SECTION: Theories of European Integration
DO WE NEED THEORY? GOVERNANCE AND DEMOCRATIC THEORY AS
THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS FOR THE UNDERSTANDING OF THE
EUROPEAN UNION
Working paper
ECPR - Fifth Pan-European Conference on EU Politics
Porto, 2010
Cláudia Toriz Ramos
Universidade Fernando Pessoa (UFP) – Porto
cramos@ufp.edu.pt
Abstract: Increasingly, the ‘fate’ of the European Union (EU) has been debated in terms of a democratic
polity in the making, although one that is a new political creature, rather than a polity designed according to
extant political models. Far from being purely descriptive, this view is theoretically inscribed in non state-centric
views of the EU, namely in the multi-level governance approach. Concomitantly, theorisation on a hypothetical
political community underpinning EU’s democratic legitimacy has evolved and widely resorts to interpretations
based on the theory and practice of democracy under the archetypes of representative as well as direct
democracy. I argue that the crossing of both frameworks of analysis – i.e. governance and democratic theory –
brings further contribution mutually to understanding the European Union and to normative uses at the level of
EU building.
Keywords: governance; multi-level governance; democracy; legitimacy
INTRODUCTION
‘Democratic governance assumes distinct political norms and rules. Government becomes (at
least in part) a trusteeship based on fiduciary arrangements and the democratic quality of a polity
depends on properties of its citizens and officials. A spirit of citizenship and public office implies
willingness to think and act as members of the political community and to follow rules of
appropriate behaviour, as defined by the community, and not to act solely as self-interested
individuals or members of particular interest groups.’ (Olsen, 2007: 8)
Increasingly, the ‘fate’ of the European Union (EU) has been debated in terms of a democratic
polity in the making, although one that is a new political creature, rather than a polity designed
according to extant political models. Far from being purely descriptive, this view is theoretically
inscribed in non state-centric views of the EU, namely in the multi-level governance approach.
1
Concomitantly, theorisation on a hypothetical political community underpinning EU’s democratic
legitimacy has evolved and widely resorts to interpretations based on the theory and practice of
democracy under the archetypes of representative as well as direct democracy. I argue that the
crossing of both frameworks of analysis – i.e. governance and democratic theory – brings
further contribution mutually to the understanding of the European Union and for normative
uses at the level of EU building.
The question underlying this topic of debate occurs to me every year in teaching European
integration to students being introduced to the topic1, who therefore do not start from theory
and who eventually ask the simplest of questions: ‘What is the European Union?’. Of course I
can give them ‘facts’, about the history, the institutions and decision making procedures, EU
law, or policies. However, even for the simplest presentation of facts, a conceptual underlying
framework is necessary. For instance, If we take the history of European integration,
conceptual tools such as interdependence, increased international cooperation, postnationalism,
functional
integration
under
the
Jean
Monnet
method,
federalism,
intergovernmentalism are all quite useful for the task. Common questions coming from the
students are: ‘Is Europe going to become a federation as... (the usual example being the
USA)?’ Or, ‘Is the European Union an international organisation?’ Or ‘What is the
democratic deficit about’? Can we, in teaching, answer these without conceptualising? And
can we conceptualise without putting forward alternative interpretations of the on-going
process? Grand theories, such as neo-functionalism, for example, provide several lines of
argument that are worth being explored with students. However, they have to be presented as
theoretical frameworks and, as such counter-arguments coming from other theories must also
be presented as alternatives.
Although this may seem a very basic level for the debate on theories, my point is that when in
the EU debate, one of the recurrent topics of integration is addressed – the need to foster
public debate on EU issues – what is actually at stake is this basic understanding of the
European integration process. And that is what theories are for. Besides, and because the
understanding of the process may have normative implications, it is important not to take
1
Under the Jean Monnet module ‘European Union Politics’, coord. by Prof. P. Vila Maior and running at UFP since 2007, on
a previously existent course on EU Politics of the University’s own initiative.
2
matters of argument as if they were matters of fact. The alleged distance between the common
citizen and EU as an institutional architecture may be more a result of lack of knowledge than
of deliberate indifference or rejection (cf. Fossum and Trenz, 2006). As Olsen (2007: 132)
puts it ‘Democracy and citizenship are concepts strongly linked to the framework of the
nation-state’ and thus ‘changes in mentality’ are probably necessary for accomplishing the
project of a European political community.
