The Representative Turn in EU Studies

Sandra Kröger, Dawid Friedrich

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781134927456
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

After the participative and deliberative turns in both democratic theory and EU studies, we are currently witnessing a 'representative turn' to which this volume contributes by addressing the relation between representation and democracy in the EU. Although in the Lisbon Treaty the EU conceives itself as a representative democracy, the meaning of this concept in a supranational polity is far from clear – either in theory or practice. Instead, the historically contingent link between representation and democracy is today severely challenged by various processes of diversification at all levels of political action (national, regional, supranational). These processes challenge our understanding of representative democracy as involving electoral democracy within clearly delineated nation-states, provoking a situation in which 'new frontiers' of representation develop. Consequently, it becomes increasingly difficult to provide normative standards as well as accurate assessments of democratic representation in the EU.

This volume addresses these core challenges of representative democracy in the EU from normative, theoretical and methodological perspectives.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

Introduction: the representative turn in EU studies

Sandra Kröger and Dawid Friedrich

ABSTRACT In everyday discourse, democracy has become associated with representation. Western-style political systems today are generally categorized as representative democracies, as is the EU. The Treaty of Lisbon declares the EU to be founded on representative democracy, with political equality as its normative foundation. However, contemporary processes of diversification, not least that of European integration, pose severe challenges to the historically contingent link between democracy and representation. Consequently, many scholars indicate a democratic deficit in the EU, which the current debt crisis has accentuated even further. This introduction takes stock of recent theoretical debates and identifies three key issues which it then links to the contributions to this collection: namely, (1) a decisive shift in the understanding of the representative relationship; (2) an increased attention to non-electoral representation, specifically civil society (organizations); and (3) the debate about whether democratic competences are best located at the supranational or the national level. We close by reflecting on potential future avenues for research.

In everyday language, democracy is usually associated with representation. This link has been understood in various ways. For example, scholars have not only differentiated between delegate and trustee models of representation, but also descriptive, symbolic, anticipatory, promissory, discursive and advocacy representation, and disputed their respective merits. (Dovi 2002; Mansbridge 1999; Pitkin 1967; Urbinati 2000). All these different approaches to representation reveal a common understanding that modern democratic politics is linked to representation and perceive of representation as the most appropriate means to serve the goal of political equality for every citizen in the context of modern mass democracies.

Conceptually and empirically, however, this link is not self-evident: ‘Through much of their history both the concept and the practice of representation have had little to do with democracy or liberty’ (Pitkin 1967: 2). The close linkage of representation with democracy was a product of contingent historical developments, more specifically of the gradual emergence of territorially confined nation states (Hobson 2008). The French Revolution offered the intellectual and political context in which democratic government came to be envisioned and institutionalized as representative government (Hobson 2008; Urbinati 2004). Indeed, Abbé de Sieyès considered the establishment of representative government as the ‘true object of the revolution’ (Hobson 2008: 453). For him, representation was a means of reactivating democracy in the context of territorial nation states. From such a perspective, ‘democracy is possible and it is desirable precisely because it is representative’ (Hobson 2008: 466; emphasis original), instead of being merely a second-best solution to direct democracy.

Following the fusion of democracy and representation, democratic representation has been understood as away of establishing the legitimacy of democratic institutions and of creating institutional incentives for governments to be responsive to citizens. Representative government so conceived has been shown to be a practically feasible and normatively justifiable version of democracy: ‘Seen in the longue durée, representation has been a decisive ally of democracy, insofar as it fundamentally helped to alter the latter’s conditions of possibility’ (Hobson 2008: 451). Indeed, by and large it is accepted today that political representation is a sine qua non for the legitimacy of any democratic political system.

