Jcms 2002 Vol 40 No 4

JCMS 2002 Volume 40. Number 4. pp.
60324
In Defence of the Democratic Deficit:

Reassessing Legitimacy in the European Union*
ANDREW MORAVCSIK
Harvard University
Abstract
Concern about the EUs democratic deficit is misplaced. Judged against existing
advanced industrial democracies, rather than an ideal plebiscitary or parliamentary
democracy, the EU is legitimate. Its institutions are tightly constrained by constitutional checks and balances: narrow mandates, fiscal limits, super-majoritarian and
concurrent voting requirements and separation of powers. The EU's appearance of
exceptional insulation reflects the subset of functions it performs central banking,
constitutional adjudication, civil prosecution, economic diplomacy and technical
administration. These are matters of low electoral salience commonly delegated in
national systems, for normatively justifiable reasons. On balance, the EU redresses
rather than creates biases in political representation, deliberation and output.
Introduction
Is the European Union democratically legitimate? It is an appropriate moment to pose this question. The last decade has witnessed the emergence of a
stable institutional equilibrium let us call it the European Constitutional
Settlement that serves as a de facto constitution for Europe. The Treaties of
Amsterdam and Nice failed to alter its structure significantly. Deliberations
now underway, despite being turbo-charged with constitutional rhetoric, are
unlikely to achieve much more. The most ambitious proposals still under serious discussion incremental expansion of qualified majority voting or flexibility, the creation of a forum for national parliamentarians, restructuring the
European Council and its Presidency, for example consolidate decade-long
*
I gratefully acknowledge comments and suggestions from Phillip Budden, Oliver Gerstenberg, Simon
Hix, Bonnie Meguid, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Helen Wallace, Joseph Weiler, an anonymous reviewer, and
participants in the 40th Anniversary Conference of JCMS, as well as the able research assistance of Mark
Copelovitch and logistical support from the Department of Politics, Princeton University .
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trends rather than launch new ones. Incremental moves to deepen foreign
policy, justice and monetary policy co-operation appear to require only minor
centralizing reforms, and few other functional issues of significance are visible on the horizon. None of this will alter the essential trajectory of European
integration. Thus we may now be glimpsing the constitutional order that will
govern Europe, barring a severe crisis, for the foreseeable future.
The question of legitimacy is timely also because the last decade has witnessed nearly continuous debate over the proper constitutional structure for
Europe. In a much-lauded book, Larry Siedentop asks, Where are the
Madisons for Europe? (Siedentop, 2000). Yet the more appropriate question
for those who have followed European thinking is: Why are there so many
Madisons? (Moravcsik, 2001a). Hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of scholars, commentators, lawyers and politicians have analysed this problem. They
have canvassed every conceivable proposal from the construction of a centralized European social welfare state to a federal commitment to English,
Christianity and juridical localism. Advocates and opponents of each have
mustered constitutional theories, social scientific hypotheses, everyday political anecdotes and good old-fashioned political rhetoric. Never before in
history have such rich and varied intellectual resources been brought to bear
on an international political process a discourse from which we can learn
much.
Both political negotiations and intellectual debates have focused, perhaps
above all, on the question of whether the EU is democratically legitimate.
Most politicians, scholarly commentators and members of the European public appear to agree that the EU suffers from a severe democratic deficit.
There are many reasons why this perception is so widespread. An organization of continental scope will, of course, appear rather distant from the individual European citizen. As a multinational body, moreover, it lacks the grounding in a common history, culture, discourse and symbolism on which most
individual polities can draw. Neither of these reasons, however, need necessarily disqualify the EU from being treated as a democratically legitimate
body.
Rather, when analysts criticize the lack of democratic legitimacy in the
EU, they generally point to the mode of political representation and the nature of policy outputs. Only one branch of the EU is directly elected: the
European Parliament (EP). Though stronger than it once was, the EP remains
only one of four major actors in the EU policy-making process. Its elections
are decentralized, apathetic affairs, in which a relatively small number of voters
select among national parties on the basis of national issues. Little discussion
of European issues, let alone ideal transnational deliberation, takes place. For
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REASSESSING LEGITIMACY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION
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setter and regulatory co-ordinator, is widely perceived as a technocracy. The

European Court of Justice, comprising 15 appointed judges, is unusually powerful. Most powerful of all, the Council of Ministers brings together national
ministers, diplomatic representatives and administrative officials from the
Member States, who often deliberate in secret. While indirectly accountable
to voters, the link is too tenuous and the mode of interaction too diplomatic or
technocratic to satisfy many observers.
These procedural qualms might be tolerable were it not for the perceived
bias in the outputs of European policy-making. Many view the EU as a throwback to the nineteenth century a fiscally weak, neo-liberal state. EU directives and regulations promote wider and deeper markets, while providing only
a truncated range of compensating and counterbalancing policies of regulatory protection or social welfare guarantees. If as Karl Polanyi and Joseph
Schumpeter asserted the legitimacy of democratic capitalism rests on an
explicit compromise between markets and social protection, then the EU appears a dangerous exception (Polanyi, 1944; Schumpeter, 1942). The most
salient task of the modern state is to equalize life chances and socialize the
risk faced by individual citizens, a goal to which the EU appears indifferent
or even hostile. No wonder, then, that many Europeans and disproportionately the poor, female, economically peripheral and recipients of public sector support view the EU with scepticism.
For these reasons, many believe it is self-evident that the EU is not democratically legitimate. Yet my central contention here is that, if we adopt reasonable criteria for judging democratic governance, then the widespread criticism of the EU as democratically illegitimate is unsupported by the existing
empirical evidence. At the very least, this critique must be heavily qualified.
Constitutional checks and balances, indirect democratic control via national
governments, and the increasing powers of the European Parliament are sufficient to ensure that EU policy-making is, in nearly all cases, clean, transparent, effective and politically responsive to the demands of European citizens.
Mostly critics overlook the relatively optimistic conclusion to be drawn
from the evidence because they analyse the EU in ideal and isolated terms.
Comparisons are drawn between the EU and an ancient, Westminster-style,
or frankly utopian form of deliberative democracy. While perhaps useful for
philosophical purposes, the use of idealistic standards no modern government can meet obscures the social context of contemporary European policymaking the real-world practices of existing governments and the multilevel political system in which they act. This leads many analysts to overlook
the extent to which delegation and insulation are widespread trends in modern democracies, which must be acknowledged on their own terms. The fact
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that governments delegate to bodies such as constitutional courts, central banks,

regulatory agencies, criminal prosecutors, and insulated executive negotiators is a fact of life, one with a great deal of normative and pragmatic justification. In this regard, moreover, most analysts view the EU in isolation, and
thus fail to appreciate fully the symbiotic relationship between national and
EU policy-making a division of labour in which commonly delegated functions tend to be carried out by the EU, while those functions that inspire and
induce popular participation remain largely national. This gives observers the
impression that the EU is undemocratic, whereas it is simply specializing in
those functions of modern democratic governance that tend to involve less
direct political participation. We might, of course, choose to criticize the
broader trend toward professional administration, judicial enforcement of rights
and strong executive leadership, but it is unrealistic to expect the EU to bear
the brunt of such a critique a point to which I return in the conclusion.
I proceed as follows. In successive sections, I analyse the constraints inherent in the European constitutional settlement that guarantee that the EU
will not become a despotic superstate; the democratic procedures that prevent the EU from becoming an arbitrary and unaccountable technocracy; the
legitimate reasons for shielding certain EU decision-makers from direct democratic contestation; the underlying social reasons why political participation
in the EU cannot be radically expanded; and the extent to which EU policymaking suffers from an excessive neo-liberal bias. Final sections consider
whether these assessments are likely to change with enlargement of the EU,
and how the analysis might be generalized.
I. Constitutional Constraints: Why the EU is not a Superstate
The classic justification for democracy is to check and channel the arbitrary
and potentially corrupt power of the state. Accordingly, arbitrary rule by national and supranational technocrats bureaucratic despotism by a
superstate in Brussels, as one formulation has it is a widespread concern
in contemporary EU politics (Siedentop, 2000; cf. Moravcsik, 2001a). This is
the stuff of British tabloid articles, often fuelled by ignorance of what the EU
actually does, but it underlies much legitimate concern, particularly among
those on the libertarian right of the political spectrum. This concern gains
plausibility from the overtly technocratic nature of much EU regulation, the
open role played by non-elected officials in Brussels, and the geographical
and cultural distance between those regulators and the average European person in the street.
Yet the threat of a European superstate is a myth. The European constitutional settlement imposes tight constraints on EU policy. These combine and
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exceed the most extreme constraints imposed in national systems by

consociational or consensus democracy (beyond, say, the Netherlands or Austria of years past), federalism (e.g. Switzerland or Canada), separation of powers (e.g. the United States), and reduced fiscal competences (e.g. the United
States or Switzerland). The result is as much confederal as federal (Moravcsik, 2001b; Elazar, 2001), and almost eliminates any threat of a European
superstate. A set of substantive, fiscal, administrative, legal and procedural
constraints on EU policy-making are embedded in treaty and legislative provisions that have the force of constitutional law to which we now turn.
Substantive Constraints and the Focus on Cross-Border Economic Activity
The EUs current activities are restricted by treaty and practice to a modest
subset of the substantive activities pursued by modern states. Its mandate
focuses primarily on the regulation of policy externalities resulting from crossborder economic activity. The core of EU activity and its strongest constitutional prerogatives still lie almost exclusively in the area of trade in goods
and services, the movement of factors of production, the production of and
trade in agricultural commodities, exchange rates and monetary policy, foreign aid and trade-related environmental, consumer and competition policy.
To be sure, there are exceptions, including a modest level of regional and
structural funding of infrastructure, but even these exist primarily as sidepayments for the creation of core policies. In some areas regulatory controls
exceed narrow market-making functions, and immigration and foreign policies are emergent areas of action. But these tend often to be treated in more
intergovernmental procedures, whereas the strongest constitutional prerogatives of the EU remain primarily economic.
Much is thereby excluded from the EU policy agenda. Absent concerns
include taxation and the setting of fiscal priorities, social welfare provision,
defence and police powers, education policy, cultural policy, non-economic
civil litigation, direct cultural promotion and regulation, the funding of civilian infrastructure, and most other regulatory policies unrelated to cross-border economic activity. Certainly the EU has made modest inroads into many
of these areas, but only in limited areas directly related to cross-border flows.1
Even within the core functions of the EU, governments are allowed to exempt
themselves to maintain high regulatory protection (e.g. environmental and
social policy), or to act unilaterally where the EU has not effectively legislated (e.g. air transport).
1 The scholarly literature on European integration seems to pay disproportionate attention to exceptional
cases of spillover in cases such as gender discrimination, the initial experience with environmental
policy and structural funding, the jurisprudence of supremacy and direct effect, the Commissions use of
Article 90, and the possible, but as yet undocumented, effects of the open method of co-ordination (OMC).
These are important trends, but atypical of the EU as a whole.
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Fiscal Constraints and the Emergence of a Regulatory Polity

One might object at this point that this analysis treats the status quo as a
snapshot and thereby overlooks the future trajectory of integration. Yet the
EUs institutional capacity to act in new areas and new ways is constrained by
a severe lack of fiscal, administrative and legal authority, thereby partially
mitigating the imperative to maintain close and constant legislative scrutiny.
At a first approximation, the EU does not tax, spend, implement or coerce
and, in many areas, it does not hold a legal monopoly of public authority.
It is not coincidental that the policies absent from the EUs policy portfolio notably social welfare provision, defence, education, culture and infrastructure require high government expenditure. The ability to tax and spend
is what most strikingly distinguishes the modern European state from its predecessors, yet the EUs ability to tax is capped at about 23 per cent of national
and local government spending (1.3 per cent of GDP) and is unlikely to change
soon. The disbursement of these funds, moreover, is explicitly directed to a
small range of policies the common agricultural policy, structural funding
and development aid that must periodically be renewed by unanimous consent of the Member States. The EU is thereby rendered a regulatory polity
a polity with legal instruments but little fiscal capacity (Majone, 1996, 1998).
These fiscal constraints have important consequences. They leave little
room for discretionary funding by Brussels technocrats. Funding levels in
agriculture and structural funding are set by strict unanimous intergovernmental agreement. Moreover, even in areas of the EUs greatest fiscal activity, much (generally most) public funding remains national. There is considerable evidence from the two largest areas of EU spending the common
agricultural policy and structural funds that national governments possess
the resources to counteract broad fiscal priorities set by authorities in Brussels (e.g. Pollack, 2000).
Administrative Constraints and the Decentralized Politics of
Implementation
Analysts often observe that the essential politics of regulation lies in implementation, yet the EU implements very few of its own regulations. With the
exceptions of monetary policy, competition policy and the conduct of, though
not the ultimate control over, external trade negotiations, the powers of the
EU to administer and implement are, in fact, exceptionally weak. How could
it be otherwise, given the extraordinarily small size of the Brussels bureaucracy? The EU employs fewer people than a modest European city. They total
about one-fortieth of the number of comparable civilian federal employees
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national perspective for the small size of its national government workforce.
Except in a few areas, the task of legally or administratively implementing
EU regulations falls instead to national parliaments and administrations.
Were this not enough, the EU has no police, military force or significant
investigatory capacity and no realistic prospect of obtaining any of these.
Take the military. Even if the most ambitious plans currently on the table in
European defence were fully realized, the EU would control only 2 per cent
of European Nato forces and these forces could be employed only for a
narrow range of regional peace-keeping and peace-making tasks. Similarly,
whereas the EU is co-ordinating efforts to combat international crime, the
decentralized structure of national police, criminal justice and punishment
systems, while externally constrained, remains in essence unchanged.
Procedural Constraints and the Politics of Checks and Balances
Of course the lack of administrative clout, and even perhaps of fiscal discretion, would be of less consequence if the EU technocracy could act unhampered by procedural constraints. Yet the EUs ability to act, even in those
areas where it enjoys clear competence, is constrained by institutional checks
and balances, notably the separation of powers, a multi-level structure of decision-making and a plural executive. This makes arbitrary action (indeed,
any action) difficult and tends to empower veto groups that can capture a
subset of national governments. Such institutional procedures are the conventional tool for protecting the interests of vital minorities a design feature
generally thought to be most appropriate to polities, like the EU, that must
accommodate heterogeneous cultural and substantive interests (Lijphart, 1990).
The most fundamental constraint lies in the requirement of unanimity, followed by electoral, parliamentary or administrative ratification, to amend the
Treaty of Rome an exceptionally high standard for any fundamental act of
substantive redirection or institutional delegation. Accordingly, the EU has
developed over the past two decades only by focusing on core areas of exceptionally broad consensus, backed by large financial side-payments to persuade recalcitrant Member States. Whereas judicial decisions like the celebrated Cassis de Dijon case may have helped set the agenda for initiatives
like the single market, monetary union or enlargement, there is now agreement in the scholarly literature that they could not do so without nearly consensual support from the Member States (Alter, 2001). Even everyday EU
directives must be promulgated under rules that require the concurrent support of between 74 and 100 per cent of the weighted votes of territorial representatives in the Council of Ministers a level of support higher than required for legislation in any existing national polity or, indeed, to amend nearly
any national constitution in the world today.
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Surmounting super-majoritarian and unanimous voting requirements is not

enough, however, to pass legislation. The EU is not a system of parliamentary
sovereignty but one of separation of powers. Power is divided vertically among
the Commission, Council, Parliament and Court, and horizontally among local, national and transnational levels requiring concurrent majorities for
action. For legislation, the Commission must propose; the Parliament must
consent; if the result is then challenged, the Court must approve; national
parliaments or officials must transpose into national law; and national bureaucracies must implement. Even within each branch and level of EU governance, we encounter extraordinary pluralism. The Commission itself is a
plural executive so much so that experts disagree whether it is an executive
at all. The EP requires unusually high majorities to act. As a result, consistent
and effective EU policy-making tends to be possible only where there exists
not just a supermajority of national representatives, but a supermajority of
European technocrats, judges and parliamentarians as well. Current proposals to represent more groups, for example through another chamber representing national parliamentarians, can only exacerbate this tendency.
Legal Constraints and the Politics of Competences
If, after such widespread consent, legislation is nonetheless unacceptable to
EU Member States, they have real alternatives to strict reliance on EU norms.
This is so to a far greater extent than even the most decentralized of national
federations. In core areas of trade and factor flows, to be sure, EU rules remain relatively strict and are enforced as such. Yet there are also a number of
areas, even in economic affairs, in which governments can act minilaterally
inside or outside the EU. These include issues in which a subset of EU
governments can work through other international organizations (e.g. human
rights, defence, border controls and some environmental policy, the UN Security Council), areas where a core of governments can move ahead collectively inside the institutions (e.g. flexibility, enhanced co-operation or coalitions of the willing in social, monetary, defence and immigration policies,
and areas with long transition periods, e.g. for new members in agriculture).
In still other areas, such as environmental policy, governments may opt out of
EU regulations to provide higher regulatory protection. The number of such
mechanisms has increased over the past decade, and their important role distinguishes the EU from national federations.2
There are, of course, isolated examples in other jurisdictions, such as the proliferation of interstate
compacts among states of the United States.
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II. Democratic Control: Why the EU is not an Unaccountable

