Shattering the Single European Sky: Argument from authorities in dealing with the SES initiative Open Access

Due to the economic downturn, coupled with the rise of nationalist political parties throughout Europe, European integration and the means of EU governance are in a crisis. One increasing problem is a lack of support for the EU among national populations. The results of the European elections in 2014 showed that EU scepticism has increased in the Member States (EU, 2014). The prevailing financial crisis and the enormous immigration challenges from 2015 onwards have further strengthened reservations (OEIC, 2016). And most recently, the Brexit vote in Britain in 2016 has shattered the groundings and the legitimacy of a Union commonly accused of a democratic deficit (see e.g. Murdoch, Connolly, & Kassim, 2017). Simultaneously, the political projects with which the EU aims to deepen integration to revitalise and strengthen Europe economically do not seem to resonate with publics.

The topic of this article, the Single European Sky (SES) initiative, is a prime example. Because the European airspace is divided into numerous national airspaces, with civil and military systems working separately in most countries, the unit costs of air traffic management services are high in Europe. The gap has narrowed slightly, but yet, in 2012, for example, costs in the United States were 34% lower than in Europe (EUROCONTROL Performance Review Commission, 2013). To address the European fragmented European airspace, the European Commission (EC) launched its SES initiative in 2004. The publicly evinced objectives of SES are higher cost efficiency, safety, capacity, as well as a positive impact on the environment in European air traffic. To achieve the objectives set by SES, the EC wishes to harmonise its airspace, and to create an efficient, non-discriminatory European air-transport infrastructure (EC, 2004a). The initiative has been signed and ratified by all Member States (EC, 2004b). Yet the project has faced serious problems (for discussion on the SES gridlock, see e.g. Baumgartner & Finger, 2014a, 2014b).

The dominant paradigms of European integration theory ascribe both successes and failures of integration to national interests and rationality (Wiener & Diez, 2009). In the case of SES, although it would be in the interest of all EU Member States to lower the costs of European air traffic, this would mean that, for example, a national Area Control Centre is closed down and employees are made redundant. Within a rational choice paradigm, in such game situations the outcome is likely to be sub-optimal (Ingram & Clay, 2000). Academic wisdom regarding the challenges of European integration aligns with that of policymakers and policy experts concerning the obstacles to the SES initiative (see e.g. Buyck, 2015). For instance, in 2012, Siim Kallas, the then Vice President of the EC and European Commissioner for Transport, criticised Member States for their undue protection of national interests in realising the desired integrated and defragmented airspace (Kallas, 2012). Baumgartner and Finger (2014a, 2014b), who have studied the problems inherent in SES, argue that besides nation-states there are numerous other actor or stakeholder groups with vested interests in the initiative (Baumgartner & Finger, 2014b, pp. 296–300). The authors make a distinction between four actor groups involved in SES: (a) intergovernmental actors (such as EU and EUROCONTROL); (b) actors created by the EC; (such as SESAR, EASA, and Performance Review Body); (c) governmental actors (the nation-states); and (d) stakeholders (airlines, trade unions, and the manufacturing industry) (2014b, pp. 295–296). The authors assert that the stagnation of SES is due to ‘too many actors’ with ‘diverging interests and insufficient power to impose a way out of the gridlock onto the other actors’ (Baumgartner & Finger, 2014b, pp. 295, 300).

Baumgartner and Fingers’ analysis has a point. Yet, their account, too, seems to follow the same realist view largely shared in European integration research, according to which actors’ interests are clearly defined immutable entities that automatically create obstacles to successful policy-making. In this article, we do not treat actors’ interest as objective facts. Rather, we perceive them as discursive assets. We argue that appealing to, for example, the national interest or safety is one of the argumentative strategies by which actors engaged in contending public policies try to affect other actors’ views of the situation and thus persuade them to accept the arguments made. Actors wishing to be influential in politics seldom invoke and appeal to the interests of their group directly. Instead, actors seeking to influence political decision-making typically utilise authority in different ways. That is, in political debate actors appeal to authoritative facts and actors and to values they assume the others to respect. Yet, this persuasion work needs to be done in such a way that the interests of the speaking party are not endangered (Alasuutari, 2015). We emphasise that the relevant parties in SES include all types of actor groups which are affected by the initiative, and which therefore attempt to influence the final form of the programme. For instance, EUROCONTROL has been trying to affect the legislation by claiming that it has established authority and knowledge regarding coordination of SES implementation at a grass-roots level (EUROCONTROL, 2012).

