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Students LAB
http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/jmecelab
senting a personal vision of a
European Parliament fit for digi-
on The Jean Monnet European Centre of EU - a space for European stu-
Excellence (http://www.leeds.ac.uk/jmce) at dents at 70 Universities to ex-
change views and ideas about
the University of Leeds Institute of Communi- how they see the European Par-
cations Studies site (http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/
liament, what their own policy
priorities are, how they think EP
index.cfm) with the following objectives: candidates do and/or should re-
late their own parties’ priorities to
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NETWORK: A lek sandrina t/ the future of the European Parlia-
my eye
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Objective 1: To encourage postgraduates
p:/ /ww w.euro ties for communicating with MEPs
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Tozeva view/31 and their own peer group, whether
and academics from different European coun-
digi-exclusion (estimated to
tries as well as from different parts of UK to cover 30% of the popula-
work together in the field of European integra- For the next academic year, The EUROPE IN tion) creates new democ-
2008/2009, JMECE LAB will launch MY EYES team ratic deficits and how these
tion. a series of events and initiatives might be overcome.
under the project “Europe in my looks forward to
Objective 2: To bring together postgraduate
Eyes”. The project has three re- welcoming you Information about the
students at the University of Leeds concerned lated elements designed (under the and your ideas EUROPE IN MY EYES and
academic guidance of the JMECE) to these exciting related projects will be dis-
with European Union issues.
to inform and encourage apprecia- projects. seminated by the JME-
tion of the role of the European CELAB under the direction
Parliament in stimulating and sus- of our team and in con-
RESEARCH: taining democratic accountability, vigi- sultation with academic staff as
Objective 3: To provide a platform for col- lance and responsiveness in the EU for appropriate. More on page 8.
the benefit of citizens.
laboration and exchange of ideas between
European Union, helping them to overcome B) Accompanying dvd made by and for
the isolation and solitude of research.
students and young people demonstrating
the relevance of an elected European
Parliament in the digi-age to shaping and
sustaining democratic accountability and
ACTIVITIES:
cross-national, multi-ethnic dialogue on
Objective 4: to invite partners to play a full common topical European themes (such
as the potential benefits to citizens of a
part in our work , including our website, meet- common consular space; mobility; and
ings, workshops, speeches, events etc. emerging policy challenges).
We draw inspiration in wanting to share our JMECE LAB at University of Leeds is highly recommended by the
European Information Network (http://www.europe.org.uk/europa/
research resources, questions and thoughts,
view/-/id/1126/), a website maintained by the European Commission
from Jean Monnet’s legendary phrase: “we
Representation in the United Kingdom, which brings together contact
do not unify countries, we unify people”. details for organisations and individuals in the United Kingdom.
Who we are
P A G E 2
1979 saw the first ever elections by direct universal suffrage to the first su-
pranational European Parliament. This was a momentous occasion. Getting
out the vote, and persuading more people to vote in Euro elections than
commonly voted in US Presidential elections challenged all concerned.
But how do you get people to vote for something they know little about? How
do you get them to vote for something lacking power? And how do you per-
suade them that doing so is significant and worthwhile when those elections
have no impact on the political colour of a government? And when no Euro-
pean level “government” as such exists?
Moreover, just because Euro elections were held did not mean that all EEC
member governments were equally enthusiastic about the prospect of such
elections. Quite the contrary. Some were concerned that elected Euro MPs
(MEPs) would eventually challenge their authority and that many of them in Some were concerned that elected Euro MPs
the meantime would simply be either less important than local councillors, (MEPs) would eventually challenge their
Euro-bores, or a nuisance.
authority and that many of them in the meantime
Worse still, when these elections took place, the Commission’s role was con- would simply be either less important than local
tested in some member states. Some wanted the Commission to be no more councillors, Euro-bores, or a nuisance.
than an administrative body, a civil service stripped of the right conferred on it
by the Rome Treaty to initiative legislation in the European common interest.
Some saw little point in giving the European Assembly the right to be elected when legislative decisions were taken by the Council
of Ministers, without reference to the majority wishes of the Euro MPs, all of whom until then were their nominees.
Others, however, wanted the occasion marked by a reasonable turnout as a symbol of democratic legitimation. All agonised over
the question of getting out the vote. All had to tread carefully to avoid upsetting national laws on political campaigns.
Without genuine transnational political parties to mobilise the electorate, steps had to be taken to inform the electorate about the
elections without simultaneously persuading voters to elect one particular candidate over another.
This was a tall order. Small units in the secretariat of the European Commission and the European Assembly accordingly had to
draft common, objective (i.e. non-ideological) neutral information leaflets to be made available throughout the member states in
more or less uniform formats, translated into the official languages and using identical illustrations. Electioneering as such was
left to national parties, with a little funding being given to the European Assembly’s party groups for similar types of information.
The result? Not the stuff to make the heart beat faster.
While the European landscape has changed dramatically since 1979, the question is whether Europe in the digi-age of online
deliberation and blogs by MEPs and Commissioners will be better able to mobilise voters than in the past.
