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The Voltmer-model for polycentricity

The broader context of this thesis is to examine transition to and building of large
communities. The most dynamic process of an integrating community in contemporary times
is the EU. Often it is conceived today as an instrumental, uncharismatic and uncharming but
economically successful organisation in comparison to the nation-states. It seems to be
driving with a set handbrake. To help the EU it is necessary to know how the EU drives and
where it drives.
What is the EU and what will it be one day?
The second question asks for prophecy. The EU is constituted by its instruments, not by goals.
The EU is inherently open to fundamental changes in character according to the forces that
control the instruments. What the EU will be one day depends on this unknown variable.
What is the EU then?
The EU is not similar to a state, because it receives its power from the sovereign states and is
therefore itself never sovereign. If there are in principle only the categories of “sovereign
actor in public international law“ and ”not actor”, the conclusion is counterintuitive, because
the EU is at least something, and in many aspects as powerful as sovereign states. The
concept of sovereignty is linked to that of a nation-state. The questions I puzzled about for a
long time was therefore:
How is a nation defined and can the EU fulfil the criteria? How does a nation come into
being and can the EU make the same process? And if it can, is the EU on its way to become a
nation? Can nation-states conserve legitimacy at the side of a newborn legitimate EU?
To cut the answer short, a nation has two sides, one a construct of human will and one an
historical process. The latter does not exist for Europe in a sufficient degree. So in the end I
arrived at the conclusion that the EU is excluded of being a nation.
And it is certainly more fruitful for the analysis of a new phenomenon not to take too many
old concepts into it, because one might fail to grasp the new features. 1

On the other hand

every analysis starts from certain assumptions and without concepts nothing can be
understood at all. Reinventing the EU must therefore first assess the critique of it, which
hopefully reveals sufficiently in which aspects the EU is unique and what concepts should be
left aside for the analysis and synthesis of a new concept.

The first chapter will be on the democratic deficit of the EU in the large sense, comprising an
assessment of proposed remedies and the discussion of unchangeable presuppositions.

In the second chapter I present a set of ten rules for a possible revision of the EU treaty or the
EU constitution. It is supposed to be a well-justified piece of constitutional engineering. I will
give some examples of how the rules will work in practice and what advantages this will
have.

In the third chapter I discuss in more general terms what the model means and what
conclusions the normative model infers for the development of new concepts.

1 Markus Jachtenfuchs “Democracy and Governance in the European Union”, European Integration online Papers

http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/1997-002a.htm

Chapter 1:

The EU and democracy

“…We must realise that they have called into life a being the development of which could not
have been foreseen completely by the most gifted of its begetters. It was enough for them to
realise or to hope that they had created an organism; it has taken a century and has cost their
successors much sweat and blood to prove that they had created a nation.”

Justice Holmes on the United States

, (1920)

After Choate’s definition

the democratic deficit is an expression pointing to several

inconsistencies in the institutional organisation of the Community.

There is a lack of accountability, transparency and openness: The commission is a non-
elective independent body that does not act on the behalf of national parliaments. The
Council, as representative of governments is indirectly elected, but with increased majority
voting the national parliaments cannot hold the representatives accountable: They could have
been voted down. The EP lacks some of the traditional attributes of national parliaments. It
cannot initiate legislation or raise taxes, and has not yet effective ways to overthrow the
executive.
Choate explains that how you view the democratic deficit depends on how you view the
community itself. There are three archetype positions.
The functionalist views the Community as an administrative union to achieve certain results
in a pragmatic way. This view sees no need for democracy on the EU level, because it ignores
the self-identity of the EU at all.
The confederalist sees the increasing self-identity of the EU, but is against. To democratise
the EU would mean to strengthen its legitimacy and self-identity. This erodes sovereignty,
which the confederalist wants to preserve. As ideal the EP, the directly binding force and
majority voting in the Council is to abolish.
The federalist wants the United States of Europe. The ideal are existing democratic states like
federal Germany or presidential US.

