Democracy in the European Union

The process of European integration has given rise to a new object of study theEuropean society. Several old questions concerning citizenship, democracy, govern-ment and institutions must be raised anew, this time at the European level. These arenot only academic issues, but also major political concerns at European and memberstate level.

There are fears that transfers of power to European institutions produce a char-acteristically new and worrying form of democratic decit. The recent rejection ofthe Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands suggests that this demo-cratic decit is beginning to impact on the Unions legitimacy, further endangeringthe European project of ever closer union.

How can this crisis be overcome, and in which direction should the EuropeanUnion be moving? This new volume

takes a closer look at the Unions democratic decit in an effort to establish itsprecise character and location;

scrutinizes top-down institutional opportunity structures for participation, theactors that are shaping bottom-up mobilization, and the ideologies and dis-courses that are informing attempts to generalize political claims beyond thenational level;

provides a detailed insight into the scope and character of participatory practicein decision-making, the structure and visions of the European political class, andthe role of civil society organizations and trans-national movements;

looks at the debate on the EU as a community of values, as well as views aboutEurope in the new member states.

This book will be of strong interest to students and researchers of the EuropeanUnion, European politics and European studies, as well as those concerned withmore theoretical aspects of governance and the public sphere.

Liana Giorgi is Vice-Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for ComparativeResearch in the Social Sciences (ICCR), Austria.

Ingmar von Homeyer is a Senior Fellow at Ecologic, the Institute for Internationaland European Environmental Policy, Berlin/Brussels.

Wayne Parsons is Professor of Public Policy and Head of Department at QueenMary College, University of London, UK.

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Democracy in theEuropean UnionTowards the emergence of a public sphere

Edited by Liana Giorgi,Ingmar von Homeyer and Wayne Parsons

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(Print Edition)

Contents

List of illustrations

Notes on contributors ix

Acknowledgements xi

1 Introduction: the political sociology of the European public sphere 1

JOHN CROWLEY AND LIANA GIORGI

2 Democratization and the European Union 24LIANA GIORGI

3 Participatory governance in the European Union 43

INGMARVON HOMEYER

4 The emergence of a European political class 79

ELISE FERON, JOHN CROWLEY AND LIANA GIORGI

5 The anti-globalization movement and the European agenda 115

ELISE FERON

6 The European Union as a Community of Values 135

LIANA GIORGI, NIKI RODOUSAKIS, MARISOL GARCIA AND

MARTIN PETERSON

7 EU accession and the public sphere in new member states: thecase of the Czech Republic 157

MICHAL ILLNER, DANIEL CERMAK, TOMAS KOSTELECKY AND

JANA STACHOVA

8 Conclusion: what future for European integration and democracy? 180

WAYNE PARSONS

Bibliography 199Index 209

viii

Illustrations

Figures

4.1 Map of the European political class 85

7.1 Public support for the Czech Republics application formembership of the EU by education 167

7.2 Public support for the Czech Republics application for

membership of the EU by party preference. 168

7.3 Public support for the Czech Republics membership of the

EU; voting likelihoods in the accession referendum 169

Tables

3.1 Case specic overview of conditions for participation 48

3.2 Effects on participation 74

4.1a Educational background of respondents by gender 91

4.1b Educational background of respondents by nationality 91

4.1c Educational background of respondents by political afliation 91

4.2 Experience studying and working abroad 93

4.3 Multiple mandates and current position 95

4.4 No mandate in the past or future 964.5 Re-election rates among elected MEPs following June 2004

elections 97

4.6 Share of holding ofcial positions at national level 98

4.7 Euro-enthusiasm (or Euro-scepticism) index 107

4.8 Political disenchantment index 108

4.9a European political ideologies by nationality of respondent 110

4.9b European political ideologies by politics of respondent 110

7.1 Answers to the question Do you think that you have enoughinformation about the accession process? 161

7.2 Support for Czech political parties 175

Contributors

Daniel Cermak is doctoral student at the Institute of Sociology, Academy of

Sciences of the Czech Republic.

John Crowley is Senior Programme Specialist at UNESCO, Editor of the

International Social Science Journal, and Executive Director of the

Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherche (CIR-Paris).

Elise Feron is lecturer at the Institute of Political Science of the Universityof Lille, and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre Interdisciplinaire de

Recherche (CIR) in Paris.

Marisol Garcia is Assistant Professor at the University of Barcelona.

Liana Giorgi is Vice-Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Compara-

tive Research in the Social Sciences (ICCR) in Vienna.

Ingmar von Homeyer is a senior fellow at Ecologic, Institute for Interna-

tional and European Environmental Policy, Berlin.

Michal Illner is Senior Scholar at the Institute of Sociology, Academy of

Sciences of the Czech Republic, Department of Local and Regional Studies.

Tomas Kostelecky is Senior Scholar at the Institute of Sociology, Academy

of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Department of Local and RegionalStudies.

Wayne Parsons is Professor of Public Policy at Queen Mary College, Uni-

versity of London.

Martin Peterson is Professor at the universities of Bergen, Norway, and

Goteburg, Sweden and member of the Globalisation Committee of the

Swedish Research Council.

Niki Rodousakis is a research fellow at the Interdisciplinary Centre for

Comparative Research in the Social Sciences (ICCR) in Vienna.

Jana Stachova is doctoral student at the Institute of Sociology, Academy ofSciences of the Czech Republic.

x Contributors

Acknowledgements

The research reported in this volume was carried out in the framework

of the EU RTD Framework Programme project The European Public

Sphere: Assembling Information that Allows the Monitoring of European

Democracy (EUROPUB) (Fifth RTD Framework Programme Improving

Human Research Potential and the Socio-Economic Knowledge Base).

1 Introduction

The political sociology of the Europeanpublic sphere

John Crowley and Liana Giorgi

At the beginning of the twenty-rst century, the European Union nds itself

at the crossroads. On the one hand, the ambitious European project of ever

closer collaboration has signicantly advanced through the Eastern enlar-

gement and the ever growing scope of economic integration. On the other

hand, institutional and implementation decits place serious barriers to

further integration and raise, more urgently than before, the question of

political integration including its desirability and feasibility. The rejection

of the Constitutional Treaty by the French and Dutch publics in 2005, aswell as the ongoing budgetary crisis, testify to a serious legitimacy crisis.

How can this crisis be overcome and where is or should the European

Union be moving towards?

There are three distinct narratives responses to this question. The rst

considers further efcient and effective integration to be possible only once

a political integration framework has been agreed upon and put into place.

Institutional reform is a term used to refer to these considerations, yet

ultimately this is also a discussion about the EU political multi-level gov-ernance system, a possible Constitution and, for some, a state model. The

second narrative with regard to the EU legitimacy crisis emphasizes the

absence of a symbolically unifying European identity or Europeanness

among EU citizens and sees the legitimacy decit closely linked to an iden-

tity decit. According to the proponents of this narrative, as long as EU

citizens are rst and foremost nationals, pledging their solidarity to those

like them within their national territorial boundaries and identifying their

national territory as the only legitimate sphere for politics, the EU as apolity will remain decient. For this reason, it might be more sensible to

concentrate any institutional reform efforts to rendering the EU an efcient

expert-led international cooperation framework for making policy rather

than politics. The third narrative links the legitimacy crisis to a democratic

decit: the reason why the European Union and the European integration

project is not genuinely recognized as both lawful and justiable has to do

with the fact that it is non-transparent and unaccountable vis-a`-vis its citi-

zens, hence undemocratic. Overcoming the legitimacy decit thus requiresovercoming the democratic decit.

