(how) do europeans make democracy work? politics beyond democracy

GLOBAL EUROPE | HKS MC/MPA 2012-2013

PANAGIOTIS VLACHOS

(How) do Europeans make democracy work?

Politics beyond democracy

Europe has been the cradle of democracy and the space where political competition has been

identified with ongoing socioeconomic progress. Nowhere else in the world has the democratic ide-

al been questioned, challenged, developed, condemned or celebrated as in the Old Continent, where

the legacies of the Athenian democracy, the Roman ‘lex’, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolu-

tion and Christianity combined with the bitter experiences of totalitarianism, warfare and national-

ism became the fertile ground on which the post-national constellation was born in the form of the

pluralist project of the European Union. Nevertheless democracy was not the primary objective of

the European “fathers”. Neither has it been by their epigones. The Monnet method of integration

that prioritized economic and technical rather than political and existential big questions based on

“engrenage”, gradual change or a spill-over effect that aggregated and assimilated national inter-

ests. The origins, the structure and the objectives of EU democracy are idiosyncratic and substan-

tially different from the pursuit of the democratic ideal of the Westphalian state. Many public ana-

lysts commit “widespread analogical fallacies” (Majone, 2009: 155) in their effort to assess the de-

mocratic identity of the EU institutions by using concepts that apply to the nation state democracies.

However the total departure of the hermeneutics of the democratic theory or the idolatry of a

sui generis post-national entity will not serve the purpose of a progressive analysis. The customs

and monetary union would not have materialized in the absence of micro and macro institutional

developments that made EU more legitimate, transparent and pluralist in the course of time. As the

supranational authorities of the European Union were pulling out sovereignty from the member

states and decision-making at the EU level could no longer ignore practical (unanimity deadlocks)

and political (competition of ideas and agendas) implications, the EU entered an era of perpetual

and sometimes asymmetric institutional experimentation; some institutions have been more ‘demo-

cratic’ or transparent than others; innovative principles or methods were introduced to address func-


tional or political claims (open method of coordination, mutual recognition, subsidiarity); democra-

tization has been either straightforward (e.g. creation and gradual empowerment of the European

Parliament, introduction of quasi-majoritarian decision-making, ‘constitutionalization’ of the citi-

zens’ initiative) or indirect (acknowledgment and consolidation of civil and human rights to serve

the objectives of the Single Market).

The latter indirect effect provides us with an additional argument about the nature and the

dynamics of the democratic process in the European Union: accession conditionality and Euro-

peanization have transformed the political systems, the democratic practices and the institutions of

all member states. Consequently, transformations at the national level (transposition of acquis) and

consolidation of democracy may as well improve inputs from the member states and their civil so-

cieties towards the Union.

In the lines that follow, we explain why the EU is not a conventional democracy whereas it

has been a space of perpetual political and institutional experimentation and a pole of democratiza-

tion for its members. We briefly elaborate on the identity of the continuously developing institu-

tional setting and we put forward a series of issues and public concerns about the current the state of

the Union.

A perennial debate on democracy

As aforementioned, the EU can be characterized as an “organized synarchy” (Chryssochoou,

2010:378) or a “mixed government” model (Majone: 156) that encompasses corporate interests

rather than a proper democratic polity. In simple words, EU has been oriented towards efficiency

rather than democracy. However, many scholars, analysts, politicians and citizens attribute institu-

tional, procedural, political, identity and communicative deficits to the EU. This long-existing de-

bate on democratic deficit (since the first EP elections in 1979) illustrates the various concerns

about the EU’s evolution from an international entity to a political system and provides us with use-

ful analytical frameworks to better understand the institutional engineering of the Union. We ad-

dress some of these issues below in an effort to briefly illustrate the characteristics of the idio-

syncratic EU democracy.

First, the existence of democratic representation at the EU level is highly debated. The Eu-

ropean Commission, as the guardian of the Treaties, combines a series of competences, executive,


legislative and quasi-judicial (Majone, 2009:169). According to theorists, the accumulation of pow-

ers by the technocratic Commission and the Council has deprived the national parliaments of their

major role as decision makers. However, both institutions incorporate extensive discussion, repre-

sentation, deliberation and negotiation between member states and interest groups as well as collec-

tive decision-making. Despite the gradual empowerment of the European Parliament (co-decision

with the Council) and its political leverage to dismiss Commission members and scrutinize legisla-

tion, citizens remain indifferent towards European elections. Ostensibly they often experience a

schizophrenic reality where the democracy they are accustomed to in their home country is not the

democracy that works at the EU level. Low voter turn-out in European elections (45.5% in 2004,

43.0% in 2009) indicates that the majority of the citizens are not attracted by the powers of the Eu-

ropean Parliament, let alone that the EU elections’ agenda is domesticated; not accidentally, the

election per se usually becomes a rehearsal for the national general one. On the other hand, the Eu-

ropean Parliament has the capacity to function as a collective entity, exercise its powers and gain

momentum as recently demonstrated with the rejection of the EU budget.