Choate aptly summarises the current positions in these categories. It is very significant for the
discussion of democracy that the participants can be categorised through their position in the
sovereignty question. Are there national democrats and supranational democrats? When
conceiving of democracy as not inherent to a system, but a quest, an ideal

, democratic values

could be realised through blending of different mechanisms.

⊕

Blending democratic mechanisms

2 Missouri v. Holland, 252 U.S. 416, 433.

Abigail Choate ”The European Parliament and the democratic deficit”, p. 7.

In my opinion it points rather to the fact that the state-like agglomeration of people in Europe did not form in the same way as

great communities were formed before in history. Public international law dates from the time of the nation-states (18

century)

and the EU is its first sophisticated creation. Its institutions mirror the provenience of a level where nearly exclusively states are
actors.

Abigail Choate ”The European Parliament and the democratic deficit”, p. 3-4.

Benjamin Barber ”Three Challenges to Reinventing Democracy” in ”Reinventing Democracy, p. 144.

Then a fourth, totally different view can be construed. The polycentralist wants a more democratic EU, keep up democracy in

nations and allow still other centres to participate in the legitimizing process. This alternative is at the base of the following
chapters.

Underlined argumants and the conclusions reappear at the end of the chapter.

Teutemann holds that the results of EU policy have too little and indirect feedback by the
voter, who is only a marginal factor.

Control and legislatory competences are taken away

from the national Parliaments, though the European Parliament experiences no synchronical
enlarging of its competences.

This weakens democracy.

If the EP does not have any possibility of control, the national parliaments are likely to bind
their governments in advance to a certain position with the effect that negotiations in the
European Council become more difficult or even impossible

. The form of negotiation is

inherited from public international law of the 19th century, when the foreign office was a
secret office, and the treaties happened to be secret, too.
The national opposition is not represented in the Council of Ministers. Consequently the
frontline in the Council is constructed along national borders and not along interest patterns.
This might stress national provenience more than the unifying character.

The conclusion of

this paragraph is that any solution has to introduce a demos to the EU.

⊕

Introduce a demos, the direct feedback of the voter

Koja

speaks from the point of view of the general science of the state: To decide if a state is

rather a monarchy or a democracy, we must look to the way the state is governed. This
presupposes that state-power is unique. Not only from an anthropological-sociological, but
also from a judicial point of view the power of the state is vested in organisationally and
functionally differentiated organs (separation of power). We need to decide which one we
refer to when we decide on whether the state is democratic. Some argue for the organisation
of the highest power in the state, some for the constitutional power, and still others for the
power to make the basic political decisions, the power to define and allocate competences.

Let us now look to the EU, which has increasingly powers attributed to states, and take the
first criteria. Who has the highest power, the power to govern? An assembly of delegates of
the member state’s governments, which is in its turn instituted by another organ in the
member state, which is only then voted by the people.
Who has the constitutional power? And who has the power to define the basic political
decisions, the power to define and allocate competences? It is not the people, neither directly
nor mediated through a representational assembly. We must not forget that the decision-
makers are not responsible in front of the European electorate. They are to the people of their
state, but through a very long chain of legitimisation. This takes away most of the power of
the traditional way to legitimate all public powers through national parliaments. They form
governments, which steer together the EU, so that there is neither need nor place for a
European Parliament.
Confidentiality of the deliberations of the Council makes it difficult to hold it accountable.
The way in which the Commission initiates, draws up and issues rules as well as its almost
exclusive right to make proposals is criticised.
In sum the marginalisation of the EP in legislative matters and the decision-making
procedures in the Council of Ministers are a situation where policy making is delinked from
democratic controls and accountability.

⊕

Submit the public powers to democratic controls and accountability

Manfred Teutemann ”Rationale Kompetenzenverteilung im Rahmen der europäischen Integration”, p. 323.