To open up the struggles a policy reform triggers in European politics and the various rhetorical tactics actors involved employ in their attempts to safeguard their distinctive interests in policy-making, we draw on neoinstitutionalist world society theory (Meyer, Krücken, & Drori, 2009) and approach them from the vantage-point of epistemic governance (Alasuutari & Qadir, 2014). This means that although actors are treated as strategists advancing their own views, they are simultaneously regarded as products of the political configurations within which policy decisions are made. Hence, the task is to study the discourses within which participants depict the situation, including the actor groups they construct and oppose or identify with, and the ways different interests are articulated. Our approach is very much related to research investigating the way political actors operate with ideas and deploy them discursively and dynamically for their own purposes (e.g. Carstensen & Schmidt, 2016; Saurugger, 2013; Schmidt, 2008).

While the mainstream theories on European integration perceive rational choice as the guiding principle in supranational politics (cf. Risse, 2004), epistemic governance takes a constructionist stance and explores politics as a living process whereby different parties aim to influence and utilise others’ views of reality, identities, and principles. Instead of predefining constituents and actors and the rationales by which they defend their interests, this approach focuses on rhetorical tactics by which participants propose what is in the interest of, say, Europe, or a nation, or what is rational in the situation at hand. Thus, working with ideas is not the opposite of rationality: ideas participate in constituting the rational option (Edmondson, 1984; Saurugger, 2013). SES is a case in point here because it represents a political project whereby the mutually supported and ratified intentions of the original initiative have taken several twists and turns, in terms of both the set of regulations and their implementation. Tracing the rhetoric in the winding trajectory of SES allows us to illustrate the dynamics and complexity of the supranational governance process within contemporary European Union.

In this article, we argue that the implementation problems of the SES initiative are not due to the incompatibility of distinct actor interests but due to the ability of the different stakeholders involved in successfully advancing their distinctive views. The fact that SES does not materialise as planned is due to the fact that the arguments are made to appear rational and indisputable in the eyes of others. In their argumentation, actors appeal, for example, to conflicting national interests and to their expertise in the area, and decision-makers are often unable to challenge their highly convincing views, which repeatedly leads to a standstill. Our empirical sample is picked up to highlight the dynamics of this epistemic persuasion. We will show how three distinct actors, the EC, the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications, and EUROCONTROL, deploy discursive strategies to construct themselves as authorities, thus ending up in disagreeing within agreement by making interest-guarding formulations of the very same setting.

The dominant realist perspectives from which European integration has been viewed see states and their representatives as the primary rational actors, whose interests determine whether they decide to delegate some of their power to an intergovernmental entity. Hence, liberal intergovernmentalism sees EU integration as a series of choices by which national leaders respond to constraints and opportunities stemming from the economic interests of powerful domestic constituents (Moravcsik & Schimmelfennig, 2009). According to it ‘the relative power of states stems from asymmetrical interdependence, and the role of institutions in bolstering the credibility of interstate commitments’ (Moravcsik, 1998, p. 18). Neofunctionalist theory, on the other hand, does expect that regional integration leads into a political spillover through which political actors shift their loyalties to and identify with the new centre, so that the end-result is a new political community, superimposed on the pre-existing ones (Haas, 1958, p. 16; Niemann & Scmitter, 2009). These approaches conceive of either states or politicians as actors, but they are similar in being quite actor-centric. They have their strengths in explaining why Member States make certain decisions, such as agreeing that the decision-making process concerning air traffic management should be moved away from an intergovernmental practice to the EU framework. However, actor-centric, realist views are poorly equipped to account for the rhetorical struggles leading to disagreement within the agreement. We will explicate the tools by which certain views gain acceptance and how and why agreed principles and practices diverge in the implementation process.

In this respect, new institutionalism complements the picture of the integration process by underlining the importance of the institutional infrastructure, cultural context, and discursive processes which constitute actors and identities (Schmidt, 2008). Similarly to the neofunctionalist thesis that European integration has shifted actors’ loyalties to the new centre, neoinstitutionalism stresses that entities such as the European Union are slowly forming, historically contingent creations that shape people’s views of life and of themselves as actors. From this viewpoint, the dream that one day we could form a scientific European integration theory, which could perhaps be applied to any integration process, is unrealistic. Rather, as Czarniawska (2009) argues in her article dealing with the history of the London School of Economics, an organisation is shaped slowly in a given time and place, when a zeitgeist is positive towards it and when ‘institutional entrepreneurs’ (Battilana, Leca, & Boxenbaum, 2009) pick up and translate or invent an idea that fits both the spirit of the times and sponsors who are willing to respond to the call. Hence, she suggests that organisations can be likened to anthills.

