The Enlarged European Union

Unity and Diversity

Peter Mair, Jan Zielonka

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136344633
• Subtopic: Political Economy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Focusing upon the emerging patterns of unity and diversity in the enlarged European Union, this study explores enlargement from the East and the impact this will have on the future identity of Europe.

Eastward Enlargement of the European Union and the Identity of Europe

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DIETER FUCHS and
HANS-DIETER KLINGEMANN

Until the Maastricht Treaties (1991), the European Community was primarily an economic community legitimated by economic efficiency criteria.¹ Maastricht, however, initiated the transformation of the Community into a European Union (EU), which continued with the Treaty of Amsterdam (1997). These treaties vest greater powers in EU institutions. The EU is thus increasingly a supranational regime, substantially restricting member states‘ scope for action, and whose decisions directly affect citizens’ lives. These decisions also affect politically sensitive areas that had hitherto been dealt with at the nation-state level (including social and moral issues). These developments have been politicising the EU and, consequently, engendering legitimation problems. The discussion on the democratic deficiencies of the EU, which has arisen only since this transformation of the European Community, is an expression of the legitimation issue. Many feel the EU can attain democratic legitimacy only if a European demos with a collective identity takes shape.² This can be maintained even if the democratic deficiencies of the EU were to be eliminated institutionally by substantially expanding the rights of the European Parliament. A viable European democracy requires a European demos that conceives of itself as a collectivity, considers itself represented by the Parliament, and makes the latter the addressee of relevant demands. However, in view of the cultural plurality and heterogeneity of European nation states, it is doubtful whether the constitution of a European demos with a tenable collective identity is possible at all.³

A further transformation of the EU must increase these doubts. At the 1992 Copenhagen summit, the then EU heads of government decided that the countries of Central and Eastern Europe could become members of the EU if they so desired and if they meet certain criteria for accession. There are now a number of candidates for accession, and negotiations are being conducted with a first group of countries. For a number of reasons, eastward enlargement is likely to make it even more difficult to develop a European identity. First, because the territorial limits of Europe are vague: where does it end in the east, or where should it end? A clearly defined territory is at least a useful, indeed necessary, precondition for the cognitive constitution of an ‘us’ that distinguishes itself from ‘others’ and which is the vehicle of a collective identity.⁴ Second, including additional nation states increases the cultural plurality of the EU still more. And, third, it cannot be excluded that, over and above this pluralisation, there is a cultural gap between Western Europe and Central and Eastern Europe. Such a gap can be caused by different traditions and historical events in the distant past but also by socialisation and experience in the opposing societal systems in which people in Eastern and Western Europe lived from the end of the Second World War until the collapse of the communist states.

A collective identity can develop only on the basis of commonality among the members of a definable community. It is an open question how comprehensive this commonality must and can be in the case of a European demos. We assume that homogenising the plurality of national cultures to form a European nation is a project that is neither practicable nor useful. For a European demos before which the EU regime can be legitimated and which participates in the democratic processes in Europe, common political values and behaviours are presumably quite sufficient. With this premise in mind, our empirical goal is to establish the extent to which such commonality exists in individual countries or whether there are serious and systematic differences.

This analysis is structured by two theoretical considerations. First, we assume that political value orientations and behaviours can be organised in meaningful patterns. In determining these patterns we draw on the concepts of the democratic community and various types of democratic community. The most important criterion is support for democratic rule and rejection of autocratic rule. The greatest possible agreement on these preferences is a necessary condition for a European demos. However, fundamental support for democracy reveals nothing about the ideas on how democracy should be specifically implemented and structured. To settle this question, further values and behaviours must be taken into account. They form specific patterns, and, with reference to the democratic theory debate, we distinguish different types of democratic community.

Second, our analysis of differences in political values and behaviours considers not only individual countries but groups or families of countries. The country groups are distinguished on the basis of criteria proposed by Huntington, Lipset and Reisinger.⁵

The planned analysis can contribute only to discovering the potential for the formation of a European demos with a collective identity. Empirically established, objective commonality can have an identity-forming effect only if it is perceived as such and finds its place in the self-description of the collectivity. However, this transformation of objective commonality into the subjective self-understanding of a collectivity presupposes a great deal. In the case of a European demos, one of the prerequisites is certainly a European public⁶ that can make latent commonality visible and allow it to become part of people’s self-conception. However, this is not the subject of our study. We limit ourselves to the priority investigation of whether there is such commonality at all.

