1
‘Europe is not a country’
A frame and discourse analysis of the Dutch political and public debate on the European Union and European integration (1997-2011)
Lodewijk Rijksbaron (11015969) Supervisor: Dhr. Dr. Floris Vermeulen Second reader: Dhr. Dr. Martijn Dekker
June 2020
Conflict Resolution and Governance University of Amsterdam
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T
ABLE OF
C
ONTENTS
1 List of abbreviations ... 4 1.1 Political parties ... 4 2 Introduction ... 5 3 Epistemology ... 11 3.1 Social constructionism ... 11 3.2 Positionality ... 144 Existing discourses on the European Union and European integration ... 15
4.1 Euroenthusiast, Eurosceptic, Europragmatists and Eurorejcets ... 15
4.2 The Dutch discourses on the EU and European integration: an overview ... 16
5 Methodology ... 20
5.1 Method ... 20
5.2 Framing the EU and European integration ... 22
5.3 Data collection and analysis ... 24
6 Parliamentary debates ... 28 6.1 Quantitative analysis ... 28 6.2 Qualitative analysis ... 31 6.2.1 Treaty of Amsterdam ... 32 6.2.2 European Constitution ... 36 6.2.3 Eurozone crisis ... 40 6.2.4 In conclusion ... 45
7 De Groene and Elsevier: a debate ... 47
7.1 Elseviers Weekblad – a supporter of the European projects ... 48
7.2 De Groene Amsterdammer: ‘no’ to a capitalist Europe ... 49
7.3 Quantitative analysis ... 50 7.4 Qualitative analysis ... 54 7.4.1 Treaty of Amsterdam ... 54 7.4.2 European Constitution ... 57 7.4.3 Eurozone crisis ... 60 7.4.4 In conclusion ... 63 8 Conclusion ... 65 9 Bibliography ... 67 9.1 Primary sources ... 67
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9.1.2 Elsevier ... 68
9.1.3 De Groene ... 69
9.1.4 Websites ... 70
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1 L
IST OF ABBREVIATIONS
1.1 P
OLITICAL PARTIESVVD - People's Party for Freedom and Democracy PvdA - Worker's Party/Labor Party
D66 - Democrats '66
CDA - Christian Democratic Party PVV - Party for the Freedom LPF - Pim Fortuyn List GroenLinks - Green Left SP - Socialist Party
RPF - Reformational Political Federation GPV - Reformed Political Alliance
ChristenUnie - Christen Union (a merge of RPF and GPV) SGP - Reformed Political Party
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2 I
NTRODUCTION
During the press conference of 13th March 2020, considering the worsening of the spread of
the coronavirus in the Netherlands, Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte was asked why there was not more coordination on a European Union (EU) level to tackle the pandemic. This seemed like a better and more effective option since the virus would not stick to physical borders (which are almost obsolete in a European Union context). The answer Rutte gave presented itself, albeit in very dire circumstances, as a suitable introduction to this thesis. The quote is directly translated from the original Dutch transcript of the press conference on 13 March 2020.
‘Interviewer: Would it not be much more effective to coordinate the fight against this pandemic on a European level?
Mark Rutte: No. To start with. Europe is not a country and, if you ask me, I would like to keep it that way. The fact that Europe is not a country, but a cooperation of different countries, means that in some area’s governance is done on a national level […]. So, there are always national differences in a European Union, which is not one country […]. There is coordination and cooperation, but it is inevitable that in a Europe of sovereign member states differences exist.’ (Rijksoverheid, 13 March 2020).1
Europe, or the EU, is not a country but an institution made up of sovereign nation states. The prime minister, in this short transcript, defined the relationship between a member state, in this case the Netherlands, and the European Union. The definition of this relationship, between the EU and the Netherlands is, has always been subject to change in the member states, likewise in the Netherlands. Not so long ago, the Netherlands was seen as the ‘the best performing kid in class’ and a proponent of further European integration. After the economic crisis of 2008 this changed, the Netherlands wanted to get power back from Europe, explaining Rutte’s comment of ‘Europe is not a country, and I would like to keep it that way’ (Segers, 2014). Mathieu Segers (2014) states that while Europe (meaning the European Union) is more important than ever, the interest from the European people for the EU is shrinking. There is a so-called ‘democratic deficit’ when it comes to the European Union. According to Segers (2014), the Dutch population has the feeling that parts of the story about the Netherlands and
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European integration have been kept from them. How the story of the Netherlands, the EU and European integration is constructed and framed will be the principal aim of this thesis. The current debate about Europe revolves around the question whether you are in favor or against Europe, a question that does not lend itself well to a complex organization like the EU or to the question of how the Netherlands should position itself vis-à-vis Europe.
The Netherlands is a founding father of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), a predecessor to the European Union and the so-called first step to European integration. The European integration project was mainly seen as a project to reconcile the animosity between Germany and France, who had been on opposite sides of the two disastrous world wars that dominated the first half of the 20th century, by merging important pillars of their economy, that of steel and coal, under the authority of one entity (Van Meurs et al., 2013). The Netherlands, together with other Western European countries, were invited to join the project. The Dutch government was, in the first instances, skeptical when it came to join an integration project that would not include the United Kingdom, feared a French dominated, political entity (Harmsen, 2008). Moreover, they were hesitant when it came to a community that was supranational instead of intergovernmental, like the just established UN, NATO and OEEC, and was seen as radical. A majority of the Dutch parliament was in favor of international cooperation but without an authoritative entity telling them what to do (Segers, 2013). This supranationalism was, however, the most important element of the plan that was drafted by Jean Monnet, a French top official. Only with supranational institutions could the animosity between France and Germany be curbed and transformed into a fruitful, economic cooperation. Because of the far-reaching integration of the Dutch economy in that of West-Germany, which was agreed upon in the first years after the war, the Netherlands had no choice but to join the project (Segers, 2013). Together with Belgium they did manage to establish a Council of Ministers, an intergovernmental entity that could control the works of the High Authority (the supranational organ in the ECSC).
In the ensuing years of the 1950s, the Netherlands tried to, mainly on economic issues, spur a federal agenda forward. The Dutch government was seen as one of the main instigators of the then far-reaching integration treaty that was signed in Rome in 1957 (Schonefeld, 1999). They were, nevertheless, again hesitant when it came to accept further supranationalization of the community, voting against a majority-vote system, fearing to be overwhelmed by the bigger countries (France and Germany). In general, the attitude of the Netherlands towards European
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integration at that time can be seen as an instrumental supranationalism: it was used as a tool to further the Dutch (trade) interests in Western Europe (Kiratli, 2016; Segers, 2014) In the ensuing decades this policy of instrumental supranationalism was an important red thread in the Dutch Europe-policy up until the end of the Cold War, with a peak of so-called Dutch Europhilia at the end of the 1980s (Segers, 2014). Segers (2013) goes further in his book on Dutch European integration, and states that because the Netherlands became more and more focused on the European continent and less on the Atlantic (UK and USA), they also became a more sincere proponent of supranational integration. The Netherlands was an important player in the further integration projects of the 1980s and the early 1990s (Segers, 2013).