This not only applies to building an organisation like the European Union, but also to problems faced in deepening integration (cf. Diez, 1999). A large number of actors utilise generally approved principles and fashionable ideas to advance their objectives, so that the direction in which the organisational structure evolves is unpredictable and contingent. But despite the distinctiveness of each process, organisations in different parts of the world are not unique, local creations. Rather, as neoinstitutionalist world society theory (Meyer et al., 2009) maintains, building institutional infrastructures is guided by shared cultural scripts that comprise a rationalist world culture of modernity. For instance, nation-states are essentially copies of each other, with the same institutions, such as a government and ministries, many of which carry the same name throughout the world (Jang, 2000). The anthill of institutional infrastructure gets formed by actions, and once built, it serves to channel actions accordingly. Likewise, the management of SES has given rise to several new organisations (EASA and PRB) harnessed to further the successful implementation of the programme.

European integration can be seen as an enactment of worldwide cultural scripts in the particular institutional setting of the European Union. For instance, the world-cultural scripts of ‘national interest’ and ‘state competition’ (Fougner, 2006) are utilised in defending economic integration by arguing that the creation of the European common market is in the interest of each nation, or by transposing the same scripts to the European level by talking about the European Union as a team in competition with other world economic powers such as the USA. Correspondingly, critics appeal to the same sacred principles but argue that the opposite conclusions are rational, supported by scientific evidence.

The circulation of worldwide cultural scripts, codified and institutionalised in a number of international agreements, for instance, regarding national sovereignty and human rights, and realised in the founding of the same organisations throughout the world, has resulted in national states’ remarkable isomorphism. World society theory, however, stresses that the isomorphism evident in the institutional structures often does not result in uniformity in actual practices. According to it, nation-states are hypocritical conformists who want to be seen as ‘modern’ and up-to-date, which is why they enact models badly suited to the local conditions. Consequently, decoupling between principles and practices, purposes and structure, and intentions and results is endemic (Bromley & Powell, 2012; Hafner-Burton & Tsutsui, 2005; Hafner-Burton, Tsutsui, & Meyer, 2008; Meyer, 2010; Meyer, Boli, Thomas, & Ramirez, 1997).

The concept of decoupling captures well the problems faced in implementing the binding SES initiative in the political system of European Union. Despite the Member States’ commitment to the principles and objectives of SES, they seem to be dragging their feet in implementing the decisions and, for example, establishing the Functional Airspace Blocks (FABs).¹ However, we suggest that conformism leading to hypocrisy is a narrow way to conceive of the situation. Different actors defending their positions and advancing their goals may subscribe to an agreed goal and yet resist it in their actions, but the idea of hypocrisy can hardly be applied to a national state as a unified actor. Furthermore, the concept of decoupling implies an original model that can be coupled in the right way, when in fact the whole process of implementing a decision consists in different actors struggling for the ‘right’ or acceptable way to translate it to local conditions. In each case, the outcome depends on the local field of battle between the actors involved, which can be studied by analysing the documents, work practices, and actors’ accounts of the SES process.

Viewed from this perspective, the skirmishes through which principles are translated into actual practices are part of the epistemic governance (Alasuutari & Qadir, 2014) in which all actors are engaged. That is, by trying to affect and appeal to others’ conceptions of reality, their identifications regarding ‘us’ and ‘them’, and what is desirable or acceptable, actors involved aim to influence the outcome of a reform process. The negotiation work is epistemic in the sense that actors appeal to widely accepted principles such as rationality, efficiency, and scientific evidence but they also ground their arguments on European and national legislation and on constructions of facts.

Thus, it can be said that in these battles actors utilise authority as a rhetorical strategy. In argumentation an appeal to authority is often treated as a fallacy, but as Edmondson (1984, p. 26) notes, it is a routine part of the use and construction of scientific authority: since ‘no investigator can prove all even of his or her central assumptions alone’, writers cite authorities and authoritative works, which also shows the reader that it is safe to accept them as authorities. The same applies to persuasion more generally. In trying to convince others of what needs to be done, speakers cannot only resort to pure logic (which does not provide the underlying premises needed to propose what measures to take); they also appeal to authoritative accounts of facts and acceptable principles. Such appeals to authority are particularly central to law-making and administrative reasoning, which are the cases in point here. Because the SES initiative rests on EU-level jurisdiction, all parties involved are bound by and dependent on legal rules and directives, which they interpret and appeal to, pointing out how national and EU legislation sets limits to what they can or must do. In addition, the stakeholders of course also employ expert authority (Goodwin, 2011) in their argumentation, appealing to, or presenting themselves as, those who possess the ‘best’ knowledge of the situation at hand. Furthermore, actors may claim to represent or give voice to stakeholders and interest groups that can facilitate or impede the implementation of SES and whose views therefore need to be taken into account.

