The Lure of Technocracy

Jürgen Habermas

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780745686820, 9780745686813
• eBook ISBN: 9780745686851
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Over the past 25 years, Jürgen Habermas has presented what is arguably the most coherent and wide-ranging defence of the project of European unification and of parallel developments towards a politically integrated world society. In developing his key concepts of the transnationalisation of democracy and the constitutionalisation of international law, Habermas offers the main players in the struggles over the fate of the European Union (the politicians, the political parties and the publics of the member states) a way out of the current economic and political crisis, should they choose to follow it.

In the title essay Habermas addresses the challenges and threats posed by the current banking and public debt crisis in the Eurozone for European unification. He is harshly critical of the incrementalist, technocratic policies advocated by the German government in particular, which are being imposed at the expense of the populations of the economically weaker, crisis-stricken countries and are undermining solidarity between the member states. He argues that only if the technocratic approach is replaced by a deeper democratization of the European institutions can the European Union fulfil its promise as a model for how rampant market capitalism can once again be brought under political control at the supranational level.

This volume reflects the impressive scope of Habermas?s recent writings on European themes, including theoretical treatments of the complex legal and political issues at stake, interventions on current affairs, and reflections on the lives and works of major European philosophers and intellectuals. Together the essays provide eloquent testimony to the enduring relevance of the work of one of the most influential and far-sighted public intellectuals in the world today, and are essential reading for all philosophers, legal scholars and social scientists interested in European and global issues.

I
The Lure of Technocracy

1
The Lure of Technocracy
A Plea for European Solidarity

(1) In its current form, the European Union owes its existence to the efforts of political elites who were able to count on the passive consent of their more or less indifferent populations as long as the peoples could regard the Union as being also in their economic interests, all things considered. The Union legitimized itself in the eyes of its citizens primarily through the results it produced rather than by fulfilling the citizens’ political will. This can be explained not only from the history of its origins but also from the legal constitution of this unique formation. The European Central Bank, the Commission and the European Court of Justice have intervened most profoundly over the decades in the everyday lives of European citizens, even though these institutions are almost completely beyond the reach of democratic controls. Moreover, the European Council, which has energetically taken the initiative during the current crisis, is made up of heads of government whose role in the eyes of their citizens is to represent their respective national interests in distant Brussels. Finally, at least the European Parliament is supposed to establish a bridge between the political battles of opinions in the national arenas and the momentous decisions taken in Brussels. But there is hardly any traffic on this bridge.

Thus, to the present day there remains a gulf at the European level between the citizens’ opinion- and will-formation and the policies actually pursued for solving the pressing problems. This also explains why conceptions of the European Union and its future among the general population continue to be diffuse. Informed opinions and articulate positions on the direction of European development have to the present remained substantially the monopoly of professional politicians, economic elites and scholars with relevant interests; not even the intellectuals who usually participate in public debates have made this issue their own.¹ What currently unite European citizens are the Eurosceptical mindsets that have become more pronounced in all of the member countries during the crisis, albeit in each country for different reasons and for reasons that tend to polarize. Although this trend is an important factor to be taken into account by the political elites, the growing resistance is not really decisive for the actual course of European policymaking, which is largely uncoupled from the national arenas. The influential European political camps are forming in the circles that decide on the policies in accordance with controversial crisis diagnoses. The corresponding orientations reflect the well-known basic political orientations.

The European political groupings can be differentiated in accordance with preference variables that are located in two dimensions; it is a matter, on the one hand, of conflicting assessments of the importance of nation-states in an increasingly integrated and highly independent world society, and, on the other, of the familiar preferences for or against strengthening politics vis-à-vis the market. The fields of the cross-classification table that can be constructed by combining these pairs of attitudes towards the desired future of Europe yield, ideally speaking, four patterns of attitudes: among the defenders of national sovereignty, for whom even the decisions taken since May 2010 on the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and in the Fiscal Compact go too far, are, on the one hand, ordoliberal proponents of a lean nation-state and, on the other, republican or right-wing populist proponents of a strong nation-state. Among the proponents of the European Union and its progressive integration, by contrast, are, on the one side, economic liberals of various types and, on the other side, those who argue that the rampant financial markets should be tamed by supranational institutions. If we divide up the advocates of an interventionist policy once again according to where they are located on the left–right spectrum, we could distinguish among the Eurosceptics not only, as mentioned, between republicans or left communitarians and right-wing populists, but also within the integrationist camp between the Eurodemocrats and the technocrats. Of course, the Eurodemocrats should not be summarily equated with ‘Eurofederalists’, because their ideas on the desirable shape of a supranational democracy are not confined to the model of a European federal state.

The technocrats and the Eurodemocrats constitute, together with the Europe-friendly economic liberals, the temporary alliance of those who are pushing for deeper integration, though only the supranational democrats want to continue the unification process in order to bridge the gulf between politics and policies which is the decisive factor in the existing democratic deficit. All three factions have reasons for supporting the emergency measures adopted thus far to stabilize the single currency, whether out of conviction or willy-nilly. Most likely, however, this course is being pursued and implemented mainly by a further group of pragmatic politicians who follow an incrementalistic agenda. The politicians who wield power and decide on the course are moving without a comprehensive perspective towards ‘More Europe’, because they want to avoid the far more dramatic and probably more costly alternative of abandoning the euro.

