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Globalisation and Democracy*
Erik Oddvar Eriksen
ARENA
Review article
Re-imagining Political Community edited by Daniele
Archibugi, David Held and Martin K�hler. The Polity
Press, 1998, ISBN 0-7456-1981-9, 352 p.
Legitimacy and the European Union by David
Beetham and Christopher Lord. Longman 1998, ISBN
0-582-30489-X, 144p.
The world order is rapidly changing due to global
structures of production, trade and communication, it is
often contended. Increasingly, the world is
becoming one through the revolution in telecommunication,
in transportation and in the formation of global
financial markets. These three revolutions have made
capital and information available everywhere and made
possible world wide mass-media and culture production.
Especially in the economic area this process is catching
on, as world financial and banking centres fuse into one
integrated network. The world financial markets
constitute a fully global economy, while trade to a large
degree remains regionalized. Globalization poses problems
for national democracy because collective decisions are
made in contexts beyond governmental control, and because
it narrows down the options available for democratic
elected boards. Economic globalization creates problems
for established institutions and for the prevailing world
system. However, a new political order may be underway.
In the book under current review: Re-imagining
Political Community, edited by Daniele Archibugi,
David Held and Martin K�hler, processes of globalisation
are connected to the end of the Cold War and the
assertion of democracy as the sole legitimate system of
governance. It contains a collection of important works
on how to come to grips with the problems posed by
economic globalisation, but also on how to take account
of the developments rendering the Westphalian model
obsolete. The task is to reformulate democratic theory in
order grasp the erosion of state autonomy and to
conceptualize a new political order. Thus the political
dimension of globalisation is in focus and this offers
interesting perspectives on both the challenges and the
possibilities facing the world at the turn of the
century.
The book is divided into three parts: The
transformation of the Interstate system - Citizenship,
Sovereignty and Transnational democracy - The Prospects
for Cosmopolitian democracy. David Held, in particular,
for years now has been pursuing the idea of cosmopolitan
democracy, which entails a system of governance arising
from and adapting to the diverse conditions and
interconnections between different peoples and nations.
In Chapter 1, he outlines the concept of globalisation
– a spatial phenomenon denoting a continuum between
the local and the global - involving the widening and
deepening of social relations across space and time and
the interdependence and vulnerabilities of day-to-day
activities. In short, the compression of time and space.
Globalisation processes are multi-dimensional
encompassing diverse domains of cooperation such as trade
and finance, multinational corporations, cultural trends,
environmental changes as well as emerging forms of
political governance. The former developments serve to
undermine democracy, while the latter induce a more
positive reading of the situation; new deliberative and
decision-making bodies emerge beyond national territory.
These new forms contain not only NGOs and social
movements, but also include the institutionalisation of
regional powers such as the EU, and, at the world level
the UN. Cross-cutting and transnational movements
indicate that the world now is “a world of
overlapping communities of fate”, and testify to the
thesis of new forms of global governance.
James Rosenau who is a leading figure in the
literature on governance, undertakes in Chapter 2 a
survey of control mechanisms beyond governments. There is
a remarkable expansion of collective power to handle new
forms of risks and vulnerabilities. Different steering
mechanisms are brought about by several channels of
influence, and these exist on different levels, some
sponsored by state and some not. Such mechanisms range
from NGOs and social movements, to Internet, cities and
micro regions. No one possesses absolute power within
these structures, therefore they may be functional
equivalents to democracy due to the logic of checks and
balances. Pluralism and disaggregation is seen as
conducive to democracy in a multi-centered world of
diverse non-governmental actors. However, until these
systems of governance can document real impact and until
their ability to respond to societal needs and influence
decision making at large the old problem of (group)
pluralism prevails. It amounts, in my opinion, merely to
governance without democracy, because there is little
chance of equal access and public accountability.
David Beetham in a short and informative chapter
writes on the potentials of the human rights regime for
cosmopolitan democracy. It is a puzzle, that is also
pursued in Chapter 4 by James Crawford and Susan Marks,
that international law started out as “droit des
gens” but ended up in the nineteenth century as a
law of peoples. These are two enlightening papers on the
problems and possibilities of entrenching human rights in
conventions and binding agreements. A human rights regime
is developing which, however, is at odds with the
prevailing notions of democracy. There is a tension
between the principle of people sovereignty, which is
based on exclusion, and the universalistic principle of
human rights that is not easily overcome. However, as I
will return to, the EU in this regard is a noteworthy
invention, even though Beetham may be right in
maintaining that the nation state for the foreseeable
future is the protector of individual rights.
