POST-NATIONAL DEMOCRACY: A CHALLENGE TO POLITICAL SCIENCE? Alberta M. Sbragia UCIS Research Professor of Political Science Director, European Union Center and Center for West European Studies University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA Sbragia@ucis.pitt.edu Paper Delivered as the Introductory Presentation Convegno Nazionale Della Societa Italiana di Scienza Politica (SISP) Universita degli Studi di Trento 15 September 2003 I am fairly certain that everyone here will agree with me if I say that post-national democracy does indeed pose a challenge to the discipline of political science. We may disagree about what post-national democracy might be and what political science itself is, but I think we can agree that the conceptualization and institutionalization of post-national democracy presents difficult challenges for political scientists. Our very vocabulary is built on the centrality of the nation-state. We study "international" politics, national and subnational politics, the role of "multi-national" corporations, "transnational" civil society, and so on. When we build datasets we collect national data. The national lies at the core of our questions, our assumptions, and our inquiry. The nation-state is so central to the study of politics that it is nearly impossible to move beyond it. Transnational non-state actors are viewed as moving across national boundaries, but the literature uses the power of national state actors as the template against which to measure the power of non-state actors. No matter how much we study transnational actors, we are doing so within a framework in which the national shapes our way of thinking, our way of identifying oneself. The nation-state is a short-hand way of capturing history, tradition, attitudes, basic values, myths, and so forth. In fact, the anguish of immigration lies precisely in the fact that parents raised in one nation must watch their own children grow up in another nation state and thereby become someone quite different from the parents. Political science itself has been shaped by national traditions. In Europe, national traditions were so strong that there was relatively little interchange among national communities of political scientists until the vision of Stein Rokkan, Jean Blondel, Hans Daalder, and Rudolph Wildenmann led to the establishment of the European Consortium for Political Research in 1970.1 American political science, for its part, is characterized by a strong "national" profile (created to a significant degree by European-born political scientists).2 The types of questions asked, the methodologies favored, the theoretical developments pursued, and the influences imported from other disciplines have varied across national traditions so that political science as a discipline stands as an example of how national intellectual traditions affect scholarly inquiry. It is not surprising therefore that for empirically oriented political scientists the study of democracy is bounded by the national. We study the practice of democracy by analyzing such practice in specific national contexts. In addition to historical experience, it is national constitutions, laws, institutions, customs, and norms which shape and define democracies. Even scholars who are developing the concept of cosmopolitan democracy argue that "although it is assuming a cosmopolitan dimension, the public sphere remains basically a national arrangement."3 Theorists argue about different types of democracy-liberal (i.e. representative) and participatory being two of the most prominent models4 -but to study actual operating democracies is to study democracies institutionalized in nation states. Those who study democracies study variation and compare very concrete aspects of politics and government whereas those who write about post-national democracy are addressing possibilities rather than actualities.5 Since no acknowledged post-national democracy exists today, an empirically oriented political scientist might conclude that the discussion of post-national democracy is better left to theorists. What can we, as political scientists interested in contemporary politics, contribute to the discussion of post-national democracy? Based on what we have learned, can we move the discussion forward? I think we can make progress by grounding such a discussion in those realities of governance that we routinely investigate in our work as political scientists. The work of political scientists who compare political systems, the scholarly community to which I belong, has provided us with a great deal of knowledge about operating democracies. Furthermore, scholars of international relations have been investigating how democracies interact with one another at the international level.6 I think that that knowledge can in fact help us think a bit more clearly about the possible contours of post-national democracy. We can, however, do more than that. Given that we are meeting in the city which constituted one of the fronts of World War I, it seems only appropriate to anchor our discussion within an integrating Europe, a Europe which in May 2004 will erase the divisions created by the aftermath of both World War II and the Cold War. I would like, however tentatively, to link my discussion of post-national democracy to the realities of governance by focusing on the European Union as well as on operating democracies. The EU is I think an ideal focal point for this discussion, for it is in Europe that the debate about post-national democracy is the most developed. It is also the only place in the world where the debate resonates with policy makers and very practical politicians. Only in Europe are the debates among political theorists paralleled by debates among politicians. In other parts of the world, economic integration is proceeding but political integration is either not desired (as in the North American Free Trade Agreement--NAFTA) or so embryonic (as in Mercosur) that the debate about post-national democracy is just beginning7. In the world outside Europe, in fact, the linkage between democracy and the national is taken for granted. 8 It therefore seems appropriate to focus on the implications of post-national democracy within a politically and economically integrating Europe. Given the constraints of time, I shall be able to only sketch my major lines of argument, but I hope we shall have an opportunity to debate during the rest of this conference. The European Union and the "Democratic Deficit" The "national" dominates the debate among political scientists studying the European Union. The key theoretical debate essentially focuses on the question of whether the EU is "just an intergovernmental organization or...an incipient federal state."9 Is it a form of polity characterized by multi-level governance or is it an elaborate international organization with distinctive features but still essentially shaped by the bargaining among member-states? Scholars rooted in comparative politics tend to view it as primarily a type of polity while those schooled in international relations tend to view it as a distinctive form of international organization. 10 Once the debate moves to the issue of democracy within the European Union, the influence of the national is very evident. To simplify, the discussion about the "democratic deficit" either implicitly or explicitly focuses on the lack of parliamentary power at the level of the EU, the lack of an EU government formed by a parliament, and the continued influence of the governments of the member states. The electorate is viewed as not having the kind of control over the decisions made in Brussels which that electorate has over the decisions made in their national capitals. Representative democracy at the national level is viewed as far more robust than at the supranational level, so much so that the EU is viewed as non-democratic in contrast to the EU's constituent member-states. In general those arguing that a democratic deficit exists often focus on the fact that the European Commission is a non-majoritarian institution. It is, therefore, not elected as is the executive in presidential or semi-presidential systems. Neither is it drawn from, or formed by, the Parliament as is the executive in parliamentary systems. The directly-elected European Parliament's powers are thought to be much more limited than are those of national parliaments, and that lack of power is best symbolized by its inability to form the executive. In a similar vein, neither the European Council nor the Council of Ministers is directly elected for its role within the European Union but is only indirectly elected for it. The members of the Council of Ministers, for their part, necessarily represent the "national" interest rather than the "partisan interest" of their electoral constituency as they do in domestic politics. The European Central Bank is not accountable to any (even indirectly) elected authority whereas previously central banks were subordinate to elected national governments. Perhaps most trenchantly, the argument is made that the European electorate cannot "throw out" the Commission; furthermore, throwing out the Council of Ministers would require a change of government in every member-state. Whereas the role of the national government's partisan coloration in the Council of Ministers is often viewed as necessarily diluted by the need to represent territorially- rather than ideologically -based interests, competitive political parties in the European Parliament have been viewed as an essential component of a democratic European Union. Many scholars have argued that a competitive party system anchored in the European Parliament is essential for Euro-democracy. 