These three narratives are not exclusive of each other. However, in

the present ofcial and academic discourse they tend to represent distinct

views about what to emphasize or prioritize in either policy or research

about European integration in the near- to mid-term future. This discoursefragmentation is to blame at least in part for the emerging impasse in

European studies faced with increasing disciplinary and thematic over-

specialization. It is also a barrier with regard to envisioning futures for

European integration.

This book tries to break with this tradition. The starting point of our

analysis has been that there is indeed an organic link between the European

Unions legitimacy and democratic decit, but that this is not the problem

alone of any specic institution, a set of institutional rules or any singlelevel of analysis. We need to scrutinize political institutions and rules (or the

lack thereof) as much as policy processes, citizens concerns or patterns of

participation (or the lack thereof). Such an approach requires a robust the-

oretical and normative framework in order to avoid that it spirals into a

nave discourse of the a bit of everything (and ultimately nothing) type.

For us this is provided by the model of a strong democracy as delineated

by the notion of the public sphere. The objective of this introductory chapter

is to outline this model and relate it to the individual chapters of the book.

Models of democracy and key considerations

The idea that it is helpful to approach the theory of democracy from the

perspective of a range of competing models is a familiar one. In a widely

quoted book, David Held (1996) proposes a series of distinctions between

ten generic models.

The Greek idea of citizenship: democracy is dened as the direct politicalparticipation of (a very low number) of citizens.

Republicanism and self-government: individual liberty is dened in poli-tical terms the active citizen, after being replaced by the religious

man, appears again in political theory.

Liberal democracy: individual liberty is not political but private andeconomical; the intervention of the state must be limited in the economy

and in private lives. Direct (Marxist) democracy threatens the concept of modern politics

and presupposes in its canonical form the withering away of the state.

The technocratic and administrative conception of democracy emphasizesthe importance of experts and centralized power. Elites are far from

citizens who do not take part in political decisions; deliberation and

parliaments are under the domination of party competition. Social and

political conicts are weaker, although freedom of opinions is high.

Pluralism is characterized by the balance of powers and respect ofminorities as well as different opinions; moreover, the political system is

2 John Crowley and Liana Giorgi

composed of various political parties and is based on the separation of

powers.

Legal democracy underscores the role of the constitution and theseparation of powers; it favours minimal state intervention in private lifeand in the economy as well as a strong civil society; it seeks to restrict

the role of interest groups and supports weak collectivism.

Participatory democracy seeks the promotion of individual liberty, ofself-development and of a collective awareness of common issues

through the direct citizen participation in the regulation of the key

institutions of society.

Democratic autonomy: equal rights and duties for individuals: they areconsidered as free and equal provided they do not threaten the freedomof others.

Cosmopolitan democracy is characterized by the reform of national andinternational governing institutions and the evolution of governance;

similar processes of globalization characterize the economy and the

civil society.

The details of the above classication might be discussed at length, but its

purpose is to provide a conceptual mapping rather than a catalogue. Wecannot, of course, choose the model that best suits us or any particular

political situation; but we can sharpen our approach to practical or theore-

tical political problems by taking account of its contrasts. Each of the ten

models summarizes some salient features of a real political system and also

gives an account of the language in which its citizens have sought to make

sense of it. Furthermore, identifying the models, even if they are regarded

merely as ideal-types, points to the tensions between them and to the prac-

tical and theoretical issues that may be at stake in adopting or emphasizingone or the other. To describe democracy in terms of competitive elitism (as

did Schumpeter, for instance) is to reject competing descriptions (in

Schumpeters case, mainly in participatory terms) as unrealistic, and thus to

circumscribe the range or scope of real-world democracy. Even if polemical

considerations did not intervene, in other words, analytical options would

carry normative baggage; in addition, democracy has been a persistently

contested notion since its modern re-emergence as a possible real-world

model in the eighteenth century. Mapping models of democracy thus helpsto clarify what is actually at stake in analytical and normative quarrels

about democracy.

Using Helds own approach, a series of issues appear to have particular

signicance in driving competing interpretations of the supercially

straightforward idea of democracy as the rule of the people:

The place of the state within the overall conception of democracy andpolitics, which can be generalized as the signicance given to deliberateordering (via authoritative command) as distinct from more or less

Introduction 3

spontaneous self-ordering (via the unintended consequences of interac-

tion) as a template for collective existence. The importance given to civil

society (however named) in democratic theory is a converse criterion.

The scale of political action, which relates closely to its nature and pur-pose. If politics is conceived in terms of the collective reexive life of a

people, then the scale of politics will naturally tend to be thought of as

unitary and uniform (e.g. in the modern context, by reference to the

nation-state). Conversely, if politics is envisaged primarily in terms of

problem-solving, there are likely to be as many scales or arenas of poli-

tical authority and action as there are problems: politics will therefore be

neither unitary nor uniform, and the nation-state as indeed the strong

normative idea of the people will tend to be regarded as a ratherarbitrary historical inheritance rather than a necessary political template.

The processes that make up politics: a wide range of perspectives exist,from an emphasis on struggles and power relations to a privileging

of dialogue and deliberation, with bargaining or negotiation models

occupying a notional intermediate position.

The subject matter or scope of politics. To say that the people should ruleis not to specify over what they should rule (simply that no one else

should rule, strictly speaking, over anything); even to say that politics isabout solving problems is not to prejudge which problems are political.

In the contemporary context, this issue points in three crucial directions,

all of which remain profoundly controversial. First, what should be the

link between the economy and politics? Second, are human rights a

political issue, or an intangible framework within which politics must

operate? Third, is there a conceptual limit (e.g. the limits of the human

body, however dened) beyond which democratic politics cannot go

without self-destructing? Needless to say, none of these questions is infact dichotomous, and all sophisticated positions occupy some kind of

middle ground. But the polar opposites are, nonetheless, the structuring

factors of public debate.

The nature of the people: whom does the people include, and whomdoes it exclude? On what is membership of the people conditional? What

sense are we to make of the suspicion about the people that underlies

traditional rejections of democracy as a viable template for government?

Needless to say, these questions intersect with considerations about theterritorial scale of political authority: patterns of inclusion and exclusion

appear very differently if politics is circumscribed a priori by territoriality

or merely contingently related to it, in the sense that many (but not all)

issues that political systems need to deal with are themselves inherently

territorial. Also of crucial signicance in this respect are such institu-

tional questions as rules for decision making and the existence of a

status, possibly including specic rights and capacities, for minorities.

The nature of political judgement. Again, this overlaps to a considerableextent with consideration of the nature of the people, but is nonetheless a

4 John Crowley and Liana Giorgi

distinct question. To regard political capacity as an aspect of common sense,

a skill that can be learned in principle by everyone, an aspect of character

that itself may or may not be universally accessible, a gift that is likely to

be rare and to ourish unpredictably, or a correlate of some kind ofhierarchically ordered wisdom, is to offer vastly different interpretations

of what membership of a political community entails. Undoubtedly, the

democratic temper tended to conne the debate to a fairly limited con-

trast between political judgement as common sense and citizenship as

popular education, but it would be misleading to view the other histori-

cally attested positions as having solely antiquarian signicance. Current

debates about the role of (especially scientic) expertise within democratic

polities clearly show the survival of traditional issues and categories.