Within the national context, political representation was to be realized through two institutions: (1) regular, free and fair elections, based on the rule of one person, one vote OPOV); and (2) a representative government that follows from the results of these elections, and which publicly aggregates societal interests into a political programme. Elections legitimate the authorization of political leaders and make them responsive and accountable to the electorate. For the limited time span of an electoral cycle, political authority is delegated to elected representatives through an act of voting based on one person, one vote that expresses the norm of political equality. Normatively, electoral cycles imply that power is conditional, and that its abuse can be sanctioned

Thus, traditional accounts have described and justified democratic political representation in the context of nation states. Their main, if not exclusive, aim is to perfect the associated territorially based electoral systems. However, contemporary democracies are evolving in ways that increasingly undermine the adequacy of these standard accounts. The modern territorial state, and with it the link between democracy and representation, is challenged through a variety of diversification processes, including those of the supranational (European) integration of competences, actors and arenas, which have contributed to the increasing dilution of traditional representative politics (Kroger and Friedrich 2012b; Warren and Castiglione 2004). Given the transfer of competences to the European Union (EU), its fragmentation and its densely structured multi-level politics, all of which weaken the ability of national democracies to keep decision-making authority in their hands, the relationship between representation, democracy and the nation-state in the EU is particularly strained. In the light of these developments, it has subsequently been argued that representation cannot be restricted to electoral representation or to representation in the nation state alone, for such a conceptualization no longer seems to grasp political reality (Lord and Pollak 2010; Rehfeld 2006).

Scholars have tried to come to grips with the changing nature of representative democracy, devising a new terminology in the process. They speak of ‘audience democracy’ and ‘post-democracy’ and the like to highlight what in their view characterizes contemporary Western types of democracies. By ‘audience democracy’, Bernard Manin (1997) refers to the increased importance of political communication organized in and by the mass media, rather than, as previously, in parliament or between parties. In an audience democracy, voting becomes retrospective, and the electorate votes for the ‘best performer’ or the best charismatic media figure, rather than for a political programme. The terminology of ‘post-democracy’ has been invented by Colin Crouch (2004), who uses it to characterize political systems which focus on outputs and the legitimacy they generate, whilst input legitimacy is un- (or at least less) important and only has an instrumental value – so long as it brings about policies which are in the general interest – whilst decision-making is increasingly put in the hands of experts, committees and private firms, a perspective that Giandomenico Majone (1996) has popularized for the EU context.

Representation is also a central concept in the way in which the EU understands its democratic legitimacy. The EU’s most recent constitutionalist discourse maintains that the EU not only needs government for the people, but also government of and by the people. In Title II on ‘Provisions on Democratic Principles’, the Lisbon Treaty highlights two key principles. First, Article 9 states the normative basis for democracy within the EU, namely political equality. Article 10 says that the EU ‘shall be founded on representative democracy’. It goes on:

2. Citizens are directly represented at Union level in the European Parliament. Member States are represented in the European Council by their Heads of State or Government and in the Council by their governments, themselves democratically accountable either to their national Parliaments, or to their citizens.

3. Every citizen shall have the right to participate in the democratic life of the Union. Decisions shall be taken as openly and as closely as possible to the citizen.

4. Political parties at European level contribute to forming European political awareness and to expressing the will of citizens of the Union.

In Article 11, the Lisbon Treaty states that the European institutions shall give citizens and associations ‘the opportunity to make known and publicly exchange their views in all areas of Union action’ and to maintain a regular and open dialogue with them. Finally, it also introduces the European Citizen Initiative whereby a group of at least a million EU citizens may petition the European Commission to further actions that fall within its competences.

Thus, political equality and representative democracy are the self-proclaimed ‘meta-standards’ (Lord and Pollak 2010: 126) against which we can judge the EU’s democratic legitimacy. However, the theoretical and practical implications of these two meta-principles for the EU are far from obvious. The Lisbon Treaty not only distinguishes between an electoral, a territorial, a functional and a direct channel of representation; but also refers to two different political subjects, individuals and states (see below), without clarifying the relationship between the different channels and subjects. It is this quest for the right balance between a supranational and an intergovernmental political order and the appropriate institutional arrangements that have provoked a fierce debate concerning its alleged democratic deficit.

Ever since the Maastricht Treaty (1992), this debate about what is now called ‘the EU’s democratic deficit’ has been growing, and there is no sign of it ceasing. The EU’s policy-making is seen as distant, non-transparent and not corresponding to institutional checks and balances present within the member states. The peoples of Europe are felt to have little or no say on the EU’s institutional development, its policy-making, and future objectives, while their lives are increasingly affected by European integration. It has also remained unclear which kind of representative democracy is being developed at the EU level.