Technocracy
We have just seen that the EU is more constrained than any national polity, in
part by its own plural structure of checks and balances, and in part by its need
to co-exist within a multi-level system of governance with fiscally, administratively and legally more powerful nation-states. This renders the spectre of
a European superstate absurd. Most analysts doubt the EU is a state at all;
they prefer to speak of a diffuse governance system.
Still, no matter how constrained its substantive and institutional authority,
there remain important areas notably important matters of market regulation, monetary policy and other related regulation in which EU legislation
and regulation are dominant. In these areas, policy-making remains rather
centralized in Brussels, Luxembourg or Frankfurt, albeit with constant Member State and interest group input. In the cases of European Court of Justice
jurisprudence, the European Central Banks setting of monetary policy and
the Commissions handling of competition policy, moreover, such powers are
wielded by semi-autonomous supranational authorities. Even where legislation and regulation remain subject, as they are generally, to super-majoritarian
consent, it might be objected that the EU policy process favours national bureaucrats and ministers at the expense of national parliaments and publics.
The EU, from this perspective, is an insulated cartel of supranational and
national technocrats.
As a description of EU policy-making, there is some truth in this (Moravcsik, 1994). But what is the implication for democratic legitimacy? I argue in
this section that the insulation of the EU from mechanisms to assure democratic accountability is easily exaggerated, particularly by those who tend to
overlook the multi-level constraints embedded in the European constitutional
settlement arising from democratic control over national governments. Moreover, the mode of EU delegation to its constitutional court, central bank and
other semi-autonomous authorities, is consistent with the late twentieth-century practice of most advanced industrial democracies. Even if we were to
reject outright the modern trend towards delegated policy-making, it would
surely be normatively arbitrary as well as politically futile to expect the EU to
bear the brunt of such opposition.
Direct and Indirect Democratic Accountability
Given the vehemence of the critique levelled against it, one might assume
that the EU lacks any form of democratic participation and accountability at
all. Yet in fact the EU employs two robust mechanisms: direct accountability
via the EP and indirect accountability via elected national officials.
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For over a decade, the EP has been progressively usurping the role of the
Commission as the primary agenda-setter vis--vis the Council in the EU
legislative process. It is now the EP that, late in the legislative process, accepts, rejects or amends legislation in a manner more difficult for the Council
to reject than to accept a prerogative traditionally accorded the Commission. The EP is directly elected by proportional representation within nationstates, and often acts independently of ruling national parties. Whereas one
might criticize the absence of clear programmatic elections, the EP nonetheless has an effective system of party co-operation. Votes most often split along
party lines and recognizable ideological cleavages shape voting patterns.
Among the most relevant differences between the European Parliament and
national parliaments appears to be the tendency of the EP to reach decisions
by large majorities. Yet this tendency underscores the propensity of the EU to
reach decisions by consensus unsurprising given the high level of support
required in the Council of Ministers and should give us reason for confidence that it is legislating in the European interest (Hix et al., 2002).
Still, if European elections were the only form of democratic accountability to which the EU were subject, scepticism would surely be warranted. Yet
a more important channel lies in the democratically elected governments of
the Member States, which dominate the still largely territorial and intergovernmental structure of the EU. In the European Council, which is consolidating its position as the EUs dominant institution, elected heads of state and
government wield power directly (Ludlow, 2002). In the Council of Ministers, which imposes the most important constraint on everyday EU legislation, permanent representatives, ministerial officials and the ministers themselves from each country act under constant instruction from national executives, just as they would at home. Here the bonds of accountability are tight:
these representatives can be re-instructed or recalled at will, often more easily than parliamentarians in national systems. In addition, national parliaments
consider and comment on many EU policies, though their de facto ability to
influence policy fluctuates greatly by country.
Broad representation also encourages transparent policy-making. In contrast to the widespread impression of a cadre of secretive gnomes of Brussels,
supranational officials in fact work under intense public scrutiny. The legislative process works slowly, with no equivalent to ruling by executive decree or
pushing legislation swiftly through a friendly parliament, and information
appears more plentiful about the EU political and regulatory process, at least
at the Brussels level, than about similar processes in nearly all of its Member
States. With 20 Commissioners and their staffs, 15 national delegations, over
600 parliamentarians, hundreds of national ministers and thousands of national officials, ex ante parliamentary scrutiny in some countries and ex post
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parliamentary scrutiny in nearly all, and finally the need for domestic administrative implementation, there can be no such thing as a monopoly of information in the EU. And whereas it is true that certain aspects of the system,
such as early discussions in the lower levels of Coreper, tend to take place in
relative secret, the same might be said of the de facto preparation of legislation in national systems. Recent research seems to reveal that the EU regulatory processes are as open to input from civil society, and as constrained by
the need to give reasons, as the (relatively open) systems of Switzerland and
the US (Zweifel, 2001). Discussions within comitology appear to take due
account of public interest considerations, though the precise reasons for this
socialization, insulated expert discussion, external pressure by Member States,
structured deliberation, anticipated non-compliance remain to be fully analysed (Joerges and Vos, 1999; Majone, 1998).
The Legitimacy of Semi-Autonomous Judges and Technocrats
It might be objected that the EU sometimes bypasses comitology and relies
overly on autonomous technocrats in the Commission or constitutional court
judges to resolve essentially political questions involving the apportionment
of cost, benefit and risk. Yet there is little that is distinctively European
about the pattern of delegation we observe in the EU. The late twentieth century has been a period of the decline of parliaments and the rise of courts,
public administrations and the core executive. Increasingly, accountability
is imposed not through direct participation in majoritarian decision-making,
but instead through complex systems of indirect representation, selection of
representatives, professional socialization, ex post review, and balances between branches of government (Majone, 1996).
The critical point for the study of the EU is this: within the multi-level
governance system prevailing in Europe, EU officials (or insulated national
representatives) enjoy the greatest autonomy in precisely those areas central banking, constitutional adjudication, criminal and civil prosecution, technical administration and economic diplomacy in which many advanced
industrial democracies, including most Member States of the EU, insulate
themselves from direct political contestation. The apparently undemocratic
nature of the EU as a whole is largely a function of this selection effect.
Insulation is not simply an empirical fact; it has normative weight. To
understand why, we must address the justifications for the apparently counter-majoritarian tendency of political institutions that are insulated from direct democratic contestation. Most such insulated institutions arise out of the
logic of commitment; that is, as efforts to enforce or embed the impartial
implementation of prior bargains. Three normative justifications, often found
in combination, are most common.
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First is the need for greater attention, efficiency and expertise in areas
where most citizens remain rationally ignorant or non-participatory. Universal involvement in government policy would impose costs beyond the
willingness of any modern citizen to bear. Insulated institutions reduce decision-making costs by encouraging specialization. They thus permit efficient
and consistent decisions to occur in areas of weak or intermittent citizen involvement and interest, most importantly where scientific, legal or administrative expertise is expensive to acquire, yet expert, informed decision-making is desired. As such expertise has come to play a greater role in policymaking, delegation to specialized authorities in areas from environmental
policy to food and drug authorization has become more common.
Second is the need impartially to dispense justice, equality and rights for
individuals and minority groups. It is common to delegate to insulated authorities, such as constitutional courts, responsibility for the enforcement of
individual or minority prerogatives against the immediate tyranny of the majority. Such delegation is often justified where citizens seek to reduce the
risk of contracting into an uncertain future. This tendency has spread in recent years as increasing numbers of governmental functions have been recognized as basic or human rights that are judicially or administratively enforced,
often at the international level, against political authorities.
Third is the need to provide majorities with unbiased representation. Insulated institutions offer one the means of redressing underlying biases in national democratic representation. The most common distortion is the capture
of open political processes, and thus government policy, by powerful
particularistic minorities with powerful and immediate interests, who oppose
the interests of majorities (often treated as the median voter) with diffuse,
longer-term or less self-conscious concerns. The classic understanding of trade
policy, for example, sees the broadly liberal interests of consumers and firms
trumped by pressure from powerful, self-conscious sectorally-organized protectionists. To the extent that this is so, the EU may be more representative
precisely because it is, in a narrow sense, less democratic.
Given these prima facie justifications, the burden of proof rests on critics
of the EU. We may debate whether the EUs central bank, constitutional court,
or competition authorities are properly constructed, but any such criticism
must first concede the legitimacy and general acceptability of a greater measure of insulation and autonomy in precisely these areas than elsewhere in
modern political life.
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III. Democratic Deliberation: Why the EU Cannot Expand

Participation
Radical democrats might nonetheless be tempted to reject the entire trend
toward insulated decision-making, domestic and international, because the
cost in terms of political participation is too high. Such critics might observe
that the European constitutional settlement has failed to promote the transnational political parties, identities and discourses that might help render European political participation meaningful and effective for citizens. A number
of analysts propose to employ European institutions to induce social co-operation in pursuit of common interests. This in turn, they expect, will generate
legitimacy.
Unless entirely grounded in an ideal preference for participation, however, these criticisms and proposals rest on the questionable premise that greater
participation in European political institutions will generate a deeper sense of
political community in Europe or, at the very least, greater popular support
for the EU. There are at least three reasons to doubt that this is the case.
First, insulated institutions constitutional courts and administrative bureaucracies, for example are often more popular with the public than legislatures. Internationally, institutions like the European Court of Human Rights
(ECHR) in Strasbourg command great legitimacy, despite their near total lack
of direct democratic legitimacy. The EUs position in the institutional division of labour involves such political functions, as we have just seen, and it is
unclear whether more participation in such functions would legitimate them.
Whereas a greater sense of common identity might indeed increase support
for the EU, this does not bear on the case for democratic reform but on the
question of how extensive European integration should be (Gibson and
Caldeira, 1993).
Second, EU legislative and regulatory activity is inversely correlated with
the salience of issues in the minds of European voters, so any effort to expand
participation is unlikely to overcome apathy. Among the most significant consequences of the limitation of the substantive scope of the EU, discussed above,
is that the issues handled by the EU and even more so second-order institutional choices about how to manage them lack salience in the minds of
European voters. Of the five most salient issues in most west European democracies health care provision, education, law and order, pension and social security policy, and taxation none is primarily an EU competence. Among
the next ten, only a few (managing the economy, the environment, alongside
the anomalous issue of Europe itself) could be considered major EU concerns, none exclusively so.3 In contrast, the issues in which the EU special3 I am indebted to Bonnie Meguid for access to her systematic data on issue salience in European countries.
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izes trade liberalization, the removal of non-tariff barriers, technical regulation in environmental and other areas, foreign aid and general foreign policy
co-ordination tend to be of low salience in most European polities. Lack of
salience, not lack of opportunity, may impose the binding constraint on European political participation. This would explain why European citizens fail to
exploit even the limited opportunities they have to participate. Monetary policy
lies somewhere in the middle: whereas citizens in advanced industrial democracies focus on macroeconomic performance, its link to the institutional
design of a central bank remains unclear in the minds of many, thereby
depoliticizing the issue.
It follows that reforms, referendums, parliamentary elections, or constitutional conventions based on EU issues encourage informationally impoverished and institutionally unstructured deliberation, which in turn encourages
unstable plebiscitary politics in which individuals have no incentive to reconcile their concrete interests with their immediate choices. The typical result is
a debacle like the 2001 Irish referendum on the Nice Treaty. Not only does
this demonstrate the existence of significant substantive constraints on EU
policy-making, but it implies as we shall see below that even if a common
European identity and the full panoply of democratic procedures existed, it
would be very difficult to induce meaningful citizen participation.
Of course this could change in the future. But the proposals to construct
greater citizen involvement in EU politics that are most plausible in theory
are patently implausible in practice. In order to give individuals a reason to
care about EU politics, it is necessary to give them a stake in it a fact that
many discussions of a demos, we-feeling, community, and constitutional
patriotism elide.4 The most compelling (and historically grounded) schemes
for doing so rest not on the creation of new political opportunities, but the
emergence of entirely new political cleavages based on interest. Philippe
Schmitter proposes, for example, that agricultural support and the structural
funds be replaced by a guaranteed minimum income for the poorest one-third
of Europeans, national welfare systems be rebalanced so as not to favour the
elderly, and immigrants and aliens be granted full rights (Schmitter, 2000).
With the EU acting as a massive engine of redistribution, individuals and
groups would reorient their political behaviour on whether they benefit or
lose from the system. This is a coherent scheme targeted at precisely those
groups most dissatisfied with European integration today broadly speaking,
the poorer, less well-educated, female, and public sector populations but it
is utterly infeasible. In search of legitimacy, Schmitter breaks with the European constitutional settlement, divorcing the EU entirely from its ostensible
purpose of regulating cross-border social behaviour, which would thereby
4
For an exception, see Weiler (1999).
617
undermine the legitimacy of almost everyone currently involved with it. The
result would almost certainly be a higher level of political dissatisfaction,
domestic and interstate, than Europe has seen in several generations.
IV. Social Democracy: Why EU Governance is not Substantively
Biased
Some, finally, maintain that the EU lacks democratic legitimacy not so much
because it stifles political participation, but because its policies are biased
against particular interests consensually recognized as legitimate. Such accounts tend to be social democratic, that is, they tend to argue that the EU
systematically biases policy-making in a neo-liberal direction.5 It does this,
so the argument goes, by excluding from the agenda particular issues, notably
social welfare and some public interest regulation, while facilitating common
liberalization of trade and factor flows. The entire arrangement is locked in
by the European legal order. Opposition does not form because it is kept off
the agenda by the European constitutional settlement, which leaves social
welfare provision to the national governments, and by the ignorance of less
fortunate individuals and groups about their own interests.
Fritz Scharpf offers just such a critique.6 Following Karl Polanyi and other
social democratic theorists, Scharpf argues that the most important element
in a democratic polity is to maintain the balance between market liberalization and social protection. Most Europeans favour maintaining current levels
of welfare spending, as demonstrated by the decentralized tendency of Member States to spend increasing percentages of GNP on welfare as per capita
income increases. Yet the status quo cannot be maintained today because of
the tendency of decentralized market competition to generate an interstate
race to the bottom in regulatory protection. Trade, immigration and especially foreign investment and capital flows create strong incentives for countries to reduce welfare expenditure. The EU cannot respond effectively to this
tendency, despite overwhelming support for the maintenance of welfare systems, because of a neo-liberal bias in the constitutional structure of the EU
and the rhetoric that surrounds it, which favours market liberalization (negative integration) over social protection (positive integration). This argument is outlined elsewhere in this issue, so I need not explain it further.
Scharpfs argument is without a doubt the most empirically and theoretically nuanced criticism of the EU democratic deficit that currently exists. Yet
5 Yet they need not be so. Many libertarians believe that policy in the EU, as well as in Europe as a whole,
is biased in a social democratic direction (see, e.g., Rabkin, 2001).

