Consensus to contestation: Reconfiguring democratic representation in the European union in the light of 19th century United States democratization

Democratization

Volumn 15, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 123-141

  Glencross, Andrew ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

European Union democratization; John C. Calhoun; Representation; Supranationalism

Indexed keywords

EID: 38649099363     PISSN: 13510347     EISSN: 1743890X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13510340701770014     Document Type: Article

References (85)

1. Christopher Ansell and Giuseppe Di Palma (eds), Restructuring Territoriality: Europe and the United States Compared (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
2. Sergio Fabbrini (ed.), Democracy and Federalism in the European Union and the United States: Exploring Post-National Governance (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005)
3. Nicolas Jabko and Craig Parsons (eds), With Us or Against US? European Trends in American Perspective (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005)
4. Anand Menon and Martin Schain (eds), Comparative Federalism: The European Union and the United States in Comparative Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).
5. John Coultrap, 'From Parliamentarism to Pluralism: Models of Democracy and the European Union's "Democratic Deficit"', Journal of Theoretical Politics, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1999), pp. 107-35. Coultrap, however, has been admonished for a supposedly 'caricatural' rendering of American pluralism that overlooks the significance of parties and elections.
6. See Richard Katz, 'Models of Democracy: Elite Attitudes and the Democratic Deficit in the European Union', European Union Politics Vol. 2, No. 1 (2001), pp. 53-79.
7. Sergio Fabbrini, 'Madison in Brussels: The EU and the US as Compound Democracies', European Political Science, Vol. 4, No. 2 (2005), pp. 188-98, at 188.
8. Rogers M. Smith, 'Beyond Tocqueville, Myrdal and Hartz: The Multiple Traditions in America', American Political Science Review, Vol. 87, No. 3 (1993), pp. 54-66.
9. Stefano Bartolini, Restructuring Europe. Centre Formation, System Building and Political Structuring Between the Nation-State and the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)
10. Peter Mair, 'Popular Democracy and the European Union Polity', European Governance Papers (EUROGOV), No. C-05-03 (2005).
11. John Aldrich, Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2001)
12. Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (New York: Norton, 2005).
13. This explains the predilection for proposing US-style presidentialism, via an elected Commission president, as well as a mooted bicameral parliament inspired by Congress. See, for instance, Joshka Fischer, Speech at the Humbolt University, Frankfurt, 12 May 2000
14. and Jürgen Habermas, 'Why Europe Needs a Constitution', New Left Review, Vol. 11, Sept-Oct (2001), pp. 5-26.
15. Best embodied respectively by Philippe Schmitter, How to Democratize the European Union ... And Why Bother? (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000)
16. and Simon Hix, What's Wrong with the European Union and How to Fix It (Oxford: Polity Press, 2007).
17. Stefano Bartolini, 'Should the Union Be Politicised? Prospects and Risks', in S. Hix and S. Bartolini, 'Politics: The Right or the Wrong Sort of Medicine for the EU?', Notre Europe Policy Paper, No. 19 (2006), pp. 29-50.
18. Schmitter (note 8); Hix (note 8).
19. Coultrap (note 2)
20. Giandomenico Majone, 'The Common Sense of European Integration', Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 13, No. 5 (2006), pp. 607-26.
21. Erik O. Eriksen and John Erik Fossum, Europe in Transformation. How To Reconstitute Democracy?, RECON Online Working Paper 2007/01, available at: http//www.reconproject.eu/projectweb/portalproject/ RECONWorkingPapers.html.
22. Currently the Parliament has co-legislating powers only in a limited range of policy fields.
23. Schmitter (note 8), pp. 84-106.
24. Ibid., 54.
25. Ibid., 59-64.
26. Hix (note 8), p. 108.
27. Ibid.
28. Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, The Federalist (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1974 [1887-1888]).
29. Sergio Fabbrini, 'A Single Western State Model? Differential Development and Constrained Convergence of Public Authority in Europe and America', Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 36, No. 6 (2003), pp. 653-78.
30. For a study of antebellum state defiance see Leslie F. Goldstein, Constituting Federal Sovereignty: The European Union in Comparative Context (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
31. Elaine K. Swift, The Making of an American Senate: Reconstitutive Change in Congress, 1787-1841 (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1996), p. 99.
32. William E. Gienapp, 'The Political System and the Coming of the Civil War', in G. Boritt (ed.), Why the Civil War Came (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 81-124.
33. Aldrich (note 6), p. 106.
34. Gienapp (note 23), p. 87.
35. Ibid.
36. Hamilton et al. (note 19), p. 408.
37. The independence/mandate debate about elected representatives continues in EU politics even if it has virtually disappeared from the domestic scene. This is true at least for Denmark, where ministers sitting in the Council appear before parliament prior to and after Council meetings in order to control their discretionary authority. See Finn Laursen, 'The Role of National ParliamentaryCommittees in European Security: Reflections Based on the Danish Case', Journal of Legislative Studies Vol. 11, No. 3-4 (2005), pp. 412-27.
38. William H. Riker, 'The Senate and American Federalism', American Political Science Review, Vol. 49, No. 2 (1955), p. 460.
39. Ibid., p. 463.
40. Aldrich (note 6), p. 124.
41. Ibid., pp. 128-35.
42. Richard McCormick, 'Political Development and the Second Party System', in William Nisbet Chambers and Walter Dean Burnham (eds), The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 106.
43. Aldrich (note 6), p. 134.
44. Lacy K. Ford, 'Inventing the Concurrent Majority: Madison, Calhoun, and the Problem of Majoritarianism in American Political Thought', The Journal of Southern History, Vol. 60, No. 1 (1994), p. 45.
