VU Research Portal The Democratic Deficit Closer to Home van Noije, L.L.J. 2007 document version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Link to publication in VU Research Portal citation for published version (APA) van Noije, L. L. J. (2007). The Democratic Deficit Closer to Home: Agenda-building relations between parliament and the press, and the impact of European integration, in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and France. Eigen Beheer. 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J. E. Keman Prof.dr. P. A. Vorderer Prof.dr. C. H. de Vreese Prof.dr. S. Walgrave Prof.dr. F. P. J. Wester © 2007 Lonneke L. J. van Noije, Amsterdam ISBN 978 90 8659 161 9 (hardcover) ISBN 978 90 8659 160 2 (paperback) Illustrations by Adrian van de Ven All rights reserved. Save exceptions stated by law, no part of this publication may be re produced, stored in a retrieval system of any nature, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, included a complete or partial transcription, without the prior permission of the proprietor. DDeficit_13.inddeficit_13.indd 2 111-10-20071-10-2007 116:27:046:27:04 VRIJE UNIVERSITEIT The Democratic Deficit Closer to Home Agenda-building relations between parliament and the press, and the impact of European integration, in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and France ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad Doctor aan de Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, op gezag van de rector magnifi cus prof.dr. L.M. Bouter, in het openbaar te verdedigen ten overstaan van de promotiecommissie van de faculteit der Sociale Wetenschappen op donderdag 29 november 2007 om 15.45 uur in de aula van de universiteit, De Boelelaan 1105 door Lonneke Lily Johanna van Noije geboren te Waalwijk DDeficit_13.inddeficit_13.indd 3 111-10-20071-10-2007 116:27:046:27:04 promotor: prof.dr. J. Kleinnijenhuis copromotor: dr. D. Oegema DDeficit_13.inddeficit_13.indd 4 111-10-20071-10-2007 116:27:046:27:04 Table of contents Chapter One Introduction 1 1.1 Agenda building: the political power of attention 3 1.1.1 Wide-ranging answers to a simplifi ed question 4 1.1.2 Why should we care? 7 1.2 Th e central concepts 8 1.3 Design of the study 14 1.4 Outline of the book 18 Chapter Two Agenda building 23 2.1 Agenda building: the concept & its origin 23 2.2 Th e case for top-down agenda building 25 2.3 Th e case for bottom-up agenda building 28 2.4 Th e balance of power 31 2.5 Agenda building during elections 34 Chapter Three Mediatisation 41 3.1 Technological revolution 41 3.2 Deregulation of the news environment 42 3.3 Th e tuned in – turned off voter 43 3.4 Th eir joint eff ect: interpretative journalism 44 3.5 European integration 46 3.5.1 Multilevel governance 47 3.5.2 Authority & proximity as news values 50 3.5.3 Policy uncertainty 51 3.5.3.1 EU policy uncertainty & agenda building 52 3.5.3.2 EU policy uncertainty & national parliaments 55 3.5.4 Th e moderating role of Europe in agenda building 57 3.5.5 Agenda convergence within the European Union 59 Chapter Four Methodology 63 4.1 Data collection 63 4.1.1 Countries 63 4.1.2 Issues 69 4.1.3 Political agenda 72 4.1.4 Media agenda 74 4.1.5 Research period 75 DDeficit_13.inddeficit_13.indd 5 111-10-20071-10-2007 116:27:046:27:04 4.2 Operationalisation 78 4.2.1 Procedure 79 4.2.1.1 Step 1: retrieving the documents 80 4.2.1.2 Step 2: validating the selection of documents 81 4.2.1.3 Step 3: recording attention & validation 83 4.2.1.4 Step 4: calculating the scores for attention 86 4.3 Methods for data analysis 87 4.3.1 Modelling strategy: diagnostics 89 4.3.1.1 Do the variables have normal distributions? 90 4.3.1.2 Are the time series stationary? 92 4.3.1.3 What is the time span of infl uence? 95 4.3.1.3.1 Is there residual serial autocorrelation? 99 4.3.1.3.2 Is there residual heteroscedasticity? 101 4.3.1.4 Is there long-term causality? 