Contested Meanings
Democratic Practice and Principles across Cultural Boundaries
Antje Wiener
Welcome Note and Summary1
Revised Draft: 18 October 2005; please do not cite, comments are most welcome
Prepared for presentation at the Workshop held at the Queen’s University of Belfast
22-23 September 2005.
Author’s Address:
Antje Wiener, School of Politics, International Studies & Philosophy, 21 University
Square, Queen's University, Belfast BT7 1NN, Northern Ireland, Tel +44 (0)28 9097
3761, Fax +44 (0)28 90235373, email: a.wiener@qub.ac.uk
This is the fourth workshop held by Team A RG2. The previous meetings included Belfast – strategy
workshop (Feb 05; Abromeit, Mair, Wiener); Leiden – democracy workshop 1: conceptual perspectives
(March 05; Mair, Andeweg, Curtin, Abromeit and others), Athens – democracy workshop 2: national
trajectories in comparative perspectives (March 05; Abromeit and others). The next meeting will be the
Mannheim – General CONNEX meeting at 18 months (Nov 05). We are grateful to the European
Commission’s 6th Framework Scheme and the Mannheim University based Network of Excellence,
CONNEX, the British Academy for sponsoring a visiting Professorship of Jane Jenson at Queen’s and
to the School of Management and Economics and the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence at the Centre
of European Studies at Queen’s for bringing Professor George Ross as a visiting professor to Queen’s.
1
“Regarded as an ideal, democracy is not an alternative to other principles of
associated life. It is the idea of community life itself. It is an ideal in the only
intelligible sense of an ideal; namely, the tendency and movement of things
which exist carried to its final limit; viewed as completed, perfected.”2
Introduction
This short paper elaborates on the theme of ‘contested meanings’ which marks the
reference frame for this workshop’s panel discussions. If we follow Dewey’s point on
democracy as “an ideal” which is based on the “idea of community life” (Dewey
1954, 14), then it is crucial to understand both the ideal and the day-to-day practice of
democracy. As the workshop’s discussions reveal, it is the triangular interplay
between the democratic ideal, and the way it is practiced and hence experienced in
different contexts, that forge the often contested expectations of democracy. Studying
the practices of democracy in different contexts and comparing them hence allows us
to assess the different meanings of the concept of democracy as a set of norms,
principles and procedures.3
Much of this discussion is informed by Harold Lasswell’s guideline for social science
analysis, i.e. who says what when and how.4 The emphasis on communication as
interactive international or transnational relations conducted in the context of
governance beyond modern state boundaries has gained in analytical importance as
modernist categories fail to explain politics and are becoming less useful guidelines
for political processes. Studying interaction in context with a view to interpreting the
meaning of supranationally derived norms has turned into a central indicator for social
2
Dewey, John 1954: The Public and Its Problems, Athens, Ohio, p. 148; c.f. Hanagan, Michael 1999:
Introduction: Changing Citizenship, Changing States, in: Hanagan, Michael/Tilly, Charles (Hrsg.):
Extending Citizenship, Reconfiguring States, Lanham, Md, 1-16, 14
3
On the notion of essentially contested concepts, see early on Gallie, Walter Bryce 1956: Art as an
Essentially Contested Concept, in: Philosophical Quarterly 97-114:
4
“Who says what in which channel to whom and with what effect” (Harald D. Lasswell 1946, 37)
1
scientists and lawyers alike.5 As this workshop’s papers demonstrate, this
methodological focus favours an inductive approach including the method of stocktaking based on reconstruction with a view to developing typologies and, with a view
to revising theoretical assumptions from a normative perspective as well.