On the whole, we suggest that there are four basic types of authority that actors employ: capacity-based, ontological, moral, and charismatic (Alasuutari, 2016, pp. 46–50, forthcoming).² Capacity-based authority means deference grounded on the capability of an entity to accomplish acts such as giving or removing funding or using other forms of coercion. Ontological authority means prestige based on expertise. That is, an actor claims recognition as a holder of the truth of the state of affairs: what is the situation; what are the facts; what can be done and what cannot. Such a claim to authoritative knowledge is often grounded in scientific research and expertise, but actors can also claim long-term experience in the policy area, for instance, in air traffic management. Moral authority relies on generally approved-of and morally binding norms, for instance, rules of rationality or international conventions. Thus, actors allude to authorities related to the norms in question. Finally, charismatic authority is based on unique characteristics of a person or organisation. Weber considered charisma to be the oldest grounds for authority, but in the modern world it can be considered as a spillover effect of respect based on other grounds: for instance, a highly respected chair of an official institution can advance issues through personal discussions.

These forms of authority are mutually intertwined and can be exchanged with each other within certain limits. For instance, scientific societies and professional associations possess ontological authority, but to build and retain their prestige they draw on the rules and procedures that define and signal rationality, and in return they are authorities in setting the standards of a profession or a field of scientific research. Furthermore, they may possess capacity-based authority in, for instance, imposing conditions on which individuals can become members of those organisations, and they may expel members who do not submit to the professional rules. A long history and prestige of an organisation may also add to its ability to influence public policy or the behaviour of its present or aspiring members.

Launching and implementing the SES has been a long and complex project with many stages and drawbacks, and a host of actors both at the international and national level. Writing the history of SES with all possible actors and interests is not the objective of this study (cf. Baumgartner & Finger, 2014a, 2014b). Instead, our ultimate aim is to illustrate the political arm-wrestling arising from SES in which selected actors aim to account for SES in ways that serve their own aspirations. The actors selected are the European Commission, the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications and EUROCONTROL. What is common to these three actors is that they are all committed to the SES framework. Yet, they all deploy interest-guarding claims about how and through which measures the SES initiative should be implemented. This continuous persuasion work results in disagreeing within the agreement, thereby obstructing the completion of SES.

As our data, we use individual interviews conducted with actor group representatives and the documentary material related to SES. The interviews were conducted with the representative of Air Transport Directorate (European Commission), with the Ministerial Counsellor (the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications), and with Senior ATM Expert (EUROCONTROL), in Spring 2014. The interviewees are individual representatives of their organisations, but we argue that the argumentation in these interviews sets forth the discursive frames and claims for authority employed by these institutions in the discourse on SES. To evidence this, we have complemented the interview data with a sample of documents produced by the institutions accounting for SES. The documents were released during the years 2012–2014.

In our analysis, we do not aim to offer a holistic or encompassing analysis of SES debates. Instead, our objective is to demonstrate the logic of the rhetorical game and the types of cards the players use in the period in focus.

In the empirical analysis, we scrutinise the ways actors seeking to appear politically convincing base their arguments on values or premises that are commonly shared among the general public. As pointed out in neoinstitutionalist scholarship, in contemporary societies such values include, for instance, the pursuit of rationality, efficiency, safety, sovereignty as well as evidence of science and scientific research. Yet, as emphasised earlier, these values or scripts shared in contemporary world society should not be treated as mere objectives of political rhetoric but also as tools by which speakers aim to imbue their arguments with credibility. In other words, these values are features that actors wishing to exert political influence need to recognise and deploy in order to convince others of their claims.

We analyse the data by asking how various actors account for SES. Our aim is to explicate the rhetorical tactics by which actors aim to appear rational and convince others of their claims. As became evident in the previous section, we approach the data particularly from the perspective of one rhetorical tactic: argument from authority (Edmondson, 1984; Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1971, pp. 305–310). In this instance, we define authority broadly: it denotes the recognition among the actors of someone or something being worth taking into account when considering one’s own conduct. That is, speakers may present themselves as powerful or claim authority for themselves, but they may equally appeal to authorities and authoritative principles (Alasuutari, forthcoming). Hence, in the empirical analysis, we pay special attention to the way speakers appeal to authoritative premises, such as safety. Likewise, we analyse the way speakers resort to imperative and prohibitive language: to what actors are obliged to do or prohibited from doing (Trosborg, 1997, p. 129) by the authority of law. In addition, we analyse how actors refer to and construct ontological and capacity-based authority. The objective is to reveal how speakers propose their solutions in ways that serve the maintenance of their institutional positions, by utilising and – in effect – constructing various organisations, themselves included, as authorities. In addition to the inspiration from the rhetorical analysis, our analyses draw from discourse analysis (Fairclough, 2003; Potter & Wetherell, 1995; Wood & Kroger, 2000).

