Saying `Maybe' to the `Return to Europe'
| Author | Gwendolyn Sasse,James Hughes,Claire Gordon |
| DOI | 10.1177/1465116502003003003 |
| Published date | 01 September 2002 |
| Date | 01 September 2002 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Saying ‘Maybe’ to the ‘Return
To Europe’
Elites and the Political Space for
Euroscepticism in Central and Eastern
Europe
James Hughes
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Gwendolyn Sasse
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
Claire Gordon
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK
ABSTRACT
A major challenge for EU enlargement is how to communi-
cate the benefits of membership to electorates. Given the
weak penetration of party systems in the Central and East
European countries, subnational elites have an important
role in shaping voter preferences. Attitudes among subna-
tional elites to EU enlargement are examined in three
leading candidate countries in Central and Eastern Europe:
Hungary, Slovenia, and Estonia. The results are based on
large-scale elite interviews conducted in 1999–2000 in key
regional cities. The research demonstrates that subnational
elites are disengaged not only structurally from the Euro-
pean integration project, since the negotiations involve the
Commission and national governments, but also in their
opinions. The subnational elites tend to view EU member-
ship as a national issue and irrelevant for their level, and are
poorly informed about EU activities that benefit them. The
article suggests that this disengagement of subnational
elites constitutes a space for the mobilization of Euroscepti-
cism from below.
327
European Union Politics
[1465-1165(200209)3:3]
Volume 3 (3): 327–355: 026078
Copyright© 2002
SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks CA,
New Delhi
KEY WORDS
EU enlargement
Euroscepticism
elites
parties
regions
Introduction
The debates about the process of enlargement of the European Union in
Central and Eastern Europe take the existence of a profound commitment
among national elites in the candidate countries to the ‘return to Europe’ as
a basic assumption (Grabbe and Hughes, 1998). There is also an empirically
rich data set from the Central and Eastern Eurobarometers of 1990–7 that
informs us of the consistent popular support for accession, though there are
indications of a trend for decreasing support over time during the 1990s. This
downward trend became more pronounced in the period 1997–2001. Recent
research correlates this change with a rise in Euroscepticism, some of which
is mirrored in party developments (Cichowski, 2000; Szczerbiak, 2001). Party-
based Euroscepticism in Central and Eastern Europe, however, has so far been
a ‘voice’ option that has had limited success in elections. Euroscepticism is a
spectrum that ranges from the ‘soft’, characterized by discontent at the asym-
metries of power in the way that the process of EU enlargement has worked,
to the ‘hard’, which involves outright opposition to membership (Taggart and
Szczerbiak, 2001a: 11). The ‘negotiations’ over membership have been one of
the driving forces behind the mobilization of Euroscepticism because they
have tended to consist of the imposition of EU conditionalities, many of which
are often perceived to accentuate the inherent tensions between transition and
enlargement objectives, and to contravene the national interests of the candi-
date Central and East European countries (CEECs). There is an apparent gap
between the behaviour and attitudes of the ‘pro-Europe’ national elites who
are pushing ahead with EU accession, on the one hand, and rising levels of
Euroscepticism among the public opinion of some applicant countries, on the
other.
The generally weak institutional and societal penetration of democratic
party systems in post-communist states is well established in several key
studies (Mair, 1997; Kitschelt et al., 1999). This suggests that we need to look
beyond the national level to other agents and structures that may mediate
between the centre and public opinion in the shaping of views on the
European Union. Moreover, there is a missing level of analysis between
studies of the national elites and public opinion, namely, the extent of support
for or opposition to EU accession among subnational elites. The research pre-
sented here examines attitudes to the EU and enlargement among subnational
elites in three leading candidate countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
Local and regional elites are important for two key reasons. First, they
are likely to exercise a potentially critical role as institutional gatekeepers,
opinion formers, and/or mediators between national elites and their agendas
and local communities, a role that will be accentuated when referendums are
European Union Politics 3(3)
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