New (open access) publication out now in @CogitatioPaG

"Party Positions on Differentiated European Integration in the Nordic Countries: Growing Together, Growing Apart?"

A short

https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/3353

Some context. Between 2010 and 2014, I conducted 34 interviews with MPs, ministers and senior party officials in the Nordic countries, starting in Iceland (where I got the chance to visit a glacier covered in ashes from a relatively recent eruption, remember?)

I asked interviewees about their positions on differentiation. What are the factors shaping their party's stance? Does transnational cooperation with members of their Nordic party family matter? What do they think of differentiation as a whole? And so on.

During that period, we were in the middle of the Euro crisis, so the issue was salient. Yet some interviewees were puzzled by my research, especially in Finland where differentiation is not really a thing and in Iceland where the issue of EU membership was yet to be settled.

Five points came out of this research:

1. Belonging to a Nordic party family does not have an impact on a party’s position on differentiation. Yes, they talk about European integration, but there is no unified position on the matter.

2. The so-called 'Conservative' party family is more pro-European than others and tends to favour homogeneity over differentiation. Yet the Icelandic Independence Party was strongly opposed to joining the EU.

3. Which factors play an important role in shaping party positions on differentiation? Government participation, public opinion as well as intra-party divisions.

4. Party positions on (differentiated) European integration are dynamic rather than fixed. This is particularly (and unsurprisingly) the case for Nordic populist radical right parties.

5. Much more needs to be done to explain the effects of party positions and public opinion towards differentiation. Many outstanding researchers are on the case (among which @CatherineDVries, @_mlorimer, Dirk Leuffen, and others involved in @dice_h2020).

If you are interested in the topic, my PhD thesis focused on party and government positions on differentiation in Finland, Sweden and Norway: https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/16175

We also have a recent edited volume on some of the most recent developments: https://www.routledge.com/Differentiated-Integration-and-Disintegration-in-a-Post-Brexit-Era/Ganzle-Leruth-Trondal/p/book/9780367135300

And we have an upcoming Handbook of Differentiation in the European Union, to be published with Routledge in 2021 (with 45-50 chapters on the issue).