The democratic production of political cohesion: partisanship, institutional sesign and life form

Online: 27 November 2018What binds a democratic society together? This would seem a well-rehearsed topic in modern political theory, but on closer scrutiny, it may appear less so. If we reformulate the question, it may become clearer why: what binds democratic society together? The emphasis on ‘democratic’ is the clue here. Much recent discussion on the cohesive force in democracies has been parasitic on other debates, such as that between cosmopolitans and communitarians on justice as the first virtue of society; that between nation-state-based and post-national views of contemporary politics or that about the cultural aspects of democratic citizenship as the glue that makes democracy work. All such views and debates tend to assume a somewhat ‘externalist’ perspective, so to speak, of the problem of cohesion in democracies. Cosmopolitans and liberal communitarians have argued over the relative importance of values and identity as the basis for the stability of a just society, whose legitimate political arrangements they generally agree must be democratic, so as to reflect the demands of equality and self-government. Disputes over whether the institutions of democracy still require the background conditions provided by the nation-state, with its consolidated networks of party system, solidarity, civil society organisations and public opinion formation, or whether similar conditions can be reproduced at a more trans- and post-national level, are very similar in scope to those between cosmopolitans and liberal communitarians. Both these disputes concern the social, institutional, ideal or identitarian pre-conditions of democracy, which help it to work with a modicum of stability, in so far as they guarantee the political cohesion of either the demos or the regime itself. Discussions over the quality and competence of citizenship look at democratic culture as an important condition for democratic institutions and procedures to function smoothly and effectively. Debates over the ‘civic culture’ in the 1960s and more recently on ‘social capital’ lay emphasis on a mixture of attitudes, practices, participation in associational networks and consolidated norms of sociability as formative components of democratic citizenship, on which the working of democratic institutions and rules depends. This suggests something more internal, or at least a virtuous circle between the culture and the institutions of democracy. But is democracy itself capable of producing political cohesion, and on what basis

From Maastricht to Brexit : democracy, constitutionalism and citizenship in the EU

Is the European Union still a viable project? The last few years have been difficult both economically and politically, while its integrative function and legitimacy have been seriously tested. For many social, economic and geo-political reasons, its expansionary moment has stopped abruptly. On the contrary, the Greek economic crisis and the Brexit referendum have raised the spectre of fragmentation and political disintegration. The promise of the EU as a possible model for legitimate governance beyond the nation state lies somewhat in tatters. Even if the EU may indeed survive most of its current crises, is the project of a EU as a normative project beyond rescue? Ever since Maastricht, the democratic legitimacy of the EU has been a key concern of policy makers, citizens and academics alike. This issue is essentially a normative one, and over the same period our work in this area has been at the forefront in exploring what has come to be known (following an early working paper we wrote with this title in 2000) ‘the normative turn in EU studies’. The debate on the democratic form and legitimacy of the EU is one that has gone on for some time and to which we, together with other scholars, have tried to contribute in the course of the last twenty years or so. Collecting articles written over the course of this period is not just meant as the testimony of an intellectual journey, but also a way of tracing such a journey in retrospect and mapping the important moments of the intellectual and scholarly debates that have contributed to shaping both our understanding and our expectations of the EU’s possible futures.Acknowledgements Introduction: From Maastricht to Brexit, Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione I.The Normative Turn in EU Studies: A Republican Europe? 1.The Normative Challenge of a European Polity: Cosmopolitanism and Communitarianism Compared, Criticised and Combined, Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione 2.Normative Theory and the European Union: Legitimising the Euro-polity and its Regime, Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione 3.Democracy, Sovereignty and the Constitution of the European Union: The Republican Alternative to Liberalism, Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione II.Rethinking Sovereignty 4.Building the Union: The Nature of Sovereignty in Europe’s Political Architecture, Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione 5.Sovereignty, Post-Sovereignty and Pre-Sovereignty: Reconceptualising the State, Rights and Democracy in the EU, Richard Bellamy III.Constituting the EU 6.Constitution Making as Normal Politics: Disagreement and Compromise in the Drafting of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and Constitution, Richard Bellamy and Justus Schönlau 7.Constitutional Politics in the European Union’ , Dario Castiglione 8.Back to the future? The euro and the EU silent constitution building, Dario Castiglione IV.Citizenship, Identity and Language 9.The Liberty of the Moderns: Civic and Market Freedom in the EU, Richard Bellamy 10.Political identity in a ‘community of strangers’, Dario Castiglione 11. Negotiating language regimes, Dario Castiglione V.The Democratic Deficit 12.The Uses of Democracy: Reflections on the EU’s Democratic Deficit, Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione 13.Still in Deficit: Rights, Regulation and Democracy in the EU, Richard Bellamy 14.Democracy without Democracy?: Can the EU’s Democratic ‘Outputs’ be Separated from the Democratic ‘Inputs’ Provided by Competitive Parties and Majority Rule?, Richard Bellamy 15.Beyond a Constraining Dissensus: The Role of National Parliaments in Domesticating and Normalising the Politicization of European Integration, Richard Bellamy and Sandra Kröger VI.Representing Europeans 16.Democracy by Delegation? Who Represents Whom and How in European Governance, Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione 17.Three Models of Democracy, Political Community and Representation in the EU, Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione 18.An Ever Closer Union of Peoples: Republican Intergovernmentalism, Demoi-cracy and Representation in the EU, Richard Bellamy VII Conclusions: Confronting the Eurocrisis and Brexit 19.Political Legitimacy and European Monetary Union: Contracts, Constitutionalism and the Normative Logic of Two-Level Games, Richard Bellamy and Albert Weale 20.It’s the politics, stupid! The EU after Brexit, and its Demoi-cratic Disconnect Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione References Cases cited in the boo

Normative Theory and the European Union: Legitimising the Euro-polity and its Regime

legitimacy; integration theory; democracy

Three Models of Democracy, Political Community and Representation in the EU

types: ArticleThis version is the author's peer-reviewed final manuscript. The published version is available from the Taylor & Francis web site http://www.tandfonline.com/ or by following the DOI in this record. Copyright Taylor & Francis.The EU's political system represents European citizens via three different channels: through the European Parliament; indirectly through their governments in the Council; and through domestic elections, which hold these last democratically accountable to national parliaments or citizens. However, these channels involve different and incompatible types of representation and forms of democracy, reflecting divergent conceptions of political community which, following Philip Pettit, we term solidarism, singularism and civicity respectively. The first channel seeks to represent the common good of a European people; the second the mutual self-interest of the single member states. We argue the first lacks social and political legitimacy, while the second proves insufficient to tackle collective European problems equitably or effectively. We propose reinforcing the third channel so as to modify these other two and produce a European ‘demoi-cracy’ able to sustain the form of representative democracy we associate with a civicity. We contend such a system fosters an ‘ever closer Union among the peoples of Europe’ by allowing the construction of shared policies that treat the different demoi with equal concern and respect