Marcus Höreth
The Democratic Deficit Cannot Be Reformed Away
The Sense and Nonsense of the European Constitutional Debate
Amongst other things, the Laeken Convention is expected
to produce proposals for reform to strengthen the democratic
legitimacy of European policy. But there are no persuasive
solutions in sight. Existing models of democracy cannot
be successfully transferred to the EU level. They result
ultimately not in an increase, but in a decrease in legitimacy.
A reform strategy committed to the principle of parliamentary
democracy has to fail in the face of the fact that there
is no pan-European “people”. The nations are not willing
to enter into the possibility of having major decisions
forced on them by “foreign” majorities. On the other hand,
a bicameral system which combines the principle of “one
person one vote” with the principle of “one member state
one vote” would face the danger of a permanent blockage
and thus engender high costs for decision-making. Furthermore,
the many needs to negotiate would not lessen, but would
exacerbate the lack of transparency of decision-making processes.
Similarly, increasing calls for the establishment of a presidential
democracy along US lines cannot overcome the problem. Not
least, such a structure is foreign to European constitutional
traditions. A strategy based on post-parliamentary participation
by civil society would end up placing powerful and well-organized
groups in a privileged position. Post-parliamentary decision-making
networks would remain untransparent for the general public
and would violate both the principle of public control of
political decisions and that of the political equality of
all citizens. Precisely because the democratic deficit cannot
be reformed away and because this implies that there is
no possibility for major qualitative constitutional improvements,
European politics should concentrate on enhancing the abilities
of European governance to deal with problems – on its effectiveness
and efficiency. The concepts of coordination, subsidiarity
and differentiated integration point in the right directions.
The capacity to solve problems which cannot be tackled at
national level will continue to be the most important foundation
of the EU's legitimacy. This implies that the Union needs
to legitimize itself primarily via its policy output. The
better it does that, the better it will be able to live
with its democratic deficit – something it will have to
live with anyway.
Anton Hemerijck
The Self-Transformation of the European Social Model(s)
Ensuring a high level of employment coupled with a very
fair distribution of wealth, without the private and public-sector
budgets being crushed by the financial burden – that is
the trilemma facing the European welfare states, and so
far they have failed to resolve it completely. In the Anglo-Saxon
countries, the objective of fair distribution of wealth
has been neglected, in Scandinavia the financing is the
central problem, and on the European continent the main
difficulty is employment – without the issues of distribution
of wealth and financing being resolved. The European welfare
states have attempted to tackle this challenge with a number
of reforms. The diversity of social, political and institutional
contexts is reflected in a variety of reform concepts which
rarely depart from the traditional approaches of the respective
model (“bounded change”). They all have in common a tendency
towards a pro-active labor-market policy, supported by measures
intended to ensure the compatibility of work and family
life. Measures to improve the financial position of the
pension insurance systems also play a central role, and
generally involve a tightening of entitlement conditions.
Further-reaching reforms generally derive from a deep-reaching
crisis and necessitate a comprehensive consensus among the
political players (examples: Netherlands, Sweden, Italy;
contrary example: France). Hardly any use is made of the
standard remedies offered by neoliberal policy concepts.
European integration reached the field of employment and
social policy in the 1990s. This will benefit the legitimacy
of the European Union, since economic integration without
social progress will be insufficient in the long term. The
“open method of coordination” utilizes an approach to policy
coordination which takes account of the variety of contexts
and challenges and enables differentiated policy learning
in the European context.
Dick Howard
The Left Agenda After September 11
An American View
The events of September 11, 2001, have brought to the
fore a dominant trend of traditionally left-wing debate
which is strikingly inappropriate in view of today’s political
problems. It is the tendency to shift the debate directly
to the root causes of the various evils of this world and,
from there, to construct a closed-off and morally superior
world-view. An understanding of the basic evil – typically
the laws of the capitalist economy and the resultant severe
lack of justice in the world – allows clear judgments on
who is right and who is wrong and stipulates clear strategies
for long-term political action. The danger is that such
fundamental certainties simply define away major policy
issues. Those who focus solely on an alleged basic evil
cut themselves out of the politically relevant debate and
relinquish important objectives (e.g. the restrictions to
be observed in the fight against terrorism). Critical intelligence
should recall that, above all, the right to criticism –
which alone permits and legitimizes the uncovering of abuses
– must be defended. This right is anchored in the fundamental
democratic values and is based on the postulate that there
is no ultimate certainty, that everything in society may
be questioned. This right to question certainties must be
fought for time and again even in states with democratic
constitutions. Even democratic societies have a tendency
to restrict the scope of politically legitimate debate and
to replace it with “values” protected by taboos. This is
particularly the case with the debate which serves the dominant
interests. But not even left-wing criticism is free of this
tendency. It is important to keep reactivating democracy
against such an “anti-politics” pursued by the left and
the right alike. That implies that contradictions between
opposing values are recognized and are made the object of
political “deliberation” which takes into account the concrete
circumstances of policy issues. The task for the left would
be to anchor the fight against terrorism and its roots in
a broader fight for democracy against neo-totalitarian and
fundamentalist tendencies of whatever origin. This does
not run counter to traditional left-wing aspirations to
justice – on the contrary.
