Does differentiated integration strengthen the democratic legitimacy of the EU? Evidence from the 2015 Danish opt-out referendum
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| Author | Frank Schimmelfennig,Dominik Schraff |
| DOI | 10.1177/1465116520949698 |
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
European Union Politics
Does differentiated
2020, Vol. 21(4) 590–611
! The Author(s) 2020
integration strengthen
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DOI: 10.1177/1465116520949698
the democratic
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legitimacy of the EU?
Evidence from the 2015
Danish opt-out
referendum
Dominik Schraff
Center for Comparative and International Studies, ETH
Zu¨rich, Zu¨rich, Switzerland
Frank Schimmelfennig
Center for Comparative and International Studies, ETH
Zu¨rich, Zu¨rich, Switzerland
Abstract
Differentiation has become a durable feature of European integration but we know
little about its effects on citizens. Does differentiated integration improve the demo-
cratic quality of the European Union and strengthen citizens’ support – or does it
promote political divides and foster citizens’ alienation from European integration?
This article develops a theoretical argument on the positive attitudinal effects of dif-
ferentiated integration, contending that differentiation accommodates heterogeneous
preferences in a diverse EU and strengthens citizens’ ownership of European integra-
tion. A quasi-experimental analysis of public opinion of the 2015 Danish Justice and
Home Affairs opt-out referendum demonstrates that the public vote increased citizens’
EU efficacy, indeed. Eurosceptic voters in particular strengthen their belief that their
individual voice counts in EU politics, suggesting that differentiation can have a positive
effect on the perceived democratic quality of the EU.
Corresponding author:
Dominik Schraff, Center for Comparative and International Studies, ETH Zurich, Haldeneggsteig 4, CH-8092
Zu¨rich, Switzerland.
Email: dominik.schraff@eup.gess.ethz.ch
Schraff and Schimmelfennig
591
Keywords
Differentiated integration, EU support, legitimacy, quasi-experiment
Introduction
Since the 1990s, European integration has become increasingly differentiated.
Starting with the British and Danish opt-outs from the Treaty of Maastricht,
European Union (EU) treaty revisions, new treaties (e.g., on the Schengen free-
movement area or the Eurozone’s Stability Mechanism (ESM) and Fiscal
Compact) and EU accession treaties frequently exempt or exclude individual
member states from specific treaty-based obligations or rights. Whereas the major-
ity of such differentiations, especially those resulting from EU accession, have been
temporary, some have introduced long-lasting divisions among members – in par-
ticular between participants and non-participants of the Euro and Schengen areas
and of integration in Justice and Home Affairs (JHA). Thus, differentiation has
become a durable structural feature of European integration.
Recent theorizing and empirical research has covered the trajectories, causes
and conditions of differentiated integration in EU treaties and legislation exten-
sively (see, e.g., Leuffen et al., 2013; Schimmelfennig and Winzen, 2020). It has
established that EU enlargement has significantly increased the heterogeneity of
EU member states – and that the expansion of supranational policy-making into
areas of core state powers such as internal and external security policies as well as
fiscal and monetary policies has made European integration more controversial
and raised concerns about national identity and sovereignty. The resulting polit-
icization of European integration, mobilization of exclusive national identities, and
growth of Eurosceptic parties and governments have been important drivers of
durable differentiated integration in the EU’s treaty framework. In some cases,
governments have either followed their own preferences or taken into consider-
ation public scepticism towards the deepening of European integration in negoti-
ating opt-outs. Ahead of the Brexit referendum, this has been the United Kingdom
(UK) story. In other cases, negative referendums on EU treaties have forced
governments to refrain from participating in the European integration of core
state powers. Denmark exemplifies this pathway. Its current policy-wide opt-
outs from monetary union, JHA and defence policy were granted after the negative
1992 Danish referendum on the Treaty of Maastricht and confirmed in two refer-
endums of 2000 (on the Eurozone opt-out) and 2015 (on the JHA opt-out).