What is important about these issues is that none can plausibly be regarded

as foreclosed by common sense or theoretical logic. Arguably, all possible

answers to all of them capture something of empirical signicance about

observable political systems, as well as something of normative signicance

about the fundamental idea of democracy. It is, in that sense, not simply an

accident of the history of political thought that the various competing gen-

eric models have emerged and survived through centuries of debate. Allow-ing for the vagaries of intellectual fashion, they sketch the conceptual

universe of democratic thinking.

Strong democracy and the concept of the public sphere

Central to our understanding of a strong democracy is the notion of a

public sphere. In discussions on democracy, and drawing in particular from

the civic republican tradition, the term public sphere or public space isused to refer to the scope of citizen interaction found in democratic socie-

ties. It is, to use Habermas (1989) terminology, the publicly relevant pri-

vate sphere of interaction: here, individuals relate to one another not in

terms of market transactions, nor in terms of power relations, but rather as

politically equal citizens (subjects) of a polity.

A public sphere delineates that space in which citizens come together to

discuss and debate issues of common or public concern. The public space

thus dened is easy to imagine and also realize in the ancient city republicor the local level of contemporary societies. It is much more difcult to

bring about in metropolitan areas or the trans-national multi-lingual con-

text. It is for this reason perhaps that contemporary discussion on the

public space in general, and the European public space in particular, is very

communication-centred, concerned with the role of the media in modern

democracies and the potential of new communication technologies, like the

internet, to provide virtual public spaces that can effectively replace real

(physical) public spaces. Our approach in this book has been to focus on thepublic sphere as a guiding principle in democratic polities making necessary

Introduction 5

the establishment and maintenance of public spaces, rather than a single

public space. Our overall aim has been to judge the links between these

multiple public spaces across different territorial levels of government, and

especially across member states, and how these impact on each other and onthe European level of governance.

A democratic polity centred on the public sphere has the following char-

acteristics with reference to the six key questions identied in the previous

section as central to democratic theory, i.e. the role of the state, the scale of

political action, the processes that make up politics, the scope of politics,

the nature of the people and the nature of political judgement:

A democratic polity centred on the public sphere relates to an idea ofgovernment as authoritative command and emphasizes transparency

of rule understood democratically as self-rule. Whether the state is a

necessary framework in this respect is a matter of vigorous debate, but it

is at least clear that in so far as the traditional territorial state is regar-

ded as obsolete, the solution is to be sought in a hierarchically ordered

scheme of territorial scales, i.e. in some form of federalism.

Politics expresses the collective reexive life of a people. It is engaged inproblem-solving only (albeit necessarily) to the extent that such collectivelife brings the people up against problems, which become so only

within the democratic process itself.

Deliberation is the fundamental democratic process. Bargaining andpower struggles are acceptable only to the extent that they are norma-

tively subordinate to deliberation and, ideally, set within an institutional

framework where they can be regulated by deliberation.

The subject matter of politics is indeterminate. However, a properlyordered democracy will be such that, at any time, the limits of politicalcompetence will be quite sharply drawn. In Habermas (1999) well

known phrase, sovereignty and human rights are co-originary.

The people includes, in principle, all those affected by the decisions takenin the course of the democratic process. The absolute minimum principle

of inclusion is, of course, that all those who are subject to laws enacted

democratically should participate equally in the process of deliberation

and enactment.

Political judgement is a skill that can be learned by anyone, and is indeeduniversally acquired in the context of socialization and education.

Undoubtedly, some people may be less effectively taught; and, possibly,

some may prove inherently more skilful. But neither of these distinctions

offers any ground for distinguishing either in principle or in practice

between those endowed with and devoid of political capacity.

While such a model is fairly determinate in the context of democratic

thinking and is in particular clearly and sharply opposed to other inuentialdemocratic modes of thinking, such as Schumpeterian elitist pluralism or

6 John Crowley and Liana Giorgi

Hayekian liberalism, it still offers considerable scope for variation. If pub-

licity-oriented democracy has a generic name in contemporary political

theory it is republicanism, and in order to clarify how this analysis can

contribute to a sharper conceptualization of the idea of a public sphere inthe specically European context, it is useful to specify some of the dis-

tinctions between varieties of republicanism. These refer ultimately to four

main titular gures: Aristotle, Machiavelli, Rousseau and Kant. It would be

mistake, however, to conclude that there are four distinct varieties of

republicanism: on the one hand it is possible, to a certain extent, to com-

bine several of the above inuences (notably, of course, Rousseau and

Kant); and on the other hand, important recent gures (most notably

Arendt) have contributed to a redistribution of some of the classic issues. Asurvey of republicanism would be quite beyond the scope of this intro-

ductory chapter, and the suggestions offered here, along with the theorists

chosen, are mainly illustrative.

Strong democracy structured by institutions

Benjamin Barber, drawing inspiration primarily from Rousseau and to a

lesser extent from Aristotle, offers a theory (and a prescription) of strongdemocracy as a way of life structured by institutions (Barber 1984, 1988).

The current crisis of democracy, for example, is analysed by Barber in terms

of the erosion of democratic institutions, including education, the public

media and the state generally, particularly under the pernicious inuence of

contemporary modes of globalization (Barber 1995). Neither liberalism nor

tribalism can be faithful solutions because the notions of individuals and of

communities are not solutions in themselves. It is not old-fashioned to

believe in politics, including in concrete and pragmatic politics rather thanideal politics. This is why both the idea and especially the structures of

democracy should be improved: the representative institutions on which

Europe depends have drifted away from citizens. Liberty, in Barbers char-

acteristically republican view, is distinctively political: it involves essentially

the capacity to act together, and only in a subsidiary sense the capacity to

protect myself from the encroachments of others. The existence of liberty

as a tangible and situated good depends on the stability of national political

institutions and on our capacity to modernize them and help them to playtheir role. Education the key to what Barber, in a striking phrase, idealizes

as the aristocracy of everyone (Barber 1992) but also nationalism and

religion are means of making this goal attainable. Politics does not mean

trying to nd absolute truth or justice but making everyday choices taking

reality into account: there are no a priori solutions. Political liberty thus

entails being a responsive and responsible politician or citizen. This is why

the state is not inherently far from citizens, or to be feared as liberals and

conservatives tend to: state and citizens can work together to change theworld in the name of common political participation.

Introduction 7

Undoubtedly, the common will of citizens, that is to say their collective

feeling of membership, based on a common participation in the building of

political society, a feeling of sovereignty, should be taken into account. As

Aristotle wrote, men are political animals. Although each country has itsown political culture and traditions, the remarks above can and should

be applied in all Western societies. Europe would not be ill advised to take

inspiration from local participation in American society and to encourage

political powers to be less centralized. Moreover, contemporary immigra-

tion and multiculturalism can help us to nd political answers to the new

identity claims which could mean the improvement of civic faith. Follow-

ing Habermas, Barber argues that democracy is fed by a collective feeling of

membership in a common (political) society. To welcome otherness there-fore entails building a common citizenship based on responsibility, popular

sovereignty, political will and strong participatory institutions.

