest-based, and ex cathedra expertise styles, to mention the obvious ones. What does digitalisation mean from this perspective? A suspicion arises that the awareness of both a parliament-we and debate pro et contra as the raison d’être of parliamentary politics has become more difficult. Still, the effects of digitalisation contain also different Chancen that can weaken the link between physical proximity and orality. In parliamentary politics, we speak, as I noted above, of the presence of the current item on the agenda as well as all those items that are currently ‘in possession of the parliament’ (see, e.g. Campion, 1929, also Palonen, 2014, 2018). To this corresponds the counting of the personal presence of members in every sitting of the parliament: the quorum requires that a certain minimum of members shall be present in the sitting. We can further distinguish between the signing to be present and the actual presence in the plenum, which is in many parliaments the conditions for the rights of debate and vote. Digitalisation enables the extension of the members’ parliamentary presence into a virtual presence through devices such as Zoom, which also means lowering the criteria of proximity. By these means, it is possible for members to participate, including by moving amendments or adjournments, in the debate at a distance. A digital vote in the plenum is, however, impossible in many parliaments such as the Finnish Eduskunta with its on-site voting system. The chances of digitalisation lie in the extension of the parliamentary presence of the items on the agenda as well as of the arguments in the debate in both space and time. Prior to digitalisation, parliamentarians complained about the huge amount of ‘paper’ on their desks (see, e.g. Lattmann, 1981). These included the daily agenda, governmental and members’ motions, committee reports with expert statements, as well background documents used in the justification of government’s proposal or clarifying the state of the art of debates in foreign parliament or in scholarly debates. Today all that can be given to members in a digital form. Paper-saving with an ecological dimension is an elementary aspect of digital presence in parliament. What does this mean politically? I can imagine that members experience this change as a huge relief and will read only what immediately

194

K. PALONEN

concerns them. The obvious danger is that with such a selective reading of the documents the specialists might, even more easily than today, get an upper hand over parliamentary generalists, and that a growing part of MPs would see themselves more as experts than as politicians, especially if parliamentary committees are based on specialisation, as in many Continental parliaments. This would lead to a fragmentation of the member’s parliamentary identity, increasing the danger of their submission to the pressure of lobbyists. Online meetings might be relevant for committees, especially those that meet frequently. But they might lower the intensity of debating the details of proposals that characterises committee debates in Westminster. Enabling digital presence might mean a lower number of members present in the plenary hall is sufficient to hold a vigorous, fair, and thorough parliamentary-style debate. Digital presence would need to be combined to a rotation principle that guarantees the quorum and provides each member prompt access to the plenary hall. For decades, parliamentarians present in the parliament building have been able to watch on an internal television what is happening in the plenum, thus relativising the proximity demand. In the Westminster model of a debating parliament, the Speaker has the power to ‘catch’ the next member to speak by keeping rotation pro et contra. In this sense, members physically present would have an advantage over those virtually present. It looks unlikely that including those virtually present would improve the debate. MPs’ spontaneous interjections from the floor have revived debates. For example, in the German Bundestag, the number of Zwischenrufe has been continuously growing (see Burkhardt, 2016). Interjections could be projected to a screen as e-mails or SMSs from members present in the parliament building but outside the plenary hall. Such a simple reform might strengthen the written element in debates at the cost of the oral, spontaneous, ‘real-time’ shouts crucial for present-day parliamentary debates.

Intertextual Parliaments Another dimension regarding extending parliamentary presence is access to the Internet inside the parliament, which, for example, enables MPs to check the information included in a speech almost in ‘real time’. Obviously, by relating ongoing debates both to past debates in the same

