âThe dictator is coming.â
With these words, the then President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, turned towards the then Prime Minister of Latvia, Laimdota Straujuma, to announce the arrival of her Hungarian counterpart, Viktor OrbĂĄn. Upon his entry, Juncker greeted OrbĂĄn as âdictatorââshaking his hand and playfully slapping him in the face.1
It was remarkable that Europeâs leading political figures appeared jovial and exceedingly friendly towards OrbĂĄn, just at a time when within Europe and beyond there was growing concern about Hungaryâs turn towards authoritarian rule.2 The bizarre encounter took place in Riga in May 2015, when the Latvian presidency of the Council of the EU hosted yet another summit chaired by Donald Tusk, then President of the European Council. The leaders gathered according to a well-established ritual of the European Council, a part of which is taking a âfamily photoâ, symbolising Europeâs unity. The role of the Council has always been somewhat contradictoryâvery powerful in practice, as it comprises all the national leaders, though formally its brief is rather circumscribed. In fact, the Councilâs purpose was only explicitly defined as recently as 2009 in the Treaty of Lisbon, which describes its mission as providing âthe Union with the necessary impetus for its developmentâ and defining âthe general political direction and priorities thereofâ. Importantly, the Treaty stipulates that the Council âshall not exercise legislative functionsâ (cited in Olsen 2020: 111).3
But my focus here is not on the EUâs institutional architecture. Instead, this vignette aims to highlight a troubling paradox at the heart of the European project. The European Unionâs raison dâĂŞtre is to protect democracy in Europe. Yet over the last couple of decades it has overseenâor even became complicit inâthe erosion of democracy in a number of its member states. The surprising camaraderie between Juncker and OrbĂĄn illustrates a strangely symbiotic relationship between technocracy and populism. The two leaders were able to feed off each other. This is not to say that Juncker was ever a mere technocrat, just as dismissing OrbĂĄnâs phenomenal political success simply as populism is an incomplete account at best. But what they came to represent in the eyes of their allies and opponents was respectively technocratic governance and populist rebellion: âpost-political juristocracy on the one side and democratatorship Ă la OrbĂĄn on the otherâ (Manow 2020: 18).4
To describe Juncker as a technocrat at all is in fact something of a misnomer. The former Prime Minister of Luxembourg was a successful politician for many years prior to his EU career, and in his role as the EU Commission President he proved a formidable political actor. This is not to ignore Junckerâs lack of popularity, missteps, policy failures and even his controversial stewardship of Luxembourgâs fiscal regime (Faiola 2014). Evaluating his three-decades-long feat of political survival in Luxembourg (for eighteen years of which he was Prime Minister), a journalistic sketch referred to him as a âman with many talents but without qualitiesâ (Schmit, Stoldt and Thomas 2012), and predicted a quick end to his career. Instead, he became a veritable âHomo Europusâ (Mulder 2019), taking his survival skills to a higher European level. It was under Junckerâs leadership that the British voted to leave the EU. And as President of the EU Commission, Juncker also oversaw the (mis-)management of both the euro and the refugee crises. Yet the problem was not Juncker as a person, but rather what the Luxembourger came to personifyâthe mode of supranational governance that bounced between technocracy and the politics of the exception.
Reflecting the EUâs intricate system of governance, the role of the EU Commissioners is somewhat ambiguous. They are not meant to act as politicians, but neither are they merely civil servants. An example of this ambiguous role is the recent attempt at âpoliticisingâ the Commission. Its aim has been to improve the quality of the EUâs democracy via the so-called Spitzenkandidaten process, in which the European Parliament was to have a decisive voice in the selection of the Commission President. Yet, the European Commission, in its position as the âGuardian of the Treatiesâ is also meant to fulfil the role of an impartial arbiter between all member states, regardless of which political party rules them. Not surprisingly then, âJunckerâs political Commissionâ of 2014â19 was a mixed blessing (Dawson 2019). In fact, it can be argued that the limited success of this approachâempowering the Commission President as a Spitzenkandidatâexposed the limits of the idea that the EU should be democratised by further empowerment of the European Parliament and its transnational party system. If anything, strengthening the role of the Commission might unwittingly accelerate the process of âthe de-institutinalisation of powerâ (White 2021: 2), the result of which would be less, rather than more democratic accountability. As Jonathan White argued, Junckerâs governing style exemplifies the tendency within the contemporary EU, which responded to numerous emergencies by individuals subordinating and remaking institutions to serve higher endsâsuch as the preservation of European unity. In other words, rather than taking his authority from the office, Juncker âwas an individual asserting his personal authority to redefine and reshape what the office entailedâ (White 2021: 11). Ursula von der Leyen might not be as charismatic as her predecessor, nor was she ever a Spitzenkandidat, but like Juncker she too had strong personal ambitions. Following on from his âpolitical Commissionâ, she promised to lead a âgeopoliticalâ one.