The fall of the Berlin wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union completely changed the geopolitical dynamics on which the ECSC and the EEC were established. An ‘open’ Europe, with the possibility of further political integration and the accession of new member states, caused a change in the way the Netherlands thought about the European project and its own position in it, regardless of their initial support for further integration and expansion (Segers, 2013). Further integration indeed happened and was finalized in the Treaty of Maastricht (1992) and Treaties of Amsterdam and Nice (1997, 2000). With the subsequent enlargement of new member-states the Netherlands started to lose grip on its own destiny. The times of a so-called ‘permissive consensus’, the implicit acceptance of further European integration, were over. More parties, next to the marginal parties that had already voiced their concerns with the European project, became critical of the European Union. The culmination of this more negative stance towards the European project was seen in the rise of Eurosceptic and anti-EU political parties in the Netherlands and the fatal blow of the no-vote in a referendum against the European constitution in 2005 (Lubbers and Scheepers, 2010). Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham (2010) state that the no-vote ‘dealt a possibly fatal blow to an idea that was already in decline: that political elites could simply proceed by building Europe in the absence of Europeans’ (p. 35). The permissive consensus shifted to a ‘constraining dissensus’: more parties started to become part of the subject ‘Europe’, it was not just deal brokering between elites anymore (Hooghe and Marks, 2009).
Because of the no-vote in the Netherlands (and France), the ratification of the constitution was postponed (Dinan, 2014). Nonetheless, there was an overall reluctance in Brussels (policy-makers and politicians) to let the constitution die out, and also the Netherlands (as well as Great Britain and France) wanted to go through with it, as long as they did not have to hold another
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referendum on the issue (Dinan, 2014). It took another four years before the so-called Treaty of Lisbon was ratified by all member-states (with the Czech Republic being the last) in 2009. Not long after this ratification, the world fell into the worst financial recession since the Great Recession of the 1920s, a crisis that caused another blow to the trust of the Dutch in the European Union and its future (Segers, 2014). In 2013, Eurobarometer found that more Dutch people were negative than positive the ’image’ of the EU (Eurobarometer Standaard 80, 2013).
Since the instigation of the European cooperation project, significant changes occurred in both the European Union itself, evolving from a small cooperation between six nation-states to one of the biggest economies of the world with 27 member states, as well as the way in which the Netherlands has looked at the European project and integration. The latter is what I want to focus my research on. While there has been much research on the Dutch role in European integration, as we will see in the third chapter, the question of how and if the Dutch stance towards the EU and European integration changed has been left under researched: ‘little attention has thus far been paid to the broader reshaping of the contours of Dutch European ‘discourse’ [...] and the manner in which these have altered over time’ (Harmsen, 2008, p. 317). Research that did focus on the Dutch stance towards the EU either focused only on political parties, or on the television or newspaper media.
The main research question guiding this thesis will, thus, be: How and to what extent did the Dutch public and political debate around the European Union and European integration change between 1997 and 2011? The question of how in this research question is an important one, as it refers to the use of language of both public and political actors. From a social constructionist perspective, which will be epistemology of this research, knowledge about a certain subject is constructed through discourse, ‘a particular way of talking about a subject’ (Jørgensen and Philips, 2002). Only in discursive form things can become tangible. Another important element of this epistemology is that this knowledge production is never solid or fixed, in other words it is subject to change. The use of language is important, because the way in which politicians and media speak about Europe has an influence on how the population thinks of the subject (De Vreese, 2003). In order to extrapolate the how, the use of language, from the data that has been generated, I used a frame analysis. According to De Vreese, ‘Frames are parts of political arguments, journalistic norms, and social movements’ discourse […] endogenous to the political and social world.’ (De Vreese, 2005, p. 53). A frame analysis allows the researcher to dissect how a certain issue is defined, using both a deductive and an inductive approach (Hope,
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2010). The main research question is rather broadly defined. More specific, I would like to analyze the language and frames used by the ‘actors’ that are part of this research. How do the actors define the relations between the Netherlands and EU and further European integration? What frames are most prevalent during these key moments? Is there a correlation between the political and public debate, do these debates use different language and frames? And, thus, most importantly, to what extent have these discourses and frames changed over time? Segers (2014) writes that when it comes to European integration, there is a distorted view in the Netherlands (p. 138). Consequently, the Dutch population has always been badly informed on the matter (Eurobarometer standard 78, 2011).
The principal aim of this research is to analyze how the media and politicians have spoken of the EU and further European integration. The aforementioned sub questions will be answered by looking at three key moments in the history of European integration, namely the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997), the European constitution and subsequent referendum (2004-5) and the euro crisis (2011). Moreover, this decade comprises a pro-EU and pro-integration period (1997) as well as the first expressions of a negative stance towards further European integration (2004-5, 2011; Segers, 2013). These moments, thus, allowed me to research if and how the discourse around the EU changed. Moreover, it is during these moments of further integration that the debate about the European Union becomes politicized and is covered extensively by the media (Van Santen and Vliegenthart, 2015). To analyze the political debate, parliamentary debates on the aforementioned key moments have been used. Debates about the EU and European integration are manifold and span different subjects, like foreign affairs, finance and environment to name but a few. I have chosen to only analyze those debates that touch upon the key moments identified. The public debate has been studied by looking at two weekly journals, De Groene Amsterdammer and Elsevier Weekblad. I chose to analyze these sources because they provide more background on issues than newspaper (Bijwaard, 2009).
I have used a timeframe of five months, so for example, the first five months of 1997 have been analyzed, to see how the EU and European integration is constructed and framed around these events. It has to be noted that when referring to ‘the’ public and ‘the’ political debate in this research, I specifically refer to the two weekly journals and the parliamentary debates of the political parties. Naturally, the public debate consists of many more actors, such as television, social media and newspapers. Similarly, the parliamentary debates that I have chosen are just a small section of the available debates and do not include other sources of
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information such as party manifestos, speeches outside of parliament and national or European elections.
In the first chapter the epistemology of this research will be expanded on as well as my own position in the research, after which a literature review on European discourses will be presented. In chapter four, the methodology will be substantiated. This chapter also provides a literature review of researches that used a frame analysis to analyze either the political or public debate in the Netherlands. The frame analysis that I have chosen for my analysis will be expanded on in the same chapter. The analysis of the three key moments will be divided into two chapters, one focusing on the political debate, the other on the public debate. Both chapters provide an answer to the aforementioned sub questions. To provide an answer to these questions, both a quantitative as well as a qualitative analysis is needed. Both chapters include a paragraph analyzing the quantitative side of the frame analysis, answering the questions ‘What frames are most prevalent during these key moments?’ and a part of the question ‘To what extent have these discourses and frames changed over time?’. The qualitative analysis provides an answer the other part of the latter question, as to ‘How do the actors define the relations between the Netherlands and EU and further European integration?’ and ‘What are the most dominant discourses?’.
Another important element of the social constructionist is that the use of language is influenced by the context in which it is said and also by whom it is said (which political party of which weekly journal). The aim is, therefore, to provide important contextualization’s, a so-called ‘thick’ description, of both the zeitgeist as well as the ideological backgrounds of the weekly journals before presenting the findings of this research. In both chapters the question as to whether and how the discourse around the EU and European integration has changed will be provided in the conclusionary paragraph. Lastly, in the conclusion, an answer will be provided to whether there is a correlation between the political and public debate.
