Democratizing Europe

verfasst von: Antoine Vauchez

Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan US

Buchreihe : Europe in Transition - The NYU European Studies Series

Enthalten in: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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Über dieses Buch

Drawing from recent streams of scholarship, Democratizing Europe provides a renewed portrait of EU government that point at the enduring leading role of independent powers (the European Court, Commission and Central Bank). Vauchez suggests that we recognize this centrality and adjust our democratization strategies accordingly.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Frontmatter

Introduction

Abstract

“This time is different”, as the European Parliament’s slogan had it for its last elections in May 2014. Yes indeed, this time is different, but difference may not lie in the reasons publicized by the European Parliament’s public relations’ department. What is different this time is that the prospect of the gradual parliamentarization of European Union (EU) polity, that has captured much of EU political imagination for the past four decades, no longer appears likely, or even to some extent desirable.

Antoine Vauchez

1. A Potemkin Democracy?

Abstract

Ever since the 1970s, “parliamentarization” as Europe’s has been conceived as the voie royale to the gradual democratization of EU polity, and reform treaties have attempted to shape and stage Europe as a “representative democracy” comme les autres. Yet, the handling of the recent crisis of the Eurozone over the past six years has highlighted the continued precariousness of democratic legitimacy in the context of the European Union. Drawing on results from the political science literature, this chapter points at the relative failure of this sophisticated institutional engineering of a European “representative democracy,” always at risk of appearing as a mere “Potemkin democracy.” Part of this failure to re-orient Europe’s political trajectory lies, I suggest, in our inability to seize Europe as it really is.

Antoine Vauchez

2. Europe’s Way of Government in the Making

Abstract

The second chapter provides a new historical account of the formation of Eu polity, one that identifies “independent institutions” as the bedrock for Europe’s government. Drawing on recent socio-historical research, it exemplifies how, from the 1960s onwards, the ambitious jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice, the increasingly numerous regulations of the European Commission—and later on the monetary decisions of European Central Bank—have jointly set the stage for a transnational polity relatively autonomous from Member States. Relatedly, the chapter identifies “independence” and “expertise” as the very terrain on which Europe’s special political legitimacy and specialized public sphere has been invented and consolidated.

Antoine Vauchez

3. The Crisis of Europe’s Independent Branch

Abstract

The third chapter explains how the Eurozone crisis has put the historically grounded connection between “Eu government” and “independence” into crisis. In a context where the triptych of the Court, the Commission and the Central Bank have been granted unprecedented oversight and controlling powers over national governments’ political economy and social policies (budgetary supervision of the European Commission, the “conditionality policy” of the European Central Bank, etc.), the exteriority of the “independent branch” from the circuit of representative democracy as well as its relative invisibility in Europe’s public sphere are more and more problematic.

Antoine Vauchez

4. Democratizing the Union

Abstract

The last chapter of the book moves to more normative grounds and explores a realist reformatory path that would help combine “independence” with “democracy.” With most reformist strategies geared towards forcing EU political system into the framework of “representative democracy,” little intellectual attention has been given to the independent institutions. As the European Commission, Court and Central Bank are now intervening at the very core of national social contracts, any major overhaul of the political union should therefore prioritize the bid to develop new forms of democratic connections with the various institutions that make up Europe’s independent branch. Drawing on recent trends of reflections on “technical democracy,” Democratizing Europe explores new ways to reconcile the required independence of these institutions with their full insertion into Europe’s public sphere and a responsiveness to the democratic debate.

Antoine Vauchez

Conclusion

Abstract

The thoughts presented in this book all focus on one and the same goal, to explore the “democratic potential” that lies at the heart of the “independent” European institutions, and to reflect upon the conditions under which this potential could be effectively realized.

Antoine Vauchez

Backmatter

Titel: Democratizing Europe
verfasst von: Antoine Vauchez
Verlag: Palgrave Macmillan US
Electronic ISBN: 978-1-137-54091-1
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-71237-3
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137540911