Supranational Community
The transnationalization of political processes and policies indicates a change of both
the constitutional framework (legal validity) and the social environment
(appropriateness; social facticity). It raises the ‘community problem’ which has
become so adamant for students of European integration. Two insights from recent
scholarship on the EU’s constitutional process or project illustrate the problem quite
well. The first calls for a constitution, arguing, “[T]he more diverse the society, the
more important [it is] to have a constitution delineating authority, power,
responsibilities, rights and obligations, including guaranties for individuals and
minorities.” (Olsen 2005, 8) The second holds that in the absence of a community, a
constitutional project is unlikely to succeed. As Bernhard Peters noted, “[I]n German
debates over the European Union, in general, and its ‘democratic deficit’ in particular,
the following quotation by Peter Graf Kielmansegg has become almost canocial:
‘Europe, even limited to Western Europe, is not a community of communications,
barely a community of members, and only a very limited community of experience’.”6
That is, the ‘community’ condition is considered as both impossible and necessary for
democratic governance in the EU’s ‘beyond the state’ context.
The workshop’s discussion suggests that the changes brought about by the
transnationalization of politics and policy bring the importance of individually held
connotations to the fore as the condition which gains in influence on the
5
Finnemore, Martha 1996: Norms, Culture and World Politics: Insights from Sociology's
Institutionalism, in: International Organization 50: 2, 325-347; Finnemore, Martha 2000: Are Legal
Norms Distinctive?, in: Journal of International Law & Politics 32: 3, 699-705; Brunnee, Jutta/Toope,
Stephen J. 2000: International Law and Constructivism: Elements of an Interactional Theory of
International Law, in: Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 39, 1, 19-74; March, James G./Olsen,
Johan P. 1998: The Institutional Dynamics of International Political Orders, in: International
Organization 52: 4, 943-969.
6
(Kielmansegg 1994)” (Peters 2005, 84)
2
implementation
of
norms.
In
the
social
environment
created
by
the
transnationalization of particular political arenas in relation with expanding policy
sectors such as say enlargement, monetary policy, financial policy, the environment,
and, more recently foreign and security policy, it is possible to identify group-based
associative connotations which allow an understanding of the respective normative
“structure of meaning in use.” (Weldes and Saco 1996; Milliken 1999)
Two types of research questions follow with a view to the possibility of supranational
community, one is empirical, the other normative. First, while political ideas are
spread across political boundaries and are often inserted into constitutional or as it
were proto-constitutional frameworks, treaties, statutes or conventions, they generate
different meanings based on contextualised interpretations.7 That is while core
constitutional norms maybe legally stipulated by a considerably large range of
modern national constitutions, and their appropriateness has been acknowledged
socially, it does not necessarily follow that their acceptance across the political and
societal boundaries of modern nation-states will converge. That is, convergence of
meaning needs to be established empirically. Converging interpretations of
constitutional norms such as e.g. democracy, the rule of law, human and fundamental
rights and citizenship develop first and foremost in transnationalised spaces e.g. in
emerging policy fields such as Schengen, monetary union, enlargement, etc in the EU.
We can hypothesise, however, that as long as these transnational spaces are not all
encompassing; an increase in diverging rather than converging interpretation of
meanings is to be expected.
In turn, the normative question raises the issue of the necessary conditions for an
interface in which meanings overlap. To assess particular conditions under which the
possibility of such an interface increases, systematising the central constitutional
elements such as principles, norms and procedures along three dimensions. These
include the concept of legal validity e.g. norms, values and principles stipulated by the
constitutional framework and to be implemented by the law; social facticity e.g. norm
types which are acknowledged as appropriate out of habit by a stable social group;
7
Hall, Peter 1989: The Political Power of Economic Ideas, Princeton; Jenson, Jane, 2005, Social
Citizenship Within the Social Investment Perspective. Britain and Canada Compared. Paper presented
at the School of Politics, International Studies and Philosophy, Queen's University Belfast, Wednesday,
21 September 2005.
3
and individual connotations e.g. interpretation of meaning of a norm which is held
individually notwithstanding any particular societal attachment.