As emphasised earlier, the European Commission bears the main responsibility for putting the SES programme into practice. Yet the targets will not come about without the support of the Member States. In other words, like all projects of the EC, SES also needs to be approved by the Council of the European Union and thereafter by the European Parliament in order to become a law. To gain the acceptance of the various EU organs for its projects the EC must manage multiple accountabilities (Christiansen, 1997). The EC must present ideas in such a way that they appear to serve all Member States and that they are indeed feasible. If changes are made to a project, as has often been the case with SES, the round of approval must start all over again. On the other hand, the EC has an institutional position as an organisation that can – if agreed on by Member States – impose sanctions on the various contracting parties. In other words, it can be said that the EC is perceived as a capacity-based authority that can threaten Member States and hence affect their moves.

In fact, drawing on the authority based on its institutional capacities, the commission’s legislative proposal SES2+ (EC, 2013) includes a suggestion to make it easier for the EC to review whether targets have been met, and hence also to impose sanctions on those Member States that fail to proceed in implementing the agreed changes. The proposal states that

Predictably, the Member States have objected to growing the EC’s teeth: the SES2+ proposal was met with resistance among the Member States, manifested, for example, in the documents on the informal Transport Ministers meeting in Vilnius in September 2013. In it SES2+ suggestions were labelled as both excessive and inadequate, as well as ignorant towards cultural differences between various countries (Transport Ministry Meeting, 2013).

Thus, threatening to make sanctions more enforceable, through imposing a ‘one-size-fits-all’ system to all FABs, has been met with resistance. What the SES2+ document proposes, in addition to tightening the targets, is to move towards giving the Member States free hands to choose the methods by which performance targets are met. In the interview [4.3.2014] a year after the publication of SES2+, the discursive strategy has slightly altered. The main concern of the EC seems to be the relationship with the Member States. In the EC’s view, the problem in SES is due to the fact that Member States see the organisation only as an actor that gives orders and diminishes their sovereignty:

The interviewee puts the blame for the problems in SES on Member States’ hostile attitude towards the EC as it is perceived in the role of a capacity-based authority. Consequently, the interviewee presents procedural flexibility as the solution. The rationale is to stress that – within certain limits – Member States are free to choose how they proceed in enhancing the cost-effectiveness of air traffic control management. The tone of discourse is understanding and conciliatory rather than leaning on the EC’s capacity-based authority.

In evading the role of an actor that imposes norms and gives orders to the Member States, the interviewee undermines the EC’s capacity-based authority by appealing to its ontological authority: deference based on knowledge and expertise. In this view, the EC is represented as a policy expert and consultant that simply helps Member States in reaching the goals they have agreed to set for themselves, by providing scientific evidence for how to meet the objectives. Hence, the interviewee points out that, according to the EC’s new strategy of procedural flexibility in implementing the FABs, Member Countries are free to choose whatever organisational arrangements they wish as long as they achieve the performance targets to increase European airspace capacity and cut costs. This change from the earlier management method based on command and control towards performance-based management as ‘action at a distance’ (Miller & Rose, 1990) does not mean that the EC has no authority in the process – quite the contrary. Instead of treating Member States as objects of external control, the EC entices them to being active, enterprising subjects, engaged in the aspiration to reach certain goals of greater efficiency and competitiveness. The EC’s role is constructed as a coordinator that helps in the enterprise by producing knowledge on the mutually ratified targets.

The various versions of SES legislative packages and the potential to perceive them as failures on the EC’s part are defensively downplayed by describing the revisions as a very typical legislative process in the EU. It is a delicate issue, since a jam in the implementation threatens the deliverables of the initiative, and for that matter, the output legitimacy of the EC as a whole (Weiler, 2012). The interviewee’s statement above exemplifies stake inoculation (Potter, 1996, pp. 124–128): he wants to counter the suspicion that their action is motivated, say, by the EC wanting to grasp power from the Member States. Instead, the actors involved are given free hands to decide how to meet the commonly agreed targets.

The Member States responsible for implementing SES are the direct counterparts of the EC, which performs its role as an entity that oversees the process, making sure that it proceeds as planned. It would be, however, a vast simplification to assume that the slow progress is due to a clash of national interests, because, as emphasised earlier, a nation-state is not an internally consistent actor with a single voice and view. Local struggles between various national actors in accounting for SES and the problems possibly inherent in it tend to further the process of decoupling.

Finland provides an illustrative example. As a Member Country, Finland is obliged to implement the SES initiative passed by the European Parliament, and the Ministry of Transport and Communications has been assigned to manage the implementation in practice. But that does not mean that everything goes smoothly, following a clear bureaucratic line of command, because the Ministry is not following a simple order or rule. Rather, the Ministry’s task is to handle the implementation as a collaborative effort between the Ministry, Trafi (National Supervisory Authority, NSA), and Finavia (Air Navigation Service Provider, ANSP), and also involving the Finnish Defence Forces and their supportive services, such as The Finnish Meteorological Institute.

