Democracy: The Unfinished Project of European Integration

The German philosopher and social theorist Jürgen Habermas, considered by many to be the greatest living social scientist, turns 80 today. His thoughts on European integration and the future of democracy still inspire – and possibly more than ever.

EU legislation has a tendency to catch people off guard. Too often, Europeans simply will not hear of the laws that the European institutions produce until they begin to feel the effects on their own skin. And when they do, they question not the legitimacy of a given law, but rather of the EU political system as a whole. Yet the academic and popular debate on the democratic deficit has been barking up the wrong tree. The European Union’s democratic deficit is not primarily an institutional deficit that can be fixed for instance through a gradual strengthening of the European and/or the respective member state parliaments. While such reforms would help, they would be more of a cosmetic than substantive nature. The bigger problem is that a fundamental ingredient of democratic politics is missing at the European level: a lively public sphere that could provide a communicative counterweight to the institutions of the EU political system.

This “deliberative” understanding of democracy as an interplay between the public sphere and the institutions of the political system is one of Jürgen Habermas’ key contributions. In this understanding, representative government can claim legitimacy only if decision-making is accompanied by free, lively and inclusive debate in the public sphere. Democracy is therefore an ideal that requires a very active notion of citizenship. In the European Union, we have good reason to question whether the promise of deliberative democracy has been fulfilled. While decisions are increasingly made at the European level, public opinion and will formation has largely remained within the member states. Consequently, EU politics tends to take place in the shadow of the public sphere. Institutional reform will not fix this crucial part of the democratic deficit.

But is democracy possible beyond the nation-state? For many, the nation-state is the natural home of democracy. It is the reference point for our collective identities, norms, values and traditions. And are these not crucial aspects to relate to in settling political disputes? Habermas has taken a radically different point of departure, arguing that the very idea of societies as uniform communities of values itself is a myth. Most, if not all societies nowadays are diverse and comprise many different and mutually incompatible sets of values. Yet democracy and democratic deliberation is nonetheless possible. And if democracy is possible in diverse national societies, there is no reason why it should not be possible also beyond the nation-state. This is so primarily because public deliberation has a civilizing function: it forces debaters to argue not on the basis of their individual values and beliefs, but on the basis of what is acceptable to all: reason.

The crossroads which the European Union faces at present is foremost a democratic dilemma. Are Europe’s citizens willing to take on the task of finishing the unfinished project of European integration, namely to strive for a full democratization of the European Union? Let us be clear on this: this is less a point about the European institutions than about the public sphere. The European Union can only become fully democratic if a European public sphere emerges as a control mechanism in relation to the political system. But this can only come about at a cost, specifically at the cost of recognizing Europeans from all the other member states as parts of the same political community, as fellow citizens in the world’s first postnational polity. The European public sphere can only produce what Habermas calls communicative power if public debate begins to transcend national borders, if the European citizens speak up collectively against the European institutions whenever protest is necessary.

Habermas is a radical democrat to whom the promise of postnational democracy by far outweighs its cost. But clearly, not everyone shares this view. There are many who view the nation-state as the natural home of democracy. They are the last who should complain about a democratic deficit, because they are the last who would acknowledge other EU citizens as their equals in democratic deliberation. And they are also the ones truly responsible for the lack of democratic control of the EU institutions. Institutional reform alone cannot fix the democratic deficit. As complex an ideal as democracy is, it is impossible to imagine without at least the functional equivalent of a public sphere as a counterweight to the political system.