Table 3: Typology of Constitutionalisation
Evaluation/institutions Legal validity
Social facticity
Individual
Connotation
▲ formal
X
X
▼ informal
X
That is, core constitutional norms acquire legal validity through their stipulation in a
community’s constitution. Their legitimacy is based on, albeit abstract and mythical
yet widely acknowledged social contract between governors and governed. They are
recognized based on social practices that enable a social reflection of the law within
one society.8 They achieve recognition based on individually held associative
connotations; shifting and changing groups, local level. Cultural positions9 add an
important analytic angle on more flexible individual based associative connotations in
addition to the now relatively well research stable societal institutional arrangements.
Agreement on certain types of norms does not preclude agreement about the cultural
recognition of norms.10 While the type of norm is usually shared, say by formal
signatories of conventions, treaties, agreements and the like, the meaning of norms is
not standardized and hence open to contestation. As a consequence, even those liberal
norms which are considered as core principles, values and beliefs of western
democratic communities such as human rights, democracy and the rule of law,
become subject to contested interpretation. Their meaning becomes contested.
Contested Meanings of Norms
8
Curtin, Deirdre/Dekker, Ige 1999: The EU as a 'Layered' International Organization: Institutional
Unity in Disguise, in: Craig, Paul/Burca, Grainne de (Hrsg.): The Evolution of EU Law, Oxford, 83136.
9
Bourdieu, Pierre (Ed.) 1993: The Field of Cultural Production. Essays on Art and Literature, New
York.
10
Fraser, Nancy 2005: Re-framing Justice in a Globalizing World, in: Paper prepared for presentation
at the Conference Habermas and the Concept of Intersubjectivity in International Relations Theory,
Frankfurt/Main 16-18 June 2005; Fraser, Nancy and Axel Honneth, 2003, Redistribution or
Recognition? A Political-Philosophical Echange, London: Verso, p. 10.
4
Norms entail a dual quality. They are both structuring and social constructed. They
evolve through interaction in context. While stable over particular periods, they
always remain flexible by definition. As social constructs norms are contested by
default.11 Social norms acquire a degree of appropriateness over time (habitual
practices)12; legal norms require social institutions to enhance understanding and
identify meaning (normative practice).13 We can therefore hypothesise that the
contested meaning of norms is enhanced under three conditions. First, a situation of
crisis raises stakes for understanding meanings based on social institutions, the social
feedback factor is reduced. Secondly, the change of governance processes i.e. the
extension of governance practices beyond modern political and societal boundaries
changes the social environment and hence the reference frame of social institutions;
the social feedback factor is reduced. And thirdly, the historical contingency of
normative meaning indicates a change of constitutive social practices both cultural
and organisational, and hence normative meaning over time.
These social or day-to-day practices are central to assessing contested meanings of
norms, yet, they do not necessarily reveal interpretations which come to the fore only
if and when they are expressed in discourse. This distinction between individually
held connotations as a result of social interaction, on the one hand, and their empirical
revelation based on interviews or other types of discursive practices, on the other,
suggests shifting the focus from studying the mere role and function of norms as
According to Giddens the “[t]he structural properties of social systems are both the medium and the
outcome of the practices that constitute those systems.” (Giddens 1979, 69; Bourdieu 1982 [1977]); see
also Kratochwil, Friedrich V. 1989: Rules, Norms, and Decisions. On the conditions of practical and
legal reasoning in international relations and domestic affairs, Cambridge; Finnemore, Martha 1996:
Norms, Culture and World Politics: Insights from Sociology's Institutionalism, in: International
Organization 50: 2, 325-347; Finnemore, Martha 2000: Are Legal Norms Distinctive?, in: Journal of
International Law & Politics 32: 3, 699-705; Wiener, Antje 2001: The Dual Quality of Norms:
Constitutional Debates, Conditional Flexibility, and Eastern Enlargement of the EU, 42nd Annual
Convention of the International Studies Association, Chicago, 20-24 February 2001.
12
March, James G./Olsen, Johan P. 1989: Rediscovering Institutions. The Organizational Basis of
Politics, New York et al.