8

POLITICS AT DISTANCE: PARLIAMENTARY POLITICS …

195

parliament and to simultaneous debates in other parliaments, Internet access makes visible the intertextuality of parliamentary debates. The historical dimension of parliamentary presence enables the members to reactivate past debates on the same or a similar item on the agenda and to render visible precedents as parliament’s past procedural decisions. Long-term members can refer to their past initiatives. Government and opposition can accuse one another of having taken, in the past, opposite stands to that what they argue for now. The point is not to make of precedents or past positions an authority, but rather a justification for change in a situation or in a standpoint. This is of course a legitimate move in the debate. In parliamentary politics, the intertextuality of debates strengthens the significance of playing with time. The presence of the parliament’s past in a debate can give depth to the argumentation as well as help avoid dilettantish novelties. Another point lies in directing attention to the exact formulations of past motions and debates, which might be either reaffirmed or altered. The corona order also illustrates the horizontal dimension of parliamentary intertextuality: every parliament might have the same topic on their agenda, and the comparison of measures is possible. This is the case with all worldwide events, although hardly any of them has been as sudden and dramatic as the corona challenge. Within the European Union, member state parliaments are connected to the European Parliament as well as to each other. It is possible—in EUrelated matters at least—that member state parliaments’ EU committees would form together a third chamber of European parliamentary institutions (with the EP and the two councils as the other chambers). While the preparation of EU decisions is mainly a matter of parliamentary committees, the ex-post ratification of EU institutions’ decisions must be made by member state parliaments in plenum. Access to the debates in other parliaments improves the chances to be aware of—in line with the earlier quote from J.S. Mill—a broader spectrum of debates and arguments both from the EU level and from other member state parliaments. For the EU, all this provides chances to get member state parliamentarians better acquainted with debates at the EU level and to include into EU decisions arguments from member state parliamentarians. Of course, we can ask whether the digital presence of questions and arguments nonetheless weakens the political sense of parliamentary debates, in which a key part of the practice is that adversaries are

196

K. PALONEN

sitting in the same audience and listening to the speeches of their ‘opposites’, to use the Westminster language. Would this physical presence be compatible with a digital presence? For example, Wolfgang Schäuble thinks that debate cannot be properly digitalised: ‘Wir müssen schon Argument pro und contra in Rede und Gegenrede diskutieren. und wir müssen entscheiden’ (quoted in Geuther, 2020). As a result of digital presence, the attention to the speeches would likely be more selective than when everyone is sitting in the plenary room. It would be difficult to respond spontaneously to the ‘mood of the moment’, as William Gladstone (1838/1953) put it, and adapt one’s argumentation to that mood. In digital debates, it might be more difficult to maintain the principle according to which in parliament one member speaks at a time on an item on the parliamentary agenda. The president of parliament should retain the authority to direct debate even over the online participants, which would be most difficult in Westminster-style parliaments relying on the Speaker’s power to distribute the turns of speaking. It would be difficult to identify legitimate interruptions, such as the amendment and adjournment motions, the raising of questions of procedure (of ‘order’ in Westminster terms), or the requests for replies. Major advantages of online presence could be expected to be reached in the committees. Expert hearings could be the easiest part of digitalisation, but also the online presence of the members could be manageable if the committees are small enough. Politically important debates should require a personal presence in the plenary hall or in the parliament building. Major regular types of debates, such as constitutional reforms, the installation of the government, the vote of confidence, and plenary debates on the annual budget need to be debated in person. The parliamentary presidium or the majority must decide on other cases within a couple of days interval. Still, individual members might raise disputes of first political importance in the middle of debates. For them, the fair regulation of online debates requires setting up new rules and conventions. It has been interesting to see how medical experts, not unlike politicians, dispute and are divided into ‘parties’. The institutional and procedural style of parliamentary debate once again indicates the best ways to contest and control expert power. While experts have disputes over knowledge as a kind of possession, for parliamentarians ‘knowledge’ lies in their Chancen to contribute to a debate. In the face of the claims