In this text and for the sequence of my argument, two main topics will be addressed:
governance and democracy, while theoretical fields for EU theorisation and strong conceptual
tools for explaining some of its key aspects. Institutions, conventionally the place for meso
theories, are at present in integration studies a substantial space for research and theorisation,
either under the tradition of conventional international organisations analysis, or the
frameworks of national comparative politics (cf. Jachtenfuchs, 2006). The word ‘governance’
became an ever increasing presence in this field, bringing innovative views on political
institutions and society. Besides, democracy being the conventional ideological frame
underpinning state - society relations, issues of democracy and democratic legitimacy are to
be debated as well. I argue that there is inevitable interconnectedness between the two topics.
And the (public) discussion of both is of utmost importance for fostering the debate with the
citizens.
1. GOVERNANCE AND THE EU
My departing point for this part of the paper is that we cannot address EU institutions without
addressing the broader picture of institutional change and institutional building and this brings
along issues of state - society relations, (or, perhaps better put for the EU context, issues of
political institutions - society relations). Beate Kohler-Koch (2005) speaks of ‘systemic
impacts’ and of ‘institutional change’ as part of the processes the literature addresses under
the very broad idea of governance in the EU. According to the author, these entail ‘political
structuring’ at the EU level, but may have ‘disintegrative effects’ at the national level.
That the institutional system of the European Union is ‘new and open-ended’ (Olsen, 2007:
16) is a widely accepted assertion. Still, conventional theoretical fields may have a capacity to
explain it. Jachtenfuchs (2006: 159) mentions the divide between ‘theories of international
relations’ and ‘theories of domestic politics’ but further considers that ‘the dividing line
3
between the two subdisciplines
of political science is eroding. Ideally, a more general
approach to political science should be able to offer an integrated view’ (Jachtenhfuchs, 2006:
160). The idea that the two subdisciplines are converging is, I think, key to understanding the
whole process. International relations sprang from the study of the structure of the
international system as a system of states. But is it still so?
State-centrism has been for long cornerstone for the interpretation of Western political
systems and of international relations. Many theories on the EU still take this approach,
namely those affiliated in the first subdiscipline mentioned above, that will present the EU as
a ‘highly institutionalized negotiating system among states’ (Jachtenhfuchs, 2006: 159) as in
current theories of intergovernmentalism (Moravcsik, 2003). From the first point of view the
logics underlying the EU are very much the result of minimum common denominators
between the member-states, negotiated at the level of intergovernmental fora. Decisional
power remains fundamentally with the states that have entered these arrangements in order to
maximize their negotiation capability and domestic and international spheres are discrete,
rather than continuous (Hooghe and Marks, 2001: 2-3).
If instead the interpretation of the European Union is one that sees it as a polity (though a new
polity in the making) the core of the system has to be dislocated. Theories emphasising the
supranational dimension of many of the EU institutions and procedures, i.e., their autonomy
and the inherent transferences of sovereignty from the national to the supranational level thus
undermine the role of the conventional nation-state. In presenting the EU as a polity, Hix
states:
‘(...) with the global devolution of power to regions, localities and non-state organizations, and the delegation of
authority to supranational bodies such as the European Union and the World Trade Organization, political power
is now dispersed or ‘shared’. This does not mean that the ‘state’ does not exist. But, it does mean that politics
and government now exist in many contexts either outside or beyond the classic state.’ (Hix; 2006: 141).
This view is consistent with analyses of ‘world politics’ as put forward in theories of global
governance and indeed it can be argued that there is continuity between the structural changes
in political power at the global and the regional (European) levels (cf. Warleigh-Lack, 2006).
Governance, and for the EU context ‘multi-level governance’ (MLG) (Hooghe and Marks,
2001; Jachtenfuchs and Kohler-Koch, 2004) are alternative views to state-centrism. However,
4
because the word governance is being increasingly used, its meaning may be slightly blurred,
thus requiring some initial definitions.
Definitions
The concept does not belong solely with EU integration studies. Several definitions can be
analysed and theoretical work has been done on this, notably for the EU context (Treib, Bahr
and Falkner, 2005; Kohler-Koch, 2005). This text does not aim at producing a full overview
of definitions but some guidelines are nevertheless necessary.
