Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

the European democratic formation of will a matter of the transfer of the nationstate
formation of will to European politics through the governments of the member
states (Kirchhof 1994). The decisive place for this operation is the Council of
Ministers. A nation-state related variation of this model hopes to obtain more
European democracy from the stronger tying of national governments to their
national parliaments as far as European politics is concerned (Lepsius 1991).
All these models start from the illusion that politics can be focused on decisive
places and gains its legitimation from a representative-democratic formation of
will, whether it is at a European or a national level. In future, however, this will be
less and less possible, at either level. The search for a European public, a European
party system, a European system of associations and a European neo-corporatist
cooperation of a European state and representative large associations will fail
due to the overly simple transfer of an obsolete model of nation-state representative
democracy to European politics. Also, the search for an adequate integration
of the nation-state formation of will into European politics in models of a confederation
of states or nationality states adheres too much to the declining era of
the nation-state representative democracy. Neither model – the federal state or the
confederation of states and/or nationality state – sufficiently takes into account
the fact that Europe will not take the form of a nation and will be increasingly less
composed of nations. Europe will, instead, become a considerably more varied
structure of local communities, of more or less strong regions, ever more fading
remainders of nations and a wealth of horizontally arranged groups of interests,
but, above all, of self-responsibly acting individuals. There will not be one central
place for politics and no central public, but many places and partial publics. Under
such structural terms, European politics can no longer find its legitimation in
obsolete forms of a democratic formation of will. The resource of its legitimation
will, instead, be its division into levels and arenas, its openness to participation, its
unfinished character, its revisability, and its capability to correct mistakes
permanently (Münch et al. 2001).
Notes
1 Council Directive 89/391/EEC of 12 June 1989 on the introduction of measures to
encourage improvements in the safety and health of workers at work, Official Journal L
183, 29/06/1989, p. 1–8.
2 Directive 96/71/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December
1996 concerning the posting of workers in the framework of the provision of services,
Official Journal L 018, 21/01/1997, p 1–6.
References
Democracy without demos 79
Behrens, P. (1994) ‘Die Wirtschaftsverfassung der Europäischen Gemeinschaft’, in
G. Brüggemeier (ed.) Verfassungen für ein ziviles Europa, Baden-Baden: Nomos.
Betz, H.-G. (1994) Radical Right-Wing Populism in Western Europe, New York: St Martin’s
Press.
Bogdandy, A. von, (1999) ‘Die Europäische Union als supranationale Föderation’,
Integration 2: 95–112.