45. I take this theory of concurrent majorities and his proposal for a dual presidency to be the work of a profound reflection on the nature of the American compound system and what made it viable rather than a crude scheme for preserving slavery by a disgruntled southern racist.
46. Diane Tipton, Nullification and Interposition in American Political Thought (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico, 1969), p. 24.
47. Ford (note 35), p. 48.
48. John C. Calhoun, 'A Discourse on the Constitution and Government of the United States', in R. Lence (ed.), Union and Liberty: The Political Philosophy of John C Calhoun (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 1992), p. 94.
49. John C. Calhoun, 'Letter to Governor James Hamilton Junior', in C. Wilson (ed.), The Papers of John Calhoun (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1978) vol. xi, p. 635.
50. Article II. I of the constitution originally read: 'The person having the greatest number of votes shall be the President, if such number be a majority of the whole number of electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such majority, and have an equal number of votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately choose by ballot one of them for President; and if no person have a majority, then from the five highest on the list the said House shall in like manner choose the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by States, the representation from each state having one vote; a quorum for this purpose shall consist of a member or members from two thirds of the states, and a majority of all the states shall be necessary to a choice. In every case, after the choice of the President, the person having the greatest number of votes of the electors shall be the Vice President.' Following the hotly contested election of Jefferson in 1800, the twelfth amendment was passed (1804) which made electors nominate the candidates for one office or the other.
51. Calhoun (note 39), p. 128.
52. Ibid., p. 277.
53. Hannah Pitkin, The Concept of Representation (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1972), p. 155.
54. David Runciman, 'The Paradox of Political Representation', Paper presented at the Princeton Political Philosophy Consortium, Princeton, New Jersey, 30 March 2006, p. 10.
55. Ibid., p. 22.
56. Madison made this point clear. In 1787 he explained that it was incorrect to consider the US 'as analogous to the social compact of individuals: For if it were so, a Majority would have a right to bind the rest, and even to form a new Constitution for the whole'. Quoted in A. Koch (ed.), Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 (New York: Norton, 1969), p. 141.
57. Don E. Fehrenbacher, The South and Three Sectional Crises (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1980).
58. Goldstein (note 21), p. 42.
59. Hix (note 8), p. 108.
60. Ibid., p. 85-7.
61. Alberta Sbragia, 'The European Union as Coxswain: Governance by Steering', in Jon Pierre (ed.), Debating Governance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 236.
62. Bartolini (note 9), p. 39.
63. Yves Mény and Yves Surel (eds), Democracies and the Populist Challenge (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002).
64. David Boucher, 'The Rule of Law in the Modern European State', European Journal of Political Theory, Vol. 4, No. 1 (2005), pp. 89-107.
65. Bartolini (note 9), p. 39.
66. Kenneth Stampp, 'The Concept of a Perpetual Union', The Journal of American History, Vol. 65, No. 1 (1978), pp. 5-33.
67. Bruno de Witte, 'Treaty Revision in the European Union: Constitutional Change Through International Law', Netherlands Yearbook of International Law, Vol. 35 (2004), pp. 51-84.
68. Article I. 60, Treaty Establishing a Constitution for Europe, available at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/site/eu/oj/2004/c_310/ c_31020041216en00110040.pdf.
69. Boucher (note 55), p. 104.
70. Renaud Dehousse, 'Constitutional Reform in the European Community: Are There Alternatives to the Majoritarian Avenue?', West European Politics, Vol. 18, No. 3 (1995), pp. 118-36.
71. For an implicitly Calhounian critique of the European Court of Justice as ultimate arbiter in competence disputes see Thierry Chopin, L'héritage du fédéralisme? États-Unis/Europe (Paris: Fondation Robert Schumann, 2002), pp. 73-7.
72. Title I, Article A, Treaty on European Union, available at: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/en/treaties/dat/11992M/htm/ 11992M.html#0001000001.
73. Renaud Dehousse, 'Community Competences: Are There Limits to Growth?', in R. Dehousse (ed.), Europe After Maastricht: An Ever Closer Union? (Munich: Beck, 1994), p. 110.
74. Ibid., p. 124.
75. The European Court of Justice has only rendered two explicit subsidiarity rulings.
76. Bartolini (note 5), pp. 132-6.
77. Johannes Pollak and P. Slominski, 'The Representative Quality of the EU: A Comparison Between the IGC and the Convention', Journal of European Integration, Vol. 26, No. 3 (2004), pp. 201-26.
78. Alexander H. Trechsel, 'How to Federalize the EU ... and Why Bother', Journal of European Public Policy, Vol. 12, No. 3 (2005), pp. 401-18.
79. This mechanism has never been used, although the threat of calling such a convention to impose unionwide direct election of senators encouraged Congress to pass the seventeenth amendment. Daniel Wirls, 'Regionalism, Rotten Boroughs, Race and Realignment: The Seventeenth Amendment and the Politics of Representation', Studies in American Political Development, Vol. 13 (Spring 1999), pp. 1-30, at p. 4.
80. Article V, Constitution of the Confederate States of America.
81. Hermann Schmitt and Jacques Thomassen (eds), Political Representation and Legitimacy in the European Union (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 334.
82. Andrew Moravcsik, 'What Can We Learn From the Collapse of the Constitutional Project?', Politische Vierteljahresschrift, Vol. 47, No. 2 (2006), pp. 219-41, at p. 237.
83. Bartolini (note 9), p. 40.
84. Peter Mair, 'Popular Democracy and the Construction of the European Union Political System', Paper presented at the ECPR Joint Sessions, Uppsala, 13-18 April 2004.
85. The Holy Bible, Matthew, 7:13.