Sean L. Yom
Islam and Globalization: Secularism, Religion, and Radicalism
In the aftermath of September 11 and in the midst of the
expanding war on terrorism, many academics, while not opposed
to Islam per se, have argued that Islam ardently opposes globalization
and all of its ideological, economic, and cultural manifestations.
This polemic contest between Islam and globalization—a dichotomy
in which these two phenomena cannot coexist due to their mutual,
antagonistic opposition to each other—is the discursive premise
for many global chaos theories about Islam’s dark future and
its impending conflict with the rest of the world. However,
not only are these global chaos theories mistaken in their
monolithic portrayal of Islam as the “green peril,” but they
fundamentally miss the point: Islamic radicalism can be characterized
not as some hideous, absurd mutation, but rather as both a
transformation of contemporary religiosity as well as a vibrant
voice in the global religious revival. A new way of framing
the Islam-globalization duality is to reconceptualize the
religious-secular divide. Secularism, which has dominated
the West since the 18th century, epistemologically shifted
the referential frame of human knowledge so that religion
became excluded from the narrative of human experience. Globalization
represented the worldwide expansion of secularism in its most
modern form and thus was to have eliminated religion and the
irrationality it represented. However, a broad-based religious
revival has occurred in the last four decades across the world,
in which new religious identities, communities, and faiths
have arisen in precise reaction to globalization. The return
of Islam as a salient religio-political dynamic in Muslim
countries is simply one element of this expansive return to
religion. Such an
evolution highlights the different ways in which the secular-religious
binary is not as stable as previously assumed; as much as
these two concepts remain reciprocally opposed, each also
ironically requires the other’s existence in order to derive,
legitimate, and reify its discourses and relations of power.
Similarly, Islam and globalization are not abstract elements
locked in a vicious contest; they engage one another on different
planes, and they actually reflect unique aspects of each other
through their constructed differences. In the end, Islam can
be portrayed as a critical element of globalization rather
than its most intractable opponent.
Robert Christian van Ooyen
The International Criminal Court Between
Law-making, Power Politics and Symbolism
The argument about the extension of the UN mission in Bosnia
and the special rules for the United States regarding prosecution
by the International Criminal Court (ICC) has met with great
outrage in many European countries, and even been regarded
as “attempted blackmail” which would torpedo all the work
of the new Court. However, if one bears in mind the political
conditions currently constraining effective international
criminal jurisdiction, one has to say that political backing
from “great powers” is vital. This has been made clear by
the establishment of the UN tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda
by the UN Security Council. The ICC, as it starts its work,
is no exception. The Court remains subordinate to states not
only in all of its powers to prosecute genocide, war crimes,
crimes against humanity and aggression: even in those cases
which actually make it to the ICC, it is – rightly – reliant
on the political backing of the UN Security Council, which,
in cases of doubt, alone disposes of effective political enforcement
measures, in Chapter VII of the UN Charter. Against this background,
the argument on both sides proves rather to be an act of purely
symbolic politics. After all, Security Council Resolution
1422, adopted on the basis of Article 16 of the ICC Statute,
which initially gives the USA a grace period of one year,
is not a bad compromise when seen in pragmatic terms. It merely
reveals what is a precondition for the ICC’s effectiveness
– and what was in any case deliberately intended by tying
the institution of the ICC to the United Nations. The emphasis
now should be on heightening people’s understanding of what
the Court can realistically achieve in the coming years.
Hans-Joachim Spanger
Between Democratic Idealism and Realist Security Policy:
Russia and the West After September 11
Since September 11, 2001, there has been a historic shift
in the relationship between the United States and Russia.
For the USA, the central challenge since that date has been
the fight against terrorism. Russia plays an important symbolic
political role here, since the inclusion of Russia in the
global coalition lends the aura of a volonté générale of the
civilized world for the American war against terrorism, if
one disregards the material advantages like the access to
the central Asian operational bases in what used to be the
exclusive Russian sanctuary of the CIS states. For Russia,
the potential benefits of the new foreign-policy strategy
are obvious: firstly the hope of Western concessions, particularly
regarding earlier membership of the WTO and slower NATO enlargement,
and secondly the justified expectation that, in the interests
of a stable anti-terrorism coalition, the West will cease
to insist on a democratization of Russia. The new US-Russian
entente is unadulterated Realpolitik resting on a shared basis
of foreign policy, the common denominator of which is manifested
in the West in the emergence of a genuine foreign-policy interest
in Russia which has placed what had been a dominant agenda
of democratization onto a backburner of ritual lip-service,
and is dominated on the Russian side by a genuine domestic
interest in modernization which is at once authoritarian and
accelerated. However, such a common basis will only be viable
for Russia and the West in the long term if it guarantees
measurable success for both sides. Here, the progress made
in Russia’s interest in the months since September 11 is at
best mixed.
Eric Teo Chu Cheow
Towards an East Asian Model of Regional Cooperation
Since the 1997 Asian Crisis, ASEAN has lost its former momentum.
The hopes of its newer member states (Vietnam, Laos, Myanmar
and Cambodia) to participate in the association’s erstwhile
economic dynamism have been frustrated. The older members
face mounting problems with Muslim revivalism. Overall, ASEAN countries are looking now for
national, rather than regionally orchestrated, solutions to
their problems. ASEAN has come to see