Scharpf (1999). For a more detailed critique, from both positive and normative perspectives, see
Moravcsik and Sangiovanni (2002).
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ANDREW MORAVCSIK
there is good reason to qualify his formulation of the argument, above all
since these qualifications are acknowledged in Scharpfs own empirical analysis.
There is little evidence of a race to the bottom. Scharpf himself concludes
ultimately that there can be such a race in only a few areas, there is relatively
little evidence that it has yet occurred, and the effects have been limited. The
level of social welfare provision in Europe remains relatively stable. National
welfare systems are no longer moving strongly in the direction of greater
redistribution, but neither are they imploding. Recent OECD analyses report
that fiscal consolidation over the past 20 years has almost always led to increases in government revenues as a percentage of GNP, and in most cases
the burden of consolidation is placed primarily on revenue increases. Much
recent research, moreover, suggests that the adverse impact of globalization
on standards in the major areas of social spending in Europe (pensions, medical care and labour market policy) is easily exaggerated. The most important
factors behind increasing social spending are instead domestic: the shift to a
post-industrial economy, lower productivity growth, shifting demand for less
skilled workers, and rising costs of health care, pensions and employment
policies, exacerbated by increasingly unfavourable demographic trends. These
factors fuel welfare deficits and fiscal strains, yet any reform is opposed by
entrenched constituencies (the elderly, medical care consumers and the fulltime unemployed) well placed to resist it. No responsible analyst believes
that current individual social welfare entitlements can be maintained in the
face of these structural shifts. In this context, the neo-liberal bias of the EU, if
it exists, is justified by the social welfarist bias of current national policies
(Pierson and Leibfried, 1995; Rhodes et al., 2001; Iversen et al., 1999).
Nor is there much evidence that the EU is driving social protection downward. By contrast, the EU has often permitted high standards and supportive
institutional reform, and thus has tended to reregulate at a high level (Vogel,
1995; Joerges and Vos, 2000). Anecdotal evidence and poll data suggest that
the EU is responsive to public and interest group concerns in a way quite
similar to national polities.7 For reasons set out in Scharpfs article in this
issue, there is far less reason for a social democrat to fear the piecemeal evolution of European law than might have been the case five years ago (see also
Scharpf, 1999). Whatever consequences there may be lie largely in the future.
The major difference between apparently intractable issues of EU discussion
such as social and tax harmonization, and similar issues where European regulation is effective, such as worker health and safety, appears not to lie in con7
The life-cycle of an issue like mad cow disease is just as it would be in any western democracy: some
bureaucracies are captured; a crisis emerges; and reforms are put in place that place greater emphasis on
the broader public interest (Joerges and Vos, 1999).
619
stitutional structure but in the precise nature of conflicts of interest among

national governments. In the case of taxation, some governments remain deeply
opposed to the harmonization of taxation and social welfare, whereas there
are few die-hard defenders of unilateralism in matters of worker health and
safety or pollution abatement. In this sense, the EU reflects patterns of consensus and contestation within European publics.
From the perspective of democratic theory, finally, it is important to note
that Scharpfs proposals are concerned primarily with maintaining social protection in richer Member States. They are quite conservative in that they favour domestic redistribution over transnational redistribution; the defence of
German welfare standards takes precedence over schemes for transnational
redistribution. Scharpfs justification lies in the subjective perceptions of identity of national citizens in countries like Germany, which do not support a
heavy commitment to redistribution. Yet this is likely to be perceived very
differently in poorer Member States, and in particular among the new members from central and eastern Europe. This leads us to the most significant
challenge facing the EU over the next decade: enlargement.
V. The Challenge of Enlargement: Why the EU is Likely to Remain
Legitimate
Will enlargement alter this generally optimistic assessment of democratic legitimacy in the EU? Given that expansion of such intensive international cooperation to include such a varied group of countries is unprecedented, any
assessment must remain more speculative than scientific. Yet there is good
reason, nonetheless, to be hopeful.
The above analysis suggests that the most fundamental source of the EUs
legitimacy lies in the democratic accountability of national governments. There
is little reason to doubt that, on balance, the prospect of enlargement and the
practice of membership of the EU bolsters domestic democratic institutions
in applicant countries. The power of attraction is perhaps the most powerful
instrument of democratization that European governments possess, and indeed perhaps, next to trade policy, their most powerful foreign policy instrument overall. There is compelling evidence that the prospect of enlargement
has significantly strengthened centrist democratic parties in central and east
European countries (Vachudova, 2001). As long as the domestic governments
of these countries remain liberal democracies, there is no reason to doubt that
their interactions with the EU will remain as firmly subject to democratic
accountability as national policies. To be sure, the EU runs the risk of admitting countries that could subsequently vote in anti-democratic parties. The
recent debacle of EU pressure on Austria, which is widely perceived as hav Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002
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ANDREW MORAVCSIK
ing been counterproductive, has demonstrated the difficulty (if not futility) of
EU efforts to micromanage the domestic democratic practices of Member
States. Still, a wholesale challenge to democracy, as opposed to an ideologically unattractive right-wing minority party, might generate a more credibly
effective response. This is certainly the lesson many learned from the Spanish
experience. In this sense, EU enlargement is almost certain to promote democracy in the region.
A more significant threat stems from the greater diversity and heterogeneity of interests within an EU of 2025 (Moravcsik, 1998; Nello and Smith,
1997). The most common argument about this diversity is, however, not the
most convincing. One often hears that the EU will become gridlocked as a
result of the increase in the number of EU Member States. This folk wisdom
is based on the rather primitive notion that the probability of gridlock is an
exponential function of the number of potential national vetoes, which is itself a direct function of the number of members (Petite, 1998). Certainly the
conclusion has a Cartesian clarity, but is it correct? Whereas individual vetoes may impose a binding constraint in a limited number of cases of unanimity voting, as with the role of Greece in foreign policy or Luxembourg in
banking, there is little reason to believe that this is generally the essential
concern. Most issues involve compromises between opposing coalitions,
whereby the total number of countries matters less. In any case, there are
relatively few remaining issues where co-operation is promising but unanimity is the norm. It is perhaps more likely that greater heterogeneity of interests
would undermine the cohesion of parties within the EP, making effective legislation more difficult. Yet the most recent analyses suggest that, as long as
countries have similar parties, cohesion is not narrowly dependent on the precise range of ideological differences (Hix et al., 2002).
Decisive instead is whether conflicts of interest, particularly those involving the redistribution of resources, will place undue strain on EU governance.
In particular, whose interests are to be represented by EU budgetary transfers? Nearly every country that has entered the EU most notably Britain,
Greece, and Spain received a relatively unfavourable financial settlement,
to which the response of each, once a member, has been to obstruct EU legislation until they received a financial side-payment. EU regional policy was a
response to the British referendum of 1975. In the 1980s, structural funding
was established and expanded as the result of pressure from Mediterranean
countries. Financial transfers contributed to the legitimacy of the EU in a
number of countries. This will be far more difficult a strategy for future entrants to pursue, due to the larger number of core members, the larger size of
the acquis communautaire, the lack of major issues on the horizon, and the
recent introduction of flexibility provisions that might well permit rich coun Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002
621
tries to react to such a situation by opting out and moving together as a subgroup. Structural and agricultural funding is unlikely to be extended at the
same level as in the past (Nello and Smith, 1997, p. 28). Labour movement is
likely to have some de facto transition period. This, in turn, may reduce the
popularity, and thus the perceived democratic legitimacy, of the EU.8 Yet
even in this context, the current arrangement, in which small countries can
block unanimity votes, may offer a better prospect of forcing continued redistribution than any type of decision-making reform.9
Conclusion
When judged by the practices of existing nation-states and in the context of a
multi-level system, there is little evidence that the EU suffers from a fundamental democratic deficit. That is not to say that there is no cause for concern.
There are a few areas where the EU departs modestly from existing national
practices with no compelling substantive justification. The most important is
the structure of the European Central Bank, which is more independent of
political pressure than any known national example (Herdegen, 1998). One
need not draw an analogy with the 1930s to view overly independent central
banks with caution. Another is the rights of immigrants, where EU standards
are evolving but could move in a direction more restrictive than the European
norm. Still another area is administrative procedure, where the formal rights
enjoyed by residents of the US under the Administrative Procedures Act surpass those formally guaranteed in Europe. Finally, Scharpf is correct in drawing attention to the possibility that, in the future, European administrative and
constitutional law might move in a direction inimical to social welfare provision. Yet up till now there is little evidence that these specific examples add
up to a structural democratic deficit in the EU. Any mature polity could point
to areas in which such democratic protections are stronger or weaker; in this
regard the EU is hardly exceptional.
So, we might reasonably ask, why then is there such public and scholarly
concern about the democratic deficit? Concern appears to result, above all,
from a tendency to privilege the abstract over the concrete. Most critics compare the EU to an ideal plebiscitary or parliamentary democracy, standing
alone, rather than to the actual functioning of national democracies adjusted
for its multi-level context. When we conduct the latter sort of analysis, we see
that EU decision-making procedures, including those that insulate or delegate
certain decisions, are very much in line with the general practice of most
8 Whether this in fact does so depends, of course, on which standard we adopt. A rise in nationalism and
a decline in European feeling is also possible and, again, the democratic legitimacy of such an outcome
is unclear (Nello and Smith, 1997, p. 47).
9 For a more detailed analysis, see Moravcsik and Vachudova (forthcoming).
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ANDREW MORAVCSIK
modern democracies in carrying out similar functions. This overall trend toward insulation of certain functions is in turn driven, most analysts believe,
by considerations that should be given normative weight, such as the complexity of many policy issues, the rational ignorance and apathy of many
publics, the desire to protect minority rights, and the power of certain special
interests in situations of open political contestation. These constraints cannot
be assumed away; they must be acknowledged on their own terms. As long as
political procedures are consistent with existing national democratic practice
and have a prima facie normative justification, I conclude, we cannot draw
negative conclusions about the legitimacy of the EU from casual observation
of the non-participatory nature of its institutions a dictum that could usefully be applied in many contexts outside the EU.
Correspondence:
Andrew Moravcsik
Center for European Studies
Harvard University
27 Kirkland Street
Cambridge MA 02138, USA
Tel: 00 1 617 495 4303 Fax: 00 1617 495 8509
email: moravcs@fas.harvard.edu
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JCMS 2007 Volume 45. Number 1. pp. 187209
Plurilateral Governance in the Enlarged

European Union*
JAN ZIELONKA
St Antonys College, Oxford University
Abstract
This article examines the impact of the recent EU enlargement on European governance. Enlargement is treated as a kind of external shock to the existing governance
system, broadening and diversifying the European public space. The prevalent hierarchical mode of governance is increasingly inadequate under these new circumstances and the Union will have to embrace more flexible, decentralized and soft
modes of governance.
Introduction
The official and academic discourse on European governance is increasingly
schizophrenic. On the one hand, the Union is seen as a prototype of postmodern, multi-level, polycentric governance that is decentralized, flexible,
deliberative, informal, inclusive and non-territorial. As Jeremy Rifkin put it:
The EU is a post-modern political institution [. . .] Each year, more and more
of the daily work of EU governance is being given over to more informal
networks of players, changing the very way government is perceived. The old
centralized top-down model of governance, with its rational performance
* This article greatly benefited from thoughtful comments by Helen Wallace, R. Daniel Kelemen, Kalypso
Nicoladis and Ania Krok-Paszkowska. It further develops some of the arguments from my recent book,
Zielonka, J. (2006) Europe as Empire: The Nature of the Enlarged European Union (Oxford: Oxford
University Press).
2007 The Author(s)
Journal compilation 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148,
USA
188
JAN ZIELONKA
standards and tight command-and-control mechanisms, is slowly giving way