As abovementioned there is some continuity between uses of the word ‘governance’ for
global politics and for EU politics. For the former the concept made its way among others on
Rosenau’s (1992) well known assertion of ‘governance without government’ which became a
landmark for the debate:
To presume the presence of governance without government is to conceive of functions that have to be
performed in any viable human system irrespective of whether the system has evolved organizations and
institutions explicitly charged with performing them. Among the many necessary functions, for example, are the
needs wherein any system has to cope with external challenges, to prevent conflicts among its members or
factions from tearing it irretrievably apart, to procure resources necessary to its preservation and well-being, and
to frame goals and policies designed to achieve them (...) governance is not synonymous with government. Both
refer to purposive behaviour, to goal-oriented activities, to systems of rule; but government suggests activities
that are backed by formal authority, by police powers to insure the implementation of duly constituted policies,
whereas governance refers to activities backed by shared goals that may or may not derive from legal and
formally prescribed responsibilities and that do not necessarily rely on police powers to overcome defiance and
attain compliance. Governance, in other words, is a more encompassing phenomenon than government (1992:
3-4).
It seems very relevant that Rosenau stresses functional requisites as starting point for
governance. However, it does not exclude governments from governance (cf. Treib, Bahr and
Falkner, 2005) though it does affirm that there is governance beyond governments. For the
world of state-centrism governance would be the exclusive product of governments, whereas
for the world of globalisation, there is governance, as ‘systems of rule’ without the underlying
formal, legal, hierarchical and exclusive state structure. Globalisation theorists will claim that
power has ‘escaped’ the state upwards (the regional and global levels), downwards (the
regional sub-national and the local levels) and sidewards (the trasnational civil society
hypothesis) thus enlarging the number of agents in the process and blurring the conventional
state - society divide, as well as the domestic - international divide (Held and McGrew, 2007;
Karns and Mingst, 2004). For political action purposes and therefore from a normative point
5
of view, the United Nations (UN) have fully adopted the concept, namely through the work of
the Commission on Global Governance (1995)2, though they tend to craft it with the modifier
‘good’ governance. In some cases, academic theorisation on global governance also carries a
strong normative imprint (cf. Warleigh-Lack, 2006: 568).
Despite the similarities and the aspects that are common to both political processes at both
levels (the regional and the global) the concept, in the context of EU theorisation, addresses a
much more structured political reality, not only because the states are still in place, but also
because the range of differences to match for governing Europe is relatively small if
compared with world politics. In other words, the European Union is more levelled internally.
To put it simply: the EU is for governance purposes a terrain where strong and solidly rooted
political institutions, the states, remain playing a fundamental political role. Yet, the
debordering of conventional political territorialisation is happening as in the rest of the world:
growing interdependences, transnationalisation of civil society, supranational political
institutions. Yet, unlike for the rest of the world, the latter is already a quite developed
institutional framework. Therefore an incremental but pervasive process of readjustment is in
place in the EU (Hooghe and Marks, 2001: 39).
Beate Kohler-Koch and Jachtenfuchs (2004: 99): define governance ‘as the continuous
political process of setting explicit goals for society and intervening in it in order to achieve
these goals’.
Also, Peters and Pierre (2009: 93-94) consider that ‘at a very fundamental level, governance
is a functional theory, assuming that societies must govern themselves and to do so must
perform certain activities’. They further clarify that governance often involves ‘a variety of
actors, many from outside the public sector itself, in order to achieve public purposes’.
2
Governance is the system of values, policies and institutions by which a society manages its economic, political and social
affairs through interactions within and among the state, civil society and private sector. It is the way a society organizes itself
to make and implement decisions — achieving mutual understanding, agreement and action. It comprises the mechanisms
and processes for citizens and groups to articulate their interests, mediate their differences and exercise their legal rights and
obligations. It is the rules, institutions and practices that set limits and provide incentives for individuals, organizations and
firms. Governance, including its social, political and economic dimensions, operates at every level of human enterprise, be it
the household, village, municipality, nation, region or globe. (UNDP (2000). Strategy Note on Governance for Human
development. cit in UNDP, 2009: 7).
