Politics (1995) 15(1) pp. 43-47

A Reply to B d e r Stephen George’

In this reply to Buller’s article, Stephen George argues that although the comments made about the awkwardpartner thesis’ are a valid critique of some common assump- tions found in the media, they do not repre- sent his position accurately; also that Buller’s critique of explanations of British govern- ments’ attitudes to the EC which concentrate on institutions cannot be made of the domes- tic politics approach that he has adopted

Jim Buller’s article is not specifically aimed at my own book An Awkward Partner (George, 1990): he is criticising what he believes to be a general set of assumptions about Britain’s relationship with the European Community (EC), and now the European Union (EU). However, many of his criticisms are illustrated by reference to George (19901, and to a book that I edited (George, 1992). My reply is primarily to the criticisms Buller makes of these two books, as I cannot answer for any- body else’s views.

Buller essentially makes two points. The first is that what he calls the ‘awkward partner thesis’ concerning Britain’s relations with the EC is of limited use in explaining that rela- tionship. Secondly, he raises doubts about the underlying argument that the awkwardness can be explained by reference to the effects of domestic political institutions.

The awkward partner thesis On the first point, that the awkward partner thesis is of limited use in explaining Britain’s

relations with the EC, I would like to say at the outset that I agree with Buller that Brit- ain’s relationship with Europe has often been misrepresented. The picture of Britain out of step with the other eleven member states is simply not an accurate portrayal of the com- plex diplomatic bargaining that goes on within the EC. In so far as he is criticising an assumption that is often implicit in press reporting of Britain’s relations with the EC, I have no argument with Buller. However, he explicitly accuses me of the same error, and this I deny.

Part of the problem is that Buller con- structs an ‘awkward partner thesis’ to which he says I subscribe, but which does not accu- rately reflect my position. His justification for constructing this thesis himself is that I do not do so explicitly.

As he says, I provide no definition of ‘awk- wardness’; but the reason for this is not just sloppy scholarship, it is that I have not used the term in any special or unusual way. It is used as a piece of plain English, for which the dictionary definition will suffice.

Buller quotes the Collins definition as ‘dif- ficult to deal with’. The Concise Oxford says ‘clumsy, bungling’. Yet Buller goes on to sug- gest ‘frequently out of step or in a minority of one’. I cannot find this definition in either dictionaly. I intended the title of my book to convey nothing more than that Britain had proved a difficult partner for the other member states to deal with, and that British governments had often been clumsy in hand- ling their relationships with other members.

Buller also makes a great deal of the point

Stephen George, University of Sheffield

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A Reply to Buller 0 Stephen George Politics (1995) 15(1} pp. 43-47

that other states beside Britain have from time to time been awkward. I do not deny this. It is why the book is called &Awkward Partner rather than E e Awkward Partner. My original suggestion was for the latter title, but I changed it when some good Danish friends took exception to the implication that only Britain had been awkward, since they proudly felt that Denmark was at least as deserving of that description.

Buller suggests that other states, and France in particular, could be classified as awkward at various times. I have no argument with that, it is just that my book is about Brit- ain.

Later in the paper Buller returns to this theme, and accuses me of acknowledging that Kohl and Mitterrand had been obstacles to a budgetary agreement, only to lose sight of my own statement in my anxiety to blame Mar- garet Thatcher. Yet in the conclusion to that chapter I say, ‘That it took so long . . . to reach a settlement owed something to the clumsiness of other EC leaders: Mitterrand in Athens and Kohl in Brussels brought negotia- tions to a halt by suggesting solutions that Thatcher clearly could not accept without loss of face’ (George, 1990 p. 163).

Buller’s argument that Britain had a justi- fied case for being awkward over the budget because it was a deal made before Britain became a member of the EC, and took no account of British interests, is exactly the interpretation that I have myself given of the origins of the budgetary dispute (George,

Buller says that I argue that Britain had a reputation for being awkward by 1973, and suggests that I slip dangerously close to arguing that Britain was awkward for not joining the ECSC, EDC, or EEC. This does not seem to me to be a sustainable inter- pretation of my position.

What I say about the period from 1945-73 is that the British political and administrative elites slowly adjusted to the changed reality in the world. What I say about 1973 is that Brit- ain rapidly established a reputation for being

1992, pp. 42-7).

difficult to work with (George 1990 p. 70). This is the view that people who were involved in the EC at the time took of the record of the Heath government. I also say that, ‘All the partners were being awkward for one reason or another’ (George 1990 p. 70).

However, the point that I do make here, and which I believe is still valid, is that the French and Germans were (understandably) much more adept at presenting their national interests as communautaire.