Teutemann p. 325.

G. Vedel et al. ”Bericht der ad hoc-Gruppe für die Prüfung der Frage einer Erweiterung der Befugnisse des EP” in Bulletin der

EU, Beilage 4/1972 Brussels, p. 34.

Teutemann p. 326.

Friedrich Koja ”Allgemeine Staatslehre”, p. 76.

So far Koja, op. cit.

The literature

proposes most often to give more power to the European Parliament to

remedy this aspect of deficit in democratic control and accountability. Could it work?
Newman

starts out with the axiom that democracy means that non-governmental opinion

needs to be able to influence outcomes, expose injustice and incompetence and offer
alternative policies.

Newman confronts then the claims of the EP to more power with its

inefficiency and weak democratic legitimacy (EP polls are dominated by domestic affairs) -
which were exactly the source of the claims. Implicitly the circularity of the argument is
revealed. In claiming more power to strengthen its legitimacy the EP concedes that it lacks the
democratic legitimisation which is a precondition for power to be exercised.
Another irony is that the EP, by shouting for more power, produced the legitimatory deficit as
much as it denounced it. The EP imposed its view of the EU as a magnified federal state and
implicitly excluded the legitimisation by the chain through to the national electorate.
A third point is that the EP is a federal institution and the Council, which controls the
Commission, is under national control. Legitimacy on the national level is not an EU problem.
The EU problem would start with the transfer of power to federal institutions like the EP.
Seen like this the EP proposes a solution to a problem, which becomes a problem through the
effects of the solution. And the problem reaches out into the past, because which government
would have conceded a loss of sovereignty when it is not at least participating in the exercise
of the pooled sovereignty?
It is the executive power in form of the administration, which has preponderance. The EU
administration manages some 4000 regulations a year and the whole number of instruments
amounts to 7000 - 8000. Where is the power to control that? Not even the media could keep
track. Most modern parliaments became working-parliaments to be still able to control the
increasing activity of the government. If the EP tried to check the EU administration it would
be bound to fail. The issues are too technical and their political relevance is that of a mosaic
pebble.

The EU administration has to be checked on a more abstract level and with the help

of experts who work out alternatives.

The concept of a Parliament must not be taken out of its context into a sphere where it cannot
work properly. Historically, the Parliament was developed to counterbalance the power of the
government (13th century) and later to support a government, so that the role to exercise
control fell to the parliamentary opposition (18th century).

Where is in the EU the

government? It is not in the EU; it is coming from outside. The European Parliament can
neither support it nor bring it down. In addition there is not even necessarily a governmental
policy based on certain political ideals, as it is the case in national governments. This means
that the EU is governed by ephemeral consensus of the delegates and it would not influence
the next decision if this “government” could be chased.
The steering of the EU is impersonal and without ideals or motives which would make future
decisions predictable. There is no commitment to one specific alternative within the EU
treaty’s possibilities. Therefore the parliament cannot counterbalance.
A further argument is that the EP is a European institution and if it would substitute the
national Parliaments in checking the course of the EU, this would mean at the same time a
further shift towards integration.

For authors and further references refer to G. Vedel et al. ”Bericht der ad hoc-Gruppe für die Prüfung der Frage einer

Erweiterung der Befugnisse des EP” in Bulletin der EU, Beilage 4/1972 Brussels.

Michael Newman ”Democracy, Sovereignty and the EU”.

Newman, p. 173.

Cf. the further explanations under point 13 in Chapter 2 below.

As it will be seen later the model instigates whoever is expert to work for a better alternative and propose that it gets the

competency to decide.

Reinhold Zippelius ”Allgemeine Staatslehre”, p.391, 396.

George Ross “Jaques Delors and European Integration, p. 99. Cf. Also he paragraph on Koja below.

More power to the Parliament would not make the EU more democratic.