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Treib, Bähr and Falkner (2005) analyse definitions of ‘governance’ according to their
emphasis on politics, polity or policy. They also present Héritier’s distinction between an
encompassing definition, which embraces both hierarchical ‘political steering’ and a restricted
sense, which entails ‘political steering in which non-hierarchical modes of guidance, such as
persuasion and negotiation are employed’ (Treib, Bähr and Falkner, 2005: 6).
Three aspects are to be emphasised. First, and as in the global dimension, these definitions
include the societal need for organisation as starting point for ‘governance’. Second they
establish that there are several types of actors involved and some coming from outside the
public sector, i.e., leaving behind conventional state - society divides. Still, Peters and Pierre
(2009: 92) remind us that the word still encompasses conventional governments. Third, soft,
non-hierarchical mechanisms as those highlighted by Héritier are a marker of ‘governance’,
although it does not necessarily discard hierarchical mechanisms.
The European Commission (2001) has adopted the word and has used it in its well known
‘EU Governance. A White Paper’. According to this:
‘Governance’ means rules, processes and behaviour that affect the way in which powers are exercised at
European level, particularly as regards openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence.’
(2001: 8)
Here the connotation is with ‘good’ governance, based on principles of democratic
governance, which will be further addressed below.
As a whole, the concept is now indisputable in EU studies. Its potential for addressing the
process of European integration has been particularly developed under the multi-level
governance framework (Hooghe and Marks, 2001; Jachtenfuchs and Kohler-Koch, 2004;
Zimmer and Benz, 2010; Littoz-Monnet, 2010) the main characteristics of which are
summarised below.
As aforementioned, multi-level governance is a non-statecentric framework for interpetation
of the political architecture of the EU. It further pressuposes that the polity is organised under
a fairly complex system of political levels, or layers. Whether the metaphor of layers
geometrically organised as concentric circles at the core of which is the citizen (according to
the principle of subsidiarity) is adequate, can be a matter of some contention. A decentred and
overllaping layout of the layers may well be more adjusted to the object being depicted. The
7
metaphor of the layer cake as oposed to the marble cake can also be used here, for visual
illustration of the idea (cf. Risse, 2004, for the paralel issue of identities). Peters and Pierre
(2009: 95) stress this complex characteristic. It can be further explained if we look at the
distribution of competences (cf. Zimmer and Benz, 2010). Whereas exclusive competences
draw a fairly clear, eventually hierarchical, dividing line between levels, shared competences
rely on a case to case assessment of levels of political decision, which enforces the
malleability of the system but may create some instability. This is also a consequence of the
procedures involved: there are hierarchical procedures, but there is a lot of negotiation and
bargaining between actors as relevant as governments, some of which at sheer
intergovernmental level, and a series of soft instruments that are aimed at creating
convergence in policies. These address articulations within the same level, though partners
involved may be not equally strong (sovereign states, under the intergovernmental procedures
all have a veto, but it is not so when it comes to softer negotiations procedures). A further
difficulty arises from vertical relations (cf. Littoz-Monnet, 2010), notably the fact that the
levels are not all equally consistent or capable of exerting political power: the regional level
cannot be compared to the national level, not to mention the fact that there is a huge variation
between what is being called region for the purposes of this level. Because this is the result of
a polity in the making, dynamics of the construction still have a strong impact upon the
structure: not only decisional processes keep being adjusted (eg. under treaty amendments)
but also there is a tension between functional requirements and politically structured
processes: Jachtenfuchs (2006) mentions the need for horizontal collaboration, understood as
functional interdependencies across policy areas, so evident these days, along with the vertical
articulation the system presupposes.
The imprint of the model is therefore that of an ‘open ended process’, that meaning that much
of it is incremental rather than constitutionalised. Hooghe and Marks (2001: 46) draw a
comparative framework between ‘feudal order’, ‘state order’ and ‘post-state order’ which is
worth some reflection. From the layout, similarities between the first and the third types of
political order emerge, notably the overlapping characteristic, the multiplicity and the sharing
of competencies. State order was created in the ‘West’ as an overcoming of feudalism: this
meant the crafting of the notion of exclusive sovereignty as a prerogative of the central state
and the clear and hierarchical definition of relations between vertical political levels (e.g. the
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local/regional and the central); but it was in the long run also responsible for the introduction
of the distinction between public and private affairs, based on a distinction of political power
vis à vis other forms of private power, which liberalism then reified in the state - civil society
dividing line, under representative democracies (Chambers and Kopstein, 2008). ‘Post-state’
order is blurring these distinctions: the drift of political power upwards and downwards
questions the hierarchical dominance of the state, whereas sidewards drifting (i.e. market and
civil society) reintroduces society as another locus for politics. Hooghe and Marks’ layout
does not assess the types of political order from the point of view of efficiency or the quality
of political solutions involved. Still the comparison opens several lines of reflection as to the
evolution of Western political systems and indeed has to be read under what Beate KohlerKoch (2005) has designated as long term systemic impacts of political change.
