RECON Online Working Paper 2009/10
Denouncing European Integration: Euroscepticism as reactive identity formation
Hans-Jörg Trenz and Pieter de Wilde

Abstract: This paper highlights the reactionary nature of Euroscepticism, argues for understanding Euroscepticism as a discursive formation in the public sphere and points to the media as central players and amplifiers of Euroscepticism. Hans-Jörg Trenz and Pieter de Wilde argue that in order to describe the dynamics of Euroscepticism, we need to understand how the polity worth of the EU is framed in public debates and how and by whom Eurosceptic narratives are mobilized, and we need to account for the public resonance of Euroscepticism and its dynamic expansion (the public salience of Euroscepticism).

RECON Online Working Paper 2009/09
Designing Politicization: How control mechanisms in national parliaments affect parliamentary debates in EU policy-formulation
Pieter de Wilde

Abstract: In this paper, Pieter de Wilde asks how ex ante and ex post control mechanisms structuring the involvement of national parliaments in EU policy-formulation affect the size and scope of conflict of parliamentary debates. The direct and indirect effects of control mechanisms are assessed in a comparative case study on plenary parliamentary debates in the Danish Folketing and Dutch Tweede Kamer on the EU multiannual budgets, Delors II, Agenda 2000 and Financial Perspectives 2007-2013.


RECON Online Working Paper 2009/08
Explicating social action: Arguing or bargaining?
Erik Oddvar Eriksen

Abstract: In this paper it is argued that reasons and norms must be given explanatory force in social action. This requires methodological individualism expanded to methodological interactionism, where promises appear not merely as bargaining chips, arguing as more than an aggregation device and normative questions not as irrational. Because both arguing and strategic communication exist, and it is as hard to identify the former as the latter, one should not let one take precedence over the other on theoretical grounds. The problem, according to Erik O. Eriksen, is not theoretical, but methodological.

RECON Online Working Paper 2009/07
Civil society and EU constitution-making: Towards a European social constituency?
Hans-Jörg Trenz, Nadine Bernhard and Erik Jentges

Abstract: The EU constitutional process has ascribed a new role to civil society not only as a partner in governance but also as a constituent of the emerging EU polity. Hans-Jörg Trenz, Nadine Bernhard and Erik Jentges propose an analytical framework and a methodology of how to analyze civil society as 'social constituency'. The research agenda is linked to the intermediary and the representative function of organized civil society as a transmission belt of legitimatory discourse on the EU.

The RECON Online Working Paper Series is available at:
http://www.reconproject.eu/projectweb/portalproject/RECONWorkingPapers.html