A sense of community through political action

Although clearly within it in a generic sense, Barber expresses scepticism

about the republican tradition as expressed in contemporary political

theory, precisely because of its traditional character. He is concerned, inparticular, that contemporary Machiavellianism may lack an adequate

understanding of the public and of citizenship, and that the inuence of

Arendt tends to be uncomfortably anti-modernist. Other contemporary

republicans, on the contrary, take Arendt and/or Machiavelli as their key

reference points. Etienne Tassin (1999), for instance, thinks that philosophy

is very useful to politics because it allows men to understand common life

in politics. This does not mean that an absolute truth conditions politics as

individual and collective actions, but that understanding the political con-dition of individuals implies nding the sense of living together, which is

not easy precisely because both events and political decisions are uncertain.

Historicism must be banished, as well as relativism. As a consequence, a

public political sphere of actions must be created and nourished to give

politics a concrete dimension, to help it to be close to individuals and

encourage them to participate in it. But, as Arendt said, since political

action is much more than work (the goal of which is private, individual

survival) because it gives sense to common life, common belonging to theworld and pluralism have the same foundations. We must not avoid the

concrete world, reality, because politics is praxis. Once we have plurality, we

have to build a political community of citizenship, that is to say the imple-

mentation of common and deliberative political action.

Pluralism means mutual recognition and shared culture, whereas collec-

tive political action implies citizenship, political action and power, which is

the opposite of domination, of strength. Moreover, the political sphere is a

public sphere, it is not just a common and shared national or culturalsphere, as the latter concerns a limited number of people and the former the

8 John Crowley and Liana Giorgi

whole political community of citizens. Tassin (1999) has specically applied

this argument to the emergence of a European polity and has logically, on

the basis of this interpretation of what publicity entails, expressed scepti-

cism about the conceptual basis of a European public sphere. Politicalaction gives the individuals their real common identity. Furthermore, poli-

tical judgement is collective and reinforces the common sense of the com-

munity. Thus, the common world is composed of individuals who, as

individuals, judge politically and, as a consequence, give a common sense to

the political action which is part of the judgement. Tassin refers to Arendts

interpretation of Kant, who considered that such a collective political jud-

gement created a feeling of universality and cosmopolitan citizens.

Tassin criticizes sovereignty because it implies submission and the absenceof common world, of freedom and of pluralism. As a matter of fact, power

cannot belong to an individual or to a restricted group of people, it does

not imply relationships, even between institutions and men. It belongs to

the whole political community, even when some people represent other people

within the political sphere. Indeed, the political sphere is fragile, because

politics is fragile, indeterminate, threatened: time is abolished except in the

concepts of beginning and promise. Politics exists only in collective action,

in deliberation which does not have specic goals except itself. Politicalpower is, by denition, useless as it aims only at making individuals work

together and take collective decisions for their common world. It does not

aim at reaching a consensus, contrary to what Habermas claims, because

politics is not government. More concretely, according to Tassin, there should

be a balance of powers, because the law does not submit individuals, it rather

links them to each other. Procedures, communication between people within

the public sphere are not the point: the feeling of belonging to the same

political community is much more crucial. Politics is an institution. Thecommon world both conditions citizenship and gives it its meaning. Indivi-

duals are equals and independent, but they are also linked to each other

through a fragile common feeling of membership and responsibility, and

through the idea of political confrontation by virtue of the res publica.

Beyond liberalism to emphasize civic virtues

By contrast with both Barber and Tassin, John Pocock (1975) offers aninterpretation of republicanism in which Machiavelli is perhaps the most

powerful inuence. Underlining Barbers point that modernity is one of the

things at stake in debate within republicanism, Pocock qualies the exces-

sively positive image of modernity understood in terms of open societies,

private liberties, political rights, liberal economy and peace, by offering a

critical historiography of liberalism. Politics in Western countries has been

reduced to private interests and pluralism for more than thirty years. What

we have forgotten are the key questions of living together and commonprinciples. This is why Machiavelli is a model for many authors for whom

Introduction 9

politics means civic virtues and political ideals, i.e. political freedom, prop-

erly understood. For Pocock, Machiavelli plays a major role in the Amer-

ican imagination of nation building, which cannot be reduced to political

and economical liberalism. He argues for a civic and humanistic denitionof politics: people are citizens before being traders. And virtue means that

people work together for their common destinies through a stable and plur-

alistic political order in which all can recognize themselves. Such a repub-

lican order is based on autonomy, civicness, limited specialization of

political functions, and active participation of all citizens in politics. In

Pococks opinion, the debate on modernity must take into account indivi-

dual rights and the limitation of political authority, but discussion of poli-

tics cannot be restricted to such liberal concerns.According to Quentin Skinner (1978) and others (for example, Alasdair

MacIntyre), there is a moral gap between the liberal conception of politics

and the Aristotelian political tradition. The conception of negative liberty,

for instance, has made political liberty a negative notion something is

lacking. One of the claims about political liberty in this line of thinking

links freedom to self-government, to civic virtues (personal liberty is linked

with the notion of public service). This means that only some well dened

ends deserve to be pursued. Another claim is that freedom implies con-straints: freedom depends on our willingness and capacity to maintain civic

virtues. Virtue is thus a constraint; we must force ourselves to be free (which

explicitly relates Rousseau to the tradition under discussion). The supposed

tension between individual rights and duties may thus be simply a mis-

placed liberal obsession. In fact, according to Skinner, real freedom, based

on political participation, is not an obligation, since humans are naturally

social (Aristotle); moreover, they are moral beings with human purposes. As

a consequence, human freedom may be a positive notion. This is whyhumans need to create a political association in order to realize their nature

and liberty.

In the classical republican tradition (Machiavelli, Harrington, Milton),

the condition for freedom thus understood is to abolish absolutism in order

to live in a free state. The benets of living in free states, from the Machia-

vellian perspective, are civic greatness and wealth, and also personal lib-

erty (individuals remain free to pursue their private ends, whatever they

are). In order to maintain individual liberties, we must promote the respublica, a self-governing republic, which implies that citizens cultivate civic

virtue, the will to serve the common good, to improve the freedom of the

community. The required qualities are courage, determination to defend our

country against foreign conquerors, and prudence; and the required insti-

tutional conditions, which in some ways are even more difcult to establish,

are guarantees that political decisions are taken by the entire political body

and the avoidance of corruption. The means are the coercive power of the

law, but not in a Hobbesian sense. For Machiavelli, the priority is to protectindividual liberties and avoid servitude.

10 John Crowley and Liana Giorgi

Republican thinkers in what is often called the classical tradition thus

connect social freedom with self-government, but also link the idea of per-

sonal liberty to that of virtuous public service. That the preservation of

individual liberty should imply coercion and constraint (duties which mayhave to be enforced) is only supercially paradoxical (pace liberalism)

because our ends, being indeterminate, are not always moral (pace Aris-

totle). There is nothing contradictory in proposing to place moral con-

straints on oneself. Today, it is commonly said (or wished) that there are

many areas of public life where increased participation may improve the

accountability of our representatives. But the most important goal is not to

build a genuine democracy based on power to the people. Rather, we

must rst of all put our duties before our rights to warrant the latter.

Dialogue towards rational consensus

Jurgen Habermas (1999) self-consciously relates himself to the republican

tradition, but derives it primarily from Kant, with the added inuence of

Rousseau. His interpretation is thus signicantly different from both Bar-

bers straightforward Rousseauism and classical Machiavellianism, and

also conicts on a number of points with the Arendtian tradition. Further-more, his sustained attention to the post-metaphysical fact of pluralism

places him in a closer and more internal connection to liberalism (e.g.