8

POLITICS AT DISTANCE: PARLIAMENTARY POLITICS …

197

for expertise, parliamentarians have been all too modest and not enough aware of their own powers. The extension of presence reminds us of the old topos that parliamentarians of all countries speak the same language independently of dialectical variations in ‘natural’ languages. ‘Parliament’ is above all a style of doing politics through debating pro et contra with procedural rules, rhetorical practices, and multiple stages of debate. Each stage refers to a knot-point in time, which offers different perspectives to the items on the agenda and a repertoire of different moves, including interrupting the ongoing debate, reinterpreting the profile of the vices and virtues in the preceding debate, and initiating a new debate on the interrupting motion (see Palonen, 2018). Analogously, both past and simultaneous debating parliaments with public records serve as moments for extending parliamentary presence. EU-wide inter-parliamentary meetings could also be a medium for member state parliamentarians to shift their political identity to the EU level. The EU would no longer be ‘somewhere there’, one week a month in Strasbourg and other weeks in Brussels but rather in EU-wide debates, in and between parliaments as well as between parliament and other EU institutions, operating with different rhetorical genres (see Palonen, 2019). Indeed, the French insistence on maintaining the plenary session in Strasbourg could be relativised with the possibility of holding the plenum session in either Brussels or Strasbourg.

Concluding Remarks In rhetorical terms, European parliamentarism would be based on deliberations, in which the members of different parliaments would participate in the same or analogous debates, in quasi-real time. Of course, such a version of parliamentarism would require political imagination, a historical understanding of past and existing practices and, given the complexity of thorough debates, reasonable time limits. Nonetheless, parliamentary proximity in the sense of physical presence is necessary in highly significant political questions. In such debates, presence could be restricted to ‘this parliament now dealing with this item on the agenda’. This would mean a dramatisation and intensification of debate. A decision concerning which questions require such combination of presence with proximity will be necessary.

198

K. PALONEN

The procedural literature on Westminster has insisted on the inherent connection between debate and vote that the motions put on the agenda also include a resolution to be voted on (see Campion, 1929, 147 and the discussion in Palonen, 2014). In parliamentary-style politics, the vote is both the end of a debate and its last step, unintelligible without the preceding thorough debates that follow the procedure. The digital extension of parliamentary presence offers a broader spectrum of arguments to the debate but may de-intensify the personal confrontation between the members present in the live audience. Which of these changes is more important needs to be closely analysed. The distance arrangements that parliaments have spontaneously invented in the face of the pandemic illustrate that growing distance does not necessarily alter the debate or the vote. The effects of digitalisation are more ambiguous. The visual presence of political adversaries might be a greater problem in parliament than, for example, in party conferences where adversaries are expected not to be present. Digitalisation as a medium of extending parliamentary presence towards the past and towards debates in other parliaments contains interesting political resources. It is too early to give an overall judgement on their significance. Evaluation might require a reinterpretation of the proximity criterion, to which orality is not necessarily bound. It remains a matter of debate how far the stretching of time by digital means can go without diminishing the parliamentary quality of debating. My discussion in this chapter has illustrated how the concept of proximity can be relativised in a manner that could be important for parliamentary politics. Extending the parliamentary presence of the debaters requires considering the criteria of audibility, the oral character of the speeches, the visibility of the entire parliamentary audience, as well as the simultaneity of inter-parliamentary debates that make past debates present. The challenge of the pandemic and digital techniques enables each of these aspects to be dealt with as media for a distanced presence in the debates. They destroy the quasi-natural illusion of regarding parliamentary debate as a kind of personal conversation in which the members join forces in their search for the best solution. The distancing perspective provides means for debating pro et contra the items on the parliamentary agenda. The point is that these aspects of extending the presence compete with one another, and the members and parliamentary institutions must

8

POLITICS AT DISTANCE: PARLIAMENTARY POLITICS …

199

choose which of these aspects they will and can accentuate in the ongoing debate. All this can be expected to make future parliamentary debates more complex and teach us how ‘debate’ in the parliamentary sense is not a single event but is always linked to other debates.