13
Curtin, Deirdre/Dekker, Ige 1999: The EU as a 'Layered' International Organization: Institutional
Unity in Disguise, in: Craig, Paul/Burca, Grainne de (Hrsg.): The Evolution of EU Law, Oxford, 83136. Finnemore, Martha/Toope, Stephen J. 2001: Alternatives to 'Legalization': Richer Views of Law
and Politics, in: International Organization 55: 3, 743-758.
11
5
causal for behaviour,14 towards research that seeks to incorporate the emergence and
meaning of norms as constitutive for the normative structure of politics.15
The Workshop Discussion
The CONNEX RG2/TeamA work-package (WP1)16 focuses on conceptual and
methodological issues related to the norms of ‘democracy’ and ‘accountability’ in the
context of governance beyond the state, and with a view to the European Union (EU)
context, in particular. The group’s work has, so far, mainly sought to generate a
critical appraisal and stock-taking of theoretical approaches as well as
methodological tools applied in research on governance beyond the state in order to
identify overlapping conceptual perspectives on democracy. This workshop has
brought together an interdisciplinary and international group of experts in addition to
the CONNEX Team members so as to initiate a comparative debate among
integration scholars from Europe and beyond including critical perspectives from
outside the integration literature and outside the confines of European academia. Key
issues are the question of democracy in the light of increasing ‘diversity’, and the
accommodation of contested normative meanings in conceptual, empirical and
pragmatic policy oriented terms. The main object is to assess the diversity and
commonality of meaning of democracy and accountability with a view to enhancing
democracy and accountability in the European Union. To that end, participants’
activities focus on comparing practices across space (nation-states; different political
arenas) and over time (historically). Ultimately the work-package contributes to the
larger question of the Research Group of whether or not there is an identifiable
particular EU meaning of democracy.
14
Checkel, Jeffrey T. 2001: Why Comply? Social Norms Learning and European Identity Change, in:
International Organization 55: 3, 553-588; Schimmelfennig, Frank 2000: International Socialization in
the New Europe: Rational Action in an Institutional Environment, in: European Journal of International
Relations 6: 1, 109-139.
15
Weldes, Jutta/Saco, Diana 1996: Making State Action Possible: The United States and the
Discursive Construction of 'The Cuban Problem', 1960-1994, in: Millennium 25: 2, 361-395. Milliken,
Jennifer 1999: The Study of Discourse in International Relations: A Critique of Research and Methods,
in: European Journal of International Relations 5: 2, 225-254. Barnett, Michael 1999: Culture, Strategy
and Foreign Policy Change: Israel's Road to Oslo, in: European Journal of International Relations 5: 1,
5-36. Wiener, Antje 2004: Contested Compliance: Interventions on the Normative Structure in World
Politics, in: European Journal of International Relations 10: 2, 189-234.
16
Research Group 2, directed by Deirdre Curtin, Utrecht; Team A, lead by Antje Wiener, Belfast
6
The papers address conflictive meanings along three distinctive types of norms which
relate to three dimensions of the community. They include first, core constitutional
norms such as citizenship, human rights, the rule of law and democracy; secondly,
operating principles that inform political procedures in the community such as
accountability, transparency, and legitimacy; and thirdly, standardised procedures,
rules and provisions such as qualified majority voting, consensus. The individual
contributions focus on
1) noting difference and establishing a typology for analysing accountability
(Bovens, Van de Steeg);
2) accommodating difference with a view to policy coordination (Puetter;
Landfried; Begg);
3) identifying procedures, principles and discourses of democracy in national and
European arenas (Lord, Morison, Niznik, Ross);
4) establishing access to participation based on democratic citizenship practice
(Jenson, Pfister, O’Neill)
With a focus on comparing practices across space (nation-states; different political
arenas) and over time (historically) this workshop’s papers contribute to RG2’s larger
question of whether or not a meaning of democracy that is particular to the European
Union is detectible (as Jane Jenson suggested during the workshop discussions, e.g.
