…and there is hope in that. I have been reading with a sense of guilt (as a not so regular contributor) posts about how the blog contest is shaping up . Frank’s provoking post Is TH!NK ABOUT IT dying? (Frank, I am one of the ‘lurkers’ as you put it, apologies for the lack of responses, there is still time to improve though, right?. Also Etan’s great post Th!nk About It is alive and kicking. So in response to Frank and Etan’s… Do we need to be trying to reinvigorate Th!nk, or is there just not enough interesting stuff happening around the EP elections, are we doing a good job explaining EU politics?
It seems to me that there is actually too much is going on and I disagree that too little is happening – there may only be a few people triggering the debates but actually they are really active and it means the landscape is changing so quickly, with so much scope, that it is hard to keep up. Yes it is true that it is boring to talk about the lack of populist engagement in European politics and the need for a public sphere that is more encompassing and direct but there is an alive and kicking subject matter around all this – just keeping up with all the key debates is a full time job!
In the world of EP election coverage these new EU slogans posted on New Europe, are an effort to move away from standardized eurobabble and actually capture something of the novelty of EP elections.
EU elections at least in Greece are a barometer for how national elections will go. Party voting is the norm. The idea that elections might not mean exactly the same thing is still an anathema to many. EP elections in a way are the testing ground for the whole EU experiment. The EU will keep doing what its doing after the EP elections, whatever the result and in fact a change of majority in the Parliament will not make a huge difference, as we all repeatedly hear.
What are the EP elections about? Why bother to vote then? For me it is a chance to participate with a kind of tacit agreement in the whole project, one that I can see is still in its infancy – one explanation of why Lisbon trailed off in the way it did is possibly that it was not yet ready, it is not implicitly a failure or about too much power in the hands of too few but a democracy not ripe enough yet. The polis wasn’t built in a day and neither will the European political platform. It is a work in progress and like any good political system it takes time. It’s a new form of democracy, the EP elections, a transnational vote, on national issues, at a postnational level.
Although many would disagree this exists, I like the idea that the EU has naïve qualities, it is not just this complex beast made up of bureaucrats with many degrees and many languages. It is a baby still, challenged toddler perhaps, whose parents have abandoned it and is searching for a new lease of life (ahhh, sweet!). I like the idea that nothing is tried and tested, that nobody knows why they will vote exactly and that there is no demarcated or particularly successful communication strategy. It means we have to work harder as thinkers to make room for this new space. Lets not transpose what works at the national level – the ‘functioning’ rules we know, it’s a good chance to make it more creative perhaps more truthful.
European politics is desperate for punters – its one of its saving graces, its still a land of opportunities for jobs, ideas, funding, contacts…its not been flooded yet, its ripe pickings for those who want it. The opportunist is always welcome as is the citizen with conviction.
One thing I am liking about the competition is that it seems to me that there is a consensus forming that we need to keep re-defining ourselves as thinkers, this is great and I hope that we will be doing the same thing right up until the end. Like any good, live democratic venture, especially one with a scope like ours – to engage in a relatively unstructured, unregulated way, it’s important that we are spontaneous but reflective and make sense of what we are doing – without banding into conformist camps- which would be the worst.
(8 votes, average: 3.50 out of 5)
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Hi Christina - great to see you being so enthusiastic about the election and about Euro blogging. What are the issues in the Greek election and will the turnout be high? Will there be an anti-Government protest vote about the civil unrest?