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CENTRIPETAL DEMOCRACY
Centripetal
Democracy
Democratic Legitimacy and Political
Identity in Belgium, Switzerland,
and the European Union
J O S EP H LA C EY
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 9/3/2017, SPi
3
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for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
To my parents,
Phyllis and Philip
Acknowledgements
This book is an updated and revised version of a dissertation, carried out at the
European University Institute’s Department of Political and Social Sciences
and defended in June 2015. An initial formulation of some themes developed
in this book has been published in the British Journal of Political Science
(Lacey 2014a), while a large part of Chapter 3 has appeared in the Journal of
European Integration (Lacey 2016). Otherwise, the vast majority of this book
constitutes new material.
A number of persons who have contributed to the development of this work
deserve special mention. Rainer Bauböck, who served as my PhD supervisor, is
heartily thanked. His extensive feedback on chapters as they were produced
was just as important as his disciplined approach towards making sure the
project was on solid foundations in the early days. I also express much
gratitude to Philippe Van Parijs, who was an active co-supervisor. There is
undoubtedly a much greater sharpness to the final product due to the tough
challenges and helpful suggestions that came from Philippe, whose own work
has helped shape the overarching theme of this project.
The works of Hanspeter Kriesi and Nadia Urbinati have also been influen-
tial in shaping various aspects of this project. My thanks to Hanspeter for his
ready availability as a valuable interlocutor and his willingness to be consulted
on chapter drafts over the course of several years, and to Nadia for her helpful
commentary on the completed dissertation draft. Alan Patten also deserves
special mention, both for his willingness to serve as sponsor for a fruitful
research stay at Princeton University’s Department of Politics and for his
specific contribution to this project in lengthy discussions over several chap-
ters during my stay. This research period was sponsored by a Fulbright Schu-
man Award, an institution to which I also extend my gratitude. In the stage
between dissertation and book, I received additional valuable remarks on large
parts of this project from Cecile Fabre, David Miller, and Nenad Stojanovic.
To all three, I extend many warm thanks.
I also offer thanks to those who provided feedback on specific draft chapters
and outlines at various stages of the project. These include all of Rainer
Bauböck’s supervisees over the period 2011–15 in the context of PhD collo-
quia, especially those who served as in-depth discussants for my work: Leila
Hadj-Abdou, Andrei Stavila, Bouke De Vries, and Rutger Birnie. Other valued
readers elsewhere include Emilee Booth Chapman, Helder De Schutter, Ander
Errasti Lopez, Kalypso Nicolaïdis, Philip Pettit, Johannes Pollak, Michael
Saward, Alexander Trechsel, Philippe Schmitter, and Quentin Skinner.
viii Acknowledgements
Contents
Introduction 1
I.1 The Problematic 3
I.2 Justifying the Comparative Approach 7
I.3 Overview of the Project 10
I I . D E M O C R A T I C L E G I T I M A C Y A ND
P OL I TI C AL I D ENT I T Y I N T H E EU
3. A Conceptual Map of the EU 81
3.1 Why Demoi-cracy? 86
3.2 Demoi-cracy and the Meaning of Demos 91
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 9/3/2017, SPi
x Contents
3.3 Demoi-cracy: A Dual Compound Regime of Deep Diversity 95
3.3.1 Deep Diversity and Europe’s Community of Ignorance 96
3.3.2 Dual Compound Regime and European Governance 99
3.4 The Demoi–demos Relationship 104
4. A Democratic Assessment of European Demoi-cracy 106
