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Democracy beyond the Nation State? The case for Europe

Week 1: Democracy and the Nation State

What is a nation?

Ernest Renan - the nation as a form of morality.
Stalin - it comes together sharing economic life, language and land.
Weber - "prestige community" with a sense of cultural mission.
Karl Deutsch - "the presence of sufficient communication facilities with enough complementarily to produce the overall result."
Clifford Geertz - ethnic and civic are two competing but yet complementary components
Anthony Giddens - "bordered-power containers".

• Political awareness
• Common territory
• Shared language
• Common psychological belief
• Common history
• Culture/religion ?
• Identity preference

Minorities in Democracies

There are very few real nation states. Democracies are based in a capital and there can be more than one nation in a state, e.g. UK has Wales, England, Scotland, etc. British politics can be very English orientated.

Week 2: Cosmopolitanism and Global Democracy

Session 1: Cosmopolitanism and Globalisation Session 2: Globalisation and Democracy

Week 3: The EU: Intergovernmental, Federal or Multi-level?

Theories of Integration

There has been a shift from realism to liberalism and back and forth.
Neo-realist - the state is the main player
Realist - the state is the only player. This view disregards what happens in the state and international bodies and pressure groups, etc.

International Relations Approaches

Functionalism/neo-functionalism (David Mitrany) - Functionalists criticised Realism as it only looks at the state and not other institutions (global or within the state).
Mitrany - war is founded in nationalism. Agencies (functional ones) should be developed to operate at different levels on certain topics, e.g. Universal Postal Union. States opt into these organisations. The agencies have control/authority in their area.
The alternative to functionalism is federalism.
Neo-functionalism (Ernst Haas) - the state is not assumed the only powers. Non-state actors are important. European integration is from "spillover".
Jean Monnet - Schuman plan. Co-operation is around oil and coal.

There was a reaction against functionalism.

Liberal Governmentalism (Andrew Maravcsik). This is a shift back to realism with states as rational actors with national interests.
Stanley Hoffman - European integration should be seen as part of the global system, e.g. Cold War.

• Governments are powerful actors.
• Spillover is possible in low politics but not high politics like defence.
• Governments are driven by domestic concerns.
• Universal theories cannot explain everything.

Comparative Politics

New Institutionalism (Armstrong, Hix and Bulmer) - Institutions are important in shaping government's preferences and are key players with their own agendas.
Institutions - courts, executives, parliaments, but also norms and values.
Path dependency - once a path is taken, it is hard to get onto a different path, e.g. moving away from the Common Agricultural Policy.

Networks Approach

Peterson, Blomberg - It looks at the day to day exchanges and negotiations.

Policy network - cluster of actors of whom have a stake and can all have the capacity to make the negotiation fail or work. There is no hierarchy. States bring in their own experts. It relies on bargaining and resource exchange. From this a policy can develop.
Issue network - similar to policy but they deal with specific issues, e.g. GM crops. Epistemic communities made up of experts and professionals.

The Institutions

European governance: EC (immigration, economics), Common Foreign and Security policy and Justice and Home Affairs (law, police, human rights, Europol).
local, national and European - (Gary Marks) multi-level government
Supranational government - its reliant on the development of transnational government. People are citizens of their countries but also of Europe.

Week 4: Sovereignty and Subsidiarity: Towards Post-Sovereignty?

What is Sovereignty?

Sovereign power is the highest power but there is a problem surrounding who holds this power.

Thomas Hobbes - sovereignty is power and comes from the sovereign (the king). He has the absolute power. However, it is unstable and uncertain, e.g. Louis XIV - "I am the state". You need to be able to make the people so what you want.
J.S. Mill - you need representative government as a good king cannot do all the work on his own.

Political sovereignty - power in government.
Legal sovereignty - this places limits.
The political and legal authority relies upon each other.

How can you have international law if there is no one to legitimise it? States have to give up some of their authority but if you are powerful, you can ignore it:

• The state should hold onto sovereignty
• States are transferring sovereignty to the UN, EU, etc
• Is there a post sovereignty concept? Universality of human rights? It is legitimate because it is a universal morality.

Rousseau/Locke - sovereignty from the people (social contract)

Sovereignty can be divided into two parts:

• Polity - actors and aims
• Regime - legally regulative aspect - divided or shared sovereignty is mostly federal.

Subsidiarity

The EU is founded upon international law. Where does sovereignty lie in the EU?
Subsidiarity - having authority at the lowest level and so if the matter, can not be dealt with, it is pushed up, e.g. It is most efficient for local government to deal with collecting refuge rather than the EU.

Week 5: What Rule? Democracy and Governance

The Democratic Deficit

Lack of democratic accountability. There is a gap between the powers transferred to the community level and the control of the elected Parliament over them.

Where are the deficits?

This is where the citizens have no options in the decision making process. The people did not have much say in the founding of the European institutions where they decide what they are and how they are framed. The deficits relate to the process and the decision making. The agenda of the Commission is not framed by the citizens and meetings are secretive. The Commissioners are civil servants but ex-politicans!

Governance

White Paper - Brussels, 25/07/2001 com(2001) 428 final

In Europe there is no government but there is governance.
Principles of good governance:

• openness
• participation - you can e-mail and will be responded
• accountability
• effectiveness
• coherence
• flexibility
• decisions should be taken at the lowest level

Week 6: What People? Identity, Interests and Representation

Session 1: The European Parliament Session 2: The European Demos

Week 7: Does the EU Need a Constitution?

The EU Constitution

Citizenship - the right to move and reside freely in the EU and the right to vote. EU citizenship is in addition to national citizenship.

Proposed changes

The minutes of the meetings of the Council of Ministers will be sent to the national parliaments. National governments can complain about new legislation. The three pillars set up by the Maastricht Treaty will be removed.

The Charter of Fundamental European Rights

This document does not state to be human rights but rather European rights and so this avoids many of the pitfalls of cultural relativism. The test will be how it could be applied to such countries as Turkey as they try to gain membership of the EU.

Week 8: European Citizenship: Rhetoric or Reality?

The term citizenship is an ambiguous term.
We are subjects of the monarch in the UK. Citizenship entails being a member of a state. Identities vary from people to people where they identify themselves differently depending on where they come from. If you are not a citizen of an European Union state, you cannot hold any EU citizenship rights. (Maastricht article 8).

Intergovernmentalists - EU granting citizenship undermines the sovereignty of the state.
Neo-functionalists - citizenship is moved up a level to the EU.

If citizenship is based on the state, is EU citizenship pointless? The EU is about trade and so this allows free movement in trade and as such, this is market citizenship.

Week 9: Legitimacy

Legitimacy underpins the contents of the whole of this course.

Beetham (1991) defines legitimacy to be:

• dependant on consent
• Legality - rule of law
• normative justifiability - what beliefs people believe in, e.g. freedom. It relates to the ends of the government and if these are in line with the people's beliefs.

Legitimation - people in power are there through the content of the people through, for example, elections.
In the EU, we do not directly chose the people in charge such as the people in the Commission and the Council. The people elect the Parliament and the Parliament approves the Commission and the Council members. The state governments also can propose their commissioners.

Delegitmatisation - where the people withdraw consent.
This is based on liberal democracies.

There is not a European demos and therefore it is difficult to have a European citizenry. There has been attempts to make the EU more directly legitimate. Legislation id being passed to tie the states to laws rather than governments since governments can change. When they do, their views on the EU can change too. Having EU citizenship undermines the national citizenship but treaties such as Amsterdam and Maastricht claim the EU does not replace national citizenship.

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