Rawls) than most republicans for whom, indeed, liberalism is often the

main conceptual adversary. Habermas himself would argue that his theories

offer a synthesis of liberalism and republicanism and reveal many of the

supposed oppositions between them to be bogus. While we may not accept

that conclusion, it is clear enough that it conveniently summarizes his

overarching intellectual objectives.Habermas conceptual framework seeks to combine law, justice, democ-

racy and rights. Therefore, morality is a key concept, as well as a law which

is to be procedural and discursively grounded. This project is bound to

create a common and participatory political sphere, a common feeling of

membership in the same political community. Habermas does not agree

with Arendt, who thought that conict more exactly peaceful conict

was the key to democracy and in a sense even its ultimate goal. According

to him, pluralism, differences of opinions and values (e.g. different concep-tions of the good) can be handled only through rational consensus, not

conict. The consensus, in turn, cannot be strictly substantive (in the post-

metaphysical context), but must have a procedural character. Referring to

Kant, Habermas insists on the importance of dialogue and considerations

of differences, while rejecting communitarianism. Habermas also seeks to

bridge or at least narrow the gap between democracy and rights in stressing

the importance of commonly shared values, which implies that laws should

be self-imposed and binding in order to reconcile legal and factual equality(the discourse principle links self-legislation to law).

Introduction 11

European democracy in terms of publicity

Why give a democratic model centred on the public sphere ideology pre-

cedence for the European Union? There are two main reasons for this. Our

argument is rst, that this model has some kind of normative priority;

second that that there are specic reasons within the dynamics of the

emerging European polity for competing models to be less likely to be

available here than at the national level.

Normative considerations

What is most distinctive about the civic republican model as a general the-

oretical approach to democracy is that it is premised on scepticism about

the two fundamental processes that lie behind the most practically sig-

nicant competing models: aggregation and delegation.

The aggregative principle states that, citizens preferences being diverse,often conicting, chaotically uncoordinated and imperfectly known, the

political process must offer processes for them to be bundled (by setting a

manageable agenda framed by issues on which people can adopt a fairly

limited range of relevant and possibly sharply conicting positions) as

well as decision procedures that ensure that, on the whole, policies (dened

as choices among bundled positions) that are opposed by the majority or by

powerful vocal minorities are not implemented. The principle of delegation,

which is compatible with the rst though not necessarily combined with it,states that politics is, for technical reasons, subject to the same general laws

of division of labour as all other forms of collective human activity.

Competence, taste, ability, ambition, along with various random factors,

lead some to concern themselves with the management of public affairs and

others to be passive or indifferent. Not only is there nothing wrong with

this it is actually more efcient in producing the public good than a

participatory system where everyone tries to do a bit of everything. It fol-

lows that it is both likely and desirable for democratic systems (dened forthese purposes as systems where everyones voice counts for something and

everyones vote counts equally) to develop mechanisms for efcient division

of political labour. Representative institutions, political parties, opinion polls

and the mass media are among the characteristic institutions of delegation

democracy in this respect.

It is a reasonable summary to regard contemporary democratic systems

as relying, on the whole, on a combination of aggregation and delegation, in

the sense that their characteristic institutions depend on both principles andthat the standard justications offered of them depend on claims about the

mutually supportive operation of delegation and aggregation. At the theo-

retical level, the Schumpeterian model of competitive elite liberalism is an

ideal-type in this regard. The question, then, is what might be wrong with

this generic model and what might lead us, in spite of its undoubted

12 John Crowley and Liana Giorgi

descriptive usefulness, to give normative priority to civic republicanism? The

answer lies in two sets of considerations that are entirely familiar from the

literature, but the signicance of which nonetheless needs to be appreciated.

First, the formal justication of aggregation is open to a series of dama-ging objections. Voting paradoxes are sufciently familiar not to require

detailed discussion here. Sufce it to mention Kenneth Arrows impossi-

bility theorem which, generalizing Condorcets paradox, shows that the

conditions required for voting procedures to produce collectively stable

decisions in terms of xed prior preferences are, theoretically, highly

restrictive. In addition, as a model of democracy considered substantively

rather than formally, aggregation is open to the challenge that, by con-

sidering preferences to be xed and largely independent from the politicalprocess, it excludes any idea of citizenship as participation in a process of

collective self-determination. It is not necessary to subscribe to the strong view

that, in the words of Pierre Bourdieu (1980), public opinion does not exist in

order to justify scepticism about the stability, coherence and even signicance

of opinions expressed publicly. But, if preferences are in some sense inde-

terminate, the very idea of aggregation becomes largely meaningless.

Second, and to a large extent independently, the idea that delegation as a

principle of political organization might be justied in democratic termscomes up against some fairly massive issues of political sociology. At a

formal level, democratic delegation requires both a robust conception of

public opinion regarded as not essentially exposed to manipulation in the

context of elite competition and an elite that is fairly open, or at the very

least not entirely endogamous. There is extensive evidence that really exist-

ing democracies tend to violate both conditions indeed, arguably, the his-

torical trend in so far as there is one is towards increasing violation.

Specic European considerations

The general normative priority of the characteristic features of civic repub-

licanism takes on a specic signicance at the European level. Elite plural-

ism in historically established democracies can rely on a dense web of

institutions, practices, and background values and preconceptions, that

correct some of the bias inherent in the principles of aggregation and dele-

gation. On the one hand, some idea of the public interest is embedded innationhood and statehood: this may be imperfectly articulated and far from

consensual, but it nonetheless remains a background resource that reduces

the need for the formal institutions of political authority to produce their

own legitimacy within the terms of their own operation. On the other hand,

and in many ways more importantly, political authority is only one aspect

of a whole web of regulation that corresponds to what we might call soci-

etal governance.

Institutional density undoubtedly sharply distinguishes the EU from itsmember states. Whatever one may think of elite pluralism or its corporatist

Introduction 13

variants in normative terms, it is abundantly clear that the background

resources on which it can rely at national level are signicantly lacking at

European level. The lack of a common language is merely one aspect of this

decit, and in many ways not the most important. Of more profound sig-nicance is a degree of institutional fragmentation that is a barrier to the

emergence of a shared political culture and, simultaneously, a major factor

in the absence of a focused political agenda. Comparison with cohesive

federal states perhaps brings this contrast into sharper relief. The United

States has regional political systems embedded both in institutions and in

an available language of identity. But there is unquestionably a national

political system that serves to organize patterns of regional variation, and

furthermore one that, inside the Beltway, is highly cohesive. In so far as theEU can be considered from the same perspective, the situation is almost

precisely the opposite. In other words, it is the thickness and self-contained

nature of the characteristic institutional systems of each of the member

states, rather than any substantive difference between them, that best

accounts for the unquestionably and correlative thinness of the EU.

