Democratizing the European Union through communication: The national level perspective

Sammanfattning: Tightly knit to the debate about a democratic deficit to the European Union (EU) is that of a communication deficit, meaning that the legitimacy a political entity gain through the communicative processes that ensure insight into politics is flawed. Ideas on how to overcome the communication deficit often revolve around transnationalizing communication between Member States or improving the communicative performance of EU institutions. This study shifts focus to the communicative processes on national level, and the importance of national politicians and journalists to pick up on information about EU processes and make them visible and relevant to their publics. An in-depth interview study, backed up by previous studies about communication regarding the EU in Sweden, is carried out with Swedish politicians and journalists to learn more about their own thoughts on the matter, as the main agents of ensuring the communicative legitimacy. With the theoretical ideas of political communication underpinning the study, the interaction between the two actors is central. We learn that the majority of interviewees are self-critical about their neglect of the EU level of the political system, and conclusions about how to overcome the democratic deficit through communicating at the national level are drawn.