Reductionist approach

Simon Hix’s contribution to the debate on the politicisation of the European Union rests on a distinction between constitutive politics and management policies (which the author describes as isomorphic issues). His policy paper comes down to the suggestion that the introduction of contestation in the decisional process would improve its performance. Stefano Bartolini disputes this, which he sees as a risk, if not a danger.

This approach seems simplistic in so far as the first author restricts politicisation to the emergence of a left-right opposition within the authorities belonging to the Union’s “institutional triangle”, which comes down to equating politicisation with polarisation.

Whilst I share, in the main, the reservations expressed by Stefano Bartolini, the thesis proficiently set forth by Simon Hix lays most open to epistemological criticism. On the one hand, supposing it proved correct, it could only apply to the running of the “community pillar”. As a result, it would have no implications for the CFSP and the ESDP, both intensely politicised though left-right opposition does not come into it, nor for that part of the management of the “third pillar” which remains intergovernmental.