These facts are very familiar, but their signicance seems not to be ade-

quately appreciated. It is striking that even a defender of the EU such as

Jacques Delors has gone on record as regarding four policy areas as beinginherently inappropriate for Europeanization: education, culture, social

welfare, and law and order. In light of earlier comments, this list looks very

like an enumeration of what is institutionally constitutive of state-centred

nationhood; its effect, if taken seriously, is certainly to entrench an irre-

ducible difference between the member states, which remain heirs to the

nation-state tradition and continue to reect it in modied form, and the

EU, which cannot aspire to the same degree of institutional and symbolic

cohesiveness. It follows that, unless the democratic decit is taken to be anecessary feature of Europeanization which implies that, as Euro-sceptics

would claim, a choice must be made between democracy and Europe the

EU must, for structural reasons, draw more on the distinctive resources of

civic republicanism than the member states. Publicity may be a background

resource at national level; it cannot be at European level. It is to this extent

that consideration of the specic features of the political integration of

Europe reinforces the general normative arguments for a generically civic

republican approach to the assessment of contemporary democracy.The reader will note that we consistently avoid considering the problem

of democracy at European level as one of identity that emphasizes the

symbolic elements (passports, anthems, ags and the other paraphernalia of

nationhood). It is often presented in public debate if not also in academic

contributions that subscription to a form of European collective identity

could possibly overcome both the actual and the perceived democratic def-

icit. In other words, the democratic decit is closely related to an identity

decit. However, rather than formulating such an identity at the symboliclevel, it is both more theoretically coherent and more practically plausible to

14 John Crowley and Liana Giorgi

relate it to the democratic process itself. This idea that democracy might be

self-legitimizing is a little more plausible. If people are given procedures that

enable them to be genuinely citizens, then they will tend to act as citizens

and feel themselves to be truly members of a political community. Intui-tively, a public sphere or space is one in which genuine citizenship is possi-

ble. Adequate democratic procedures would thus promote a sense of

identication, and vice-versa, leading to a virtuous cycle of truly European

citizenship.

The public sphere as a sociological process

The previous sections tell us what a public sphere would look like and whythe EU is unlikely to be democratic without one. What they do not tell us is

how public spheres emerge in general. The question is what sociological

features might guarantee, or less ambitiously permit, the emergence and

stability of a public sphere structured by a language of political justication

based on impartial argument that serves as a regulatory ideal. The point is

not, of course, that political actors cease to have distinctive interests, values

and identities when speaking or acting publicly. They cannot, and even if

they could there would be no normative reason to demand it of them.Rather the regulatory language is one that enables actors to know what

kinds of arguments count as good and what things cannot be said in public

without discrediting a claim and its author. In a very formal sense, such

criteria are indistinguishable from political correctness, which may be

understood in a very derogatory way. For public language to have normative

signicance, therefore, some standard of conformity to the public interest

needs to be available at least in principle. To make this requirement positive

would be highly implausible: indeed, we should be suspicious of anyattempt to dene the public interest independently from the democratic

process itself. It is more plausible, however, as a negative constraint: the

idea of the public interest equips us with tools to detect arguments, whether

explicit or implied by claims advanced, that are prima facie bad in the sense

that they are designed solely to use public means to obtain private advan-

tage. In democratic terms, obviously, such a language can be neither chosen

nor imposed; it necessarily emerges, and one would expect it on general

sociological grounds to emerge as an aspect of procedures and processes inwhich it is embedded and to which it gives meaning. Publicity, understood

in terms of public accountability (accountability in public and account-

ability to the idea of the public), is simply a convenient and sociologically

resonant name for this kind of evaluative language.

The rst feature of publicity is what Habermas (1996) puts at the centre

of his analysis: the fact that the public sphere relates politics to law. Law-

making involves dening general rules for persons and circumstances

unknown, or at least imperfectly known. It means shifting attention frombargaining about resource sharing for any specic issue to deliberating

Introduction 15

about rules to guide resource sharing more generally. The planning and use

of physical infrastructure, such as housing and leisure facilities, offer

numerous examples. Such infrastructure obviously occupies specic spaces,

and issues of access and quality are themselves highly localized. It may,however, be more politically effective to mobilize at a higher level. In that

case, one would expect to encounter the claim that the state should provide

(or order the council to provide) resource x for group Y. However, forms of

mobilization that succeed in federating a durable coalition usually have a

rather different character, expressing more abstract, more generalizable in

a word, more political concerns. Typically, the revised claim is that law A

should be passed in order to guarantee equitable access to resource x (or

some broader class X of resources) for all groups (including, of course, Y).In other words, claims that are legislative in the generic sense that they are

about the rules of politics are political in a way that typically does not make

sense locally because the local is by denition not so much a space as a

sub-space. It is of its nature to be embedded in a larger-scale entity. The

complexity of Europe, on the other hand, is underlined by the fact that the

member states are neither strictly autonomous, nor merely local with

regard to the EU.

What is important sociologically is that the politicization of claims, andthe corresponding shift from bargaining to deliberation, depend on the

dynamics of mobilization rather than on the good intentions of the actors

involved. Otherwise, the idea of a public sphere would be purely wishful

thinking. Whether the dynamics of mobilization sufce to impose delibera-

tion on actors who do not have an interest in generalizing and politicizing

their claims is, however, doubtful. The process sketched with reference to

the nationalization of local claims depends crucially on the comparative

weakness of the initial mobilization and the structural necessity to changescale, because of the lack of legislative capacity at the local level. Pure bar-

gaining may be a perfectly stable format for other kinds of claims. Haber-

mas himself would of course argue that the dynamics of argument even

within a bargaining format force the participants towards deliberation.

But this is inadequate, since it leaves willingness to participate in good-faith

argument ungrounded within the dynamics of mobilization.

The problem for a sociological analysis of the public sphere is, therefore,

to specify the structural conditions that make participation in deliberation arational political strategy even for actors who are unreasonable in the

Rawlsian sense that they are not motivated by a desire for just cooperation.

Such conditions cannot, of course, provide guarantees, or even impose

enforceable constraints on political participation. Arguably, indeed, democ-

racy depends on the absence of guarantees or constraints of this kind. The

conditions are simply those that make it more probable that membership of

a society organized as a political community should take the form of parti-

cipation based on public-spiritedness in other words what one wouldusually call, for normative purposes, citizenship.

16 John Crowley and Liana Giorgi

The sociology of political participation, of which work inspired by the

theories of Pierre Bourdieu is exemplary, is generally regarded as and to a

real extent is self-consciously constituted as a critique of and alternative

to the idealism of Habermas and other proponents of Offentlichkeit. WhatBourdieu calls the political eld (champ politique) coincides empirically

with the public sphere: it is characterized by the mobilization of resources,

the expression of interests and the articulation of justicatory language

(Bourdieu 2000). It is the forum in which membership of a society orga-

nized as political community is constituted the forum, in other words, of

citizenship. In Bourdieus interpretation, however, the political eld is also

the point where political domination converges, in mutually reinforcing

ways, with economic and symbolic domination to arrange and justifyunequal participation. It is the place, in other words, where domination

dresses up as citizenship. As people confronted with cross-dressing tend to,

Bourdieu views this with a mixture of technical admiration and moral

revulsion.

At rst sight, no two things could be more different than a public sphere

and a political eld. In fact they are, pace both Bourdieu and Habermas,

mutually reinforcing. What prevents citizenship being simply a sham in the

political eld is the competitive pressure to which those who attempt tomonopolize it are subjected. And what prevents the public sphere being

merely wishful thinking is precisely the same competitive pressure. What

develops, in other words, is an uneasy balance between the tendency of

public-spiritedness to emerge from cynical politics and the tendency of even

the most idealistic politics to close in on itself. This balance, like citizenship

itself, is a question of empirical degree: there are no knock-down argu-

ments, sociological or quasi-transcendental. Effectively, a public sphere is an

open political eld: one from which nothing is excluded a priori and inwhich practical limits to inclusion can be overcome if people care about

them enough. If it did acquire closure in any of these respects, it would

cease, ultimately, to be public in the full sense of the word. Meaningful

citizenship is the correlate of such openness.