to a process-oriented model of governance, made operational in horizontally
structured networks (Rifkin, 2004, pp. 22425).
On the other hand, EU governance is still largely about securing compliance with EU laws and regulations, formal and structured decision-making,
greater convergence and standardization, suppression of diversity and consolidation of the external boundary. Ever closer union is still the official aim
of European integration and there is ongoing pressure for institutional
fusion (Wessels, 1997). Moreover, EU regulation is still highly detailed,
prescriptive and coercive. Daniel Kelemen put it bluntly: The precision of
EU law is backed by a coercive approach to enforcement (Kelemen, 2006,
p. 108).
The European Commissions White Paper on Governance is another
example of this schizophrenia (Commission, 2001). It advocates the progressive adoption of new forms of governance, such as self-regulation,
co-regulation, the open method of co-ordination and independent regulatory
agencies. However, it also wants to enhance the old and rather rigid Community Method which envisages a strong central authority managed by the
Commission itself.
Of course, officials often want to have it both ways. The European Commission seems to be in favour of network governance provided that it is
able to control and manipulate the various networks (Magnette et al., 2003).
However, the issue cannot be reduced to partisan politics. It is difficult to say,
let alone prove which mode or modes of governance are best suited for the
Union of today. The Union is larger and more complex and is struggling with
the dilemma of how to maintain efficiency and order amidst growing interdependence, differentiation and unpredictability. Moreover, the impact of
external shocks and pressures can make certain forms of governance prevalent or obsolete.
This article will concentrate on this last point. It will try to examine the
impact of the most recent wave of EU enlargement on European governance.
Enlargement is treated as an external shock to the existing governance
system. Enlargement has done more than broaden the European geographic
and public space. It represents an enormous injection of economic, political,
legal and cultural diversity. This import of diversity will render the hierarchical mode of governance largely inadequate. The enlarged EU will have to
embrace more flexible, decentralized and soft modes of governance. I call this
new paradigm a plurilateral mode of governance. Of course, we are talking
here only about the impact of ten eastern European countries with a combined
economic potential of a medium-sized EU member such as the Netherlands
(Cyprus and Malta are not analysed here). Nevertheless, these ten countries
2007 The Author(s)
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PLURILATERAL GOVERNANCE IN THE ENLARGED EUROPEAN UNION
189
share similar characteristics and aspirations and they entered a Union which
was already highly divided on major issues. In this sense, the addition of new
Member States from eastern Europe tips the balance between supporters and
opponents of various governance options.
The article contains four sections. Section I identifies two leading and
contrasting modes of European governance: hierarchical and plurilateral.
Section II examines elements of hierarchical and plurilateral governance in
the Union on the eve of enlargement. Section III assesses whether the recent
wave of EU enlargement enhances the former or the latter mode of governance. Section IV seeks to establish whether plurilateral governance can be
efficient and democratic.
The article argues that the plurilateral mode of governance would not
necessarily encourage free riding which leads to disorder. Nor would it
necessarily leave Europes citizens without any public form of protection,
arbitration, jurisdiction, regulation and reallocation. Plurilateral governance
is not a panacea for all Europes problems, but it can help the EU to cope with
the pressures of globalization because of its built-in flexibility and ability for
learning. It can enhance Europes competitive edge because it pulls together
vast European resources without eliminating Europes greatest strength: its
pluralism and diversity. Plurilateral governance might even be seen as legitimate by Europes citizens because it tries to bring governance structures
closer to the people and relies on incentives rather than punishments.
I. Two Contrasting Modes of Governance
There is no commonly agreed definition of governance. For instance, Rod
Rhodes has identified no less than seven definitions of governance (Rhodes,
2000). The distinction between government and governance is also blurred
and contested. In this article governance means various types of regulation of
social relationships and their underlying conflicts by reliable and durable
means and institutions (Jachtenfuchs, 2001). Such a broad definition allows
us to analyse various different polities and organizational structures, a variety
of actors with different powers and objectives as well as different strategies,
instruments and cultures of interventions. Students of European integration
often focus only on EU institutions while ignoring private actors and a variety
of public actors that are also practising governance with implications for the
Euro-polity. Such a broad definition also allows us to use insights from
various disciplines concerned with governance: political science, public
administration, public management and international relations. These different disciplines do not often talk to each other, but they are concerned with
2007 The Author(s)
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JAN ZIELONKA
similar things. Students of European integration need to use the insights

from other disciplines rather than treating the EU as a unique organization
that cannot benefit from experiences observed in non-European contexts.
Most crucially such a broad definition is well suited for grasping a major
paradigm shift without getting lost in the details, however interesting such
details may be. The academic and political discourse about the EU is full of
complications and ambiguity. This is partly because the complex European
bargaining process makes it difficult to produce straightforward solutions.
Besides, the utility of different modes of governance may differ from field
to field and we may therefore need to look for the optimal combination
(Majone, 2005). However, we also need to acknowledge that there is a
battle of ideas going on in contemporary Europe: those who share a certain
paradigm try to apply it to many different fields. Moreover, hybrid or mixed
solutions are less efficient and transparent than straightforward ones. The
current multiplicity of various arrangements undermines the legitimacy of
the European project. New circumstances demand new ways of governing
the EU. It is time to make some crucial choices despite the complicated and
conflicting evidence.
There are many modes of governance identified by the existing literature,
but to grasp a shift from one mode to another I need to identify two main and
contrasting types, which can serve as analytical benchmarks indicating the
range of possible options for the enlarged EU. The first obvious analytical
benchmark is represented by the hierarchical type of governance. This mode
is often dismissed as simplistic, old-fashioned and ineffective, but I disagree
with such absolute assertions. Hierarchical governance can be quite complex
and even sophisticated. Hierarchical models are still widely used as a reference point for developing other models and organizational paradigms. And
there is an ample body of evidence pointing to the continuous utility of
hierarchical organizations (Hood, 1998).
The rise and persistence of nation states is the most spectacular success
story of hierarchical governance. The effective installation of a central and
hierarchical form of government allowed states to prevail over other units
existing in the late Middle Ages (Weber, 1971; Poggi, 1978; Tilly, 1990).
Their strong bureaucracies were able to provide top-down administrative
control and steering. States were able to harden their borders and constrain
exit options for political and economic actors (Hirschman, 1978). This
helped them to reduce diversity and foster homogeneity within their respective borders. Central goal-setting was also important to this notion of governance and implementation of these goals required state intervention either
through laws or policies. The basic law, in the form of a constitution
has been essential in defining the rules of political game and structuring
2007 The Author(s)
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institutions. The principle that rules should apply equally was predominant in
most nation states and this required uniformity and standardization of public
action throughout the entire territory.
Although with the passage of time states have changed their nature and
mode of functioning, the principles of hierarchical governance are still very
much in place. All states have an easily identifiable centre of authority with a
built-in hierarchy and division of tasks. This centralization of authority makes
the state the primary actor in charge of key functional fields such as internal
and external security, the monetary system and taxation. Various legal, administrative, economic and military regimes within states largely overlap. There
is one single type of citizenship with equal rights and duties. Governance is
primarily carried out with the help of laws and central regulations. Noncompliance with laws and regulations is monitored and sanctioned.
This type of governance can only function with clear, fixed and relatively
hard borderlines. It also requires relatively high socio-economic and cultural
homogeneity. This is why all states attempt to forge greater convergence
within their borders using various policies of economic redistribution, social
integration or even cultural assimilation.
Hierarchical governance is not about a one-person dictatorship. Nor is it
about voluntary use of laws or crude sanctions. The hierarchical governance
discussed here represents a sophisticated system of reaching binding decisions and implementing them in an orderly and disciplined fashion. At the top
of the hierarchy we find an elected government with all the usual checks
and balances. But hierarchical governance can also envisage a considerable
degree of decentralization and delegation. Moreover, different degrees of
discipline and centralization can be applied in different policy fields. What is
important in this type of governance is that ultimate power rests in the hands
of central authorities (or their local proxies). Agency in hierarchical governance is always clearly defined and so is its programme. Moreover, hierarchical governance favours clear lines of control and responsibility.
It is easy to see numerous advantages of this kind of governance. As the
story of nation states shows, hierarchical governance enjoys remarkable
legitimacy. This is partly because it envisages majority rule and common
(national) purpose. It is also relatively transparent because the agency, programme and lines of responsibility are clearly spelled out. This facilitates
legal and political accountability. Indeed, national elections can well be seen
as a performance test.
All these advantages are not easily available in the plurilateral form of
governance. In fact, plurilateral governance represents a sharp contrast to
hierarchical governance. Instead of having a clear hierarchical structure,
plurilateral governance is based on interpenetration of various types of
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JAN ZIELONKA
political units and loyalties. There is no pyramid-like governmental structure. Rather it resembles a junction box or even a kind of garbage can
(Richardson, 2001; Wallace, 2000). There is no single centre of authority in
charge of key functional fields, but a multiplicity of various overlapping
military, police and economic regimes operate on different territories. In fact,
one of the characteristic features of this type of governance is a disassociation
between authoritative allocations, functional competencies and territorial
constituencies. Territory is not clearly demarcated as the system tolerates soft
and changing borders. Governance is not about steering but about gardening
reflecting principles of flexibility, subsidiarity, devolution and differentiation.
Compliance is largely voluntary and based on incentives. Cultural and socioeconomic diversity is cherished. Divided sovereignty along different functional and territorial lines is accepted.
Table 1 spells out the sharp contrasts between these two different models
of governance.
The term plurilateralism was used by Philip G. Cerny in the early 1990s
to describe the shift in the world order from a hierarchy of holistic actors,
states, which impose order through power and hegemony, to a more complex
and diffuse set of interactive self-regulatory mechanisms or webs of power
(Cerny, 1993, p. 31). For me this term represents an aggregate model of
various novel notions of governance such as multi-level, polycentric or
network governance (Hooghe and Marks, 2003). These terms emphasize
different aspects of non-hierarchical type of governance, but they all show
that effective governance can tolerate deliberation and pluriformity. Governance can be about negotiation and persuasion rather than control and steering. Incentives can produce better results than sanctions and coercion.
Enablement skills can be more crucial than management skills. Governance
can merge public and private spheres rather than keeping them separated.
Three more general assumptions unite advocates of these new modes of
governance. First, an effective system of governance does not need to be
state-based or state-centric (Peters, 2000). Second, an effective system of
governance does not even need to be territorial or territorially-fixed (Ruggie,
1993). Third and most importantly, an effective system of governance must be
able to represent the basic types of variety found in the system to be governed
(Kooiman, 1993). This means that the more diverse the qualities to be governed, the more diverse the necessary governing measures and structures and
the more diverse the relationship between them.
Supporters of the new non-hierarchical governance agree that it is less
structured and transparent than the hierarchical one. They also see problems
stemming from partisan policies of various networks. But hierarchical governance has also its weaknesses and problems. Much of order and fairness
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Table 1: Two Contrasting Modes of the European Governance System

Hierarchical
A clear hierarchical structure with one centre
of authority (pyramid scheme).
The centre of authority is in charge of key
functional fields such as internal and
external security, monetary system and
taxation.
Overlap between legal, administrative,
economic and military regimes.
Distinction between the public and the
private is clear (as it is between policy and
administration).
Hard and fixed external border lines
hampering not only entrance, but also
exit. Distinction between EU members
and non-members is sharp and important.
Governance is about engineering and
steering. Centralized jurisdiction is to
prevent disorder and free riding.
Non-compliance with central regulations is
monitored and sanctioned.
Cultural and socio-economic diversity is
contested.
One single type of citizenship with equal
rights and duties.
Absolute sovereignty sought.
Plurilateral
Interpenetration of various types of political
units and loyalties (garbage can scheme).
Multiplicity of various overlapping military,
police and economic regimes.
Disassociation between authoritative

allocations, functional competencies and
territorial constituencies.
Public and private spheres interact and the
distinction between the policy and
administration is obscured.
Soft border zones in flux. Distinction
between the European centre and
periphery is most crucial, but blurred.
Governance is like gardening reflecting
the principles of flexibility, subsidiarity,
devolution and differentiation.
Compliance is voluntary and based on
incentives.
Cultural and socio-economic diversity is
cherished.
Diversified types of citizenship with
different sets of rights and duties.
Divided sovereignty along different
functional and territorial lines accepted.
Source: Author.
under hierarchical governance is illusory: interest groups are able to manipulate the definition of the common (national) good and its implementation
record is poor despite all the built-in monitoring and sanctions. Moreover, in
the increasingly globalized economy hierarchical governance is less and less
effective in addressing social conditions.
II. Two Faces of European Governance
We have two competing paradigms, one envisaging hierarchical and the other
non-hierarchical governance. Of course, hybrid solutions can also be considered, but it is important to grasp the direction of change from one pole to
another. In fact, the European Union is a perfect example of such a hybrid
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arrangement, having adopted many features of what we have identified as the

plurilateral system of governance. The EUs governance is increasingly
non-territorial, multi-level and multi-centred (Hooghe and Marks, 2001;
Kohler-Koch, 2003). Its governance is more about bargaining between different actors than about automatic implementation of commands from the
centre. EU institutions such as Member States and sub-states (cities and
regions), public and private agents, transnational and supra-national actors all
interact with each other. Decision-making competencies are shared by actors
at different levels rather than monopolized by European (or Member States)
executives. The EU increasingly relies on soft rather than hard law. Compliance with some laws and directives is voluntary (or there are few sanctions
for non-compliance). Encouragement of best practices, shaming and persuasion are used in some fields more than orders, commands and administrative
directives. Consider for instance the 2005 European Councils decision not to
impose fines on Germany and France for running an excessive budget deficit
as envisaged by the Stability and Growth Pact. The Council stated: The
purpose of the excessive deficit procedure is to assist rather than to punish and
therefore to provide incentives [. . .] to pursue budgetary discipline, through
enhanced surveillance, peer support and peer pressure (European Council,
2005).
Moreover, the Treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice have formalized the existence of overlapping orders within the EU and introduced
provisions for greater flexibility and differentiation. According to Grinne de
Brca and Joanne Scott: The paradigm (however notional) of uniformity,
homogeneity and one-directional integration is gradually being replaced by
one of flexibility, mixity and differentiation (De Brca and Scott, 2000, p. 2).
The so-called open method of co-ordination (OMC) is a good example for
this new mode of governance. It was announced at the 2000 European summit
in Lisbon and defined as an experimental approach to EU governance based
on benchmarking of national progress towards common European objectives
and organized mutual learning. The OMC obliges Member States to pool
information, compare themselves to one another and reassess current policies
and programmes in light of their relative performance. However, the OMC
does not seek to homogenize Member States inherited policy regimes and
institutional arrangements. The purpose is experimental learning and deliberative problem solving across the EU rather than enforced convergence from
the top (Zeitlin and Pochet, 2005).
The plurilateral system of governance is also being advanced by actions
taken by individual Member States outside the official framework of
European integration. Consider, for instance, the way individual European
states have coped with the problems posed by conflicts of laws in enforcing
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international contracts. While large trade flows demand certainty in contract