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3 E
PISTEMOLOGY
3.1 S
OCIAL CONSTRUCTIONISMThe epistemological foundation of this research is social constructionism.2 Central to this
epistemology is that knowledge is constructed through interaction with others (Leeds-Hurwitz, 2009). In other words, through discourse knowledge about the world is constructed (Ibid.). In order to analyze how the Dutch public and political debate around the European Union and European integration is constructed, a theory of social constructionist discourse analysis will be used as a guiding theory throughout this research. A discourse is defined in this thesis as a ‘a particular way of talking about and understanding the world (or an aspect of the world)’ (Jørgensen and Philips, 2002, p. 1). In this research, the ‘way of talking’ is about the European Union and European integration in the Netherlands. Jørgensen and Philips (2002) define four important premises of the social constructionist discourse analysis, drawing from definitions from Berr (1995) and Gergen (1995). After the explanation of these premises, its embeddedness in this research will be explained.
The first premise, in line with the entire social constructionist epistemology, states that the knowledge in the world should not be seen as an objective truth (Jørgensen and Philips, 2002). The way we see the world ‘out there’, in other words our knowledge and representation of the world, is not a reflection of reality. Reality can only come to us in discursive terms, it exists in our discourse, in the way we use language, and because language is not rigid but is subject to change, meaning can also never be completely fixed (Jørgensen and Philips, 2002). Subsequently, the knowledge and representations that we generate of reality are ‘historically and culturally specific and contingent’, meaning that, depending on this historical and cultural context, our views on the world could have been different and that they could change over time (emphasis mine) (Jørgensen and Philips, 2002, p. 5). Important in this regard, is that knowledge in a social constructionist sense, is anti-foundationalist and anti-essentialist. Because all knowledge is contingent, social constructionism opposes the foundationalist view that knowledge can be grounded on a ‘solid base’ (Jørgensen and Philips, 2002, p. 5). In the same vein does social constructionism oppose the essentialist idea that the social world has fixed and
2 In this thesis, I will speak of social constructionism and not of social constructivism, unless there are quotations using that wording.
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authentic characteristics (Jørgensen and Philips, 2002). Following on that premise, Jørgensen and Philips (2002) define that ‘knowledge is created through social interaction in which we construct common truths and compete about what is true and false’ (p. 5). Lastly, the link between knowledge and social action is defined. The authors state that because there are different social constructions of the world, there will also be different ways of acting in that social world, meaning that social constructions of knowledge have effect on the social world. Based on these four premises this research is guided. To state this clearly, it is generally understood in this research that the European Union and European integration are socially constructed, meaning that their existence is neither solid nor fixed but always subject to change. Vollaard (2013), in his research on Dutch political discourse concerning European integration, underscores the importance of language in these discourses, stating that ‘if language structures reality, then every language has its own reality’. In that vein, it is possible that a concept like the EU changes when new meaning is given to such a concept. He states that this can be done by attaching meaning to, for example, political events and linking them to pre-existing stories and values (Vollaard, 2013). A good example of this is the Brexit of 2016. The European Union, up until the Brexit vote in 2016, was deemed as an institution that was indestructible, only capable of integrating further or strengthening its capacities. Oliver (2013) stated that the Brexit referendum challenged ‘a taboo of contemplating the idea of a member state withdrawing from European integration’ (p. 1321). Even contemplating leaving was tabooed. But because there was a discursive shift in the British political and public debate, the possibility of the UK leaving the EU became more likely and led, albeit not directly, to the departure of the UK on 31st January 2020 (Hänska and Bauchowitz, 2017). Social constructions of
knowledge have effect on the social world. Thus, a social constructionist approach defines the European Union not as an ‘objective truth’ or something that is fixed or stable. Since the European Union consists of 27 Member States, it can be argued that the European Union is socially constructed by these countries together through discourse, in forms such as treaties and policies. An ‘ever closer union’ in this regard does not mean that there is pre-conceived idea of what that ‘closer’ entails, in other words it is not essentialist.
Not only on a supranational level is the construction of the European Union defined, this also happens in the individual member states. Alexander Wendt (1999) states in his book Social
theory of International Politics, that constructionism encourages us to ‘look at how actors are
socially constructed', but it does not tell us which actors to study or where they are constructed.’ (p. 7) Within international relations, the actors we decide to study need to have an international
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‘dimension’. In this research the actor will be the Netherlands and the international dimension will be the EU, looking at how the Dutch public and political debate around the European Union and further European integration changed, taking several key moments in the history of the European project. As stated in the introduction, the Dutch discourse around the EU and European integration has not been fixed or invariable over the decades, which is in line with the social constructionist stance that knowledge is not fixed and can change over time. Jørgensen and Philips (2002) also state that knowledge and the shaping of reality is historically and culturally specific, stressing the importance of providing contextualization of the four key moments that are selected for this analysis. Only by putting the language in its context it is possible to understand the meaning of the discourse and to see how the discourse changes (McCarthy, 1991; Jørgensen and Philips, 2002). By not only looking at two different journals,
De Groene Amsterdammer and Elsevier, but also including political debates that take place in
the Dutch parliament, a more inclusive narrative can be generated taking into account that the social world is not constructed by one discourse but by a multitude of viewpoints that can compete with one another. The aim of this research is thus not to generate the ‘true’ discourse in the Netherlands on this subject, since there is not one true discourse, the aim is rather to generate a ‘thick’ description of how the public and political debate in the Netherlands have changed over time concerning the EU and European integration. With a ‘thick’ description, I refer to the contextualization of the data that I generated. I aim to put the data in its historical and cultural context, because this contextualization, as Jørgensen and Philips (2002) argued; influence the social construction of reality and thus the debate on the EU and European integration.
Since I will be analyzing two different debates, it will be interesting to see how both discourses relate to one another. Is there an interplay between the two spheres? Taking a social constructionist approach, the production of knowledge influences the social world, thus, expecting a correlation between the political and the public debate. Concerning this correlation, Jørgensen and Philips (2002) have argued that there is indeed a certain element of power present in this competition between discourses. There is no ‘true’ discourse but there is a ‘winner’ in this competition of discourses, which Laclau and Mouffe (1985) define as the ‘hegemonic discourse’: the perspective that dominates in the discourse. A dominant discourse can thus influence the of view people (or journals) have of the world, or in this case the European Union and European integration. In this way, it can be argued that a correlation between the political and public debate is possible. In the case of the European Union and
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European integration, there are various (dominant) discourses that can be distinguished, such as the Eurosceptic or Europhile perspectives. These types of discourses will be explained in the following chapter.