The most crucial point to be noted about this outline characterization is

that it makes the emergence of a public sphere a matter of degree. Publicity

is not either present or absent; it is more or less signicant within a political

system. Its signicance grows as a wider range of actors and issues areregulated by publicity, and conversely declines when larger sections of the

political process are condoned off from the kind of normative assessment

that republican citizenship entails. More formally, it may be useful to dis-

tinguish for these purposes between three dimensions of openness that are,

in principle, fairly independent, and the impact of which on the strong idea

of publicity is cumulative. Furthermore, the three dimensions summarize

the thrust of the extensive research on the forms and implications of poli-

tical exclusion especially the subtle exclusion that affects those who areformally included as citizens, but whose concerns remain unheard and

Introduction 17

unrecognized. The rst dimension of openness is in terms of persons. A

genuinely public sphere would be open in principle to all and, in practice,

would offer a sufciently wide range of options and relevant resources

including opportunities to establish innovative coalitions for no one to bestructurally excluded. The democratic ideal, of course, would demand truly

equal access, but this standard is so exacting that it is of little assistance in

assessing real-world systems that are, to varying degrees, imperfect. The

second dimension of openness is in terms of issues. A genuinely public

sphere would be indeterminate with respect to questions that can be raised

and problems that matter. At any point in time, a political community will

tend to rely on a broadly shared common sense within which some things

are not political, not topics for public discussion, not recognized as thingsat all. This is normatively acceptable so long as that common sense is

provisional not in the sense that all actors submit it to reexive criticism

(which would be incompatible with the very idea of common sense) but,

much more simply that nothing prevents it being challenged at any time by

any one. Again, it would be absurdly exacting and ultimately self-defeating

to insist that everything must always be up for grabs, but the principle of

publicity does give us the critical resources to be sceptical of things that are

persistently and routinely taken for granted. The third, and in some respectsmost challenging, dimension of openness is in terms of modes of discourse.

One interpretation of publicity associates it closely with a particular kind of

public intervention one based on impartiality and reasoned argument

from general principles and abstract concerns. It is a familiar nding of

critical sociology, especially from a feminist perspective, that such rules of

engagement even if only at the level of entrenched common sense are

highly exclusive. A necessary corollary of openness to persons and issues is

that discourse is not regulated other than by the requirements of delibera-tion itself, and we might indeed add, against Habermas own views on the

communicative process, that civility as a condition of open-endedness is a far

more appropriate standard here than rationality as a condition of consensus.

Arguably, the public sphere might benet hugely from the deliberate foster-

ing of non-standard forms of engagement, precisely because our taken-for-

granted notions of impartiality carry heavy unacknowledged baggage.

Contents and structure of this book

Let us start by summarizing the theoretical argument of the previous sec-

tions. This is that the democratic model centred on the public sphere, which

should and is being given precedence for the European Union by reason of

the latters institutional thinness, implies a twofold focus on citizenship:

from the top-down perspective, on the institutional opportunity structures

for participation and, more specically, their openness with regard to per-

sons, issues or modes of discourse; from the bottom-up perspective, on theforces and actors that are shaping mobilization and, in turn, the generalization

18 John Crowley and Liana Giorgi

of political claims beyond the national, hence at the European level. At the

same time, a public sphere is not clearly delineated in that it either exists or

it is absent. Its emergence is rather a matter of degree: a strong European

democracy is that in which the public sphere plays a signicant role; a weakEuropean democracy is that where the opposite is the case.

This theoretical argument provided the basis for the research that is

documented in this volume. All of the contributors in this volume worked

together over a period of three years studying public debates and instances

of participation across policy domains and several countries, as well as at

the level of the EU supra-national institutions, in an attempt to both

document and analyse the emergence of the European public sphere and its

degree of signicance. Our research design was guided by two principalconsiderations that follow directly from our theoretical argument: First,

that in order to tap on the emergence of the European public sphere it is

necessary to look into the decision structures and procedures, and examine

to what extent these allow for the contestation of decision-making by citi-

zens and their representatives. Second, that insofar as the consolidation of

the European public sphere depends equally, if not more signicantly, on

the ability of relevant intermediaries civil society organizations, political

parties or social partner organizations to Europeanize political claims,assessing the degree and scope of the European public sphere implies that

we have to look into the patterns of mobilization and narratives of these

actors. Accordingly, the contributions to this volume deal respectively with

opportunity structures for participation (Chapter 3), the emergence of new

European actors (Chapters 4 and 5), and the latters narratives on the

European Union at the supra-national and national levels (Chapters 6 and

7). Chapter 2 places this research in the context of the democratic audit

scholarship. Following this short overview, let us take a closer look at theindividual chapters.

In search of a methodological framework that would allow us to measure

and monitor the degree to which publicity informs European democracy,

Liana Giorgi, in Chapter 2, suggests that it might be more reasonable to

think about these questions in terms of democratization. Even in the

absence of supra-national institutions such as those of the European Union,

contemporary societies would still be facing democratic challenges by

reason of the complexity brought about by the growing inter-dependenciesbetween territorial and societal levels of governance, within as well as

beyond the nation-state. The extension of the scope of the democratic audit

scholarship to consider ever more social and political institutions supports

this view. From this perspective, it is more reasonable to think about

democratic practices in terms of governance mode rather than in demo-

cratic modelling terms. As argued earlier in this chapter, contemporary

democratic systems tend to rely on a combination of aggregation and dele-

gation to arrive at collective decisions, and following our theoretical argu-ments, deliberative procedures are or should be gaining in signicance in a

Introduction 19

democratic framework centred on the public sphere. Giorgi extends this line

of reasoning to apply to the institutional level. In turn, this means that

monitoring democracy in order to assess the degree of its openness in terms

of publicity must not only be carried out at different territorial levels andacross different societal institutions, but also with the overall objective of

establishing the extent to which different procedural modes for aggregating

or integrating citizen interests are used and with what effect. This is the

approach subsequently adopted in Chapter 3.

Based on the results of an empirical study across several European policy

domains, Ingmar von Homeyer (Chapter 3) is able to show that there is a

signicant variation across policy domains with regard to both the institu-

tional opportunity structures for participation and the total intensity ofparticipatory practice as such. However these two dimensions do not stand

in an obvious direct relationship. In other words, participatory practice is

not determined alone by the opportunity structures for participation, nor

do the latter, when they exist, always lead to the desired democratic input in

the decision process. The relationship is much more complex and needs to

take into account various factors and primarily the decision procedures at

work both at the European and national levels, the competencies of Eur-

opean institutions as compared to their counterparts at national level, thedegree of felt common affectedness of the key issues under consideration, as

well as the existence of key civil society organizations with strong advocacy

coalitions. Indeed, argues von Homeyer, the latter two factors carry a far

greater weight than the former. In other words, participatory governance is

more likely to emerge in those areas that deal with themes which are per-

ceived as shared across Europe and where there are key civil society or other

organizations that mobilize at the European level. Interestingly, the degree

to which interest organizations mobilize at the European level stands oftenin inverse relationship to the degree of organizational embededness of these

actors at the national level. In other words, the more nationally embedded

institutional actors are, the less they are likely to mobilize at the European

level. For instance, the degree of European mobilization of environmental

organizations is far greater than that of trade unions even though social

policy issues display as high a level of common affectedness as questions

related to environmental sustainability. The fact that social policy themes

such as employment have till recently been diverted from public attention bydealing with them through the open method of coordination corroborates

the tendency of long-established interest organizations at national level to

work by lobbying national governments or in concert with other national

interest organizations. To this should be added that on key sensitive topics,

like social and welfare policy, national governments act as gatekeepers when

it comes to launching or deepening European debates.

