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Czech Public Opinion on Turkey's Accession to the EU: An Analysis through the Lenses of Sociological and Discursive Institutionalism*
Abstract
While Turkey lacks significant levels of public support fromthe Czech Republic in its EU bid, the existing studies of European public opinion on the question of Turkey do not bring any reasonable explanation as to why this can be so. To shed light on this problem, this article offers an analytical framework derived from sociological and discursive institutionalism. First, it shows that the historical/cultural context in the Czech Republic has created an informal institution built around the norms of “othering” Muslim societies like Turkey (sociological institutionalism). Second, based on the media coverage of selected political issues from Turkey between 2005 and 2010, it argues that this institution both enables and constrains the “discursive ability” of the media in communicating these issues to its audience (discursive institutionalism). Since the media—as a political actor—mostly acts to maintain this institution and does not critically debate it, the public opinion of Turkey as the “cultural other” remains as a dominant perception. The official support of the political elite for Turkey’s accession to the EU does not countervail the media influence, as this support is often not conveyed to the Czech public agenda.
Support for European integration is a function no longer only of `hard' economic and utilitarian predictors but also of `soft' predictors such as feelings of identity and attitudes towards immigrants. Focusing on the issue of the potential membership of Turkey in the European Union (EU), this study demonstrates that the importance of `soft' predictors outweighs the role of `hard' predictors in understanding public opinion about Turkish membership. The study draws on survey data (N = 1630) and applies a series of regression models and structural equation modelling to show in addition how the effects of utilitarian considerations are mediated through `soft' indicators, further accentuating the importance of identity considerations and anti-immigration sentiments. The findings are discussed in the light of public support for and the legitimacy of further European enlargement.
This article investigates patterns in audience reception of 16 news stories that received prominent media coverage in the
summer and fall of 1989. Using a national sample of American adults, it compares education, self-reported rates of media use,
interpersonal communication, and prior levels of general political knowledge as predictors of individual differences in recall
of current news events. Results indicate that respondents' background level of political knowledge is the strongest and most
consistent predictor of current news story recall across a wide range of topics, suggesting that there is indeed a general
audience for news and that this audience is quite sharply stratified by preexisting levels of background knowledge. Thus,
in survey research applications that require estimates of individual differences in the reception of potentially influential
political communications, a measure of general prior knowledge—not a measure of news media use—is likely to be the most effective
indicator. The article further concludes that the tendency of individuals to acquire news and information on a domain- or
topic-specific basis fails to undermine the value of political knowledge as a general measure of propensity for news recall.
All three of the traditionally recognized new institutionalisms – rational choice, historical, and sociological – have increasingly sought to ‘endogenize’ change, which has often meant a turn to ideas and discourse. This article shows that the approaches of scholars coming out of each of these three institutionalist traditions who take ideas and discourse seriously can best be classified as part of a fourth ‘new institutionalism’ – discursive institutionalism (DI) – which is concerned with both the substantive content of ideas and the interactive processes of discourse in institutional context. It argues that this newest of the ‘new institutionalisms’ has the greatest potential for providing insights into the dynamics of institutional change by explaining the actual preferences, strategies, and normative orientations of actors. The article identifies the wide range of approaches that fit this analytic framework, illustrating the ways in which scholars of DI have gone beyond the limits of the traditional institutionalisms on questions of interests and uncertainty, critical junctures and incremental change, norms and culture. It defines institutions dynamically – in contrast to the older neo-institutionalisms’ more static external rule-following structures of incentives, path-dependencies, and cultural framing – as structures and constructs of meaning internal to agents whose ‘background ideational abilities’ enable them to create (and maintain) institutions while their ‘foreground discursive abilities’ enable them to communicate critically about them, to change (or maintain) them. But the article also points to areas for improvement in DI, including the theoretical analysis of processes of ideational change, the use of the older neo-institutionalisms for background information, and the incorporation of the power of interests and position into accounts of the power of ideas and discourse.
