PLATO-ESR3-01-official-documents

The politicisation and depoliticisation of EU policies such as state aid are key to the legitimation and contestation of the EU. However, the existing literature tends to focus on analysing these processes either in terms of politicisation or depoliticisation, but rarely both simultaneously. Rather, this thesis conceptualises politicisation and depoliticisation as embodying a fluid-like state within Multilevel Governance (MLG) structures, such as the EU, where agents play a key role. The thesis first explores 266 state aid cases labelled “Unlawful with Recovery of Aid” (UWRA) to identify which were appealed, and to gauge the degree of news coverage that each case gained. From the analysis of the 266 cases, the dissertation selects the cases of Apple in Ireland and Ilva in Italy for sustained and detailed analysis. It explores how actors have sought to politicise and depoliticise these state aid cases in the national news media. A claims-making analysis is performed to understand how actors attempt to legitimise or delegitimise their own actions or the actions of the other actors involved (the Commission, Apple, Ilva and the Irish and Italian governments). To perform the analysis, a set of 100 newspapers were gathered from the Factiva database, including two leading quality newspapers (centre-left and centre-right) from Ireland (the Irish Times and the Irish Independent) and Italy (Il Sole 24 Ore and La Repubblica). The results show that a key moment in the trajectory of both the politicisation and depoliticisation of a state aid case is the act of appealing by the member state. More specifically, in the Apple case, TINA (There Is No Alternative) was used as a strategy to discursively depoliticise the action of appealing which, interestingly contributed to the overall politicisation of the state aid case. In contrast, other depoliticising strategies (“appeasing” claims) which intended to calm past tensions between the Italian government and the Commission were used successfully. In terms of politicisation, the Apple case showed an “international conflict trajectory” (Irish government versus the Commission) while the Ilva case raised concerns about the Italian government and the management of the corporation. Overall, this dissertation advances understandings of the differentiated patterns of politicisation and depoliticisation by illustrating that the Apple case followed the “politics against policy” route while this was avoided in the Ilva state aid case.

国家援助等欧盟政策的政治化与去政治化，是欧盟合法性构建与正当性争议的核心议题。然而，现有研究往往仅从政治化或去政治化单一维度分析这两类进程，鲜有同时兼顾二者的研究。本论文将政治化与去政治化概念化为多层治理（Multilevel Governance, MLG）框架下的一种流体态过程——在欧盟这类多层治理结构中，行为体发挥着关键作用。
本论文首先对266起标注为“需追回援助的非法援助案（Unlawful with Recovery of Aid, UWRA）”的国家援助案例展开分析，甄别其中被上诉的案件，并评估各案件获得的新闻报道量级。基于对这266起案例的分析，本论文选取爱尔兰苹果案与意大利伊尔瓦（Ilva）案进行深入细致的持续性分析。
研究探讨了行为体如何在各国新闻媒体中对上述两起国家援助案例进行政治化与去政治化操作。本研究采用诉求建构分析（claims-making analysis）方法，旨在解析行为体如何试图为自身或其他相关方（欧盟委员会、苹果公司、伊尔瓦公司以及爱尔兰与意大利政府）的行为进行合法性辩护或合法性消解。
为开展此项分析，研究团队从Factiva数据库中采集了100份报纸样本，其中包含爱尔兰与意大利各两家主流高端报纸：爱尔兰的《爱尔兰时报》（Irish Times）与《爱尔兰独立报》（Irish Independent），以及意大利的《24小时太阳报》（Il Sole 24 Ore）与《共和国报》（La Repubblica）。
研究结果显示，在国家援助案例的政治化与去政治化进程中，成员国的上诉行为是关键转折点。具体而言，在苹果案中，“别无选择（There Is No Alternative, TINA）”被用作一种话语策略，对上诉行为进行去政治化建构，而这一策略反而间接推动了该国家援助案例整体的政治化进程。与之形成对比的是，旨在缓和意大利政府与欧盟委员会过往紧张关系的“安抚型诉求”等其他去政治化策略则取得了成功。
在政治化维度方面，苹果案呈现出“国际冲突轨迹”（爱尔兰政府与欧盟委员会对立），而伊尔瓦案则引发了针对意大利政府与企业管理的争议。总体而言，本论文通过揭示苹果案遵循“政策对抗政治”路径，而伊尔瓦国家援助案规避了该路径，推进了学界对政治化与去政治化差异化模式的认知。