Juncker also articulated a classic defence of technocratic rationality removed from parliamentary scrutiny when he explained, âwe all know what to do, we just donât know how to get re-elected after weâve done itâ. Amongst EU officials and scholars, this notion became known as the âJuncker Curseâ (Copsey 2015: 147). Following this logic, Juncker defended the EUâs decision-making mechanisms that were often opaque and lacking sufficient democratic accountability. Doing so, he echoed the logic of what is known as the âMonnet methodâ, which is embraced by proponents of functionalist theories of European integration, and criticised by more sceptical voices as âintegration through stealthâ (Majone 2005): âWe decide on something, leave it lying around, and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people donât understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning backâ (cited in De Vries 2018: 56).
The downside of this approach is the erosion of trust in both EU and national political institutions and their representatives. The more competencies the EU acquired affecting various aspects of citizenâs lives, the harder it got to pursue this mode of integration. Particularly over the last couple of decades, the process of European integration had been punctuated by numerous episodes of people âkicking up a fussâ. In order to pre-empt such responses, Juncker went so far as to justify lying in the pursuit of major policy goals, stating that âif things get serious, you have to know how to lieâ (Hewitt 2014). This might come as a surprise to observers of contemporary politics who consider lies to be an indispensable part of the populist playbook. This takes us back to Hungary, where a Prime Minister confessed to his party faithful:
Thereâs not much choice. Thereâs not much because we screwed up. Not a little, but badly. No country in Europe has been as dim-witted as we have. Thereâs an explanation. Obviously we lied throughout the last year-and-a-half or two. I nearly died when for a year-and-a-half I had to pretend to govern. Instead, we lied morning, noon and night.5
This frank speech was later leaked to the press, leading to anti-government protests and clashes with the police that left more than a hundred people wounded. Yet the target of peopleâs anger was not OrbĂĄn, the self-proclaimed adherent of illiberal democracy, but rather his liberal, pro-European predecessor Ferenc GyurcsĂĄny, whose government paved the way for the Fidesz landslide victory, enabling the ensuing consolidation of OrbĂĄnâs rule. What GyurcsĂĄny represents in the context of post-1989 democratic transformation in Central and Eastern Europe is the failure of pro-European, liberal elites to gain sufficient public support for economic and political reforms (as I discuss further in Chapter 5). The governing elitesâ reliance on technocratic rationality backfired, leaving many people across the region feeling that their revolutions were âstolenâ (Krapfl 2013). What was particularly disconcerting was the ability of many former communists to reinvent themselves as passionate adherents of free market liberalism and European integration. They succeeded in transforming their pre-1989 political capital into considerable private wealth (Tucker 2015), which in turn endowed them with more political power. The widespread perception that politicians of all stripes were corrupt was thus not without justification. This is an aspect of populist rebellions in new member states that tends to be overlooked. In Hungary, following GyurcsĂĄnyâs fall from grace, OrbĂĄnâs party won the elections to the European Parliament in 2009, and national parliamentary elections in 2010. With his popularity unabated at the time of writing, OrbĂĄn is arguably one of the few remaining politicians who has shaped European politics for more than two decades (and in this respect, is on the path to overtake both Angela Merkel and Juncker). This is not to ignore the divisive nature of OrbĂĄnâs policies, or the nefarious methods he used to pursue them. Yet what is particularly interesting about his spectacular success in Hungary for the present book, is the extent to which it reveals democratic dysfunction across Europe.