‘Good’ governance id est democratic governance?
At its minimum, governance means some kind of political order and the word does not
necessarily carry a normative orientation (cf. Treib, Bahr and Falkner, 2005). Yet, and for the
EU case, re-opening the Pandora box of Western politics, as addressed in the comparison
above, may indeed mean unleashing hidden ‘devils’. By this I mean that the reformulation of
the spheres of European politics expressed in the many and overlapping layers may entail
loopholes providing opportunities for the privatisation of powers and ambiguities in the
definition of ‘common interest’. Thus, in EU politics ‘good’ governance has often been
identified with democratic governance.
This is expressed in the Commission’s approach to governance, in 2001 (cf. above) where
principles of good governance, understood as synonym of democratic governance3, within a
multi-level framework are clearly expressed:
3
Also the EU glossary on-line states, for the entry ‘governance’: ‘The debate on European governance, launched by the
Commission in its White Paper of July 2001, concerns all the rules, procedures and practices affecting how powers are
exercised within the European Union. The aim is to adopt new forms of governance that bring the Union closer to European
citizens, make it more effective, reinforce democracy in Europe and consolidate the legitimacy of the institutions. The Union
must reform itself in order to fill the democratic deficit of its institutions. This governance should lie in the framing and
implementation of better and more consistent policies associating civil society organisations and the European institutions. It
also entails improving the quality of European legislation, making it clearer and more effective. Moreover, the European
Union must contribute to the debate on world governance and play an important role in improving the operation of
international institutions.’ http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/glossary/governance_en.htm [accessed 15/06/2010]
9
‘Each principle is important for establishing more democratic governance. They underpin democracy and the
rule of law in the Member States, but they apply to all levels of government – global, European, national,
regional and local.’ (European Commission, 2001: 10).
The five principles are: i) ‘Openness’ of the institutions vis à vis the general public, with the
explicit aim of fostering ‘confidence in complex institutions’; ii) ‘Participation throughout the
policy chain – from conception to implementation’ a formula aiming both at the improvement
of policies and the reinforcement of citizens’ confidence in the institutions; iii)
‘Accountability’ of the institutions at the various levels, understood as clarification of roles
and responsibility; iv) ‘Effectiveness’ of policies presented in conjunction with the principles
of proportionality and subsidiarity; v) finally, ‘Coherence’ understood as vertical and
horizontal articulation of policy levels in a complex policy system.
As a whole, these principles cover statutory requirements of democracy, namely participation
and accountability, but they sound as a top down effort for reform of institutions that have
themselves been repeatedly accused of weaknesses in democratic governance. Peters and
Pierre (2009: 97) state that EU governance remains undemocratic. That the EU is very much a
bureaucratic construction, the product of an ‘elite’ of politicians and decision makers is
eventually a fairly indisputable interpretation of the European Union. Overcoming this
imperfection is one of the major challenges for the European project today, especially if
democracy is understood not as a procedural but as a substantial concept, as stated by KohlerKoch and Rittberger:
‘It is the principle of autonomy that stands at the center stage of the democratic project. (...) Autonomy is
intimately linked to self-determination: Autonomy implies that people are free and equal in the determination of
their own lives. Autonomy qua self-determination is thus set against any notions of paternalistic authority or
domination which deny that people are the best judges of their own individual good or interest.’ (2007: 12)
The threshold for democratic multi-level governance in the EU thus defined is quite
demanding.
2. DEMOCRACY AND THE EU
Democracy is statutory in the EU (TEU, article 2 and Title II). At the same time, democracy
has proved to be a difficult requisite to fulfil, at every movement of EU governance. This part
of the text, departing from the assumption that EU as a sui generis political system meets a
very good explanatory framework in multi-level governance theory, addresses hindrances to
10
democracy that occur in the EU, in the framework of that model, and further tackles the
possible ways to overcome them.