What’s the point of Euro elections? That question was asked in the run up to the first elections to the European Parliament in
1979, and it has been asked ever since.
In 2008, the human face will not be missing as it was in much of the information material produced for the first Euro elections. But
scepticism and a lack of understanding of the genuine impact of the work of the European Parliament remains. Can elected MEPs
really “do something” to address the issues closest to the hearts of the voters?
In 1977-1979, there was a general concern that mobilising voter interest in voting would be hard for three broad reasons: (i) suspi-
cion that potential voters in the European Community’s (then nine) member states were too unaware, ill-informed or blissfully un-
concerned about the EC to be interested in turning out to vote; (ii) if they did know anything about the EC, they wouldn’t want to
bother voting for a European “Assembly” (as it was then called) that was powerless, and lacked any legislative authority;
and (iii) Euro-elections in general were a “bad thing” presaging a federal future and political union.
The importance of democratic elections, as understood in Western liberal democratic polities, to the conduct of government and to
the relationship between government and citizens adds a further frisson to Euro-elections.
Governments had assiduously avoided honouring the obligation in the Rome Treaty to elect the European Assembly by direct
universal suffrage according to a common (not uniform) electoral system (Article 138 EEC) from the inception of the EEC. They
had instead accepted national MPs being nominated to a chamber that was relatively unchallenging and devoid of genuine legis-
lative authority.
Some felt that elected Euro MPs would not accept that status. History shows that their concerns, on the latter score, to be well-
founded. Elected MEPs immediately embarked on a process of gaining legislative power and forcing the Council of Ministers to
meet openly (rather than behind closed doors) when acting in a legislative capacity.
Moreover, once citizens of the EEC were granted the first political right–to elect Members of the European Assembly/Parliament –
those MEPs championed their cause, acting as “voice of the people”.
What is surprising is that all this happened even though member governments did not strain themselves to boost public interest in
Euro-elections. Few leading government politicians engaged in political debates around the campaigns.
National MPs, too, in many member states, saw the European Assembly/Parliament as a rival to their own authority and few were
prepared to campaign vigorously to get out the vote between 1979 and from then on, with some notable exceptions.
What did this mean for “communicating Europe” to first time Euro-election voters?
1. A lack of coherence and cohesion / The preparation of campaign material for the elections was left in the hands of national
parties fielding national candidates in their own member state according to electoral rules that either mirrored or slightly amended
national general election rules from rules on voter and candidate eligibility criteria, to campaign, television and financial criteria.
2. Invisibility / It was hard to discern the quintessential Europeanness of the world’s first supranational elections to an “Assembly”
intent on being more than a mere “talking shop” in an institution (the EEC) that the Soviet Union regarded as the hostile economic
arm of NATO and the USA.
3. Unintelligibility / Levels of knowledge and awareness about the EEC were low and even lower regarding the existence let
alone role of MEPs.. The question was how to get the vote out. Since the European Parliament’s nominated outgoing members
had claimed that Euro elections were essential to boost the EEC’s democratic legitimacy (and with it their quest for legislative
authority and executive accountability), getting as high a turnout as possible was seen as important. It still is, thirty years later.
The situation was not helped by the lack of coherent organisation, funding
or sense of purpose among the politicians contesting the elections. Logos
and manifestoes had to be agreed and written.
The newly emerging transnational parties had no voice as such in the Euro-
pean Assembly’s “party groups” but were responsible nonetheless for get-
ting voters out in the member states because only the component national
parties could campaign there. Their membership was not uniform.
The Confederation of Socialist Parties was disparate and found the concept Campaigns were off-limits. Their role was therefore to
of agreeing a common manifesto so problematic that it had many footnotes
inform the public when the elections were to take place
exempting different parties from specific sections (origins of the opt-outs).
The European Liberal and Democratic Group comprised strong European and advise them that those eligible to vote in national
integrationists and strange right-wingers but managed to create a common elections would be eligible to vote in the Euro election.
platform. The French and Italian communists disagreed too much to do so.
In 1979, the main political groupings inside the European assembly were reflected in these groups but they were distinct from
them – something that did not add to campaign or programmatic coherence. (turn the page)
ISSUE 2 P A G E 6
5. Invisible and unintelligible / In 1977, the EEC Commission was a far smaller outfit, ill-suited to the role of producing infor-
mation material to mobilise people to go and elect MPs. Indeed, that was not in its remit. The most it was equipped (and
allowed by governments) to do was produce anondyne, “neutral” information in all official EC languages by way of “information”
about policy areas. Campaigns were off-limits. Their role was therefore to inform the public when the elections were to take
place and advise them that those eligible to vote in national elections would be eligible to vote in the Euro election.
Devoid of the usual spin and ideological rhetoric, which could be seen as “influencing” the outcome, the material that met the
criteria of neutral, objective information came to be presented in “safe” ways.
