The Eurozone crisis and citizen engagement in EU affairs

Introduction: the differentiated politicisation of European governance

“…These findings are underlined with a view to the politicisation of European governance among European citizens in Baglioni and Hurrelmann's (2015) study of laypeople -a perspective largely understudied in the current literature (but see Stoeckel 2013;Van Ingelgom 2014). While parliamentarians and actors present in mass media seem to have picked up European governance as a controversial issue, citizens do not appear to follow this development swiftly.…”

“…It may be indicated by the number of newspaper articles reporting on European governance (e.g. Grande and Hutter 2015;Hoeglinger 2015;Leupold 2015;Schmidtke 2015), how 'aware' citizens are of the existence of the EU, its institutions and policies and how worried they are about EU politics (Baglioni and Hurrelmann 2015), by the amount of public statements party representatives dedicate to EU issues in national election campaigns (Hoeglinger 2015) or by the number of parliamentary questions devoted to EU issues (Wonka 2015).…”

“…Only if we know whether conflict is organised around the legitimacy of the Union itself or around day-to-day EU decision-making does it become possible to gauge the effects of politicisation. The contributions to this volume reveal that politicisation objects vary substantially across settings: Baglioni and Hurrelmann (2015) and Hoeglinger (2015) show that citizens as well as parties in electoral campaigns focus mainly on the polity as politicisation object. For these settings, Mair might be right because politicisation appears to be mainly organised in terms of principled opposition to or support for the EU as a whole.…”

“…To them, the EU is an extension of the nation-state, not an alternative. Baglioni and Hurrelmann (2015) address the question of citizens' attribution of responsibility in the Euro crisis. Their findings imply that the EU is not considered responsible for the crisis.…”

“…Domestic polarisation may stimulate democratic legitimacy at the national level, but limits it at the European level, if it does not manifest in all member states equally. The contributions by Baglioni and Hurrelmann (2015) and Leupold (2015), moreover, highlight that the dominant focus on conflicting national demands results in an empowerment of national political institutions, particularly national governments. This could result in the EU taking on a more pronounced intergovernmental nature.…”