The problem: the ‘democratic deficit’
‘The democratic deficit – that is, the weakness of representative democracy in the EU – is rooted in the
institutional genesis of the EU as an offspring of national institutions that claim sovereignty in their respective
territories’ (Hooghe and Marks, 2001: 41)
The expression ‘democratic deficit’ was coined late in the seventies to designate the distance
between the citizens and the institutions in European governance (Marquand cit. by Mény,
2003: 399) and has, ever since, fuelled strong academic and political debates (cf. among many
others, Dahl, 1998; Schmitter, Majone and Moravcsick, 2000; Follesdal and Hix, 2005)4.
Let’s try to define the basic contours of the problem, within the purposes of the present text:
If, under a state-centric approach to EU integration, a strictly procedural approach to the topic
of ‘democratic legitimacy’ is adopted then there isn’t much to debate (cf. Ramos, 2009). The
fact that the states involved in the process are democratic and that their governments are
legitimate makes of their decisions for the supranational sphere, legitimate decisions, in the
framework of national democracies. Furthermore, if centrality is attributed to the role of the
states, the problem is mostly a problem of the domestic order, i.e., of the contract between the
citizens and political institutions as established internally, in domestic elections under the
conventional pattern of representative democracy. Whether political parties manage or not to
meet the requirements of and expectations created in the citizens is very much a problem of
domestic policy, if civil society in the EU is addressed as a series of discrete national civil
societies and representation understood as a two step process: for internal and for external
matters. But is this conventional layout traditionally designed for legitimating national
governments acting in issues of foreign policy sufficient for the on-going process of European
4
The on-line glossary of the European Union states: ‘The democratic deficit is a concept invoked principally in the argument
that the European Union and its various bodies suffer from a lack of democracy and seem inaccessible to the ordinary citizen
because their method of operating is so complex. The view is that the Community institutional set-up is dominated by an
institution combining legislative and government powers (the Council of the European Union) and an institution that lacks
democratic legitimacy (the European Commission)./ At every stage of the European integration process, the question of
democratic legitimacy has become increasingly sensitive. The Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice Treaties have triggered the
inclusion of the principle of democratic legitimacy within the institutional system by reinforcing the powers of Parliament
with regard to the appointment and control of the Commission and successively extending the scope of the co-decision
procedure. (...)’ [http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/glossary/democratic_deficit_en.htm] [accessed 15/06/2010]
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integration? National parliaments have repeatedly claimed that, unlike for domestic issues,
they loose control upon governmental decisions taken at EU level, a recurrent argument
within the democratic deficit debate (Auel and Benz, 2007; Follesdal and Hix, 2005). And
even when the ‘output legitimacy’ (cf. Bekkers, 2007) argument is put forward, sustained by
the alleged efficiency (good governance?) of EU policies (Majone, 1996), the counter
argument that these policies should be the result of the scrutiny of the majority rather than that
of spurious processes does arise (Bellamy, 2010).
A significant step into supranationalism was taken in 1979 with the emergence of the
European Parliament as a directly elected institution and thus introducing a new type of
legitimacy, direct legitimacy (cf. Ramos, 2009), based on representation resulting directly
from the votes of the citizens. This meant institutional innovation, at the European level, from
the point of view of patterns of legitimacy; but from the point of view of patterns of
democracy it relies entirely upon formal representative democracy. However, and ever since,
there have been claims that the EP remains weak (although its powers were substantially
reinforced as a result of the sequence of treaty amendments). Besides, the mediating political
parties, electoral campaigns and electoral systems in place for EU elections remain national,
rather than supranational. Neither did a European public sphere ‘automatically’ emerge as
unified space for the debate of European politics. Nor can the analysis of the
transnationalisation of civil societies in the EU put forward major evidence of the emergence
of a united political community, the citizens remaining far from the EU (Follesdal and Hix,
2005; Mair, 2005).
The shortcomings of explanations based on this dichotomy are the reason why the multi-level
framework becomes functional for explaining patterns of political institutions – society
relations in the EU, and eventually for operationalising research on democracy in the EU. The
answer to the characterisation of the EU political system does no longer seem to be an either
or statement based on the intergovernmental pattern as opposed to the supranational pattern,
the latter understood as a state like polity, only in a larger scale (Follesdal and Hix, 2005;
Mair, 2005). Under a multi-layered framework, the question of democratic participation has to
be put both at each level within its specificities, and also for the whole architecture involved.
