Depoliticized policies, depoliticized citizens? The politicization of the EU: A policy-centered perspective

Dupuy, Claire [Sciences Po Grenoble] Van Ingelgom, Virginie [UCL]

The EU may get more politicized (in the sense of salience, polarization and extension of actors, see de Wilde and Zürn, 2012; de Wilde, Leupold and Schmidtke, 2016) but also, and mostly, acts as an agent of depoliticization, along with other institutions at the EU and domestic level (Hay, 2007; Papadopoulos, 2013; Wood and Flinders, 2014). We suggest to go one step further than the existing literature that suggests that economic voting may be decreasing in times of globalization (Hellwig, 2008; Lobo and Lewis-Beck, 2012) or that citizens are increasingly aware of their government’s limited autonomy when facing external constraints (Ruiz Rufino and Alonso, 2017). This paper argues that EU policy, in particular in the social and economic realms, its media coverage at the national level and national politicians’ usages of Europe, depoliticize economic and social issues. Specifically, EU policy preferred options are framed not only as being beyond the reach of national governments and politicians, but also, and more importantly, without alternative (Dupuy and Van Ingelgom, 2015; Karremans, 2017). While denying choice, these depoliticized policies, in return, feedback citizens’ attitudes toward politics in general. This paper therefore intends to bring in (EU) public policy in the analysis of citizens’ disaffection towards politics in contemporary Western Europe. At the most general level, it contends that citizens’ growing disregard for politics is partly an outcome of policy changes and changes in state structures and administrations. Thereby, the paper articulates changes at the macro level to changes at the individual level.