References Ankersmit, F. (1996). Aesthetic politics. Stanford University Press. Ankersmit, F. (2001). Historical representation. Stanford University Press. Ankersmit, F. (2002). Political representation. Stanford University Press. Arendt, H. (1960 [1981]). Vita activa oder vom tätigen Leben. Pieper. Bering, D. (2010). Die Epoche der Intellektuellen 1890–2001. Berlin University Press. Borchert, J. (2003). Die Professionalisierung der Politik. Campus. Burkhardt, A. (2016). German parliamentary discourse since 1948 from a linguistic point of view. In P. Ihalainen, C. Ilie, & K. Palonen (Eds.), Parliament and parliamentarism (pp. 176–191). Berghahn. Campion, G. (1929). An introduction to the procedure of the House of Commons. Allen et co. Eduskunta. (2021). Täysistunnot eduskunnassa. https://www.eduskunta.fi/taysis tunto. Flynn, P. (2013). How to be an MP? Biteback. Fryde, E. B. (1970). Introduction. In E. B. Fryde & E. Miller (Eds.), Historical studies on the English Parliament, vol. 2, 1399–1603 (pp. 1–30), Cambridge University Press. Geuther, G. (2020). Deutscher Bundestag. Schwierige Selbstbehauptung in coronazeiten. Available at https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/deutscher-bundestagschwierige-selbstbehauptung-in.724.de.html?dram:article_id=476166. Gladstone, W. (1838/1953). Public speaking. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 39, 266–272. Griffith, J. A. C. & Ryle, M. (2003). Parliament. Functions, practices, and procedures. R. Blackburn & A. Kinnon (Eds., 2nd ed.), Sweet & Maxwell. Helsingin Sanomat, (2020, May 3). https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-200000 6493304.html. Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). (2020a). Parliaments in a time of pandemic. https://www.ipu.org/parliaments-in-time-pandemic. Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). (2020b). Country compilation of parliamentary responses to the pandemic. https://www.ipu.org/country-compilationparliamentary-responses-pandemic. Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU). (2020c). How to run a parliament during a pandemic. https://www.ipu.org/news/news-in-brief/2020-04/how-run-par liament-during-pandemic-q-and.

200

K. PALONEN

Kaiser, T. (2020). Bewährungsprobe für den Parlamentarismus? Repräsentative Demokratie in der Pandemie. https://www.kas.de/de/einzeltitel/-/content/ bewaehrungsprobe-fuer-den-parlamentarismus. Lattmann, D. (1981). Die lieblose Republik. Aufzeichnungen aus Bonn am Rhein. Kindler. Llanque, M. (2008). The rhetoric of intellectual manifestos from the First World War to the war against terrorism. In K. Palonen, T. Pulkkinen & J. M. Rosales (Eds.), Ashgate research companion to the politics of democratization in Europe. Concepts and histories, (pp. 185–198), Ashgate. Lüsebrink, H. J., & Reichardt, R. (1990). Die ‘Bastille.’ Fischer. Luukka, T. (2020, April 30). Hallitus pohtii kirjastojen avaamista. Helsingin Sanomat. https://www.hs.fi/politiikka/art-2000006493304.html. Mill, J. S. (1861). Considerations on representative government. https://www.gut enberg.org/files/5669/5669-h/5669-h.htm. Meier, C. (1980). Die Entstehung des Politischen bei den Griechen. Suhrkamp. Mergel, T. (2002). Die parlamentarische Kultur in der Weimarer Republik. Droste. Palonen, K. (1992). Politik als Vereitelung. Die Politikkonzeption in Jean-Paul Sartres ‘Critique de la raison dialectique’. Westfälisches Dampfboot. Palonen, K. (2004). Parliamentarism: A politics of temporal and rhetorical distances. Österreischische Zeitschrift Für Geschichtswissenschaft, 15(3), 111– 125. Palonen, K. (2008). The politics of limited times. Nomos. Palonen, K. (2010). Objektivität’ als faires Spiel. Wissenschaft als Politik bei Max Weber. Nomos. Palonen, K. (2014). The politics of parliamentary procedure. The formation of the Westminster procedure as a parliamentary ideal type. Budrich. Palonen, K. (2016). From oratory to debate. Parliamentarisation of deliberative rhetoric in Westminster. Nomos. Palonen, K. (2018). Parliamentary thinking. Procedure, rhetoric, and time. Palgrave. Palonen, K. (2019). Rethinking political representation from the perspective of rhetorical genres. Theoria. A Journal of Social and Political Theory, 66(158), 27–50. Peltonen, M. (2013). Politics, rhetoric, and popularity in pre-revolutionary England. Cambridge University Press. Ridard, B. (2018). L‘encadrement du temps parlementaire dans la procédure législative. Allemagne, Espagne, France, Royaume-Uni. Institut Universitaire Varenne. Rousseau, J. J. (1966). Du contrat social. Garnier-Flammarion. (Original 1762)