Each party has its tasks and obligations in handling air traffic management, which means that in implementing the SES legislation, the parties need to fit in potentially contradictory requirements, principles, and ideals. The Ministry is in charge of managing this adjustment work at the national level.

This is reflected in the rhetoric with which the Finnish government, and the Ministry as its representative, position themselves. While the official policy documents issued by the government express compliance with the EC as a capacity-based authority, they also appeal to existing national legislation and to its underlying rationality and effectiveness. Here is an example:

The same rhetoric – compliance with the common goal to coordinate air traffic management between Member States, and reservations regarding its implications for the current system – is evident in the statements of the Ministry’s representative [interviewed on 19.3.2014]. The Ministry’s compliance with EU law has also materialised in the state-level agreement to establish the North European Functional Airspace Block (NEFAB). The NEFAB agreement, which entered into force in 2012, aims to meet relevant requirements in the SES legislation obligating the contracting parties – Estonia, Finland, Latvia, and Norway – to ensure ‘enhanced and increasing cross-border provision of air navigation services’ (Government of Finland, 2012). But although the new organisational structure has been built as a kind of coordinating body on top of national structures in each of these countries, actual practices have not changed much at all. That is because of the conflicting interests of different sub-national parties and because the government also acknowledges important national interests that cannot be compromised. From the outset, it appears that these problems are insurmountable, but the Ministry’s representative only complains that they cannot solve the problems in the required time frame.

The Ministry justifies the slow progress of SES by reference to an insufficient time frame. Instead of claiming that the national interests and the objectives of SES clash, the Ministry relies on the moral authority of legislation. It portrays itself as a normatively committed and principled actor, expressing its compliance with both authorities, the EC and the Finnish Government. As mentioned above, the most difficult practical problems are the implications of the European-wide modernisation of air traffic management for national security and defence. The Ministry highlights Finland’s effort to secure the existence of the fully integrated civil–military system, which differs from the systems used in other Member States, and the close cooperation between civil and military aviation. The recognition of national aspects of security and defence is also strongly emphasised. In striving for the values of sovereignty and security, the Ministry appeals to the idea of protecting specific aspects of national legislation while implementing SES. It provides an example of how institutional structures and principles play a role in digesting policy ideas (Surel, 2000). While supporting the SES in principle, the Ministry maintains the role of a proper legislator and aims to ensure that the EU law will be in line with national legislation.

The Ministry seems to balance between two normative objectives in the implementation process. On the one hand, it promotes ensuring the successful enforcement of SES legislation, therefore being able to demonstrate Finland’s commitment to and competence in the accomplishment of international responsibilities. On the other hand, the Ministry emphasises its role as an advocate of national sovereignty and security in its aim of maintaining the integrated civil–military system of air traffic control. Overall, the political discourse of the Ministry can be characterised by inherent dualism between law and value; European and national; change and continuity. These dichotomies reflect the complexity of the Ministry’s position in which it has to display credibility and capability to multiple parties, including the EC, national actors, and other Member States.

EUROCONTROL (European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation) has the role of the sidelined expert in the SES process. Its duties as collective ATC innovator, overseer and regulator have been reallocated elsewhere – to the European Aviation Safety Agency, EASA, and Performance Review Body, both working under the EC – and it has been faced with the threat of becoming marginalised institutionally. In SES2 in 2009, EUROCONTROL was appointed the role of Network Manager in the SES process. In practice, this has meant gradually giving up on its regulatory intergovernmental responsibilities and veering towards becoming a ground-level advisor for service providers. The EC-led SES project has put the legitimacy of EUROCONTROL in question. EUROCONTROL deals with this challenge by painting a picture of the situation in which it can serve as the missing link of expertise in the successful implementation of SES. Compared to the latter two, the organisation’s position in the realm of negotiations compels it to build an offensive case. Using imperative language and contrasting juxtapositions, EUROCONTROL works on constructing itself as a crucial ontological authority. For example, the progress report by EUROCONTROL in 2012 is formulated to demonstrate the gap between goals and achievements and to include detailed recommendations for how to proceed.

In the SES2+ proposal by the EC (2013) the role of Network Manager is indeed reinforced. EUROCONTROL’s increasingly undermined position and its dissatisfaction towards prior arrangements is implied in the way the organisation instantly picked up on its improvement in status and fostered its public attention in a press release the same day SES2+ was brought out [EUROCONTROL, 2013]. Strategically, the favourable press release communicates public commitment to SES, which is of course crucial in securing EUROCONTROL’s role in the process. To stay involved one must operate within the frames of ratified agreements. This act of public balancing is, however, less obvious in the interview [4.3.2014], in which the representative of EUROCONTROL is openly critical about SES as a governance project and criticises the EC for being incoherent in its actualisation. The triple set of regulations – SES, SESII, and SES2+- are described as being inconsistent with each other. It is argued that the EC has been unrealistic and indecisive about what it pursues and what its visions and recommendations are.

