The European union democratic deficit: Federalists, skeptics, and revisionists

European Journal of Political Theory

Volumn 5, Issue 2, 2006, Pages 191-212

  Bowman, Jonathan ^a  

^a SAINT LOUIS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Democratic deficit; Democratic revisionism; European Union; Federalism; Freedom; Nondomination; Open Method of Coordination; Republicanism; Sovereignty; Subsidiarity

Indexed keywords

EID: 33646056418     PISSN: 14748851     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/1474885106061606     Document Type: Article

References (47)

1. For the most developed version of this view, see e.g. Andreas Follesdal (2000) 'Subsidiarity and Democratic Deliberation', in Erik Eriksen and John Fossum (eds) Democracy in the European Union: Integration through Deliberation?, pp. 85-110. London: Routledge. See also Follesdal (1998) Survey Article: Subsidiarity', Journal of Political Philosophy 6(2): 190-219.
2. I agree with Daniel Elazar's (1998) relevant claim in Constitutionalizing Globalization: The Postmodern Revival of Confederal Arrangements. New York: Rowman & Littlefield. He argues that 'there is still too much statist hierarchy embedded in European political culture and, consequently, political thought' (p. 94).
3. For a fuller exposition of republican freedom as nondomination, see Philip Pettit (1997) Republicanism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. For extensions of this view of freedom to the European Union, see James Bohman (2002) 'How to Make a Social Science Practical: Pragmatism, Critical Social Science and Multiperspectival Theory', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 31(3): 499-524. Bohman (2004) 'Constitution Making and Institutional Innovation: The European Union and Transnational Governance', European Journal of Political Theory 3: 315-37.
4. For the first discussion of the EU as a multiperspectival polity, see John G. Ruggie (1998) Constructing the World Polity: Essays on International Institutionalization. London: Routledge. See also Bohman (2002, in n. 3).
5. Joseph Weiler (1999) 'European Democracy and its Critics: Polity and System', in The Constitution of Europe, pp. 264-85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. While Weiler does not use the term multiperspectival, he refuses to follow federalists or Euroskeptics in their 'unitarian' and 'monolithic' approaches to settling upon a theoretical framework for assessing the democratic qualities of the EU. Due to the threepillar structure of the EU, Weiler opts instead to speak in terms of three interspersed 'modes of governance': International, supranational, and infranational, p. 271.
6. See e.g. Kostas A. Lavdas (2001) 'Republican Europe and Multicultural Citizenship', Politics 21(1): 1-10. John Schwarzmantel (2003) Citizenship and Identity: Towards a New Republic. London: Routledge. For a multicultural approach to republicanism with France as the model, see Jeremy Jennings (2000) 'Citizenship, Republicanism and Multiculturalism in Contemporary France', British Journal of Political Science 30: 575-98.
7. Pettit (n. 3), p. 24.
8. Ibid. p. 55.
9. See Joshua Cohen and Charles Sabel (2003) 'Sovereignty and Solidarity: EU and US', in Jonathan Zeitlin and David Trubeck (eds) Governing Work and Welfare in a New Economy: American and European Experiments, pp. 345-75. New York: Oxford University Press. The authors explain (p. 347) that in the Open Method of Coordination:... plans are periodically criticized by a panel of expert officials from other Member States in light of other plans, and each country's performance is judged against its own goals, the performance of others, and its response to earlier rounds of criticism... the goal here too is mutual correction and not uniformity.
10. For a similar view of human rights as responses to shared problems, see Jürgen Habermas (2001) 'Legitimation through Human Rights', in The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays, tr. Max Pensky. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
11. Cohen and Sabel (n. 9), p. 346.
12. Nick Bernard (2003) 'A "New Governance" Approach to Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights in the EU', in T.K. Hervey and J. Kenner (eds) Economic and Social Rights Under the Fundamental Charter of Social Rights of the European Union, pp. 247-68. Oxford: Hart Publishing. Olivier de Schutter (forthcoming) 'The Implementation of Fundamental Rights through the Open Method of Coordination', in Olivier de Schutter and Simon Deakin (eds) Social Rights and Market Forces: Is the Open Method of Coordination of Employment and Social Policies the Future of Social Europe? Brussels: Bruylant.