4.1 The Impossibility, Undesirability, and Satisfactory Nature
of European Democracy 108
4.1.1 The Impossibility of European Democracy 108
4.1.2 The Undesirability of European Democracy 109
4.1.3 The Satisfactory Nature of European Democracy 110
4.2 Statespeoples’ Control in the EU 113
4.2.1 Statespeoples’ Control of EU Membership 114
4.2.2 Statespeoples’ Control of Treaty-Making 115
4.2.3 Statespeoples’ Control of the European Council and the Council 119
4.3 Citizens’ Control in the EU 122
4.3.1 Citizens’ Control of the Commission 123
4.3.2 Citizens’ Control of the European Parliament 125
4.3.3 Citizens’ Control of the European Central Bank 127
4.3.4 Technocracy, Collusion, and Populism in the EU 129
4.4 The Public Sphere and the Role of Civil Society 131
4.4.1 Discursive Participation 131
4.4.2 Mobilization 133
4.5 The Democratic Deficit in Summary 136
Conclusion to Part II 139
I I I. T E S T I NG T HE L I NG U A FR A N C A T H E S I S:
BE LGIUM AND SWITZERLAND COMPARED
5. Belgium Versus the Lingua Franca Thesis 145
5.1 Political Community Formation in Belgium 146
5.1.1 Francophone Linguistic Dominance Versus Flemish
Language Equality 147
5.1.2 Flemish Communalism Versus Francophone Regionalism 151
5.1.3 Francophone Federalism Versus Flemish
Confederalism/Separatism 153
5.1.4 The Belgian Demos–Demoi Relationship 155
5.2 Consociationalism and Federalism in Belgium 157
5.3 Democracy in Belgium 160
5.3.1 The Belgian Voting Space Compound 161
5.3.2 Democratic Representation: Authorization,
Accountability, and Gatekeeping 164
5.3.3 Consociationalism and Democratic Representation 165
5.3.4 Centripetal Democracy Foregone? 169
5.4 The Lingua Franca Thesis Confirmed? 172
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 9/3/2017, SPi
Contents xi
I V . I MPL I C A T I O NS FO R D E M O C R A T I C L E G I T I M A C Y
AND POLITIC AL IDENTITY IN THE EU
7. Modelling Centripetal Democracy for the EU 217
7.1 A Realistic Demoi-cratic Ideal 219
7.1.1 Executive Formation and the European Party System 220
7.1.2 Direct Democracy: Accession and Secession 226
7.1.3 Direct Democracy: Primary Law 228
7.1.4 Direct Democracy: Secondary Law 231
7.1.5 Some Qualifications: Managing Differentiated Integration 236
7.2 A New Representative Politics and the Maturation of the
European Public Sphere 238
7.2.1 Visible Power and Identity-Formation in a Less
Populist EU 238
7.2.2 The Possibility of and Limitations to Discursive
Integration in the EU 243
7.3 The Prospects: Democratic Legitimacy and the Lingua Franca Thesis 246
7.3.1 Democratic Legitimacy in the EU: A Likely Scenario? 247
7.3.2 How Strong is the Lingua Franca Thesis Threat in the EU? 249
7.4 Are There Alternatives? 252
The Argument in Summary 257
References 265
Index 287
List of Figures
For most of its approximately sixty-year existence, the European Union (EU)1
has accumulated substantial governing powers without receiving much demo-
cratic input from citizens. Such observations have sustained decades of debate
among academics and the upper echelons of European institutions in which
the legitimate basis of the EU’s long-growing influence has been under
question. Yet so long as citizens perceived the EU as benign, or even as having
a generally positive impact on their welfare, these legitimacy concerns only
occasionally found resonance in mainstream national debates. Enter the
financial crisis and the EU was no longer thought to be delivering the goods.
At least since 2009, citizens from across Europe have been pointedly asking
key questions of legitimacy that strike to the core of the European project:
What is Europe anyway? Who is making the decisions, and for whom? Why
should these decisions be obeyed? In short, the financial crisis has exposed like
never before the EU’s purported legitimacy gap to the popular mind.
