Questioning EU Enlargement

Europe in Search of Identity

Helene Sjursen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134223404
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This new book takes a unique approach to the study of European enlargement, tackling key questions.

What kind of understanding of the EU do the enlargement processes speak to? Do decisions to enlarge mainly suggest that the EU is a free market, focusing on potential economic gains? Do they indicate that there is a sense of common European identity? Or is the focus primarily on securing respect for democratic principles and human rights?

Offering up-to-date studies of the EU enlargement processes and country-specific in-depth analyses, Questioning EU Enlargement will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of European studies, international relations and politics.

1 Introduction

Enlargement and the nature of the EU polity

Helene Sjursen

Introduction

As the debates and referendums across Europe on the ratification of the Constitutional Treaty have demonstrated, the European Union (EU) is a contested entity. It is not only in public debates, in political protest and contestation, however, that questions regarding the nature and purpose of the EU are raised. It is also so in the academic literature. Here, a main question is how to conceptualize this creature that fits neither the concept of ‘state’ nor that of ‘international organization’. What kind of polity is the EU? Its status is unclear and ambiguous. There are different interpretations of what constitutes its core characteristics, as well as of the future direction of integration. To some, the EU is mainly a market, securing the free movement of goods and capital, and providing opportunities for economies of scale for European firms. To others it builds on a common European identity and common European values. Others again see the EU as the first step towards a democratic, supranational polity.

Can the enlargement processes help us to achieve a better understanding of the nature of the EU? In this book we ask what kind of understanding of the EU the enlargement processes speak to. Do they mainly suggest that the EU is a free market, focusing on potential economic gains? Do they indicate that there is a sense of common European identity, which guides the selection of candidates? Or is the focus primarily on securing respect for democratic principles and human rights?

Surprisingly, although enlargement has been a fundamental feature of the European Union (EU) since its early days, few systematic studies of its significance for European integration have been produced. Rather, enlargements have been seen as isolated episodes, which do not tell us much about the EU as such. It is quite clear, however, that the question of membership and how it is dealt with is at the core of any political community – including the EU. In fact, one might argue that without looking at this issue, it would be difficult to get a clear picture of what kind of order is emerging in Europe.

In order for an organization to find criteria for inclusion (as well as exclusion) of members one would expect it to have, or to be forced to form, an idea of what its fundamental purposes are. New applications for membership, and prospects of enlargement, inevitably raise questions such as who the Europeans are and what kind of values characterize Europe. Deciding where Europe stops, or should stop, is a particular challenge. What kinds of criteria are being used to determine this? Through an analysis of such questions, we seek to achieve a better understanding of the European political order: the EU qua polity.

Three conceptions of the EU

Several possibilities arise in regard to the question of what kind of order is emerging in Europe. In this book we take as our starting point three ideal types, which depict the EU according to integrationist modes – economic, cultural and political – and modes of rationality – instrumental, contextual and communicative.¹ We ask to which of these ideal types EU enlargement speaks.

First, the EU might be on its way to be reduced to a mere problem-solving entity. Here the purpose of the entity would be to promote the interests of the member states. Thus, integration would be limited to, in fact dependent on, the member states’ perception of a clear advantage of committing to collective (European) rather than national solutions. The possibility of vetoing further integrative steps or proposals, should a member state find that they would be detrimental to its interests, would be taken for granted. Consequently, such an entity would not have supranational institutions in a strict sense. The institutions would be instruments of the member states rather than autonomous entities. Their main purpose would be to reduce the costs of cooperation rather than to take independent initiatives. The core of cooperation would, in this conception, be aimed at promoting the material interests of the member states through economic cooperation. One could also imagine cooperation in other issue-areas such as foreign or security policy if it were considered to provide discernible benefits to members. However, it would most likely happen only in situations of crisis where states consider that they face a common threat. Finally, such an entity would most likely be rather unstable, as the ‘glue’ that would keep member states together would be the continued expectation that cooperation and integration would bring more gains than losses for each of them. If such benefits were no longer in evidence, one might expect members to look elsewhere for solutions to their problems.

