Political legitimacy and European monetary union: contracts, constitutionalism and the normative logic of two-level games

The crisis of the euro area has severely tested the political authority of the European Union (EU). The crisis raises questions of normative legitimacy both because the EU is a normative order and because the construction of economic and monetary union (EMU) rested upon a theory that stressed the normative value of the depoliticization of money. However, this theory neglected the normative logic of the two-level game implicit in EMU. It also neglected the need for an impartial and publically acceptable constitutional order to acknowledge reasonable disagreements. By contrast, we contend that any reconstruction of the EU's economic constitution has to pay attention to reconciling a European monetary order with the legitimacy of member state governance. The EU requires a two-level contract to meet this standard. Member states must treat each other as equals and be representative of and accountable to their citizens on an equitable basis. These criteria entail that the EU's political legitimacy requires a form of demoicracy that we call ‘republican intergovernmentalism’. Only rules that could be acceptable as the product of a political constitution among the peoples of Europe can ultimately meet the required standards of political legitimacy. Such a political constitution could be brought about through empowering national parliaments in EU decision-making

On the logic of productive cooperation: a response to critics

This paper identifies and responds to four critiques of democratic contractarianism, as advocated in Democratic Justice and the Social Contract, to be found in this symposium. The first is that, as a contingent practice-dependent account of justice, democratic contractarianism lacks the capacity to explain civic cooperation. The second is that, despite its intentions, Democratic Justice does not lay out an authentic contractarian theory. The third is that the theory is incompatible with our considered judgements about justice. And the fourth is that the ambition of Democratic Justice to use the empirical method to compensate for the failures of hypothetical contract theory fails because all social science needs interpretation. To each of these critiques, replies are offered, drawing attention to the way in which democratic contractarianism exemplifies a logic of social cooperation to mutual advantage that is compatible with justice provided the cooperation emerges from a bargaining situation of roughly equal power

Just Returns?

Democratic Justice and the Social Contract offered a contractarian theory of democratic justice. This article responds to criticisms that its arguments either assume premises that are not genuinely constructivist or that the premises imply untoward conclusions. It also discusses the role of deliberation in a democracy and seeks to refute some alleged shortcomings of its method

Associative Obligation and the Social Contract

John Horton has argued for an associative theory of political obligation in which such obligation is seen as a concomitant of membership of a particular polity, where a polity provides the generic goods of order and security. Accompanying these substantive claims is a methodological thesis about the centrality of the phenomenology of ordinary moral consciousness to our understanding of the problem of political obligation. The phenomenological strategy seems modest but in some way it is far-reaching promising to dissolve some long-standing problems of political theory. However, it fails at just the point at which a theory of political obligation is needed, namely when individuals question the grounds of their political obligation. A principle of obligation is needed to provide individuals with a reason for compliance with authoritative social rules when the exercise of that obligation is irksome. It is at this point that we need to invoke the idea of society as an implicit social contract, in which obligations are seen as stemming from those terms that it would be in the interests of individuals to agree in a social contract. This is consistent with the method of reflective equilibrium

Assisted Dying and Voting Schemes

Sometimes the governing bodies of organizations like the Royal Medical Colleges take a public stand on controversial issues in bioethics. When they do so, they sometimes consult their fellows and members. This paper reviews the voting schemes that might be used. In doing so, they face well-known logical problems involved in using any majoritarian voting procedure where more than two alternatives are at issue. There is no way around these problems. The problems are compounded if a super-majority principle is used where the status quo is not the default. The paper suggests that such policy decisions should be framed, so far as possible, as a movement from an existing policy position where one exists

Popular Government Without the Will of the People

Populism sees representative government as intrinsically elitist, preferring to think about democracy in terms of the will of the people, expressed through devices such as referendums. However, this view is not one that can be made sense of and seeking to pursue the will of the people is dangerous to democracy. Citizen engagement is important in a representative democracy, but this is best conceived on a model of civil society organizations undertaking practical public deliberation. A philosophical model of deliberation leading to choice is introduced, and the argument that such a theory is itself elitist is considered but found wanting