It’s an interesting story indeed, but is it falsifiable?

Maybe i was shamed into eating a croissant instead of a pain au chocolat this morning, despite an unvawering opposition to it, but then again, maybe not. Maybe i hadn’t a policy on croissant-vs-pain au chocolat. Maybe i’d have chosen pain au chocolat, but made up my mind on croissant, after all.

And i’m not even an abstract entity composed of millions of people, various agendas, changing goverments, evolving policies, different representatives, presidents, ambassadors, bureaucrats etc, like france. So in my case, unwaverance should be easier to diagnose.

4.”getting the empirics pretty badly wrong”
I stand by my empirical claims an against some intemperate and largely evidence free criticism: 1. France did not unwaveringly oppose EU enlargement. This is a very common exaggeration. 2. The pre-ordained conclusion of the EU convention (more centralisation of power at the EU level) meant that rejection by the elements of civil society whose views were excluded from the process was always a very likely outcome.
3. The British and US governments are the main forces behind Turkish accession to the EU.

It’s a very interesting story – and the Schimmelfennig piece is the best account I’ve read of it (although it does have a fair amount of IR jargon in there – it’s writtne for the academic audience). What Schimmelfennig says – and I think he’s right on this – is that the French were never able to publicly act on their true preferences so as to veto membership because of how rotten this would have looked, given the public pronouncements that EU leaders had made about the birth of democracy in central and Eastern Europe etc. Effectively, they were shamed into compliance with a normative discourse that they didn’t internalize.

The reason I can’t get my head around your argument is that if France was unequivocally opposed to Central-Eastern European enlargement why didn’t they veto it? Surely France must have at least come around to a pro-enlargment view for it to happen – or am I missing something?

nik.

I agree that postmaterialism is never going to take root as long as there are so many on this planet with so many acute and desperate material needs—and as long as those who are rich in material wealth met are bombarded with advertising making them to feel inadequate and to greedily, endlessly crave more and more and more—, but a man can dream, I suppose.

What do you mean by “This is the essence of Blairism,” precisely? That it has been able to link the middle classes with traditional working class voters via a kind of idiosyncratic economic populism?

Well, we disagree here. But this is just an appeal to your own authority, not evidence. You provide no evidence here, and neither do Schimmelfennig, Sedelmeier, Torreblanca or Wallace. Intense French opposition to EU enlargement is first assumed, then explained away. But it never existed with the intensity asserted.

“France was quite unequivocally opposed to Central-Eastern European enlargement in the early 1990’s as anyone who was around Brussels then will tell you. They feared, quite reasonably, that enlargement to the East would magnify Germany’s influence, and also water down parts of the EU that they liked (broadening v. deepening debate), while also potentially jeopardizing the CAP over the longer term.”

France had all these concerns – in mild degree. Ross Perot versus NAFTA: that’s unwavering opposition. France and EU enlargement: some anxiety, nothing more. They could live with enlargement as part of the wider EU deal.

“As for the last Constitutional Convention – I lost count of the attempts to make it exciting to the public through various roadshows, publicity events, interviews, leaks etc etc. All failed, of course – but that’s the point I’m making.”

These are claptrap consultation exercises which no one would think could support any policy but more centralisation of power at the EU level. A bit like much government or political “consultation” – see Adonis et al on the Poll Tax or the Labour Party’s big Consultation or Bush’s roadtrips for Social Security reform. It’s a mockery of participation which was rightly derided. Or do you think that mainstream UK public opinion’s (and many interest groups) view that the EU shd do much less was somehow reflected in the process? Or there is anyway in which it could have been?

I say that 1. many consultation processes are really a sham and lack of enthusiasm for them reflects that 2. the EU constitutional convention was really one of those. You will agree with 1. at least. And I will be suprised if you think that 2. isn’t at least partly true in this case. I am of the view that it’s 100% true.

“The facts simply aren’t as you say they are.”
Well, so far I am unpersuaded.

“the SPD have been trying to grapple, not terribly well, with core economic issues” Does this mean “lost”?

“For social democrats, it is as important to clearly delineate where economic interests differ as it is to articulate and affirm the universalist values of liberal democracy.” Does this mean “say something useful”?

Replying to abb1 in my 11, and crossed post with you. Note that i don’t agree neither on the nationalism of the guy merely afraid to have his job outsourced.

Morpheus, cure to all my grumpiness, here i come.

But turkey still has little explaining power in this, just as the polishness of the plumber.

The last time there was an election here, chirac lost 20 regions out of 22, and the situation went downhill. People are not happy and feel insecure, and voted on that. It’s not that complicated.

… Must be just grumpy for losing this one.

Yabonn – you seem to be misinterpreting me here. There’s absolutely nothing above to suggest that opposition to Turkish accession played a major role in motivating the French no vote. And if you look at my previous post on the topic, I make it quite clear that we are beginning to see competing economic visions of Europe. My interest is in what happens from here. The deeper opposition to Turkey seems at the moment to be coming from the CDU in Germany. Although that said, I wouldn’t be half surprised if mutterings increased in France too, now that Chirac has been gravely weakened on the right.