⊕

Check the EU on a more abstract level than the concrete decisions

∪

More power to the EP is no solution

Further doubts that a strengthening of the EP could reintroduce legitimacy, according to
Axtmann

For a parliament to generate democratic legitimacy it must be embedded in the political
process of the political community, supported by its intermediary institutions. These are
nationalised and simply and plainly absent on the European level. Such a structure has the
following functions:
1.

Representation presupposes a community that can be represented. There is no European
public, so the European Parliament cannot be representative.

Intermediary institutions reduce the complexity of the social and political environment of
the citizens so that they can cognitively and emotionally respond to it and act upon it.
Without, identification is improbable.

Intermediary institutions provide channels for the citizen to articulate support and
criticism, which otherwise are directed to the political system as such.

Parliamentary rule is rule of the majority. The majority rule has as precondition that the
minority can reasonably believe to have access to the majority position. For this there must
be no fundamental ethnic, linguistic, religious, ideological or economic cleavages the
decisions rely on, and there must be a collective identity so that the differences in specific
policy areas will not be dramatised into fundamental differences over the institutional order
of the political community.

To describe the consequences for democratic legitimacy, the objective and subjective
component of legitimacy have to be distinguished. A European public opinion and
intermediate structure could of course form, and the exercise off power would be subjectively
legitimated through consent, but this is not sufficient.
The objective side of legitimacy is the claim that the exercise of power is best for this society,
either by the way it is exercised or by reaching the promised goals (inner and outer security,
freedom, fair distribution of goods, increase of wealth, environmental protection etc.).

When

the nation-state gives away the exercise of power, then it says implicitly that it is not able to
claim that. Its objective legitimacy decreases in proportion to the gain in legitimacy of other
levels, e.g. the EU.
When the Principle of sovereignty claims that all legitimate power comes from the state-level,
it subscribes to the best exercise of power in all aspects. If the sovereign nation-state consents
to the development of non-national levels of legitimacy, it corrupts its own legitimacy. As
long as the alternative is only the same sovereignty, the resistance of the nation-states only
prevents that the same unsolved problems resurrect on the larger EU-scale.
A new concept should allow for birth of legitimacy on all levels. Then the nation-state could
become what it always should have been: Not absolute, but peaceful. The political system
would correspond better to society, a polycentristic and multilevel pattern. What sovereignty
keeps in its fist could spread upwards and downwards, allowing for decentralisation (seen

Axtmann Roland op. cit. p. 152-154.

Alex Singer “Nationalstaat und Souveränität – Zum Wandel des europäischen Staatensystems”, Europäische

Hochschulschriften Series XXXI Vol. 232 Political Science, Peter Land 1993 Frankfurt p. 35. Singer refers to Peter Reichel
“Politische Kultur in Deutschland” in Iring Fetscher and Herfried Münkler (ed.) “Politikwissenschaft. Begriffe – Analysen -
Theorien” Reinbek 1985 p. 112.

from the national level) and centralisation (seen from a higher, e.g. EU level) at the same
time.
The democratic deficit of the EU can according to Axtmann

be summarised as follows: In a

democratic constitutional state parliament represents the sovereignty of the people. This
sovereignty is realised in the legislative competence of parliament, especially the budgetary
powers. In the EU the Parliament’s rights are seriously curtailed. Its new powers of co-
decision in some policy areas cannot veil the fact that it is not a legislative chamber with
effective powers of sanction against the Council of Ministers and the Commission.
The EP

controls non-compulsory expenditure, implements or rejects the Community budget,

but cannot raise taxes or determine compulsory expenditure.
The EP has a formally powerful weapon with the motion of censure of the Commission. It is
similar to the power of national parliaments to demand the resignation of the government
when it fails to maintain a majority.

The motion was used only four times and all of them

were in the 70’s, when the EP was not yet generally elected. It never led to a dismissal. It can
not hold responsible a single member of the Commission nor avoid that the new Commission
will pursue the same policy. The Member States can even nominate the same persons into
office again. The complaints of the EP are more often directed to the Council of Ministers as
the main legislator

, but the EP cannot reach it with the motion.