13. For an application of this three-step process of benchmarking to US constitutionalism, see Michael Dorf and Charles Sabel (1998) 'A Constitution of Democratic Experimentalism', Columbia Law Review 98: 267-473, 459.
14. Ibid. p. 287.
15. Neil MacCormick (1997) 'Democracy, Subsidiarity, and Citizenship in the "European Commonwealth"', Law and Philosophy 16: 331-56. For a similar view, see also Bohman (2002 and 2004, in n. 3).
16. See Thomas Pogge (1998) 'How to Create Supra-National Institutions Democratically: Some Reflections on the European Union's "Democratic Deficit"', in Andreas Follesdal and Peter Koslowski (eds) Democracy and the European Union, pp. 160-85. Berlin: Springer Verlag. Also see Andreas Follesdal (1998) 'Democracy, Legitimacy, and Majority Rule in the European Union', in A. Weale and M. Nentwich (eds) Political Theory and the European Union: Legitimacy, Constitutional Choice and Citizenship, pp. 34-48. New York: Routledge.
17. This view is held by skeptics such as Robert Dahl of the prospect for a democratic order to emerge out of the European Union. See his (1999) 'Can International Organizations be Democratic? A Skeptic's View', in Ian Shapiro and Casiano Hacker-Cordon (eds) Democracy's Edges, pp. 19-36. New York: Cambridge University Press. I will look at the skeptical view more closely in the next section.
18. Here a distinction is necessary between the European Union (EU) and the European Community (EC). The Maastricht Treaty divided EU competencies into three separate pillars of decreasing degrees of Community influence over the respective realms of policy. The Community Method generally applies only to first-pillar issues of the EC that are largely economic, social, or environmental, including international trade. It does not apply to the second pillar, Justice and Home Affairs (the interaction between European Union and member state judiciary) or to the third pillar: Common Foreign and Security Policy.
19. Consider Robert Dahl (n. 17) as a philosophical advocate of the skeptical view of the EU. See also Dieter Grimm (1995) 'Does Europe Need a Constitution', European Law Journal 1: 282-302.
20. Philippe Schmitter (2000) 'Designing a Democracy for the Euro-Polity and Revising Democratic Theory in the Process', p. 236, in I. Shapiro and S. Macedo (eds) Designing Democratic Institutions, pp. 224-50. New York: New York University Press.
21. Ibid. p. 239. For a similar view, see MacCormick (n. 15). See also Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione (2004) 'Legitimizing the Euro-"Polity" and its "Regime"', European Journal of Political Theory 2: 7-34. In addition, see the following revisionist works from advocates of democratic experimentalism. Cohen and Sabel (n. 9). Dorf and Sabel (n. 13). Oliver Gerstenberg and Charles Sabel (2002) 'Directly-Deliberative Polyarchy: An Institutional Ideal for Europe?', in Christian Georges and Renaud Dehousse (eds) Good Governance in Europe's Integrated Market, pp. 316-41. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Oliver Gerstenberg (1997) 'Law's Polyarchy: A Comment on Cohen and Sabel', European Law Journal 3: 343-58.
22. Dorf and Sabel (n. 13), p. 445.
23. R. Bellamy and D. Castiglione (2000) 'The Uses of Democracy', p. 72, in Erik Eriksen and John Fossum (eds) Democracy in the European Union: Integration through Deliberation? London: Routledge.
24. For a more complete development of such an idea of 'unbounded territoriality' that is consistent with the revisionist approach to the democratic deficit, see Ruggie (n. 4), p. 27.
25. For a good discussion of the Forum of Migrants, see Rika Kastoryano (2003) 'Transnational Networks and Political Participation: The Place of Immigrants in the European Union', in Mabel Berezin and Martin Schain (eds) Europe without Borders: Remapping Territory, Citizenship, and Identity in a Transnational Age, pp. 64-85. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. See also Ruggie (n. 4), pp. 190-1.
26. For an advocate of this branch of revisionism, see in particular Ulrich Preuss (1996) 'Two Challenges to European Citizenship', in Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione (eds) Constitutionalism in Transformation: European and Theoretical Perspectives, pp. 122-40. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. For a similar view of EU citizenship, see Jo Shaw (1998) 'The Interpretation of European Union Citizenship', Modern Law Review 61: 293-317.
