Is there a democratic case for the EU?
Henry Farrell of Crooked Timber writes a piece at the Monkey Cage, on making the political and democratic case for the EU. He starts from the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, which is happening tomorrow. The No campaign is pushing hard on issues of nationalism and expoliting anti-politician feeling. The Yes campaign, with most political parties behind it, is saying … what? Mainly, it seems, ‘vote yes because we think it’s a good idea’.
Henry:
People don’t understand the EU - but as best as I can make out, their trust in the guidance of political elites has waned dramatically too. The argument that mainstream politicians are representing Ireland’s best interests is meeting with decided skepticism. The No side have been hammering home again and again the argument that pro-Treaty politicians are anti-democratic - they don’t trust voters to decide on this Treaty anywhere except in Ireland where they have to. The empirical claim (if not necessarily the anti-democratic bit) seems to be resonating with the public, for the simple and obvious reason that it’s undeniably true.
The problem for pro-European politicians is how to frame the argument for Europe in a way that doesn’t start from the premise ‘we need a strong EU so it can take effective decisions’. That’s not a bad argument to make to a policy wonk or a political theorist, because in a globalised world the EU does have more clout acting together than member states would have on their own. But it is a pragmatic argument, not a democratic argument, in a world where people don’t feel that the EU is a democratic institution.
In fact, the EU is not that undemocratic, as international institutions go. It has an elected Parliament, which is more than the United Nations has, and the Lisbon Treaty even strengthens it. The member states who are represented on the Council of Ministers are all democracies and so, at least in theory, represent the democratic will of their countries. But as can be seen across Europe, and particularly in the UK, that doesn’t seem to be convincing anyone of its democratic bona fides.
Why not? There are three problems.
First, Europe is a convenient whipping boy for unpopular policies. National politicians will crow about their personal responsibility for popular EU measures, and will blame unpopular measures on pressure from Brussels. So Europe as a concept starts the game a goal down.
Second, policy debates are conducted in a way that brings out the worst in the system. In Britain debates about law and regulation are begun behind closed doors in Whitehall, and defended in Parliament when a common position is reached, but in the EU they are conducted in the open from fairly early on. Political horse-trading is never the most edifying spectacle, all the more so when it’s conducted with other countries’ politicians in distant cities. Add to that populist bravado about ‘batting for Britain’ or ’speaking up for French farmers’ and European decision making seems tawdry, contrary and distant.
Third, Europe is not yet an accepted political space. We are used to the nation state system, so it doesn’t seem unfair that a government holds power even though some parts of a country voted for someone else. George Bush’s first term was an exception, but few people in California would say that federal power exercised in the state is illegitimate because they voted for John Kerry in 2004. I think that British voters would consider it illegitimate for the European project to be governed by, say, an alliance of Scandinavian and Mediterranean countries.
At base, the EU’s problems arise from the fact that it is an international (interstate) body operating in an era where traditional state politics is in trouble. The power of the Council of Ministers is democratic if you believe in the honesty and the mandate of the politicians who attend, but fewer and fewer people do. At the same time, the desire for personal political influence is much harder to realise on a Europe-wide level than it is at a local or national level.
Henry Farrell says, near the end of his piece:
One can make European politics salient - by emphasizing the different options that are open at the European level, the extent to which they favour either left or right, and providing voters with some opportunity to express their choices over which they favor.
And I think he is absolutely right. The way I would put it is that the EU needs to leaven its inter-state ways of working with more post-state approaches - to take seriously its stated ambitions for closer union. The role of the nation state is still central to the EU project, but the Union currently operates like the US Senate, in state-based blocks largely unbalanced by representation.
If we are serious about building that representation, it has to go with the grain of current democratic attitudes: to be a space with argument and clearly defined positions, but one in which personal involvement and discussion are to the forefront, rather than parliamentarians or political parties.