These ndings lead von Homeyer to advance three principal propositions

with far-reaching implications with regard to how to promote participatorygovernance. The rst is that the issue of modications of decision-rules or

20 John Crowley and Liana Giorgi

stronger EU competencies is far less important than generally thought.

Modications to decision-rules with regard to EU supra-national institu-

tions might be necessary for efciency purposes. They are, however, not key

for participatory governance. The second proposition is that timing has animportant effect on the emergence (or not) of participatory governance.

From the perspective of civil society organizations, this of course means

that it is important to remain always on the alert, seeking to capitalize on

windows of opportunity that facilitate specic concerns being publicized

widely. From the top-down perspective of state institutions seeking to pro-

mote participatory governance and assuming that this is indeed sincerely

aspired to it implies that a reactive mechanism ought to be structured

into consultation or participation procedures in order to encourage thearticulation of concerns and demands as input to decision-making. Finally,

the third proposition is that Europeanization begins at the national level

and is directly linked to the desire and ability of national actors and stake-

holders to attach a European dimension to political claims.

That this Europeanization of political claims is only happening at a slow

pace is shown by the research reported in Chapter 4, which deals with the

(European) political class. In Chapter 4, Elise Feron, John Crowley and

Liana Giorgi report on the results of an attitudinal survey carried outamong members of the European political class. These are persons holding

or aspiring to a political ofce at European or national level or working in

political functions for institutions dealing with European affairs. Our

respondents can be distinguished between Euro-sceptics and Euro-enthusiasts,

whereby Euro-scepticism is far more widespread than Euro-enthusiasm, which

is mainly to be found among Swedish respondents and members of the

Green and Liberal parties. At the same time, we nd across the political

spectrum a majority being disillusioned with mainstream representativepolitics. More signicantly, however, we nd a complete dissonance with

regard to the future of the European Union and of the project of political

integration. This dissonance exists within national delegations as well as

within political groupings. Only a minority (less than one quarter) appear to

favour some form of federalism for the EU. The rest are equally divided

between a model of cooperative intergovernmentalism and a view that sees

no role for either the European Parliament or national elected ofcials and

which we have termed, following Dahrendorf, glocalism.In other words, even though debates in Europe increasingly come to dis-

play a shared policy language, as shown by von Homeyer in Chapter 3,

debates about Europe have yet to nd a shared political language and their

representatives, as shown by Feron et al. in Chapter 4. This dissonance or

the lack of a unifying European ideology across the political spectrum or of

unifying European political ideologies within political parties might explain

the continuing legitimacy decit of European institutions and the European

Union as a whole, which in the medium- to long-term can aggravate itsdemocratic decit or harm the nascent European public sphere.

Introduction 21

In Chapter 5, Elise Feron looks at another emerging European political

actor, namely the anti-globalization movement. The future of the European

Union as a political system and its policies are also central concerns for the

anti-globalization movement. The set of movements that gather under thebanner of anti-globalization (or advocating a different type of globaliza-

tion) are not primarily targeting the European Union through their mobili-

zation; rather they are using EU institutions, events or policies to bring

forward specic concerns. By so doing they have been both favouring and

accompanying the growth of the European public sphere and have con-

tributed to renewing the old repertoire traditionally used by social move-

ments at the European level. Perhaps more importantly they speak for the

existence of a European civil society and for its desire to take a more activerole in decision-making.

In Chapter 6, Liana Giorgi, Niki Rodousakis, Marisol Garcia and

Martin Peterson take a closer look at the debate on the European Union as

a community of values. The latter exemplies many of the challenges and

contradictions entailed in the European political integration project and in

turn, explains the difculties with ideological design. This debate, they

argue, is neither new nor straightforward, yet until recently the natural

tendency within European institutions has been to relegate it to expertcommittees and keep it away from the public sphere, probably because it

was judged as potentially explosive. Giorgi et al. argue that there are three

distinct narratives on the European Union as a community of values and

that the ultimate choice for one or the other narrative or, more realistically,

their combination, will determine both the character and scope of European

political integration as well as the disposition of the European public

sphere. The rst narrative links European values with democratic principles

but is ultimately about the future of national sovereignty. The second nar-rative seeks the enlargement of European values to include social values and

more, specically, the commitment of the EU to full employment, a social

market economy and the welfare state. Despite the establishment of a Eur-

opean social agenda and a European Employment Strategy, not much pro-

gress could be made in this respect the main reason for this was the lack

of agreement concerning the division of competencies between supra-

national and national institutions. Finally, probably the most explosive of

the three narratives concerning the EU as a community of values, is thatwhich attaches a cultural dimension to European values. The key question

here is the extent to which European identity should and could transcend

nationalist aspirations centred on cultural and religious homogeneity.

In Chapter 7, the nal thematic chapter of this book, Michal Illner,

Daniel Cermak, Tomas Kostelecky and Jana Stachova take a look at one of

the new member states and illustrate, with reference to the referendum in

the Czech Republic regarding EU accession, how overall approval for EU

membership need not coincide with acceptance of the political project ofEuropean integration. Even though Czech citizens voted in favour of EU

22 John Crowley and Liana Giorgi

accession by a clear majority, a juxtaposition of the referendum results with

electoral results and the results of attitudinal/sociological surveys carried

out at around the same time shows that this yes to the European Union

was far from being enthusiastic. An equivalent amount of caution is prob-ably called for when assessing the referendum results in France and the

Netherlands regarding the Constitutional Treaty. A yes can mean different

things to different people just like a no. Perhaps more importantly, what a

yes might imply in terms of a democratic political system has still to be

specied. The debate has in fact just begun.

Introduction 23

2 Democratization and the EuropeanUnion

Liana Giorgi

The territorial scale and resulting complexity of trans-national democracies

renders these fragile with regard to democratic standards and practices.

Multi-level and exible governance mechanisms may appear as extending

the opportunity structures for stakeholder and citizen participation in deci-

sion-making, but assuring this materializes implies submitting these new

institutional structures to democratic scrutiny. Social institutions in

advanced democracies tend to substitute real with virtual representation

and participation with technical expertise. This could lead to the transfor-mation of advanced democracies into modern forms of guardianship. One

way to avoid this is through comprehensive democratic auditing that asserts,

rather than negates, the signicance of mainstream criteria for democratic

political systems and decision processes.

A democratic assessment of the European Union political system as

representing a trans-national form of democracy-in-the-making must be

carried out at different territorial levels. The emergence of a supranational

actor does not make national democracy (and assessment) obsolete, itrather presupposes it. Furthermore, in advanced democratic societies, like

the European Union, democratic assessment must be extended to cover

social institutions like civil society, the media and economic corporations, as

well as policy domains. EU democratic auditing is best thought of as a

nested activity that pulls together information from different sources and

levels of government and concentrates on comparisons across territorial l