Second, the EU might be moving towards a value-based community. From such a perspective it would be a geographically delimited entity seeking to revitalize traditions, mores and memories of whatever common European values and affiliations there are. A sense of common identity, a ‘we-feeling’, would function as a basis for integration. In such a polity, integration would not necessarily be limited to issues where member states would expect concrete benefits. As the polity would rest on a feeling of commonality this would facilitate expectations of solidarity across the borders of the member states and allow for an uneven distribution amongst members of the cost and benefits of integrative moves. Hence, contrary to a problem-solving entity, a value-based community might be expected to have moved beyond intergovernmentalism and towards transnational or supranational institutional arrangements. The common good of the polity would be a core concern justifying potential costs to individual member states. In such a polity, collective institutions would have a certain autonomy, and contribute to shape and define the collective understanding of the community’s identity and purpose. However, it is quite commonly argued that there is no basis for a common European identity, as the EU is composed of a number of groups and communities with often conflicting views on what would be the common good.

Consequently, a third possibility would be that the EU is moving towards a rights-based post-national union. The polity would constitute an extension of the democratic constitutional state to the European level. Hence, as in a value-based polity, it would have autonomous institutions whose legitimacy would be derived not from the member states but directly from a European demos. Contrary to the value-based polity, however, integration would not rest on a feeling of cultural cohesion and common traditions. A post-national union would rest on universal rights and democratic procedures. This would allow for cultural pluralism and the collective will would be shaped through processes aimed at reaching a common understanding across different identities as well as interests.

Even if these types draw on existing notions of European integration, they disentangle different aspects of the polity, approach them from a more abstract and principled perspective, and makes it an empirical question which of them are most viable. As they are ideal types, empirical findings are not likely to provide a complete fit with one of the models. However, they are useful and important tools helping us to provide order and make sense of the empirical material. Furthermore, as Eriksen and Fossum (2004: 438) argue, ‘[a] polity will most likely exhibit a complex and historically contingent weaving together’ of these three conceptions. As the EU is in so many ways an ‘unknown entity’ and also has a developmental path that is very different from that of European nation states, investigating how these different components are played out in the EU is particularly useful if we want to develop a clearer understanding of this polity and the emerging order in Europe.

In order to assess to which of these ideal types enlargement speaks, we ask two core questions. First, why has the EU – with the exception of the British candidature in the early 1960s – systematically decided in favour of enlargement? Given the costs and risks of enlargement, why expand? And why have not individual member states, in particular those that expected to pay the highest price for enlargement, used their power of veto? If, for example, we consider that the EU is chiefly, as the first ideal type suggests, a problem-solving entity, where membership is derived from its discernable benefits, we would, at least at first sight, expect a veto from some of them. However, a much more detailed analysis is required in order to investigate the extent to which this means that the various enlargement processes speak to the second or third ideal type of the EU.

The question is not only that of the basis on which the EU has decided to enlarge; equally important is how and in what way decisions to enlarge have been implemented. How have the norms and rules of the European Union been applied in accession processes? This is the second question raised in this book. As enlargement can be defined as a process through which new members accept a set of common action norms, we ask to what extent the norms and rules, the criteria for enlargement, have been applied in a consistent and similar manner to all states. This question of consistency is particularly relevant with regard to a potential differential treatment of the various applicant states.