11 While transnational party groups exist in the European Parliament, strong transnational parties with trans-societal roots do not exist. Although the fact that the Members of the European Parliament (MEPS) are organized according to ideologically-based transnational party groups sets the European Parliament apart from other international assemblies (which are organized by national delegations), the operating reality of the European Parliament is that national delegations are more powerful than are leaders of the groups as such.12 Although party discipline has developed to the point that the party groups vote more cohesively than do the parties in the US Congress, 13 critics have charged that the two major party groups (the Socialists and the People's Party) cooperate to such an extent that the Parliament's party system does not meet the standards of a parliamentary democracy. The fact that the range of powers exercised by the Parliament are far from comprehensive also contributes to the deficit. Although the Parliament exercises a significant control over the EU's budget, that control is limited. It has no say over either agricultural spending (which accounts for roughly 45% of the EU's one hundred billion euro budget), taxation, or the EU's revenues.14 It also is not involved in shaping the negotiating mandate for the EU's international agreements (the mandate is completely controlled by the Council), has no say over competition policy (which is under the Commission's jurisdiction), and is excluded from the Union's Common Foreign and Security Policy. Although, for example, the Parliament is very important when it comes to intra-EU environmental policy, it is excluded from international environmental negotiations, an area of increasing significance. In brief, then, the argument about the "democratic deficit" rests on the claim that the Euro-electorate simply does not have enough control over the process of decision-making in Brussels. The Commission is not elected, the members of the Council of Ministers are responsible exclusively to national parliaments and national electorates, and the Parliament, while being excluded from key policy areas, is both strongly influenced by national delegations and is not internally adversarial enough. There is therefore a disconnect between the logic of domestic politics-which is viewed as democratic--and the logic of EU politics which is viewed as both elitist and technocratic.15 In Dimitris Chryssouchoou's words, the European Union "has failed to transform itself from democracies to democracy."16 Post-National Democracy and Decision-Making Citizens of the EU live in democracies and thereby already enjoy a wide range of rights. As you well know, they not only enjoy the freedom to choose among candidates and political parties during elections, but they also enjoy the freedom of the press, the right to criticize their government, the right to worship as they please or not to worship at all, and the right, when arrested, to be tried under the rule of national law which is applied fairly uniformly across citizens. Although a national democracy certainly includes an electoral control over decision-making, such control is embedded in a concern for other rights which we now take for granted in democratic systems.17 Given the importance of all the rights citizens already enjoy in their own national democracies, the discussion about post-national democracy becomes focused, almost by default, on the mechanisms by which citizens can influence decision-making. It is in the area of decision-making that the EU is particularly relevant. (Citizens do not need the EU to grant them the freedom of speech, for example). Electoral influence over decision-making becomes the central component of post-national democracy since the citizens concerned already enjoy other rights within their own national democracies. Post-national democracy in Europe will not transform our general notion of political rights although it will "transnationalize" rights such as the suffrage which already exist at the national level18. Rather, it will involve allowing the citizenry to exert a more direct influence over the decisions made in Brussels. That in turn implies that national governments and public administrative officials will lose the monopoly they have traditionally exercised over policy made beyond the borders of the nation-state. Governments and public officials will no longer be the guardians of national sovereignty as traditionally understood.19 The relationship between elites and the mass public will be re-shaped. We are therefore bound to be more interested in institutional configurations in post-national democracy than we are when we are discussing democracy in a national context. In a national context, democracy enjoys the "halo effect" of being the twin of rights.20 Within the EU, the halo effect is enjoyed by the national government and not the EU in and of itself.21 Europeans already enjoy rights so post-national democracy is concerned with decision-making far more than rights. That concern with decision-making, however, co-exists with a lack of a common identity, of a people, of a demos.22 Many scholars, both in political science and sociology, as well as journalists have focused on the problem posed by the lack of a European identity, the lack of a European public sphere in which citizens of different nationalities could debate with one another, and the lack of feelings of solidarity across national boundaries.23 The fact that in Europe "contentious politics", to use Sidney Tarrow's term, is still nationally-based and nationally- organized clearly illuminates the consequences of the absence of a demos.24Since the "national" is so important to the structuring of power, it is not surprising that the "national" is equally important in structuring identity, protest, the boundaries of public space, and "cultural self-image."25 My assumption, however, is that the debate about democracy in the European Union will not be stopped by the lack of a demos .Those arguing for greater democracy at the EU level have been listened to since 1979 when the European Parliament was directly elected for the first time. Since then, the power of the European Parliament has been consistently expanded. The current draft of the European constitutional treaty strengthens the power of the Parliament once again-as did the negotiations for the Single European Act, the Treaty of Maastricht, the Treaty of Amsterdam, and the Treaty of Nice. The existence of a democratic deficit, however defined, has come to be part of the landscape of European integration; it is perceived as a real problem by practical politicians. Not only do they acknowledge it rhetorically, but they acknowledge it by consistently changing the institutional arrangements which govern the making of legislation. The diplomats and elected politicians who are involved in negotiating institutional change are not likely to be swayed by the arguments of scholars who argue that without a demos there can be no post-national democracy.26 After all, the preconditions of national democracy are not necessarily the preconditions of post-national democracy. Just as national democracy required a movement from the clan as the key form of social organization to that of territorially-defined citizenship, so too post-national democracy is likely to be underpinned by important differences vis a vis national democracy27. National democracy was closely linked to a nationally-defined demos, but post-national democracy may in fact distinguish itself from its national predecessor by incorporating within itself the lack of such "we-feeling." In national democracies, consociational arrangements have allowed democracy to co-exist with sharp societal cleavages. Although I would argue that such cleavages differ in significant ways from the kinds of national cleavages characteristic of the EU, new types of institutional arrangements will need to develop in order that post-national democracy be able to co-exist with the lack of a political community.28 Such arrangements will need to address both the relationship between the governors and the governed and the fact that the both the governed and the governors are inextricably tied to the national. 29 And here I privilege the discussion of institutional arrangements within a post-national democracy. Given the lack of a demos and the lack of strong pan-European political parties, the organization of institutional power necessarily becomes extremely salient for a discussion of post-national democracy within Europe. 30Just as institutions (along with market forces) have been key to the process of integration, I argue that institutions will be key to the evolution of post-national democracy. National Democracies and Institutional Arrangements As we think about the literature on existing democracies, the key premise of that literature is that operating democracies differ amongst themselves.31 We know that the practice of democracy varies rather widely-in Europe as elsewhere. In many cases, what is viewed as integral to one form of national democracy is viewed as peripheral or even undesirable in another national democracy-even within Europe. For example, the degree of transparency that Swedes take for granted in their version of democracy seems inconceivable in the French, British, or German versions. Such differences among democracies are linked to national histories, civil wars, international conflict, cleavage structures, patterns of party development, electoral systems, and so forth.32 We know that democracies can have a presidential system, a parliamentary system, or as in the case of France a hybrid system. They can be federal or unitary or like Spain somewhere in between. They can have strong parties with strong party discipline, as in West European countries, or weak parties as in most of the former socialist countries and the United States and Brazil. They can have a strong center, as in France, or a weak center as in Canada. They can have a strong bureaucracy or a relatively weak one; a very powerful or a weaker judiciary, official secrets and a penchant for secrecy on the part of the public administration or a bureaucracy which is very transparent and offers open access to information. Democracies can have one party in the governing coalition for many decades as have Japan and Italy or have frequent turnover among parties. They can have a "first past the post" electoral system or a system based on proportional representation or all sorts of hybrid systems. .In the legislative arena, some, such as the United Kingdom, have a "chamber of debate" while the US, by contrast, has a very powerful legislative body.33. One useful way to conceptualize the various differences among democracies is to use Lijphart's distinction between the consensus and the majoritarian model of democracy. That distinction is helpful to me in thinking about post-national democracy. Majoritarian democracies concentrate power "in the hands of a bare majority-and often even merely a plurality instead of a majority" while consensus democracies disperse power while simultaneously trying to "maximize the size of majorities." Consensual democracies often do not completely change the party composition of coalition governments; turnover in government is often partial rather than complete. Majoritarian democracies are "exclusive, competitive and adversarial whereas the consensus model is characterized by inclusiveness, bargaining, and compromise." 