Abstract
During the 1990s, observers from various backgrounds began to point to a resurgence of ‘national interests’ in the public statements of European political leaders. This resulted in speculation about a possible paradigm shift in attitudes towards the European project and the mechanisms underlying the European Union (EU). In particular, analysts and witnesses of European politics feared the undermining of a culture of consensus1 which had carried the European project throughout the Cold War years.2 Concerns about a ‘Thatcherisation’ of European politics grew as discourses of ‘national interest’ appeared not only in member states known for their caution towards the European Union like Britain, but also in France and Germany where even apparently convinced Europeans such as Joschka Fischer began to draw on the notion of ‘national interest’.3 Especially in Germany, where Helmut Kohl was leaving the Chancellorship after 16 years in office, renewed emphasis on ‘national interests’ combined with the uncertainties of generational transition to amplify concerns about the country’s post-Cold War European and international role.4
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Notes
Torreblanca, J., ‘Accommodating Interests and Principles in the European Union: The Case of Eastern Enlargement’, in Sjursen, H. (ed.), Enlargement and the Finality of the EU, Oslo, ARENA Report No 7, 2002, p. 20.
To quote but a few examples, Jean-Louis Quermonne, a professor of political science and founding member of Notre Europe, a think tank established under the impulsion of Jacques Delors to promote closer Union between the people of Europe, complained that the European Council increasingly resembled a diplomatic conference confronting the member states’ ‘national interests’ (Quermonne, J.-L., L’Europe en quête de légitimité, Paris, Presses de Science Po, 2001, p. 61); Luxembourg’s long-standing Prime Minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, observed following the Brussels European Council meeting of December 2003 which failed to agree on the Draft Constitutional Treaty that ‘the national interest seems more important than the European interest’ (‘L’Europe empêtrée dans les crises’, Bruxelles, Agence France Presse, 26.12.2003); Henri de Bresson, Le Monde’s Europe correspondent, wrote in June 2003 that Germany’s and France’s post-Nice reconciliation ‘conveyed the feeling that the two countries were trying to align their power political interests rather than to propose a true project for the future of the European Union open to as many as possible’ (de Bresson, H., ‘Commentaire: Un défi pour Paris et Berlin’, Le Monde, 6.6.2003, p. 6); to quote a last example, The Economist, also in June 2003, derided ‘what could be more Anglo-chauvinist than a prime minister who constantly frames his vision of Euro membership and European integration in terms of Britain’s “winning argument”?’ (‘Britain and the Euro, Can They be serious?’, The Economist, 14.6.2003).
For Joschka Fischer’s references to Germany’s ‘national interests’ see for example Fischer, Bundestag, 8.3.2001, or Fischer, Bundestag, 26.6.2003. On Fischer’s attitude towards European politics see Schwarz, H.-P., ‘Die Zentralmacht Europas auf Kontinuitätskurs, Deutschland stabilisiert den Kontinent’, Internationale Politik, Vol. 11, November 1999, p. 3.
For an analysis of the normative implications of Morgenthau’s ideas on ‘national interest’ see Good, R. C., ‘The National Interest and Political Realism: Niebuhr’s “Debate” with Morgenthau and Kennan’, The Journal of Politics, Vol. 22(4), November 1960, pp. 597–619).
For Morgenthau, the ‘national interest (…) is not defined by the whim of a man or the partisanship of party but imposes itself as an objective datum upon all men applying their rational faculties to the conduct of foreign policy’ (Morgenthau, H. J., ‘Comment’, The New Republic, 22.1.1977, p. 9, quoted in Burchill, S., The National Interest in International Relations Theory, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, p. 36).
Morgenthau was slightly less categorical in 1952, when he wrote that arguments presenting a policy to be a necessary national interest ‘must be subjected to rational scrutiny which will determine, however tentatively, their approximate place in the scale of national values’ (Morgenthau, H. J., ‘Another “Great Debate”: The National Interest of the United States’, in McLellan, D. S., Olson, W. C., Sondermann, F. A. (eds), The Theory and Practice of International Relations, Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1960 [1952], p. 185).
Beard, C., The Idea of National Interest, An Analytical Study in American Foreign Policy, New York, Macmillan, 1934;
Beard, C., The Open Door at Home, New York, Macmillan, 1934, pp. 155–8.
See for example Aspinwall, M., Rethinking Britain and Europe, Plurality Elections, Party Management and British Policy on European Integration, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2004, pp. 33–4.
Weldes, J., ‘Constructing National Interests’, European Journal of International Relations, Vol. 2(3), 1996, p. 279.