comparing EU with Canadian use of the principle of accountability e.g. the concept of
‘peer accountability’ presented by the Bovens & Van de Steeg papers does present an
institutional innovation that is not available to Canadians). The workshop’s selection
of panels and presenters sought to open up the internal European(integration) debate
towards an interdisciplinary and international perspective. This perspective is
intended to juxtapose and compare views from the European Union and beyond so as
to not fall into the trap of contributing to the creation of a sui generis theory for a sui
generis case of ‘European governance’ that often looks pretty similar to models of
modern nation states. In addition, most of the workshop papers propose a normative
position to go beyond the pitfalls of modernist categories of democratic governance,
arguing that these categories have been incomplete all the way. They lack the
potential to establish democratic legitimacy based on the absence of access to
participation in contestation over the rules – and rulers - that govern a democratic
7
community. There is then, a critical emphasis beyond the pragmatic concern of
today’s political scientists, as to how best coordinate politics under conditions of
globalisation.
The Marshallian citizens of our time,17 i.e. those citizens who enjoy full access to
participation to the public sphere are restricted to restricted transnationalised spheres.
As long as the rather optimistic view of the cosmopolitans remains unsubstantiated by
empirical data, it is advisable to maintain a critical perspective on the development of
citizenship rights based on the radical change of access conditions (e.g. social rights,
welfare state etc.) to establish an exclusive Marshallian citizenship seriously. If we
acknowledge an increasing diversity for some time to come – then the normative
question of whether ‘diversity’ is a possibility or a constraint arises, i.e. should
diversity be accommodated (overcome) or maintained (establish)? The former
approach is reflected in the ‘community’ based approaches to democracy that
inevitably find a ‘democratic deficit’; the latter proposes to rethink concepts of
democratic government in the light of governance beyond the state including
citizenship, contestation, rights, access, belonging.
-
focus on new sites in addition to modern community/polity/society, i.e.
-
structures (rather than systems)
-
individual/groups (rather than states)
-
institutions (hard and soft; see Shaw’s comment on the ‘soft quality’ of ‘new
governance’)
Conclusion
The workshop’s goal was threefold: take stock, compare (empirically, conceptually)
and network towards joint research projects and elaborate on new theoretical
perspectives. The papers presented at the workshop reflect both the empirical and the
normative questions. They were grouped on thematic panels on ‘democratic
accountability’, ‘democratic procedures’, and two governance panels on ‘economic
policy’ and ‘rights politics’, respectively.
17
Marshall, T.H. 1950: Citizenship and Social Class, Cambridge.
8
Table 1: Conditions of legitimate democratic governance beyond the state under
the principle of ‘diversity in unity’
Stages Focus
Dimension
Type of approach
Criteria
1
Noting
difference
(stock-taking)
Principle
Descriptive/Analytical Multi-level
governance;
social
relations;
arrangements
2
Accommodating
diversity
Procedure
Pragmatic
3
Accepting
difference &
establishing
access to
contestation
Core
constitutional
norm
Normative
Trust; small
group
interaction
Rights;
equality;
public
deliberation;
wider
citizenship;
citizenship
regime; sites;
discourse
Paper
Bovens,
Van de
Steeg;
Begg;
Ross;
Niznik;
Landfried
Puetter
Landfried
O’Neill,
Jenson,
Pfister;
Morison;
Puetter
The papers respectively address the issues of policy implementation, constitutionmaking, and a critical normative input into the conceptual debate. To that end they
raise the questions of first, how do norms work and why do they work differently in
different arenas; secondly, how to define norms; and thirdly, how to guarantee
democratic quality under the condition of transnationalization. The discussion
suggests to emphasise on a methodological focus for tackling the input of normative
contested meanings and subsequently assess the possibilities for democracy beyond
the state that emphasises first and foremost the role of new spaces in addition to
modern community/polity/society, including structures (rather than systems),
individual or micro-level groups (rather than states) and an understanding of
institutions as both hard and soft. Empirical work following these assumptions would
ideally seek to analyse the quality of public deliberation, the degree of access to
contestation, and the procedural arrangements.
9
10