34 The United Kingdom is the archetype of the majoritarian democracy whereas Belgium is the archetype of a consensus democracy. .ijphart's discussion of consensual democracy, and the widespread existence of consensual elements in many democracies, alerts us to the possibility that an operating post-national democratic system may well resemble Belgium far more than some "ideal". That is, a post-national European democracy will be a system characterized by continual negotiation and the construction of compromises and political bargains based on deeply-rooted territorially-based cleavages. Whereas many of the critics of the current European Union seem to want both efficiency and effectiveness on the one hand and electoral control on the other, it is quite likely that a democratic European Union (however institutionalized) will be less efficient than is the current Union. As James Caporaso argues, "effective democracy does not imply that all good things go together."35 The European Challenge Once we move to the EU level, we are faced with a number of dilemmas. Once we begin thinking about the EU as a potential democracy in and of itself, we realize that we have to be careful about using historical antecedents. First of all, no large democracy has adopted its democratic institutions from scratch. India became a democracy in a post-colonial situation just as the US did. In the case of the US, it is important to remember, as Robert Dahl reminds us, that the US, by today's standards, was a very small country when it chose its democratic institutions and designed its system of governance.36 Even then, it had to suffer a very bloody civil war before its national integrity was well grounded. Would the US choose the same institutional arrangements if it were becoming a democratic federation in 2003? Would California, with 33 million people, agree to be represented by only two senators when Wyoming, with a population of half a million also is represented by two Senators? The answer to that question is not, by any means, obvious. The question of post-national democracy in the EU therefore has to face the critical problem of scale. The population of the EU, after May 2004, will number roughly 500 million of inhabitants. Governing such a large population would present problems to any traditional democratic nation-state. It is even more of a dilemma for an entity that is not a traditional nation-state. Secondly, the heterogeneity of the population is quite high. True, the EU's entire population is all relatively wealthy in global terms, but their linguistic diversity, their history of frequent warfare, their strong links to different parts of the world outside Europe, their negative stereotypes of each other, their different postwar experiences (with the West Europeans experiencing national democracy and prosperity and the East Europeans experiencing the opposite), do not make the path to a democratic EU very easy. Even within Western Europe, the relationship of the Scandinavians to the rest of Europe is historically different from that of the British, that of the Irish is different from both the Scandinavians and the British, and that of Portugal is different from that of Spain. Of course the relationship of Germany and France to the rest of Europe is well-known. Secondly, the history of colonial empires is significant in thinking about how diversity within Europe has been shaped. The British, the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Belgians, and the Dutch all had significant empires of different duration. For the British, the French, the Portuguese, the Belgians and the Dutch, decolonization is associated with the post-WWII period. Seen from a historical perspective, decolonization happened very recently. Therefore, many EU member states have been -and still are--oriented not only toward Europe but also toward other areas of the world. A visit to the foreign ministry of any of the EU's ex-colonial powers will immediately highlight their different conceptions of global geography. European nations were the colonizers of the world, but they competed against one another in the process of colonization.37 That historical experience underpins the difficulties the European Union faces in becoming a more effective (unitary) global foreign policy actor. Sovereignty in the exercise of foreign policy is nourished by historical experience, ongoing relationships with ex-colonial states, and the existence of extra-European linguistic communities based on the previous colonial experience (i.e. the lusophone, hispanic, francophone, and anglophone world). Third, the experiences of WWII have given many Europeans their favorite and most widely used negative nationally-based stereotypes.38 The Dutch and the Germans have had a summit meeting discussing how to increase the amity between those two populations, the French have had to work very hard at creating societal links with Germans and vice versa, German schoolchildren visiting Britain are currently being attacked as Nazis, the Poles trust the US more than their European neighbors to protect them in case of attack and so on. . Fourth, within national systems, there are also differences vis a vis integration-or there might be if given the opportunity to mobilize. The Federal Republic was born a "semi-sovereign state', to use Peter Katzenstein's term, but no referendum has ever been held in Germany on the question of integration. A large majority of the German population opposed the replacement of the Deutschemark with the Euro, but the Euro was adopted nonetheless. The referendum in France on the Maastricht Treaty won by the slimmest possible margin, and integration went ahead. The Irish and the Danes have both had to vote twice to approve initiatives promoting integration. Enlargement has taken place in spite of widespread opposition within the mass public if public opinion surveys are to be trusted. Finally, the EU's population is divided into many small states as well as a relatively few large states. Both the citizens and governing elites of the small states view their counterparts in the large states as predisposed to be overbearing, arrogant, and willing to run roughshod over their views. The citizens of small states, regardless of partisan identification, easily feel threatened by the (political and market) power which big states wield as a matter of course. Although the EU has given small states a greater share of power than has any other international organization, the small states are constantly worried that their relative share of power will be eroded. The current controversy between small states, which have respected the strictures of the Stability and Growth Pact, and the three large member-states which have ignored those constraints is a case in point. The issue of the respective power of the small and large member-state governments will undoubtedly be addressed once again in the next few months-just as it was during the negotiations for the Treaty of Nice which opened the door for enlargement. It is not surprising that most of the small states are mobilizing to act in unison during the forthcoming Intergovernmental Conference which will negotiate the new constitutional treaty for the European Union. The question of how citizens as opposed to governments are to be represented within the EU is critical, and is the usual focus of the debate about the democratic deficit within the EU. However, it must be remembered that the citizens of small states worry about being ruled by the citizens of more populous states. This worry is exacerbated by the fact that big countries exercise market-power in an economically integrated post-Euro Europe as well as political power. From the point of view of small euro-zone countries, the economic actions of the big countries can lead to policy consequences which are damaging to small countries. Governments which are viewed as protectors by the citizens of small states vis a vis the governments and citizens of large states cannot be marginalized without the citizenry of the small states feeling aggrieved. On the other hand, democracy does imply that some kind of majority, however inclusive, has a substantial say in what gets done. The perennial question of democracies-how to protect the interests of the minority-takes on a particularly difficult twist when territorially-based identity is involved. We know from the example of the Basques in Spain, Northern Ireland in the UK, and Corsica in France, and to some extent the history of the Trentino in Italy that protecting the interests of a minority which defines itself territorially rather than by partisan or functional affiliation is a particularly difficult issue for democracies to address and resolve. When the territorial identity involved is also recognized as sovereign in the international arena, the problems of constructing democratic governance with its overtones of some kind of majoritarian impulse are exacerbated. One of the most common responses-one found in the Trentino-is that of giving greater autonomy to the territorially-defined group in question. However within the EU, that becomes particularly problematic because economic integration is the core purpose of the EU. Such integration requires a "level playing field" for all economic actors regardless of their nationality or claims to uniqueness. For that reason, "subsidiarity" as it concerns competition policy, the single market, trade policy, and monetary policy is explicitly excluded within the European Union. Economic integration is important in another way as well. Since economic integration is the underpinning of European integration, market considerations must be given a very strong hearing in any kind of policy conflict which pits the market against other claims, whether social or environmental.39 Whereas a traditional democracy has the luxury of choice when it comes to its national political economy (the example of India comes to mind), the European Union is far more constrained in the degree of choice. After all, economic regionalism necessarily privileges trade-which in turn privileges the market economy which underpins trade. The construction of a regional union is therefore very different from the construction of a nation-state. The role of the market is fundamentally different.40 For electorates used to a more explicit or more balanced trade-off between the logic of the market and the regulation (correction) of the market, however, the privileged position of the market can lead voters who view the world from a strong social democratic or Christian democratic perspective to view themselves as a permanent minority within the Union.41 At the national level, of