On the issue of accountability, critics highlight that the European Commission is full of

technocrats and committees, still relatively free from the EP scrutiny and it is not accountable to

citizens. As for the ECJ, mainstream criticism contends that it has expanded its jurisprudence in ar-

eas beyond its legitimate powers. However, the ECJ has been the most decisive agent of the Euro-

pean integration, as it has promoted and safeguarded civil and social rights. As for the Council’s

power to have the final say in decision making, it is argued that the Council represents elected offi-

cials and governments, hence national choices are present at the EU level through extensive delib-

eration and preparation, let alone that it is in the interest of nation states to upload powers to the EU

system to avoid political and transaction costs.

On the issue of transparency and democracy, a series of steps taken as the simplification of

legislation, the publication of Council minutes and the opening up of the meetings to the Public and

the media illustrate the effort to make the EU more appealing and understood. The extent to which

media and the public are engaged in this process, it still remains debatable.

As for legitimacy, scholars like Chrysochoou emphasize the socio-psychological dimension

of the democratic deficit and the lack of a European demos. Others acknowledge the need to instill

political competition and majoritarian tools in decision-making. However, a EU, which resembles

to a polarized national assembly would be probably unable to produce long-term policies. Another


danger of majoritarian politics would be the suppression of minorities and the creation of losers and

winners at the expense of win-win outcomes (cosmopolitan values). Scholars like Vivien Schmidt

(2012) acknowledge that both the EU and the nation states are responsible for democratic legitima-

cy by arguing that “legitimizing criteria are largely split between the EU and national levels of gov-

ernment”. She concludes that policy making at the EU level can become more transparent, account-

able, open to interest representation, efficacy, inclusiveness and to stimulate public discourse by

adopting a “throughput” type of legitimacy. Arguably, the provision of the Lisbon Treaty that grants

the EU citizens the right to initiate a policy issue partly corresponds to aspirations for participatory

democracy. On the issue of European identity, scholars insisting on the creation of a pluralist polity

based on a European demos, seem to undermine the historical and cultural roots of diversity in Eu-

rope and neglect the departure from utopian large scale projects to more policy-oriented visions that

could probably achieve relevant goals, e.g. a common European educational policy.

Finally, the EU exercises significant transformative influence on the institutions of the

member states. Scholars like Borzel and Risse (2000), have identified that the process of Euro-

peanization is applied in the domestic spheres of political and democratic consolidation, the mod-

ernization of public administrations and judiciary structures, economic performance and institutions

as well as intergovernmental relations while it enriches political discourse, interest formation, ag-

gregation and representation.

In the case of the southern-European states (Spain, Greece, Portugal), the EU accession be-

came the major drive towards civil peace and democratic consolidation, healing the wounds of prior

autocratic regimes, long-existed political instability and social divisions. Empirical studies in Italy

and Greece also demonstrate that Europeanization of political and economic institutions has also

influenced domestic political systems by shifting party agendas and public policies towards the cen-

ter and by de-radicalizing public discourse and political contestation.

Similarly, the EU makes democracy work through the application of the ‘Copenhagen crite-

ria’ on the new member states. As candidate states must safeguard democracy, the rule of law, hu-

man rights and respect for and protection of minorities, they make serious progress towards “the

establishment of a workable democracy” (Zielonka). In reality, transformations are sometimes de-

layed or incomplete, as modernization is a timely and cooperative process; national parliaments lose

power and administrations are obliged to function according to the prerogatives of multilevel gov-

ernance, import new practices, transpose new rules, become more transparent and accountable; de-


spite initial enthusiasm citizens in the peripheral member states develop feelings of distance and

disengagement from the European system. Hence, the responsibility of the domestic political elites,

the intergovernmental and the supranational institutions of the EU is to bridge the gaps and engage

citizens in the democratic rule and procedure, communicating the benefits and explaining the trade-

offs of the membership.

Contemporary considerations

Does the above mean that democracy in Europe is perfectly functional? Despite the sui

generis character (pluralist, post-democratic, post-modern are few of numerous ‘labels’) of the EU

polity, public concerns should not be neglected. The compromise of nation state interests with the

agenda of the supranational authorities perpetuates heated political, social and scholarly debates on

the existence or lack of legitimacy, representation, accountability, and civic participation and in the

event of political or economic crises, loss of sovereignty. Traditional cleavages have been replaced

by more complex and diverse social needs, magnified by the perplexed influence of multilevel gov-

ernance and decision-making. However, the occurring fiscal crisis, as all crises in the history of Eu-

ropean integration, sheds light on pre-existing institutional and perceptional discontinuities. In the

midst of the current economic slump, public opinion attributes strong causal links between Brus-

sels/Berlin-made decisions and imposition of national austerity, recession and high rates of unem-

ployment.