Meanwhile, the Euro-sceptical forces that have long pervaded British pol-
itics managed to pressurize the government into holding a referendum on EU
membership (popularly referred to as the Brexit referendum). To the great
surprise of most observers, with a turnout representing 72.2 per cent of the
electorate, Euro-scepticism prevailed as 52 per cent of British voters decided in
favour of leaving the EU following the referendum on 23 June 2016. A range of
factors surely contributed to this result, yet a substantial part of the discourse
concerned questioning the EU’s democratic credentials. Reviewing the final
pre-referendum statements of prominent publications and political figures
who advocated a vote to leave the EU is telling in this regard. The editorial
of a weekly conservative magazine, The Spectator, referred to ‘the EU’s fun-
damental lack of democracy’; a European Parliament that ‘represents many
1
Technically, the EU was created only in 1993 under the Maastricht Treaty. My reference here
to a longer history of this association should be understood as including the European Economic
Community (EEC) established under the Treaty of Rome in 1957, out of which the EU grew and
incorporated within itself under the modified name European Community under Maastricht.
The Lisbon Treaty, which came into effect in 2009, abolished the European Community, with the
EU subsuming its functions.
2 Centripetal Democracy
2
http://www.spectator.co.uk/2016/06/out-and-into-the-world-why-the-spectator-is-for-leave/.
3
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/19/please-vote-leave-on-thursday-because-well-
never-get-this-chance/.
4
http://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/681776/nigel-farage-eu-referendum-
brexit-vote-leave-independence-ukip.
Introduction 3
I. 1 THE PROBLEMA TI C
Philippe Van Parijs adopts the relatively uncontroversial view that democracy
requires some kind of demos or unified people if it is to be sustainable in the
long run. He also endorses the increasingly prevalent position that a thin civic
identity based on common commitment to political principles and projects is
sufficient to constitute a democratic people, eschewing the historically popular
notion that a demos must be reinforced by cultural homogeneity in the form
of common ethnicity or religious commitment (Van Parijs 2011: 28–30).
What he seeks to revive, however, is the nineteenth-century thesis famously
put forward by John Stuart Mill (1862: 310), which states that the functioning
of democracy requires a linguistically unified demos. Significantly, this does
not mean that all citizens must have the same first language to make democ-
racy work, but merely that they generally have sufficient knowledge of one
language in which communication can typically proceed with ease. Following
Mill’s line of thought, Van Parijs (2011: 28) claims that the emergence of a
demos is ‘facilitated, indeed made possible, by the availability of a common
language’. And, in a phrase, there can be ‘[n]o viable democracy without a
linguistically unified demos’ (Van Parijs 2000: 236).
What is fundamentally at stake in these propositions is that a common
language is essential as a fluent means of discourse by which citizens can
communicate with one another and the governing authorities in the pursuit of
public policy. Multilingual contexts are expected to give rise to distinct public
spheres of political discourse, such that the vast majority of citizens in the
respective public spheres will access media and engage politically in their own
language. Citizens in different public spheres, in other words, will tend to go
through different processes of opinion formation. But why should this be a
problem? Underlying Van Parijs’ position are several powerful presupposi-
tions about the logic according to which democratic relations in multilingual
political systems proceed.
First, it is assumed that the existence of linguistically distinct public spheres
will serve to create different identities and corresponding sociopolitical
4 Centripetal Democracy
cultures. Second, insofar as the public spheres do not undergo the same
processes of opinion formation or adopt the same sociopolitical norms and
styles, there is a high risk that different political preferences will emerge.
Third, under these circumstances, political conflict is expected to become
crystallized around such differences between the linguistically demarcated
groups, so that they each feel constrained by one another in pursuit of their
own independently derived preferences. Finally, the inability of members from
the distinctive public spheres to find satisfaction at the central governing level
will weaken the demos by leading to demands among certain actors in the
respective public spheres for increasing autonomy from the central authority,
to the limit of complete secession.