The study proceeds in three steps. First, the concepts of democratic community and types of democratic community are presented. The empirical analysis follows. It begins by explicating the classification of countries and by stating a number of theoretical expectations. In the empirical analysis itself, we first establish the extent to which the societal community in individual countries and groups of countries can be considered democratic at all. We then determine what type of democratic community predominates in these countries and groups of countries. In a third and final step, we summarise the empirical findings and draw a number of conclusions on the formation of a European demos with a collective identity.

THE CONCEPT OF THE DEMOCRATIC COMMUNITY

The demos of a democracy is a certain form of societal community. And like every societal community it is constituted through two mechanisms.⁷ First, by drawing a boundary that defines who is included and who is excluded. In modern societies, citizenship provides a formal boundary. But it can have a constitutive effect only if it is subjectively assimilated by members of the community. This requires cognitively identifiable criteria, and one important such criterion is a clear territorial boundary. Second, a societal community takes shape through the ties between members on the basis of things actually or presumed to be shared. Only through these two mechanisms does a mere aggregate of individuals become a community that presents and can describe itself as such, and with which members can also identify.

The form of societal community that interests us is the demos, which, as the subject of a democratic form of government, should be a democratic community.⁸ If it is to be accepted as such, it has to exhibit certain minimal characteristics. The institutional order of a democracy (kratos) can function only if there is a corresponding community (demos). In determining the properties of a democratic community we draw on an analytical model that divides democracy into three hierarchically structured levels.⁹ The topmost level is that of political culture, whose constitutive elements are the fundamental values of a democracy. The next level is that of political structure, which consists of the democratic system of government of a country, generally laid down by the constitution. This structure can be understood as a selective implementation of the cultural values of a community for the action context of politics, and this system of government is also legitimated by recourse to these values. The lowest level in the hierarchy is that of the political process. The political process is concerned with the realisation of the collective goals of a community by the actors. Their action is controlled by the political structure, and this means, among other things, that normative expectations about the behaviour of political actors are associated with the constituted system of government in a given country. The three levels thus form a control hierarchy that begins with culture and ends with the process or actual activity on the part of actors. What attributes must a community have at these three levels if it is to be deemed democratic?

At the cultural level, a democratic community is characterised above all by support for the fundamental values of democracy. They include the idea of self-government or sovereignty of the people. And this includes mutual recognition of citizens as free and politically equal. Since the birth of democracy in ancient Athens, the two values of freedom and political equality have been essentially bound up with that of democracy.¹⁰

A democratic community cannot be as clearly identified at the structural level as at the cultural level. On the one hand, it must be expected that the regime in the citizens’ own country is supported in so far as it is a democracy and not an autocracy. Otherwise approval of the idea of democracy would be completely non-committal. On the other hand, the idea of a democracy can be institutionally embodied in different ways. For this reason, many people may basically want a democracy but not in the form that exists in their country. People may therefore support or criticise the democracy implemented in their country for a variety of reasons.¹¹ They may support it because it is a democracy and as such has institutionalised the idea of democracy. They may criticise it because they feel that the reality of democracy in their country fails to meet their own normative ideas of democracy, and because they also assume there are alternative forms of implementation that produce a better democratic reality. Such people can be described as ‘critical democrats’.¹² Both possibilities are compatible with the prerequisites for a democratic community.

The process level ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Books of Related Interest
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Diversity and Adaptation in the Enlarged European Union
• Eastward Enlargement of the European Union and the Identity of Europe
• Culture and National Identity: 'The East' and European Integration
• Discomforts of Victory: Democracy, Liberal Values and Nationalism in Post-Communist Europe
• Making Institutions in Central and Eastern Europe, and the Impact of Europe
• Making Markets and Eastern Enlargement: Diverging Convergence?
• Health not Wealth: Enlarging the EMU
• The Welfare State in Transition Economies and Accession to the EU
• Approaching the EU and Reaching the US? Rival Narratives on Transforming Welfare Regimes in East-Central Europe
• Abstracts
• Notes on Contributors
• Index