course, political parties represent different combinations of claims against or for the market. However, the fact that European-wide political parties are very weak indicates that that possible solution is still in the future. More radically, post--national democracy in fact may be characterized by a lack of transnational parties (at least as we currently conceptualize parties). Although political rights are very amenable to becoming "transnationalized", institutions which are embedded in the national may well not make the leap to the transnational. There is no reason to expect that all the institutions we associate with national democracy will re-appear on the regional stage. The divisive issue of small states versus large states will make it very difficult to construct strong cohesive transnational parties. Ideology would need to trump the "national" Given the lack of a transnational ideology in Europe, it is not clear how such transnationalism would emerge. Post-National Democratization Having laid out some of the very practical and concrete difficulties which post-national democracy in Europe faces, what can we as political scientists do to move the discussion forward? I would argue that post-national democracy in Europe should be conceptualized as an ongoing process of post-national democratization.42 The national experience is useful, I think, in that national systems typically have democratized over time. Democracy in national states was an evolutionary process, with national states varying tremendously, for example, in who obtained the right to vote when. Male non property owners often were given the right to vote later than male property owners, and women were typically given the suffrage after males.43 It is useful to remember that three of the founding states of the European Union did not allow women to vote without restrictions until the post-WWII period-France allowed women to vote for the first time in 1944, Italy in 1945, and in Belgium women were allowed to vote without restrictions in 1948. Democratization, I would argue, rather than democracy as such, is the process which we as political scientists should study. Post-national democratization is the challenge which both future generations of citizens and political scientists must confront. Whereas national democratization addressed the extension of the suffrage and the limiting of monarchical power, post-national democratization will give pride of place to institutional arrangements. Such arrangements will be the contested focal point of the process of democratization. An institutional design which can produce transnational electoral and partisan minorities, pluralities, and majorities while accommodating intense feelings of national identity as well as hard-nosed inter-state bargaining44 can only be constructed by extensive conflict, negotiation, and consistent dissatisfaction with the status quo (whatever that may be). The European Union, for the foreseeable future, will consistently experience an "impossible status quo"45-which in turn will mobilize various actors to push for the evolution of the institutional design then in place. The dynamic which has occurred between the negotiation of the Single European Act in 1985 and the drafting of the constitutional treaty by the Convention on the Future of Europe in 2003 makes my point. Europe is gradually evolving into what will become a post-national democracy. It has no model, however, to use as a template. In that sense, it is analogous to the experience of British democracy which, in the thirteenth century, pioneered the limitation of monarchical power. It differs from that experience, however, in that the democratization of the European Union can draw on a host of national models of democracy with differing institutional arrangements. Those models offer a reservoir of experience which offer guidelines. However, the European Union must also address the political realities which confront it as it democratizes. The American experience of constructing a new democratic system, for example, built on the British (as well as the Dutch) model46 but modified it considerably to address the political realities faced by those who wanted to abandon the weak Confederacy and establish a stronger federal system. The introduction of a presidential rather than a parliamentary system, the separation of powers among the executive, legislative and judicial branches (with an overlapping of powers), the introduction of judicial review and federalism, the creation of two equally powerful legislative chambers which however kept foreign policy powers restricted to the representatives of state legislatures, and the writing of a constitution by a constitutional convention all represented original contributions of the American system to the world of democratic institutions.47 The US experience demonstrates that new institutional arrangements typically involve a combination of copying and modifying other existing models as well as creating new ones. While the European Union will be viewed historically as the original post-national democracy, its emergence in a world of numerous national models of democracy will lead it to copy and modify existing institutions as well as to create new ones. It will need to develop original institutions in order to create a system which balances the numerous conflicting forces within the Union. However, just as the US accepted the very notion of a representative democracy, a legislative body and an executive as well as the limitation of executive power from Great Britain, the European Union's institutional arrangements will incorporate existing institutional models. The outcome will be an eclectic mixture of the old, the modified, and the new. The question is: What does it copy?48 How and what does it modify? What does it create that is original? It will clearly copy the institution of the legislature. The democratization that has already occurred within the European Union has been focused on the European Parliament. Although it is fashionable to downgrade the importance of the Parliament, it is noteworthy that since 1985 the Parliament has very significantly increased its power in the institutional system. The Single European Act, the Treaty of Maastricht, the Treaty of Amsterdam, and the Treaty of Nice all expanded parliamentary powers; the proposed constitution would do the same. It is now the only directly-elected multinational parliament in the world. If we compare it to national parliaments, it has fewer powers but if we compare it to other multinational assemblies such as NATOs, it is incredibly powerful. While its powers may be limited to selected policy sectors, such powers are real within those sectoral constraints. From the point of view of the US Congress, the European Parliament may look relatively weak from the point of view of the national parliaments as they operate in practice .the view is decidedly different True, the European Parliament cannot select or bring down the executive, a power which is widely viewed as being intrinsic to the power of parliaments. However, the French Parliament cannot bring down the French President who is directly elected, and the German and Spanish Parliaments can only bring down the government after a constructive vote of no confidence, That is, they must agree on a replacement for prime minister before voting a government out of office. The idea of the parliament's untrammeled ability to bring down a government is based, as is much of the implicit assumptions of parliamentary democracy and therefore of the democratic deficit, on the powers of the British Parliament rather than the powers of the French, German, or Spanish parliaments. Britain, however, as already mentioned is the archetype of the majoritarian democracy whereas those systems which restrict the power of parliament to bring down a government have substantial elements of the consensual model. Finally, although the British parliament can oust a government from office, its lack of independent legislative authority is such that it is a "chamber of debate." In other words, when the House of Commons is not bringing down a government, it is not doing much legislating (at least if compared to legislatures with a strong independent legislative authority). If we separate its power to form or bring down a government from its actual legislative authority, it is clear that the Parliament has become an ever stronger legislative body. As Kreppel argues, "the EP has evolved from a ...chamber of debate to a ....legislative body."49 The draft constitutional treaty increases the powers of the Parliament still further. Although the Commission exercises the monopoly of legislative initiative, in fact the overwhelming majority of bills introduced in national parliaments are introduced by the executive. In that sense, the European Parliament does not differ substantially from national parliaments as they operate in practice.50 The European Parliament, however, does differ from national parliaments in its ability to actually legislate rather than (in large measure) ratify that which the executive proposes.51 If it continues expanding its power, and if party government does not emerge in Brussels, the Parliament will have a stronger voice in actually shaping legislation than does the French Parliament, the British House of Commons, or the Spanish Parliament. Over time, with respect to its independent legislative authority, the European Parliament will resemble the US Congress more than it will resemble its national counterparts. For its part, the Council of Ministers52 already functions (although not exclusively) as a legislative body.53 Although critics of the EU point out that the Council is not directly elected, that fact is not of itself unusual. Upper houses in bicameral legislatures are indirectly elected in Austria, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. Furthermore, the upper houses in Ireland, and Spain include representatives who are indirectly elected.54 The Bundesrat in Germany is a powerful upper house which represents the German state governments rather than the German electorate; it is co-equal to the Bundestag in many but not all areas and it does not form the government. The Council of Ministers is unusual not because it is indirectly elected or because it represents governments rather than the electorate but because it is the sole decision-maker in key aspects of EU policy such as agriculture spending and trade policy, in certain areas within justice and home affairs (internal security), and in foreign and defense policy. Having said that, however, the Council of Ministers has