Democracy requires that citizens' opinions play some role in shaping policy outcomes, including in foreign policy. Yet, although the literature on public opinion and foreign policy has made great progress in recent decades, scholars have reached no consensus concerning what the public thinks, or thinks about, with respect to foreign policy; how it comes to hold those opinions; or whether those opinions influence (or even should influence) foreign policy. In this article, we first review the extensive gains in scholarly knowledge in the area of public opinion and foreign policy over the past several decades, emphasizing relatively recent work. We then suggest a framework, based on the concept of market equilibrium, aimed at synthesizing the disparate research programs that constitute the literature on public opinion and foreign policy. To do so, in addition to considering the relationship between leaders and the public, we incorporate a third strategic actor, the mass media, which we believe plays a critical role alongside citizens and elites in shaping the public's attitudes about, and influence on, foreign policy. Our goal is to clarify the multifaceted relationships between these actors and foreign policy outcomes.
The newest new institutionalism, discursive institutionalism, lends insight into the role of ideas and discourse in politics while providing a more dynamic approach to institutional change than the older three new institutionalisms. Ideas are the substantive content of discourse. They exist at three levels - policies, programs, and philosophies - and can be categorized into two types, cognitive and normative. Discourse is the interactive process of conveying ideas. It comes in two forms: the coordinative discourse among policy actors and the communicative discourse between political actors and the public. These forms differ in two formal institutional contexts; simple polities have a stronger communicative discourse and compound polities a stronger coordinative discourse. The institutions of discursive institutionalism, moreover, are not external-rule-following structures but rather are simultaneously structures and constructs internal to agents whose "background ideational abilities" within a given "meaning context" explain how institutions are created and exist and whose foreground discursive abilities, following a logic of communication, explain how institutions change or persist. Interests are subjective ideas, which, though real, are neither objective nor material. Norms are dynamic, intersubjective constructs rather than static structures.
In choosing and displaying news, editors, newsroom staff, and broadcasters play an important part in shaping political reality. Readers learn not only about a given issue, but also how much importance to attach to that issue from the amount of information in a news story and its position. In reflecting what candidates are saying during a campaign, the mass media may well determine the important issues--that is, the media may set the "agenda." of the campaign.
A team of Central Europe-based political geographers examines Turkey's bid for European Union (EU) membership, one of the most controversial issues confronting that country's and EU politics. The authors analyze Eurobarometer public opinion survey data on EU enlargement (and particularly Turkey's EU membership) across the 27 polities of the enlarged EU as well as in Turkey itself. The analysis of the data points to clear regional differences in support for Turkey's EU membership. Moreover, the authors' statistical analysis indicates two major components around which public perceptions of Turkey's EU membership coalesce. The first, identified as a "thick" component, based on the idea that EUrope embodies a specific cultural identity, opposes Turkish membership, whereas a second "thin" component, comprised of institutional-procedural norms, leaves the door open to Turkey. They argue that it is at the complex intersection of these two opposing views that Turkey's bid for EU membership should be located and eventually decided.
Local populations in Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, and to a lesser degree in the Czech Republic, experienced much interaction with Muslims throughout the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when the Ottomans, as well as the Crimean Tatars, invaded the Kingdom of Hungary and waged wars against the Polish-Lithuanian state and the Habsburg Hereditary Lands. The Ottoman era has usually been reflected in the history textbooks of these four countries under the headings "Turkish Wars" or "Ottoman Expansion." Since the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989, all four ex-communist states have been involved in rewriting textbooks, although the perception of the Ottomans and Muslims has not changed in all cases. Without claiming to map the entire historical presentation of the Ottomans, this article demonstrates the polyphony found in the textbooks of this region. By analyzing secondary school educational materials in all four languages, it is possible to identify stereotypes, prejudices, and distortions within the perception of the Ottoman Turks.