103 4.3.2 Modelling strategy: testing the hypotheses 106 4.3.2.1 Structural equation modelling 107 4.3.2.2 Overall agenda building 110 4.3.2.3 Distinguishing between routine & election times 110 4.3.2.4 Allowing time to make a diff erence 111 4.3.2.5 Allowing the EU to make a diff erence 112 4.3.2.6 Checking for spuriousness due to real-world cues 113 Chapter Five Country descriptions 115 5.1 United Kingdom 115 5.1.1 Th e disruptive force of Europe 115 5.1.2 Brussels & British news reporting 118 5.1.3 Brussels & British parliamentary scrutiny 120 5.2 Th e Netherlands 122 5.2.1 Consensus all the way to Brussels 122 5.2.2 Brussels & Dutch news reporting 126 5.2.3 Brussels & Dutch parliamentary scrutiny 128 5.3 France 130 5.3.1 Europe’s best friend & worst enemy 130 5.3.2 Brussels & French news reporting 135 5.3.3 Brussels & French parliamentary scrutiny 138 Chapter Six Chronology 141 6.1 Agriculture 143 6.1.1 British agriculture 143 6.1.2 Dutch agriculture 145 6.1.3 French agriculture 147 6.1.4 Agriculture: concluding remarks 149 DDeficit_13.inddeficit_13.indd 6 111-10-20071-10-2007 116:27:046:27:04 6.2 Th e environment 149 6.2.1 Th e British environment 149 6.2.2 Th e Dutch environment 151 6.2.3 Th e French environment 153 6.2.4 Th e environment: concluding remarks 155 6.3 Drugs 156 6.3.1 British drugs 156 6.3.2 Dutch drugs 158 6.3.3 French drugs 160 6.3.4 Drugs: concluding remarks 161 6.4 Immigration 162 6.4.1 British immigration 162 6.4.2 Dutch immigration 164 6.4.3 French immigration 167 6.4.4 Immigration: concluding remarks 170 Chapter Seven Agenda-building results 171 7.1 Overall agenda building 171 7.2 Agenda building during elections 175 7.3 Agenda building over time 178 7.4 Agenda building across issues 179 7.4.1 Building the agenda of agriculture 180 7.4.2 Building the agenda of the environment 181 7.4.3 Building the agenda of drugs 181 7.4.4 Building the agenda of immigration 182 7.4.5 Controlling for real-world cues 182 7.4.6 Issue-specifi c agenda building: concluding remarks 184 7.5 Agenda convergence 187 7.6 Summary 190 Part Two Explaining the yet unexplained: The role of European actors and political confl ict 191 Chapter Eight European impact revisited 193 8.1 What really happened? 194 8.1.1 Revisiting the chronology of France 194 8.1.2 Revisiting the chronology of the environment 197 8.1.3 Revisiting the chronology of immigration 198 DDeficit_13.inddeficit_13.indd 7 111-10-20071-10-2007 116:27:046:27:04 8.2 Th e moderating role of European visibility 199 8.2.1 Methodology 200 8.2.1.1 Data and operationalisation 200 8.2.1.2 Ranking issues according to European visibility 203 8.2.1.3 Interaction models with European visibility 204 8.2.2 Results 206 8.2.2.1 Rank orders according to European visibility 209 8.2.2.2 Th e interaction eff ect of European visibility 213 8.2.3 Concluding remark 217 Chapter Nine The moderating role of confl ict 219 9.1 Agenda building as a contingent process 220 9.2 Confl ict 221 9.2.1 Confl ict & the political infl uence of media opinion 223 9.2.1.1 Advocates of the indexing hypothesis 223 9.2.1.2 Challengers of the indexing hypothesis 224 9.2.2 Confl ict & agenda building 228 9.2.3 European confl ict & agenda building 230 9.3 Methodology 233 9.3.1 Political confl ict defi ned & operationalised 233 9.3.2 A bottom-up approach to automated content analysis of confl ict 234 9.3.3 A research design for the validation of a tool 238 9.3.3.1 Towards a tool with semantic validity 238 9.3.3.2 Towards a tool with predictive validity 240 9.3.3.2.1 Choosing maximum entropy over naive Bayes 242 9.3.3.3 Validating the best tool with human coding, but without success! 245 9.3.4 Concluding remark 246 Chapter Ten Conclusion & discussion 247 10.1 A recapitulation 248 10.1.1 Part One 248 10.1.2 Part Two 251 10.1.3 Conclusion 253 10.1.4 A closer look at country diff erences 253 10.2 Limitations of the study 257 10.3 Lessons for theory: crossing national and academic boundaries 263 10.3.1 Agenda building amidst political communication 263 10.3.2 A European public sphere due to news sources? 264 10.3.3 Th e media in multilevel governance 266 DDeficit_13.inddeficit_13.indd 8 111-10-20071-10-2007 116:27:046:27:04 10.4 Lessons for parliament 268 10.5 Lessons for journalism 270 10.6 Concluding remark 273 References 275 Appendices 293 Samenvatting 313 Dankwoord 327 DDeficit_13.inddeficit_13.indd 9 111-10-20071-10-2007 116:27:046:27:04 DDeficit_13.inddeficit_13.indd 1100 111-10-20071-10-2007 116:27:056:27:05 List of tables Table 4.1: Newspapers with editorial line, circulation and source per country 75 Table 4.2: Size of the fi nal corpus for content analysis per country 82 Table 4.3: Number of keywords per issue per country 84 Table 4.4: Overview of the