8

POLITICS AT DISTANCE: PARLIAMENTARY POLITICS …

201

Rozenberg, O. (2020, July 2). Post pandemic legislatures. Is real democracy possible with virtual parliaments? European Liberal Forum, Discussion Paper. https://www.liberalforum.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ ELF_DiscussionPaper_2_Post-PandemicLegislatures.pdf. Sartre, J. P. (1944 [2005]). Huis clos. In M. Contat (Ed.), Théâtre complet (pp. 91–136), Gallimard. Sartre, J. P. (1946 [1954]). Réflexions sur la question juive. Gallimard. Sartre. J.-P. (1958) [1964). Les grenouilles qui demandent un roi. In Situations V (pp. 113–144). Gallimard. Sartre, J. P. (1960 [1985]). Critique de la raison dialectique, tome 1. Gallimard. Sartre, J.-P. (1961) [1964]. L’analyse du Referendum, In Situations V (pp. 145– 159). Sartre, J. P. (1966 [1972]). Plaidoyer pour les intellectuels. In Situations VIII (pp. 375–455), Gallimard. Sartre, J.-P. (1973 [1976]). Élections, piège à cons. In Situations X (pp. 75–87). Gallimard. Schmitt, C. (1928 [1970]). Verfassungslehre. Duncker & Humblot. Das Schweizer Parlament. (2020). https://www.parlament.ch/de/ratsbetrieb/ sessionen/aktuelle-session. Sirinelli, J. F. (1990). Intellectuels et passions françaises. Manifestes et pétitions au XX siècle. Fayard. Skinner, Q. (1996). Reason and rhetoric in the philosophy of Hobbes. Cambridge University Press. Skinner, Q. (1998). Liberty before liberalism. Cambridge University Press. Skinner, Q. (2002). A third concept of liberty. Proceedings of the British Academy, 117 , 237–268. Skinner, Q. (2014). Forensic Shakespeare. Oxford University Press. Süßmuth, R. (2000). Wer nicht kämpft, hat schon verloren. Meine Erfahrungen in der Politik. Econ. Tardieu, A. (1937). La profession parlementaire. Flammarion. Vatter, A. (Ed.), (2018). Das Parlament in der Schweiz. Libro. Vieira, R. A. (2015). Time and politics. Parliament and the culture of modernity in Britain and the British world. Oxford University Press. Weber, M. (1917 [1988]). Wahlrecht und Demokratie in Deutschland. In W. J. Mommsen (Ed.), Max-Weber-Studienausgabe I/15 (pp. 155–189), Mohr. Weber, M. (1918 [1988]). Parlament und Regierung im neugeordneten Deutschland. In W. J. Mommsen (Ed.), Max-Weber-Studienausgabe I/15 (pp. 202–302), Mohr. Weber, M. (1919 [1994]). Politik als Beruf. In W. Schluchter & W. J. Mommsen (Eds.), Max-Weber-Studienausgabe I/17 (pp. 35–88), Mohr. Wright, T. (2012). Doing politics. Biteback.

