A Political
Sociology
of
European
Democracy
A Political
Sociology
of
European
Democracy
Week 4
Lecture 2
Lecturer
Paul Blokker
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Introduction
The Democratic Deficit: Formal and
Informal Aspects
– Input democracy and output democracy
– Civil society involvement in the EU
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Introduction
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Introduction
Announcement: Examination
- The student will be evaluated at the end of
the course by means of a written essay, to
be handed in at the end (deadline: 30
May, to be handed in by e-mail, by
17:00 pm);
- The written essay will be of a minimum of
3.000 words, and needs to contain a
bibliography with at least 10 academic
resources.
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Introduction
Announcement: Examination
- The essay needs to address a theme related
to democracy in or of Europe.
- The essay needs to be set up in a clearly
structured way, with a clear introduction with
an outline of the paper, a convincing
argument in the middle part, and succinct
conclusions (including own opinion).
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Introduction
Announcement: Workshop
- In the first week of June, we will hold a halfday workshop on Postnational Democracy.
Invited speakers are:
- prof. Jiri Priban, Cardiff University prof.
William Outhwaite, Newcastle University.
The workshop will substitute for normal class
hours. Probable date is Tuesday 5 June.
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Introduction
European Democracy and Civil Society
– The increased emergence of a Political Europe
has made a ‘democratic deficit’ more visible;
– Output democracy seems insufficient to stem
the critique on a democratic deficit;
– Input democracy – if understood as
representative politics through parliaments –
suffers from the declining standing of
parliaments and party politics, and a lack of
direct civic engagement.
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Introduction
European Democracy and Civil Society
– Before the late 1990s, the European project
was legitimated by a ‘permissive consensus’,
that is, citizens given the political elites a
mandate for issues of problem-solving;
– Most researchers therefore analysed ‘societal
participation in EU governance … from a
functional, output-oriented point of view
investigating interest groups’ contribution to
effective problem-solving and governance ‘for
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the people’ ‘ (Finke 2007: 4)
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Introduction
European Democracy and Civil Society
– The increasingly perceived ‘democratic deficit’
has led to a shift of attention towards inputoriented views, based on the idea of authentic
participation and governance ‘by the people’;
– On this view, the ‘parliamentarization’ of the
EU would not be sufficient for a
democratization of European structures
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
– Civil society involvement is now understood as
a significant way to counter the democratic
deficit;
– Civil society involvement is indeed the
professed purpose of strategies of ‘good
governance’ and ‘deliberative method’.
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
– One definition of civil society is:
‘Civil society refers to the realm of interaction,
institutions, and social cohesion that sustains
public life outside the spheres of the state and
economy’ (Encyclopedia of Social Theory)
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
– There is, however, no consensus on the exact
meaning of civil society:
1. An oppositional perspective that identifies civil
society with autonomous and distinct spheres of state
and civil society, locating civil society opposite to the
state (Locke);
2. An integrative approach emphasizes the associative
relation between society and the state. Involvement of
civil society has a legitimizing and controlling function
(Montesquieu, Hegel).
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
– Civil society generally involves:
- a tripartite framework of civil society, the
state, and the economy;
- individual rights as a protection of citizenship
(private and public autonomy);
- social solidarity;
- social plurality;
- the public sphere and political participation.
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(Cohen & Arato 1988)
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
– On the European level, the virtue of civil
society is supposed to lie in:
• its potential to connect a diversity of
interests and groups to European policymaking;
• the enhancement of political participation
by non-political actors;
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
– Since the mid-1990s, EU-society relations are
increasingly discussed;
– The EC’s White Paper on Governance explicitly
promoted improvements of European
governance;
– The European Convention included civil society
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representation in the deliberative process;
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
“Today, political leaders throughout Europe are
facing a real paradox. On the one hand, Europeans
want them to find solutions to the major problems
confronting our societies. On the other hand, people
increasingly distrust institutions and politics or are
simply not interested in them.”
(White Paper on Governance, 2001)
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
“The problem is acknowledged by national
parliaments and governments alike. It is particularly
acute at the level of the European Union. Many
people are losing confidence in a poorly understood
and complex system to deliver the policies that they
want. The Union is often seen as remote and at the
same time too intrusive.”
(White Paper on Governance, 2001)
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
“The White Paper proposes opening up the policymaking process to get more people and
organisations involved in shaping and delivering EU
policy. It promotes greater openness, accountability
and responsibility for all those involved. This should
help people to see how Member States, by acting
together within the Union, are able to tackle their
concerns more effectively.”