Democratic processes have hitherto only functioned within national borders

. European

integration was equated with economic integration and could therefore be left to
administrators of economic rationality. Especially with Maastricht the EU overcame its role of
solving mere technical problems. Axtmann’s original idea to create the European ‘public’ is
to lift the existing national intermediary institutions into the European discourse. These
historically different intermediary institutions secure the democratic character of the Union
and enable the formation of a genuinely European ‘public’. He wants the national and
European Parliaments to cooperate to introduce national domestic issues into the European
context and to assess European policy proposals in their impact on the national political
system.

But when Axtmann considers little later the possibility of the development of a public sphere
in regional arenas of political interest, he has to concede that the “fragmentation of interest”
makes the formulation of a regional interest eminently difficult. Furthermore the introduction
of regions into the European sphere, e.g. by giving the Committee of the Regions more than
advisory powers or even giving it democratic status through elections, would rival the EP to a
political body with counter-interests. Where the EP needs integration to acquire legitimacy,
the Committee of Regions will fight for autonomy.

To have both institutions at the same

time is not possible, because they are playing again the null-sum game for legitimacy. But
why should we then prefer one to the other? Axtmann is silent on this question. But more
important is the observation that the intrinsically ‘regional’ issues have disappeared. The
national issues may still be there but become unsteerable without a common economic policy
and in my eyes there is no reason how the EU can in advance be said to be the arena where
issues are best decided. The EP alone, even with a European public, cannot represent all
interests European people have. The EP beside other institutions will only lead to a
distribution of legitimacy.

Axtmann Roland, ”Liberal Democracy into the twenty-first century”, p. 149.

European Parliament.

Abigail Choate ”The European Parliament and the democratic deficit”, p. 52.

This was clearly the case with the first two attempts of a motion of censure in 1972 (EP’s power of expenditure) and 1976

(milk powder). Choate p. 51-53.

Jürgen Habermas ”Citizenship and national identity: Some reflections on the future of Europe” in ”Praxis International” 12:1, 1-

19. Quoted by Axtmann op. cit. p. 164.

Axtmann p. 155.

Axtmann op. cit. P. 162.

If I interpret Axtmann right, he thinks that citizenship based on the French republican model
of political community, based on a sovereign legal system, is coming to an end and will be
replaced by the German ethno-cultural model of community.

But is the common descent,

language and culture more stable than sovereignty? Common descent relies on a myth, and
common language and culture are indistinct and of decreasing pertinence in our world. I think
the problem is the restriction of institutions to predefined territorial competences

∪

Known and approved mechanisms of democracy stem from nation-state experience and
cannot be exported to the transnational sphere without changing their meaning

⊕

Enhance a genuine European public formation and intermediary structures

⊕

Break up predefined territorial competences

Harden

founds his criticism to the two methods to tackle the democratic deficit, the

federalist and the confederalist solution, in his general view of democracy. Democracy has its
roots in popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty has critical and affirmative democracy as
main aspects. The first questions, limits and constrains public power. The second is the aspect
that popular sovereignty is the positive source of legitimacy of public power and the
justification for the government’s authority to enforce obligations.

Thus popular sovereignty

delegates authority and limits it at the same time. The limitation is vital because the citizen
cannot choose to exit the jurisdiction.
Popular sovereignty needs a forum of trust, hitherto provided by the nation-state. Harden
states that there is not a sufficient degree of shared political identity between the peoples of
Europe to envisage a federal state.