27. Although Schmitter is a revisionist democratic theorist, he raises a similar remark (n. 20), p. 242: 'If the EU as a nonstate will have to come up with novel institutions if it is to democratize itself, then it will run the risk that both politicians and citizens may find it difficult initially to recognize these novel rules and practices as "democratic."'
28. Preuss (n. 26), p. 138.
29. Ibid.
30. Shaw (n. 26), p. 317.
31. For an opposing view, see Schwarzmantel (n. 6), p. 50. He thinks the forms of inclusion characteristic of democratic revisionism 'cannot provide an enduring basis for democratic community'. I argue that the OMC can provide the forms of reciprocity and solidarity he seeks and the system of rights in the EU can offer the decentered participation required for something analogous to his 'new republic'.
32. Will Kymlicka (forthcoming) 'The Evolving Basis of European Norms of Minority Rights: Rights to Culture, Participation, and Autonomy', in John McGarry and Michael Keeting (eds) European Integration and the Nationalities Question. New York: Routledge.
33. See Alexander Caviedes (2004) 'The Open Method of Coordination in Immigration Policy: A Tool for Prying Open Fortress Europe?', Journal of Public Policy 11(2): 289-310. For a good discussion of minority rights and the OMC, see Guido Schwellnus '"Much Ado about Nothing?" Minority Protection and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights', in Constitutionalism Web-Papers: ConWEB No. 5/2001 found at http://les1.amn.ac.uk/conweb/.
34. However, due primarily to the relative success of the OMC in other policy fields, at present the member states of the EU are reluctant to follow the recent recommendations of the Commission to subject immigration policy to the OMC. Caviedes (n. 33).
35. Commission of the European Communities (2004) 'Communication from the Commission: The Fundamental Rights Agency Consultation Document', Brussels, 25 Oct. COM (2004): 693.
36. Kostaryano (n. 25), p. 82.
37. A recent study of modern Turkey found that unsettling elements of its recent history might have been subverted if it had implemented basic constitutional principles enshrined in the set of treaties that contributed to the formation of the modern Turkish state. Examples from the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 which serves as the basis for the modern Turkish state and its foreign relations include tolerance towards all religions and non-discrimination in the use of minority languages.
38. Joseph Weiler (1998) points to the case of Gayusuz versus Austria that went to the European Court of Human Rights and led to the extension of social security benefits to third country nationals (1998) 'An "Ever Closer Union" in Need of a Human Rights Policy', European Journal of International Law 9: 658-723, 719.
39. Jennings (n. 6), pp. 584-95.
40. Pettit (n. 3), p. 180.
41. Kymlicka (n. 32), p. 18.
42. Ibid. p. 19.
43. Jennings (n. 6), pp. 593-94.
44. Rika Kastoryano (2002) 'Citizenship: Beyond Blood and Soil', in Mohsen-Finan Leveau and Wihtol de Wenden (eds) New European Identity and Citizenship, pp. 101-16. Burlington: Ashgate Publishing.
45. Bruno de Witte (2002) 'Politics versus Law in the EU's Approach to Minorities', in Jan Zielonka (ed.) Europe Unbound: Enlarging and Reshaping the Boundaries of the European Union, pp. 137-60, p. 145. London: Routledge.
46. For such approaches to the democratic deficit, see MacCormick (n. 15) and Follesdal (n. 1). A third view of the EU federation advanced by Jürgen Habermas is to see human rights and popular sovereignty as co-constitutive at the EU level. The emphasis on basic rights is closer to my own view; however, his European-wide political identity is not as amenable to the incorporation of third country permanent residents as my more plural view. See Habermas (1998) 'Does Europe Need a Constitution? Response to Dieter Grimm', in Ciarin Cronin and Pablo De Griff (eds) Inclusion of the Other, pp. 155-61. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (2001a) 'The Postnational Constellation', in The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays, tr. Max Pensky, pp. 58-112. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (1999) 'The European Nation-State and the Pressures of Globalization', New Left Review 235: 46-54. (2001b) 'Why Europe Needs a Constitution', New Left Review 11: 5-26.
47. Bruno de Witte (n. 45), p. 145, emphasizes that this was precisely the justification of the judgment given by the European Court which found that 'It is of the essence of democracy to allow diverse political programs to be proposed and debated, provided that they do not harm democracy itself.'