This groundbreaking book represents the most systematic examination to date of the often-invoked but rarely examined declaration that "history matters." Most contemporary social scientists unconsciously take a "snapshot" view of the social world. Yet the meaning of social events or processes is frequently distorted when they are ripped from their temporal context. Paul Pierson argues that placing politics in time--constructing "moving pictures" rather than snapshots--can vastly enrich our understanding of complex social dynamics, and greatly improve the theories and methods that we use to explain them. Politics in Time opens a new window on the temporal aspects of the social world. It explores a range of important features and implications of evolving social processes: the variety of processes that unfold over significant periods of time, the circumstances under which such different processes are likely to occur, and above all, the significance of these temporal dimensions of social life for our understanding of important political and social outcomes. Ranging widely across the social sciences, Pierson's analysis reveals the high price social science pays when it becomes ahistorical. And it provides a wealth of ideas for restoring our sense of historical process. By placing politics back in time, Pierson's book is destined to have a resounding and enduring impact on the work of scholars and students in fields from political science, history, and sociology to economics and policy analysis.
There is something of a paradox in the findings of public opinion research that those individuals who shift their political
position from one election to another frequently have less information about the political situation and the issues than persons
whose attitudes and positions remain relatively unchanged. This runs contrary to the common assumption that changes in political
attitudes and behavior occur in response to communication of information and arguments about the principal candidates and
the issues on which they are divided. Here is an extended discussion of the question.
This article examines EU citizen attitudes to Turkey's bid to join the EU. The key theoretical constructs investigated to explain opposition to Turkey's EU membership are related to rational economic self-interest and group-level interests and concerns. The findings indicate that the former are irrelevant for distinguishing between opponents and supporters of Turkey's candidacy, while the latter do provide fairly powerful explanations for opposition to Turkish EU membership. However, because these factors do not completely explain overall levels of hostility to Turkey's candidacy, context is also introduced, particularly the threatening context provided by Turkish migration. The find- ings indicate that migration from Turkey to some of the EU member states has combined with feelings of group pro- tectiveness to produce widespread animosity to Turkey's entry into the EU.
All authoritarian governments attempt to control the flow of news and information to the public--but with what effect? To answer this question, we adapt an existing model of opinion formation to conditions in authoritarian countries, validate that model on opinion data collected in Brazil during its authoritarian period, and, finally, use the model to derive expectations about patterns of regime support that exist in different kinds of authoritarian systems. The paper shows that support for regime policies depends heavily on citizens' level of political awareness. In general, highly aware persons are more heavily exposed to government-dominated communications media, but are also better able to resist the propaganda they encounter. As a result, people in the broad middle ranges of awareness--who pay enough attention to be exposed but are not sophisticated enough to resist--typically are most susceptible to government influence.
This article argues that citizens employ proxies rooted in attitudes about domestic politics when responding to survey questions about the European integration process. It develops a model of public opinion toward European integration based on attitudes toward the political system, the incumbent government, and establishment parties. With the help of data from Eurobarometer 34.0, the study tests political and economic models of public support for membership in the European Union in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, and Portugal. The analyses show that system and establishment party support are the most powerful determinants of support for membership in the European Union. The results also suggest that the relationship between economic factors and support previously reported in research on public opinion toward European integration is likely to be mediated by domestic political attitudes.
Contemporary theories of politics tend to portray politics as a reflection of society, political phenomena as the aggregate consequences of individual behavior, action as the result of choices based on calculated self-interest, history as efficient in reaching unique and appropriate outcomes, and decision making and the allocation of resources as the central foci of political life. Some recent theoretical thought in political science, however, blends elements of these theoretical styles into an older concern with institutions. This new institutionalism emphasizes the relative autonomy of political institutions, possibilities for inefficiency in history, and the importance of symbolic action to an understanding of politics. Such ideas have a reasonable empirical basis, but they are not characterized by powerful theoretical forms. Some directions for theoretical research may, however, be identified in institutionalist conceptions of political order. This is precisely the objective of the present article.
