Changing Spaces of Political Communication: The Case of the European Union

This essay assesses whether new public communicative spaces are emerging in the European Union as a result of the process of political and economic integration. It first argues that supranational developments have induced an important theoretical shift in which the public sphere is no longer equated with the boundaries of the nation-state. It goes on to illustrate how the emergent Euro-polity has developed an important space for a supranational elite policy community to operate. Alongside this, the growth of transnational media (newspapers, magazines, television news) has worked to sustain a restricted elite space rather than to herald generalized access to communication by European publics. These tendencies tend to confirm, rather than to challenge, the European Union's existing "democratic deficit."