Criticism related to the EU’s democratic deficit became more prominent in the aftermath of the financial crisis. According to Firat Cengiz, it is crucial for European citizens to become more involved in policymaking processes if this deficit is to be overcome. However, she points at an inherent problem affecting areas such as competition policy, where the increasing prominence of overly technical language has undermined opportunities for democratic engagement

Cengiz, Farat

LSE Research Online

1/22/2016The EU policymaking paradox: Citizen participation is a must,but the shaping of policies has become too technicalblogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2016/01/22/the-eu-policymaking-paradox-citizen-participation-is-a-must-but-the-shaping-of-policies-has-become-too-technical/Criticism related to the EU’s democratic deﬁcit became more prominent in the aftermath of theﬁnancial crisis. According to Firat Cengiz, it is crucial for European citizens to become moreinvolved in policymaking processes if this deﬁcit is to be overcome. However, she points at aninherent problem aﬀecting areas such as competition policy, where the increasing prominence ofoverly technical language has undermined opportunities for democratic engagement.The European Union’s democratic deﬁcit reached new dimensions in the aftermath of the 2008political and ﬁnancial crisis. The member states’ immediate reliance on intergovernmental methodsin crisis management, decreasing solidarity between governments and also partially between the peoples of thecreditor and debtor countries, and the lack of any meaningful role for the European Parliament and nationalparliaments in the governance of the Economic and Monetary Union have collectively contributed to citizens’fundamental distrust of the European economic and political system. Citizens increasingly rely on mechanismsoutside the conventional political system to voice their distrust, as reﬂected in increasing hashtag activism and thegrowth of a protesting culture.The Union’s democratic deﬁcit had been much discussed before the crisis. As an atypical political system that standssomewhere in between an international organisation and a federal state, the Union does not satisfy the criteria of aliberal democracy. In a nutshell, this is because in the absence of a directly elected institution with ultimatelegislative power (like national parliaments) and an executive held to account by that legislative (like nationalgovernments), it is incredibly diﬃcult for European citizens to make an impact on decisions made in Brusselsthrough the ballot box.Neither does the Union satisfy the republican democracy model that sees democracy as a collective decision-making process exercised by a demos (a dense harmonious community) to achieve the common good. Some arguethat Europe has multiple demoi rather than a single one. In any case, the Union’s diverse citizenship makes itdiﬃcult for citizens to communicate with each other in a common political sphere.The fallacy of input-output and democracy-eﬀectiveness dividesBefore the crisis, the Union’s democracy problems were partially assumed away in the light of the input-outputlegitimacy model. Proponents of this model did not deny that the European Union suﬀered from low citizen ‘input’ toits policymaking process. But they argued that partially thanks to its technocratic and expertise-driven policymakingprocess, the Union created a single market and regulatory policies that are in the interests of citizens. According tothis perspective, this attributed ‘output’ legitimacy to Union governance. The output-based understanding ofdemocracy was largely inspired by the New Public Management and the European regulatory state theories thatperceive the democratic qualities of policymaking and the eﬀectiveness of policies as entirely separate.Post-ﬁnancial crisis political developments and citizens’ increasingly vocal stance against the economic and politicalsystem require a fundamental shift in how we perceive and talk about the Union’s democratic deﬁcit. First, given theincreasing welfare gap and inequality between diﬀerent European countries and diﬀerent classes of citizens,insuﬃcient citizen participation in policymaking cannot be excused with the promise of economic welfare. In otherwords, the Union’s ‘input legitimacy deﬁcit’ can no longer be justiﬁed with the promise of ‘output legitimacy’. Asforcefully argued by Beetham, it is never a good idea for a political system to build its relationship with citizens solelyon the promise of performance, because this would leave the relationship vulnerable to a crisis when the promised1/4performance cannot be delivered.Secondly, the input-output dichotomy as well as the New Public Management and the European regulatory statemodels can be questioned at a more fundamental level. The ﬁnancial crisis and its management alone stand asproofs that expertise-driven policymaking at the expense of citizen participation does not guarantee more eﬀectivepolicies maximising citizen welfare. In the light of post-modern deliberative democracy models the input-outputdichotomy, that perceives the democratic qualities of policymaking and the eﬀectiveness of policies as separate,appears to suﬀer from a fundamental fallacy.If citizens provide a direct source of information on policies’ eﬀects on their life experiences and welfare how caneﬀective policies be made without suﬃcient citizen participation solely on the basis of technical expertise? Putdiﬀerently, how can output legitimacy be achieved without input legitimacy? Deliberative democracy models force usto question the democracy-eﬀectiveness divide and to embrace a more holistic understanding of policymaking inwhich democracy (input) and eﬀectiveness (output) play mutually reinforcing, and not alternative roles.In the shadow of the post-crisis political developments, and particularly the Greek experiences, the Union’seconomic governance is increasingly criticised for being undemocratic. This burgeoning debate on economicdemocracy might have signiﬁcant consequences on the shape of the Union and its relationship with citizens in thenear future, for instance by directly impacting the UK citizens’ decision on whether or not to stay within the Union inthe context of the forthcoming Brexit vote.Nevertheless, the democracy discourse focuses almost exclusively on high policy issues, such as the managementof the Economic and Monetary Union and the refugee crisis, and it overlooks the democratic qualities ofpolicymaking in less exciting and more technical areas.Democracy in Union competition policyThe Union enjoys exclusive power to regulate the customs union, monetary policy for the euro, the commonﬁsheries policy, common commercial policy and in the area of competition policy. Although these policies do notattract much public attention due to their technical nature, they have a signiﬁcant impact on citizens’ dailyexperiences and their