Lindseth, Peter L.

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Do 2 Feb2012The Eurozone Crisis and Europe’s Persistent ‘No-DemosProblem’ verfassungsblog.de /eurozone-crisis-europes-persistent-nodemos-problem/Peter Lindseth Do 2 Feb 2012By PETER LINDSETHAs usual, things are moving so quickly in the Eurozone crisis that pressing controversies one day seeminglybecome old news the next.  In the lead up to this week’s EU summit, for example, Germany caused a stir by callingfor the appointment of an external commissioner with the power to veto the Greek budget because of Greece’sinability to meet its budgetary commitments.  We’ll see where that leads, but outrage in Athens was the predictableresult. The Greek finance minister reportedly said: ‘Whoever puts before a people the dilemma of choosing betweenfinancial assistance and national dignity disregards basic historical lessons’.  In the overheated world ofcontemporary Eurozone commentary, one observer called the proposal ‘Anschluss economics’.But as readers of this blog well know, Germany has its own worries about the Eurozone crisis and what it portendsfor that country’s own historically hard-won democracy.  These worries arguably animate, for example, the recentjurisprudence of the German Federal Constitutional Court, as some of my earlier posts have outlined.  From theGerman perspective, recourse to Eurobonds as a means of addressing the crisis (in which other member statesmight add to Germany’s debt obligations without a vote of the national parliament) would almost certainly be seen bythe Court as a violation of the Bundestag’s historical control over the national purse, and therefore also an affront tothe democratic identity of the German constitution.These two contrasting (Greek and German) expressions of concern over the fate of national democracy in the faceof the current crisis, however, are suggestive of a deeper challenge for European integration.  I am referring notmerely to the Eurozone’s seeming lack of financial solidarity among its member states—that, in fact, is merely asymptom.  Rather, I am speaking of the notorious lack of a coherent ‘demos’ for the EU as a whole—what we1/5academics have long called the ‘no-demos problem’.This label refers to Europe’s failure (as yet) to develop a fully autonomous and strongly-legitimated supranationalidentity akin to a national identity, one capable of sustaining the sort of supranational solidarity and mutual financialdiscipline that the current debt crisis may well demand.   The polity to which integration currently corresponds—‘Europe’—does not (as yet) understand itself as sufficiently cohesive to legitimize the EU in a recognizably‘democratic’ and ‘constitutional’ sense.  As Joschka Fischer put it in his famous Berlin speech in May 2000 onEurope’s constitutional future, European governance has long been understood, not without cause, as a largely‘bureaucratic affair run by a faceless, soulless Eurocracy in Brussels’.  This lack of autonomous democraticlegitimacy is now making itself felt in the Eurozone crisis.A European demos need not define itself in linguistic, religious, ethnic, racial or any other purportedly ‘organic’ or‘pre-political’ terms—that would be dangerous and unacceptable.  But, for better or worse, a European demos muststill define itself historically.  This species of historical legitimacy builds on more than merely legal and technocraticfoundations—indeed, on more than what Max Weber called ‘the directly economic disposition of goods andservices’.  Rather, it must be grounded in what Weber described as a ‘particular pathos’ and ‘enduring emotionalfoundations’ derived from a history of ‘common political struggle’.The devastating legacy of extreme nationalism, war, and genocide in Europe in the first half of the twentieth centurydid much to propel the integration process forward in the second half.  But that devastating experience, along withthe seeming benefits of the integration process itself (its so-called ‘output legitimacy’), have proven insufficient tocreate a sense of an autonomous European demos capable of self-rule through supranational institutions‘constituted’ for this purpose.  Hence the limitations on supranational solidarity that one now senses in the Eurozonecrisis.Even as many aspects of governance have, over the last half-century, been otherwise denationalized, indeed‘Europeanized’, the same has not occurred in the realm of political culture, at least not to the same extent.  Europecontinues to suffer from a disconnect between the scope of its (actual or needed) supranational power, and thescope of its autonomous supranational legitimacy. In the realm of political culture, the institutions of representativegovernment within the nation-state have thus retained their central role in terms of democratic and constitutionalidentity, as both the Greek and German perceptions of the current crisis seem to suggest.All this points to the fact that, like any form of essentially delegated governance (akin, say, to delegation to anadministrative agency on the national level), supranational governance in the EU or the Eurozone is legitimate forcertain purposes but not others—unless Europeans are prepared to change fundamentally their understanding ofwhat democratic self-government means, or where it is located.  The recent examples from both Greece andGermany suggest an ongoing and potentially deep resistance to full-blown integration, even as both countries areacutely aware that the current crisis almost certainly demands ‘more Europe’.Whenever we talk about the legitimacy of integration in whatever form, we must always ask the question ‘legitimatefor what?’  