As has been said in the introduction, the focus in this book is on conceptual controversies in the history of building the European Union (EU) as a representative democratic polity, both in theory and regarding the EU’s institutional practice. The academic debate on representative democracy in the EU is also my reference point in three respects: (1) it indicates the core questions and resurgent controversies of conceptualising the EU as a representative democratic polity; (2) it indicates the relevant contested concepts; and (3) I aim at making a contribution to this debate by highlighting ambivalences, pitfalls and conceptual controversies related to conceptualising the EU as a representative democratic polity.
This means that I use the conceptual controversies in the academic debate on representative democracy in the EU as one point of departure, but I do not interpret the academic debate itself. In addition, I also include the political and institutional practices related to inventing the EU as a representative democratic polity. This is why I concentrate on the three conceptual clusters of parliament -representation -legislature , citizens-subjects-people -sovereign -electorate-demos and government -executive. All three clusters are key in the theory and practice of parliamentary democracy, challenging and challenged in their relations to the EU multilevel polity and allowing different possibilities to construct conceptual frameworks for the EU as a democratic polity. The clusters have also been subject to extensive conceptual controversies and different interpretations. Each of them has a different history and their use also differs between languages and political cultures. Throughout the book, I question which meanings were attributed to them in the course of EU integration, by whom and why, how they were contested and controversially discussed, and how their political practice was shaped.
Academic Controversy on the EU as a Representative Democracy
What is the academic controversy about? In EU studies, conceptual controversies start with the question of what the EU actually is. As has been said, approaches differ according to their theoretical and methodological perspectives and to their judgements. Should the EU be defined as a “polity sui generis”, that is, as a new kind of polity without precedent that accordingly cannot be grasped with the established categories, as is still sometimes assumed? Is it an international organisation (see, e.g. Magnette 2005)? Is it a political system without being a state (see Hix and Høyland 2011; Tömmel 2014a)? Should the EU hence be analysed as a polity that is in some respects different, in other respects similar to other polities, following the approaches in comparative politics and systems analysis? Is it acceptable to ask for legislative, judicative and executive dimensions in the EU polity, or whether the EU can be seen in terms of semi- or presidential systems? Or does this create an analogy to the nation state? Last but not least, how and from which background should the EU be normatively judged?
Consequently, and following the different approaches, very different accounts of the normative question of the necessity of representative democracy in the EU emerge. Some participants in the debate judge the EU as an intergovernmental entity whose primary task is to execute and clearly regulate defined policies that the member states delegate to it. Hence, they do not see any need for EU democratisation at all (Moravscik 2002; Majone 1998). Others critically discuss the EU as a polity, along with the multilevel system that it builds with the member states, focusing on flaws in and threats to its democratic quality. These authors claim the EU needs to be further democratised, but disagree on how this can be accomplished and which conditions must be met (for overviews on the debate see Føllesdal and Hix 2006; Abromeit 1998).
The academic debate on representative democracy in the EU and EU democratisation indeed centres around interpretations of the three key conceptual clusters, parliament -representation -legislature , citizens-subjects-people -sovereign -electorate-demos and government -executive. But the interpretation of these conceptual clusters and the normative judgements related to them are at least as controversial and contested among both scholars and political agents as in the earlier days of representative democracies.
Furthermore, there are a number of contributions in which the second step is made before the first—it is asked which concepts have (satisfactorily) been realised and which are missing, how the different institutions interrelate, or how the political levels of the EU play together, but this is often discussed without making explicit the understandings, definitions or meaning of the concepts used. This also implies that certain academic fashions are taken as implicit guidelines for the correct usage of concepts. Only in more recent times has the debate led to asking how the key conceptual clusters are to be reinterpreted regarding their compatibility with the EU. After some first contributions that claimed this necessity (see, e.g. Chryssochoou 2002; Bellamy and Castiglione 2003), there are now an increasing number of authors discussing these matters (see, e.g. the contributions in Piattoni 2015).
There is also a bias towards methodological nationalism in parts of the literature. Categories and criteria according to which the EU’s political system and its democratic situation are judged often are explicitly or implicitly taken from established mainstream interpretations of concepts. In particular, in several contributions, the criteria according to which the EU’s democratic quality is judged are—again, explicitly or implicitly—taken from the example of nation states, in a static and a temporal use. The German debate on an EU demos development (see Kielmannsegg 2003; Scharpf 1998 and chapter “Citizenship and Democracy in the EU”) is a good example of this: several contributors speak of an inappropriateness of institutional EU democratisation, using a temporal understandings of key concepts like demos and democracy, and not taking into account that today’s democracies developed over time and continue to develop.
But the EU cannot simply be judged according to the same criteria and categories as a nation state. In terms of conceptual history of the key concepts discussed in this book, the nation state is a contingent result of definite historical constellations in Europe, especially in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Nation states, hence, have themselves been contested and controversial. Understanding conceptual changes in European unification does not only mean extension (amplificatio) of the nation state paradigm. On the contrary, it requires relativising this paradigm and creatively applying forms of political practices and institutions independently of their organisation levels.
The Triad of Representative Democracy: Citizenship, Parliament, Government
As has been said in the introduction, I argue in this book that the EU has been developing towards a situation where basic elements of representative democracy have been institutionalised and are present in the political and institutional practices.
This argument rests on a basic account of the general principles and elements of representative democracy: if we try to distil what the general elements that classify most concepts of representative democracy are (see, e.g. Dahl 2000; Diamond and Morlino 2004; Palonen 2016a), and if we also take into account how representative democracy developed (Urbinati 2006; Pitkin 2009; Manin 1997), there is a typical interrelation between the three elements, or conceptual clusters, that were introduced above. Citizens vote for parliament and hence legitimise it; parliament represents the citizens and elects the government; and the government is responsible to parliament. In the introduction, I termed this the triad of representative democrac...