The political communication of social movements : An empirical analysis of ATTAC associations claims-making over European integration

摘要

Social movements increasingly mobilize contestation either against the institutionalization of the EU system of governance or against the penetration of European norms at the domestic level. As a French association created in 1998 to promote the Tobin tax and to regulate the globalization of financial markets, Attac is a paradigmatic example of social movements intends to “politicize” European issues from below. This chapter uses the methodologies of process-tracing and content analysis applied to the policy programmes of four Attac federations in order to show the development of a “new left” discourse on European integration. Attac has constantly included European debates in its policy statements since 2001, creating national federations while trying to promote a new type of “Euro-protests” against the Bolkenstein directive or the European Constitution. Exercising centrifugal pressures on social-democratic parties in Western Europe, it has obliged some centre-left parties to assume a new discourse around the overarching idea of a “social Europe”.