Mary Kaldor in a very topical chapter on violence in
the 1990s, addresses the so-called “new civil
wars” - based on identity and new territorial
cleavages - which are difficult to prevent by the
established system of security. These wars also reflect
the general tension between democracy and human rights,
and as there is recognized right to ones own culture,
there is an urgent need for new kinds of peace keeping
mechanisms. A cultural transformation – a civil
political culture, which it took centuries to accomplish
in Europe - is needed to curb these kinds of wars, Kaldor
contends. The task is to institutionalise violence
regulating power transnationally and to check barbarism
by “active cosmopolitan citizenry”. (p.109)
The second part of the book starts out with a chapter
on Citizenship and Sovereignty in the Post-Westphalian
European State, in which Andrew Linklager discusses the
theoretical implications of cosmopolitan democracy.
Conventional conceptual lenses both conceal what is going
on and provide biased assessment standards, hence
“the tyranny of concepts” (H.Bull). By
employing recent developments in critical theory
(Habermas), Linklater is able to question normative ideas
of sovereignty and citizenship and to employ the concept
of democracy to polities wider than the nation state.
Likewise Ulrich Preuss in Chapter 7, from a much similar
position manages to see citizenship in the European Union
as a step towards loosening the ties between the
associates of a polity from pre-political cultural bonds
in order for trust and collective action to come about.
Both these chapters shed light on what a bold idea the EU
is (or might be) as it disconnects citizenship from
nationality. The authors see the development of Europe
now in line with the ideals of Enlightenment and Kant's
idea of perpetual peace. However, Preuss makes us aware
that nation states after the French revolution have not
at all existed in isolation, as is the impression
conveyed by conventional perspectives – once again a
reminder of the “tyranny of concepts”.
Richard Bellamy and Dario Castiglione (Chapter 8) cool
off the enthusiasm regarding the EU by pointing to the
problem of belonging and the lack of community feeling.
Under such circumstances increasing the power of the
European Parliament makes the democratic deficit larger.
Democracy is not only a set of rules for reaching binding
decisions but is made and remade in cultural traditions
and in the citizens' minds. It is embedded in a way of
life. They advocate for the EU as a mixed polity building
on “multiple communitarian attachments” and
dubb their position “cosmopolitan
communitariansm”. In the consecutive contribution
Janna Thompson questions the communitarian perspective
and warns about building politics on virtues: Even though
democracy presupposes the existence of a community-based
identity for citizens to abide majority decisions, it is
not necessarily dependent on pre-existent forms – it
may be fostered. The communitarians, thus, have problems
with rendering change understandable and with conceiving
of a rational justification of norms: or as Thompson asks
provokingly: “why should (we) be obliged to adopt
this virtue”? (p.184)
Daniele Archibugi ends this part of the anthology by
outlining the principles of cosmopolitan democracy, i.e.,
an ambitious endeavour into a world order based on rule
of law and democracy. She finds that domestic democracy
(inside nations), interstate and global dimensions all
have to be included in a multilevel structure making up
cosmopolitan democracy. She argues that the traditional
confederal model is too weak as it does not allow direct
intervention to promote intrastate democracy, whilst the
federal is too strong and rigid a model among world'
states, as it coercively imposes democratic orders on
lower levels. Cosmopolitan democracy represents a midway
between these two positions as it encompasses states with
different constitutions within an overarching democratic
world order. This, then, impels the writer to sum up and
develop the necessary reforms of the United Nations, if
democracy at world level is to come about.
In the last section the prospects for cosmopolitan
democracy are examined in different policy-fields. First,
Martin K�hler analyses the emergence of a global civil
society and the widening of the public sphere which,
however, are required not only for normative but also for
social and technical reasons. The depolititization of the
economic and technological spheres of action has led to
decoupling between the citizens as equals among equals in
the public sphere – citoyen – and citizens as
bourgeois – as private person in the economic or
private sphere of action. Economic and technological
globalisation makes the citizens remain private. Citoyen
and bourgeois are no longer members of the same
community. K�hler, however, points to the way civil
society organizations presages a shift in political
conflict resolution by increasingly bringing these two
roles together in international conferences, human rights
covenants, international criminal law and regional
settings such as the EU, and global settings like the UN.