Harden sees the federal state as the founding myth of the

EU, whose prospect frightened the people when it became closer to reality through the EU
treaties. The federalist vision is unacceptable.
The status quo lacks now the myth of the future federal state as legitimisation. In addition the
enlargement of the EU with the parallel spread of the majority vote in the Council leaves the
control of national parliaments more and more outside. The status quo is no option, either.
And of course can European integration not be safely reversed.
How to introduce democracy on a level where a demos does not exist? Affirmative
democracy is not possible, but critical democracy. All the Member States of the Union
acknowledge for example fundamental rights and freedoms and the Rule of Law. But
essential is for Harden that the Union has not furthermore the authority to determine its own
authority (Kompetenzen-Kompetenz), which leads to creeping centralisation through
legislation by the council and judicial interpretation. A “tribunal of competences” should
decide on the transgression of scope.

In the article Harden proposes flexible integration with a core competency which can be
enlarged either by revision of the treaties or voluntary partnerships between some of the
Member States.

Bogdanor

wants to reach higher democratic legitimacy for the Commission by its election

in a two-ballot system. If the Council is continuing to be the legislator, the governments will
not only have to negotiate amongst themselves, but in addition with the alien power of a

Axtmann op. cit. p. 167.

Cf. chapter three.

Ian Harden ”Democracy and the EU” in ”Reinventing Democracy, p. 132-143.

Harden, p. 134-135.

Harden, p. 136. Harden sees the federal state as the founding myth of the EU, which frightened the people when it became

closer to reality through the EU treaties.

Harden, p. 139.

Vernon Bogdanor ”The future of the European Community: Two models of democracy” in ”Government and Opposition” 21, 2,

1989, pp. 161-176. Quotation after Newman (above).

Commission. The common denominator will diminish beyond the present, criticised size. The
effect will not be a positive control, but only a negative veto-power and the system is likely to
be stuck.
The mentioned aspect of critical democracy, the Kompetenzen-Kompetenz, is the focus of a
technically very sophisticated and complicated work of Teutemann

. His point is that the

present allocation of competency is not rational and that a distribution into seven specified
communities would be salutary. He regrets that the competency to order the competences is in
the hands of those who would loose power in doing so.
His utmost sophisticated works shows by its mere existence that much work and controversy
is involved in such a redistribution of competences. Many countries have seen major
difficulties in joining the Maastricht treaty without consulting their people in a referendum if
they wanted competences to be “given away”. The rationale is that this is a revision of the
national constitution. In Germany revisions are limited in extent, therefore the
Bundesverfassungsgericht was driven to put up different conditions for the exercise of the
competency. This shows that the prevailing political theory regards the decision of the
national electorate as the only or at least the most legitimate procedure to relocate
competency. Even if Teutemann’s plans were a solution, they could not do without a
referendum.

⊕

Introduce critical democracy by a mechanism to define and redistribute the competences
(Harden). To do this, a referendum is necessary (Teutemann).

Lindström

distinguishes two areas of European integration, the economical-political and

the communicative-cultural area. The nation-state has reached in two hundred years of
systematic integration a monopoly in supplying basic communicational capacities, together
with the platform for further socio-cultural integration (civil society), and controls the process
of its own cultural reproduction. In the economic area the nation was first favourable for
development by breaking down medieval barriers and promoting an infrastructure, but
became then an obstacle.

Lindström’s conclusions are that a constitutionally secured balance

between the three main political actors (Brussels, nation-states and regional actors) has to be
established. He predicts that in creating that balance, nation-states will lose a major rationale
for their legitimisation. Their last resort will be cultural mechanisms of integration.
Plurinational states will confront ever stronger concurrence by ethnic communities, up to the
redefinition of borders.

The view that there are three main political actors is premised on starting out for the analysis
from the nation-state and discovering then one higher and one lower level. Both could be
differentiated further and as truthfully, the supranational level for example in discerning
Europe, the area of secularised Christianity, the western world and the globe. Lindström takes
into account three centres of integration, and in the economic-political area he conceives them
as working in parallelity. The picture he draws is still territorially anchored and static, but it
contains a first germ of polycentricity.