Wendt, A., ‘Anarchy is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics’, International Organization, Vol. 46(2), 1992, p. 401.
Hollis, M., Smith, S., Explaining and Understanding International Relations, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1990, p. 166, quoted in Weldes, J., ‘Constructing National Interests’, op. cit., p. 276.
Finnemore, M., National Interests in International Society, Ithaca NY, Cornell University Press, 1996.
See for example Moravcsik, A., ‘Negotiating the Single European Act: National Interest and Conventional Statecraft in the EC’, International Organisation, Vol. 45(1), 1991, pp. 19–56; or Moravcsik, A., Vachudova, M. A., ‘National Interest, State Power and EU Enlargement’, East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 17(1), p. 43.
Sedelmeier, who advocates a constructivist approach that takes interests to be endogenous writes that ‘not only policy-makers from member states that have a material interest in enlargement referred to the EU’s role-identity when talking about why the EU should enlarge’ (Sedelmeier, U., Constructing the Path to Eastern Enlargement, the Uneven Policy Impact of EU Identity, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2005, p. 38, emphasis added, see also pp. 6, 26–7).
Also, Adrian Hyde-Price, who emphasises that interests are not objectively determined and pre-given but defined on the basis of a range of subjective, normative considerations, as well as objective and material factors, nonetheless a few lines further down writes that ‘Germany also has a strong national interest in multilateral integration in a pan-European cooperation’ (Hyde-Price, A., Germany and European Order, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2000, pp. 11, 29).
Larsen, H., Foreign Policy and Discourse Analysis, France, Britain and Europe, London, Routledge, 1997, pp. 7–8, 187, 190.
Jervis, R., Perception and Misperception in International Politics, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1976, p. 132, quoted in Larsen, H., Foreign Policy and Discourse Analysis, op. cit., p. 8.
See in particular Sandholtz, W., Stone Sweet, A. (eds), European Integration and Supranational Governance, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1998;
Moravcsik, A., The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power From Messina to Maastricht, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1998.
See for example Mazey, S., ‘European Integration, Unfinished Journey or Journey Without End?’, in Richardson, J. (eds), European Union, Power and Policy-making, London, Routledge, 2001.
Laffan, B., O’Donnell, R., Smith, M., Europe’s Experimental Union, Rethinking Integration, London, Routledge, 2000, pp. 74–8.
Wessels, W., ‘Administrative Interaction’, in Wallace, W. (ed.), The Dynamics of European Integration, London, Pinter, 1992, pp. 230, 236–8.
Moreau Defarges, P., Les institutions européennes, Paris, Armand Colin, 2001, p. 103.
Wessels, W., ‘The EC Council: The Community’s Decision-Making Center’, in Keohane, R.O., Hoffmann, S. (eds), The New European Community: Decisionmaking and Institutional Change, Boulder, Westview Press, 1991, pp. 135, 137; Christiansen, T., ‘The Council of Ministers, The Politics of Institutionalised Intergovernmentalism’, op. cit., p. 149.
Although Wessel’s work includes writings on the Council of Ministers and the European Council (Wessels, W., ‘The EC Council: The Community’s Decision-Making Center’, op. cit.; Hohscheit, J. M., Wessels, W. (eds), The European Council, 1974–1986: Evaluation and Prospects, Maastricht, European Institute of Public Administration, 1988;
Bulmer, S., Wessels, W., The European Council: Decision-Making in European Politics, London, Macmillan, 1987), his main emphasis is on the administrative layers of European governance.
Christiansen, T., ‘The Council of Ministers, The Politics of Institutionalised Intergovernmentalism’, op. cit., p. 149; Checkel, T. J. ‘Social Construction and European Integration’, in Christiansen, T., Jørgensen, K. E., Wiener, A. (eds), The Social Construction of Europe, London, Sage, 2001, p. 54.
Quermonne, J-L., L’Europe en quête de légitimité, op. cit., pp. 21, 55, 61–4; Duverger, M., L’Europe dans tous ses Etats, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1995, p. 77; Moreau Defarges, P., Les institutions européennes, op. cit., pp. 102–3.
Hayes-Renshaw, F., Wallace, H., The Council of Ministers, London, Macmillan, 1997, p. 23.
Foucault, M., The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, London, Tavistock, 1972, p. 80.
This understanding of discourse, following the second possibility opened up by Foucault’s definition, is mostly likely furthest from Foucault’s broader understanding of discourse as it appears from the sum of his work, which did not focus on ‘text and textual analysis’, that is on ‘real instances of people doing or saying or writing things’, but on the rules underlying actual discursive practice (Fairclough, N., Discourse and Social Change, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1992, pp. 56–7).