3.2 P
OSITIONALITYIn a social constructionist epistemology, the researcher always takes a position in the field that is being studied (Jørgensen and Philips, 2002). Important in this respect is that the researcher makes clear what their position is in the research. Moreover, we as individuals are all ‘guilty’ of framing something that we see on the news or read in the newspapers. So, just as I will elaborate on the ‘[the] process or contextual features of news making’ of the weekly journals, I will do the same with the contextual features of news receiving, that is, my own opinion on the matter (Vliegenthart and Van Zoonen, 2011). When it comes to the EU and European integration, I am critical of the current situation. This criticism mostly stems from the lack of democratic accountability within the structure of the institutions, taking Ursula von der Leyen’s ‘election’ as a turning point in my understanding of the EU. This does not mean that I am against international cooperation or supranational structures per se, it has to do with the internal politics and workings of the EU at this point. My own critical frame could influence my way of understanding the data. This will be minimized by largely using a deductive method of research (as will be explained in chapter 4), while keeping in mind that there is not such a thing as an ‘objective truth’ (Jørgensen and Philips, 2002; Hope, 2010). First, the data I will generate will be put in its historical context and the standpoints of the political parties and weekly journals will first be provided. In this way, I can correctly place the articles and speeches in its context. Moreover, by being transparent, the data will be available to the reader in the appendix, readers can dispute my interpretations and conclusions (Hope, 2010).
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4 E
XISTING DISCOURSES ON THE
E
UROPEAN
U
NION AND
E
UROPEAN INTEGRATION
4.1 E
UROENTHUSIAST, EUROSCEPTIC, EUROPRAGMATISTS ANDEUROREJCETS
The discourse around the Netherlands and European integration, as was discussed in the introduction, has fluctuated in almost seventy years of the European project. Both in the media and politically there have been voices in the Netherlands for and against the initiation of the project and further integration in the decades that followed the signing of the Treaty of Paris (1951) and the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). The Dutch debate concerning the European integration project has been subject to many books, dissertations and articles. Before touching upon the Dutch case, it is worth to look at what different discourses around the European Union and European integration have been defined in general.
As explained in the previous chapter, in this thesis a discourse is seen as ‘a particular way of talking about and understanding the world (or an aspect of the world)’ (Jørgensen and Philips, 2002, p. 1). When it comes to the discourse around European Union and European integration the typology developed by Kopecký and Mudde (2002) is widely used or referred to.3 They
categorize political parties’ stance on Europe in Euroenthusiast, Eurosceptics, Europragmatists and Eurorejects discourses. The categorization of these four elements is based on their support for the EU on the one hand, and their support for European integration on the other. Euroenthusiast are those that support the general ideas of European integration and believe that these ideas should be institutionalized (Kopecký and Mudde, 2002). Eurosceptics in this typology are parties that support the general ideas of European integration but show pessimism when it comes to the current ideas about that integration (Kopecký and Mudde, 2002, p. 302). They combine Eurosceptic and Euro-pessimist elements. Europragmatists ‘do not support the general ideas of European integration underlying the EU, nor do they necessarily oppose them, yet they do support the EU’ (Kopecký and Mudde, 2002, p. 303). In short, Europragmatists make decisions based on its profitability for their country or constituents. Lastly, there are Eurorejects, who combine a Europhobe and EU-pessimist stance. They do not support the European integration project nor the EU in general.
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This typology shows that there is no such thing as ‘a discourse’, there are multiple discourses when it comes to the EU. Other discourse categorizations, put in the Dutch context, will be analyzed in the next paragraph.
4.2 T
HED
UTCH DISCOURSES ON THEEU
ANDE
UROPEANINTEGRATION: AN OVERVIEW
This paragraph will provide an overview of what has been written about the Netherlands and the EU. The main focus will be put on the literature that used a discourse analysis, while more historical works will be briefly summarized. The latter will be used throughout this thesis to provide the historical and cultural context of the three key moments that are central to this research.
Many authors have focused on the initial post-war years, when there was an international willingness to establish international organizations and focused on the considerations of the Dutch political parties and government to go along with these initiatives (Van Heerikhuizen, 1998; Harryvan and Van der Harst, 2001; Harryvan and Van der Harst, 2017; De Bruin, 2010; Griffith, 1990; Segers, 2013-2019). Literature that has dealt with the media in these initial years of European integration is rather absent, with just one study focusing on the coverage of weekly journals (Bijwaard, 2009). While literature that has focused on the media coverage of European integration up until 1990 is less frequent, after 1990, mainly due to digitalization, the number of media analyses increased (see Vollaard, Van der Harst and Voerman, 2015). Then, there is also literature that deals with the entire period of European integration, from 1945 up until the second decade of this millennium, treating the historical context of the decisions of and the role the Netherlands has played in that (Vollaard, Van der Harst, Voerman, 2015; Vollaard, 2005; Vollaard, 2015, Harryvan and Van der Harst, 2017; Segers, 2013; Segers, 2019). Others have focused on the intellectual debate concerning European integration (Hollander, 2011) and the political and parliamentary debates concerning Europe (Harryvan and Van der Harst, 2013). The Netherlands as a case study has also frequented in comparative analyses or in analyses that take a large number of (candidate) member states (e.g. Kriesi, 2007; Koopmans and Statham, 2009; Van Spanje and De Vreese, 2014; Boomgaarden et al., 2010; Lubbers and Scheepers, 2010).
Sources that focus on analyzing the discourses of Dutch political debate around European integration and how these discourses have changed have featured less in academic literature,
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albeit with some notable exceptions. Kiratli (2016), for example, applies a discourse analysis of Best et al (2012) on the political party manifestos of the largest parties in the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands. Best et al.’s (2012) discourse analysis looks at three levels, cognitive-evaluative (What does integration stand for?), the emotive level (looking at the emotional affiliation and the projective level (focusing on the future of the EU) (Kiratli, 2016, p. 642). In the Netherlands, Kiratli (2016) focused on the Christian Democratic party (CDA) and the Labor party (PvdA). Although Kiratli’s research is qualitative in nature, it misses contextualization. For a comparative case study, this brings useful insights, but to understand how these discourses have changed and to what extent they have changed is difficult to disseminate. Providing historical and cultural contextualization of these discourses is the aim of this research, as has been done in research by Robert Harmsen (2008), Hans Vollaard (2013) and Harryvan and Van der Harst (2013).
Harmsen (2008) focuses on the discourse of the European integration project shaped by political elites. Harmsen defines a discourse in this regard as ‘the overarching themes in which national representation of European integration are framed’ (Harmsen, 2008, p. 317). By drawing on party programs and official government documents, together with national press coverage and polling data, he analyses the shift of discourse on European integration by taking two specific events, namely the 2005 Constitutional referendum and the 2007 Intergovernmental Conference. Harmsen uses two themes to substantiate his research, namely ‘fit’ and ‘place’. Fit, in this context, is understood as the ‘goodness of fit’ between EU-policies and templates and that of the individual member states. Place refers to the role of a certain country in the EU- decision making process and in European integration as a whole. Harmsen concludes that the federalist framework that was prevalent during the early 1990s, as was described in the introduction, has shifted to a more ‘limits of Europe’ type of discourse (Harmsen, 2008). He states that the ‘fit’ and ‘place’ discourse has turned to misfits and thus has put the EU and its integration under more scrutiny (Harmsen, 2008).