enforcement, the solution has not been found in harmonizing national laws or
even in guaranteeing the recognition of foreign courts awards through official
treaties. Private international traders have instead been encouraged to settle
their disputes through specialized arbitration, deemed to be more responsible
and more informed about the usages and customs of their specific transactions
(Casella and Feinstein, 2002). (In the classical hierarchical system the private
administration of the law was not recognized by state powers.)
However, the plurilateral system of governance is still widely contested
and there is strong pressure to inject more hierarchy and coercion into the
European system. Consider, for instance the opposition to flexibility clauses in
EU law (such as the Constitutional Treaty), pressure to impose strict sanctions
for non-compliance of the EMU Stability Pact rules or criticism of the OMC.
Supporters of hierarchical governance argue for strict observance of the so
called community method that underlines equal rights and duties of all
Member States. They try to ensure that EU laws are detailed, rigid and hard.
They insist that the acquis communautaire has to be applied fully by all
members without exceptions and call for an efficient system of monitoring and
sanctions to ensure that Member States comply with the acquis. The European
Commission has radically strengthened its enforcement activities in recent
years. It now initiates nearly 1,000 infringement procedures per year and asks
the European Court of Justice to impose ever higher penalties for Member
States failing to comply with its rulings in infringement cases (Commission,
2005).
Supporters of hierarchical governance want the central government of the
Union to have ever broader powers and a visible face in the form of a Union
President, for instance. They want to strengthen the European bureaucracy to
help the Commission guard the treaties and to offer strategic steering and
guidance. They want the adoption of a European Constitutional Treaty that
would not only delineate the competencies of European institutions but also
establish a clear hierarchy between them. They want greater economic, political and cultural convergence between Member States and they insist on a strict
distinction between EU members and non-members. They are also sceptical
about or even hostile towards any kind of pillarization, devolution and differentiation in the Unions law and policy. Subsidiarity is a suspicious term for
them. They argue that these solutions are not only vaguely defined but also
quite dangerous because they disrupt the unitary nature of the EU institutional
system and create unworkable procedures of decision making. In fact, they
often see greater flexibility and differentiation as a step towards disintegration.
The policy of enlargement also has been designed and implemented
according to the hierarchical paradigm. It has been run from the European
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centre with little space of manoeuvre for the candidates. A similar blueprint
was applied to all candidates and across various functional fields. The full
adoption of the acquis communautaire by applicants has been one of the
clearly stated conditions for accession and the candidates were not allowed
any opt-outs. The EU not only told Eastern European applicants what they
should do in terms of, say, new legislation or administrative reform but
also sent representatives to specific ministries to make sure that the changes
were being made as prescribed through the twinning programme. The
whole process of re-adjustment was carefully monitored. The champions and
laggards among the applicant countries were identified at regular review
sessions. The key terms of the conditionality policy were safeguards, benchmarks, guidance and screening. Those states that failed to meet the EUs
conditions were kept at bay through trade quotas and tariffs and the Schengen
regime.
The process of EU accession left little space for the flexibility, tolerance
and voluntarism associated with the plurilateral type of governance. The EU
provided decisions and expected compliance from the applicant states. The
EU provided models and the applicant states were supposed to copy or imitate
them. The EU was offering teaching and training and the applicant states were
expected to socialize and learn. EU proposals and solutions were to be taken
over by virtue of their place of origin and not necessarily by virtue of their
substance. The applicant states compliance was voluntary only in theory. In
practice, these states could not afford to turn their backs to the EUs demands
and expectations.
How is the Unions predilection for hierarchical governance and its apparent inability to switch gears and embrace plurilateral governance to be
explained? Why is there so much indecisiveness when it comes to deciding
which model is best suited for the current stage of European integration? First
of all, there are existing (and quite legitimate) differences in normative
standpoints. What one person sees as a way of recognizing change and
plurality, another sees as a recipe for disorder. Some believe that all social
systems tend towards atomization and anarchy while others trust that even the
most chaotic systems are able to generate a dynamic order. The Union is led
by people holding these two contrasting views and this results in hybrid if not
contradictory policies. In this context it is important to recognize the impact
of national traditions, because different states look at the Union from their
own national experience and often want to shape the Union in their image.
For instance, France has a strong tradition of central national government,
while Italy has a tradition of strong regional government.
Second, the proclaimed aim of European integration is ever closer union
and this encourages centralized and homogenizing policies. For many
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students and practitioners, the progress of European integration is measured

by the degree to which the Unions central institutions acquire more powers
in functional and territorial terms. Likewise it is measured by the degree the
Union is able to achieve greater cohesion. The failure of European integration, on the other hand, is illustrated by examples of persisting and irreconcilable differences between individual Member States and their reluctance to
empower the centre of European government. In the literature on European
integration concepts of fusion, convergence, cohesion and integration are
often used as synonyms and this inevitably leads to a tendency to demonize
any sign of diversity, flexibility, subsidiarity and decentralization.
Third, there is a peculiar pattern of institutional power politics at play in
the Union. Governments of Member States fear that new modes of governance will shift power from the European Council to various networks which
cannot be fully controlled by them. The European Commission favours new
modes of governance because it hopes that networks will strengthen its own
position vis--vis the European Council. However, the Commission supports
new modes of governance only in the fields where the Community Method is
difficult to apply so as not to erode its own power. Moreover, the Commission
does not want to make the networks fully independent either. The Commission sees itself as an organ that creates, institutionalizes and steers networks
(Wincott, 2001).
Fourth, experiences of introducing plurilateral governance within the
European context have so far been disappointing. This has caused some
academics and practitioners to wonder whether the EUs institutional environment is well suited for the use of informal and flexible governance instruments. However, it is important to keep in mind that flexible governance
instruments have to date been introduced only in the most difficult fields for
the Union to deliver and they were usually introduced in a rather symbolic
manner. The OMC is a good example here. It has been applied largely in the
field of employment and social inclusion policy where all European actors,
not only the EU, are unable to act effectively due to a complex variety of
factors. Moreover, the OMC tends to be treated as a bureaucratic exercise
isolated from the general policy-making process and devoid of any significant
resources. For instance, the Ministry of Social Affairs in the Netherlands has
only one full-time employee responsible for collecting information and
writing reports envisaged by the OMC (Idema and Kelemen, 2006).
Despite all this hierarchical governance is not winning. This is because
mounting pressures of globalization, modernization and interdependence
undermine the rationale and utility of this type of governance (Rosenau,
1997). Moreover, the one-size-fits-all solutions orchestrated by the European
centre are ill-suited for coping with the ever-larger and more diversified
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European space. Enlargement towards eastern Europe has represented the

greatest import of diversity in economic, legal and cultural terms. And
although the enlargement strategy has been designed along the hierarchical
blueprint there is mounting evidence suggesting that this strategy has produced perverse effects.
III. Governance in the Enlarged EU
The precise implications of the eastward enlargement on the European governance system will only be known in a few years time. However, it seems
clear that the enlarged European space will have to be governed in a more
decentralized and flexible fashion than envisaged by the hierarchical model.
Moreover, it is increasingly apparent that the new Member States do not want
to see a powerful centre in Brussels applying uniform policies across the
entire EU space.
First and most obviously, enlargement has made the centre of European
governance further detached from local concerns within the Union. This is
partly because the EUs space is now much larger and partly because the new
Member States have different structural features and political priorities than
the old ones (Mair and Zielonka, 2002). Despite the remarkable progress
achieved in recent years, the new members are still much poorer than the old
ones and they are unlikely to close this gap in wealth in less than three
decades. Their democratic institutions are still relatively unstable and fragile.
Their economic, legal and administrative structures are relatively undeveloped. New members also have their own distinct histories, societies and
cultures. Finding one-size-fits-all solutions for the diverse 27 actors will be
difficult. Even if such solutions could be identified and agreed upon, the
chance that they would work is now smaller than was the case before.
Moreover, it will not be easy to monitor compliance with policies designed by
the European centre and sanction those who do not comply.
With low levels of convergence across the EU it will be difficult to provide
an overlap between various legal, administrative, economic and cultural
boundaries. Effective governance will require more devolution, differentiation and flexibility. In time this is likely to result in greater disassociation
between territorial constituencies and the authorities in charge of certain
domains of public life such as trade, employment, competition, migration,
education, health or welfare support. Individual units will develop different
loyalties and institutional arrangements. We will also see a growing multiplicity of various overlapping regimes. All this is a move towards the plurilateral type of governance and away from the hierarchical one.
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Another evident implication of enlargement is the Unions growing inability to orchestrate reforms that would reinforce the powers of the European
centre and inject a greater degree of hierarchy and order into the governance
system. This means that the Union will increasingly function in informal
ways with few set rules and weak central steering. Consider for instance the
December 2005 failure to increase the communitarian budget for the enlarged
EU. A European centre without a sound budget is likely to be rather weak and
unable to assert its authority. Or consider the failure to adopt the European
Constitutional Treaty. If adopted, the Constitutional Treaty would strengthen
the EUs central institutions in several ways. First, the Union would have
greater powers in the fields of migration, asylum and transborder crime.
Second, the draft simplified decision-making procedures and set out the EUs
competencies more clearly. Third, it reorganized the EUs institutions in a
way that could potentially strengthen hierarchical governance. For instance,
giving the European Council its president and minister of foreign affairs
can hardly be seen as a merely cosmetic surgery. It was widely expected that
in due time this reorganization would help the European centre to assert its
authority. The failure of the Constitutional Treaty is likely to reinforce the
multi-layered, multi-centred and heterogeneous nature of European governance. The governance structure in the enlarged EU will therefore be very
complex and the Union will lack the means to execute a hierarchical mode of
governance. This will be difficult to reverse, if only because the new Member
States from eastern Europe strongly oppose any move towards hierarchical
governance in Europe (as do some old Member States, of course).
In the constitutional debate, governments from eastern Europe were
among those most determined to prevent any decisive shift of powers to the
European centre. This was underlined by the Latvian president, Vaira VikeFreiberga: Latvia sees the EU as a union of sovereign states [. . .] We do not
see the need at the moment to create a unified federal European state [. . .]
Europes vast diversity is one of its greatest strengths. While this diversity
may present challenges to consensus-building, it is a resource that must be
nurtured and cherished. Every Member State of the European Union, whatever its size, has the potential to make a meaningful contribution to the
organization as a whole (Vike-Freiberga, 2002). And Slovenias Foreign
Minister, Dimitrij Rupel, added: The basis of diversity management is the
principle of subsidiarity. Subsidiarity can be an efficient means of avoiding
unnecessary disputes (Rupel, 2001).
New Member States from eastern Europe have also resisted efforts to
make the European Commission a more consolidated centre of government
by insisting that each Member State will have its own commissioner with the
right to vote. Likewise they have insisted that the system of a rotating EU
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presidency remains in place in one way or another. This system implies that
the main centre of governance in the EU moves from one European capital to
another on a regular basis thus preventing the rise of a single European centre
in Brussels. Moreover, the new Member States were eager to increase the role
of national parliaments rather than the European Parliament.
It would be wrong to interpret these policies as eurosceptic. After all, these
governments fought hard to get into the European Union and the results of the
accession referendums have shown that EU membership was overwhelmingly
supported by citizens in the region. However, new Member States have had
experience of tight hierarchical rule under communism and fear that decisions
will once more be made far from their capitals. According to the 2006
Eurobarometer, the vast majority of citizens in new Member States believe
that their voice does not count in the EU. In Latvia only 18 per cent of those
polled believe that their voice counts, in the Czech Republic 20 per cent
and in Estonia and Slovakia 21 per cent (the EU average is 36 per cent)
(Commission, 2006).
Citizens of the new Member States are also concerned about losing their
cultural identity. The Czech President, Vclav Klaus, expressed the anxiety of
millions of fellow eastern Europeans by asking: shall we let our identity
dissolve in Europe like a lump of sugar in a cup of coffee? (Klaus, 1994,
p. 136).
There are also strong economic arguments that make eastern Europeans
sceptical about hierarchical governance. Although the new Member States
fought hard to acquire as many subsidies from the central budget as possible,
it would be wrong to assume that they would like to see more regulation,
harmonization and centralized distribution from Brussels. For instance, they
have opposed the EUs plans to impose high social and environmental standards on their producers because this would effectively impede their competitive edge. As President Klaus put it: The claims for quasi-universal social
rights are disguised [. . .] attempts to protect high-cost producers in highly
regulated countries, with unsustainable welfare standards, against cheaper
labour in more productive countries (Klaus, 1997, p. 113). The new members
also tried to stall efforts to limit tax competition by the EU because they need
to continue offering better conditions to investors if they are to catch up with
the more developed members. They also worry that the convergence criteria
required by the Maastricht Treaty will prevent fast growth and by the same
token frustrate their efforts to catch up with the old members. This is because
fast growth in their case would imply much higher rates of inflation and larger
public deficits than allowed by the Maastricht Treaty. Harmonization of trade
rules for all EU members has meant that some new members, such as Estonia
have had to increase their external tariffs and non-tariff barriers (for example,
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subsidies, quotas and antidumping duties) with regard to low-cost locations

outside the EU.
The new members ability to catch up with the old members will primarily
depend on factors other than financial transfers. Most economists argue that
the surest way to enhance growth leads through credible market and policy
institutions. Therefore the new members would like the EU to adopt policies
that stimulate innovation, competition and deregulation. They ask for new
rules facilitating mobility and promoting flexibility. They want to see
increased liberalization and devolution stimulating growth. All this implies
embracing the plurilateral mode of governance. This is not just neo-liberal
economics, as some critics argue.
Of course, each Member State tries to get as much money as possible
from the EU budget. However, centrally distributed net transfers will not
help the new Member States to sell products in competitive markets or to
enhance labour productivity. Transfers induce complacency vis--vis the
sponsors and are at odds with the logic of competitive exposure stimulating
growth, efficiency and creativity. Besides, the new members are fully aware
that the old members are unlikely to increase their contribution to net transfers. Countries such as the UK, Finland or the Netherlands might support
greater devolution, deregulation and competition stimulating growth, but
they are unlikely to support more direct transfers from the common
European budget.
There are several other factors related to enlargement that render hierarchical governance difficult in the years to come. As mentioned earlier, hierarchical governance requires fixed and relatively hard borders without which
it is difficult to consolidate central rule. However, new Member States have
intense and complex relations with their neighbours further south and east
and they fear that hard borders would frustrate cross-border human links of
their respective nationals, curb flourishing economic relations and even cause
some legal problems. The strategic implications of sealing EU borders would
be even greater. This is why the Union tries to integrate its neighbours in
various ways (Commission, 2003). Neighbours are asked to adopt European
laws and administrative solutions in exchange for aid, liberalization of
mutual exchanges and institutional integration. But this means that the EU
borders become more fuzzy and the distinction between EU members and
non-members becomes more blurred. This in turn reinforces the variable
geometry of European governance and produces ever greater disassociation
between authoritative allocations, functional competencies and territorial
constituencies.
Another important factor is related to European foreign and security
affairs. Hierarchical governance would require the Union to be in charge of
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these affairs and since the Maastricht Treaty, the EUs foreign and defence
policy has been on the rise. However, the new Member States from eastern
Europe do not want to see the Union in charge of these fields. They are all
pro-NATO and pro-America and their perceptions of national interest, especially vis--vis Russia, are different from those of most old Member States.
And so the 27 find themselves increasingly divided on such issues as the war
in Iraq or the pipeline deal with Russia. Instead of using the European
framework, the new (and some old) Member States prefer to act within
NATO, the UN or even the OSCE. They also entertain formal or informal
coalitions of the willing, contact groups or bilateral initiatives. In short,
governance in this field is clearly plurilateral and enlargement has dashed
prospects for changing that.
IV. Plurilateral Governance and Democracy
Enlargement seems to make the decisive break towards multi-level governance in concentric circles. This type of governance relies on self-regulation
and co-regulation rather than central steering and punishments. The Union
has tried to orchestrate enlargement in a hierarchical manner but the results
are quite perverse. We have a Union that is not only larger, but also more
diversified and disaggregated. Although the new Member States seem to want
more European governance they are clearly reluctant to strengthen the European centre. All this suggests the demise of hierarchical governance and the
rise of plurilateral governance. Can this work and if so, will the new system
enjoy democratic legitimacy?
The answer is a qualified yes. Plurilateral governance is not about total
freedom and anything goes policies. Governance in its essence is about
the maintenance of collective order, the achievement of collective goals and
the collective process of rule through which order and goals are sought
(Rosenau, 1997, p. 175). But there are various ways of achieving all
that. The Union needs some kind of a central government, but it does
not need a unitary government structured like a pyramid. The Union
needs some kind of constitutional order, but this order can leave room for
a large degree of flexibility and differentiation. The Union should make
various actors comply with the agreed rules and prevent free-riding, but
incentives and shaming may offer the prospect of greater compliance than
commands and sanctions. The Union needs to provide some guidance and
steering, but this does not need to prevent compromise and accommodation
in formulation and implementation of its policies. The Union can principally
act as a mediator between various European networks and as facilitator of
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continuous communication, co-operation and compromise between such