gradually come to share power with the directly-elected Parliament. The Single European Act began the process, and all subsequent treaties have in fact expanded the range of policy areas in which both the Parliament and Council are decision-makers. At this point, the Parliament has a veto over numerous policy areas in which both bodies legislate. Thus, to the extent that democratization involves the Council sharing power with the Parliament, that process is ongoing and is likely to be deepened by the forthcoming intergovernmental conference. The problem of a "government" vs. the reality of an "executive" Given my argument thus far, it might seem that I am arguing that the process of democratization will either lead the EU to adopt a parliamentary system similar to that of its member-states or that it will evolve into a separation of power system with a powerful bicameral legislature. In fact, I do not think such an outcome of the democratization process is likely. It is far more likely that the EU will very significantly modify the way a political system works. If we take the next few decades as our time frame, the notion of a traditional European government being formed by a bicameral legislature is very unlikely. Such a government, even if it were made responsible to both houses of a bicameral legislature and even if one of those houses represented national governments, would I think be unacceptable to large portions of the European electorate. (The emergence of a major external threat to Europe, however, would change this calculus). In a similar vein, a directly elected president such as we find in the United States or Brazil would also be unacceptable. Therefore, I do not think a European government --of any type--is in the cards during my lifetime at least. Here the lack of a demos becomes critical. The existence of a demos is far more important for the establishment of a government than for the establishment of a legislature. Given the historic role of monarchical authority in developing executive authority in Europe and in the colonial United States, we take the existence of a government as the norm in a democracy. We equate a "government" with the "executive". However, the kind of cultural and historical underpinning which supports traditional parliamentary democracy in the member-states is not present within the mass electorate to the extent that would be required for the formation of a government, with all the cultural, symbolic, and ceremonial dimensions that such a term implies. Similarly, the lack of a demos militates against the direct election of a president, such as in the United States, within a separation of powers system. The EU, then, will not have a government as traditionally conceptualized. However, the EU will certainly have an executive. I would guess that the real innovation of the EU will be in creating an original model of an executive body. In institutional terms, European post-national democracy will be distinctive, will be different from national democracy, in the character of its executive. From a comparative perspective, "completely new types of institutions are relatively rare in the history of nation-states."55 The European Commission is in fact a non-derivative institution. That is, it is does not resemble any executive anywhere in the world. It is an original, sui generis. It has no counterpart. So too the eventual executive in the EU is likely to be the original institution developed by an integrating Europe. If other regional organizations move toward political integration, the European Union's original construction of the executive will become the referent. The electoral link between the citizenry and that executive is likely to be the most contested issue as democratization proceeds...There will be a real tension between how much the national governments are able to control the executive, how much the European Parliament controls it, and how much the electorate will. In general, however, the executive in the European Union will be different from a "government" in rather important ways. The institutional arrangement within the Union will evolve over time. Without going into the details, the current draft of the constitutional treaty being discussed indicates that the kind of institutional experimentation which was initiated by the Treaty of Maastricht is continuing unabated. The convoluted nature of the Union is due precisely to the lack of a traditional government and the impossibility, at least in the medium term, of constructing such a government. The proposed changes to the Union put forth by the Constitutional Convention chaired by Giscard d'Estaing attempt to address the problems found in the current institutional arrangements and, not surprisingly, would make the structure even more complicated. The area of foreign policy is exceptionally problematic for the Union, for governments above all represent a country externally. The international system is based on intergovernmental negotiations so that the lack of a government renders the Union qua Union nearly powerless internationally unless the member-states have delegated "governmental" authority to the Commission (as they have done in the case of trade policy). The impact on the Union of the absence of an EU government thus becomes particularly clear in this area. The complex proposal put forth by the Constitutional Convention highlights both the difficulty caused by the absence of a government and the difficulties involved in compensating for such a lack. The proposal includes a President of the European Council (to be elected by the European Council by 2/3 of the member states representing 60% of the EU's population), who would ensure the external representation of the Union on issues related to the EU's Common and Foreign Security Policy. Such a President would co-exist with a Union Minister for Foreign Affairs, who would take part in the work of the European Council and who would simultaneously chair the Foreign Affairs Council and be the Vice-President of the Commission. The Union Minister therefore would answer to both the Council of Ministers and the Commission while being responsible for the Union's external representation in those areas falling outside the Common Foreign and Security Policy. Third parties would see an entity represented by the Commission President, the Union Minister, and a President of the European Council. The new structure would not be viewed as much of an improvement in the sense that is still unclear with whom a third party would negotiate. However, seen from the point of view of governance, the new structure is an experiment in fashioning a system which can improve the external representation of the Union qua Union without actually forming a government. As to the Commission, the proposed draft suggests that the European Council select a candidate for the Presidency of the Commission (an office which would be strengthened vis a vis the other Commissioners) to be presented to the European Parliament. Within the European Council, 2/3 of the member-states' prime ministers/presidents representing 60% of the EU's population would need to agree on the candidate to be presented. If a majority of the Parliament's members do not accept the proposed candidate, the European Council must present a new candidate within a month. Again, we see an effort to ensure very considerable control by member-state governments, including small countries, while increasing the control of the Parliament who itself would become a co-legislator with the Council in an expanded range of policy areas. While these are merely proposals which may well not be accepted during the intergovernmental conference, they do indicate the kind of institutional innovation which the Union has and will continue to experience. Executive-legislative relations, assuming weak pan-European parties, will also differ from either a pure parliamentary or a pure separation of powers system. Such relations may well evolve into a hybrid of the parliamentary and separation of powers system as well as the mixed polity system which prevailed before either parliamentary or separation of powers systems developed.56 In other words, the institutions which will characterize a democratic European Union are likely to include a strong bicameral legislature with co-equal houses except in foreign policy and an executive which will be an original and not similar to the current national systems of prime ministers and cabinets (or to presidential systems characterized by the election of a President such as we find in the United States, Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina). The Commission will undoubtedly be changed over the next few decades, but its successors will exhibit the kind of originality with which the Treaty of Rome endowed the Commission as we know it today. The executive of the future will be similar to the Commission of today in that it will not be a government while nonetheless carrying out many (but not all) of the key functions of an executive. It must be remembered that the process of post-national democratization is very contingent. If strong pan-European political parties were to develop, for example, a system resembling a standard parliamentary system would be more likely to be adopted. If pan-European parties are weak, a more original format is more likely to be created. Strong European parties would lead to institutional copying; weak parties will lead to institutional originality and innovation. Concluding Thoughts: Post-National Democracy and Guardianship I have tried to argue that post-national democracy should be conceptualized as a process of democratization which is both ongoing and necessarily evolutionary. Post-national democracy, when it eventally reaches the stage of being a "frozen institutional compound of processes of democratization" will reflect a mixture of recognizable and original institutional arrangements.57 One of the issues which post-national democracy will inevitably face, however, is that of the proper balance between majoritarian and non-majoritarian institutions. Non-majoritarian institutions such as central banks, regulatory agencies, anti-trust authorities, and courts have become more prominent in the post-war period in especially the area of economic management. National democracies vary in the balance which they have chosen, and the European Union thus far at least has chosen to create two very powerful and very independent non-majoritarian institutions-the European Central Bank and the European Court of Justice-which are playing key strategic roles in the shaping of Europe's political economy.58 