Habermas, supranational democracy and the European constitution

European Constitutional Law Review

Volumn 2, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 398-423

  McCormick, John P ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

Author keywords

European civil society; European constitution; European Union democracy; Globalization; Habermas; Joerges; Legal integration; Multi segmented governance; Procedural substance; Rechtsstaat; Scharpf; Schmitter; Sektoralstaat; Social integration; Sozialstaat; Supranational democracy; Supranational edistribution; Weiler

Indexed keywords

EID: 35348986521     PISSN: 15740196     EISSN: 17445515     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S1574019606003981     Document Type: Article

References (141)

1. See, e.g., Saskia Sassen, Losing Control?: Sovereignty in an Age of Globalization (New York, Columbia University Press 1996).
2. See, e.g., Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 2004).
3. See Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy (W. Rehg (trans.), Cambridge, Polity Press, 1996) [hereinafter BFN];
4. Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory (C. Cronin & P. de Grieff (eds.), Cambridge, Polity Press 1998) [hereinafter [O];
5. Habermas, 'The European Nation-State and the Pressures of Globalization', 235 New Left Rev. 46 (1999) [hereafter NLR];
6. Habermas, 'Beyond the Nation-State?: On Some Consequences of Economic Globalization', in E.O. Eriksen & J.E. Fossum (eds.), Democracy in the European Union: Integration Through Deliberation? (London, Routledge 2000) p. 29-41, [hereinafter DEU];
7. Habermas, The Postnational Constellation: Political Essays (M. Pensky (ed.), Cambridge, Polity Press 2001) [hereinafter PC];
8. and Habermas, Warum braucht Europa eine Verfassung?, in Zeit der Übergänge 104-29 (2001). I cite the English translation by Michelle Everson, sponsored by the European University Institute: 'So, Why Does Europe Need a Constitution'? available at [hereinafter RSC].
9. See John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971)
10. and The Law of Peoples: With, The Idea of Public Reason Revisited' (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press 1999).
11. See Thomas McCarthy, The Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas (Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press 1978).
12. Most explicitly in Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (T. Burger & F. Lawrence (trans.), Cambridge, Polity Press 1989 (1962)) [hereinafter STPS].
13. PC, supra n. 3, p. 66.
14. Ibid.
15. DEU, supra n. 3, p. 31.
16. IO, supra n. 3, p. 123.
17. Ibid.
18. PC, supra n. 3, p. 98.
19. IO, supra n. 3, p. 151.
20. Ibid.
21. RSC, supra n. 3, p. 13.
22. PC, supra n. 3, p. 73.
23. IO, supra n. 3, p. 123.
24. NLR, supra n. 3, p. 53.
25. RSC, supra n. 3, p. 14.
26. NLR, supra n. 3, p. 54.
27. DEU, supra n. 3, p. 34
28. Ibid., p. 33.
29. Ibid.
30. NLR, supra n. 3, p. 54.
31. PC, supra n. 3, p. 77.
32. NLR, supra n. 3, p. 56.
33. Ibid., p. 155.
34. See RSC, supra n. 3, p. 6.
35. IO, supra n. 3, p. 155.
36. RSC, supra n. 3, p. 19.
37. RSC, supra n. 3, p. 27-28 (emphasis added).
38. IO, supra n. 3, p. 155.
39. Ibid., p. 155-156.
40. Ibid., p. 156.
41. RSC, supra n. 3, p. 23.
42. Ibid., p. 3.
43. Ibid.
44. IO, supra n. 3, p. 156.
45. Ibid., p. 157.
46. PC, supra n. 3, p. 100.
47. RSC, supra n. 3, p. 18.
48. Ibid., p. 4.
49. Ibid.
50. IO, supra n. 3, p. 156.
51. DEU, supra n. 3, p. 37.
52. Ibid., p. 35.
53. RSC, supra n. 3, p. 19.
54. IO, supra n. 3, p. 158.
55. NLR, supra n. 3, p. 56.
56. Ibid.
57. PC, supra n. 3, p. 79.
58. Ibid.
59. Ibid., p. 18.
60. RSC, supra n. 3, p. 7.
61. PC, supra n. 3, p. 98.
62. RSC, supra n. 3, p. 4.
63. See Dieter Grimm, 'Does Europe Need a Constitution?', 1 European Law Journal (1995) p. 282-302.
64. IO, supra n. 3, p. 158.
65. See the Maastricht Decision of the German Federal Constitutional Court, 2 BvR 2134/92, 2159/92, Europäische Grundrechte Zeitschrift 429 (1993).
66. IO, supra n. 3, p. 151.
67. See Andrew Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press 1998).
68. RSC, supra n. 3, p. 17.
69. IO, supra n. 3, p. 152.
70. NLR, supra n. 3, p. 52.
71. PC, supra n. 3, p. xviii.
72. Ibid., p. 98.
73. IO, supra n. 3, p. 159.
74. Ibid.
75. DEU, supra n. 3, p. 34.
76. PC, supra n. 3, p. 102.
77. RSC, supra n. 3, p. 9.
78. Ibid.
79. PC, supra n. 3, p. 99.
80. NLR, supra n. 3, p. 58.
81. RSC, supra n. 3, p. 21.
82. NLR, supra n. 3, p. 59.
83. PC, supra n. 3, p. 18.
84. IO, supra n. 3, p. 161 (emphasis added).
85. See Mark Hayes, The New Right in Britain (London, Pluto Press 1994);
86. Martin Schain, 'The National Front and the Legislative Elections of 1997', in M. Lewis-Beck (ed.), How France Votes (New York, Seven Bridges Press 2001);
87. Meredith W. Watts, Xenophobia in United Germany: Generations, Modernization, and Ideology (Basingstoke, MacMillan Press 1997).