It is one thing for a member state to delegate authority to a supranational process to harmonizeregulatory standards in various domains (important a task though that may be).  It is quite another to denationalizethe power over the national purse in an indeterminate way, as a means of saving a common currency whose initialdesign and implementation may well have been so flawed.As the Italian political scientist Stefano Bartolini presciently warned in 2005 (that is, well before the onset of thecurrent crisis), ‘the risk of miscalculating the extent to which true legitimacy surrounds the European institutions andtheir decisions . . . may lead to the overestimating of the capacity of the EU to overcome major economic andsecurity crises’. Unfortunately, the Eurozone crisis is, sadly, proving to be a case in point.  Monetary union dependedimplicitly on the capacity of supranational bodies (most importantly the ECB, but also national governmentscollectively) to undertake certain policy steps that they simply lacked the autonomous legitimacy to take. Resistance, foot-dragging, and push-back are the inevitable result.  The ‘no-demos problem’ is thus not merely an2/5object of academic debate.  Rather it has real bite, and it may still impede the resolution of the crisis.To resolve the current crisis, it is becoming increasingly likely that significant sacrifices in terms of traditionalunderstandings of constitutional democracy on the national level may well be required.  The resolution of the crisiswill, in other words, require more than merely economic or financial concessions.  Rather, it may also ultimatelyrequire deep and possibly painful political-cultural adjustments in prevailing understandings of democratic self-rule.These adjustments may demand, in the end (at least for many Europeans), several steps further in the integrationprocess than they are currently willing to go, precisely because of the lack of a common European demos.  Then theEuro will fail.  Or—and this too is possible—the need to retain the common currency, one which perhaps shouldnever have been established in the first place but whose dismantling now is too costly and unpredictable tocontemplate, may ultimately control the outcome.  But one can only guess how enduring the regime that emergesfrom such functional demands will be.  We must simply wait and see.Peter Lindseth is a professor for international and comparative law at University of Connecticut and currently afellow at the American Academy in Berlin.This post was originally posted on EutopiaLaw.com and is reposted here with thanks.Foto: Radio Nederland Wereldomroep, Flickr Creative CommonsBy PETER LINDSETHAs usual, things are moving so quickly in the Eurozone crisis that pressing controversies one day seeminglybecome old news the next.  In the lead up to this week’s EU summit, for example, Germany caused a stir by callingfor the appointment of an external commissioner with the power to veto the Greek budget because of Greece’sinability to meet its budgetary commitments.  We’ll see where that leads, but outrage in Athens was the predictableresult. The Greek finance minister reportedly said: ‘Whoever puts before a people the dilemma of choosing betweenfinancial assistance and national dignity disregards basic historical lessons’.  In the overheated world ofcontemporary Eurozone commentary, one observer called the proposal ‘Anschluss economics’.3/5But as readers of this blog well know, Germany has its own worries about the Eurozone crisis and what it portendsfor that country’s own historically hard-won democracy.  These worries arguably animate, for example, the recentjurisprudence of the German Federal Constitutional Court, as some of my earlier posts have outlined.  From theGerman perspective, recourse to Eurobonds as a means of addressing the crisis (in which other member statesmight add to Germany’s debt obligations without a vote of the national parliament) would almost certainly be seen bythe Court as a violation of the Bundestag’s historical control over the national purse, and therefore also an affront tothe democratic identity of the German constitution.These two contrasting (Greek and German) expressions of concern over the fate of national democracy in the faceof the current crisis, however, are suggestive of a deeper challenge for European integration.  I am referring notmerely to the Eurozone’s seeming lack of financial solidarity among its member states—that, in fact, is merely asymptom.  Rather, I am speaking of the notorious lack of a coherent ‘demos’ for the EU as a whole—what weacademics have long called the ‘no-demos problem’.This label refers to Europe’s failure (as yet) to develop a fully autonomous and strongly-legitimated supranationalidentity akin to a national identity, one capable of sustaining the sort of supranational solidarity and mutual financialdiscipline that the current debt crisis may well demand.   The polity to which integration currently corresponds—‘Europe’—does not (as yet) understand itself as sufficiently cohesive to legitimize the EU in a recognizably‘democratic’ and ‘constitutional’ sense.  As Joschka Fischer put it in his famous Berlin speech in May 2000 onEurope’s constitutional future, European governance has long been understood, not without cause, as a largely‘bureaucratic affair run by a faceless, soulless Eurocracy in Brussels’.  This lack of autonomous democraticlegitimacy is now making itself felt in the Eurozone crisis.A European demos need not define itself in linguistic, religious, ethnic, racial or any other purportedly ‘organic’ or‘pre-political’ terms—that would be dangerous and unacceptable.  