The europeanization of the spanish public sphereunder what circunstances do political actors gain visibility in eu related debates

Resumen

This doctoral thesis explores under what circumstances executive actors, politlcal parties and interest groups galn visibllity in EU (European Un Ion) related debates in the Spanish media for the perlod 2005-2015. The case of Spaln allows explorlng aspects so far subjected to little empirlcal investigations. For example, the motivafions of Europhile parties to pay attention to the EU, to what extent parties use an EU frame to achieve política! goals in a multilevel system of government, or the changíng patterns of pollticization of EU issues in one of the countries more seriously hit by the euro crisis. The analysis relies on the content analysis of 40.000 stories and 354.000 claims of polltical actors publlshed in El País and El Mundo from 2005 to 2015. The first chapter, devoted to the analysis of executive actors and political parties, corroborates that political actors react to top-down pressures. Executive actors, those with more media visibility, mainly react to the approval of new EU normative and events, such as European Council meetings, while the visibility of polltical partles is more associated to European parfiament elections. Yet, the thesis shows that política! actors do not react only to EU processes and events. Even if European integration is not a politicized issue in Spaln, the analysis of public debates on EU affairs show that partles use Europe strategically, as part of their competition to each other in the domestlc political arena. Results also illustrate that the euro crisis did not redlstribute significantly political actors' visibility in the media. Even if challenger parties were very critica! of most decisions adopted to overcome the crisis, their visibility on EU related public debates did not significantly increase during this critica! juncture. Finally, even if European integration is not a politicized issue, as far as the EU is associated with domestic political debates, patterns of media political parallelism emerge. For example, the visibility of secessionist Catalan partles in EU related debates only increases parallel to increasing support for independence In El Mundo. The second chapter, devoted to the analysis of interest groups, corroborates that in this case top-down processes do not play an important role in explaining their visibility in EU related debates. Interest groups do not obtain more media coverage when new normative is discussed at the EU level, not even on those policy areas where the EU has more competences. Yet, stories where new EU regulation in the fields of energy, environment, labour and social issues is discussed, show higher diverslty of interest groups than policy domains of economic nature, which are monopolized by few groups. The analysis also shows that debates related to the European parliament and the European Commission are generally associated with a more pluralistic patterns, ínvolving interest groups of dlfferent types, than those where the European Councll participate. The visibility of interest groups does not increase neither during the approval of new EU normative, nor when their implementation is discussed at domestic leve!. Interest groups wlth a role in the lmplementation process have no visibility in public debates on European affairs, not even on highly politicized issues. Regarding the impact of the euro crisis, it did raise attention to previously excluded groups in EU related debates, such as labour unions or citizens groups. Yet, important differences exist between El Mundo and El País. The analysis of interest groups further corroborates that the media are not passive actors but may be actively involved in the process of giving sorne actors more attention in public debates to support their political allies.