From the rule of law to the rule of rules: technocracy and the crisis of EU governance

Scicluna, Nicole; Auer, Stefan

doi:10.1080/01402382.2019.1584843

Cited by 32 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…5). These moves were and are strongly contested, not just within the affected societies but also among integration-wary circles in domestic politics, as indicated by the repeated complaints raised by the German Constitutional Court between 2015 and 2020 (Scicluna & Auer, 2019). Given this combination of executive self-empowerment and growing political contestation, an executive actor following the emergency politics script should uphold its public emergency emphasis even if the immediate crisis pressures wanewhich is consistent with the aggregated communication patterns that we see here.…”

Section: Emergency Emphasis In the Public Communication Of European Executivessupporting

confidence: 69%

“…Kreuder-Sonnen and White ( 2021) themselves stress that policies are only one side of emergency politics. Equally constitutive of emergency politics are executives' attempts to cultivate the crisis nature of the circumstances to then rationalize their measures in the light of the proclaimed emergency (see also Scicluna & Auer, 2019). Especially such communicative behaviour should help distinguish functionalist accounts from emergency politics, or crisis management from crisis exploitation.…”

Section: Observing Emergency Politics Through Executives' Public Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Supranational emergency politics? What executives’ public crisis communication may tell us

Rauh

2021

Journal of European Public Policy

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This contribution engages with the empirical analysis of emergency politics in the EU, arguing that executives' public communication helps to distinguish crisis management from crisis exploitation. An initial, descriptive text analysis of emergency emphasis in more than 19,000 executive speeches suggests that supranational actors, most notably the European Central Bank, do indeed use rather alarmist language over and beyond objective crisis pressures when their competences are contested. Yet, this behaviour does not appear to be a ubiquitous phenomenon, pointing to the need for more specific expectations on when and why EU executives pro-actively embark on the emergency politics script.

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Section: Emergency Emphasis In the Public Communication Of European Executivessupporting

confidence: 69%

Section: Observing Emergency Politics Through Executives' Public Communicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Supranational emergency politics? What executives’ public crisis communication may tell us

Rauh

2021

Journal of European Public Policy

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“…A technical view of the EU accession process, therefore, has compromised the underpinnings of postcommunist states' European integration at large, and questioned the EU's objective of forging a functioning political community of interdependent states, not sovereign national communities (Scicluna and Auer 2019;Kochenov and De Ridder 2011). In the past, the EU's promotion of citizen equality has gone beyond a shared view of financial discipline and economic cooperation, ensuring independence of political and judicial institutions.…”

Section: Postcommunist State-society Compactmentioning

confidence: 99%

The (not so) surprising longevity of identity politics: contemporary challenges of the state-society compact in Central Eastern Europe

Agarin

2020

East European Politics

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The article argues that across the East European region ongoing uncertainty about the nature of the state-society compact is central to continuous relevance of "national" in politics. This compact defines who owns the state and who is to benefits from its current form. Since postcommunist nation-state-building was as much about the exclusion of some residents from the political community as it was about limiting states' reliance on thick political ideologies, "national identity" remains at the heart of postcommunist politics. This foundational exclusion also offers considerable insights for comparison of the causes, effects and challenges of identity politics in wider Europe.

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“…The cumulative effect of these logics is worryingly undemocratic. Major policy changes (for example, the creation of the permanent bailout fund, or the expansion of the ECB's mandate) are first justified by reference to exceptional circumstances, and then embedded via an insistence on the importance of following the rules (Scicluna and Auer 2019).…”

Section: The Crisis Of Borderless Europementioning

confidence: 99%

Merkel's Germany and the European Union: Between Emergency and the Rule of Rules

Auer¹

2019

Gov. & oppos.

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The European Union is caught between technocracy and the politics of the exception, eroding in the process the very political sphere that makes democracy work. Partly a cause of this erosion and partly an effect, the EU retreats into the ‘rule of rules’ when faced with what are, in fact, profoundly political problems. Whether it be in response to the eurozone crisis, EU–Russia–Ukraine relations or the influx of refugees, the EU's policies led to conflicts over geopolitics, sovereignty and redistribution. Its apolitical responses were as ubiquitous as they were inadequate. They reflect Germany's preference for consensual politics, which is paradoxically enforced by Angela Merkel's dictum about there being ‘no alternative’. In order to think of alternatives to the Europe that exists, we need to revive ‘the political’, theorized by the likes of Carl Schmitt, Max Weber and Hannah Arendt at times when democracy was under duress.

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From the rule of law to the rule of rules: technocracy and the crisis of EU governance

Cited by 32 publications

References 40 publications

Supranational emergency politics? What executives’ public crisis communication may tell us

Supranational emergency politics? What executives’ public crisis communication may tell us

The (not so) surprising longevity of identity politics: contemporary challenges of the state-society compact in Central Eastern Europe

Merkel's Germany and the European Union: Between Emergency and the Rule of Rules

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