But, for better or worse, a European demos muststill define itself historically.  This species of historical legitimacy builds on more than merely legal and technocraticfoundations—indeed, on more than what Max Weber called ‘the directly economic disposition of goods andservices’.  Rather, it must be grounded in what Weber described as a ‘particular pathos’ and ‘enduring emotionalfoundations’ derived from a history of ‘common political struggle’.The devastating legacy of extreme nationalism, war, and genocide in Europe in the first half of the twentieth centurydid much to propel the integration process forward in the second half.  But that devastating experience, along withthe seeming benefits of the integration process itself (its so-called ‘output legitimacy’), have proven insufficient tocreate a sense of an autonomous European demos capable of self-rule through supranational institutions‘constituted’ for this purpose.  Hence the limitations on supranational solidarity that one now senses in the Eurozonecrisis.Even as many aspects of governance have, over the last half-century, been otherwise denationalized, indeed‘Europeanized’, the same has not occurred in the realm of political culture, at least not to the same extent.  Europecontinues to suffer from a disconnect between the scope of its (actual or needed) supranational power, and thescope of its autonomous supranational legitimacy. In the realm of political culture, the institutions of representativegovernment within the nation-state have thus retained their central role in terms of democratic and constitutionalidentity, as both the Greek and German perceptions of the current crisis seem to suggest.All this points to the fact that, like any form of essentially delegated governance (akin, say, to delegation to anadministrative agency on the national level), supranational governance in the EU or the Eurozone is legitimate forcertain purposes but not others—unless Europeans are prepared to change fundamentally their understanding ofwhat democratic self-government means, or where it is located.  The recent examples from both Greece andGermany suggest an ongoing and potentially deep resistance to full-blown integration, even as both countries areacutely aware that the current crisis almost certainly demands ‘more Europe’.Whenever we talk about the legitimacy of integration in whatever form, we must always ask the question ‘legitimate4/5for what?’  It is one thing for a member state to delegate authority to a supranational process to harmonizeregulatory standards in various domains (important a task though that may be).  It is quite another to denationalizethe power over the national purse in an indeterminate way, as a means of saving a common currency whose initialdesign and implementation may well have been so flawed.As the Italian political scientist Stefano Bartolini presciently warned in 2005 (that is, well before the onset of thecurrent crisis), ‘the risk of miscalculating the extent to which true legitimacy surrounds the European institutions andtheir decisions . . . may lead to the overestimating of the capacity of the EU to overcome major economic andsecurity crises’. Unfortunately, the Eurozone crisis is, sadly, proving to be a case in point.  Monetary union dependedimplicitly on the capacity of supranational bodies (most importantly the ECB, but also national governmentscollectively) to undertake certain policy steps that they simply lacked the autonomous legitimacy to take. Resistance, foot-dragging, and push-back are the inevitable result.  The ‘no-demos problem’ is thus not merely anobject of academic debate.  Rather it has real bite, and it may still impede the resolution of the crisis.To resolve the current crisis, it is becoming increasingly likely that significant sacrifices in terms of traditionalunderstandings of constitutional democracy on the national level may well be required.  The resolution of the crisiswill, in other words, require more than merely economic or financial concessions.  Rather, it may also ultimatelyrequire deep and possibly painful political-cultural adjustments in prevailing understandings of democratic self-rule.These adjustments may demand, in the end (at least for many Europeans), several steps further in the integrationprocess than they are currently willing to go, precisely because of the lack of a common European demos.  Then theEuro will fail.  Or—and this too is possible—the need to retain the common currency, one which perhaps shouldnever have been established in the first place but whose dismantling now is too costly and unpredictable tocontemplate, may ultimately control the outcome.  But one can only guess how enduring the regime that emergesfrom such functional demands will be.  We must simply wait and see.Peter Lindseth is a professor for international and comparative law at University of Connecticut and currently afellow at the American Academy in Berlin.This post was originally posted on EutopiaLaw.com and is reposted here with thanks.Foto: Radio Nederland Wereldomroep, Flickr Creative CommonsLICENSED UNDER CC BY NC NDSUGGESTED CITATION  Lindseth, Peter: The Eurozone Crisis and Europe’s Persistent ‘No-Demos Problem’,VerfBlog, 2012/2/02, http://verfassungsblog.de/eurozone-crisis-europes-persistent-nodemos-problem/.5/5

The Eurozone Crisis and Europe’s Persistent ‘No-Demos Problem’

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The Eurozone Crisis and Europe’s Persistent ‘No-Demos Problem’

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