State of the literature

There are few systematic studies of the significance of enlargement for European integration. In recent years, however, a discussion has emerged on the general question of the role of norms in the enlargement process. In empirical terms this debate has focused mainly on the EU’s decision to enlarge to Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Yet the question is also highly relevant with regard to the impact of the EU on political transformation in applicant states. The questions of when, how and to what extent the EU has had an impact on political transition in the new Central and East European member states have been in focus in a number of recent studies (Grabbe and Hughes 1998; Jacoby 2004; Kelley 2004; Kubicek 2003; Sadurski 2004; Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005; Vachudova 2005; Zielonka and Pravda 2001). The consensus tends to be that transition in applicant states can best be understood with the help of rational-choice perspective. Milada Anna Vachudova (2005), who considers that the EU’s enlargement policy has played an important part in encouraging transition to liberal democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, underlines the importance of a credible offer of membership as an effective incentive to reform. The various contributors to Sedelmeier and Schimmelfennig’s edited volume come to a similar conclusion regarding the explanatory force of a rational-choice perspective. What seems to be missing in these analyses, however, is a theoretical conception that would allow for an investigation of the potential significance of an export of democratic norms, as opposed to any other norms or rules. Why, one might ask, is the transition to democracy of particular interest? Vachudova (2005: 259) provides an answer at the very end of her book when she applauds the EU’s enlargement policy by concluding that: ‘For better . . . the most powerful tool of EU foreign policy has turned out to be EU enlargement’. It would seem then that transition to democracy is particularly interesting because it is, so to say, a ‘good thing’. Yet, the tools used to analyse it cannot account for this normative standpoint. The same theoretical tools could in principle have been used to analyse transition to autocracy. Hence, these analyses cannot grasp, or even ask, to what extent the EU’s enlargement policy was successful in encouraging democratic transition in Central and Eastern Europe because of the legitimacy of the particular norms it exported, rather than because of an effective use of incentives. What is more, they cannot grasp why the acquired transition appears to be stable.

With regard to the question of the EU’s decision to enlarge to Central and Eastern Europe on the other hand, a large number of authors, albeit from different perspectives, stress that norms must have played an important part (Fierke and Wiener 1999; Friis and Murphy 1999; Schimmelfennig 2001; Sedelmeier 2000a; Sjursen 2002). Fierke and Wiener (1999), who have examined EU and NATO enlargement, emphasize the importance of speech acts produced by the member states of the European Community and NATO during the Cold War. In documents such as the Helsinki Declaration (CSCE 1975), Western states promised to work for the spread of democratic principles and human rights across the East-West divide in Europe. These speech acts entailed a commitment that they could not escape from after the end of the Cold War. With the fall of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe they were reinterpreted to signify an inescapable promise of membership for the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) in Western institutions. Previous normative commitments had taken on a dynamic of their own. Sedelmeier’s (2000a) take on this issue is to emphasize the role of norm entrepreneurs in pushing for enlargement. Particularly important in his view was the role of policymakers within the European Commission. As they were amongst the actors associating most closely with a European identity they acted as ‘principled’ policy advocates. Consequently he accepts the possibility that norms – defined in terms of actors’ identity – can be used genuinely, although the existence of these norms are neither explained nor assessed. Further, he concludes that the impact of norms was uneven across different groups of actors in the enlargement process. For the policy advocates of enlargement the impact of norms was constitutive, whereas ‘rationalist calculations of reputation and social costs of deviation’ (Sedelmeier 2000a: 170) explain how these policy advocates could mobilize support for enlargement in the EU as a whole. Following Fierke, Wiener and Sedelmeier, Schimmelfennig (2001) seeks to combine the so-called ‘constructivist’ accounts of enlargement with a rational-choice approach. His take on solving the ‘puzzle’ of enlargement is to suggest that it is the outcome of ‘rhetorical entrapment’. Member states such as Germany and Denmark, who in his view had a self-interest in enlargement, used normative arguments strategically to shame those within the EU who were opposed, such as, for example, France or Spain, into accepting it. In this perspective, norms function only as constraints on the actors’ behaviour.

This book builds on existing research on enlargement, but takes a different starting point by asking what the various enlargement processes might tell us about the EU qua polity. Furthermore, it takes the analysis a step further, first by challenging the assumption that is predominant in the literature that the only mechanisms through which norms and identities have an impact are self-interested calculations of costs and benefits. Norms do not only matter because it is costly not to comply with them, but because they are ends in themselves. They refer to principles or values that are considered valid, true or right. Second, we move beyond the existing literature through a distinction between value- or identity-based and rights-based norms. To emphasize the role of norms, as much of the literature on enlargement does, is only the beginning. There are numerous rule-sets, norms and identities. Hence a key question is what kind of norms have been important.