welfare. Since they are exclusively regulated by the Union, democratic input in these areasessentially depends on mechanisms for citizen participation at the EU-level.Most decisions regarding these policies are increasingly made within inaccessible and opaque networks, bringingtogether national and EU level oﬃcials, bureaucrats, experts and at times interest group members. These networksdo not have any relationship with citizens, and at times they make decisions using soft law methods outside theUnion’s legislative framework. As a result, they exacerbate the EU’s democratic deﬁcit. Since they are relativelynovel governance phenomena, research regarding the democratic qualities of these networks and proposals toincrease democracy in network governance are relatively scarce.In a recent research project, I have critically assessed the democratic qualities of the EU’s competition policy in thislight. The project studies the participation of citizens and institutions representing their interests, including theEuropean Parliament and consumer organisations, in the recent reform process of Union competition policy. Thereform process transformed the enforcement of EU rules against anti-competitive agreements, abuse of dominantpositions and anti-competitive mergers.Partially inspired by American antitrust policy, the reforms steered EU competition rules toward a neo-liberalparadigm that employs neo-classical economics as the key enforcement methodology to distinguish betweenharmful (ineﬃcient) and harmless (eﬃcient) behaviour. The European Commission orchestrated the reform processalmost singlehandedly and implemented the reforms using soft-law, network governance and coalition-building withthe epistemic community of European and American competition law and economics scholars.2/4A discursive analysis of competition policy debates in the European Parliament’s Plenary and its Economic andMonetary Aﬀairs Committee (between 1999-2014) shows that, in contrast to the European Commission’s insistenceon economic eﬃciency as the key underlying objective of competition policy, Members of the European Parliament(MEPs) envision a multi-faceted policy that pursues several objectives including: social objectives (such asemployment and environmental protection), industrial policy and internal market objectives, SME protection,protection of consumers, growth, and eﬃciency. After the crisis, MEPs have voiced social policy objectivesconsistently and more so than other policy objectives. Additionally, MEPs have complained on several instancesover imperfect transparency in the European Commission’s management of the reform process and for beingeﬀectively blindsided by the Commission.Figure: Discourses used in competition policy debates in the European Parliament Note: For more information see the author’s longer journal article.Similar to the European Parliament, consumer organisations have also played a minimal role in the reform process.This is not only because consumer vis-à-vis business organisations suﬀer from serious collective action andresource problems, but is also due to the fact that consumer organisations do not speak the same technicallanguage as Commission oﬃcials. They are also not able to provide the technical information and expertise which ismuch needed by Commission oﬃcials in their enforcement activities. Thus, they do not enjoy the same level ofaccess to policymaking as do business organisations.Technical policy discourses and democracyThe European Commission and other actors primarily relied on the scientiﬁc expert discourse of neo-classicaleconomics in the reform process. This technical discourse appears as a key reason for the European Parliamentand consumer organisations’ marginalisation in the reform process. As argued by Foucault, all expert discourses,particularly those in the context of economics, tend to be exclusionary, because individuals cannot be a part of thedebate and criticise what economics argues without being ﬂuent in its language and methodology.3/4This jeopardises democracy in policymaking because apparently technical and scientiﬁc choices often concealpolitical choices. As argued by Beetham, most policy decisions reﬂect a choice regarding the social and economicorder and such choices cannot be perceived as purely scientiﬁc or technical – and therefore devoid of politicalcontent. For instance, the competition policy reform process was very much inﬂuenced by the economic policychoices made in the Union’s Lisbon and Europe 2020 Agendas; and Competition Commissioners Monti, Kroes andAlmunia heavily relied on the Lisbon and Europe 2020 discourses in their defences of the reform process.Thus, as a ﬁnal note, my research project highlights the fundamental importance of an accessible discourse fordemocracy in policymaking. Network governance lacks the procedural and bureaucratic straightjackets of theEU’s legislative process. Thus, if organised in the light of democratic principles, networks can potentially function asopen, participatory platforms giving citizens a real voice in policymaking. But for this to happen, ﬁrst and foremost,the currently inaccessible, overly technical discourses used by networks should be replaced with accessible, simple,citizen friendly ones.This call for more accessible policy discourses might nevertheless generate criticism from the perspective thatcompetition and other policies regulating markets and economy are inherently technical. Thus, experts should havethe primary say in these policies, as citizens do not have as much to contribute to the discussion. In response to this,I argue that competition and similar economic policies make a signiﬁcant impact on citizen welfare – or at least thisis what the European Commission claims – and this makes citizen participation in policymaking a must. Also, thefact that these policies have become so technical that citizens struggle to be even a part of the conversation in itselfstands as proof of the fundamental democracy problems in the making of these policies.Please read our comments policy before commenting .Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, norof the London School of Economics. Featured image: Margrethe Vestager, EU Commissioner for Competition, viawww.livemint.com Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1PrPmIu _________________________________About the authorFirat Cengiz – University of LiverpoolFirat Cengiz is Senior Lecturer in Law and Marie Curie Fellow at the University of Liverpool. Herprimary research interests are in Europeanisation and multi-level governance. She is the authorof Antitrust Federalism in the EU and the US (Routledge, 2012) and the co-editor of Turkey and theEuropean Union: Facing New Challenges and Opportunities (with Lars Hoﬀmann, Routledge,2014).4/4

The EU policymaking paradox: Citizen participation is a must, but the shaping of policies has become too technical

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