EUROCONTROL pictures the indecisiveness of the EC as being caused by a lack of proper understanding of the operational level (service providers) of aviation in different parts of Europe, which, in turn, puts the most important value in air traffic management, safety, in jeopardy. EUROCONTROL is willing to help, though.

The account attempts to enhance EUROCONTROL’s ontological authority by suggesting that the missing expert knowledge about putting regulations into practice is exactly something that EUROCONTROL possesses. EUROCONTROL pursues a role of the rational translator in the SES process, as an entity that translates the regulations into concrete instructions on realising SES at the operational level of air traffic management. This version of reality not only safeguards the institutional importance of EUROCONTROL in the realm of European aviation but also presents the organisation as the institutional link and a conduit between the EC and the service providers in the Member States. The argument is set to emphasise that without EUROCONTROL acting as a translator the SES will not succeed, while it also serves to build a coalition with another actor on the policy field (cf. Béland & Cox, 2016).

A further element in deference-building relies on moral authority.

Instead of objecting to the SES upfront, EUROCONTROL must come to terms with it. Besides appealing to its ontological authority based on its knowledge in the field, it builds up moral authority by declaring commitment to securing safe flying. The account also touches charismatic claims for authority by practically presenting EUROCONTROL as a long-established institutional incarnation of safety in European aviation. The institution manages the challenging political conditions of SES by suggesting itself as occupying the role of an urgently needed and normatively reasoned mediating expert in the SES process.

The SES framework involves a very specific policy area and it may seem marginal in the eyes of the integration crisis and current turmoil in the European Union. However, it is often through a particular case study that we are best able to illuminate the strategies used in an interest group conflict (see DeLeo, 2016; Pralle, 2006). The EC is regularly accused of incapability and powerlessness in reconciling Member States’ dissenting interests, which leads the joint harmonisation projects to a dead end. In this article, we have approached supranational policy-making as an evolving discursive process that questions the conception of a nation-state as a unitary actor defending a solid realm of national interests. Instead, there are several national and supranational actors engaged in the process, each trying to influence the outcome of the reform and steering it rhetorically towards serving their institutional objectives.

Our study contributes to the field of discursive institutionalism (e.g. Alasuutari, 2015; Carstensen & Schmidt, 2016; Schmidt, 2008), which considers a scrutiny of intentional actors, concrete local practices, and policy discourses as the primary means to understand policy formation processes. The tricky case of SES provides a good example to underline the relevance of these aspects in detail. Despite the general support for the goals of SES and the persistent efforts to push it through by revising the regulations several times during the past 13 years, the programme has not proceeded as planned.

SES offers a glimpse of the dynamics and challenges of European integration as a step-by-step evolving project. The trajectory of SES supports the claim that in the setting of a policy conflict neither the position nor the interests of institutional actors remain the same (see DeLeo, 2016). Actors do not negotiate static objective facts but deploy the temporally evolving situation strategically, tuning their procedural targets and resulting in dynamic discursive struggles at various stages of the reform process. These are the dynamics we are referring to by the concept of epistemic governance. In the rhetorical game for institutional interests, and eventually even for institutional legitimacy in general, it is crucial to convince the other players of the most rational option to choose in the situation. The world-cultural value of rationality does play a central role in argumentation about policy harmonisation (cf. Boli & Thomas, 1997). Yet, rationality is not functioning as an objective criterion in the process but rather as an object of definition under dispute. Discursive moves by the actors target the question of what should be done next. They work on this question by trying to shape the other players’ conception of reality throughout the spectrum of facts, values and identities. These ideas are not solid and stable but actors deploy them strategically and dynamically (cf. Saurugger, 2013). To increase the persuasiveness of their stances, participants aim to appear as authoritative actors and allude to the authority behind their claims.

SES is a case in which there are numerous national and supranational actor groups represented in and influenced by the reform. Our empirical analyses focus on three actors involved in the implementation process, which all support SES and comply with taking it forward. Yet each of the three puts on display a slightly different position in regard to SES. The discursive constellation of ‘disagreeing within agreement’ evidenced in the data highlights the rhetorical game played around SES. The accounts in the documents of, and interviews with representatives of, the European Commission, the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications, and the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation, EUROCONTROL, all point to the highly strategic nature of framing and making questions in a policy process (Serrano-Velarde, 2015; Turnbull, 2013). The situation is problematised to favour the solutions the institution in question has to offer. We have explicated the rhetorical machinery actors use to convince others and support the rationality of their argumentation.