⊕

Establish a constitutionally secured balance between the main political actors

Manfred Teutemann ”Rationale Kompetenzverteilung im Rahmen der europäischen Integration”, esp. p. 193-199.

Bjarne Lindström “Nationalstaten, regionerna och det framtida Europa: på vägen till en ny integrationsmodell”.

The nation-state is too small for the production-network of the international communities of information and too big for

modern, sectorially differentiated economical growth. Lindström op. Cit. p. 22.

Lindström op. cit. p. 38.

Kohlhase

points to the interesting fact how federation theorists two centuries ago dealt with

a similar problem. They viewed the crisis not as a problem of the institutions, remediable
through better institutions and procedures, but as a problem of the people. They proposed new
behavioural patterns

, which would mean today education to a “European Citizenship”.

The

problem of lacking common values is shifted one level higher: The educator has to determine
which values to educate. This is a very undemocratic solution. But also in modern times the
democratic deficit was interpreted more as a deficit of the concept of democracy than of the
examined system.

∪

PR measures are not sufficient to produce legitimacy

Katz

in his turn can give more convincing reasons why the democratic deficit does not have

to be viewed as a problem. He asks what the motivation is to accept a state and notifies
common elements in contemporary technologically developed societies, whereof I quote
three.
1.

There is a tendency to split cultural identity from reason of state (Staatsräson).

Individuals are rather submitted to instrumental integration than through commitment to
symbols.

Modern states work in a way that solutions have more to do with objective problems than
symbolic action. To lead modern states requires more the manager-type of person than the
charismatic.

These points paint the picture of a secularised rational citizenry and if they describe at least
partially a reality, then initial legitimacy is no more a major concern. The EU needs not to
integrate on the cultural sector, its instrumental integration is high and still rising and the EU
has highly skilled experts to administrate solutions. A high degree of acceptance could be
expected, yet this is not the case.
Katz did not say that these motives are the only ones or that they suffice to make an order to
an accepted order, but that this rationale works in some aspects. The conclusion should
therefore be that in different areas different mechanisms, institutions and executive styles to
reach legitimacy are necessary. Viewing public communities through the spectacles of
rationality may still increase and spread to other areas, therefore the mechanisms should be
open to revision.

⊕

Install different mechanisms in different areas, open to revision

De Sousa Santos

perceives the democratic deficit of the EU as an indicator to what extent

the “hegemonic model of modern democracy is tied up with national time-space and state
action”. This would mean that the “deficit” is not a suboptimal situation, but a situation

Norbert Kohlhase “Einheit in der Vielfalt – Essays zur Europäischen Geschichte, Kultur und Gesellschaft.

“Gesinnungs- und Gesittungsbildung”.

44 Norbert Kohlhase “Einheit in der Vielfalt – Essays zur Europäischen Geschichte, Kultur und Gesellschaft, p. 24.
45 A different attempt to doctor the persons who perceive the problems rather than the problems themselves can be found in
also Wessels and Diedrichs (“A New Kind of Legitimacy for a New Kind of Parliament - The Evolution of the European
Parliament”

http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/1997-006a.htm;

), who try to understand the EU as a new kind of political system

characterised by fusion of the instruments of national, subnational and supranational actors. Their conclusion is, that the present
concept of democracy is not applicable to the object of examination. Cf. also chapter 3 under the heading'legitimacy'.
46 Daniel Katz “Nationalismus als sozialpsychologisches Problem” in: “Nationalismus”, p.82-83. (Retranslation!)

47 Cf. the conclusion after Choate above.
48 Bonaventura de Sousa Santos “Towards a new common sense - Law, Science and politics in the paradigmatic transition”, p.
286-387.

without known optimum. Democracy cannot transgress its national “time-space” to work in
local or transnational “time-spaces”, and adequate alternative models are “problematic”

Of course this view depends very much on the definition of democracy.

De Sousa Santos distinguishes the following four dimensions of the democratic deficit:

1.

