Introduction: Democratic Challenges of Differentiated (Dis)Integration (Swiss Political Science Review, Special Issue) (original) (raw)
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Few debates in political theory are challenged as much by the constant change of their empirical subject as those about democracy in the European Union (EU). With A Republican Europe of States, Richard Bellamy responds to the EU's post-Lisbon era, which has been characterized by the euro crisis, conflicts over migration, the rise of Euroscepticism, and Brexit. Keeping an eye on these contextual conditions and the related legal and political transformations, he has developed a general theory of international democracy aimed at securing non-domination between peoples and between citizens and their representatives at the international level, and elaborated its implications for the EU. The result is a distinctive version of demoi-cracy, whose firm centering on the nation-state as the natural locus of democracy is likely to be controversially discussed. In this article, I raise some critical considerations regarding the design of demoi-cratic institutions, the adequate understanding of EU citizenship, and the normative credentials of differentiated (dis-)integration.
Democracy and differentiation in Europe
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 13501763 2015 1020838, 2015
This contribution addresses two questions. First, what forms and shapes does European Union (EU) differentiation take in the realm of representative democracy in the multilevel constellation that makes up the EU? Second, what are the implications of differentiation for the theory and the practice of democracy?
The Democratic Dilemmas of Differentiated Integration: The Views of Political Party Actors
Swiss Political Science Review, forthcoming, 2021
Differentiated integration (DI) appeals as a pragmatic way of accommodating political and economic differences among member states (MS). However, it potentially challenges their equal standing in EU decision-making, creating the possibility for some MS to dominate others. As such, it risks undermining the democratic legitimacy of the EU. Drawing on 35 interviews with party actors in seven MS, we find many shared these concerns, thereby questioning the acceptance of DI. While they considered DI could support self-determination at the national level, they worried it might result in arbitrary exclusion and growing inequality at the EU level. To be non-dominating, they contended differentiated policies must remain open for all to join, be based on clear criteria, and allow all MS a say, though only participating states should be entitled to vote on differentiated policies in the Council, whereas all MEPs should be able to vote in the European Parliament. Zusammenfassung: Differenzierte Integration (DI) entschärft politische und wirtschaftliche Heterogeneität zwischen den Mitgliedstaaten (MS) der Europäischen Union (EU). Sie wirft allerdings Fragen politischer Gleichheit zwischen den MS und der Dominanz schwächerer MS durch stärkere auf und riskiert, die demokratische Legitimität der EU zu untergraben. Die Analyse von 35 Experteninterviews zeigt, dass viele parteipolitische Akteure aus sieben MS diese Bedenken teilen. Einerseits unterstützen sie DI als Mittel zu nationaler Selbstbestimmung. Andererseits sorgen sie sich, dass DI zu arbiträrer Ausgrenzung und wachsender politischer Ungleichheit auf EU-Ebene führen könnte. Um dem entgegenzutreten sollten alle differenzierten Politiken offen bleiben für diejenigen, die ihnen beitreten wollen, und ein späterer Beitritt sollte auf transparenten Kriterien beruhen. Die gegenwärtigen Abstimmungsregeln im Rat und im Europäischen Parlament werden hingegen weitestgehend befürwortet. Résumé: L'intégration différenciée est une réponse pragmatique aux défis posés par l'hétérogénéité des états-membres de l'Union Européenne (UE). Toutefois, cette méthode risque de mettre en cause le principe d'égalité entre ces états-membres, d'engendrer des relations de domination et, de ce fait, de saper la légitimité démocratique de l'UE. Par une analyse de 35 interviews avec des acteurs de partis politiques issus de sept états-membres, nous montrons qu'une grande part des élites politiques européennes partagent ces préoccupations et contestent l'acceptabilité de l'intégration différenciée. Même si certains interviewés pensent que l'intégration différenciée peut renforcer l'autodétermination au niveau national, ils craignent qu'elle peut également donner lieu à des exclusions de nature arbitraire et augmenter les inégalités au niveau européen. Les interviewés considèrent que les politiques différenciées doivent rester ouvertes à tous et qu'elles doivent se baser sur des critères précis. Il ressort également de ces entretiens que seuls les états concernés par une politique devraient avoir le droit de vote au Conseil, alors qu'au Parlement Européen tous les députés devraient avoir le droit de vote. 2
Swiss Political Science Review, 2021
Since Brexit, there has been increasing interest in democratic theory in the question of the conditions under which reversals of European integration can be considered legitimate. So far, however, the literature is very much focused on the specific case of the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the European Union. In this article, I seek to prepare the ground for a systematic theory that clarifies, at a general level, the scope and limits as well as the actors and procedures of democratically legitimate disintegration. To that end, I map the potential democratic costs and benefits of EU disintegration. In doing so, I distinguish five types of disintegration: retreat, revocation, exit, expulsion, and dissolution. All of these measures can produce conflicts between the democratic claims of citizens and peoples. Many of these cannot be resolved but must be dealt with politically. Overall, disintegration bears more potential costs for citizens than for peoples.