Hans Vollaard (2013) in his article on the structures of the Dutch-Europe debate, tries to dissect how European integration has been shaped in the Netherlands by linking it to discourses about the Dutch identity and place of the Netherlands in the world. The author covers the European integration discourses from the end of the second world war up until the national elections of 2009. The dominant discourse of the initial years of European integration was characterize by the necessity and inevitability of integration (Vollaard, 2013). After these years, a dominant ‘progressive discourse’ emerged, in which Netherlands should be a leading nation when it
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comes to international cooperation. The Dutch were world citizens, not ‘provincialists’ or ‘nationalists’. European interests became Dutch interests during these progressive years. After the Treaty of Maastricht (1992), the Netherlands adopted a more functionalist/pragmatic approach, openly rejecting the progressive discourse of the decades before. This more ‘pragmatic’ discourse also included a nationalist discourse, with political parties claiming that member-states should regain control of the decision-making instead of furthering integration (Vollaard, 2013). These discourses were also found in the 2009 national elections. Harmsen and Vollaard have both concluded that the Dutch discourse has changed in the last decades from a positive view towards the EU and further integration to an integration project in which it finds itself becoming more and more uncomfortable, hence the ‘misfit’ discourse Harmsen found and the more pragmatic/nationalist discourse Vollaard found.
Harryvan and Van der Harst (2013), in their analysis of Dutch political parliamentary debates in the Netherlands from 1945 to 2013, defined five categorizations to classify the positions of the political parties when it comes to Europe and further integration. The authors distinguish between maximalization’, positivism’, retaining’, ‘Europe-renationalization’ and ‘Europe-rejecting’.4 Europe-maximalization equals a positive view of
European integration, deeming it desirable as a solution for transnational issues and as a political goal in and of itself (Harryvan and Van der Harst, 2013, p. 18). Europe-positivism is similar to the maximalization attitude, with the exception of not seeing integration as a political goal in itself. These two can be understood as ‘Europhile’ viewpoints. The Europe-renationalization attitude deems the European project as positive in some areas but is of the opinion that the Netherlands has given up too much of their national sovereignty and national competences and want to re-nationalize some of these lost competences. The Europe-rejecting point of view is similar to that of Kopecký and Mudde (2002) and opposes any European supranationalism and deems the European competences over national competences to be of an occupying nature (Harryvan and Van der Harts, 2013. These two can be deemed ‘Eurosceptic’ according to the authors (Harryvan and Van der Harts, 2013, p. 19). The last attitude, Europe-retaining, considers European integration as finished and deems further integration to be unnecessary.
4 These categorizations are translated from the original Dutch definitions of ‘Europa-maximalistisch’, ‘Europe-positivistisch’, ‘Europa-behoudend’, ‘Europa-renationalistisch’ and ‘Europa-verwerpend’.
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These paragraphs have shown that there is broad variety when it comes to defining a national ‘Europe’ discourse, ranging from Eurosceptic, Europe-maximalist or ‘progressive’ discourses to a ‘misfit’ type of discourse. Although the formulations differ, in many cases the types of discourses that are found show similarities. The utilitarian and pragmatic discourses can be seen as Europragmatic, a nationalist discourse as Eurorejectionist or Europe-renationalization, and a progressive discourse concurs with the Euroenthusiast and Europemaximalist and -positivist discourses. What can also be concluded from this literature overview, is that many researches have focused only on the discourse of the political spectrum of the Netherlands when it comes to European integration. Discourse analyses of the Dutch public debate have been absent, where media is mostly subject to frame analyses (as we will see in the following chapter; Bijwaard, 2009). In general, an analysis that encompasses both political party discourses as well as media discourses in the Netherlands have been absent in the current literature. As Harmsen (2008) points out in his article, ‘little attention has thus far been paid to the broader reshaping of the contours of Dutch European ‘discourse’ [..] and the manner in which these have altered over time’ (p. 317).
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5 M
ETHODOLOGY
5.1 M
ETHODWhere the social constructionist discourse analysis approach will the guiding theory of knowledge, a frame analysis will be the guiding method in conducting this research. Mat Hope (2010) states that a frame analysis is ‘a discourse analysis method that is principally concerned with dissecting how an issue is defined and problematized.’ (Hope, 2010, introduction). In a similar vein, Entman (1993) defines that to frame is ‘to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation.’ (p. 52). I have chosen to use a frame analysis as a method in this research to, in the words of Jørgensen and Philips, ‘categorize the world particular ways’ (Jørgensen and Philips, 2002, p. 98). By categorizing the public and political debates in particular frames, such as an ‘economic profit’ frame, it is possible to define the discourses of the various sources I will analyze. Because I will generate a vast amount of data, it will not be possible to just analyze words or sentences, so I will also look at entire paragraphs or articles. From words, to frames to a definition of the ‘discourse’. As Bateson (1955) has argued ‘statements do not have intrinsic meanings, but only acquire those in a frame that is constituted by context and style’. Taken together, this would allow me, in a larger framework, to see if these discourses have been subject to change over the course of fourteen years of European integration, if there are so-called hegemonic discourses in the Dutch debate and to see if there are correlations between the political and public debate.
The frame analysis will be done by taking both a deductive approach, where you do have predefined frames in mind before analyzing and an inductive approach, without having predefined frames in mind before the research (De Vreese, 2004). The predefined frames in the deductive approach have identifiable characteristics, such as core sentences or keywords. In a deductive analysis you will look for these characteristics (De Vreese, 2004, p. 53). Conversely, with an inductive approach you do not have core sentences or keywords to look for, you build a frame while researching the text. The exact usage of these approaches will be explained in paragraph 4.3. Hertog and McLeod (2001) have criticized the inductive approach for being difficult to replicate or to generalize. Flyvbjerg (2006) has stated, however, that social sciences should not be about making predictions or generating generalizations and should value more
21
context-dependent research (p. 3). While taking Flyvbjerg’s stance in account, I have chosen to use predefined frames as ‘any production feature of verbal or visual texts as a candidate for news frames is too broad a view’ (Cappella and Jamieson, 1997, p. 39). These predefined frames will be mentioned in the next paragraph. The aim of this thesis is not, however, to generate generalizable data as this would go against the social constructionist idea that nothing is solid or stable. As I will not focus on the entire Dutch discourse around the EU and European integration, it will be an in-depth analysis of a certain time frame in Dutch history.
Next to ‘frames’ you also have the verb ‘framing’. Van Zoonen and Vliegenthart (2011) state that in media and communication studies, academics fail to make a distinction between these two. Moreover, when compared to other fields of studies, such as sociology, there is an apparent difference in using these two concepts (Vliegenthart and Van Zoonen, 2011). The authors define a ‘frame’ or multiple ‘frames’ as ‘content features of news’, the elements the news outlet focuses most on (Vliegenthart and Van Zoonen, 2011, p. 102). De Vreese (2005) states that frames ‘are part of political arguments, journalistic norms, and social movements’ (p. 53). Framing, on the other hand, is defined as ‘[the] process or contextual features of news making and receiving’ (Vliegenthart and Van Zoonen, 2011, p. 102). This distinction is relevant for two reasons, one of which will be explained here, the other will be explained in the next paragraph. As I will analyze two weekly journals that have different opinions on the European Union and European integration, their ‘contextual features’ in the newsroom will also differ. The same goes for the Dutch parliamentary debates, where political parties have different views on the EU and European integration.