The above discussed loss of direct democratic control over the actual process of
governance erodes the legitimacy of the integration process to the extent that the total
welfare of the Europeans is not demonstrated to enhance as a result of that integration.

Committees operate without democratic control or public involvement and are greatly
responsible for the lack of transparency and bureaucratic overload in the EU. There is a
connection to point 3 and 4.

Despite all structural funds economic and social disparities between the more and the less-
developed territories could not be eliminated. The more developed countries, incensed by
chauvinistic regionalisms, may conclude that the social cohesion funds have been draining
resources that might otherwise have been kept where they were generated. The less
developed countries realize that the gap that separates them from the more developed
countries is never closing. Their conclusion may be that the more developed countries
overbenefit from the internal disintegration of the weaker national economies resulting
from the integration process. In terms of social cohesion and global welfare legitimacy
can only be guaranteed by a both-win situation. Whenever the positive-sum game
confronts a recession in global welfare (as in the 1990s) the EU loses acceptance.

The role of European business interest groups in the development of integration is an
object of dispute. With the unfolding of the integration process, the relative balance
between capital and labour interest representation, which in some nation-states was
achieved in the period of organized capitalism, has collapsed in favor of capital. The
representation of the organised capitalism, mainly due to the professional lobbying of
business interest groups, is more effective on the community level. The shift of
administrative competences to the community level is bound to have effects on the
organisation of interest representation. The forms of national corporatism are not likely to
reproduce themselves at the community level. Instead some kind of transnational
pluralism will emerge. The preservation of the nation-states as key actors in the process of
integration functions as safety valve against this unbalanced representation.

If the federalists manage to lift policy making to the EU level, then the democratic deficit will
reemerge under the heading of labour underrepresentation. In the last consequence the
democratic deficit will continue until the EU is the true copy of a nation-state, including a
civil society with intermediary institutions. But the ingredients for a nation Europe are not
available, and the nation-states have their own “democratic deficit” in form of fading
legitimacy. If it is conceded that the EU is not and will not be a nation-state, federal or not,
the question for a new concept for the EU can be tackled.
The European people must be able to experience that lower global welfare is not a
consequence of the bad intentions of a coalition of developed countries against the less
developed, or of the bad intentions of a centralist EU against the nation-states, but due to the
economic system. They can only experience this when they are able to change it. Maybe they
will themselves come to prefer an effective “commitology” before a costly and transparent
institution. But maybe they find an effective and transparent way to do the job.

49 De Sousa Santos, op. cit.

Conclusions of Chapter 1:

What to do (or not to do) to legitimise the EU?

⊕

Blending democratic mechanisms (Choate).

⊕

Introduce a demos, the direct feedback of the voter (Teutemann).

⊕

Submit the public powers to democratic controls and accountability (Koja).

⊕

Check the EU on a more abstract level than the concrete decisions.

⊕

Enhance a genuine European public formation and intermediary structures (Axtmann).

⊕

Break up predefined territorial competences (Axtmann).

⊕

Introduce critical democracy by a mechanism to define and redistribute the competences
(Harden). To do this, a referendum is necessary (Teutemann).

⊕

Establish a constitutionally secured balance between the main political actors (Lindström).

⊕

Install different mechanisms in different areas, open to revision (Katz).

⊕

The EU has to find own, maybe new mechanisms and sources of legitimacy, because it is
not and will never be a true copy of the nation-state (de Sousa Santos).



More power to the EP is no solution (Newman).



PR measures are not sufficient to produce legitimacy (Kohlhase).



Known and approved mechanisms of democracy stem from nation-state experience and
cannot be exported to the transnational sphere without changing their meaning
(Habermas).

In the following chapter a demos shall be added to the EU by a new mechanism, which
legitimately redistributes competences between the political actors and leads to the formation
of a European political forum.

The indication of authors in brackets refers to the position developed from a discussion of their findings (underlined in the

text), not that they actually have pronounced this opinion.