The True Deficits of the European Public Sphere: Domesticisation and Politicisation

Abstract

The expression “communications gap” is, as noted in the Introduction, a loaded term that implicitly attributes to a mediation problem the distance between EU institutions and their citizens. In order to consider the “communication deficit” as one of the potential explanations and not the only explanation for the lack of popular engagement with EU politics, I derive from the literature on political publicity two concepts — “domesticisation” and “politicisation” — that account, without implying any media-related judgement, for the sociopsychological remoteness of the EU and the prominence of bureaucracy and administration over ideological conflict.