Index

A Affinity, 12 Ankersmit, Frank, 185, 186 Antidiscrimination, 98, 101–104, 111 Arendt, Hannah, 184 Attlee, Clement, 61, 62, 68, 69, 71, 74, 75, 80, 84 B Beveridge, William, 64–67, 72 Bevin, Ernest, 61, 62, 66, 69, 70, 73, 74, 76 Bourgeois, Léon, 15, 46, 49. See also Solidarité Briand, Aristide, 67 Bricolage, 2, 3, 4–7, 12, 20, 30, 37, 39, 40, 53, 55, 60, 62–64, 67, 70, 71, 80, 83, 84, 90, 111, 112, 119, 146, 147, 152, 158, 165–167, 169–173, 181. See also Chance, Contingency, Interests, Rhetoric, Theories British commonwealth, 66, 78, 83 Butler, Josephine, 44, 45, 47, 48, 51

C Cahuzac, Jérôme, 29 Chance, 2, 3, 180, 186, 188, 192, 193, 196. See also Bricolage, Contingency Churchill, Winston, 6, 61–63, 66, 67, 71, 73, 79, 80 Citizenship, 5–7, 36, 37, 55, 73, 90, 95, 98, 99, 111 Conceptual history, 93–97 Conceptual politics, 5, 6, 12, 90, 91, 93, 96–98, 102, 104 Congress of Europe, 60, 68, 71, 81 Conservative Party (UK), 61 Constructivism, 17–20, 27 Contingency, 2, 4. See also Bricolage Controversies, 6, 90–95, 97, 98, 103, 111, 112, 119, 120, 131, 137 Coronavirus, 135. See also Covid-19 Coudenhove-Kalergi, Richard von, 66–68, 75, 83 Council of Europe, 6, 60, 63, 64, 80–84

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 N. Kauppi and K. Palonen (eds.), Rhetoric and Bricolage in European Politics and Beyond, Rhetoric, Politics and Society, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98632-2

203

204

INDEX

Covid-19, 4, 7, 12, 118, 134, 135, 137, 170, 172. See also Coronavirus

D Dalton, Hugh, 61 Debate, 3, 4, 6–8, 28, 30, 36, 37, 39, 41, 45, 46, 51–53, 60, 62, 64, 65, 71, 72, 74, 75, 80, 84, 94, 117, 119, 120, 123, 125, 133, 138, 184, 186, 187, 189–199 Delors, Jacques, 18, 22, 27 Digitalisation, 180, 192, 193, 196, 198 Distance, 4, 7, 8, 30, 61, 179, 180, 182, 185, 186, 188, 191, 198. See also Politics, Proximity Dreyfus affair, 40, 42, 49, 183, 184 Dynamic topography, 20, 22

E Eden, Anthony, 73 Ehrnrooth, Adelaïde, 46 Euro group, 104–106, 108, 110, 111 European commission, 17, 18, 26, 98, 102, 104, 106–109 European Court of Justice, 81 European Parliament (EP), 23, 24, 29, 80, 91, 95 European Parliamentary Union (EPU), 68, 72 European Science Foundation (ESF), 30 European Stability Mechanism (ESM), 105–108, 110 European Union (EU), 1–6, 8, 11, 13, 14, 16–20, 23–31, 59, 67, 81, 89–93, 95–99, 101–107, 111, 112, 120, 185, 192, 195, 197

F Federalism, 6, 15, 63, 64, 66, 71, 74, 75, 80, 84 Federal union, 64, 66, 76 Feminism, 5, 36–45, 47, 49, 50, 53, 55 Feminist knowledge, 38, 40, 41, 44, 51–55 Financial crisis, 7, 104, 105, 110, 111 Friberg, Maikki, 46 Functionalism, 16, 17, 27 G Gender, 6, 18, 36, 37, 40, 43, 44, 46, 49–55, 153 H Hagman, Lucina, 46, 52 Hamon, Benoît, 24 Humanism, 160, 161, 165, 166 I Ideascape, 14, 16, 31 Intellectual networks, 5, 37, 54 Intellectuals, 23, 38–41, 46, 49, 51, 184 Interests ideational, 16, 91 material, 14, 15, 27 Intergovernmentalism, 1, 6, 8, 16–20, 26, 27, 30, 31, 70, 71 International Committee of the Movement for European Unity, 71 International Federation for the Abolition of Regulated Prostitution, 45 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 105–107, 110 Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), 68, 191