Actors try to persuade each other by evoking forms of authority in their claims. The EC perceives the problems in SES as stemming from a lack of trust among the Member States and from local power struggles, both resulting in a reluctance to put SES regulations into practice. The EC actually changes its rhetorical strategy and institutional boundary-work across time (see Dumez & Jeunemaitre, 2010). The edge of capacity-based authority to impose financial sanctions on the Member States is transmogrified into stressing the task of coordination and hierarchically mitigated procedural flexibility. The EC highlights its organisational responsibilities in securing the scientifically calculated performance scheme, and eventually the goals of SES that everybody has agreed on. The mutually ratified agreement on the SES framework works in its favour. However, the institutional logic of the European Union also poses an obstacle to the EC. A discursive struggle in a democratic system of governance differs from a struggle in, for instance, a hierarchical business organisation (DeLeo, 2016). The programme cannot and will not proceed without the compliance and motivation of the Member States. To this end, the EC aims to construct itself as an ontological authority – as an expert body that provides research-based evidence for policies through which the Member States could best reach the goals they have set for themselves.

As a body representing a Member State, the Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications has quite a different standing in the SES process. It is responsible for implementing and adjusting the binding regulations into concrete practices, together with the actors at the operational level of air traffic management. In the Ministry’s view, the narrow time-frame poses the biggest challenge in SES. Another dilemma stems from the discrepancy between SES and national peculiarities of the Finnish air traffic management system, posing a threat to national defence and security. With this discursive strategy, the Ministry is able to present itself as an institutionally principled actor which aims to balance between realising both the international agreements and the national commitments. Acting as a legislator carefully observing the rule of law, the Ministry’s statements appeal to the moral authority of legislation: what the Ministry’s officials are obliged to or cannot do. The deep-rooted EU principles of negotiating and making agreements together with other states offer the Ministry an enabling factor. It has an institutionalised say in the implementation, which allows it to make reservations about the concrete realisation of SES, leading to an inevitable decoupling between supranational aims and local practices.

EUROCONTROL provides an example of how knowledge and expertise can be played out in epistemic governance. EUROCONTROL talks from the margins of the political interrelations of the European Union. In SES, it represents a sidelined expert whose former primary responsibilities (regulating, networking, controlling safety in aviation) have been radically reallocated elsewhere. By the new rule of the European Commission, its position and institutional legitimacy are put in question. EUROCONTROL relies on ontological authority in describing the ignorance and misunderstandings of the EC in drafting incoherent sets of universalistic regulations. It provides the EC with expert help in achieving the harmonisation of European airspace by serving as a translator between the EC and the implementing bodies. Besides ontological authority, it builds on normative values and on the well-established mission of the organisation to protect safe flying in Europe.

The claims for authority in the discourse on SES are interrelated. SES remains an ongoing negotiation, whereby defining problems and solutions is about defining ‘us’ as actors and ascribing identities to other parties as well. The core principles (efficiency, sovereignty, safety) actors rely on in their argumentation are not new in discussing ATM (see Lehiany, Jeunemaītre, & Dumez, 2015). Our aspiration in this article has been to show how institutional actors play with these principles in the discursive action: how they relate to each other in the struggle over rationality by employing different forms of authority. SES is embedded in a specific institutional frame (cf. Serrano-Velarde, 2015). World-cultural values resonate in it, but with respect to prior studies on epistemic governance and authority building (Alasuutari, Rautalin, & Syväterä, 2016), the peculiar thing about SES is that regulations are imposed on nation-states from above. Within the realm of European integration, the mutually ratified agreement provides the structural frame for the dynamics of epistemic work; none of the actors’ rhetoric transgresses this. In the case of SES, especially in regard to the empirical cases we have analysed, the mystery is not in the infectious adaptation of a model by different parties, but in the standstill of a programme which in itself is mutually agreed on and supported.

Our triad on SES demonstrates that the rhetorical tools of authority building can function to pull apart as well as to push through policies – even where there is principled commitment to move forward. The epistemic governance perspective applied in this article sheds light on the strategic moves of the actors to influence the practical proceeding and outcome of the SES programme. Our aim has been to make the mechanism of these rhetorical battles more transparent and offer detailed and concrete insights into the logic of institutionalism and governance within a polity like the European Union.

We are grateful to Hannele Palukka for her contribution to data collection. We also want to thank all the members of the Tampere Research Group on Cultural and Political Sociology (TCuPS), who gave us valuable feedback on the manuscript.

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Pertti Alasuutarihttp://orcid.org/0000-0003-4111-9641