Consistent with the literature on deeply divided societies, this kind of
process will tend to be led by political parties, who are often electorally
incentivized to organize political competition around salient markers of
identity. A major reason for this is that it may be easier to garner votes by
organizing political competition in this way than by attempting to appeal to
citizens across salient divisions on the basis of ideology or general policy
proposals directed towards the common good (Reilly 2001: 4). Donald
L. Horowitz (2014: 5) neatly sums up the problem: ‘In societies severely
divided by ethnicity, race, religion, language, or any other form of ascriptive
affiliation, ethnic divisions make democracy difficult, because they tend to
produce ethnic parties and ethnic voting.’
As Jan Erk (2008) observes in his study of deeply divided societies, there is
an ineluctable tendency for state and society to become congruent over time as
people with the same socio-political culture wish to govern themselves with as
little concession as possible to other political communities. The case of
linguistically divided public spheres, as the above outlined logic suggests, is a
forerunning example of this phenomenon. Historically speaking, this view
appears to receive broad support insofar as nation-building in the nineteenth
century standardly involved linguistic homogenization in democratizing states
across the Western world, while acute political conflict has been a mainstay of
the political scene in many political systems constituted by linguistically
distinct public spheres.
The word ‘viable’ is a key qualifier in Van Parijs’ above statement. There are
two possible ways of interpreting this term, one that makes his claim an
absolutist thesis and another that makes it a matter of degree. Given the
continued and long-standing existence of multilingual democratic states, like
Canada, the absolutist understanding whereby all multilingual democracies
are seen as ultimately doomed to failure seems highly doubtful. In fact, despite
being a proponent of the view that democracy requires a unified public sphere,
Van Parijs (2013: 61) is committed to the long-term viability of his native
multilingual Belgium. Clearly therefore, his thesis should be understood as a
matter of degree, not predicting the eventual demise of all linguistically
Introduction 5
divided political systems, but rather insisting upon their inability to form a
demos strong enough to undergird robustly democratic practices. In other
words, the lot of multilingual democracies is to constantly grapple with
identity crises and the democratic difficulties of dealing with distinct processes
of opinion formation. While this does not guarantee the eventual failure of the
system, it is expected to make them particularly vulnerable to the emergence
and persistence of acutely conflicting, disintegrative and secessionist tenden-
cies that stymie democratic institutions.
To avoid confusion between the absolutist and relative interpretations of
Van Parijs’ hypothesis, we should give the latter its own explicit formulation
since it is with this interpretation that the project is concerned. Let us
henceforward refer to the relative interpretation of Van Parijs’ view as the
lingua franca thesis on sustainable democratic systems, or the LFT for short.
It can be briefly stated as follows: ‘The less linguistically unified a political
community, the more problematic is the establishment and sustainability of a
democratically legitimate regime.’ Put differently, the less likely it is that two
people chosen at random can communicate with one another in a political
community, the more difficult it will be to have well-functioning and sustain-
able democratic institutions.5
From this construction of the LFT, two closely related questions emerge.
First, if the LFT is a matter of degree, then there must be circumstances
extraneous to the supposed dynamics of distinctive public spheres in a demo-
cratic system that make the system more or less likely to succumb to these
dynamics. Stated otherwise, are there forces that may mitigate some of the key
factors leading to the more problematic consequences predicted by the LFT?
Second, if it is possible to mitigate the consequences expected by the LFT, can
it then be overcome entirely or neutralized under certain conditions?
While the attempt to answer these questions will be relevant to any multi-
lingual political system, this inquiry is primarily concerned with the EU, which
is fragmented into several dozen public spheres of political debate. As a
relatively young political system, which nevertheless claims to aspire for
democratic legitimacy and supranational identity formation, the EU may
not serve as an especially good case for testing the main claims of the
LFT. On the contrary, the extent to which we accept the validity of the LFT
and its presuppositions will have a major impact on how we understand the
problems of and the prospects for the achievement of democratic legitimacy in
the EU. Should this political system find itself in an especially poor position
with regard to the LFT, there may be low lying limits to just how much
European democracy can be improved.
