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This article contributes to the debate on domestic politicisation of EU issues by suggesting hitherto overlooked explanation of (non)politicisation. This paper uses Czechia as an intriguing case in which the mainstream explanations of a low level of domestic politicisation of EU issues do not apply. The Czech case illustrates that, first, even in the context of high public Euroscepticism, EU issues do not necessarily become politicised, particularly so when the public does not consider them to be important. Second, high politicisation does not occur when there is a path dependency of a mismatch between positions of political parties and significant parts of their electorates on EU issues. Finally, the rise of catch-all populist parties prevents a high level of politicisation of EU issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Euroscepticism is frequently presented as a key ideological feature of far right parties, however, this definition masks important variations between them. This paper argues that far right positions on Europe are characterized by long-standing ambivalence rather than straightforward opposition. While far right parties frequently oppose the EU, ideological flexibility, the malleability of European integration and the protean nature of Europe also lead them to display support towards certain aspects of it and towards Europe as a civilization. The argument is illustrated through a qualitative analysis of the party literature of the Movimento Sociale Italiano and the Front National. The analysis shows that these parties conceived of Europe as an identity, a space of liberty, an endangered heritage and a construction where national interests must be defended. In each theme, they offered ambivalent readings of Europe, oscillating between opposition and support depending on how Europe and the EU were defined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU has become increasingly politicized not only at the bottom, due to polarized debates, divided electorates, declining mainstream parties, and rising Euroskeptic populism; or from the bottom up, as national politics permeates member-state leaders' positions in the Council. It has also emerged purely at the top, in the increasingly politically charged dynamics of interaction within and among EU actors. Such politicization involves struggles for power and influence that are ideational as much as institutional and coercive. Current theorists of EU integration, because of their tendency to focus on only one or another EU actor have overlooked the EU's politicized dynamics, even though their accounts, taken together, provide ample evidence of it. The article shows that the EU has gone from what was once metaphorically described with the catchphrase of 'politics without policy' at the national level to 'politics against policy' in more contentious areas, whereas at the EU level it has moved from 'policy without politics' to 'politics with policy'. The paper illustrates with the cases of the Council and the Commission in the Eurozone crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Euroscepticism has been a persistent part of the European integration process over the last several decades (Usherwood and Startin [2013]. Euroscepticism as a persistent phenomenon. JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, 51, 1–16). Scholars have proposed various theories to explain resistance to integration by drawing upon economic, political and cultural theories. In this paper, I ask whether Euroscepticism is a by-product of rural–urban divisions, which influences one's perception of the economy, one's trust of transnational politics and one's cultural identity. However, geographical variables have never been tested in the presence of these more well-established Euroscepticism predictors. Here, I use the European Social Survey to compare the predictive power of economic, political, cultural and geographical variables on two forms of Euroscepticism: trust in European Parliament and the belief that integration has gone too far. Multilevel mixed-effects regression models demonstrate that trust in the European Parliament is indeed higher in big cities, but overall, place of residence is not a strong predictor of Euroscepticism. Among other theories, I find that cultural variables are more meaningful than economics or politics. I finally conclude with a discussion of the EU's future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent Eurozone crisis and the outbreak of political and populist Euroscepticism pose an unprecedented challenge to advocates of the post-war ‘Idea of Europe’. In the United Kingdom and France, some of the most eloquent and impassioned defences of ‘Europe’ have been penned by Jewish intellectuals. The historian Walter Laqueur, the philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy and journalists such as David Aaronovich, for example, have all rallied to the cause of ‘Europe’. This article will focus on the responses of Robert Menasse and Henryk Broder, two Jewish intellectuals from Austria and Germany, who have recently published powerful reflections on the European idea. Menasse’s polemic of 2012,Der Europäische Landbote(The European Courier), defends the idea of Europe as a ‘Friedensprojekt’, or ‘peace project’, and the European Union as an institutional antidote to the destructive power of nationalism and the self-interest of the nation-state. Broder’s bestselling book of 2013,Die letzten Tage Europas: Wie wir eine gute Idee versenken(The Last Days of Europe: How we are Scuppering a Good Idea), embraces ‘European values’ but launches a critique of a European Union which stifles pluralism and critical debate. This paper analyses how Menasse and Broder define the idea of ‘Europe’ and argues that, despite their differences, in form and content, the work of Menasse and Broder draws on a common tradition of enlightened cosmopolitanism as well as informs the renewed academic debate in the humanities and social sciences about the place of ‘cosmopolitanism’ in our global world. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper seeks to apply the relevance of Euroscepticism literature to the study of radical left party outlooks on European integration and by doing so: (1) outlines general patterns of opposition to European integration, by 11 radical left parties that are housed in the European United Left/Nordic Green Left group of the European Parliament, in the 1990s and beyond; (2) assesses the congruence between the outlooks of these parties or the lack thereof; and (3) illuminates the factors conditioning these outlooks by addressing the ideology-strategy debate. To this end, the paper employs two, widely referenced and historically relevant, analytical frameworks of party-based Euroscepticism (by Paul Taggart and Aleks Szczerbiak, and by Petr Kopecky and Cas Mudde), and applies them to the radical left as a whole and its various sub-sets, as identified by the literature so far. The analysis leads to the following three findings. First, a moderating approach can be observed on average, thus leading to an increase in overall congruence. Second, congruence increases slightly, as we move towards a more specific typology but overall no systematic congruence is to be found in the radical left as a whole or most of its sub-sets, in the period examined. Third, while ideology carries causal weight, strategy appears more prominent as a conditioning factor of outlooks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a long time, Italy has been traditionally described as one of the strongest pro-European countries. Italians' general discontent for domestic politicians and institutions seemed initially to amplify these sentiments, indicating in the European Union (EU) the solution to the atavist deficiencies of the Italian political system. Since the beginning of the 2000s, support for Europe, especially at the mass level, started to decrease. This situation became more evident when the effects of the world financial and economic crisis invaded the political debate. The first aim of this special issue is to understand and explain the new counter-trend in Italian sceptic sentiments towards the EU. In particular, this issue presents six different papers focusing on: Italian public support for the EU, the image of Europe in the national press, the Euroscepticism of radical right parties and movements, the relationship between attitudes towards Europe and voting turnout, and the effects of two crucial issues – corruption and immigration – on attitudes towards European institutions. The studies presented confirm the importance of considering the context of each member-state and each national scenario. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article aims at contributing to the ongoing academic debate about European integration. It stresses the need for an interdisciplinary approach rooted in history and political science. The argument is twofold. Most of the existing literature overlooks the historical dimension of contention over the making of Europe and implicitly makes it a contemporary phenomenon defined as Euroscepticism. This, it is argued, has led to some major analytical deadlocks. Consequently, it is necessary to reframe the debate through the notion of resistances to Europe. Resistances can be defined as manifestations of hostility towards one (or several) aspect(s) of European integration perceived as a threat with respect to one's values. This notion, this paper suggests, is particularly adequate to the study of past and present contention over European integration, which is highlighted with various empirical examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]