networks.
Flexibility, devolution, delegation and decentralization seem the most
natural kind of responses for coping with an enlarged and highly diversified
economic space. But it would be wrong to assume that we need to embrace
pluritalateral governance only because of enlargement. According to a
growing body of experts plurilateral governance represents the most effective
way of stimulating cohesive growth (Weingast, 1995). This is because plurilateral governance is more responsive to local constituencies, more open to
experimentation and innovation and more reliable in meeting undertaken
commitments than centralized, hierarchical governance.
Plurilateral governance may well be efficient, but is it also democratic?
(Papadopoulos, 2003). How will democracy work in a complicated system of
multi-layered and multi-speed arrangements? Can European agencies and
networks be made more transparent and accountable? Will citizens preferences be reflected by EU decision-making? Does not democracy require
genuine parliamentary representation with electoral contestation leading to a
majoritarian European government? In their recent article for this journal
Andreas Follesdal and Simon Hix gave an affirmative answer to the last
question (Follesdal and Hix, 2006). In their view, democracy in Europe
requires contestation for political leadership and over policy. They suggest
direct election of the Commission President by citizens or by national parliaments. This, in their view, would lead to greater politicization of the EU
agenda, with governments and national and European parties backing different candidates and policy platforms.
Follesdal and Hix rightly argue that many EU regulatory policies are not
politically benign and have significant redistributive consequences. What they
fail to note is that these regulatory policies are often aimed at mitigating the
redistributive effects of globalization over which Europeans have even less
democratic control. They are right to argue that democratic polity requires
contestation, although they fail to appreciate that elections represent only
one possible form of democratic contestation (Pettit, 2000). They correctly
observe that majoritarian democracy produces different outcomes to those
produced by enlightened technocrats. However, in the EU most important
decisions are made not by technocrats, but by elected national politicians
voting in the European Council. There is a fundamental problem with
Follesdal and Hixs analysis. They try to apply state-like democratic recipes
to a polity that is not a state. How can a majoritarian form of democracy be
adopted in a Union that does not have a single centre of governance? How can
parliamentary representation function in a polity without a coherent public
space and territorially defined demos? How can the European Parliament
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articulate and aggregate highly heterogeneous public preferences across an

ever wider European space?
Follesdal and Hix expect that the election of the Commission President
would generate party competition in the short term and this would alter
political loyalties in the long term. This expectation emerges from their
reading of state-building history: in the history of American and European
democracies the replacement of local identities by national identities
occurred through the process of and operation of mass elections and party
competition (p. 550). However, such a reading is selective if not misleading.
The rise of the national demos resulted from a complex interplay of culture,
politics and history and not just from elections and party competition
(Gellner, 1983). Moreover, political contestation has evolved within territorially consolidated states (Rokkan, 1999). The EU has never consolidated
its ever moving territory. Its economic, administrative, military and cultural
borders do not overlap. And it is difficult to imagine European parties
with their weak electoral base generating a decisive shift from a national to
European identity.
As Stefano Bartolini rightly argued, institutional democratization
without political and cultural structuring may turn into faade electioneering, at best, or dangerous experiments, at worst (Bartolini, 2005, p. xv).
Would increased European parliamentary representation not clash with the
Member States representation? Would a popularly elected Commission
President not try to grab more powers at the expense of the ECJ and European Council? One cannot but conclude that majoritarian politics is ill
adapted to the needs of a hybrid creature like the EU, which is characterized by great diversity and by strong national feelings. We need to find
different ways of assuring citizens participation and accountability and
in this respect plurilateral governance offers some advantages over hierarchical governance.
Plurilateral governance, most notably, disperses power and brings governance structures closer to the citizens. It is easier for citizens to influence
power that is deconcentrated, divided, fragmented or even fused. Since there
is no clearly identified hierarchical centre the abuse of power is also less
likely. Fragmented political power forces political factions to give reasons for
their preferences and to make them compromise or even abandon particularistic interests. This leads to another democratic virtue of plurilateral governance: enhanced deliberation. Plurilateral governance with its multi-actor and
multi-rational bargaining process generates much more self-reflection and
collective deliberation than a hierarchical system of governance. Plurilateral
governance also offers significant advantages in terms of accountability. True,
complex networks notoriously escape formal democratic controls, but they
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are subject to a variety of informal controls that are less present in hierarchical
systems. Dispersion of power contributes to accountability because different
centres watch each others moves and publicize abuses of power. Enhanced
deliberation also contributes to accountability because issues are considered
in more depth by a variety of actors.
If a genuine system of parliamentary representation is not possible at the
European level it is important that the most important decisions remain in
the hands of democratically elected national governments. Plurilateral governance secures this objective better than hierarchical governance because it
does not try to force Member States into uniform behaviour (Hodson and
Maher, 2001). Plurilateral governance seems also more suited to accommodate and aggregate preferences of highly heterogeneous polities such as
the current EU. This is because its objective is a voluntary and differentiated community of project rather than a holistic community of identity
(Nicoladis, 2003, p. 6). Hierarchical governance has a tendency to emphasize unity over diversity. But a genuine democracy is chiefly about pluralism, individualism and multiculturalism. Plurilateral governance scores well
even when we look at contestation. Political contestation does not have a
single and often distant arena, but it takes place at various different levels of
European governance where actors are in a better position to assess their
interests and have more meaningful opportunities for involvement. There is
also more space for juridical contestation in plurilateral governance, because
decisions from the European centre are not majoritarian and they can therefore be more easily contested in courts and various semi-public or private
arbitration chambers.
All this is not to argue that plurilateral governance generates a superior
form of democracy. It is only to argue that there are various ways of assuring
participation, contestation and accountability and that traditional forms of
representative democracy are not as effective as it is often claimed, especially
in the context of the enlarged European Union. Plurilateral governance is not
being exercised by self-appointed and largely unaccountable networks and it
is not rule-free (Shapiro, 1997). It combines formal and informal decisionmaking practices with various actors involved in political bargaining, each of
them enjoying different forms of legitimacy. The Union should guarantee free
access to various European networks and make sure that the ongoing bargaining process is transparent and open (Heritier, 2003). Moreover, the civic
and political rights of EU citizens ought to be upgraded because citizens need
protection against possible unfair costs resulting from complex European
bargaining (Cygan, 2003). All types of governance must be subject to democratic scrutiny, but different polities require different governance and different democratic remedies.
2007 The Author(s)
206
JAN ZIELONKA
Conclusion
This article has offered evidence that enlargement has made hierarchical
governance inadequate if not obsolete. As the history of the EU plainly shows
hybrid solutions are always possible, but they are by their nature inefficient.
It is difficult to opt for discipline and flexibility at the same time. Pyramidal
centralism is difficult to combine with variable geometry. This means that
some choices ought to be made. The enlarged Union is more likely to benefit
from a plurilateral rather than hierarchical system of governance and it is
time to agree on this and try to make the plurilateral system work.
Plurilateral governance would mean a multiplication of various steered
networks and hybrid arrangements with less hierarchy and enforced participation. The dominant governing principle would not be a centralization of
power in the Commission, but delegation of power by both the Commission
and Member States to specialized autonomous bodies operating with different
degrees of centralization (Sapir et al., 2004). The Commission and the
Council would perform some strategic tasks aimed at creating incentives for
innovation and adaptation, but would not insist on having one single institutional solution for individual functional problems. This would allow for
institutional flexibility and differentiation. Such a system seems well suited to
the post-Soviet and post-modern Europe of today. It can be both efficient and
democratic.
Correspondence:
Jan Zielonka
St Antonys College
University of Oxford
Oxford OX2 6JF, UK
tel: + 44(0)1865 274532
e-mail: jan.zielonka@sant.ox.ac.uk
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JCMS 2007 Volume 45. Number 1. pp. 2342
The Community Deficit

AMITAI ETZIONI
George Washington University
Abstract
The European Union is suffering not just from a democratic deficit, but a community
deficit. The level and scope of its integration activities far exceed the degree of
community that it sustains. The article explains why community, particularly
normative-affective community, is needed and how it can be built in the EU.
Introduction
The question of whether independent nations can form encompassing and
lasting unions has been studied in recent years with special attention given to
the EU, widely regarded as the most advanced union of its kind in contemporary history. Within this context, theoretical questions have been raised
regarding the design of the EU what changes in its architecture will ensure
further development? And what changes might hinder its growth? Much of
the debate has focused on changes in political institutions, especially on the
so-called democratic deficit. The argument presented here, however, points
out that much more attention needs to be paid to the community deficit, the
lack of shared values and bonds.1 Such a deficit must be curtailed if the union
is to continue to solidify and must be reduced before the democratic deficit
can be overcome. The article closes by comparing various measures that have
1
For more discussion on the need for community in Europe, see Greven and Pauly (2000) and Offe (2002).
2007 The Author(s)

Journal compilation 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148,
USA
24
AMITAI ETZIONI
been suggested to strengthen the EU, paying special attention to those that
can help reduce the community deficit.
I. Basic Concepts
Three concepts are used to proceed. The first concerns the level and scope of
integration of the activities of the nations involved. This level of integration
varies from low to high. For instance, the budgetary integration of the EU is
low with its budget consisting of no more than 1.27 per cent of its GDP in
2000 to 2006, whereas the budgetary integration of the US is high with its
budget consisting of approximately 20 per cent of its GDP in 2000 (Economic
Council, 200002). The scope of integration also varies from narrow (for
example, only economic) to broad (for example, both economic and cultural).
The second concept concerns the political architecture of the union involved.
It may be intergovernmental or supranational or various mixes of the two and
it may be based on unanimous consensus or majority rule (within the framework of a constitution) or some mix of the two (Haas, 1958). The third
concept concerns the level of community building. Because this is the focus of
this article, the term requires more discussion than that given to the other two.
The term community is often used very loosely and can mean very different things (Booth Fowler, 1991; Frazer and Lacey, 1993), hence, a definition is essential. The definition I maintain holds that the members of the social
entity involved have formed a core of shared values (i.e. a moral culture) and
a web of bonds of affection.2 To avoid confusing this definition of community
with others, I shall refer to it as a normative-affective community. The focus
of this article is on internal elements of community building in contrast to
external conditions that can also affect a communitys future. The focus on
internal factors is based on the assumption that as a rule, these factors can be
more readily modified and controlled than external conditions, such as the
international political environment, the economic environment and the
natural environment. Finally, the article deals mainly with the role and formulation of shared values, leaving an examination of the ways bonds of
affection are formed to another publication.
II. Step I versus Step II Unions
It is useful to differentiate between two types of transnational unions, which
I shall refer to as Step I and II. These are ideal types; various intermediary
states can readily be envisioned.
2
For more explanation of this definition see Etzioni (1996, p. 127).
2007 The Author(s)

THE COMMUNITY DEFICIT
25
Step I unions have a low level of transnational integration and a much

narrower scope as compared to Step II unions. Step I unions form free trade
zones that allow a high level of free movement of goods and some services as
well as the free flow of capital. They also engage in considerable harmonization of regulations and laws, especially those that concern economic activities. The political architecture of these unions relies on intergovernmental
institutions. The participants in these bodies are representatives of the nations
involved. All important decisions require unanimity and hence each member
nation has both de jure and de facto veto power on decisions. National
sovereignty is thus preserved. Community building in Step I unions is relatively low. The loyalty of the citizens is to their nation and not to the union;
their bonds of affection are largely national or sub-national. There is little
commitment to the unions common good and to the projects in which the
union is engaged, including the project of further unification.
In contrast, Step II unions have a high level and broad scope of integration. They allow not only the free flow of goods and services across the
borders of member nations, but also have a single currency. They differ from
Step I unions especially by allowing the free flow of people, including
people who are not citizens of any of the member countries, such as immigrants, white slaves and even suspected terrorists. Member nations largely
surrender their border controls to the union. Step II unions harmonize
numerous activities, including many non-economic ones. Their political
architecture draws on some supranational bodies and/or makes at least some
important decisions based on the majority of the national representatives
rather than on unanimity. Stage II unions no longer treat national sovereignty as a decisive legitimating principle on at least some key issues.
Supranational bodies are needed because intergovernmental institutions are
too cumbersome to handle the high volume of integrated activities, especially if the scope of these activities has expanded from the economic sphere
to many others. Attempts to relegate decisions to bureaucrats and experts
instead of allocating them to supranational bodies will be successful only if
the decisions are of limited import and low in public visibility. In the long
run, such a strategy (characteristic in what is often referred to as a regulatory state3) will be rejected as authoritarian, undemocratic and illegitimate.
For the reasons spelled out below, the supranational political architecture
that a Step II union needs presupposes a considerable level of normativeaffective community building.
For a complementary analysis on this point, see Hooghe and Marks (2003). Also, for a description of a
regulatory state and its problems, see Caporaso (2005).
2007 The Author(s)

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AMITAI ETZIONI
Step II unions can be turned into nations.4 However, these unions differ
from nations in that they (a) have nations as members, which are expected to
continue to command distinct cultures and loyalties; that is Step II unions are
communities of communities, not Gemeinschafts; (b) the scope of the shared
values and the loyalty Step II unions require can be considerably narrower
than that of nations; (c) although nations are often forged by force or are
expressive of a primordial tribal ethos, Step II unions, we shall see, can
emerge out of moral dialogues between free people and be expressive of
shared values.
III. Within History
Thus far, Step I and II unions have been discussed as ideal types. I now move
to examine actual unions with this analytical distinction in mind. Several free
trade areas are close to Step I unions including those in North America, South
East Asia and parts of Africa. One reason that free trade zones seem to be
stable and self-sustaining is that they produce benefits for all participants,
although not to the same extent. Another major reason free trade zones seem
to be stable, indeed growing, is that their level and scope of integration,
political architecture and community building are all compatible they are all
low. Representatives of the member governments retain control and hence can
veto the expansion of the scope and nature of integrated activities beyond
what is considered beneficial and legitimate by their electorate. These unions
have no or only very weak supranational institutions. NAFTA, for instance,
has a process to make binational panel decisions on trade disputes, but the
panels power is limited as recently illustrated by Americas decision to
ignore the panel ruling on Canadian softwood lumber. Furthermore, these
unions engage in no real community building.
The EU grew out of a limited endeavour at economic co-operation
between six nations limited to some industries. The European Coal and Steel
Community was founded in 1951 to that end, although its founders had much
loftier ideals to create a union in order to bring peace to a war torn continent.
Over time, the level and scope of integrated activities expanded, leading in
1957 to the formation of the European Economic Community. It in turn still
further expanded the scope of its activities, which resulted in the creation of
the EU in 1992. More members were added throughout the process. Initially
the union introduced only freer trade in goods and services. However in 1985,
several of the Member States passed a major threshold that separates Step I
4
Nation is commonly defined as a community invested in a state. It is true that many groups aspiring to
such a status call themselves a nation as many Basques, Scots and some black Americans do. These
expressions are widely recognized as aspirations, however, not facts.
2007 The Author(s)

