Constitutional Alternatives to the Crisis: A Political-Sociological Approach to European 'Anti-Politics'
Abstrakt
The democratic deficit of the European Union (EU) has widened with the current European crisis, not least due to a highly problematic form of EU crisis management, based on 'new intergovernmentalism', recourse to international rather than treaty law, ambiguous legal arrangements, interference into domestic politics, and a tendency towards technocratic governance (cf. Blokker forthcoming; Cartabia 2013; Tuori and Tuori 2014; Wilkinson 2013).
This general move away from democratic policy-making and public debate has had harsh consequences for the democratic quality of the EU, both in terms of the democratic procedures and their violation (the top-down imposition of a singular vision) and in terms of substantive politics and its limitation (an absence of political choice and debate). Hence it is not surprising that the democratic nature of the European integration project is contested, and contestation seems to be on the increase, or at least becoming more visible, with the current economic crisis.
What seems evermore clear is that a European project confined to transnational market-making, referring to a rather thin 'output-oriented legitimacy', is found wanting in terms of social competence as well as civic-democratic enablement.