Because of these contextual features, the authors of the articles or the politicians in the debates will not be individually analyzed but will be treated as part of the journals and the political parties they represent. Taking Vliegenthart and Van Zoonen (2011), ‘that the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors of individual producers are the product of professional and organizational processes in the newsroom, rather than traits or decisions of autonomous individuals.’ (p. 111). It has to be noted that many researches concerning framing and frames, focus on the consequences of certain frames for public opinion, so-called frame-effects (see e.g. Vliegenthart and Van Zoonen, 2011; Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000; De Vreese, 2003; Schuck and De Vreese, 2008; Vliegenthart, Schuck, Boomgaarden, De Vreese, 2011). The principal aim of this research, however, will be dissecting the language and frames used to describe the EU and European integration in the Dutch political and public debate. Researching frame-effects will therefore not feature in this research.
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5.2 F
RAMING THEEU
ANDE
UROPEAN INTEGRATIONThe political debates in the Netherlands have mostly been subject to discourse analyses, whereas the public debate has mostly been subject to frame analyses. The Dutch media coverage of the EU has been subject to a number of researches (Vollaard, Van der Harst, Voerman, 2015; ’t Lam, 2012; Boomgaarden, Vliegenthart, De Vreese, Schuck, 2010; Helbling, Hoeglinger and Wüest, 2010; De Beus and Mak. 2009; Vliegenthart, Schuck, Boomgaarden, De Vreese, 2008; Schuck and De Vreese, 2006; Kleijnnijenhuis, Takens, Van Attevelt, 2005; Van Donselaar, 2009; Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000). The results of these researches will be very briefly mentioned here but will be expanded on in chapter five and six, where the results of my own frame analysis will be compared with comparable articles.
In a number of the aforementioned researches a frame analysis was used. One of these researches looked at more generic frames like the ‘conflict’, ‘benefit’ and ‘disadvantage’ frames (Vliegenthart, Schuck, Boomgaarden, De Vreese, 2010). Other researches have looked at the tone of the news coverage, whether it was negative, neutral or positive (‘t Lam, 2012, De Vreese, Banducci, Semetko and Boomgaarden, 2012; De Beus and Mak, 2009). The first two articles found that the news in the Netherlands covering the EU is mostly neutral in nature but is followed by more negative frames. De Beus and Mak (2009) concluded that over the course of their research (1990-2002) the share of negative news had increased. De Beus and Mak (2009), Pfetsch et al. (2004), Helbling, Hoeglinger and Wüest (2010) and Semetko and Valkenburg (2000), used more specific frames, such as the ‘economic’ frame, the ‘norms and values’ frame or the ‘identity’ frame, in their analyses. This more specific frame-usage research, is more suitable to my research as I aim to generate a ‘thick’ description, whereas most methods ‘are limited in their ability to retrieve detailed information from texts, and especially to establish relationships between actors, issues and frames’ (Vliegenthart, 2007, p. 144). That is not to say, that frames like ‘risk’ or ´opportunity’ will not feature in this research. These frames are usually part of larger frames like the ‘economic prosperity’ frame or the ‘security and ecology’ frame.
In this research, I will use the frames formulated by Helbling, Hoeglinger and Wüest (2010). Although this research is solely focused on the frames used by political parties, they did so by looking at media outlets. As this research concentrates on both media and political parties, this research method seemed most applicable. I will briefly describe the various frames that they
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identified, after which the following paragraph will expand on my data collection and the use of the frames formulated by Helbling, Hoeglinger and Wüest (2010).
Helbling, Hoeglinger and Wüest (2010) disseminate the frames that political parties use with regards to European integration by looking at quality newspapers of six EU member-states of which the Netherlands is one. The authors distinguish between three generic frames: the cultural frame, the economic frame and other utilitarian one. These three frames are then divided into subsections. So, the cultural frame has two subframes, namely ‘national identity’ and ‘multicultural-universalist’. The former emphasizes elements like national boundaries, national sovereignty and references to a specific (homogenous) culture, fearing the loss of these unique features due to further integration. The latter, conversely, welcomes European integration as it ‘contributes to a better understanding between peoples, and that it may remove cultural barriers’ (Helbling, Hoeglinger and Wüest, 2010, p. 500). This frame favors both cultural openness and exchange (multicultural) as well as general moral principles like democracy, civil rights and rule of law (Helbling, Hoeglinger and Wüest, 2010). The second and third frame, the economic and other utilitarian frames refer to both positive and negative aspects. The first frame is divided into ‘labor and social security’ and ‘economic prosperity’ frames (Helbling, Hoeglinger and Wüest, 2010, p. 499). The former focuses both on fear of unemployment, loss of wages and a decline of the social welfare state (negative), as well as on the benefits of EU-membership for the social security of a country (positive). The latter concentrates on European integration in ‘the context of wealth and growth’ (Helbling, Hoeglinger and Wüest, 2010, p. 501). In general it stresses the benefits of the EU internal market its the international competitiveness (Helbling, Hoeglinger and Wüest, 2010)The last frame, ‘other utilitarian’ frames, is divided into a ‘efficiency and efficacy’ frame and a ‘security and ecology’ frame (Helbling, Hoeglinger and Wüest, p. 501). The first frame focuses on the action and capacity of the state, referring to, for example, the poor governance of EU institutions (negative) or the necessity of international cooperation to tackle transnational issues (positive). The second and last subframe focuses on the consequences of integration for internal, external and environmental security.
This paragraph and the previous chapter have also shown that analyses that encompass both political party debates as well as media debates have been largely absent in the current literature, especially when it comes to weekly journals (as will be explained in chapter six).
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5.3 D
ATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSISIn order to get a comprehensive understanding of the Dutch debate on EU and European integration, I have chosen to look at three different moments of further integration, moments that asked for a constructive debate about how the Netherlands would like to see further integration develop (or not). Van Santen and Vliegenthart (2013) have shown that coverage of the EU increases during important key moments like the Treaty of Amsterdam and the European Constitution. It is during these moments of institutional (European summits), policy (treaties) or national (referenda) events that media attention for the EU was at its highest (Van Santen and Vliegenthart, 2013). By looking at two weekly journals and parliamentary documents, an attempt is made to shed light on how both the political as well as the public constructed and framed the Dutch stance on the EU and European integration. In this way, it is possible to see if and what kinds of shifts have occurred in that debate. Moreover, from a social constructionist standpoint, taking only one side of the debate would go against the idea that ‘the social world is not constructed by one discourse but by a multitude of viewpoints that can compete with one another’ (Jørgensen and Philips, 2002). In the end, this research should generate a ‘thick’ description of the three key moments I have chosen.
For every year that I chose, a so-called anchor point has been chosen. For the first key moment, the Treaty of Amsterdam, I chose the dates during which the Amsterdam summit took place (16 and 17 June 1997), as the anchor point. For the European Constitution, the date of the referendum, 1 June 2005, was chosen. Lastly, the European Summit of 21 July 2011, during which the EU-member states discussed the necessary steps in the eurozone crisis, has been chosen as the final anchor point. All news coverage of Elsevier and De Groene from the five months before these anchor points have been selected. The reason for only looking at the preceding months, and not the succeeding months as well, has to do with density of news coverage, which was significantly higher before the anchor points than after. This data collection has resulted in the following numbers. For the De Groene, I have analyzed 58 articles (19 from 1997, 22 from 2005 and 17 from 2011), for Elsevier 97 articles (21 in 1997, 45 in 2005 and 31 in 2011) have been subject to analysis. In the bibliography (chapter 9) an overview of the parliamentary debates and those articles that were subject to the discourse analyses (paragraph 6.2 and 7.4) can be found.
