The party politics of the Euro crisis in the GermanBundestag: frames, positions and salience

Introduction: the differentiated politicisation of European governance

“…In support of the cleavage transformation hypothesis (Hooghe et al 2004;Kriesi et al 2008Kriesi et al , 2012Marks and Wilson 2000), we show in different contexts that party competition is constrained by ideology (Hoeglinger 2015;Schmidtke 2015;Wonka 2015). These ideational preferences of constituencies are considered to be shaped by macro-processes like globalisation and migration (Kriesi et al 2008(Kriesi et al , 2012, dominant policies enacted by the EU, i.e.…”

“…Of utmost concern is the question of membership: shall we be a member of the EU and/or the Eurozone mobilises people much more than treaty revisions or the accession of other countries (Grande and Hutter 2015). However, we also demonstrate that the day-to-day exercise of formal authority spurs politicisation (Leupold 2015;Schmidtke 2015;Wonka 2015).…”

“…It may be indicated by the number of newspaper articles reporting on European governance (e.g. Grande and Hutter 2015;Hoeglinger 2015;Leupold 2015;Schmidtke 2015), how 'aware' citizens are of the existence of the EU, its institutions and policies and how worried they are about EU politics (Baglioni and Hurrelmann 2015), by the amount of public statements party representatives dedicate to EU issues in national election campaigns (Hoeglinger 2015) or by the number of parliamentary questions devoted to EU issues (Wonka 2015).…”

“…Although parliaments' engagement with European governance remains selective and is conditioned by institutional factors, issue salience and party politics, there seems to be a more general politicisation trend (Auel and Christiansen 2015). Wonka (2015) illustrates this development for the German Bundestag during the Euro crisis.…”

“…Wonka (2015) shows that the European measures to tackle the financial crisis became a major object of politicisation in the German parliament. Similarly, Wendler's (2014: 563) comparative analysis of parliamentary debates demonstrates that constitutive issues of EU Treaty reform are quickly linked to redistributive concerns.…”