{"id":1767,"date":"2008-06-11T07:08:26","date_gmt":"2008-06-11T07:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2008-06-11T07:11:01","modified_gmt":"2008-06-11T07:11:01","slug":"democracy_we_do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1767","title":{"rendered":"Democracy? We Don’t Need No Steenkin’ Democracy…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here’s Andrew Moravcsik – a real political scientist explaining why<\/a> (pdf) the EU don’t need no steekin<\/i> referenda to have legitimacy with the people (h\/t Henry Farrell<\/a>, with whom I actually agree today – see his quote at the end of the post)…<\/p>\n

The draft European constitution sought to legitimate the EU by inducing more popular deliberation about Europe\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s future. This strategy was doomed to failure because it is inconsistent with basic empirical social science about how advanced democracies work. Salient political rhetoric and increased opportunities to participate do not, as a rule, generate more intensive and informed public deliberation or greater public trust, identity and legitimacy – particularly where the issues in question are not highly salient. Two conclusions follow. First, the failure of constitutional reform is, paradoxically, evidence of the success and stability of the existing “European constitutional settlement.”<\/p>\n

\nThe rhetoric of federalism has not changed to reflect this new reality. Second, prescriptive analysis of real-world constitutional reform requires that normative theorists draw more heavily on empirical social science in order to ascertain to what extent institutions actually have the consequences ideally ascribed to them.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, creating opportunities for public discourse and obtaining the consent of the people as a pre-requisite for government really doesn’t matter all that much.<\/p>\n

Because the people – they are pretty happy with their leaders. Ask any political scientist and they’ll let you know (just don’t ask a pollster).<\/p>\n

This diagnosis fails to heed the fundamental lessons of the five-year constitutional detour. The effort to generate participation and legitimacy by introducing more populist and deliberative democratic forms was doomed to failure because it runs counter to our consensual social scientific understanding of how advanced democracies actually work. There is simply no empirical reason to believe, as the advocates of constitutional reform clearly believed, that opportunities to participate generate greater participation and deliberation, or that participation and deliberation generate political legitimacy. These social scientific errors are the focus of my analysis below, but before turning to them I want to underscore two broader implications, one for EU policy analysis and one for political philosophy.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The political philosophy position is especially risible:<\/p>\n

For political philosophers engaged in normative analysis of real-world constitutional systems, the implication of this episode is to counsel skepticism toward those who recommend politicization, deliberation and mass plebiscitary democracy as panaceas to promote political legitimation and effectiveness. Even in a “politicized” environment, there is no reason – particularly, as we shall see, when dealing with the sort of issues the EU handles – to assume that increases in opportunities to participate necessarily generate participation, deliberation, legitimacy, or popularity. Nor is there any normative reason to favor such arrangements. All modern constitutional systems politicize some functions and depoliticize others, and they do so for deliberate reasons that are normatively, as well as pragmatically, justifiable. In arguing for constitutional reform in real-world constitutional democracies, therefore, the critical challenge is rarely how to increase our adherence to some ideal of participatory democracy. Instead it is how to design institutions that politicize and depoliticize<\/b> politics functions in a way that generates more accountability, more desirable outcomes, and more long-term popular support – a set of goals that have real normative weight (Majone 2005; Moravscik 2002: 613-614; Pettit 2004; Grant\/Keohane 2005). From this perspective, I assert, the existing European constitutional settlement is not just pragmatically more successful, but also normatively more desirable, than politicization through “democratic” reform.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Part of me wants to ask if the guy has read Habermas, part of me just wants to snark: I guess that when the peasants start bringing tumbrels to Brussels, they’ll start paying attention.<\/p>\n

Here’s Ferrell, speaking much more articulately:<\/p>\n

But there are, in my eyes, clear indications that Moravcsik\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s preferred model of legitimation doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t work either. People don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t understand the EU – but as best as I can make out, their trust in the guidance of political elites has waned dramatically too. The argument that mainstream politicians are representing Ireland\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s best interests is meeting with decided skepticism. The No side have been hammering home again and again the argument that pro-Treaty politicians are anti-democratic – they don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t trust voters to decide on this Treaty anywhere except in Ireland where they have to. The empirical claim (if not necessarily the anti-democratic bit) seems to be resonating with the public, for the simple and obvious reason that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s undeniably true.<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What do the people want? Ask a political scientist – don’t bother asking the people…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1767"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1767\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}