Cultures of states and informal governance in the EU: an exploratory study of elites, power and identity

Socializing Democratic Norms

“…Indeed, precisely such a bifurcation has been observed by Maxine Isaacs (1998) as the formulation of opinions about American foreign policy by American elites and masses can be said to involve entirely different reference points and logics (Stiles, 2003: 3). This corresponds well with the view put forward by Ulf Hedetoft (2003), who has suggested that it is possible to identify a 'state culture' as well as the widely accepted 'political culture'. This is despite the fact that 'state culture' has not traditionally been seen as a separate analytical concept, basically because the state and its actors (the elite) are not supposed to close culturally around themselves, but are supposed to operate within the overall 'political culture', representing the nation.…”

“…Accordingly, the focus of the analysis that follows is less on pinpointing the efforts of particular international actors in relation to Russia and more on the domestic structures and their embrace of these new developmental dynamics. I shall follow the analytical distinction into a nation/people level of popular political culture and the state/elite level of governmental or 'state political culture' (Hedetoft, 2003;Flockhart, this volume) with the aim of portraying Russia's overall development towards democracy. At the same time, however, it is also the basic axiom of this contribution that Russia's sheer territorial vastness and great power structure will limit the impact and power of external actors upon domestic developments in Russia compared to the small or medium state empirical cases of out-groups 1, 3 and 4 actors within this volume, a topic I shall return to shortly.…”

European policymaking on the tobacco advertising ban: the importance of escape routes

“…A proposal without a broad consensus can therefore 'still be blocked by intergovernmental haggling over the precise content' (Scharpf, 2000: 18-19). According to Héritier (1999), because of this consensus-forcing nature, combined with the diversity of actors' interests and the redistributive elements of many EU policy decisions, most policy processes would indeed result in deadlock, were it not for the creative use of institutions and informal strategies to overcome structural inertia and to facilitate the dynamics needed to accelerate integration (Héritier, 1999;Hedetoft, 2003). Political impasses can thus be circumvented through various escape routes 'that make Europe work' (Héritier, 1999: 1).…”

Critical Junctures and Social Identity Theory: Explaining the Gap between Danish Mass and Elite Attitudes to Europeanization

“…In that sense it seems unproblematic to conceptualize the nation or 'the people' as a social group. In the case of the elite in Denmark, however, the issue is not as clear, as it seems that the Danish elite, overall, does not conceive of itself as a distinct social group, probably because Denmark is an anti-elitist society, where people who objectively do belong to the elite nevertheless are likely to cast themselves as quite ordinary people (Hedetoft, 2003). It is therefore not possible to conceptualize the overall Danish elite as a social group, since membership appears unlikely to be emotionally significant to individual members.…”