(White Paper on Governance, 2001)
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
- The White Paper emphasized strongly the role of
civil society in the implementation of good
governance, that was to function by openness,
participation, accountability, effectiveness and
coherence;
- The White Paper, and particularly its focus on
participatory democracy and civil society, has since
been widely perceived and intensely debated in a
scientific debate of civil society involvement in the
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EU.
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
Two approaches in scholarly debates to civil society
involvement:
1.
Output-oriented approaches focus on governance
and problem-solving;
2.
Input-oriented approaches focus on civic
participation and voice.
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
1.
The output-oriented governance approach sees
governance as “a process and state whereby public
and private actors engage in international
regulation of societal relationships and conflicts”
(Kohler-Koch and Rittberger 2006).
- The emphasis is on the inclusion of non-state
actors in policy-making;
- The objectives are to contribute to more effective
policy-making.
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
1.
Output-oriented governance approach
- The emphasis is on ‘participatory governance’
- Groups or stakeholders to be included are:
business, social partners, welfare organizations,
consumer, women, and environmental groups.
- The rationale lies in ’intelligent democracy’:
enhancement of information on the willingness to
comply, consideration of citizens’ motives.
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
2.
Input-oriented governance approach
- An emphasis on civic participation and authentic
governance ‘by the people’ as a ‘good in its own
right’;
- An emphasis on issues of popular legitimacy and
popular representation.
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
(Kohler Koch 2010)
– The main emphasis in European governance
is, however, on output-oriented participation of
different groups and stakeholders;
– Less attention is paid to representation:
Whom are the participating groups/collective actors
actually representing?;
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
– The discourse of the European Commission is
oscillating between input- and outputoriented conceptions of civil society;
– The White Paper seems to explicitly try to
resolve issues of effective policy-making and
problem-solving;
– The Commission has increasingly sought to
include groups for this purpose (common
market, migration, social policy)
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
– The issue of representation of societal actors
is less at stake. After all, European politics
disposes already of various forms of
representation:
• member states in the Council,
• the electorate in the EP,
• functional interests in the European Economic and
Social Committee,
• subnational interests in the Committee of Regions
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(Kohler-Koch 2010: 102).
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
– The governance approach promoted by the
Commission was attractive for two reasons:
• A commitment to the improvement of governance
would enhance the legitimacy of the European
Commission;
• Governance and civil society were fashionable
concepts (governance addressing malfunctioning
governance, civil society addressing
malfunctioning democracy).
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
– The White Paper on Governance:
- Deep skepticism towards the problemsolving capacity of expert-based policymaking: call for ‘more open government’;
- Growing dissatisfaction with parliamentary
democracy: call for direct participation of
stakeholders
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
– The White Paper on Governance (2001):
- ‘Stakeholders’ were to include target
groups, civil society actors, experts
- a new mode of governance was to
guarantee wider involvement, redress
inequalities, increase collective learning, and
enhance vertical and horizontal articulation in
the policy process (Kohler-Koch 2010: 103)
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
– The White Paper on Governance (2001):
- The White Paper put ‘stakeholders’ at the
forefront, and endorsed a
‘reasoned discourse between experts and lay
people to support the effectiveness and
legitimacy of policy-making and a wider public
debate on European issues to erase the
“deficit of mutual awareness between civil
society and public authorities’ “ (Kohler 31
Koch
2010: 103)
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
– Kohler Koch argues there are however durable
tensions in the governance approach in
particular with democratic representation;
– This comes through in particular with regard
to two dimensions, that is, the division of
power, and direct deliberative polyarchy (DDP)
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
- Two dimensions show that popular
representation is not of importance:
• Division of powers: The Commission is not a
representative institution, and its consultation of
stakeholders is merely in the area of initiating and
executing policy, not legislation;
• Directly deliberative polyarchy (DDP): a system of
direct involvement of stakeholders, in which
emphasis is on experimentation, but no attention is
paid to power differences, irreconcilable interests,
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the safeguarding of citizens’ democratic rights.
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
- The representativeness of the stakeholders
involved is then largely unclear
- Two criteria seem important:
- Descriptive (e.g., from different member states)
- Substantive (the representation of distinct
interests, groups, minorities, etc.)
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
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Civil Society
European Democracy and Civil Society
- According to Kohler-Koch in the Commission’s
approach, key problems remain unresolved:
- participation
- problems of collective action;
- absence of clear benchmarks for
representativity and selectivity in the
interaction between EU institutions and
interest groups.
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