The collection of the data of these two weekly journals differ in a number of ways. Elsevier, has an archive with a search engine with which you can look for certain words, sentences and
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articles, and you can select a timeslot. To search for relevant articles of 1997, I chose to look for articles that featured ‘Treaty of Amsterdam’, for 2005 ‘European Constitution’ and for the Euro crisis I selected multiple search words, namely ‘European integration’, ‘euro crisis’ and ‘Europe’. I chose to expand the search for the latter event because there was no fixed event that I could focus on as with the other two. Selecting articles for De Groene on the other hand, was different, as their archive does not have a search engine. Their archive is divided into years of publication. So, for these three years, I looked through all editions, usually 50 per year, and selected those articles that featured ‘EU’, ‘Europe’, ‘European integration’ and ‘euro’ in the headlines. I realized that this selection might not give a complete picture of all the articles that featured the EU, so I have tried to also include articles that did not necessarily feature one of the aforementioned words in the headlines but referred to relatable subjects, such as the economy and foreign affairs.
The parliamentary debates have been limited to two debates per selected event (6 in total). I have chosen those debates that treated the focused on the key moments. So, in 1997, I chose those debates in which the Treaty of Amsterdam was directly discussed. Important to note, is that parliamentary debates on the treaty also featured in smaller groups, so-called parliamentary committees, but these debates usually feature highly detailed discussions on the consequences of the treaty. As the aim is to get an understanding of how the political parties frame the relation between the EU and the Netherlands, focusing on miniature details would distort the possibility to get a comprehensive understanding of the political parties’ relation to the EU as a whole. For example, the parliamentary Economic and Financial Committee solely discuss the economic consequences of the treaty, so the chosen frame will always be economic. In the larger debates, the ones I have chosen, the parties focus on their entire stance on the EU and further European integration, allowing me to dissect specific discourses. The last key moment, the Euro crisis, has an already predefined frame, namely the ‘economic consequences’ frame. I have tried to not only focus on the debate on the European summit of July 2011, but also include the yearly debate on the ‘State of the European Union’ in my analysis. This debate discussed the EU as a whole and does not only concentrate on the economic consequences of EU-membership.
After the data selection, I used atlas.ti, a qualitative data analysis tool, to analyze the various documents. With a frame analysis, especially when you use predefined frames that have been used in this analysis, it is important to define how you identify these various frames in the text. In general, I used the method of looking for core sentences, paragraphs or keywords that would
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characterize a certain frame. I coded every sentence or paragraph that formulated a value judgment about the EU and European integration, taking the definitions of the six sub-frames formulated by Helbling, Hoeglinger and Wüest (2010) (see paragraph 4.3). In this way, it is possible to work your way ‘up’ from words, sentences and paragraphs, to frames and, ultimately, to discourses. When researching for such frames in a more qualitative manner, by going through and reading all the debates and articles, it is possible to miss core sentences or paragraphs. To see if I indeed found all relevant sentences and paragraphs, I also searched for key words, related to the frames, such as ‘social security’, ‘sovereignty’, ‘euro’ and so on. Important to note, is that most of the sentences or paragraphs that were coded featured multiple frames, that also related to one another (Helbling, Hoeglinger and Wüest, 2010). So, for example, an article in the Elsevier noticed the following when talking about the implications of the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam: ‘under the guise of more efficiency and effectiveness for the EU, national sovereignty of the member-states is reduced’ (Fortuyn, 1997). Here you see a clear example of how the ‘efficiency and efficacy’ frame is opposed to the ‘national identity’ frame, which corresponds to a loss of national sovereignty. All articles and parliamentary debates have been treated in this manner.
Besides these predefined frames, I have also found two ‘new’ frames over the course of my analysis. Namely the ‘democratic deficit’ frame and the ‘informative’ frame. The ‘democratic deficit’ frame can be divided into two sub-frames, namely a democratic deficit on the national level, the ‘national democratic deficit’ frame, and on a European level, the ‘EU democratic deficit’ frame. The first sub-frame refers to, for example, the (minimal) role the Dutch parliament plays in EU decision-making and the debate, or rather lack of debate, on European issues in the Netherlands. The latter sub-frame, which is a well-known concept when it comes to European Union affairs, refers to the lack of transparency and openness of the EU-institutions as well as the lack of democratic control of the European Parliament. The democratic deficit of the EU can also be deducted from the ‘efficiency and efficacy’ frame of Helbling, Hoeglinger and Wüest (2010), focusing on the ‘poor governance of European institutions’, but this, in my opinion, does not cover the entirety of what a ‘democratic deficit’ entails, such as transparency, accountability and a democratic debate (a public sphere so to say). Both sub-frames are, thus, more negative in nature. This frame, ‘democratic deficit’ has been found in both public and political debates and, more importantly, is one of the most found frames in my analysis (as will be explained later).
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The other inductively found frame, the informative frame was only found in the public debate, and refers to those paragraphs and articles that provided the reader with general information about the EU, without also providing a value judgment. I have chosen to highlight this frame as well, because I wanted to analyze if the information about the EU increased or decreased during the key moments. Some authors have concluded that European subject have not increased significantly in the Netherlands over the last decades (Pfetsch et al., 2004). In this way, I could analyze if the weekly journals tried informing their readers on what the EU entails and, more importantly, if that informative frame increased over the years. The results of this analysis will be elaborated on in the coming chapters.
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6 P
ARLIAMENTARY DEBATES
In the coming chapters, I will elaborate on the findings of my frame analysis of the political and public debate, with one paragraph focusing on the quantitative results and one paragraph focusing on the content of the frames that were found. By quantifying my data analysis, I will be able to dissect which frames were most prevalent during these years and thus provide an answer to the sub questions ‘What frames are most prevalent during these key moments?’, and ‘To what extent have these frames changed over time?’. In the qualitative part, the focus will be on the language behind the frames used by the political parties and the two weekly journals, providing an answer to the sub question ‘What language is used by the weekly journals/political parties to define the relationship between the Netherlands and EU and further European integration?’. These sub questions will allow me to answer the research question: ‘How and to what extent did the Dutch public and political debate around the European Union and European integration change between 1997 and 2011?’. This chapter will concentrate on the political debate, the subsequent chapter on the public debate.
6.1 Q
UANTITATIVE ANALYSISThe frequency of the frames used in the political debate has been visualized in Table 1. I have chosen to look at the frames used per year, so 1997, 2005 and 2011, and not to focus on the individual political parties as this paragraph tries to answer the questions ‘What frames are most prevalent during these key moments?’, and ‘To what extent have these frames changed over time?’. This research tries to expand that knowledge by looking at more specific frames, such as defined by Helbling, Hoeglinger, Wüest (2010). The six subframes that they identified, the ‘nationalistic’ and ‘multicultural-universalist’ frames (cultural), ‘labor and social security’ and ‘economic prosperity’ frames (economic consequences) and ‘efficiency and efficacy’ and ‘ecology and security’ frames (other utilitarian), have been used in this analysis (see paragraph 4.2 for explanation). In addition, the ‘national democratic deficit’ and ‘European democratic deficit’ have been inductively identified during the research (see paragraph 4.3 for the explanation). This quantitative analysis will in part be compared to Helbling, Hoeglinger, Wüest (2010) outcome. The authors differentiated their frame prevalence per type of political party, such as socialists, communists and liberals. I will not make the same differentiation per party, but I can, based on the party constellation of the Dutch parliament in the years that I
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analyzed, analyze if their frame prevalence concurs with my own data. The dissection of which party said what and thus, to which discourses these frames refer, will be substantiated on in the following paragraph.