This means recognition of the individual as a bearer of
rights and may be “... the first step towards a
framework of direct accountability...” (p.242)
K�hler has left out the role of the media when
addressing the public sphere, which is brought to the
fore in Chapter 12 by Gwyn Prins and Elizabeth Sellwood.
Their point of departure is the well known dilemma of a
public sphere that may be sensitive to problems of public
concern and a decision making structure unable `to act'.
They analyse the successful action of Greenpeace to stop
Shell sinking the Brent Spar – a very large floating
oil storage and loading buoy - in the ocean bed in 1991.
Environmental groups succeeded in mobilizing vigorous
protests and consumers in many countries because of
rhetorical skills, the use of media and new communication
systems. They also managed to change the attitude of
Shell itself because of constructive dialogue on a
scientific basis. The campaign succeeded in drumming up
support and change opinion. However, the role of media
and of an autonomous public sphere in opinion formation
is not developed in this chapter.
In the next contribution Pierre Hassner asks if
refugees represent a special case for cosmopolitan
citizenship. The increasing number of refuges – or
stateless persons – alerts us to the shortcomings of
the world order made up of nation states which are
divided internally and open to the outside world.
Refugees exist because of conflict within divided
countries and because of ties between groups and other
countries. It is only by establishing political orders
transnationally and by going beyond the monopoly and
sovereignty of the state that the refugee problem, along
with other similar problems, can be solved. Refugees are,
in Hannah Arends', words deprived of `the rights to have
rights', and it is “precisely because they are
citizens of nowhere that they are potential citizens of
the world” (p.274). Hassner subscribes to Kant's
project for Perpetual Peace based on a republican
notion of states, of universal hospitality and of
cosmopolitan spirit.
Derk Bienen, Volker Rittberger, Wolfgang Wagner
(Chapter 14) and Richard Falk (Chapter 15) evaluate the
United Nations, the former from communitarian and
cosmopolitan points of view. They analyse reform
proposals and pose the question of who should be the
effective members. From a communitarian perspective there
is some credibility to the present form with governments
as the sole members, because “states' rights”
are “derived from the needs of individuals”.
The authors of Chapter 14, then, find the communitarian
principle of international democracy - as it is
institutionalised in the General Assembly - compatible
with cosmopolitan democracy. Nevertheless they opt for
supplementing thiis with territorial representation
– one person, one vote - either as a second assembly
or by reforming the General Assembly. However, as Falk
reminds us, democracy was not a condition for membership
in the UN. It was primarily founded to prevent the
recurrence of war. The UN has increasingly taken up human
rights and democratic questions and as host of a series
conferences supporting women rights, environment,
development, participation etc. it has been innovative
and rather controversial. The UN helps facilitate
transitions to constitutional democracy at the state
level. The world order is changing and comprehensive
democratization is needed for the post-westphalian order
to achieve functional stability and normative legitimacy.
But the UN itself needs to be emancipated from
constraining geopolitical and global market forces.
This is altogether a very welcome anthology, focused
on the most pressing political questions of our time and
written in a lucid and clear style. However, not all the
chapters are of the same high quality and not all themes
equally well treated. As for empirical grounds not yet
surveyed I miss the public sphere and more on the role of
media. Civil society is addressed but the public sphere
as deliberating fora lifted over associations of the
civil society and pitted against the decision making
agencies is not properly addressed, neither empirically
nor theoretically. It is of utmost interest for
cosmopolitan democracy that a global public sphere
evolves and this requires sensitive and independent
media-institutions. This also connects to the theoretical
deficit in the conceptualization of cosmopolitan
democracy in this book, that concerns the manner in which
the tension between human rights and democracy is
addressed. This tension does not solely arise because of
the Westphalian model of state sovereignty, and something
a cosmopolitan order automatically might solve. The
tension is of principle as is revealed in communitarian
and liberal theories of democracy, which are the dominant
perspectives in this anthology. While human rights are
universal and appeal to humanity as such for validation,
democracy refers to a particular community of consociates
who come together and decide what are in their equal
interest. Whilst liberals may be able to give rights a
solid ground, they can not explain their genesis and how
justice is brought about in popular assemblies. On the
other hand communitarians are at pains to give rights a
secure foundation beyond the will-formation of a
particular society. Both entities need to be brought
about simultaneously, and it is by squaring this circle
that cosmopolitan democracy can be given a firm
theoretical basis.