By contrast, we know comparatively little about the effects of differentiated
integration1 – in particular at the micro level of citizens. In his pioneering work,
K€
olliker (2001, 2006) distinguishes centrifugal and centripetal effects of differen-
tiation: it may drive insiders and outsiders further apart or it may bring them closer
together over time. Yet the analysis of these effects has generally remained at the
level of EU institutional developments and elite interactions. K€
olliker (2001, 2006)
592
European Union Politics 21(4)
theorizes integration effects based on the positive or negative externalities of the
collective good produced by the insider group of member states. As for centrifugal
effects, Jensen and Slapin (2012) suggest a ‘cascading’ of initial differentiation,
increasingly widening the gap between insiders and outsiders as the opt-outs of
integration sceptics facilitate insiders’ decision-making on an ‘ever closer union’. In
line with this expectation, Schimmelfennig (2016) finds evidence for a path-
dependent drifting apart of Eurozone insiders and outsiders in the Euro crisis.
Martinsen and Wessel (2014) show that differentiation can also have disintegrative
effects on future policy-making in the core.
Other studies have found evidence for centripetal institutional effects. Adler-
Nissen (2009, 2014) points out how informal institutional and diplomatic practices
may mitigate the formal divides created by differentiation. Naurin and Lindahl
(2010) show that the Euro-outsiders Denmark, the UK and Sweden do not suffer
from a bad reputation and possess high network capital in the EU, and Dyson and
Marcussen (2010) describe the ‘fuzzy’ governance structures that transcend the
formal boundary between Eurozone and opt-out countries. Yet these works do
not address effects and dynamics of differentiated integration at the level of
citizens.
Such individual-level effects have been the subject to normative assessments of
differentiated integration, which lack empirical substantiation, however. Critics
claim that differentiated integration undermines transparency, equality, democra-
cy, and solidarity (see Adler-Nissen, 2014: 27–31 for an overview). First, differen-
tiation adds to the institutional complexity of the European multi-level governance
system, making it even more difficult for citizens to follow policy-making and
attribute responsibility. Second, it creates a fragmented Union citizenship with
unequal rights and obligations across the member states of the EU – for instance,
with regard to the free movement of persons, from which citizens of non-Schengen
and new member states are excluded. Third, it undermines the development of a
single European political community. Rather than including citizens and giving
them full and equal ‘voice’ within the EU, it solves conflicts through the partial
‘exit’ of national communities. Finally, differentiated integration is seen to weaken
the solidarity among member states and their loyalty to the Union. By opting out
of integration or excluding members, member states exempt themselves from shar-
ing integration burdens and contributing to EU-wide convergence.
Yet these criticisms may be based on an inappropriate or unrealistic view of
European democracy and solidarity. Proponents of European ‘demoi-cracy’
(Bellamy and Kr€
oger, 2017; Cheneval and Schimmelfennig, 2013; Nicolaı¨dis,
2013) question the ideal of a single European demos, from which the sceptics of
differentiated integration appear to start. In the demoi-cratic perspective, the EU
lacks the resilient collective identity of citizens, the common public sphere, and the
transnational political organizations that characterize a demos, and it is unlikely to
develop these features in the foreseeable future. Rather, the foundations and pro-
cedures of democracy and solidarity are developed most strongly at the national
level. In this view, differentiated integration is not only tolerable as an instrument
Schraff and Schimmelfennig
593
of accommodating the diversity of national demoi, but turns into a fundamental
principle of a European demoi-cracy, in which statespeoples retain sovereignty
over decisions on entry, exit and constitutional issues of the national and
European order. By avoiding forcing states into a choice between full integration
and no integration at all, differentiated integration grants each democratic nation
the sovereign right to choose the level of integration that matches its policy pref-
erences and collective identities (Lord, 2015: 792).
We build on this demoi-cratic perspective to theorize and test an argument
about the beneficial individual-level effects of differentiated integration. We
assume that decisions to introduce or uphold opt-outs that correspond to the
national majority preference of citizens have the potential to increase the demo-
cratic legitimacy of the EU and the concomitant support of citizens for European
integration.
We study and demonstrate this effect in a quasi-experimental analysis of public
opinion around the 2015 Danish JHA opt-out referendum. In this referendum,
Danish citizens were asked whether they agreed to change the opt-out of Denmark
from EU interior policies to a case-by-case opt-in. Specifically, their approval
would have been necessary...
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