The Crisis of Representative Democracy and the Return of the Political
In response to a number of pressing challenges, particularly over the last decade or so, the European Union has unwittingly exacerbated the crisis of representative democracy. As âemergency Europeâ (White 2015) has become the new normal of this experimental polity, unsettling the existing governing structures, the theoretical frameworks underpinning the European project ought to be questioned as well. To do so, I turn to political and legal thinkers including Hans Kelsen, Carl Schmitt and Hannah Arendt, who confronted a more dramatic and altogether more serious challenge to democracy: the constitutional breakdown of the Weimar Republic followed by the rise of Nazi Germany and the devastating impact of the Second World War. While the concept of popular sovereignty was at the centre of debates about democracy in the first half of the twentieth century, more recently its usefulness has been questioned. Ironically, discussions about sovereignty were declared retrograde just at the time when the process of European integration was entering a phase that would prove their relevance.
With the privilege of hindsight, one could say that the start of the new millennium marked the moment of peak globalisation, which was in Europe further reinforced by intensified processes of economic and political integration. While the EU scholarship was then dominated by claims about Europe leaving concerns with popular sovereignty behind, some major innovations at the EU level, such as the creation of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), exacerbated the perceived loss of control. The global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008, for which Europe was ill prepared, acted as a catalyst for a decade of crises from which the European Union is yet to recover. These upheavals led to a backlash against a more cosmopolitan Europe, and to the reassertion of sovereignty at a national level. Brexit was but one exampleâif a particularly spectacular oneâof this trend. The rise of âsovereignistâ political leadership in Hungary and Poland, and the ongoing strength of nationalist mobilisation across Europe, including within large, founding member states such as Italy and France, suggest that nationalism as a political force is here to stay. As Bernard Yack pithily observed, âthe age of liberal democracy is also the age of nationalismâ (2003: 29). Yackâs argument about politics in general applies equally to the EU: âliberal politics rests on a familiar but rarely analyzed image of political community, one that tends to nationalize our understanding of politics and politicize our understanding of nationalityâ (ibid. 31).
To take this argument a step further, I suggest that the process of democratising the EUâs politics unwittingly nationalises it. On this view, increased national mobilisation is not, per se, undermining democracy in Europe, but is rather a response to attempts at its democratisation. In fact, Yackâs key argument is that an important source âof the politicization of national loyalties in the modern world seems to be an idea that most liberals continue to hold both dear and indispensable to a decent political order: the principle of popular sovereigntyâ (2003: 50). This claim is no longer all that controversial within broader discussions of political history (Roshwald 2006) and contemporary political theory (Tamir 1993, 2019; Miller 1995, 2016; Stilz 2019). Yet it continues to be viewed with suspicion within EU studies, where popular sovereignty is seen as âthe source of the ills that befell Europe in the twentieth centuryâ (Lev 2017: 208), with the EU being presented as a successful example of a âpost-sovereignâ polity.6 A good illustration of this view is Jan-Werner MĂźllerâs series of rhetorical questions:
[D]oes European integration, in fact, prove how useless the Schmittian intellectual tool kit has become, and, in particular, that âSchmittian sovereigntyâ remains caught in existentialist, concretist ways of thinking, which have long lost touch with the intricate âlegitimation through procedureâ or the legitimation through prosperity which some see at the heart of the EU? Has functionalist integration, a kind of âpolity-building by stealth,â by âneutralizingâ the âprimacy of the political,â disproved Schmittâs suspicion of the liberal order to sustain itself through purely economic means? Has Schmittian unitary and decisionist sovereignty, which always asks for the identification of the final arbiter, been extinguished in favor of âpooled sovereigntyâ and a kind of subtle sovereignty by âmutual recognition, continuity and consentâ? (2000: 1779)
To be blunt, my answers are no, no and no. First, legitimation through procedures might work in normal times, but Europe has had very little normality over the last three decades. Second, I contest the view that a liberal order could âsustain itself through purely economic meansâ. What the recent European developments have shown instead are the limitations of âpolity-building by stealthâ. Attempts to overcome political conflicts via âneutralisationâ did not help European democracies, which leads me to my third ânoâ regarding âpooled sovereigntyââa conceptual tool that tends to obscure power, unwittingly exacerbating the problem of democratic accountability. As Yack put it, sovereign control is exclusiveââif one community possesses it, another cannotâ. In other words, the sovereign is the one who has the final say on any given territory. Thus, sovereignty that is pooled or joint âis either a metaphor or a contradiction in termsâ (Yack 2003: 43).