The role of non-majoritarian institutions within a post-national context may well be highlighted even as majoritarian institutional arrangements are created. What kinds of issues should be outside of standard democratic controls? Robert Dahl has pointed out that "the democratic process is not well equipped to deal with questions of exceptional complexity." He argues that the choices involved in nuclear weapons strategy (arguably one of the most important policy areas of the post-war period) were so difficult in both technical and political terms that they were made outside the democratic process. Public opinion and Congress were simply irrelevant. In his words, "For all practical purposes....no public opinion existed and the democratic process was inoperable."59 Dahl distinguishes between delegating authority to experts, a common feature of the process of bureaucratization, and the alienation of authority. Delegation allows democracies to set the terms of delegation and retain some kind of final control, whereas alienation excludes the setting of terms and leads to what Dahl terms a system of "guardianship."60 The process of guardianship essentially involves decision-making by a well-qualified minority, but in general both the public and legislators are excluded. Dahl views guardianship as the major competitor to democracy as we know it. Clearly the control of nuclear weapons is, as Dahl points out, an extreme case. It does, however, raise the general question of the degree to which a post-national democracy, however constituted, will choose to place some issue areas under "guardians" rather than "delegates."61 It can be argued that within Europe the (radical) decision to move to economic regionalism and supranational institutions was made in a context more similar to that of "guardianship" than that of what Dahl considers "democracy". In fact, the process of transnational democratization has arisen in the first place because of decisions made under conditions resembling guardianship. The EU will face an increasing number of public policy issues of technical as well as political complexity -the case of BSE stands as a potent example. How will such issues be addressed?62 How serious will be the tension between guardianship, on the one hand, and delegation on the other, when technical policy issues with major consequences for the citizenry arise? We should not automatically assume that a democratized European Union will eschew guardianship. A post-national democracy could indeed decide to accept a higher degree of guardianship than have national democracies. When it comes to choosing between the "guardians" and the "delegates", there is no guarantee that a post-national democracy will make the same choices that have been made by national democracies. A half century from now, political scientists may argue that delegation was characteristic of the age of national democracy while guardianship has become an integral part of post-national democracy. Ironically, we must consider the possibility that transnational democratization could lead-over the long term-- to a significant role for transnational "guardians." 1 Flora, Peter, Stein Kuhnle and Derek Urwin. (1999) State Formation, Nation-Building, and Mass Politics in Europe: The Theory of Stein Rokkan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. Xii. 2 See, for example, Robert W. Crawford and Darryl S.L. Jarvis (eds) (2001) International Relations-Still an American Social Science? Toward Diversity in International Thought. Albany: State University of New York Press. See especially the chapter authored by Stanley Hoffmann (pp. 27-52) and A.J.R. Groom and Peter Mandaville, (pp. 151-165). See also Hans Daalder (ed) (1997) Comparative European Politics: The Story of a Profession. London: Pinter. Daalder points out that developments in the study of comparative politics in the US strongly influenced European scholars, many of whom studied in the United States. However, he also concludes that "a confrontation with Anglo-Saxon scholarship....fostered a desire to develop alternative theories and typologies which were more in line with the understanding of these scholars' own countries." (p.3) 3 Kohler, Martin (1998) "From the National to the Cosmopolitan Public Sphere," Re-Imagining Political Community: Studies in Cosmopolitan Democracy, edited by Daniele Archibugi, David Held and Martin Kohler. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 233 (231-251 4 See, for example, Dryzek, John S. (1990) Discursive Democracy: Politics, Policy, and Political Science Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, especially chapter 6, Held, David. (1995) Democracy and the Global Order: From the Modern State to Cosmopolitan Governance. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 5 The sample of national democracies has increased rather substantially since the dissolution of the Soviet Union so that comparative analysis has become even more attractive. Democracies and democratization can be classified and compared in many ways, and the debates about how to carry out such comparative work are robust. One of the more interesting debates addresses the question of how much weight should be given to international factors in the emergence and consolidation of democracies. See for example, Laurence Whitehead, (1996), The International Dimensions of Democratization: Europe and the Americas, Expanded Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press; see especially chapters authored by Laurence Whitehead (pp. 3-25) and by Philippe C. Schmitter (pp. 26-55). See also Charles Tilly (1995), " Democracy is a Lake," The Social Construction of Democracy, 1870-1990, edited by George Reid Andrews and Herrick Chapman, Washington Square, New York: New York University Press, pp. 365-387; Gary Marks (1997), "A Third Lens: Comparing European Integration and State Building," European Integration in Social and Historical Perspective: 1850 to the Present, edited by Jytte Klausen and Louise A. Tilly. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 38-41 (23-43); Ronald H. Linden, (2002) Norms and Nannies: The Impact of International Organizations on the Central and East European States, New York: Rowman & Littlefield, especially the chapters authored by Frank Schimmelfennig (pp.1-32), Geoffrey Harris (pp. 33-58), Alexandru Grigorescu (pp. 59-90), and Ronald Linden (pp. 369-382); Duane Swank. (2002) Global Capital, Political Institutions, and Policy Change in Developed Welfare States, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and Carles Boix (2003) Democracy and Redistribution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 6 See, for example, Bruce Russett and John R. Oneal (2001) Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations, New York: Norton; Charles Lipson (2003), Reliable Partners: How Democracies Have Made a Separate Peace, Princeton: Princeton University Press; John W. Owen (1997), Liberal Peace, Liberal War: American Politics and International Security, Ithaca: Cornell University Press; Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones and Steven E. Miller (1997), Debating the Democratic Peace: Cambridge: MIT Press; Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce , James D. Morrow, Randolph Siverson and Alastair Smith, (1999) "An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace, " American Political Science Review, Vol. 93 (December): 791-812; Michael W. Doyle (ed) (1997) Ways of War and Peace: Realism, Liberalism, and Socialism New York: Norton. 7 Alberta M. Sbragia (2002), "Building Markets and Comparative Regionalism: Governance Beyond the Nation-State," in Regieren in internationalen Institutionen. Edited by Markus Jachtenfuchs and Michele Knodt, Opladen: Leske + Budrich, pp. 235-254; Mario Telo (ed.) (2001) European Union and New Regionalism: Regional Actors and Global Governance in a Post-Hegemonic Era. Aldershot. 8The kind of intensive multilateralism and supranationality which characterizes Europe is so alien to the rest of the world that Europe is an enigma and a puzzle to many non-Europeans. To many observers, Europe is now exotic-a foreign land where arcane debates about a post-national "democratic deficit" take place. 9 Crepaz, Markus M.L. (2002) " Consociational Interpretations of the European Union," European Union Politics, Vol. 3, Number 3, September 2002, p. 375 (370-381) 10 For an overview of the various theoretical approaches to the study of European integration, see Rosamond, Ben (2000)Theories of European Integration,New York: St. Martin's Press and Chryssochoou, Dimitris N. (2001) Theorizing European Integration, London: Sage; for theoretical analyses drawn from international relations theory see Moravcsik, Andrew (1998) The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press; Gruber, Lloyd, (2000) Ruling the World: Power Politics and the Rise of Supranational Institutions, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press ,Chapters 8 & 9: Mattli, Walter (1999) The Logic of Regional Integration: Europe and Beyond Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; for an examination of Economic and Monetary Union rooted in the literature on international political economy, see McNamara, Kathleen R. (1998), The Currency of Ideas: Monetary Politics in the European Union, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Analyses (both in article and book form) rooted in comparative politics are now very numerous; for book-length treatments, see, for example, Hix, Simon (1999) The Political System of the European Union , London: Macmillan; Hooghe, Liesbet and Gary Marks, (2001), Multi-Level Goverance and European Integration, Boulder, Colo: Rowman & Littlefield; Egan, Michelle P. (2001); Constructing a European Market: Standards, Regulation, and Governance Oxford: Oxford University Press; Wallace, Helen and William Wallace, (2000), Policy-Making in the European Union, Fourth Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Majone, Giandomenico (1996) Regulating Europe, London: Routledge; Leibfried , Stephan and Paul Pierson (eds) (1995), European Social Policy: Between Fragmentation and Integration, Washington DC: Brookings; McKay, David (2001), Designing Europe: Comparative Lessons from the Federal Experience, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Heritier, Adrienne (1999), Policy-Making and Diversity in Europe: Escape from Deadlock, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Sbragia, Alberta (1992) Euro-Politics: Institutions and Policymaking in the "New" European Community, Washington, DC: Brookings. For an article which explicitly addresses the debate between scholars of comparative politics and international relations, see Hurrell, Andrew and Anand Menon (1996) "Politics Like any other?" Comparative Politics, International Relations and the Study of the EU," West European Politics, Volume 19, No. 2, April, pp. 386-402. 