This connects with a more general point, which helps to explain the apparently greater awkwardness of British governments: that the dominant discourse about European integra- tion has been based on French views of the nature and purposes of the exercise. The only other coherent and consistent view has been that of British governments, but this has struggled to displace the hegemonic French dlscourse.

I have developed my argument about the differences between these views in George (1989). For what it is worth, I believe that in the aftermath of the trials and tribulations of ratifying the Maastricht Treaty, the British dis- course, and British concerns, are becoming more central, and that this tendency will become more pronounced following the impending enlargement of the EU.

Another aspect of British awkwardness, in Buller‘s reading of the argument, has been the unwillingness of British governments to conclude deals. He shows that Britain did accept deals, and made concessions to con- clude them.

Again I have no argument with this inter- pretation, unless Buller is suggesting that it is my own view. One of the themes of George (1992) is that a learning process within the British political and administrative elites brought them, at different speeds for different groups, to be more adept at playing the Community game.

Finally, Buller argues that ‘it still seems legitimate to question the importance of focussing on the awkward political style of successive British leaders’, asking whether

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that style reflects the substance of policy. While this is a legitimate point, and one

which I have been at pains to make in my own writing, Buller needs to recognise that in diplomacy, style and substance cannot be so easily separated. Eventually a negative tone will become a barrier to the achievement of legitimate objectives .

A good example of this was the way in which the British Treasury’s scheme for the ‘hard Ecu’ as an evolutionary path to possible monetary union, which was intended as a ser- ious contribution to the debate, was per- ceived by most of Britain’s partners as yet another British wrecking device designed to prevent any progress being made.

The policies followed by the British gov- ernment when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister were often more moderate than their presentation, but the tone adopted by the Prime Minister herself made it very difficult for Britain to win allies.

The domestic politics approach Curiously, having argued that Britain has not been an awkward partner, the second part of Buller’s argument is that Britain’s awkward- ness is not attributable to domestic political institutions. Again this is presented as a cri- tique of a general explanation of British policy, but most of the examples of its use are drawn from George (1992).

Let us be quite clear what it is that we are talking about here. Buller says that I do not set out my theoretical framework explicitly. This is true, and I acknowledge as much in George (1990). However, the theoretical fra- mework that is set out explicitly by Simon Bulmer in the first chapter of the edited book (Bulmer, 1992) goes a long way to filling this gap.

It is unusual for anyone other than the editor to write the introductory chapter to an edited book, but the fact that I was happy for Bulmer to write this chapter indicates that

there was no great difference between his theoretical standpoint and my own. The Pre- face (which I did manage to write) also indi- cates that the book is intended as a companion volume to Bulmer and Paterson’s book on Germany and the EC (Bulmer and Paterson, 1987).

From this it should be clear that the theo- retical underpinning of my work is the ‘domestic politics approach’ as first set out by Bulmer in a well-known article (Bulmer, 1983).

The domestic politics, or ‘domestic pro- cess’ approach sees governments as standing at the interface of international and domestic political pressures. It does not underestimate the importance of the international context, which is why every chapter of George (1990) starts with an outline of the international con- text to the events under consideration. How- ever, the approach does stress that domestic politics matter in explaining the policies of British governments to the EC. To quote Bulmer:

Our basic approach is to take a ‘domestic process’ approach: to assume that govern- mental policy is not simply the result of important exogenous European and inter- natioml developments. Instead it is assumed that Britain’s particular economic and political relationship with the world system is mediated by its national political system. Hence Britain’s role in the EC cannot be understood fully by a mere account of the activities of successive cen- tral governments. The forces underlying governmental policy must also be exam- ined. (Bulmer, 1992, p. 2).

Bulmer goes on to explain that ‘an institu- tional interpretation is advocated’ (Bulmer, 1992, p. 25); but he is clear that what is meant is not ‘the “traditionalist” approach to institutions’ but the ‘new institutionalism’ which goes beyond looking at just the organs of the state and encompasses ’the organiza- tion of finance, business, and the labour market; the structure of the political system; and the country’s positioo in the international

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A Reply to Buller 0 Stephen George Politics (1995) 15(1) pp. 43-47

economy’ (Bulmer, 1992, p. 25). Buller says that Bulmer and other suppor-

ters of this argument never define the ‘strong institutional logic’ which has driven the atti- tudes and policies of British governments. This seems odd, because the domestic institu- tional influences on British policy are what George (1992) is all about. The institutional logic is traced through the chapters, which cover the civil service, Parliament, local gov- ernment, political parties, pressure groups, and public opinion.

Buller chooses to focus on just one of these institutions, the political parties, and on just one aspect of this institution, the adver- sarial party system, with passing mention of public opinion.