In what follows, I will first sketch a somewhat schematic genealogy of the kind of thinking that MĂźllerâs praise of âpost-sovereignâ polity exemplifies (Rousseau, Kelsen, Kojève) and foreground my further arguments with a brief discussion of opposing thinkers (Schmitt, Arendt).
The desire to neutralise the âprimacy of the politicalâ, which can be viewed as part of the EUâs DNA, has a long pedigree. It is linked to the idea that political conflicts could and ought to be overcome by reason, which can be traced back to a particular strand of the Enlightenment represented by the likes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and restated more recently by John Rawls and JĂźrgen Habermas. Against the premise that âmight makes rightâ, commonly associated with Hugo Grotius and Thomas Hobbes (and later revived by, e. g., Schmitt), Rousseau constructs a political order based on a social contract. Rousseauâs bold blueprint in effect reverses the earlier notion, suggesting that right makes might. The social contract is just and legitimate because it relies on citizensâ mutual acceptance of their shared interests, embodied in what Rousseau calls volontĂŠ gĂŠnĂŠraleââthe general willâ. This is not to be confused with the will of a majority, as people can be easily deceived about what is good for them, while âthe general will is always in the right, and always tends to the public welfareâ (Rousseau [1762] 1994: 66). It follows then, that true freedom consists in peopleâs compliance with the general will. By contrast, those individuals who are not sufficiently enlightened to internalise the wisdom of the general will and who defy its demands are enslaved by their selfish instincts. They shall be âforced to be freeâ (ibid. 58). In other words, they ought to be liberated from the influence of their ill-informed private will. Clearly, what Rousseau envisaged is rather different from contemporary notions of liberty, in which freedom also entails the freedom to be left alone. In line with this, Rousseau did not believe in the possibility, or even desirability of political representation. His package was all or nothing, and his conception of sovereignty somewhat circular: âsimply by virtue of its existence, the sovereign is always what it should beâ (ibid. 58).
Perpetual European Union
However impractical The Social Contract might appear today, Rousseau already understood that his blueprint could only work on a relatively small scale. How to apply the same logic to the relationship between sovereigns was far trickier. On the surface, it seems obvious that cooperation would be in their mutual rational interests. This assumption underpins a number of ambitious designs for lasting peace. As early as 1712, AbbĂŠ de Saint-Pierre (1658â1743) advanced a project âto render Peace perpetual in Europeâ, proposing âa Treaty to establish a perpetual European Unionâ (cited in Heuser 2019: 132â3). Rousseau considered its underlying logic compelling, writing that it would be enough to ârealize this commonwealth of Europe for a single dayâ to make it last forever; âso fully would experience convince men that their own gain is to be found in the good of allâ (Rousseau [1756] 1991: 88â9). Yet however logical this scheme was, Rousseau was profoundly sceptical about its realisability. He anticipated Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegelâs criticism of contractual theories applied to international relations. The rights of nations, Hegel argued in the Philosophy of Right (PR), âhave reality not in a general will, which is constituted as a superior power, but in their particular willsâ (cited in Glendinning 2014; compare Hegel [1821] 1989: 499â500, §333). Along similar lines, Rousseau criticised Saint-Pierreâs âperpetual European Unionâ, describing his plan âas ineffectual for founding it and unnecessary for maintaining itâ. Foreshadowing the problems of EU democratic legitimacy that cannot rely simply on âdelivering the goodsâ, Rousseau observed that
though the advantages resulting to commerce from a general and lasting peace are in themselves certain and indisputable, still, being common to all states, they will be appreciated by none. For such advantages make themselves felt only by contrast, and he who wishes to increase his relative power is ...