Table 1. Political debate. Type of frame per year, in percentages of the total number of frames
1997 2005 2011 Total percentage Frequency
Nationalistic 9,6% 15,0% 14,1% 12,6% 34
Multicultural-universalist 3,8% 5,0% 2,4% 3,7% 10
Economic prosperity 3,8% 12,5% 17,6% 10,8% 29
Labor and social security 17,3% 7,5% 7,1% 11,2% 30
Efficiency and efficacy 25,0% 23,8% 23,5% 24,2% 65
Ecology and security 10,6% 5,0% 20,0% 11,9% 32
National democratic deficit 7,7% 17,5% 8,2% 10,8% 29
European democratic
deficit 22,1% 13,8% 7,1% 14,9% 40
Total 100 100 100
(N) 104 80 85 269
As the results in Table 1 reveal, there is a lot of fluctuation in the frame division, although the most prevalent frame, the ‘efficiency and efficacy’ frame, remains rather consistent. The same can be said of the most infrequent frame ‘multicultural-universalist’. The ‘efficiency and efficacy’ frame may refer to ‘the workings of the political system’, ‘the poor governance of the European institutions’ or ‘improving its position on international politics’ (Helbling, Hoeglinger, Wüest, 2010, p. 501). In general, taking the total percentage (fourth column of Table 1), the ‘other utilitarian’ frame, has been most frequently found with more than a third of the total frames. The other frequently used frame is the ‘democratic deficit’ frame, which covers more than a fourth of the total frames found. When taking these two aforementioned frames that emphasize the institutional and democratic character of the EU, almost half of the frames found in 1997 were of that nature (see the first column of Table 1). In the years that followed the prevalence declined somewhat to 37,6% in 2005 and 30,6% in 2011 (see column two and three of Table 1). Considering the fact that the Dutch parliament is responsible for assessing the treaties that are proposed by Brussels, especially the institutional consequences of the treaty for the EU as well as for their own parliament, the prevalence of the two aforementioned frame is not surprising. In addition, Helbling, Hoeglinger, Wüest (2010) found that especially the Green parties, the Christian democrats, the liberals and the social democrats used ‘efficiency and efficacy’ frame. Considering the fact that in 1997, these parties combined had 131 seats (of 150 seats), the prevalence of the ‘efficiency and efficacy’ frame in that year can be explained. The decrease from these two most prevalent frames can be partly explained
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by the fact that in 2005, when not only the EU’s institutional character was subject of discussion but also the role of the Dutch parliament came under scrutiny in the form of a referendum, the focus shifted to the ‘national democratic deficit’.
Furthermore, in 2011, with the eurozone crisis and the Arab Spring as the main topics of discussion, the frame shifted to the ‘economic consequences’ frame and the ‘ecology and security’ frame, with the latter referring to internal, external and environmental security. In general, the ‘economic prosperity’ frame increased significantly over the course of the three years of analysis. This frame does not only emphasize the positive economic consequences of integration but also to more technical issues such as ‘budgetary considerations’ (Helbling, Hoeglinger, Wüest 2010)). Interestingly, where the emphasis on economic prosperity increased, that of the ‘labor and social security’ decreased every year. Also, the ‘nationalistic’ frame, emphasizing national sovereignty, increased from 1997 onwards. According to Helbling, Hoeglinger, Wüest (2010), it is mostly the populist parties that use this type of frame. In 1997, populist parties on the left and the right only held a small faction in Dutch parliament, with a total of 5 seats (Tweede Kamerverkiezingen 1994, n.d.). The constellation changed in 2003 and 2010, especially in the latter case, where populist left and right had more than a quarter of the seats in parliament (Tweede Kamerverkiezingen 2003, n.d.; Tweede Kamerverkiezingen 2010, n.d.). As we will see in the coming paragraphs, the topic of national sovereignty and national identity was put on the agenda in the 1990s and peaked in the early 2000s and 2010s, explaining the growing use of the ‘nationalistic’ frame, not only by those usually associated with nationalistic arguments (Harryvan and Voerman, 2013, p. 294). This quantitative analysis has provided answers to the sub questions formulated at the beginning of this paragraph. It has shown that the Dutch parliament mainly focused on the institutional side of the EU and European integration. This prevalence remained rather consistent over the years, with the other frames being subject to change. The fact that the prevalence of these less frequented frames differed significantly over the years, indicates that social world has an impact on what is being discussed. Helbling, Hoeglinger, Wüest (2010) also conclude that the position of political parties on European issues depends on the traditional interests of the party regarding national and European issues, if they belong to the political establishment, as well as the context of the country and the issue that is being discussed (p. 516). In the following paragraphs, this combination of contextual factors will be considered when the language behind the frames will be extrapolated.
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6.2 Q
UALITATIVE ANALYSISIn this paragraph I will ‘get behind’ the most prevalent frames that were found and identified in the previous paragraph. The frame analysis has given an indication of what the parliamentary debate focused on when referring to the relationship between the Netherlands and the EU. The quantitative frame analysis, however, does not cover the entire story. Frames give you an insight in the way something is categorized, but normally with frame analyses the language that is used remains hidden (Vliegenthart, 2007). In the frame typology of Helbling, Hoeglinger and Wüest (2010), the ‘labor and social security’ frame and the ‘efficiency and efficacy’ frame include both positive and negative assessments of European integration (see paragraph 4.2). Thus, foregrounding and signifying the core sentences and keywords behind the frames that I found is important as to make such distinctions visible, also from the understanding that the language that is used forms our reality (Jørgensen and Philips, 2002). In short, I want to analyze the key words and core sentences that the political parties used, to extrapolate which discourses were most dominant in these debates. Consequently, I can answer the sub questions, ‘How do the political parties define the relationship between the Netherlands and EU and further European integration?’ and ‘What are the most dominant discourses?’.
This paragraph will be divided into three subparagraphs, each focusing on one key moment. The contextualization’s, both of the EU as well as of the Netherlands, will forego the actual analysis, so that the reader understands the setting in which the political parties framed their arguments. I have decided to analyze the discourse based on the prevalence of the frames, while trying to adhere to the order in which the parties spoke. I will give a general account of the discourse behind the frames while sometimes highlighting what individual parliamentarians have said. The referencing will be done by quoting the politician’s party and year of debate between brackets, for example: (Timmermans, PvdA, 2005). But, as stated in chapter 4, politicians in the debates will not be individually analyzed but will be treated as part of the political parties they represent’. The viewpoints of the political parties that were in parliament in 1997, 2005 and 2011 are mentioned throughout the paragraphs.