5
Thanks to Van Parijs for assistance in reformulating his hypothesis in this way.
6 Centripetal Democracy
In order to test the LFT in a way that is relevant to the EU, I propose to
assess the democratic performance of political systems that have had to
confront the LFT and which bear closest resemblance to the EU qua political
system. In my view, this narrows the range of instructive cases down to
political systems that have a) entrenched multilevel government, b) linguis-
tically distinctive public spheres, and c) claims to democratic legitimacy. On
the basis of these criteria, several contemporary cases immediately come to
mind, most prominently Belgium, Canada, India, Spain, and Switzerland,
though there are others worthy of attention.6 A more complete analysis
would involve comparing the EU with at least these political systems, yet the
limits of this book dictate the choice of a more modest range of cases.
Belgium and Switzerland have been selected since they are expected to
produce especially valuable comparative insights: the former has historically
struggled in dealing with the existence of distinctive public spheres, whereas
the latter seems to have met with more success. Indeed, precisely because of its
apparent success, Switzerland stands out as a curiosity that few other cases
could rightly claim to displace in this study. The same is not true for Belgium
as a number of other multilingual political systems have encountered similar
difficulties with integrating linguistically divided public spheres. Spain too is
a special example of this. A significant difference is that Belgium (like Switzerland)
has no credible lingua franca, such that linguistic differentiation in this polity
plays a greater role in isolating the public spheres from one another. While
regional languages, like Catalan and Basque, are widely spoken within their
respective territories, Castilian can be considered the lingua franca of Spain.
Because it is a purer case of linguistically isolated public spheres, Belgium may
be a marginally better case selection than Spain, both for testing the LFT and
providing comparative lessons for the EU (which similarly lacks a common
language).
Canada has the special feature of having no lingua franca to mediate
between the majority English and minority French speakers. However, this
country would seem to be an intermediate case that has been in many ways
more successful than Belgium, yet less effective than Switzerland, in managing
multilingualism. The more limited contrast between Canada and Switzerland,
as opposed to Belgium and Switzerland, would seem to promise somewhat less
productive comparative insight. While India does not yet have a lingua franca,
both Hindi and English have firmly emerged as lingua franca contenders and
may ultimately make the LFT less relevant over time. Indeed, it is an express
6
Several valuable studies take a number of these and other cases together, in an effort to
explain the difficulties of integrating deeply divided societies (e.g. Toubeau 2010; Stepan, Linz,
and Yadav 2011; Alonso 2012). Although there is some thematic overlap between these and the
present study, the focus of the former is not with the LFT problematic, that is, the impact of
distinctive public spheres on democratic legitimacy and political identity.
Introduction 7
clause in the Constitution of India that the state should aim to develop Hindi
‘as a medium of expression for all the elements of the composite culture of
India’ (Art. 351). As things stand, India has undoubtedly experienced diffi-
culty in managing its linguistic diversity, but, like Canada, may be considered
an intermediate case when compared to Belgium. Moreover, India is still
developing as a democratic system since its independence in 1947 and the
impact of linguistic diversity on the quality of its democratic functioning may
be more difficult to discern than in the chosen cases. Both Belgium and
Switzerland have been relatively consolidated democracies for a long period,
where the interaction between multilingualism and democracy has been
ongoing since the middle of the nineteenth century. Effectively, these cases
have two main advantages over India when it comes to testing the LFT and
drawing lessons for the EU: greater observability over time and the absence
of persistent intervening variables, like mass poverty and local corruption,
that might affect democratic functioning independently of any impact that
linguistic diversity may be simultaneously exerting.7
7
While Belgium and Switzerland might be significantly better cases for testing the LFT, there
is a special advantage that India possesses when it comes to drawing lessons that are pertinent to
the EU. Specifically, India’s linguistic diversity (twenty-three constitutionally recognized
languages) is much closer to the EU (twenty-four official languages) than either Belgium
(three official languages) or Switzerland (four official languages). As we shall see in the Conclu-
sion to Part III of this book, the number and size of language groups does make a difference to
how the dynamics of the LFT manifest themselves in multilingual societies.