11 See for example, David Marquand, (1978), "Towards a Europe of the Parties," Political Quarterly, Vol. 49, No. 4, pp. 425-45; Fulvio Attina (1990) "The Voting Behaviour of the European Parliament Members and the Problem of Europarties," European Journal of Political Research, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 557-79 and Attina (1992) "Parties, Party Systems and Democracy in the European Union," International Spectator, Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 67-86; 12 Annie Kreppel (2002), The European Parliament and Suprantional Party System: A Study in Institutional Development Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, chapter 8. If we draw on Angelo Pianebianco's organizational analysis of parties, which itself draws on Pizzorno's analysis of political participation, such a finding implies that although the formal organization of supranational party groups attempts to create a "system of solidarity," a system of territorially-based "systems of interest" is actually in place. While the latter is viewed as an indication of institutional maturity in national systems, at the regional level, one can argue that the party system is still in the process of formation. The degree of voting cohesion found within the party groups may therefore be misleading in terms of the actual organizational institutionalization which the supranational party groups are undergoing. See Angelo Pianebianco (1988: English version), Political Parties: Organization and Power, Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, especially chapter s 1, 2,,3, and 4. 13 Simon Hix, Amie Kreppel, and Abdul Noury (2003) "The Party System in the European Parliament: Collusive or Competitive?" Journal of Common Market Studies, Vol. 41, No. 2, pp. 317-318 (309-331) 14 Brigid Laffan, (1997) The Finances of the European Union, London: Macmillan; Elizabeth Bomberg, Laura Cram, and David Martin (2003) "The EU's Institutions," in The European Union: How Does it Work? Edited by Elizabeth Bomberg and Alexander Stubb, Oxford:Oxford University Press, pp. 56-59 (43-68) 15 For sophisticated discussions of the democratic deficit, see J.H.H. Weiler (1999), The Constitution of Europe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; J.H.H. Weiler (1995), "Does Europe Need a Constitution? Demos, Telos and the German Maastricht Decision, European Law Journal, Vol. 1, pp. 219-259; Fritz Scharpf (1999), Governing in Europe: Effective and Democratic? Oxford: Oxford University Press, Philippe C. Schmitter, (2000) How to Democratize the European Union...and Why Bother? New York: Rowman & Littlefield.; Dimitris N. Chryssochoou (2000); Democracy in the European Union, London: I.B. Tauris & Coe Giandomenico Majone (forthcoming) "International Economic Integration, National Autonomy, Transnational Democracy: An Impossible Trinity?" and Giandomenico Majone (1998) "Europe's 'Democratic Deficit': The Question of Standards," European Law Journal volume 4, No. 1, pp. 5-28.; Vivien A. Schmidt, (2003) "The European Union: Democratic Legitimacy in a Regional State?" Paper Delivered at the 2003 American Political Science Association Convention. Andrew Moravcsik, argues that the EU, if compared to the actual practice of national democracies, is actually far more responsive and more legitimate than its critics contend and in fact fares well in such comparison. See Andrew Moravcsik, (2003) "In Defense of the 'Democratic Deficit': Reassessing Legitimacy in the European Union," in Integration in an Expanding European Union: Reassessing the Fundamentals, edited by J.H.H. Weiler, Iain Begg, and John Peterson, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 77-98. In response to Moravcsik's argument, Andrew Scott argues that Moravcsik does not give enough weight to "the social construction of relations between the governed and the governors" (same volume, p. 102) Arend Lijphart, for his part, views the European Union as largely conforming to the consensus model of democracy. Lijphart (1999) Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries, New Haven: Yale University Press, pp.42-47. 16 Dimitris N. Chryssochoou (2000) Democracy in the European Union, London: I.B. Tauris & Co., p.4 17 James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, (1995) Democratic Governance, New York: The Free Press, pp.2-3 18 See Philippe C. Schmitter, (2000) How to Democratize the European Union...and Why Bother? New York: Rowman & Littlefield, p. 5.; Miguel Poiares Maduro, (2003), "Is there Europe for a Constitution? A Comment on Weiler," in Integration in an Expanding European Union: Reassessing the Fundamentals, edited by J.H.H. Weiler, Iain Begg, and John Peterson. London: Blackwell, pp. 35-39 For a discussion of how the EU will expand rather than simply " transnationalize" certain types of rights, however, see Giandomenico Majone, (forthcoming) "International Economic Integration, National Autonomy, Transnational Democracy: An Impossible Trinity?" For a discussion of the prospect of new social rights linked to EU citizenship, see Maurizio Ferrera (2003), "European Integration and National Social Citizenship: Changing Boundaries, New Structuring?" Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 36, no. 6, August, pp. 611-652. 19 See Robert O. Keohane (2003), "Ironies of Sovereignty: The EU and the US," in Integration in an Expanding European Union: Reassessing the Fundamentals, edited by J.H.H. Weiler, Iain Begg, and John Peterson. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 307-330. 20At the national level, the extension of democracy and the extension of rights have typically been linked in some fashion. In Latin America, South Korea, Taiwan, and Russia, democracy and such rights have recently been viewed as inextricably linked. . Institutional variation across democracies matters much less to people than the fact that democracy ensures that they enjoy the freedom which is tied to " protection from arbitrary state action" Tilly, "Democracy is a Lake," p. 376. 21 See Alberta Sbragia, The Dilemma of Governance with Government, Jean Monnet Working Paper 3/02, Jean Monnet Working Paper Series, see www.JeanMonnetProgram.org 22 See, for example, Dimitris N. Chryssochoou (2000) Democracy in the European Union. London: I.B. Tauris. 23 For a discussion of how the process of Europeanization has affected the evolution of British, French, and German nation-state identities, see Thomas Risse, (2001) "A European Identity? Europeanization and the Evolution of Nation-State Identities, in Transforming Europe: Europeanization and Domestic Change edited by Maria Green Cowles, James Caporaso, and Thomas Risse. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, pp. 198-216. For a discussion of a 'constitutional demos', see J.H.H. Weiler (2003) "A Constitution for Europe? Some Hard Choices," in Integration in an Expanding European Union: Reassessing the Fundamentals, edited by J.H.H. Weiler, Iain Begg, and John Peterson. London: Blackwell, pp. 17-34 24 Sidney Tarrow (1998) Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics, Second Edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly. (2001) Dynamics of Contention, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Doug Imig and Sidney Tarrow (eds.) (2001) Contentious Europeans: Protest and Politics in an Emerging Polity, New York: Rowman & Littlefield. 25 Ulf Hedetoft, (1994) "The State of Sovereignty in Europe: Political Concept or Cultural Self-Image," in National Cultures and European Integration: Exploratory Essays on Cultural Diversity and Common Policies, edited by Staffan Zetterholm, Oxford: Berg, pp. 13-48. 26 In some sense, the notion of democracy can be viewed as being an "iron cage" which has its own constraints. Whereas Weber viewed bureaucratization as an iron cage, democracy may have achieved the same status, at least in an integrating Europe. 27 See Giandomenico Majone (forthcoming), "International Economic Integration, National Autonomy, Transnational Democracy: An Impossible Trinity?" Majone, however, argues that the lack of a demos is a key impediment to post-national democracy, in his words, "transnational democracy would be, at best, a diminished democracy." (p. 18 of manuscript) 28 For the debate on whether the consociational model is appropriate for analyzing the European Union, see the contrasting arguments made by Matthijs Bogaards and Markus M.L. Crepaz (2002), "Consociational Interpretations of the European Union," European Union Politics, Vol. 3, No. 3, September , pp. 357- 380; Matthijs Bogaards, (2002). "The Consociational Analogy of the European Union: A Rejoinder to Crepaz with a Comment on Kaiser," European Union Politics, Volume 3, Number 4, December, pp. 501-03; Olivier Costa and Paul Magnette (2003), "The European Union as a Consociation? A Methodological Assessment," West European Politics, Vol. 26, Number 3, July, pp. 1-18. Bogaards argues that national states differ from societal segments in that the former are sovereign while the latter never have been. His argument, with which I concur, implies that the kind of institutional arrangements which will be necessary to manage national divisions within a post-national union may well be quite different from the kinds of consociational arrangements we find at the national level. 29 As Philippe Schmitter points out, "what is missing are the professional politicians who represent transnational interests and passions....there are few persons who identify exclusively with the Euro-Polity." Philippe C. Schmitter (2000)How to Democratize the European Union...and Why Bother? New York: Rowman & Littlefied, p. 9. 30 For an important critique of the approach I am taking, see Roger Friedland and Robert R. Alford (1991), "Bringing Society Back In: Symbols, Practices, and Institutional Contradictions," The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, edited by Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 232-266. 