Media discourse and public opinion are treated as two parallel systems of constructing meaning. This paper explores their relationship by analyzing the discourse on nuclear power in four general audience media: television news coverage, newsmagazine accounts, editorial cartoons, and syndicated opinion columns. The analysis traces the careers of different interpretive packages on nuclear power from 1945 to the present. This media discourse, it is argued, is an essential context for understanding the formation of public opinion on nuclear power. More specifically, it helps to account for such survey results as the decline in support for nuclear power before Three Mile Island, a rebound after a burst of media publicity has died out, the gap between general support for nuclear power and support for a plant in one's own community, and the changed relationship of age to support for nuclear power from 1950 to the present.
The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr Ostrom uses institutional analysis to explore different ways - both successful and unsuccessful - of governing the commons. In contrast to the proposition of the 'tragedy of the commons' argument, common pool problems sometimes are solved by voluntary organizations rather than by a coercive state. Among the cases considered are communal tenure in meadows and forests, irrigation communities and other water rights, and fisheries.
In the context of European Union enlargement and the discussions about a European constitution, the question of Europe's identity has once again entered the limelight of political debates. From a poststructuralist perspective, identities are constructed through practices of othering, articulating a difference. In this article, I follow Ole Wæver to argue that for most of the time after the Second World War the most important other in the construction of a European identity has been Europe's own past. This temporal form of othering offered the possibility to form an identity through less antagonistic and exclusionary practices than was common in the modern international society. However, since the 1990s geographic and cultural otherings are on the increase, marking a return of geopolitics in European identity constructions and undermining the notion of European integration as a fundamental challenge to the world of nation‐states.1 A previous version of this paper was presented at the workshop ‘Other Europes’, organised by the Poststructuralism working group of the British International Studies Association, Keele University, England, 16 May 2003. I would like to thank the workshop participants, Alessandra Buonfino, Bahar Rumelili and the three referees of this journal for their critical and constructive comments. View all notes
How can differences in public support for membership in the European Union across the twelve EU member states and among its citizens be explained? Using Eurobarometer polls for 1982, 1986, and 1990, the paper examines how direct and indirect economic benefits associated with EU membership affect support for integration. We find that individuals living in countries that benefit more from EU membership display higher levels of support for their country's participation in the EU. Moreover, the results indicate that those individuals who benefit personally are also more supportive of the integration project. The paper also spells out some of the possible ramifications of these results.
This paper studies the recent rise of the public fear against Islam and Turkey in Europe. We present an overview on the current tendencies and provide an informative synopsis on Islamophobia in general and Turkophobia in particular. The quantitative part of the study focuses on a regression analysis to model the relationship between the European dislike of a Turkish EU membership and the Turkish population in Europe. Our results show that a higher Turkish population share in the European host country corresponds to a higher disapproval rate of Turkish membership in the EU. In the same vein, a lower Turkish population share in the European host country corresponds to a lower disapproval rate of Turkish membership in the EU. The positive statistical relationship is found to be highly significant and of high effect size.
The conventional critique of institutional theory, and especially historical institutionalism, is that it is incapable of coping with change. We argue for the importance of political conflict as a means of initiating change in an institutionalist framework. In particular, conflict over ideas and the underlying assumptions of policy is important for motivating change. We demonstrate the viability of this argument with examples of institutional change.
It is increasingly common for social scientists to describe political processes as "path dependent." The concept, however, is often employed without careful elaboration. This article conceptualizes path dependence as a social process grounded in a dynamic of "increasing returns." Reviewing recent literature in economics and suggesting extensions to the world of politics, the article demonstrates that increasing returns processes are likely to be prevalent, and that good analytical foundations exist for exploring their causes and consequences. The investigation of increasing returns can provide a more rigorous framework for developing some of the key claims of recent scholarship in historical institutionalism: Specific patterns of timing and sequence matter; a wide range of social outcomes may be possible; large consequences may result from relatively small or contingent events; particular courses of action, once introduced, can be almost impossible to reverse; and consequently, political development is punctuated by critical moments or junctures that shape the basic contours of social life.
