Justifying Enlargement in a Multi-level Polity: A Discursive Institutionalist Analysis of the Elites-Public Gap over European Union Enlargement

Abstract:
In view of the decreasing levels of public support for successive European Union enlargements, this article examines how political elites attempt to bridge this growing gap.

Drawing insights from discursive institutionalism, the article undertakes a systematic analysis of an aspect that has been widely neglected in the existing literature on enlargement: the relation between the discursive interaction among policy-makers at the EU level (co-ordinative discourse) and direct political communication at the national level (communicative discourse). Focusing on the case of Germany, the article argues that debates on enlargement at the EU and national levels have been growing apart since the 1970s, and discusses the implications of this discursive gap for the public legitimization of past and future enlargements.