31 See, for example, Lijphart, Arend. (1999) Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries. Yale University Press; Arend Lijphart (1984), Democracies: Patterns of Majoritarian and Consensus Govrnment in Twenty-One Countries, New Haven: Yale University Pres; Sergio Fabbrini (1994), Quale Democrazia: L'Italia e gli altri, Roma-Bari: Laterza; Sergio Fabbrini (2003), " A Single Western State Model? Differential Development and Constrained Convergence of Public Authority Organization In Europe and America," Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 36, no. 6, August, pp. 653-678; Giovanni Sartori (1997) Comparative Constitutional Engineering: An Inquiry into Structures, Incentives and Outcomes, Second Edition, New York: New York University Press.; Michael Laver and Kenneth A. Shepsle (eds.) (1994), Cabinet Ministers and Parliamentary Government, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Kaare Strom (1990), Minority Government and Majority Rule, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press;. Rueschemeyer, Dietrich Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens,(1992) Capitalist Development and Democracy, Chicago: University of Chicago Press; Wilensky, Harold L. (2002) Rich Democracies: Political Economy, Public Policy, and Performance, Berkeley: University of California Press, especially chapter 18, 32 See for example, Flora, Peter, Stein Kuhnle and Derek Urwin, (1999) State Formation, Nation-Building and Mass Politics in Europe: The Theory of Stein Rokkan. Oxford: Oxford University Press; Tilly, Charles (1990) Coercion, Capital, and European States. Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell; Bartolini, Stefano (2000) The Political Mobilization of the European Left: 1860-1980: The Class Cleavage Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Lipset, Seymour Martin and Gary Marks (2000) It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States, New York: W.W. Norton. 33 Amie Kreppel points out that legislative bodies differ widely in the degree of independent legislative power which they possess. In a "chamber of debate" model, "most legislative decisionmaking effectively takes place elsewhere, generally in the executive." Amie Kreppel (2002), The European Parliament and Supranational Party System: A Study in Institutional Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 4. Most European parliaments, including the French, would be far closer to the 'chamber of debate" model than to the "legislative body" model. The US Congress represents the ideal type of the latter model, for it possesses a high degree of independent legislative authority. See, for example, John Huber (1992) "Restrictive Legislative Procedures in France and the United States," American Political Science Review, Vol. 86, pp. 675-688 34 Arend Lijphart (1999) Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries. New Haven: Yale University Press, p. 2. 35 James Caporaso (2003) "Democracy, Accountability, and Rights in International Governance," in Governance in a Global Economy, Miles Kahler and David Lake (eds.) Princeton: Princeton University Press. 36 Dahl points out that the population of the United States was smaller than that of today's Denmark when it adopted the American constitution in 1787. Until 1850, the population of the United States was less than 20 million. In other words, it was not at all comparable to the scale of governance required in today's Italy, France, Germany, or Britain-or even Spain or Poland. Robert A. Dahl (2001), "Is Post-National Democracy Possible?" Nation, Federalism, and Democracy: The EU, Italy, and the American Federal Experience, edited by Sergio Fabbrini, Bologna: Editrice Compositori, p. 43 37 The historian Donna Gabaccia argues that "in the South Atlantic freer trade with the British empire was a motivating factor in rebelling against Spain." "Global Perspectives on Atlantic History, " unpublished paper, p.13 38 What I found striking in the recent dispute between Schroder and Berlusconi was how quickly the media as well as politicians invoked old ethnic stereotypes. The Godfather, the Nazi guard, the arrogant German tourists, all reminded us that transnational perceptions are far from uniformly positive in an integrating Europe. Negative stereotypes are latent, lying below the surface, and very quickly come to the surface once a conflict begins. 39 For an excellent discussion and critique of this fact, see Fritz Scharpf (1999), Governing in Europe: Effective and Democratic? Oxford: Oxford University Press. 40 For an influential analysis of the market and institutional development in several national contexts, see Barry Weingast (1995) "The Economic Role of Political Institutions: Market-Preserving Federalism and Economic Development," The Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, Vol. 11, no. 1,pp. 1-31; see also Alberta Sbragia (2003), "Reform, Institutions, and Governance: Should We Think About the Market? A Comment on Olsen," in Integration in an Expanding European Union: Reassessing the Fundamentals. Edited by J.H.H. Weiler, Iain Begg, and John Peterson. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 73-76; Alberta M. Sbragia, (2000), "Govrnance, the State, and the Market: What is Going On?" Governance, Vol. 13, No.2, April, pp. 243-250 For a discussion of unions based on national security rather than economic integration, see Helga Haftendorn, Robert O. Keohane and Celeste A. Wallander, (1999) Imperfect Unions: Security Institutions over Time and Space, Oxford: Oxford University Press; Frederick K. Lister (2001), The Later Security Confederations: The American, "New" Swiss, and German Unions, Westport, CT: Greenwood. 41 See Fritz Scharpf, (1999) Governing in Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press 42 The legal scholar Alexander Somek argues that "what we proudly refer to as 'democracy' in a national context is essentially the frozen institutional compound of processes of democratization...our received understanding of democracy is built upon tacit references to a patchwork of different practices of democratization." Alexandere Somek (forthcoming), "Democratic Minimalism: Turning the Clock Back from Democracy to Democratisation," in Democratisations, edited by Jose Ciprud. 43 Minority groups gained the suffrage even later than women. In Australia, one of the first countries to allow women to vote, all aboriginal peoples were able to vote only in 1965. Only in 1965 were African-Americans living in the American South guaranteed the right to vote. Even in a country like Finland, where universal suffrage for both men and women was granted as early as 1906, the local indigeneous population the Sami, were not granted their own consultative parliament until 1974. 44Such bargaining will not soon disappear, and in the areas of foreign and defense policy, it may well become strengthened once the US is not a key actor. 45 See Renaud Dehouse (ed.) (1997), Europe: The Impossible Status Quo. London: Macmillan. 46 See, for example, John Pinder (ed) (1999) Foundations of Democracy in the European Union: From the Genesis of Parliamentary Democracy to the European Parliament, London: Macmillan. 47 See, for example, Colin Bonwick (1999), "The United States Constitution and Its Roots in British Political Through and Tradition," Foundations of Democracy in theEuropean Union: From the Genesis of Parliamentary Democracy to the European Parliament edited by John Pinder, London: Macmillan, pp. 41-58 48 See, for example, Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell (1991) "The Iron Cage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields." In The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, edited by Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 63-83, especially the discussion on mimetic processes, pp. 69-70 49 Amie Kreppel (2002) The European Parliament and Supranational Party System: A Study in Institutional Development, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 50Nonetheless there is a noticeable difference between the monopoly of legislative initiative exercised by the Commission and the right of initiative by the executive in national systems. Majone points out that "the EC has no legislature but a legislative process in which the Council, the Parliament, and the Commission have different parts to play." Giandomenico Majone (2002), "Delegation of Regulatory Powers in a Mixed Polity," European Law Journal, Vol. 2, no. 3, p. X (319-339). 51 For a discussion of the lack of legislative power found in European parliamentary systems, see David Judge (1995) "The Failure of the National Parliaments?" in The Crisis of Representation in Europe, edited by Jack Hayward. London: Frank Cass, pp. 79-100. 53 For a discussion of different "images" of the Council of Ministers, see Helen Wallace (2002), "The Council: An Institutional Chameleon?" Governance , Vol. 15, No. 3, July, pp. 325-344; Fiona Hayes-Renshaw and Helen Wallace (1997), The Council of Ministers of the European Union, London: Macmillan 54 Tsebelis George and Jeannette Money, (1997) Bicameralism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 47. 55 Alberta M Sbragia (2002), " The Treaty of Nice, Institutional Balance, and Uncertainty," Governance, Vol. 15, No. 3, July, p. 396 (393-411) 56 For a discussion of the relevance of the system of "mixed government" for analyses of the European Union, see Giandomenico Majone (2002), "Delegation of Regulatory Powers in a Mixed Polity," European Law Journal, Volume 2, no. 3, pp. 319-339 57 Alexander Somek (forthcoming), "Democratic Minimalism: Turning the Clock Back from Democracy to Democratisation," in Democratisations, edited by Jose Ciprud. 58 See, for example, Michelle Egan (2001), Constructing the Single Market, Oxford: Oxford University Press. 59 Robert Dahl (1985) Controlling Nuclear Weapons: Democracy Versus Guardianship, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, p.8. p. 34. For an examination of nuclear strategy within Europe, see Marc Trachtenberg (1999) A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement 1945-1963. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 60 Robert Dahl (1985) Controlling Nuclear Weapons: Democracy Versus Guardianship, Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, pp. 1-3 61 Giandomenico Majone has broached this issue from a different perspective. While remaining within the paradigm of delegation, he argues that we need to think about "trusteeship" and the "fiduciary principle" when we analyze governance in the European Union. Giandomenico Majone (2001) "Two Logics of Delegation: Agency and Fiduciary Relations in EU Governance," European Union Politics, Vol. 2, no. 1, February, pp. 103-121. 62 For a discussion of how such technical issues are addressed at the national level, see Anthony Barker and B. Guy Peters (eds) (1993) The Politics of Expert Advice: Creating, Using and Manipulating Scientific Knowledge for Public Policy Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 23 Trento SISP Presentation for September 15, 2003