One of his arguments against the view that the party system has acted as a constraint on government policies in the EC is that govern- ments have chosen to mobilise support instead from British industrialists. Given this, it is strange that he makes no mention of the chapter on pressure groups in the edited book (Butt Philip, 1992).

Buller is critical of the argument that the adversarial nature of the party system can explain British attitudes to the EC. As an example of this argument being employed he again turns to George (19921, and quotes the chapter on the political parties (Ashford, ,1992). Ashford does use this argument; but he also identifies two other factors connected with the parties: ‘the considerable intra-party divisions on this issue; and the threat posed by integration to the parties’ ideological self- image’ (Ashford 1992, p. 119). Buller himself later suggests that such considerations are central to understanding British policy.

Also, it is important to remember that this piece is the chapter on political parties in a book that deals with a range of institutions. To suggest, as Buller seems to, that Ashford gives unique emphasis to this explanation is misleading because it takes the chapter out of context. Whether Nigel Ashford would emphasise the role of the party system in explaining British policy in the EC is for him

to say, but so far as this specific chapter is concerned it reflects his contribution to an integrated team effort to provide a compre- hensive explanation of British policy.

On the substantive point about the effect of the British party system on the attitudes of British governments to the EC, Buller argues that the effect of the adversarial party system has not necessarily been to make govern- ments more awkward. However, his alter- native interpretation of the effect of party- political considerations on government policy does not undermine the fundamental thesis of the domestic politics approach, which is that domestic politics matter. Buller provides plenty of evidence in this section of his argu- ment of precisely how much domestic politics have mattered when British governments have made key decisions concerning membership of the EC.

The section of Buller’s article on national sovereignty is largely devoted to criticism of William Wallace, who is quite capable of defending himself. For my own part, I would simply make the point that whatever the views of individual government Ministers, they are constrained in the language that they use by the requirements of a domestic political discourse on the EC in which the concept of sovereignty features as an unquestioned good thing.

Particularly for Conservative Ministers, the option of telling the Party that sovereignty ought to be ceded to Brussels has been closed by the failure of previous Consetvative leaders (including the pro-EC Edward Heath) to abandon the old Conservative discourse of nation for a new discourse of Europe.

Buller’s conclusion suggests that we need to stop concentrating on the influence of domestic political structures and pay more attention to actors such as political parties and interest groups.

The domestic politics approach has always seen such actors as central to the explanation of national governments’ attitudes to the EC, although other institutional factors are also influential in shaping those attitudes.

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Buller seems to me not to have understood the domestic politics approach, because he is critical of it while his own position is per- fecrly comparible with it. There is plenty of room within the approach for differences about specific interpretations of the impor- tance of individual factors, but none of the factors that Buller identifies as important is excluded from the approach, nor indeed from the book (George, 1992).

Conclusion In summary, I have a great deal of sympathy with Buller’s substantive arguments about Britain and the EC, although I do think that he tends to overstate his position somewhat, particularly in the extent to which he wishes to deny that Britain has been an awkward partner.

Where I think he is misguided is in his interpretation of my own work. His criticisms are not entirely aimed at a straw adversary, because many of the assumptions that he attacks are held by sections of the British press, and perhaps even by some academics. However, they are not held by me.

part of the sub-title of this journal, and I am happy to further that debate by accepting the editors’ invitation to reply. I would like to make it clear at the outset, though, that although we are in the same Department, I am not Duller’s PhD supervisor.

References

Ashford, N. (1992), ’The Political Parties’ in George

Bulmer, S. (1983), ‘Domestic Politics and European Community Poliq-Makng‘ Journal of Common Market Studies, 21 (4, pp. 349-63.

Bulmer, S. (1992), ‘Britain and European Integra- tion: of Sovereignry, Slow Adaptation, and Serni- Detachment’ in George (1992) pp. 1-29.

Bulmer, S. and Paterson, W. (19871, 7be Federal Republic of Germany and the European Com- munip. London: Allen & Unwin.

Butt Philip, A. (1992), ‘British Pressure Groups and the European Community’ in George (1992) pp.

George, S. (1989), ‘Nationalism, Liberalism, and the National Interest: Britain, France, and the Eur- opean Community’ Strat/klyde Papers on GOZJ ernment and Politics no. 67.

George, S. (1990) An Awkward Partner: Brilain in the European CommuniQ. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

George, S. (ed) (1992) Britain and the Europeun Community: 7be Polirics of Semi-Detuchment. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

(1992) pp, 119-48.

149-71.

Notes Jim Buller’s article admirably fits the ‘debates’

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