However, the institutionalisation of rights and
decision-making agencies on different levels are required
by the cosmopolitan model. Intermediate institutions in a
global democratic world order – regional bodies
between UN and the nation state – are thus needed.
The EU is, then, of utmost interest for cosmopolitans and
is several times referred to as the most promising
example of post-national governance.
Democracy in the EU
The EU is demanding both in analytical and descriptive
terms. It is a complex and multifaceted entity that is
unprecedented but whose identity, legitimacy and
democratic quality are contested. There are disagreements
among scholars about its nature and there is dissension
among lay people of its value and justification. The
technocratic vision has for a long time now dominated
both the public and scholarly debate on the EC/EU: It is
an elite game in the hands of economic interests and
bureaucrats. It is the technical expertise and the
functional interests that dominate the EU and exists
mostly for handling problems which are beyond the reach
of nation states. Its legitimacy hinges on the ability to
solve problems in a smooth way, hence the free market
measures and the ability to manage solely negative
integration. However, due to recent happenings, The
Amsterdam treaty, enlargement, security politics - the
increasingly deeper and wider integration - this
perspective has become ever more confining. There is no
broad consensus on the goals and the EU is not only about
regulation and pragmatic concerns. In my view the EU is
best conceived of as a political response to economic
globalisation.
It is therefore high time that a book on
“Legitimacy and the European Union” appears. In
this book David Beetham and Christopher Lord ask whether
there are legitimacy problems and whether such a
post-national polity can at all be justified. Legitimacy
is here understood as a three-tiered relationship,
between legality, normative justifiability (according
to socially accepted beliefs) and consent of
appropriate subordinates. These are the
liberal-democratic criteria for political authority which
are also relevant for the EU because of its impact on
citizens' and nation states' interests. Indirect
legitimation, i.e., the contention that the EU derives
its legitimacy from the legality and legitimacy of the
member states, does not suffice: “.. the electoral
authorisation of ministers at the national level, and
their accountability to their national parliaments”
is unsatisfactory (p.15). The EU requires direct
legitimation, hence the three legitimatisation criteria;
effective performance according to given ends, democracy
– accountability and representation – and identity,
i.e., agreement on the nature and boundaries of the
political community.
A common identity is needed for securing trust, that
is, in order for subjects of collective decision-making
to be committed: Every political order presupposes some
kind of common identity to foster allegiance and respect
for laws. Even if the EU is something less than a state,
it requires identity due to its ability to make
collective decisions. Nevertheless, the prospects for a
European identity that makes it possible to build a Union
is rather bleak as there is no “European
people” with a common history and cultural
traditions on which the EU may vegetate. Its identity is
quite thin and people in Europe display a “rather
multi-tiered sense of belonging” (p.47). There is a
low European identification by conventional standards,
and the EU has had to apply different strategies in
relieving its legitimacy problems: “by building
national governments into its own political
system...“ and “... by implicating organised
non-governmental actors in policy formulation and
implementation” (p.57). From the identity point of
view democratization – extended participation - of
the EU is required in order to secure the trust necessary
for such a wide-ranging and consequential polity to go
ahead.
While one may agree in this analysis by and large, the
authors do not seem to adequately recognize the way the
constitutional structure institutionalised in the
member-states and half way already at work at the EU
level presupposes and again reproduces the required kind
of political identity. In this perspective there is
already a political culture at work that fosters
collective decisions making. The EU in fact has
contributed to the de-legitimation of national
identities! (p.101) Majority vote is limited and
consensus democracy is a prevalent trait, but this does
not necessarily hinge on lack of common identity, but
rather on the lack of proper democratic structures of
governance. In order to fully understand post-nation
political integration and the underlying notion of
identity quite another analytical treatment and
measurement is required than the one undertaken in this
book.
Their second assessment criterion – democracy -
entails examination of the possibilities for the
development of the political system along
intergovernmental and supranational dimensions. On the
first dimension it is the domestic authorization of the
EU that lends credibility to the legitimacy claim. The EU
need not itself be democratic while the member-states
comply with democratic criteria. The structure of the EU
in which the Commission has proposal power and is the
main power unit, and not the (intergovernmental) Council,
in addition to the technocratic and bysantic decision
making style, renders this legitimation strategy
obsolete. Further, representation and accountability
under the intergovernmental model cannot sustain the
indirect mode of legitimation, due to long and weak
chains of command. This has led to the
“de-democratisation of the state rather that the
democratisation for the Union”. (p.74).
