A Political
Sociology
of
European
Democracy
A Political
Sociology
of
European
Democracy
Week 4
Lecture 1
Lecturer
Paul Blokker
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Governo Locale
Introduction
The Democratic Deficit: Formal and
Informal Aspects
– Input democracy and output democracy
– Civil society
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Governo Locale
Introduction
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Governo Locale
Enlargement
Case-study: Hungary
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Governo Locale
Enlargement
Case-study: Hungary
Background
- Since early 2010, Hungary has a new
government, dominated by the Fidesz party
(centre-right), which overwhelmingly won the
elections and holds a more than 2/3 majority in
parliament;
- The Fidesz has started a radical overhaul of the
country’s democratic institutions, including a
rewriting of the Hungarian constitution.
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Governo Locale
Enlargement
Case-study: Hungary
Background
- Hungary has been consistently criticized for not living up
to European values of democracy and the rule of law, not
least by the EC and the Eur. Parliament, as well as by the
Venice Commission
- The Venice Commission ‘ found issues with almost all the
rights and freedoms recognised under the fundamental
law, and especially those left out: the omission of an
explicit commitment to prohibiting the death penalty and
forced labour is particularly glaring’ (Dupré, Guardian, 13
March 2012).
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Governo Locale
Enlargement
Case-study: Hungary
Background
- Regarding the constitution-making process, the
government has been criticized for:
- the constitution has not been made in a democratic, participatory way;
- not observing the rule of law (no democratic debate on the need for a
new constitution);
- the new Constitution is underspecified (the Fidesz government will
define cardinal laws)
- The constitution alters the political community (from people to nation)
- The constitution is a majority constitution;
- The constitution does not fully respect human rights (gay rights;
minority rights);
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Governo Locale
Enlargement
Case-study: Hungary
Background
- The EU has made three major decisions about
Hungary:
- The parliament has called on the country "to
respect the basic values and standards of the EU",
- The commission has threatened to suspend the
allocation of substantial funding because of
Hungary's excessive budget deficit,
- The commission has begun what is called an
"accelerated infringement procedure“ (art. 258).
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Governo Locale
Enlargement
Case-study: Hungary
Resolution EP:
Calls on the European Commission as guardian of the Treaties to monitor closely the possible amendments and the
implementation of the said laws and their compliance with the letter and spirit of the European Treaties and to
conduct a thorough study to ensure:
a.
the full independence of the judiciary, in particular ensuring that the National Judicial Authority, the Prosecutor’s
Office and the courts in general are governed free from political influence, and that the mandate of independentlyappointed judges cannot be arbitrarily shortened;
b. that the regulation of the Hungarian National Bank abides by European legislation;
c. that the institutional independence of data protection and freedom of information is restored and guaranteed by the
letter and the implementation of the relevant law;
d. that the right of the Constitutional Court to review any legislation is fully restored, including the right to review
budgetary and tax laws;
e. that the freedom and pluralism of the media is guaranteed by the letter and the implementation of the Hungarian
Media Law, especially with regard to the participation of civil and opposition representatives in the Media Council;
f. that the new electoral law meets European democratic standards and respects the principle of political alternation;
g. that the right to exercise political opposition in a democratic way is ensured both within and outside institutions;
h. that the law on churches and religious denominations will respect the basic principles of the freedom of conscience
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and refrain from subjecting the registration of churches to the approval of a two-thirds majority in the Hungarian
Parliament;
Governo Locale
Introduction
Input and Output
Democracy
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Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
(Bellamy 2010)
- The EU offers fertile ground for rethinking
democracy and democratic practice;
- The EU can be seen as an ‘unidentified
political object’ in which experimentation with
new political forms is on-going (‘Conventionmethod’, OMC, Citizens’ Initiative).
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Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
- Rethinking democracy is particularly
important today as standard, national
Schumpeterian democracy is threatened by:
- declining party membership;
- ‘bankruptcy’ of political parties;
- declining voter turnout;
- individualisation/consumer
citizen/decline of the public interest
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Governo Locale
Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
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Governo Locale
Enlargement
Democracy without democracy?
(Bellamy 2010)
- Schumpeterian democracy:
an elitist-institutional characterization of democracy,
where the emphasis is on an understanding of individual
freedom as the ‘existence of a sphere of individual selfgovernment’ (Schumpeter 1974: 271), while the
democratic method is seen as based on elite competition
for popular votes, and civic participation is limited to voting
for leadership or representatives
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Governo Locale
Enlargement
Democracy without democracy?
EU democracy
- The EU has become a ‘veritable laboratory of
new modes of democratic governance’
(governance, Open Method of Coordination,
Citizens’ Initiative);
- The EU is however more concerned with
‘output’ considerations with regard to democratic
governance, rather than ‘input’ considerations.
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Governo Locale
Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
- Democracy on the European level often takes
a guise of ‘output democracy’;
- Input-oriented legitimacy:
‘government by the people’,
citizens set the rules to which they
abide
- Output-oriented legitimacy:
‘government for the people’,
management needs to be efficient17
and
policy objectives met
Governo Locale
Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
EU democracy
- According to Fritz Scharpf, input democracy does
not mean that ‘the people cannot do wrong’
- Rather, input democracy auspicates that policy
inputs emerge from public debates that are attempts
to verify the ‘truth’ in public reason;
- Input is thus as much about participation as it is
about finding some sort of consensus or general will;
- But such a consensus is only likely to emerge in the
context of a demos with a shared cultural identity.
