Suchergebnisse

Based on a pilot study of online news making and commenting in Denmark, the article discusses the relationship between online political news making and democracy. Empirical insights on the dynamics of user engagement and debates on mainstream Danish online news platforms are used to delineate the contours of the online public sphere. It is argued that the new digital media should be discussed not only as a new forum for political participation but also in relation to traditional forms of representative democracy. The analysis comprises the technical features and apps that are designed by online news providers in Denmark to facilitate the constitution of new "voice publics". How these voice publics are designed as an element of news making and news distribution and, as such, linked to the old "representative" and "attentive publics" of news consumption is investigated.

The mediatization of politics is generally explained in relation to the legitimacy requirements of the modern state and as such, it is typically confined to the national media sphere. Can we speak in any meaningful way of mediatization beyond the national? The European Union (EU), which operates under increasing legitimacy constraints and is exposed to the salience of media debates that contest its public legitimacy, is a case in point. Is the EU becoming mediatized? And what are the effects of EU mediatization? Under what conditions can the mass media become a facilitator of European integration? The issue at stake is whether the media (new and old) can have an integration function beyond the national and facilitate the building of democratic legitimacy of the European Union. We propose that the concept of mediatization offers the theoretical and analytical tools necessary to understand precisely how the interaction between the EU polity and the media unfolds and how it impacts on the process of the EU's public legitimation. First we deliver a general account of mediatization, highlighting its core definers and main points of critique that the concept has attracted. We then show how mediatization is relevant to the EU pol­ity and propose an analytical model that can capture this process empirically

The article maps new developments in the interdisciplinary research field of European civil society. From the angle of the reconstitution of democracy in the EU, it reviews recent contributions from political science, sociology and law. All share the concern with the pervading empowerment of the institutions of European multi-level governance. But each approaches the question of the democratizing and legitimizing potential of civil society beyond the state from a different vantage point, indicating competing conceptions of European civil society that draw on deliberative, participatory or representative democratic norms. It is argued that the EU-constitutional experience has sharpened the ambivalence between top down activating or "partnership" approaches vs. bottom up mobilizing or "social constituency" approaches to the construction of European civil society. These new tensions in the concept of a European civil society are currently manifested in the upholding of its civic-cosmopolitan promises and a more nuanced view of its contentious role against uncivil practices.

This paper applies a normative democratic perspective on European constitutional politics to the analysis of discursive practices related to the crisis of the "Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe" (TCE), in the aftermath of the failed referenda. Starting from three distinct logics of constitutionalisation, we ask whether and in which ways EU constitutional politics has interacted with the general public sphere. In terms of constitution politics, did the national mass media basically ignore the European dimension, and fail to take the debate beyond the national state? Or did they closely represent deliberations that went on during the "reflection period," and present the various reasons for and against this joint agreement designed to get the EU out of its impasse? And, moreover, did they represent social contentions and enhance the diversity of interests and identities involved in the constitutional crisis debates in the run up to the Lisbon Reform Treaty? To answer these questions, we will use the methodology of comparative discourse analysis and a data set covering constitutional media debates from May 2005 - June 2007 in 14 EU member and candidate countries.

"Norwegen hat mehrfach um die Mitgliedschaft in der Europäischen Gemeinschaft nachgesucht. In den Sechzigerjahren scheiterte die Aufnahme des Landes in die Europäische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft (EWG) am Veto Frankreichs. 1972 und zuletzt 1994 votierte die norwegische Bevölkerung gegen eine Mitgliedschaft in der EU. Vor dem Referendum 1994 trat Norwegen dem Europäischen Wirtschaftsraum (EWR) bei, einem zwischenstaatlichen Abkommen der EU- und EFTA-Mitglieder. Mit dem erneuten Negativvotum des norwegischen Volkes ist das EWR-Abkommen - so die These von Ulf Svetdrup und Hans-Jörg Trenz - zu einer Dauerlösung geworden, das zwar eine enge Verflechtung Norwegens mit der EU rechtlich kodifiziert, eine Vollmitgliedschaft aber vorläufig ausschließt. Wenn auch die Kooperation zwischen Norwegen und der EU zum wechselseitigen Vorteil gereicht, ist eine Gleichberechtigung der Partner des EWR-Abkommens nicht gegeben. In der politischen Praxis zeigt sich eine deutliche Dominanz der EU, die den EWR-Staaten rechtliche Standards diktiert. Norwegen ist ein 'gehorsamer Rechtsumsetzer' und will seine enge Beziehung zur EU nicht gefährden. Der Status dieser 'halben Mitgliedschaft' wird anhalten, weil das kontroverse Thema einer EU-Mitgliedschaft derzeit im politischen und öffentlichen Diskurs in Norwegen gemieden wird. Norwegen - so das Fazit des Beitrags - hat sich in seiner peripheren Außenseiterposition recht gut eingerichtet." (Autorenreferat)

The riddle of how to democratize the multi-level polity of the EU is answered by pointing to the empirical impact of an unfolding European public sphere. It is argued that there is a self-constituting dynamic of a European public sphere which abets the coupling of transnational spaces of communication with the institutional integration of the EU. From this perspective, democracy is not external to the EU, it is already part of the logic of European institution-building and governance and is fostered by collective learning processes in which definitions of the collective good as well as conditions for appropriate forms of political participation are negotiated. In discussing the case of the EU's constitutional reform, a theory of democratic functionalism is proposed which accounts for this specific form of democratization of the EU.

This book discusses the extent to which the theoreticalrelevance and analytical rigor of the concept of the public sphere is affected bycurrent processes of transnationalization. The contributions address fundamentalquestions concerning the viability of a socially and politically effective publicsphere in a post-Westphalian world.