88. DEU, supra n. 3, p. 36-37.
89. RSC, supra n. 3, p. 9.
90. Ibid., p. 12.
91. Ibid., p. 22.
92. Ibid., p. 23.
93. IO, supra n. 3, p. 152.
94. RSC, supra n. 3, p. 23.
95. IO, supra n. 3, p. 161 (emphasis added).
96. PC, supra n. 3, p. 18.
97. IO, supra n. 3, p. 161.
98. Habermas remarks that the allied victory 'sparked' democracy in the Federal Republic, but does not consider the extent to which it imposed democracy: PC, supra n. 3, p. 47.
99. See ibid., p. xv-xvi.
100. See Fritz Scharpf, Governing in Europe: Effective and Democratic? (Oxford, Oxford University Press 1999) p. 114.
101. Ibid., p. 115 n. 19.
102. Ibid., p. 115.
103. Ibid., p. 116.
104. Ibid., p. 117.
105. Wolfgang Streeck, 'Citizenship under Regime Competition: The Case of the "European Works Councils", in Klaus Eder & Bernhard Giesen (eds.), European Citizenship between National Legacies and Transnational Projects (Oxford, Oxford University Press 2001) p. 122, 128.
106. See J.H.H. Weiler, The Constitution of Europe: 'Do the New Clothes Have an Emperor? and Other Essays (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press 1999) p. 16, cf, 96, 319.
107. This is judiciously discussed by Scharpf, supra n. 89, p. 50.
108. In only scant moments of his account does Weiler even hint that Court-driven harmonization of an internal market was obviously neo-liberal in philosophy and effect. See, e.g., Weiler, supra n. 95, p. 189, referring to the legacy of the Cassis de Dijon case.
109. Ibid., p. 60.
110. On the failure of functional-formal integration to spillover into substantive-positive integration, see Philippe C. Schmitter, How to Democratize the European Union ... And Why Bother? (Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield 2000) p. 88.
111. See Stephen D. Krasner, 'Global Communications and National Power: Life on the Pareto Frontier', 43 World Politics (1990/91);
112. Hamid Mowlana, Global Communication in Transition: The End of Diversity? (London, Sage Publications 1996);
113. and Wayne Sandholtz, 'Institutional and Collective Action: The New Telecommunications in Western Europe', 45 World Politics 2 (1993).
114. See Svein S. Andersen and Thomas R. Burns, 'The European Union and the Erosion of Parliamentary Democracy: A Study of Post-Parliamentary Governance', in Svein S. Andersen & Kjell A. Eliassen (eds.), The European Union: How Democratic Is It? (London, Sage 1996);
115. Svein S. Andersen and Tom R. Burns, Societal Decision-Making: Democratic Challenges to State Technocracy (Aldershot, Dartmouth 1992).
116. Weiler provides an excellent summary of infranational processes but unfortunately never really proposes how they might be subsumed under his constitutionalization thesis - but, as mentioned above, his more recent writings may suggest that he has forsaken the latter completely. On infranationalism generally, see Alexander Ballmann, 'Infranationalism and the Community Governing Process', in J. Weiler (ed.), Certain Rectangular Problems of European Integration (Project IV/95/02, Directorate for Research, European Parliament, 1996);
117. and Christian Joerges, 'Bureaucratic Nightmare, Technocratic Regime and the Dream of Good Transnational Governance' in Christian Joerges & Ellen Vos (eds.), EU Committees: Social Regulation, Law and Politics (Oxford, Hart 1999) p. 3-17.
118. Weiler, supra n. 95, p. 98, 273.
119. Ibid., p. 272.
120. Christian Joerges, '"Deliberative Supranationalism" - Two Defences', 8 European Law Journal 1 (2002), p. 145.
121. Ibid.
122. Andersen and Burns, The European Union and the Erosion of Parliamentary Democracy, supra n. 100;
123. Weiler, supra n. 95, p. 278.
124. Weiler, supra n. 95, p. 285.
125. Scharpf, supra n. 89, p. 159.
126. Joerges, supra n. 104, p. 148-149.
127. Although for an account of the deliberative dynamism at least some regulatory agencies in the US, especially in their formative stages, see Daniel P. Carpenter, The Forging of Bureaucratic Authority: Reputations, Networks, and Policy in Executive Agencies, 1862-1928 (Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press 2001).
128. Christian Joerges, 'The Law in the Process of Constitutionalising Europe' reprinted in Erik Oddvar Eriksen, et al. (eds.), Developing a Constitution for Europe (Taylor & Francis, 2004) p. 13, 42 n. 88.
129. See Schmitter, supra n. 98, p. 36.
130. A point that, to be fair, Schmitter himself acknowledges: He notes that what is missing from the associational account of the 'gradual and uneven accumulation of organizationally privileged access is a general and systematic practice of equalizing access to these rights and obligations for all the organized interests.' See ibid., p. 35.
131. See ibid., p. 18.
132. See ibid., p. 17.
133. Scharpf, supra n. 89, p. 169.
134. Ibid., p. 80-81.
135. Ibid., p. 82.
136. Ibid., p. 180.
137. Ibid., p. 182.
138. Ibid., p. 181.
139. Ibid., p. 171-172.
140. Ibid., p. 174.
141. Ibid.