Strategic Responses to Domestic Contestation

How have EU-level actors responded to the increase in salience and contestation across the member states? This volume explores and explains the actors' strategic responses and emphasises that domestic pressure has triggered both depoliticisation and politicisation. Long gone are the times when EU decisions left citizens indifferent, and when the supranational was largely irrelevant for public opinion and electoral politics across the member states. Instead, a string of existential crises has struck and unsettled the Union over more than a decade. These crises have politicised Europe, tested the endurance of the supranational system to its core, and put EU-level actors under unprecedented pressure. This volume explores how and why EU-level actors respond to the various, sometimes competing, 'bottom-up' demands, and challenges the view that domestic contestation necessarily limits EU-level room for manoeuvre. Instead, contributions show that domestic pressure can be perceived as either constraining or enabling, with responses, therefore, ranging from the restrained to the assertive. Driven by the survival of the Union, by the preservation of their own powers, and by different perceptions of domestic demands, actors will choose to politicise or depoliticise decision-making, behaviour, and policy outcomes at the supranational level. The volume concludes that whilst domestic pressure triggers supranational responses, such responses should not be assumed to be restraining; they may equally be empowering including for European integration itself. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

Edoardo Bressanelli is 'Montalcini' Assistant Professor in the Institute of Law, Politics and Development at the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa, Italy, and Senior Visiting Research Fellow at King's College London, United Kingdom. Christel Koop is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Economy at King's College London, United Kingdom. Christine Reh is Professor of European Politics and Dean of Graduate Programmes at the Hertie School in Berlin, Germany.

1. EU Actors under pressure: politicisation and depoliticisation as strategic responses Edoardo Bressanelli, Christel Koop and Christine Reh 2. Politicisation management in the European Union Frank Schimmelfennig 3. Contestation and responsiveness in EU Council deliberations Sara B. Hobolt and Christopher Wratil 4. The Court of Justice in times of politicisation: 'law as a mask and shield' revisited Michael Blauberger and Dorte Sindbjerg Martinsen 5. Let's speak more? How the ECB responds to public contestation Manuela Moschella, Luca Pinto and Nicola Martocchia Diodati 6. Responsive withdrawal? The politics of EU agenda-setting Christine Reh, Edoardo Bressanelli and Christel Koop 7. Understanding the European Commission's use of politicisation in the negotiation of interinstitutional agreements: the role of consultations and issue framing Adriana Bunea 8. Politicisation and economic governance design Fabio Franchino and Camilla Mariotto 9. The European Union's authoritarian equilibrium R. Daniel Kelemen