Rediscovering Europe in the Netherlands - St Antony's College ...

diagnosis
2.3.2 the traditional legitimisation method under pressure
End of the permissive consensus
For a long time, the ‘permissive consensus’ of a majority of Western Europeans
with respect to the positive results of the European integration
process and the active involvement of this small elite circle matched the
observations of neo-functionalists like Ernst Haas and intergovernmentalists
like Andrew Moravcsik. They claimed that the elite representatives
of functional and sectoral interest groups were the driving forces behind
the process of European integration. Their ‘elite perspective’ is based on
three assumptions:
1. The European public has such a superficial vision of European integration
that this does not provide a stable incentive structure for political
parties to take a position on European issues;
2. For most European citizens, European integration is of virtually no
interest. What interest there is, is restricted to business, farmer and
other functional groups;
3. European issues are by definition unique and ‘sui generis’. As a result,
they are not connected with the basic conflicts that dominate normal
adversarial political life in Western democracies.
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In contrast to the intergovernmentalists, the neo-functionalists predicted
that this one-sided involvement of the elites in Europe would be only
temporary. Ultimately a process of politicisation would emerge, which
would draw the European public into the European political arena.
Thanks to the positive results of European integration, that public
would also increasingly begin to identify with the eu (Hooghe and Marks
2005a).
Experience since the early 1990s, however, suggest that the traditional
method of output legitimisation has come under increasing pressure.
At the same time, it has become clear that the assumptions of the ‘elite
perspective’ are also no longer tenable. In accordance with the predictions
of the neo-functionalists, there has indeed been a rapid politicisation
of key European issues, but this has by no means led to unambiguous support
for and identification with the eu by the citizens of Europe. On the
contrary, opinion polls carried out for Eurobarometer surveys suggest
that support for eu membership and confidence in the benefits of eu membership
have declined among the citizens of eu member states since 1992
(see graph 2.1). Although there are differences in levels of support between
the eu member states (cpb and scp 2007: 9). How can this change be
explained?