8 Centripetal Democracy
Environment
Inputs Outputs
Political Institutions of
Environment
Community Authority
8
A reader familiar with Easton’s work may wonder why I have not chosen to replicate his
now famous graphic of the political system (Easton 1957: 384). I believe what I have presented
differs from Easton’s representation only in form and not in substance, with the advantage of
adding clarity. Easton’s classic graphic does not distinguish between the political community and
the institutions of authority. This runs the risk of misinterpretations, including the confusion
that the political system is somehow equivalent to the authorities and exclusive of the political
community.
Introduction 9
My aims in this project are to a) identify the conditions under which demo-
cratic legitimacy is most likely to suffer from the logic of the LFT, b) attempt to
discover whether or not it is possible to overcome the LFT without establish-
ing a lingua franca, and c) assess the prospects for attaining democratic
9
For Belgium–EU comparison on democratic legitimacy, see Van Parijs (2000) and Sinardet
and Bursens (2014). For Belgium–Switzerland comparison on democratic legitimacy, see
Stojanovic (2009). For Switzerland–EU comparison on democratic legitimacy, see Lacey (2014a).
For Belgium–Switzerland–EU comparison on democratic legitimacy, see Papadopoulos and
Magnette (2010).
Introduction 11
Oli ollut kuuma päivä, ja aivan hikisenä olit joutunut veturiin. Siellä
oli värisyttänyt ja miltei paleltanut. Ja minkä näköiseksi olit tullut —
öljyiseksi ja nokiseksi käsistäsi ja vaatteistasi; oikeastaan teki mielesi
mennä suoraa päätä kylpemään. Mutta et sitäkään jaksanut.
Sinä iltana läksit pian levolle, sillä sinun piti nousta varhain
seuraavana aamuna.
33.
34.
— Minäpä tiedän, mitä sinä voisit oppia sitten kun tulet terveeksi.
Oppisit kutomaan verkkoja. Se tulisi olemaan sinulle sopivaa työtä
ensi syksynä.
Yötä päivää olin puolestasi rukoillut siitä hetkestä asti, jona sinut
vietiin kotoa. Viltteihin peitettynä oli sinut paareilla kannettu
puutarhan läpi ja sitten tietä pitkin pysäkille. Lehtolan asukkaat olivat
osaaottaen ikkunoistaan katselleet synkkää saattoa, ja Tapiolan
isäntä oli metsäpirtistään rientänyt sairasta saattamaan. Itse olit ollut
tyyni. Olin pannut sinisen harsoni kasvojesi yli, ettei tulisi tomua
sieramiisi, ja sinä olit harson alta seurannut molemmin puolin tietä
näkyviä peltojen lyhteitä.
Ja oli kuin olisit tahtonut minua siinä auttaa ja kuin olisin kuullut
iloisen äänesi lapsuutesi ajoilta, kun keinutuolissa istuen huudahdit:
Niin mutta kyllä teillä olisi ikävä, ellei minua olisi!
— Matkaani.
Et vastannut mitään.
35.
Kai hän oli oikeassa. Ja kaiketi olikin niin, että ihmisten sieluissa
tuikki valo ja että heistä itsestään riippui, pääsikö se valaisemaan
heidän silmäinsä ikkunoista elämän hämärään. Useimmat tuskin
ovat mistään niin varuillaan kuin siitä, ettei heidän sisäinen minänsä
millään tavoin pääse itseään ilmaisemaan. Luukut kiinni ja ovet
salpaan! Ja niinpä jääkin elämä monelle erämaaksi, jossa jokainen
astuu polkuansa muista paljoa tietämättä.
*****
36.
37.