The question becomes even more complex since MLG encompasses overlapping levels and
also for the fact that multi-level arrangements are not based on such a stricter distinction
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between society and political institutions as was conventional for domestic representative
democracies. With such distinctions blurred, it may become difficult to overcome democratic
deficits on the basis of representative democracy only. Thus democratic inputs have to be
sought for also under other mechanisms of political participation.
It can be hypothesised that MLG may portray a transitional period, given the systemic
changes occurring and the pervasiveness of incrementalism over constitutionalism in the EU.
The mechanism encountered for fostering the legitimacy of the European Commission (the
election by the EP) may seem one such experiment, eventually leading to other solutions in
the future. However, multiplicity and non exclusive attachments to political levels seem to be
the rule, rather than hierarchy, and it may well be that these are permanent features of the new
polity and thus, that a framework imbued of traditional shapes may be inadequate (Follesdal
and Hix, 2005; Kohler-Koch, 2005; Schmidt, 2006; Olsen, 2007).
Democratic participation and multi-level governance
Within Schmidt’s (2006) analysis of state-societal structures in ‘simple’ and ‘compound’
polities5 she includes the EU in the second category and characterises it as a ‘highly
compound regional polity’:
‘The EU has a high degree of diffusion of power and authority through quasi federal institutional structures,
allows for a high level of interest access and influence through semipluralist policy formulation processes,
ensures the uniform application of the rules trough regulatory implementation processes and emphasizes
consensus-oriented politics through largely non partisan patterns of voting and exercising voice in a weak
proportional representation system’ (2006: 230-231).
Subsidiarity, as part of democratic theory, and ‘constitutional’ principle in the European
Union emphasises the ascendant (subsidiary) characteristic of the levels in EU governance,
from the citizen to the top. Eventually, this does not fully characterise reality but only
empirical evidence will be able to say more (cf. Bekkers, 2007; Kohler-Koch and Rittberger,
2007). This text does not review concrete practices of democracy (either representative or of a
more direct inspiration – participatory, deliberative, etcetera) at each and every level of multilevel EU governance, neither the transactions between the levels. It focuses mostly the
5
The author defines ‘compound’ polities as a combination of proportional representation systems, corporatist policy making
processes and federal or regionalised states that disperse power through multiple authorities (2006: 227).
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implications of different types of democracy in promoting EU democratic legitimacy at
central EU level. Thus, in the framework of MLG analysis to EU governance, I would like to
conduct this part of the text under two main questions: i) is representative democracy still
a/the solution (and according to conventional formula or some other)? ii) what other solutions
are there, in order to guarantee the principle of autonomy as basilar democratic principle (cf.
Kohler-Koch and Rittberger above)?
As to the first question: mechanisms of representative democracy in place account for formal
legitimacy, notably for Council and EP decision-making. Yet, neither for the first nor for the
second case has the process managed to overcome the alleged distance, and what is worse,
resistance (as expressed in treaty ratification referenda or EP elections turnouts) of the citizens
vis à vis the European Union.
Lord and Pollak (2010) speak of ‘EU’s many representative modes’ as ‘compound
representation’, addressing both conventional, formal mechanisms of representation (as
above) and other informal ways of representation (such as through non-elected representatives
of civil society organisations). They present both advantages and disadvantages of the model.
Among the latter, I would stress the possibility that the representation of several interests in
such compound system may ‘collide’ instead of ‘cohere’, and also the fact that, unlike under
formal representation, informal representatives stand for segmented interests and thus, no
general claims can be assumed. They conclude that ‘EU’s specific combination of
representative practices hardly allows for ensuring public control with political equality’
(Lord and Pollak, 2010: 117). In fact, increased participation in the design and
implementation of policies by those civil society members directly involved (as stated in the
Commission’s White Paper) may increase the quality of policies, that way having a positive
throughput and output impact. Yet, it does not guarantee general public control over
bureaucratic and political agents of policy making (namely the Commission), neither are the
informal representatives under clear ‘accountability’ rules. As Olsen puts it: ‘One basic
principle of democratic citizenship is that those affected by decisions should be able to
influence common affairs on equal terms’ (2007: 119).