Larsen, H., Foreign Policy and Discourse Analysis, op. cit., pp. 9, 13–14, 25–7; Diez, T., ‘Speaking “Europe”: The Politics of Integration Discourse’, Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 6(4), 1999, p. 611, p. 612, note 2.
Hansen, L. ‘Introduction’, in Hansen, L., Waever, O. (eds), European Integration and National Identity, the Challenge of the Nordic States, London, Routledge, 2002, p. 4; Larsen, H., Foreign Policy and Discourse Analysis, op. cit., pp. 25–7; Hansen, L., ‘Introduction’, op. cit., p. 5;
Waever, O., ‘Discursive Approaches’, in Wiener, A., Diez, T. (eds), European Integration Theory, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 206–7.
Waever, O., ‘Explaining Europe by Decoding Discourses’, in Wivel, A. (ed.), Explaining European Integration, Copenhagen Political Studies Press, 1998, p. 116;
Waever, O, ‘Identity, Communities and Foreign Policy, Discourse Analysis as Foreign Policy Theory’, in Hansen, L., Waever, O. (eds), European Integration and National Identity, the Challenge of the Nordic States, London, Routledge, 2002, pp. 26–7;
Haahr, J. H., ‘“Our Danish Democracy”: Community, People and Democracy in the Danish Debate on the Common Currency’, Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 38(1), 2003, pp. 28–9.
Fairclough, N., Wodak, R., ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’, in Van Dijk, T. A. (ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction, Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, Volume 2, London, Sage Publications, 1997, p. 258.
Chilton, P. Schäffner, C., ‘Discourse and Politics’, in Van Dijk, T. A. (ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction, Discourse Studies: A Multidisciplinary Introduction, Volume 2, London, Sage Publications, 1997, p. 226.
For example Lamassoure, A., Histoire secrète de la convention européenne, Paris, Albin Michel, 2004;
or Scott, D., Off Whitehall: A View from Downing Street by Tony Blair’s Adviser, London, I.B. Tauris, 2004.
Especially Schröder, G., Entscheidungen, Mein Leben in der Politik, Hamburg, Hoffmann und Campe, 2006;
Blair, T., A Journey, Random House, London 2011;
Chirac, J., Barré, J.-L., Le temps présidentiel: Mémoires, tome 2, Editions Nil, Paris, 2011.
For example Peter Ludlow or Peter Norman have since 2001/2002 prepared regular briefings and a number of monographs about the activities of the European Council, drawing on insider knowledge to provide detailed accounts of the progression of negotiations on key issues and of the lead-up to many of the major European Council meetings (Ludlow, The Making of the New Europe, The European Councils in Brussels and Copenhagen 2002, Brussels, EuroComment, 2004; or Peter Norman, The Accidental Constitution, The Making of Europe’s Constitutional Treaty, Brussels, EuroComment, 2005).
Campbell, A., The Blair Years: Extracts from Alastair Campbell Diaries, London, Hutchinson, 2007.
Michaud, Y., Chirac dans le texte, La parole et l’impuissance, Paris, Stock, 2004, p. 16; this highlights another problem, as edited statements may not correspond to the texts actually delivered. The Downing Street website specifies that it sometimes edits transcripts because under Ministerial and Civil Service codes government websites cannot carry party political content. Since the leaders or their advisors approve the editing, one may however assume that even edited speeches are indicative of what the leaders and their advisors would like the public to hear.
On the analysis of vocabulary or lexical fields, see for example Rémi-Giraud, S., Rétat, P. (eds), Les mots de la nation, Lyon, Presses universitaires de Lyon, 1996.
On the analysis of grammatical forms, see for example Chimombo, M. P. F., Roseberry, R. L., The Power of Discourse, An Introduction to Discourse Analysis, London, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998, pp. 136–7.
On the analysis of personal pronouns see Ensink, T., ‘The Footing of a Royal Address: An Analysis of Representativeness in Political Speech, Exemplified in Queen Beatrix’s Address to the Knesset on March 28, 1995’, in Schäffner, C. (ed.), Analysing Political Speeches, Clevedon, Multilingual Matters Ltd, 1997, pp. 5–32; Fairclough, N., New Labour, New Language?, op. cit., pp. 151–2; or Chilton, P. Schäffner, C., ‘Discourse and Politics’, op. cit., p. 218.
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© 2012 Katrin Milzow
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Milzow, K. (2012). Introduction. In: National Interests and European Integration. International Relations and Development Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137271679_1
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