The Monkey Cage

Let me summarize in a different way:

• the people are ignorant and must be led by an avant garde who knows what's best for them


• the perfectibility of society is dependent on elite technocrats who will manage labor, industry, and consumer interests from a centralized bureaucracy


• democracy is messy and slow and must be transcended in a 'third way' that ensures unity of thought and purpose

Nice summary Robert!

But seriously.

Henry, the implications of any treaty reforming the EU for left or right views of the EU's role are bound, are they not, to be entirely ambiguous, given that such treaties are negotiated and unanimously agreed by all the member-state governments, who are obviously of diverse political colour generally and with regard to the EU.

So by definition referendums on such treaties cannot divide the poltical parties along straightforward left-right lines. If, however, proposed reforms were to be put to referendums via a process analogous to that for normal constitutional amendments (in Ireland) - i.e. the government proposes, the parliament (where the govt by definition has a majority) approves and the people vote - greater "ideological" coherence along the lines you suggest might be possible.

Of course for this to be possible at the EU level implies that the Commission would need to be politicised - elected by and responsible to the Parliament rather than the member-states - and empowered to make proposals for the amendments of the EU's constitution (i.e. the body of existing Treaties) without these amendments first requiring the approval of member-state governemnts. These amendments could then be put to a vote in each country - effectively the Commission would need to be able to go over the heads of the governments directly to the different electorates. Eventually a proposal might even be made to abolish each country's veto (by way of referendum) over such amendments.

But of course all of this would itself have to come about through the existing process as it is...

Semi-related, I think it would help if this kind of stuff got more play in national media and political circles:

http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2008/06/10/ue-l-accord-sur-le-temps-de-travail-hebdomadaire-juge-inacceptable_1056386_3234.html#ens_id=1046783

Things like the working-time directive seem promising issues for the kind of politicisation of the EU you suggest, no?

I think your conclusion is right. James's point about need to use the broken process to fix the broken process is also right, and worrying.

I think the EU feels the disenchantment with politicians more sharply than other political institutions because it doesn't have the nation-state adornments or a sense of shared history to give it romantic legitimacy.

(A longer response is at http://demsoc.org/blog/2008/06/11/is-there-a-democratic-case-for-the-eu/)

(the closing bracket shouldn't be part of the URL above)

The problem with Moravcsik’s argument is that it is backward looking. It says that the EU does not need democratic legitimacy because the issues it decides are of minor political saliency, for example minor technical matters related to the functioning of the common market. However successive treaties on European Union have given the EU more and more powers in areas that are politically sensitive. The people living under EU law are not a single polity that will agree to be bound by pan-European majorities on politically sensitive issues that a majority of their nation (which is a polity) disagrees with. This inherent lack of democratic legitimacy was previously hidden by the triviality of the issues decided by the community method, but is now exposed as the EU decides more and more of the sensitive political issues that used to decide general elections. Following your suggestion of making EU politics more salient by politicizing the Commission would mean the EU exceeding its legitimacy base even further.

Surely the logic of your points, Freeborn John, is that as the EU takes on less technocratic, regulatory and more substantive, political tasks it needs to become more like a polity, e.g. power needs to shift from appointees (such as the Commission) to elected positions (the Parliament)? Now maybe you think that non-technical matters shouldn't be EU matters in the first place, either because the EU can't become a polity in the relevant sense or because the existing polities (the member-states) can perform such tasks better. But obviously that's a point of view that would need to be defended. And presumably the willingness of citizens to agree to pan-Euro democratic decisions (however "qualified") will vary across space and time?

James: I see a relationship between the strength of European unity (i.e. the tendency of the pan-European populations to crack along national lines) and the range of policy issues that can be decided by majoritorian institutions such as the EU parliament while being accepted as democratically legitimate. The best guide to strength of that unity is opinion polling on the strength of European identity, as measured for example by Eurobarometer. This suggests the strength of European identity is rather weak (about 9% on average of citizens of EU member-states say their European identity is stronger than their national identity). Also the strength of European identity seems to have got slightly weaker since 1990, perhaps as a reaction to the EU exceeding its legitimacy base.

I would suggest that either European identity needs to become stronger to legitimise the existing range of policies decided by pan-European institutions, or alternatively the range of politically salient policies decided by the community method needs to be trimmed back until Moravcsik’s assumption that EU policies are not salient and do not need to be democratically legitimated becomes true again. Since national identities once formed are self-reinforcing and are based on things like language and culture that are extremely resistant to change, I think it will be the later path that is more realistic.

I'd agree with Freeborn John that Moravcsik is a bit late in trying to stop the neo-functionalist bicycle. But the important point, it seems to me, is the data Moravcsik presents about people's relative lack of interest in the issues and policy areas over which the EU has influence. This makes it not so surprising that those in Ireland who feel they have a stake in the outcome of the treaty referendum have appealed to voters by emphasizing (fabricating?!) local dimensions and implications.
My question is: by introducing a left/right cleavage at the EU level, wouldn't you only be increasing the likelihood that EU issues would continue to be interpreted in the terms of "local" battles? (And that's not even to mention the fact that it's becoming increasingly difficult to parse out what left and right is these days - there's this, for example: Kriesi et al).

I think if the Commission were politicised along left/right lines there would be many more cases where the mirage of European unity was fractured along national lines. It is often assumed that the problems of democratic legitimacy in the EU can be solved by tinkering with its institutions. However I believe this is fundamentally mistaken. You could take political institutions of the highest democratic credentials, such as those of the United States federal government, and apply them to the EU and the result would be an explosion of cases where one country or another refused to accept the legitimacy of the pan-European majority. The problem of democratic legitimacy in the EU is not due to institutional imperfections but is a direct result of Europe consisting of multiple nations, none of which will accept to be bound by decisions they disagree with simply because there are majorities in other countries that would like them to.

I don't think that you need to cleave discussions along left/right lines specifically. The lines will emerge if there is a greater stake

As for weak European identity, I'm not sure the stat about whether people see themselves as more European than, say, French is that relevant for political legitimacy. Texans are Texans, New Englanders are New Englanders but they still obey federal law. A better stat would be whether, when they understand how EU decisions are actually made, they think the EU has legitimacy to make rules in a particular area.

In the US it took a Civil War and over 250,000 deaths to establish by force majure the pre-eminence of the Federal Government over States that considered themselves independent actors with duly elected legitimate leadership of their own. Wait until something less dulling than plumbing standards and frozen poultry quotas
comes to the fore. The EU is a mirage that won't last past the next major temperature shift. And I don't mean as in thermometer.

Have just gotten back from Ireland, and won't be able to respond in detail for a bit. But this has all been very helpful

The strength of European identity (relative to national) is important because it explains the lack of a European demos. The definition of ‘demos’ (e.g. from Fritz Scharpf) is “a community in which the identification of members with the group is sufficiently strong to override the divisive interests of subgroups in case of conflict”. Without a strong European identity the group (EU) will fracture into sub-groups (nations) on any issue of high-political saliency.

Texans, New Englanders, etc. are all part of the American demos and will therefore stick together even when the policy preferences of Texans (for example) are outweighed on politically sensitive matters. This is not the case in Europe, where French or Britons etc. may agree to be bound by majority votes on minor issues (maximum curvature of cucumbers. Etc) but not on anything of true significance. If the issue being decided by the EU has high political saliency then political tensions rise and ultimately European unity fractures along national lines. In my opinion this explains why the EU is becoming less and less popular.