The relevance of the above distinction is perhaps most clearly demonstrated through the debate on enlargement to Turkey. However, its broader importance when it comes to determining the borders of the EU should also be clear, as rights-based norms do not yield criteria for establishing borders. The question of where Europe stops is likely to become even more crucial in the years to come. If rights were the only mobilizing argument for enlargement, there would be few reasons why, for example, Canada should not become a member of the European Union. Also, liberal-democratic – rights-based – norms may be a necessary condition for enlargement, but we suspect that they may not on their own suffice in order to explain how member states may be mobilized to accept a costly enlargement. Consequently, the distinction between rights-based and value-based norms should allow us to establish a more nuanced picture of enlargement, the reasons why it has taken place and why certain prioritizations have been made. In turn it should also allow for a more nuanced picture of the nature of the EU polity. In fact, one of the pertinent questions with regard to the direction in which the EU is developing is that of collective identity: to what extent is this a necessary requirement in order for the EU to develop a legitimate polity as well as to establish a common will needed for collective action? Is it really needed? And to what extent is there any basis at all for nurturing the development of such an identity within the EU?

Theoretical approach

If norms are not only adhered to because of the cost of non-compliance how can their importance be accounted for? If norms are not simply constraints on actors’ (self-interested) behaviour but also compel compliance because they are found to be right or valid, how can this be explained? What are the mechanisms through which norms are complied with? In this book we rely on deliberation as an alternative mechanism, underpinned by the concept of communicative rationality. This contends that actors are rational in the sense that they are able to justify and explain their actions with reference to intersubjectively valid norms, that is, norms that cannot be reasonably rejected in a rational debate (Eriksen and Weigård 2003).² This conception of rationality provides us with alternative micro foundations for political processes to those in a rational-choice perspective, where actors are defined only as ‘utility maximizers’, who are rational in the sense that their choices are made on the basis of maximizing benefits in accordance with their own preferences. Whereas developments in the direction of the first ideal type of the EU may be accounted for with a rational-choice perspective, both the second and the third ideal types are more difficult to accommodate within such an approach.

There is an explicit emphasis on language – on the force of reasons – in the communicative perspective that we do not find in the rational-choice approach. This builds on Jürgen Habermas’ (1987) theory of communicative action. Habermas considers that our communication through linguistic expressions – ‘speech acts’ – ‘play a central role in regulating and reproducing forms of social life and the identities of actors’ (Cronin and De Greiff 1998: x). The process of argumentation is considered to be the crucial mechanism of social coordination. Arguably this is so also in a rational-choice perspective. The actors may not always be mute in a bargaining process – such processes obviously entail exchanges of information between actors – however, the type of information that is conveyed in a bargaining process is different (Heath 2001). Here it is mainly a matter of signalling preferences that are backed by threats and promises, whereas the definition of actors as communicatively rational suggests that they are also capable of providing reasons for particular choices and that others are in turn capable of assessing the validity of those reasons. This opens for the theoretical possibility of an agreement between actors that is based on an understanding supported by mutually acceptable or identical reasons, rather than individual utility calculations.

The perspective is similar to rational-choice analysis in the sense that they are both action-theoretical approaches. Social phenomena are in other words considered to be products of interaction between individuals. However, rather than focusing on monological actors with fixed preferences, the theory of communicative action focuses on dialogical actors ‘who co-ordinate their plans through argumentation, aimed at reaching mutual agreement’ (Eriksen and Weigård 1997: 221). In addition to the concept of actors as strategic and oriented towards realizing self-interest, we then have a conception of actors as understanding-oriented and seeking to reach agreement with other actors through argumentation. Here it is posited ‘that co-operation comes about when the process of reason giving generates a capacity for change of viewpoints’ (Eriksen and Fossum 2000: 257).

This conception of actors as understanding oriented and thus able to shift from a purely self-regarding to an other-regardi...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Tables
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction: Enlargement and the nature of the EU polity
• Part I: The EU as a post-national rights-based union
• Part II: The EU as an identity-based community
• Part III: Between norms and interests
• Conclusion