27
from Step II unions when they signed the Schengen Agreement that lifted
border checks and allowed for the free movement of people. Another significant threshold was passed when the EU introduced the Economic and Monetary Union and 12 of the Member States adopted a common currency.
However, while the level and scope of integration activities increasingly
expanded, few efforts were made to create Step II architecture.5 True, the
1986 Single European Act did provide for some qualified majority voting, but
it was not until 2005 that a major attempt was made to shift the Union from
a high degree of unanimous decision-making to a high degree of majoritarian
decision-making. The EU Constitutional Treaty proposed this and other
important changes in the political architecture, but it was rejected by France
and the Netherlands and has since been sidelined.
Thus the EU remains in at least a somewhat precarious position, with
increasing integration but without a definitive and superordinate centre for
the resolution of conflicts or for the allocation of public goods [it has] only
a process and hence no definite person or body that can be held accountable
for its actions in the public realm (Schmitter, 2000, p. 16). Even less, very
little in effect has been done to provide for normative-affective community
building. This mismatch between ever higher levels of integration and
expanding scope, the lagging political institutions and above all community
building is a major cause of the current difficulties facing the EU. The
hypothesis presented here is that either the lagging factors will have to catch
up or the advanced ones will have to be scaled back.
The mismatch and its resulting stress come into focus when one examines
the two major thresholds on the way from Step I to Step II unions the
introduction of a single currency and the free movement of people. The
introduction of a common currency will be considered first. A common
currency requires the formation and implementation of transnational macroeconomic policies that in turn necessitate the existence of suitable political
institutions to make the needed decisions. The rationale is as follows.
The two instruments of macroeconomic policy are monetary policy (e.g.
changes in interest rates and money supply) and fiscal policy (e.g. changes in
tax rates and public spending). Most economists accept that the reach of the
institutions that formulate and enforce macroeconomic policies must parallel
the area in which the currency is used. One main reason is that the currency
must be protected from excessive extension of credits and the creation of
large deficits by member nations, or the economy of all the members will
suffer from loss of trust in its currency due to fears of hyperinflation or
5
Although the EU has not developed a robust supranational political architecture, this is not to say that no
power has been diffused into the hands of a European-level governance. For a detailed description of this
diffusion of power, see Hooghe and Marks (2001).
2007 The Author(s)

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AMITAI ETZIONI
depression (or even both). When the EU introduced a single currency, it also
introduced the European Central Bank to attend to monetary policy for all of
the EU. Fiscal policy, however, was left almost completely in the hands of the
members national governments. Although fiscal policy is subject to common
rules on deficits and debts delineated in the Maastricht Treaty, the Stability
and Growth Pact and the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines, those rules have
not been closely followed. Entering into 2005, 11 members of the EU, among
them Germany, France and Italy, were in breach of the Stability and Growth
Pacts decree that deficits are not to exceed 3 per cent of GDP. Increasing
deficits help individual nations stimulate their own economies, but in the long
run they harm the value of the euro and the long-term interest rate in the euro
area.6 As such, no matter what the ECB does in terms of monetary policy, the
euro will be in trouble if fiscal policy is not effectively kept in check. If in the
longer run fiscal policy is not integrated much more effectively than it is now,
the common currency is going to be endangered.
To turn to the second threshold, a similar double lag (both in political
architecture and community) was created when the free movement of people
was introduced. To the extent that border checks were eliminated following
the Schengen agreement, illegal immigrants, criminals and terrorists were
free to move across national borders with impunity and hence EU-wide
policing was required. Europol, the EUs nod towards a police department, as
well as the European Justice and Home Affairs Council are designed to tackle
this challenge. However, these bodies are poorly funded and understaffed.
Above all, they are in need of a much higher level of harmonization of
national policies than the existing political institutions can provide and the
existing level of community can tolerate. For example, effectively deporting
illegal immigrants is increasingly difficult as illegal immigrants ordered to
leave one country are moving to another one (as well as hiding in the first). Of
the more than 650,000 illegal immigrants ordered to leave the EU in 2004,
approximately two-thirds avoided expulsion and remained in the EU in 2005
(Bowley, 2005).
Complications in arrests and extraditions of suspected criminals provide
another example of the effects of mismatch between free movement of people
and low-level political architecture and community (particularly value) harmonization. Prior to 2004, the amount of time needed for one EU member to
surrender a criminal suspect to another EU member was nine months on
average. In many cases, the timeframe was much longer and in some cases
extradition was withheld or nearly withheld in an extreme case in 1994,
Belgium threatened to grant asylum to a Basque couple wanted in Spain for
6
For more discussion of this problem, see Feldstein (2005). Also see Pisani-Ferry (2002).
2007 The Author(s)

29
terrorist activities (Ireland, 1995, p. 262). The creation and implementation of

EU warrants finally streamlined the extradition process in January 2004 and
cut the average extradition time to 43 days. But it has since come under fire.
For example, the German constitutional court declared the EU warrant null
and void in July 2005, arguing that it provides inadequate protection to
German citizens. And, in April 2005, the Polish constitutional court annulled
the Polish law implementing the warrant. British MP John Denham summarized the situation well: the lesson to be learned was that Euro- and national
MPs needed to debate proposals when they were tabled, not after they have
already been turned into national law (European Information Service, 2005).
Free movement of people without a robust political architecture and community has also led to pronounced stress and concern about social dumping.
Immigrants who enter one EU nation are in effect free to move to other
nations. Thus a relatively lax immigration policy in Spain and poor border
controls in Italy have saddled many other EU members with immigrants in
numbers and of backgrounds that the overwhelming majority of their citizens
do not favour. For example, in 1992, 65 per cent of applications from Tamil
refugees were approved in France, but only 1 per cent were approved in
Germany. Once inside France, however, these and other such refugees are
able to move into Germany and elsewhere in the EU, leading to what analysts
have called refugee dumping (Ireland, 1995, p. 245). A reviewer of a previous version of this article argued that although there was a wide perception
of a race to the bottom no hard evidence for such a race exists. He cited
Vogels (1995) Trading Up as evidence to the contrary. As I see it, severe
dislocation can and does occur without a race to the bottom. Moreover, even
if such fears are merely in the public mind, they still must be addressed.
Moreover, many people are beginning to fear that since labour is generally
less costly in the south and east and benefits are richer in the north, jobs will
move to the southern and eastern Member States and those who seek to
exploit the system will move northward. Economists liken this phenomenon
to adverse selection in which net beneficiaries are attracted to jurisdictions
engaged in redistribution, while net contributors are repelled (Wildasin,
1994). Citizens and politicians call this phenomenon social dumping one
country dumps its problems on their neighbours (Ireland, 1995, p. 245).
Dumping, it is feared, will not only impoverish strong welfare states, but also
encourage a race to the lowest common denominator countries will lower
their own social welfare benefits to limit their attractiveness as dumping
destination points. Although the scope of these flows is not well-established,
politicians have made a case out of it and drummed up fear which further
undermines the EU. This fear is particularly pronounced in France where
the fear of an inundation of Polish plumbers and other cheap labour has
2007 The Author(s)
30
AMITAI ETZIONI
dominated the discourse that led to the rejection of the EU Constitutional

Treaty (Sciolino, 2005). Ultimately, only harmonization of welfare (as well as
tax policies and much else) can allow the free flow of people to continue.
Although several important externalities have also contributed to the EU
malaise,7 one can conclude that a great deal of strain on the Union has been
generated from the fact that the EU has an increasing Step II level of activities
and scope with a largely Step I architecture and above all, a weak community.
IV. The Movement to Step II
A considerable number of analysts and EU policy-makers have taken the
position that no new Step II political architecture or accelerated normativeaffective community building must be introduced even as the volume and
scope of integrated activities has risen to a Step II level. To employ the image
cited above, these analysts are content for the EU to stand midair between
two steps. The UK, for instance, has opposed many of the measures to create
a more robust political architecture on the grounds that they are not needed.
Thomas Risse explains that this consistent opposition to deepening European
integration is rooted in a distinctive nationalist English identity [that] is
incompatible with federalist or supranationalist visions of the European
political order [. . .] and still perceives Europe as the (friendly) other
(Risse, 2001, p. 199).
Other analysts, especially in the earlier years of the EU, have argued that
more integration is necessary, but that it is to occur as a functional spillover
that will automatically lead to the formation of the needed political architecture. They argued essentially that as Brussels (a code word for the European
Commission and more generally, the EUs governing bodies) affects ever
more EU-wide activities, various interest groups will shift their attention from
the national capitals to the EU capital.8
In contrast, others hold that the EU needs to work explicitly towards
making a much more robust political architecture and sense of community.
European Commission President Jos Manuel Barroso states that it is simply
7
Other developments that were not introduced by the EU also increased the stress on the Union in the same
period. These developments are beyond the scope of this article, but one of them is so consequential that
it should be briefly cited. In the first period of the EU, one of its latent functions was, as German Chancellor
Helmut Kohl put it, to lock Germany into Europe and to protect Germany from itself. Germany was
initially content to pay a large portion of the EU budget and let France serve as the major governing power
of the EU. Germany, however, has gradually shed its post-Second World War feelings and has come under
increased domestic stress. This development has recently led Germany to curtail its contributions and to
challenge French leadership. In turn, French ardour for the EU has cooled. Both of these processes are just
beginning to unfold and are likely to continue in the future, adding to the difficulties that the EU will face.
8
Among others, Ernst Haas proposed this view, see Haas (1958). It has since been criticized because
functional spillover seems limited to elites, see van Hamm (2001, p. 242).
2007 The Author(s)
31
wrong to think that a single market can be sustained without social cohesion,
a political vision and the solidarity that flows from the feeling of belonging
to a common project (Barroso, 2005). German Foreign Minister Joschka
Fischer has called for turning the EU into a federation, what Winston
Churchill once called a United States of Europe (Fischer, 2000). The 2005
draft Constitutional Treaty entailed the introduction of majority voting in
significantly more areas in which unanimous decision-making had hereto
prevailed. Such a change would have meant that Member States would no
longer be able to veto in effect measures they strongly opposed and hence,
supporters of the Constitutional Treaty held that progress could be made
much more swiftly. The rejection of the Constitutional Treaty by French and
Dutch voters and the fear that several other nations will not endorse it, make
the Constitutional Treatys fate rather unclear at this stage. What is clear,
however, is that the most important move to form a new political architecture
suitable for a Step II union has, at least, been derailed.
The 2005 constitutional initiative raises important questions. The hypothesis here advanced is that democratization requires a significantly higher level
of community than the EU now commands or ever commanded even before
the recent enlargement.
V. Curtailing the Community Deficit before the Democratic Deficit
There are at least two major reasons for why normative-affective community
building is needed prior to more democratization. (These words are chosen
carefully; the argument is not that a fully-fledged community must be in place
before democratization nor that no democratization is at all possible without
more community building.)9
The first of these reasons is that democratization requires willingness on
the part of the members of a union to make sacrifices for one another. The
second is that the making of democratic policies requires shared values.
Democracy imposes sacrifices on citizens for the sake of the collective
whole, often in the form of high-level taxation and sometimes in the case of
committing citizens to war.10 Frequently, it also imposes disproportional
losses on some members of the Union for the sake of others. This is most
9
There is an important and valuable dialogue among scholars as to whether or not the existing democratic
institutions of the EU, especially the parliament, suffice to legitimate the EU. Whatever the conclusion, I
suggest that these institutions cannot grow significantly unless there is more community building. On the
dialogue see Bellamy and Castiglione (2000), Chryssochoou (2001); for counter argument see Lord and
Beetham (2001).
10
Democracy also demands that those who lose a vote will nonetheless abide by the outcome of that vote.
For a detailed analysis of this kind of sacrifice and the conditions under which it is best fostered, see
Anderson et al. (2005).
2007 The Author(s)
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AMITAI ETZIONI
evident when one considers public policies that involve the reallocation of
scarce resources (these policies include public budgets, subsidies, credits and
much else), as well as changes in macro-economic and related policies. Thus,
to give one example, if the EU is to follow a unified economic policy, some
nations economies will have to be slowed down, because the economy of
some other nations is overheating (growing too fast, threatening run-away
inflation). This means that the citizens of say Germany and France would
have to see their unemployment rates be further increased, income per capita
decreased and public policies under-funded because the economies of say
Ireland and Portugal have been growing too fast! Members of one community
do so without much reflection. Americans, for instance, would accept an
economic lag in the South if it were necessary to abate the economy overheating in California and New York, because they view the United States as
one community. EU Member States are much less inclined to accept such
sacrifices for each other and for the EU.
For the EU citizens to accept the sacrifices such decision-making entails
they need to value the EU common good and the purposes it serves. That is,
in selected matters, the EU must acquire what I call a narrow trumping loyalty
before the democracy deficit can be curtailed. Such split loyalty (between
ones nation in some matters and the EU in others) is far from unknown. In
effect, it exists in many nations that are federations or act as if they have some
such qualities. In the United Kingdom for instance, a person often splits
loyalty between being Scottish or Welsh and being British. As political
theorist Andreas Fllesdal puts it: citizens need a shared sense of belonging
to two political communities, as citizens of two commonwealths: loyalty to
members of their own sub-unit and an overarching loyalty to other citizens
in the political order (Fllesdal, 2006).
One might argue, however, that citizens of EU nations do indeed already
have this narrow trumping loyalty and have shown that they are willing to
make sacrifices for the EU as a whole. One might point to the fact that the EU
has long sustained a budget and made income transfers in the form of
Structural and Cohesion Funds to regions considered in need of development
help, including Greece, Portugal and Ireland.11 Hence the EU seems to
command the necessary loyalty. However, thus far the EU budget has
amounted to only a tiny fraction of the Member States budgets the 200006
budget has a ceiling of 1.27 per cent of EU-area GDP and almost all social
welfare programmes remain under the control of individual nations. Indeed,
the EUs social and redistributive component has been quite limited; even
11
This is a reference to the EUs Structural and Cohesion Funds. For details on this funding, see European
Communities (2004b).
2007 The Author(s)

