Democratic deficit or demoicratic legitimacy?
towards a new conceptual framework for the EU
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.60054/PEU.2020.7.69-80Keywords:
European Union, democratic deficit, fallacy of false analogy, demoicracy, output legitimacyAbstract
“Democratic deficit” is used as an umbrella concept covering a wide range of criticisms against the European Union (EU) as undemocratic or insufficiently democratic. The article reveals the logical unsustainability of the concept by demonstrating that it is a result of the so called “fallacy of false analogy”; in our case it is due to a wrong analogy between the EU and the modern democratic state (MDD). This rejection opens the debate about the necessity to create a new vocabulary for describing the functioning of the EU since the available one is deeply entrenched in the theory of the MDD. Several elements of this new conceptual framework - demoicracy, policy-politics, output legitimacy etc., - are introduced and applied.
References
Malinov, Svetoslav (sast.) (2003), Modernata demokratichna ideya, Sofia: Siela.
Malinov, Svetoslav (sast.) (2004), Modernata demokratichna darzhava, Sofia: Siela.
Stoyanov, Lyudmil (2008), Imperia na logikata, Sofia.
Uemov, A. I. (1970), Analogia v praktike nauchnogo issledovania, Moskva: Nauka.
Bang, H. P. (2011) ‘The Politics of Threats: Late-modern Politics in the Shadow of Neoliberalism.’ Critical Policy Studies, 5 (4), pp. 434-448.
Bang, Henrik, Dagnis, Mads Nedergaard, Jensen & Peter (2015), ‘We the People’ versus ‘We the Heads of States’: the debate on the democratic deficit of the European Union’, Policy Studies, 36 (2), pp.196-216.
Birch, Anthony (2007), The Concepts and Theories of Modern Democracy, London: Routledge.
Cheneval, F. and Schimmelfennig, F. (2013), ‘The case for demoicracy in the European Union’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 51(2), pp. 334-350.
Cheneval, F, Lavenex, S. and Schimmelfennig, F. (2015), ‘Demoicracy in the European Union: Principles, institutions, policies’, Journal of European Public Policy, 22(1), pp.1-18.
Dedman, Martin (2009), The Origins and Development of the European Union 1945-2008, London: Routledge, pp.33-49.
Easton, David. ‘An Approach to the Analysis of Political Systems’, World Politics, 9, (3), p. 383-400.
Follesdal, A. (2006), ‘The Legitimacy Deficits of the European Union’, Journal of Political Philosophy, 14 (4), pp.441-68.
Follesdal, A. and Hix, S. (2006), ‘Why there is a democratic deficit in the EU: a response to Majone and Moravcsik’, Journal of Common Market Studies 44(3), pp.533-562.
Habermas, J. (2008), Europe the Faltering Project, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Held, David (2007), Models of Democracy, London: Polity Press.
Holyoak, K.J. (2012), ‘Analogy and relational reasoning’ in: Holyoak, K.J. and Morrison, R.G. (eds.) Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning, New York: OUP, pp.234-59.
Israel, Jonathan (2009), A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy, Princeton University Press.
Kurinmaki, Jussi and Nevers, Jeppe (2018), Democracy in Modern Europe: A Conceptual History, Copenhagen: Berghahn Books.
Locke, Don (1973), ‘Just what is wrong with the argument from analogy?’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 51 (2), pp.153-156.
Majone, G. (1998), ‘Europe’s Democratic Decit’, European Law Journal, 4 (1), pp.5-28.
Marks, G. (2012), ‘Europe and Its Empires: From Rome to the European Union.’ Journal of Common Market Studies 50 (1), pp. 1-20.
Meny, Yves (2009), ‘The Challenge of a Post-national Democracy’ in: Moury, Catherine and de Sousa, Luís (eds) Institutional Challenges in Post-Constitutional Europe: Governing Change, New York: Routledge, pp. 125-126.
Mill, J. S. (1882), A System of Logic Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence, and the Methods of Scientific Investigation. New York: Harper & Brothers, p. 794.
Milward, A.S. (1984), The Reconstruction of Western Europe 1945-51, London: Methuen.
Moravcsik, A. (2002), ‘Reassessing Legitimacy in the European Union’, Journal of Common Market Studies, 40 (4), pp.603-24.
Nicolaidis, K. (2004), ‘The new constitution as European ‘demoi-cracy’?’, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy, 7(1), pp.76-93.
Nicolaidis, K. (2012), ‘The idea of European demoicracy” in: Dickson J and Eleftheriadis P. (eds) Philosophical Foundations of EU Law, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.247-274.
Nicolaidis, K. (2013), ‘European demoicracy and its crisis’, Journal of Common Market Studies 51(2), pp. 351-369.
Ronzoni, Miriam (2016), ‘The European Union as Demoicracy: Really a Third way?’, European Journal of Political Theory, 16/2, p. 212.
Salmon, Merrilee (2013), Introduction to Logical and Critical Thinking, University of Pittsburgh Press, pp.131-133.
Sidgwick, A. (1883), Fallacies: A View of Logic from the Practical Side, London: Kegan Paul, p. 232.
Scharpf, F.W. (1999), Governing in Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.7-21.
Schmidt, V. A. (2012), ‘Democracy and Legitimacy in the European Union Revisited: Input, Output and ‘Throughput’.’ Political Studies, 61 (1), pp. 2-22.
Schmitter, Phillippe (2003), ‘Democracy in Europe and Europe’s Democratization’, Journal of Democracy, 14(4), p.79.
Tversky, A. and D. Kahneman (1983), ‘Extensional versus intuitive reasoning: the conjunction fallacy in probability judgment’, Psychological Review (90), pp. 293-315.
Watt, D.C. (1980), ‘Sources for the History of the European Movement’, in: W. Lipgens (ed.) Sources for the History of European Integration 1945-55, Leyden-London-Boston: Sijthoff.
Weiler, J. H. H. (1995), ‘Does Europe Need a Constitution? Demos, Telos and the German Maastricht Decision.’ European Law Journal, 1 (3), pp. 219-258.
Wood, Gordon (1994), ‘Democracy and the American Revolution’ in: Dunn, J. (ed) Democracy: The Unfinished Journey, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp.91-107.
