In Fig. 1, three different shades of grey correspond to variations in estimated conflict intensity within national conflicts. Light grey reflects either merely regional conflicts (the conflicts around risk laboratories in France and Sweden in the seventies, for example) or such of low intensity in latency-, up- or downswing-phases. Dark grey or black fields indicate highs or climaxes of media-attention and political controversy respectively. Estimations of conflict intensity are based on non-quantitative inferences, taking into account media intensity as well as pertinent policy events and largely fall back on an extensive research of the available literature including a number of quantitative studies on public opinion, policy and media-content. Fig. 1 serves as a heuristic device to summarize the long-term evolution of European public debates. It does not claim to objectively represent conflict intensity. (For a general critique of the positivist approach to public opinion see Gamson 2004) Nor does it suggest the theoretical necessity to take the year as natural unit since phases of controversy might span months or years alike. Nor does Fig. 1 claim to measure conflict intensity across national publics since sources mostly refer to national controversies and at times are not comparable. Variations in intensity rather mirror the temporal patterns of national conflicts. Sources: A number of national contributions in Durant et al. 1998 and Gaskell/Bauer 2001 and independent analyses of longitudinal quantitative media-materials up until 2002. These materials result from two consecutive European network projects bringing together research groups from Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK. The data include content-, policy- and survey-analyses which provide a high degree of standardisation and comparability. As quantitative data on media activity mostly end around 2002, assessments of subsequent years had to be based on other sources. First, on current in-depth accounts of the controversy: For Austria Seifert 2003: 201-107, and Seifert 2005, for France Marris et al. 2004: 5-7, 29-37, for Germany Boschert/Gill 2004: 8-9, 15-16, Greece: Sakellaris/Chatjouli 2001, Italy: Allansdottir et al. 1998, 2001, and Ansell et al. 2003: 24-29, Spain. Tàbara et al. 2004: 21-24, 57-59, the Netherlands Schenkelaars Biotechnology Consultancy 2004: 13-19, and for Denmark Toft 2004: 4-6, 13-14. Second on CD-ROM or online-research in the digital archives of Le Monde for France, the HR-Net archives (www.hri.org/cgi-bin/news-search) for Greece, the Irish Times online (www.ireland.com) for Ireland, and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung for Switzerland. Finally, personal communication with national experts completed the picture. On France: Claire Marris, Pierre-Benoît Joly and Christophe Bonneuil (all in Paris, May 2004), on Ireland: Brian Motherway (e-mail, 22.9.2004), on Italy: Agnes Allansdottir (phone 5.10.2004), on Greece: George Sakellaris (phone 18.10.2004).
Fig. 2 plots intensity of media coverage of biotechnology in Austria and the UK on the time axis. Data are derived from a longitudinal sample of elite media, provided by the EU-funded project "Life Sciences in European Society" coordinated by George Gaskell and Martin W. Bauer at the London School of Economics and Political Science; (old.lse.ac.uk/Depts/lses/outline/overview) The Austrian sample is based on the daily broadsheet Die Presse and the weekly broadsheet profil, in the UK the daily broadsheet The Independent was used. Selection of articles is based on key words referring to biotechnology like DNA, gene engineering, biotechnology, genome. The graph "media intensity" reflects the total number of articles per year, irrespective of their content. The variable "political accountability" defines the subset of articles chiefly dealing with political actors and events. It thus serves as an indicator for the degree of political controversy in both countries. To provide comparability of samples among the two countries, absolute numbers of articles are plotted relative to respective years of maximal intensity, which was 1998 in Austria and 1999 in the UK.
Fig. 3 summarizes the main channels by which synchronized publics can influence supranational decision making, as exemplified in the case of biotechnology. National publics might, to varying degrees, respond to stimuli synchronized through structural coupling and coordinative trans-national actors. To varying extent, national governments prove responsive to public arenas and carry recalcitrant national postures to the supranational level. MS governments exerted the most tangible effect by forming an alliance to block further GMO approvals thus ratcheting up biotechnology regulations designed by the Commission. These proposals next go through common decision-making by Council and European Parliament. At the same time, Commission proposals reflect international pressure from trading partners and free trade agreements. Resulting policies and regulations feed back into the structural make up of the EU, thus tightening structural coupling of European publics.