However, also the EU as a supranational entity poses
legitimacy problems as lack of a Euro electorate, of a
party system at the European level and complete
parliamentary power serve to keep the politics of the EU
in “a kind of sub-optimal equilibrium” (p.81).
The EU is a dual legitimation system as it receives
support both from the member states and from
supranational elements – the Court and the
Parliament – but its legitimacy deficit is profound
as proper authorisation, representation and
accountability is difficult to institutionalise. The
authors also maintain that the EU may be aspiring to some
new form of democratic system which carves up legitimacy
on its own, but for the time being it has to work on
established notions of democratic legitimacy. The
problems posed by identity and democratic deficits put
higher burdens on performance which is the last
legitimation criteria.
While intergovernmentalists opt for an Union without
democracy – i.e., member state democracy is enough,
Beetham and Lord observe that the EU is far more than an
inter-govermental system of governance and that political
powers that impose goods and burdens on citizens and
states are in need of direct legitimation. The EU is a
far-reaching polity, whose undertakings have profound
effect on citizens and their affairs. It affects their
interests as consumers, producers, employees, and rights
holders. There are thus three kinds of rights delivery
through which the EU may obtain legitimacy: security,
welfare and civil liberties. Due to its performance and
the effects of the EU's policies, there is a rising call
for a greater onus on measures to strengthen the direct
legitimacy of the EU. This is underscored by the use of
the EU to relieve the national agenda of difficult
issues, which highlights the autonomy of EU
decision-making. As also negative integration produces
winners and loosers, and as performance itself is in need
of justification, legitimacy through performance not only
depend on the capacity to realise goals but also on
agreement of the criteria for performance.
This, however, brings to the fore problems with the
perspective presented here, in which performance and
identity are held to be independent sources of
legitimacy. These two dimensions should not be put at the
same level as democracy in assessing legitimacy in the
EU. In a post-methaphysical world – and even more so
at a post-national level of integration – such a
conceptual strategy is not adequate as it is only
democracy and the way it involves citizens and their
representatives in the deliberative and decison making
processes that ensures legitimacy. Democracy is the only
legitimate form of governance, it may be contended: It is
by adhering to democratic procedures that a modern polity
at all may achieve legitimacy. The concept of democracy
therefore should be situated on a much deeper level than
what is the case in the work of Beetham and Lord. This
would make it possible to see that only procedures for
deliberative and decision making processes can provide
for legitimacy. Only through such procedures can outcomes
claim to be just and identities and commonalties
legitimately be expressed. Moreover, legitimacy is not
easily subjectable to empirical measurement, as it
involves a normative component – that is that
powerholders or institutions deserve the support they are
receiving.
I believe that such a perspective on legitimacy –
in contrast to a perspective assuming legitimacy to be
achieved by complying to existing norms of justice or to
prevailing notions of identity – might produce a
less pessimistic view on the democratic deficit in the
EU, and conceive of the EU as in fact a more integrated
and justified polity than the perspective of this book
allows for. The EU itself claims popular approval, it
claims to be a source of legitimacy in itself. The
authors touch upon such insights several places. They
point both to the rhetoric of `bringing the Union ever
closer to the people' - the Community as `a political
union' - a polity - and the many referenda on treaty
changes to increase the depth of European integration.
These features are, however, not only reminders that the
power resides directly with the people, but also that the
EU is a process, and that the process itself, and the way
it is conducted induces legitimacy. Increasingly the
European Community is becoming a polity sui generis and
increasingly agreements have to be established not
posited.
However, apart from this objection this is a very fine
book, nuanced, nicely written and full of insights for
every one interested in the very remarkable process of
European integration taking place in an ever more
globalized world. It shows the problems of
institutionalising post-national democracy, and that
globalization has sparked a new debate in political
theory challenging older notions of democracy,
citizenship and community and their inter-relations. The
EU in particular is theoretically demanding as
conventional perspectives are at pains to explain its
endurance and stability. It is therefore very much to be
appreciated that Beetham and Lord put legitimacy at the
core of the analysis and that B�hler & co., connect
democracy and globalisation. These books helps us see
that the world order has become increasingly complex and
that interconnections and mutual dependency have brought
about new levels of integration which also require
democratic governance, even without the existence of the
EU.
Footnotes
* To be published in Public
Administration in a slightly reversed version. I am
grateful for comments by Johan P. Olsen and Helene
Sjursen.
[Date of publication in the ARENA
Working Paper series: 15.08.1999]
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