The failure of the domestic political elites to articulate and disseminate both positive and

negative EU policy outcomes in their national arena has also contributed to the construction of the

unattractive image of EU politics. Arguably, a new wave of euro-skepticism is nurtured and ex-

pressed and despite EU-driven citizens cannot adjust to the normative functions of the EU “state” as

their local democratic experience is importantly different. But as long as we do not think of in-

ternational politics as politics among states, it is not reasonable to think of European politics as poli-

tics isolated from the European institutions. Arguably, the major objective scope of the European

unification has not been the birth of a democratic supranational polity but the cultivation of material

interests that generate dependencies, collective decision making, spill over effects on more policy

areas and finally, create spaces and opportunities for a political union. At least, this has been the

prevalent mentality over the last three decades that influenced the creation of the Single Market, the

EMU, the Lisbon Treaty and a series of institutional reforms.


The quest of the holy grail of democracy within the institutional environment of the Euro-

pean Union conceals the drastic effect of the EU on the political systems of the nation states; hence

a more thorough and open-minded approach to the European Union is required, beyond the Com-

munity method, that perceives the EU as a multidimensional developing political system that gener-

ates and encompasses political dynamics at the local and at the national level. And these dynamics,

despite their simplistic or obsolete semantics (“power to the people”) are nothing but legitimate ag-

onies of a better and social Europe. To quote Shakespeare, even the elites acknowledge that “there

is something rotten in the state of Denmark” and the EU has to cope with its chasms and discontinu-

ities.

The crisis unravels a sequence of unresolved issues in the complex European psyche, let

alone it exposes the EU institutions and governments, banks and interest groups to public fury.

Surging inequality and insecurity will only seek shelter in populism and extremism. As Mary

Kaldor (2013) highlights, “the lack of bottom-up pressure at a European level, the weakness of

trans-European solidarity, the fragmentation of subterranean politics, all hint at dark political ten-

dencies” or in the words of Ackerman & Maduro (2012) “a vicious cycle threatens, in which top-

down institutional engineering escalates the appeal of hard-right parties aiming to destroy the entire

European project”.

To conclude, democracy is a collective project, which depends on the credibility of the Eu-

ropean Union as the major transformative agent of the European political space. If Europeans have

made democracy work over the last 60 years, it is because they have explicitly demonstrated the

capacity to promote solidarity, identify goals and cultivate synergies. Leaders rose to the occasion

after crises. The material, social and political interests were clear and articulate – at least they were

not coming at a significant social and political cost as today. At least, “choices need to be clearly

articulated and explained to citizens. In our European countries today, political choices must have a

strong European component”, according to Loukas Tsoukalis (2011). In other words, a distant, aus-

tere, punitive version of the EU is not sustainable. Its malaise has already begun to erode national

democracies as we have witnessed in Italy and Greece. If national democracies are left alone to

cope with radicalization and anti-European populism, the future of the EU – let alone of the EMU –

will be extremely jeopardized.


References:

Ackerman, Bruse & Maduro, Miguel (2012) – Broken Bond, Foreign Policy, 09.17.2012 http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/17/germany_euro_broken_bond

Borzel, Tanja A. & Risse, Thomas (2000) – When Europe Hits Home: Europeanization And Domes-tic Change, European Integration Online Papers (EIoP), Vol.4, No15

Chryssochooou, Dimitris (2010) – ‘Europe’s Contested Democracy’, in Cini, Michelle & Perez-Solorzano Borragan, Nieves, European Union Politics, Oxford University Press, 3rd Edition

Zielonka, Jan (2007) – ‘The Quality of Democracy After Joining the European Union’, East Euro-pean Politics and Societies, Vol.21, No.1, pp. 162-180

Kaldor, Mary (2013) – ‘The New War in Europe?’, Open Democracy, available at http://www.opendemocracy.net/mary-kaldor/new-war-in-europe

Majone, Giandomenico (2009) – Europe as the Would-be World Power. The EU at Fifty, Cam-bridge University Press

Schmidt, Vivien (2012) – ‘Democracy and Legitimacy in the European Union Revisited: Input, Output and “Throughput”, Political Studies, Political Studies Association

Tsoukalis, Loukas (2011) - ‘The Shattering of Illusions. And What Next?’

, Journal of Common Market Studies, Annual Review, Vol.9, pp. 19-44

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/17/germany_euro_broken_bond

http://www.opendemocracy.net/mary-kaldor/new-war-in-europe

(how) do europeans make democracy work? politics beyond democracy

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