For example, real people could not be used even to show voting. A logo — hand placing ballot paper in box — was ac-
cepted instead. In Ireland, where (unlike in the UK) television advertising for a political event was far less problematic, even the
animated image of a man walking to put his ballot slip into a ballot box had to be replaced by a sugar cube doing the same.
In Britain, newspaper advertisements advising people when the Euro election was being held (on a different day to the majority
of EC states) was written. It was informative, dense, dull and the same text was used regardless of whether it was to be located
in a broadsheet or tabloid…in either case, it did not feature prominently. Nor did colour.
The more pro-EC states allowed greater imagination. In Belgium, Picasso’s famous dove of peace was adapted as a rain-
bow dove emanating from a stylised “E” (significantly associated with the “e” of European movement federalism and adapted
too by the pro-integrationist centre European People’s Party (comprising mainly Christian democrats).
Ten years later, things had improved in terms of candidate and voter eligibility criteria, campaign funding and the use of more
visually attractive material in many member states. But twenty and thirty years on politicians ask the same questions. In
2009, we will see whether the new technologies and e-spaces for exchanging views affect voter turnout in those states where
voting is not compulsory.
In the run-up to June 2009, what, if any, images will come to symbolise European democratic commitment and endeavour?
And can the Euro elections embody a sense of common purpose and identity?
Network research has now become one of the hottest trends in Political Science (and in the rest of the social sciences). Schol-
ars are now dealing with the study of all kinds of relationships: between people (e.g. representatives and their constituents),
between people and organisations (e.g. the website http://www.theyrule.net/ eloquently shows how the same few individuals sit
on the boards of companies one would think unrelated), between people and objects (e.g. members of parliament sponsoring
the same legislation), and between all kinds of collective entities (e.g. trade among companies or among countries). “The actors
of the system can vary, but the key [in network research] is the relationship among individuals”, Lazer noted.
Tapping the state of research in political networks was the main goal of the Harvard Conference on Networks in Political Sci-
ence, held on 13 and 14 June 2008 at the JFK School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Initially conceived as a
small symposium for political scientists, the feedback to the call for participation (over 200 submissions from disciplines across
the social sciences) exceeded all expectations. The two-day conference was preceded by two days of workshop sessions
on network analysis software applications. My poster presentation, which explained how a combination of network analysis
and ethnography can help reveal the reasons behind the so-called European communications gap, was one among the nearly
80 poster presentations shown at the event. Robert Huckfeldt, a professor in Political Science from the University of California-
Davis and one of the pioneers in the study of political networks, closed the conference with a keynote address titled
“Interdependence, density dependence, and networks: Observational challenges for political analysis.”
The European Union is arguably one of the finest examples of networked governance, hence the presence at the conference of
researchers studying policy networks in the EU. Paul Thurner, from the University of Munich, explained how network methodol-
ogy can be applied to policy analysis by taking examples from his own research on EU policy networks at the 1996 Intergovern-
mental Conference.
After the success of the event, the conference organisers are now exploring how to keep the “momentum” going. A new section
on political networks within the American Political Science Association was one of the initiatives suggested. Whatever its institu-
tional form, presenters and attendees agreed on the need of continuing to share their common interest on politics and net-
works. “This is a great moment to be alive”, said James Fowler, professor of Political Science at the University of California-San
Diego and one of the co-organisers of the event. In his view, science is about to experience a kind of Copernican Revolution.
His own research is crossing the disciplinary borders thanks to his focus on networks. A paper of his co-authorship made the
headlines in The New York Times last Summer, giving new insights to public health researchers: Obesity can spread like a
virus from friend to friend. That is, we are more likely to become obese if one of our friends becomes obese. (http://
tinyurl.com/5v8bet)
The network perspective, the study of relationships, could become a new scientific paradigm, a new way of seeing the world
around us. Biologists are now researching how proteins interact with each other, very much like a sociologist would pay atten-
tion to who relates with whom in a given organisation or social setting. Networks were there since the beginning of times,
but somehow we have overlooked them for quite a long time. The pervasiveness of the Internet might have had its role in the
current awakening. “The Internet is a powerful metaphor”, said David Lazer. Indeed, for Facebook users is easy to understand
that our life is about networks.
P A G E 8
Research Interests:
C O N T A C T
Stergios MAVRIKIS governance
Institute of Communications Studies
• European Citizenship
Houldsworth Building
University of Leeds • European Citizens – European Netizens
Leeds • Enlargement
LS2 9JT, UK • The Lisbon treaty
• European democratic/communication Deficits
Mob: +44 (0) 7900116588 D E T AI L S • Multiculturalism
Fax: +44 (0) 113 343 5808 • Europeanism
eMail: cla7sm@leeds.ac.uk • European history, politics, law and business
• Post-national identities / supranational identities
Website: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/jmce/ • European public sphere(s)
Forum: http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/pdp/index.cfm (at the moment • European audiovisual policy
available only to the members of JMECE LAB) • European public opinion
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php? • European Communication Polyglotism
gid=22750100523 • EU internal and external security, liberty and free
dom.