From the perspective of our typology, however, cracks are forming in this heterogeneous alliance. The pragmatists who are setting the agenda in the short run are allowing the snail’s pace of reforms to be dictated by short-term economic and everyday political ‘imperatives’, while the more far-sighted pro-European forces are pulling in different directions. The market radicals are primarily interested in relaxing the restrictions on the European Central Bank’s self-chosen refinancing policy. The interventionists, buoyed by a tailwind from the crisis-hit countries, are demanding that the austerity course imposed by the German government be supplemented with targeted investment offensives. The primary concern of the technocrats, meanwhile, is to strengthen the decision-making power of the European executive, while the Eurodemocrats defend different models of a Political Union. Driven by different motivations, these three forces are striving to supersede in different directions the rickety status quo to which the governments and political parties, which are under pressure to demonstrate their legitimacy, are clinging in the face of growing Euroscepticism.

The dynamic of the conflicting motives shows that the existing pro-European coalition will disintegrate as soon as the unresolved problems compel the political elites to view and deal with the crisis within an extended time horizon. The road map for a deepening of the institutions of the Economic and Monetary Union drawn up by the Commission, the President of the Council and the Central Bank is testimony to the dissatisfaction with the reactive nature of the existing approach. The heads of government of the Eurozone initially requested this plan, but immediately shelved it again, because they shy away from grasping the hot iron of a formal transfer of sovereignty rights to the European level. For some, republican ties to the nation-state may still be too strong, whereas for others opportunistic motives of preserving their own positions of power may play a role. What pragmatists of all colours want to avoid, however, is another revision of the Treaty. For then how politics is conducted would have to be changed and European unification would have to be converted from an elite project into one that includes the citizens.²

(2) The Commission, the Presidency of the Council, and the European Central Bank (ECB) – known in Brussels parlance as ‘the institutions’ – are the least subject to legitimation pressures because of their relative distance from the national public spheres. So it was up to them to present proposals for the meeting of the European Council on 13 and 14 December 2012 that represent a brief and already diplomatically pared-down digest of a reform plan published a few days earlier by the Commission.³ This is the first comprehensive document in which the EU develops a perspective for medium- and long-term reforms that goes beyond merely dilatory reactions to critical symptoms. Within this expanded time horizon, attention is no longer focused exclusively on the contingent constellation of causes that since 2010 has connected the global banking crisis with the vicious circle formed by the mutual refinancing of over-indebted European states and undercapitalized banks. Instead it directs attention to longer-term structural causes inherent in the monetary union itself.

The Economic and Monetary Union was designed in the 1990s in accordance with the ordoliberal ideas of the Stability and Growth Pact. It was conceived as a supporting pillar of an economic constitution which was supposed to stimulate free competition among market players across national borders and to be organized in accordance with general rules that were binding on all member states.⁴ Even without the instrument of devaluing national currencies, which is not available in a monetary union, the differences in levels of competitiveness among the national economies were supposed to gradually even out. But the assumption that permitting unbridled competition subject to fair rules would lead to similar unit-labour costs and to equal levels of prosperity, thereby obviating the need for joint political decision-making on fiscal, budgetary and economic policy, has been proven wrong. Because the optimal conditions for a single currency in the Eurozone are not satisfied, the structural imbalances between the national economies that were there from the beginning have become more acute; and they will intensify further as long as the European policy pattern does not break with the principle of each member state making independent sovereign decisions on fiscal, budgetary and economic policy issues without taking other member states into consideration – in other words, from its national perspective alone.⁵

Despite some concessions, the German Federal Government has clung steadfastly to this dogma until now. The reforms adopted leave the sovereignty of the member states intact, if not de facto, then formally. The same holds for the stricter supervision of national budgetary policies, for the adoption of credit assistance instruments for heavily indebted states – the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and the ESM – and for the planned establishment of a banking union and unified banking supervision under the auspices of the ECB (!). At most, the plans now under consideration for a uniform resolution of ailing banks, a transnational bank deposit protection fund and an EMU-wide transaction tax could be regarded as a first step towards a ‘joint exercise of sovereignty by the individual states’.

Only the above-mentioned but provisionally shelved reform plan of the Commission addresses the actual cause of the crisis – namely, the faulty design of a monetary union that clings to the self-understanding of an alliance of sovereign states (or ‘sovereign subjects of the Treaties’). According to this proposal, three essential, though vaguely defined, objectives are to be realized at the end of a tortuous reform path projected to last five years. First, there would be joint political decision-making at the EU level on ‘integrated guidelines’ for coordinating the fiscal, budgetary and economic policies of the individual states.⁶ This would call for an agreement that prevents the policies of one member state from having negative external effects on the economy of another member state. Second, an EU budget based on the right to levy taxes, with a European financial administration, is envisaged for country-specific stimulus programmes. This would create scope for selective public investments through which the existing structural imbalances in the monetary union could be combated. Third, euro bonds and a debt repayment fund are supposed to make possible a partial collectivization of state debts. This would relieve the ECB of the task of preventi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Preface to the English Edition
• Part I: The Lure of Technocracy
• Part II: European Conditions. Continued Interventions
• Part III: German Jews, Germans and Jews
• End User License Agreement