INDEX

K kairos , 21, 23 Kergomard, Pauline, 47 Key, Ellen, 53, 54 Knowledge, 3, 5, 6, 11–14, 18, 30, 37, 42, 44, 51–53, 55, 132, 148, 149, 152, 169, 187, 196 Knowledge war, 39 Kohl, Helmut, 22 Koselleck, Reinhard, 93–99

L Labour (UK), 61, 62 La Fronde, 46, 48 Laski, Harold, 61 League of Nations, 63, 64 Legitimation, 5, 11, 13, 15, 16, 27, 29, 111 Le Pen, Jean Marie, 25 Le Pen, Marine, 25 Ligue des droits de l’Homme, 48, 49 Liikanen, Erkki, 29

M Mackay, Ronald, 67–69, 71–76, 78, 79, 84 Maréchal, Marion, 25 Member of European Parliament (MEP), 21 Member of Parliament (MP), 69, 191 #MeToo, 36 Mill, John Stuart, 46, 188, 189, 195 Mitterrand, François, 22 Monnet, Jean, 27 Movement politics, 8, 181, 182, 192 Movements for European Unity, 68

N Neofunctionalism, 1, 8, 16–19, 24, 25, 27, 30, 31

205

Neo-Malthusianism, 50, 52 Niinistö, Sauli, 29 Normative power Europe, 17 North Atlantic Alliance (NATO), 69 P Parliament, 3, 6, 46, 60, 72, 109–111, 183, 186–189, 191–198 Parliamentary politics, 3, 8, 180, 181, 185–187, 193, 195, 198 procedure, 183, 186 Pieczynska, Emma, 45 Politicization, 8, 23, 24, 186 Politics, 4, 6–8, 14, 19–21, 23–26, 29, 48, 53, 90, 119, 120, 126, 131, 138, 139, 147, 150, 152, 153, 155–157, 159, 164, 166, 167, 170, 172, 181, 182, 185, 186, 193. See also Movement, Signature, Style of Politification, 23, 24, 26 Postmodernism, 159, 160, 164, 165 Pro Finlandia, 46 Prosopography, 37 Proximity, 7, 8, 180–182, 183, 186, 188, 190–193, 197, 198. See also Distance R Regional alliance, 63, 64, 66, 70, 83 Revue de morale sociale, 36, 39, 40, 51 Rhetoric deliberative, 81 epideictic, 185 negotiation, 63 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 185 S Sainte Croix, Ghénia de, 47, 49

206

INDEX

Sartre, Jean-Paul, 7, 179–182, 184 Schmitt, Carl, 128, 137, 139 Science, 1, 15, 25, 30, 42, 48, 91, 93–95, 117, 118, 120–128, 130–134, 136–139 politics of, 123, 124, 134 Science Europe, 30 Signature politics, 8, 181, 183–185 See Politics Situated action, 19, 20, 22, 23 Skinner, Quentin, 4, 60, 95, 97, 99, 184, 186 Social ethics, 41 Solidarité, 49 Style of politics, 180, 186, 187 T Theories academic, 2, 5, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 19, 25, 27, 30, 31 emergent, 5, 13, 19, 25 established, 1, 4, 5, 13, 16, 25, 26 lay, 5, 13, 14, 16, 18, 24, 27, 28, 30, 31 Transnational, 6, 21, 37–41, 44, 50–55, 167 Treaty of Rome, 99, 100

Trope, 17, 62

U United Europe Movement, 6, 66, 67, 70, 72, 73, 78–80, 82–84 United Nations, 63, 73, 76, 83 United States of Europe, 63–66, 71, 78, 83 Urpilainen, Jutta, 29

V Vidart, Camille, 45

W Weber, Max, 2, 7, 14, 15, 22, 24, 127, 133, 179, 182, 187, 191 Westermarck, Edward, 46 Westermarck, Helena, 46 Western European Union, 80 Wuarin, Louis, 39, 44, 49

Z Zemmour, Eric, 24 Zola, Émile, 40