Direct Democracy and EU Integration
Representative democracy was constructed as a normative model and theory during the Westphalian Modernity. It was put into practice during the "long XIX century" (Hobsbaum) and is presumed to have been the dominant model for organizing the institutional design since the second half of the XIX century. However we are currently experiencing crisis of both representation and democracy which produces the feeling that the representative democracy is nowadays "shaken order" (Mishkova). Some of the most important determinants of the crisis of democracy and more precisely of representative democracy are result of globalization. One of the basic challenges to constitutionalism and constitutional theory nowadays concerns the issue how to reestablish the conditions for democracy in the pluralist and multilevel constitutional setting of the EU, supranational constitutionalism and the emerging global constitutionalism. One of the main trends in that regard consists in launching and promoting the use of direct democracy for adopting fundamental decisions related to supranational constitutionalism and EU integration. Several types of EU related referenda have been used during the last decades especially in the age of constitutionalization of the EU legal order. Referenda for EU accession and even for EU secession (the Brexit case), as well as for the ratification of EU law reforms and the key EU policies (such as: financial stability and migration issues) have been held in several EU member states. This paper will try to provide a critical analysis of the problem-solving capacity of such referenda, their impact on the "democratization of democracy" (Offe), and their capacity to serve as a viable form of democratic control and inclusion in the context of structural crisis of the Westphalian statehood and its democratic government model.
2019
The following document is the final submitted version of a paper I did for a governance and democratization class during my Masters of International Relations program. The European Union has come under extensive scrutiny for it perceived democratic deficit through its institutional structure, centralisation and accusations of anti-democratic behaviour, which began with the Maastricht Treaty (Christiansen, 2012: 686-687). Given the rise of so called 'populist' politicians in Central European member states of the union, there is a great level of concern about the degradation of democracy. On the other hand, 'Eurosceptic' politicians on the left and right have long expressed concern about how continued integration into the European Union political project is eroding national sovereignty. With the ongoing dramas of Brexit, this issue is in the spotlight. This essay will examine the risk to democracy that comes out as a result of some of the second and third order governance features of the European Union (Kooiman, 1999: 78-83). Additionally, I will use the conceptual tools of norm entrepreneurship and class struggle as foundational assumptions of my argument. I will argue that the dangers to maintaining democratic forms of governance in the European Union is a mix of failures of national parliaments, the decisions of EU leaders and the series of contradictions within its current construction. I will achieve this by first discussing the differing views of what constitutes the ideology of the European Union, the issue of populism and a discussion of the core institutions themselves. The risk to democracy here is defined in the sense of our most common, fundamental expectation of democracy: that elected leaders enact policy that is within the desires and best interests of the demos. A further possible risk to democracy from the European Union is the further entrenchment and reproduction of class warfare and liberal totalitarianism (Gambetti, 2005: 642-645), whose totalitarian nature has previously been disguised by 'market solutions' and the depoliticization of politics (Brown, 2006). It should also be noted that this essay is not an exhaustive account of this specific issue.
Demoi-cracy in the European Union: principles, institutions, policies
In a 'demoi-cracy', separate statespeoples enter into a political arrangement and jointly exercise political authority. Its proper domain is a polity of democratic states with hierarchical, majoritarian features of policy-making, especially in value-laden redistributive and coercive policy areas, but without a unified political community (demos). In its vertical dimension, demoi-cracy is based on the equality and interaction of citizens' and statespeoples' representatives in the making of common policies. Horizontally, it seeks to balance equal transnational rights of citizens with national policy-making autonomy. The EU belongs to the domain of demoi-cracy and has established many of its features. We argue that both vertical and horizontal demoi-cratization have been triggered by processes of supranational integration in the EU. They differ, however, in the origins and the outcomes. Vertical demoi-cratization has initially been a reaction of parliamentary institutional actors to majoritarian decision-making in regulatory policy-areas, resulting in the empowerment of the EP and the strengthening of parliamentary oversight at the national level. By contrast, horizontal demoi-cratization has been promoted by governments as an alternative to majoritarian and legally binding policy-making in core areas of statehood as well as coercive and redistributive policy-areas; it has resulted in soft, coordinative forms of policy-making, seeking to protect national autonomy. The extent to which these developments actually meet the normative standards of demoi-cracy in practice, however, is mixed.