Die Politisierung der europäischen Integration. Nationale Parlamentsdebatten zur Europäischen Union im Bundestag und House of Commons. (German)

The assumption of a "politicization" of European integration has received much attention, yet there is a lack of empirical evidence on the thematic objects and political cleavages of public debates about Europe. Against this background, the article investigates the contentiousness of debates about the European Union at the level of national parliaments, a subject previously neglected in research about the Europeanization of national parliaments. Based on the computer-aided manual coding of ten debates in both the German Bundestag and the British House of Commons between 2005 and 2009, the analysis finds that a relatively broad range of subjects related to the EU has become politicized, including the economic dimension of European integration but also "constitutional" questions such as the reform of the EU Treaties. Moreover, different modes of interaction between political parties can be observed at different thematic and institutional levels of the debate, confirming the relevance of government/opposition politics at the level of "domesticated" debates but indicating the emergence of atypical position patterns of parties in debates about supranational institutions and policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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