However, criticisms have also been put forward and some scepticism expressed as to the
capacity of improving the EU as a polity, by copying the state pattern, and thus seeking to
14
implement competitive European party politics, as grounds for a fully representative exercise
of legislative and executive powers in the EU. Mair (2005) emphasises the fact that also at the
national level partisan politics are undergoing a crisis (‘depoliticization’) and therefore that
this is time for seeking for other complementary processes of political participation, instead of
imprisoning the EU in the old clothes of the states. Mair and Thomassenn (2010) even affirm
that the lack of party government at the European level (i. e. government according to formal
representation) may be more of a virtue than a flaw in the system, an assertion many would
contest (cf. Kohler-Koch and Rittberger: 2007; Schmidt, 2009).
As for my second question:
Rather than enlarging the concept of representation, which at the level of informal
representation is even arguable, it is perhaps better to put the question at the basilar level of
political institutions and societies’ patterns of relation, because this is where apparently the
issue of the democratic deficit started (cf. above). Rather than using representation as a key
concept, it is perhaps better to replace it by ‘participation’ (cf. Kholer-Koch, 2010) and thus to
look into other alternative types of democracy, entailing other types of participation (Catt,
1999; Held, 2006). The dividing line of representation versus direct democracy runs on the
mediation of the will of the citizen by a delegate (Lord and Pollak, 2010) versus personal
intervention in the process. The second, quite obviously collides with rigid political
institutions - society divides based on the liberal representative pattern, but may fit well a
more indistinct layout as that of MLG.
Bekkers and Edwards’ (2007: 55) systematization of strengths and weaknesses of models of
democracy in terms of input/throughput/output legitimacy grounds a good research
hypothesis, which is that for MLG patterns and given their diversity, multiple forms of
democracy may produce better combined results than a single form.
What was addressed as informal representation above largely draws on the move towards
governance and participatory democracy (Joerges, Meny and Weiler, 2001; Finke, 2007;
Greven, 2007) as fuelled by the European Commission in the last decades. It is therefore a
top-down and output oriented strategy, specifically designed for fostering the involvement of
‘civil society’ in policy making. It may indeed improve the quality of political outputs and
15
promote consensus among specific interest groups, but it hardly fits a notion of ‘common
interest’.
Other participatory practices have aimed at involving the citizen directly, for fostering the
input side of democratic legitimacy (Finke, 2007; Kohler-Koch, 2010). However, they are
difficult to implement in terms of scope and can only encompass the small number, or the
small territorial dimension. Popular legislative initiative, recently introduced in the treaty of
Lisbon, still has its way to make, in order to prove that it is more than just a principle. As for
referenda, and although there is not the possibility of a general referendum at EU level, the
track record for national referenda on EU issues is far from convergent with the decisions
taken by the politicians, under the mechanisms of representative democracy. Deliberative
experiments are theoretically grounded in the promotion of a European public sphere, which
remains nevertheless quite unstructured (Vreese, 2007).
CONCLUSION
Reifying governance as ‘the structure’ of EU is a dangerous operation, since it is only a
theory. Still, it is a theory that provides alternative explanations for aspects of EU integration
that can hardly find better ones under intergovernmentalism, or supranationalism of the
conventional type. Multiplicity and overlapping layers quite inevitably make of it a patchy
terrain for regular political participation. Conventional representative democracy does not
seem to be able to provide democratic legitimacy al all levels of EU integration, without
alienating the citizens. Even if the problem is a problem of the domestic relation of the
governments with their national citizens, in the end it amounts to the ‘central’ problem of
EU’s democratic deficit, since the levels are subsidiary. Participation throughout different but
complementary mechanisms may be a good tool for improving it, in the context of EU’s MLG
structure.
MLG is an alternative way of looking into European integration. It requires new conceptual
tools and collapses with entrenched state-centric views of the polity. The European
Commission uses the model in a prescriptive way and tries to reinforce communication with
and participation of the citizens. The academic debate forcefully goes beyond that approach.
For instance, Kholer-Koch (2010), in debating representation and participation as established
16
in the European Union, metaphorically turns grassroots (politics) into ‘astroturf’... because
democracy is not (only) procedural. It is mostly a project of ‘autonomy’.
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