Estudio teórico que analiza los supuestos de cómo los ciudadanos van obteniendo información política a través de los diversos medios de comunicación para después convertirla en opinión pública.
- Kenski Henry C.
‘V tureckých volbách se utká město s venkovem’
- Pavel Novotný
Muslimštímigranti a český sekulárnístát
- Eva Pavlíková
Turquie - France: Dialogue de Sourds
- Nicole Pope
‘Tug of War or Lifelining: Central European Views on Turkey's Accession to the EU’
- Armağan Çakir
- Angelika Gergelova
‘EU se shodla s Ankarou, vstupní jednáni mohou začít [The EU Agreed with Ankara: Accession Negotiations Can Begin]’
- M F Dnes
‘Startujeme s Tureckem [We Are Starting with Turkey]’
- Zbyněk Petráček
‘Danke Österreich! [Thank You, Austria!]’
- Respekt
‘VIDEO: Erdogan se pustil do Perese a odjel z Davosu [Erdogan Attacked Peres and Left Davos]’
- Týden
Czech Debate on the EU Membership Perspectives of Turkey and
- D Král
• Král, D. (2005), Czech Debate on the EU Membership Perspectives of Turkey and Ukraine, Prague: EU-ROPEUM Institute for European Policy.
Rediscovering Institutions: The Organizational Basis of Politics
- James G March
- Johan P Olsen
‘Vraťte se do Osvětimi, křičeli prý propalestinští aktivisté na vojáky Izraele [“Go Back to Auschwitz!”, Shouted Pro-Palestinian Activists at Israeli Soldiers]’
- M F Dnes
‘Turci odhlasovali ústavní reformu, která mázemi přiblížit EU [Turks Voted for a Constitutional Reform That Can Move the Country Closer to the EU]’
- M F Dnes
‘Hrozí Turecku puč? Vojáci vyčkávají [Is a Potential Coup Threatening Turkey? Soldiers Are Waiting]’
- Pavel Novotný
‘The Support of East Central European Countries for Turkey's Accession to the European Union’
- Pavel Šaradín
‘Erdogan: Pragmatik, který to umí s davem’
- Pavel Novotný
- List
- Interviews
LIST OF INTERVIEWS
No. 1: A Certified Turkish-Czech Translator in the Czech Republic, 8 June 2012, Prague.
No. 2: A Professor of Politics at Charles University, 19 April 2012, Prague.
No. 3: A Former Editor of Prague Post (2008-2012), 20 June 2012, Prague.
No. 4: An Analyst, Association for International Relations -AMO, 4 May 2012, Prague.
No. 5: An Analyst, Association for International Relations -AMO, 25 April 2012, Prague.
No. 6: An Analyst, National Security Studies Institute, 7 June 2012, Prague.
No. 7: A Member of the Turkish-Czech Friendship Association, 12 June 2012.
No. 8: Another Member of the Turkish-Czech Friendship Association, 12 June 2012, Prague.
No. 9: An Analyst, EUROPEUM, 4 June 2012, Prague.
No. 10: A TOP09 Parliamentarian and the Head of the Czech-Turkish Interparliamentary Group in the
Czech Parliament, 9 July 2012, Prague.
An Expert, the Czech-Arab Centre for Cultural Dialogue
No. 12: A Member of CETIAD (the Czech-Turkish Association of Young Entrepreneurs), 12 June 2012, Prague.
No. 13: An Expert, the Czech-Arab Centre for Cultural Dialogue, 19 April 2012, Prague.
No. 14: A Member of the Czech-Turkish Businessmen Association, 20 June 2012, Prague.