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Governo Locale
Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
EU democracy
- Input democracy on the EU level would need a
shared cultural outlook, shared solidarity or trust, and
historically grown and accepted institutions by the
European citizens (cf. Offe; Grimm);
- Output democracy on the EU level would seem the
only possibility at the moment, in the absence of a
European demos. Output democracy is about
regulatory politics which can be administered with
democratically based politics.
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Governo Locale
Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
EU democracy
- On the EU level, according among others to
Scharpf, only a narrow range of political problems is to
be dealt with, that is, policies which do not involve
far-going redistribution of wealth but rather deal
with technical issues (standardization, convergence,
market liberalization, austerity)
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Governo Locale
Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
Output democracy
- An example of such ‘output democracy’ is the EU
integration project as a project of market-making;
- The Single Market was initiated by the European
Commission, and importantly furthered by the
European Court of Justice;
- The idea behind the European Single Market is that
the regulation and expansion of the four freedoms is
by definition good for the larger EU, and hence for
European society as such.
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Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
Input democracy
- But the emphasis – according to Richard Bellamy –
in Scharpf’s view of input democracy might be
wrong.
- Democratic politics on the EU level is not
impossible: it is not so much consensus arising from
mind-like persons (sharing cultural values and
identity) that is important in input democracy, it is
that all participants are seen and treated as
responsible agents.
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Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
Input democracy
- Three aspects are important to democracy:
1. political equality;
2. the reasonableness of political
disagreement;
3. the accountability of politicians and their
responsiveness to public interest.
- All these aspects point to the importance of input
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for democracy.
Governo Locale
Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
Input democracy
1. political equality
- the democratic process should accord each person
equal standing as an autonomous reasoner about
collective life
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Governo Locale
Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
Input democracy
2. the reasonableness of political disagreement
- reasonable political disagreement is part of
democracy;
- disagreement arises out of ideological divisions that
reflect reasonable sets of ideas;
- disagreement is based on the ‘burdens of judgment’
(Rawls): complexity and difficulties in public
reasoning
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Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
Input democracy
3. the accountability of politicians and their
responsiveness to public interest
- mechanisms to encourage rulers to consult the
ruled regularly are necessary to make that citizens
with different views on the common are heard and
treated with equal respect;
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Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
Input democracy
To sum up, input legitimacy is based on persons being
included in the decision-making process, in which
their views are treated on a par with everyone’s elses,
and in which they do not feel permanently excluded
(Bellamy 2010: 5).
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Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
Output democracy
- In the words of Scharpf, output democratic
legitimacy is ‘collectively binding decisions that serve
the common interests of the constituency’ (1999);
- Political decisions can be differentiated into
‘redistributive’ decisions and ‘regulatory’ decisions.
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Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
Output democracy
- Two arguments are relevant:
a. non-majoritarian: political decisions can be
differentiated in two types: those that need a
democratic majority decision and those that need not
(democracy is unnecessary and hinders efficiency);
b. counter-majoritarian: the correction of distortion of
input processes on behalf of minorities.
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Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
Output democracy
a. non-majoritarian: European Court of Justice,
European Central Bank, standard-setting bodies;
b. counter-majoritarian: ECJ, co-decision procedures,
consensual or qualified majority voting.
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Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
Output democracy
- Standard democratic input is distorted by two
phenomena (Pettit 2004):
1. ‘false positives’ – too much attention to
unrepresentative groups, or ‘misperceptions or
misrepresentations of what public valuation
supports; in particular, the misidentification of
policies that are prompted only by factional or
sectional interest as initiatives that enjoy the
support of such valuation’ (Pettit 2004);
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Governo Locale
Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
Output democracy
- Standard democratic input is distorted by two
phenomena (Pettit 2004):
2. ‘false negatives’ – the exclusion of minority
views from the agenda or ‘failures to perceive
options that public valuation would support’
(Pettit 2004)
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Governo Locale
Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
Output democracy
a. non-majoritarian: attempt to correct ‘false
positives’, that is, an attempt to make policy-making
follow the general interest rather than that of distinct
groups.
b. counter-majoritarian: attempt to correct ‘false
negatives’, that is, an attempt to make sure that the
voice of sizeable and consistent minorities is taken
into account.
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Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
Output democracy
- non-majoritarian approaches include:
- deliberation among experts (e.g. Constitutional
courts, Open Method of Coordination), and
- direct deliberative democracy among the
people (deliverative fora, referenda);
- counter-majoritarian approaches include:
- consensus or supermajorities (co-decision
making);
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- litigation (‘individual complaints’).
Governo Locale
Democracy
Democracy without democracy?
Summing up
- Output democracy might be seen as insufficient for
the emerging European Polity;
- Input democracy might not be irrelevant, if the
strong version of a European demos is dropped and
EU democracy is understood as taking place on
various levels;
- Bellamy suggests to enhance national electorates
and parliaments control on EU issues.
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Governo Locale
Enlargement
- ..;
- On 1 April 2012, the Citizens’ Initiative was
launched by the EC;
- Some argue that the ‘European Union
became more democratic’;
- EU citizens can “call on the European
Commission to make a legislative proposal”;
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Governo Locale
Democracy
- ..;
- The European Citizens’ Initative (ECI)
represents undeniable progress;
- At the same time, there is very little interest
in the ECI from the media;
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Democracy
- ..;
- Moreover, there are many hurdles: for a
proposal to be valid, it must ‘transcend
borders, national issues and political and
cultural differences’;
- It remains to be seen whether: 1) citizens will
mobilize, and 2) how the EC will react. 38
Governo Locale
Democracy
- ..;
- But initiatives are stock-piling:
They range from the very specific - legalising
gay marriage throughout the European Union
and creating a European anti-obesity day to
the more general - on disability rights and
making education more European.
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