This is not the right place to enter into a detailed discussion of the ‘demo-cratic deficit’ of the EU as such. Suffice it here to acknowledge that for many it does exist, be it for institutional or social reasons. Some scholars argue that there is a mismatch between taking policy decisions increasingly at the EU level while politics still mainly operates – so far as it does – at the national level and based on national elections. For democracy to be saved, they contend democratic government should move more consistently to the EU level, in particular to the European Parliament (EP), so as to be responsive and accountable at the level where the policy decisions are being taken (Hix and Follesdal 2006). Other scholars also acknowledge a democratic deficit in the EU, but consider that it should and can only be countered through strengthening domestic representative institutions (Cooper 2012). For a third, minor group, the alleged democratic deficit does not pose a severe problem. From such a perspective, EU technocratic governance is a safeguard against government ineffectiveness, and checks and balances at the EU level are even superseding those at the domestic level (Majone 1996; Moravcsik 2008).

Certainly, the current debt and euro crisis has ensured that the issue of the democratic deficit remains on the political and academic agenda. Indeed, it seems as if one central element of modern democracy – democratic parties competing for power by offering political alternatives – had been sidelined by the dictates of the financial markets. The EU has contributed to this situation and worsened the economic and political crisis by following all too willingly the austerity measures demanded by the German government and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and sealing off discussion about political alternatives. It has opted in favour of a depoliticized, technocratic and a more intergovernmental form of governance rather than recurring to parliaments at a moment when the very core of these institutions – budgetary policy – was at stake. Technocratic governance has been increased by creating the Frankfurt group and letting it become the main driving body of fiscal policy as well as by supporting the establishment of technocratic governments in both Italy and Greece. Intergovernmental governance has been strengthened by moving from the ‘Community Method’ to what Chancellor Merkel¹ has called the ‘Union Method’, which puts national governments rather than the European Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament centre stage. What is more, the intergovernmental handling of the crisis has allowed Germany (and, to a lesser degree, France) to dominate fiscal policy over the past few years – a dominance symbolized by the two countries’ leaders’ walk on the beaches of Deauville in October 2010 – thereby privileging national interests over a common, European one, whilst the European Parliament has been completely sidelined. National governments, specifically the Irish, Greek, Italian and increasingly the Spanish, have proved powerless to change the underlying fiscal approach, which instead has been decided in Berlin and Frankfurt.

The handling of the crisis, and specifically the fiscal treaty, marks an important break with the existing EU governance architecture. This is all the more severe as the treaty constitutes a significant deepening of European integration in the economic and budgetary sphere without at the same time strengthening either the national or supranational representative institutions and thereby lending democratic legitimacy to the current and future fiscal policy. The euro and debt crisis has thereby amplified an existing problem – the lack of a transparent, open political process at the EU level which would be in the hands of democratic representative institutions and therefore, in the last resort, of the European peoples. However, without such a process, not only can citizens have no input into decision-making, but also there is no public space in which political alternatives can be discussed. In short, the fiscal treaty and the different rescue measures lack the democratic legitimacy they so urgently need.

Much of the recent related debate has been on whether decisions should be made by democratic representatives or experts. At the time of writing, much suggests that the future of the EU and its member states may look like the current arrangements of Italy or Greece for some time – member states governed by technocrats rather than by party government. Governments may no longer be enforcing partisan electoral promises, but implementing budgetary, economic and other policies decided at the EU level, either in the European Council or, worse, in the Eurogroup, rendering national elections almost irrelevant. Whether a member state has a right-wing or a left-wing government no longer seems to make much difference for the choice of core policies. What has been said to characterize the EU – policies without politics (Schmidt 2006) – may be...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Citation Information
• 1. Introduction: the representative turn in EU studies
• 2. Democratic representation in the EU: two kinds of subjectivity
• 3. Unequal but democratic? Equality according to Karlsruhe
• 4. Three models of democracy, political community and representation in the EU
• 5. Representation as delegation: a basis for EU democracy?
• 6. No representation without justification? Appraising standards of justification in European Parliament debates
• 7. Mediatized representative politics in the European Union: towards audience democracy?
• 8. Representative claims analysis: theory meets method
• Index