Is North American Regionalism Less Politicized Than European Integration? Evidence from Focus Groups

Abstract

The institutions, decision-making processes and outputs of regional governance arrangements are often portrayed as neither legitimate nor illegitimate, but simply ‘a-legitimate’ (Steffek 2007: 190) in the eyes of citizens — so remote from their day-to-day political experiences that they are not seen as being in need of popular legitimation. This changes when regional governance becomes politicized — that is, when citizens gain awareness of its political significance, begin to develop opinions about it and treat it as salient in their political discourses and activities. The European Union (EU) is widely cited as an example of a regional organization that has experienced this kind of politicization. Since the debate about the Maastricht Treaty in the early 1990s, the ‘permissive consensus’ on EU-related issues in the European population has presumably weakened, and therefore EU institutions are said to be increasingly faced with explicit challenges to their legitimacy.