33
after a nearly 20 per cent increase from 2003, Structural and Cohesion Funds
accounted for only 34 per cent of the EU budget in 2004, equivalent to no
more than 0.4 per cent of EU-area GDP.12 Efforts to expand the 2007-13 EU
budget have been marked by acrimonious debate and failure. Europeans are
not ready to sacrifice much over and above their limited contributions to the
EU the French do not want to surrender their farm subsidies, the British do
not want to relinquish their $6 billion annual rebate from the EU and the
Germans (as well as the Swedish and Dutch), who are painfully aware that
they have paid much more into the EU than they have gained from it, seek to
freeze the EU budget at the current level of 1 per cent of gross national
income, rather than allowing it to increase to the suggested 1.14 per cent of
GNI.13
The current paucity of EU-wide normative-affective community is further
evident in pressures to re-establish national borders with regard to immigrants, criminals and suspected terrorists. Citizens of many European nations
are not willing to put up with sacrifices imposed upon them by the border
policies of other nations, as has been previously discussed. Failed attempts to
harmonize the divergent welfare policies of Member States provide another
example of the EUs lack of normative-affective community and its effects.
To harmonize welfare, countries with rich schemes would have to curtail
theirs, those with more meagre ones would have to jack theirs up or some
nations would have to transfer significant funds to others. However there is
very little support for such harmonization. Without harmonization, however,
the free movement of people and jobs is undermined and the union and a
united economic policy, as has been previously demonstrated, is hobbled.
In a response to the argument that there is a need for a core of shared
values, Andreas Fllesdal remarked that sharing universal values like human
rights does not necessarily build European community.14 The point is not
without merit, but it dodges the main thrust of the argument presented here.
The argument is that the EU needs more than values that are universally
shared; to build community, it needs particularistic values. To this claim
Fllesdal responds that the values Europeans have are particular to each
nation but not to the whole EU. Actually, however, there seem to be several
strong candidates for EU-wide particularistic values. These include a strong
12
For budget statistics, see Commission (2004a). For further information on the limited nature of redistribution programmes, see Caporaso (2006) and Majone (1993).
13
The Netherlands puts 0.44 per cent more of its gross national income into the EU budget than it takes
out; Germany has a negative balance of 0.33 per cent and Sweden 0.38 per cent (Reuters, 2005).
14
Fllesdal writes, The required values are seldom uniquely European and the European features that
merit respect are not common values (Fllesdal, 2005).
2007 The Author(s)

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AMITAI ETZIONI
commitment to prevent war between the members and to deal with nonmembers (even rogue states) with peaceful means. Also included is a strong
commitment to the social market. Although Europeans are now thinking
about trimming down the social market, they greatly differ from the United
States in their shared and strong commitment to it.15 (Britain on all these
accounts is at the margin of the EU or beyond.) Finally, although the willingness to openly face common histories, especially the Holocaust, is far from
fully shared, it is stronger in EU countries than in countries such as Japans
willingness to repent for atrocities it committed.
Before moving on, it is helpful to clarify the references to a narrow
trumping loyalty and to a core of shared values neither entails an entirely
comprehensive commitment. The reference to a core of shared values does
not entail that these values be all encompassing. Indeed there is room for a
high level of national subsidiarity,16 not merely in matters of governance but
also in normative positions on matters such as euthanasia17 or tolerance for
hate speech. And in the same vein, there is no need to abolish loyalties and
bonds of affections to ones nation, as long as on selected matters the loyalty
to the new, encompassing community, trumps that of loyalty to ones nation.
The end result is an EU that is more than a civil society but less than an
all-encompassing, social entity. It is to be a community whose members share
a core of values, whose common good and purpose they find compelling and
whose institutions are considered legitimate to the extent that their design and
actions are compatible with the shared values. Hence it is to be a community
that commands trumping loyalty in select matters, but defers to national
loyalty in other matters.
VI. The Pivotal Role of Moral Dialogues
Now that the need for community building has been established, the discussion turns to explore the ways that a core of shared values can be enhanced.
These differ from a number of suggestions that have been made as to how to
enable the EU to continue to flourish, sometimes also referred to as community building. It is neither possible nor necessary to examine them all
here. They can be sorted, however, into several major categories which will
15
For more discussion on the existence or potential existence of distinct European shared values, see
Caporaso (2006); Hoffmann (1988) and Jospin (2003). Also see Walter Laquer, who points to Europes
dedication to reaffirming the life instinct and working to live rather than living to work (Laquer, 2005).
16
For more on the concept and the place of national subsidiarity, see Etzioni (2004).
17
Euthanasia, however, would have to be limited to local residents lest one nation become a destination
point for euthanasia and thereby stultify other nations policies against it. This limitation can be legislated
by stipulating that euthanasia can only be made available to people who have known the executing
physician for at least one year, thus in effect limiting euthanasia to locals.
2007 The Author(s)

35
serve to highlight the difference between normative-affective community

building and other measures that may or may not strengthen the EU.
We have already mentioned suggestions like Fischers call for federation
and the proposed EU Constitutional Treaty that entail profound changes in
the political architecture. Along similar lines, Philippe van Parijs has proposed directly electing parliament members from an EU-wide list or having
pan-European elections for President of the EU Council (van Parijs, 1997).
For reasons already indicated, however, such measures best follow a significant measure of normative-affective community building and cannot drive it.
Several symbolic measures have been introduced such as an EU flag, EU
licence plates, EU passport covers and an EU anthem. These symbolic measures can contribute when there is a sense of community to express and
solidify but they cannot create community where it is absent.
Increased contact among the citizens of the various nations has also been
suggested. For instance, student and scholar exchanges have been implemented under the ERASMUS programme, a branch of the EUs broader
SOCRATES programme to enhance European education. One observer
hoped that if these programmes would be much increased, community building would be enhanced.18 Some benefit has been indeed generated this way,
however data from other such plans suggests that ones prejudices are likely
to be reinforced by such programmes and are often reasserted once those
students and scholars return home.
Reference to shared values is often met with a considerable degree of
value angst, which leads several key liberal theoreticians to seek to keep
values out of the scope of public policy. They fear that drumming up an EU
ethos will be akin to nationalism, which led to the fascist and totalitarian
movements, the bane of recent European history.19 These fears are not to be
taken lightly; however, in the case of the EU, the danger that its ethos will be
expressive of a kind of primordial sense of tribalism is very remote.20 First,
the Member States are not expected to vanish and loyalty to them will
continue to counterbalance EU loyalties. Second, the EU once driven by
Catholic and conservative leaders and followers has grown much more
diverse in terms of the members values. The EUs problem, hence, is not
that one set of values will overwhelm all others and grow totalistic, but rather
that it must find some significant shared values. Moreover, two values that
18
For more discussion on community building through education and exchange, see Peck (1997).
Not all political theorists agree some, including David Miller and Alex Warleigh, hold that a deep
cultural and ethnic ethos or demos is in fact necessary to form a stable and democratic Union. They argue
that the lack (and potential impossibility) of such a demos in Europe is the principle problem for
unification. See Warleigh (2003) and Miller (1995).
20
Fllesdal argues similarly, see Fllesdal (2005).
19
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AMITAI ETZIONI
many Europeans do share is the aversion to war and abhorrence of totalitarianism, based on their shared experiences. Indeed, if and when the EU develops a more significant core of shared values, the most likely result will be
somewhat akin to the rise of shared values that were at the formation of the
United States not the evocation of a primordial ethos, but a new covenant
formed by those who choose to participate in the formation of the new union.
Such a new covenant may arise and other shared values may be formed
out of moral dialogues. Moral dialogues are public discussions that engage
values rather than merely interests or wants. They involve more than facts and
reasoning; they engage beliefs and normative commitments. Moral dialogues
are not dialogues among experts but among citizens. They often include some
factual and logical arguments, but they are mainly ethical, rather than empirical, in nature. Take the question of whether or not there should be a death
penalty. The empicical question of whether or not it deters murder plays some
role in the relevant moral dialogue. However, the main issues are moral ones:
whether the state ever has a right to take a life and whether one ought to keep
those convicted of hideous crimes alive in prison in order to avoid the fatal
error of executing even one innocent person. To provide but one more illustration, the debate on whether or not gay marriages should be sanctified by the
state is not driven by empirical questions (for example, can they make good
parents), but by ones religious, humanitarian and other values.
We are familiar with moral dialogues in families and small groups. Whole
societies, however, even if their population ranks in the hundreds of millions,
can and do engage in moral dialogues that lead to changes in widely shared
values. These moral dialogues are composed of the many millions of hours
spent over meals, in pubs, while commuting, at work and in the media
discussing moral issues. They entail linking millions of local conversations
into society-wide networks and shared public focal points, including call-in
shows, debates on network television and in widely circulated newspapers
and magazines. The dialogues are often triggered and closed with political
decisions (for example, legalizing gay marriages), but moral dialogues should
not be confused with political participation.21
When a community is engaged in a moral dialogue, the discussion often
seems disorderly, meandering and endless. However, such dialogues frequently do lead to new, shared moral values. Most importantly, through the
process of moral dialogue people often modify their commitments and behaviours. For example, in the 1950s European as well as other societies had no
sense of a moral obligation towards the environment. This does not mean that
there were not some studies, articles and individuals who saw great value in
21
For more discussion of such dialogues, see Etzioni (1996, charter 4). Percy B. Lehning presents an
objection to this point of view, see Lehning (2001).
2007 The Author(s)

37
the environment; but the society as a whole did not rank protecting the
environment among its core values. A profound moral dialogue that developed in the 1960s and 1970s led not merely to a shared sense of moral duty
to Mother Earth (although communities continue to differ on what exactly
that entails) but also to a fair measure of changed behaviour (voluntary
recycling for example), regulations and public policies. There continue to be
disagreements about the level of commitment to this cause and the best ways
to proceed, but not about the fact that it is a basic value. Another key example
is the debate on womens rights that resulted in profound changes in the way
the two genders view, treat and deal with one another.
In the past, many of these dialogues were nationwide and led to national
action such as new legislation and regulations and new economic incentives
and penalties. In recent decades, however, there have been a growing number
of transnational moral dialogues that have led to shared positions and action.
These include both narrow issues and more encompassing ones. Transnational
moral dialogues led to wide support for the United Nations and especially the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights; even nations such as Singapore and
China no longer dismiss it out of hand. The same holds for a shared moral
commitment to the environment, opposition to land mines, the need to curb the
trade in ivory and the willingness to intervene for humanitarian purposes.
The nations that are members of the EU have participated in many of these
moral dialogues, either within their own respective nations, or as members of
the inchoate global community, but not often in EU-wide dialogues. EU-wide
dialogues that have taken place have often fallen short of what was needed for
normative-affective community building. The reasons for these failures need
to be examined if future dialogues are to be effective.
In the past, major EU decisions have typically been made by one nation at
a time, for example, nations decided independently whether or not to join the
EU in the first place, whether or not to adopt the euro, embrace the Constitutional Treaty and so on. These decisions were even made at different points
in time by the various nations rather than simultaneously. The dialogues have
focused on what is in the best interest of each individual nation, not on what
is best for the EU as a whole.22 Moreover, national governments that have
favoured various EU-enhancing steps have chastised those nations that
opposed those moves. Thus, these dialogues enforced national differences
rather than unity. If EU-wide dialogues are to be effective, they best be linked
to forthcoming EU-wide decisions rather than such national decisions. For
instance, votes on the acceptance of an EU constitution should take place in
all Member States simultaneously.
22
For a detailed defense of the thesis that European integration proceeded on the basis of national
advantage, see Moravcsik (1998).
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The dialogues must involve the public. In the past, many EU decisions
were conducted behind closed doors, negotiated by diplomats, lawyers,
experts and above all civil servants, couched in terms the public could not
follow. The resulting documents, such as the Treaty of Rome, the Maastricht
Treaty and the proposed Constitutional Treaty included countless pages of
complex details. (Sixty per cent of the French voters who rejected the Constitutional Treaty said they voted no because the Constitutional Treaty was too
complicated to understand, see Commission, 2005.) The public had very little
influence on the content of these documents; they were just permitted into the
process to vote yes or no. Moreover, the various documents were often
promoted as serving various interests of the member nations or groups within
them, rather than presented as normative commitments to shared values and
the common good of the budding EU community. This evidence suggests that
significant adjustments need to be made if EU-wide moral dialogues are to be
fomented. The example that follows illustrates what an effective EU-wide
moral dialogue might look like. This specific case can be substituted by
another, but the format may be essential.
Suppose the EU governments were to announce that the EU needs a
closely shared immigration policy due to the fact that immigrants that are
allowed to make their way into one Member State often end up in other EU
countries. (Another potential topic could be the extent to which the EU should
enlarge and whether it should include Turkey a question particularly relevant to sorting out what EU shared values encompass. Whatever the topic is,
it must be evocative enough to engage the public and cannot be limited to
procedural or narrow interest issues.) The EU governments would also
announce that the new immigration policy would not be decided in nationby-nation votes, but rather by an EU-wide referendum to take place, say, six
months later.
Before the referendum, there would be numerous public hearings and
town hall meetings conducted by members of the European Parliament,
public intellectuals, local politicians, NGO leaders and others to discuss
alternative policies. The ballot would have several parts including immigrant
rights, requirements for gaining EU citizenship and policies for illegal immigrants and asylum seekers from countries that are not torn by war.
One might think that what is suggested here as a moral dialogue to curtail
the community deficit is what others would call public participation to fill the
democratic deficit. What is suggested here, however, is to use the political
process to trigger, focus and give closure and significance to social processes
particularly that of coming to shared values. Hence at issue here is not
polity, but community building. For democracy, voting is an essential
element; for community building it is but an instrument.
2007 The Author(s)
39
A key point of the suggested design of the moral dialogues is to encourage

EU voters to consider what is best for the larger EU community rather than
focus on the interests of their particular nation. Some might say that this would
mean that even if all the citizens of a small state were to oppose the measure,
it could still be passed. However, the very merit of the suggested format is to
encourage people to cease thinking only as citizens of their national state and
instead deliberate and vote more on what is best for the EU community,
especially on issues such as immigration in which one nations policies have
a dramatic impact on other nations. The debate would surely be emotional and
would likely produce different conclusions than a Commission committee.
However, it would reflect the people, their values and their preferences and it
would commit them to EU-wide policies and, in the process, to the EU itself.
For a moral dialogue to be effective it is essential that people have a sense
that it will have a real impact.23 For instance, people would need to know that
the European Parliament would be committed to following the results of the
suggested referendum on immigration and to spelling the results out in law.
The people would also need to know that the Commission would be bound to
implement these laws.
Over time, moral dialogues will nurture the formation of a core of shared
values among members of the EU. Such a core is a cardinal condition for
the formation of a normative-affective community that is in turn essential for
the formation of the political institutions a Stage II union requires. Thus, the
lagging elements will be brought in line with those that rushed ahead, meeting
on a higher ground rather than being forced to retreat to a lower level. The
argument is not that moral dialogues will magically transform the EU all by
themselves. Many other factors, however, are in place most obviously the
high volume of activities that are already integrated, the single currency and
the relatively free movement of people. It is the community building element
that is particularly lagging and it is the one that stands to benefit most from
moral dialogues.
Correspondence:
Amitai Etzioni
George Washington University
2130 H Street, NW
Suite 703
Washington, DC 20052, USA
e-mail: etzioni@gwu.edu
Tel: +1 202 994 8191
23
Fllesdal similarly highlights the importance of the public seeing that their decisions in public debates
and voting booths have a real effect. See Fllesdal (2005).
2007 The Author(s)

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AMITAI ETZIONI
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Wildasin, D.E. (1994) Income Redistribution and Migration. The Canadian Journal
of Economics, Vol. 27, No. 3, p. 638.
2007 The Author(s)


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JCMS 2002 Volume 40. Number 4. pp.

In Defence of the Democratic Deficit:

REASSESSING LEGITIMACY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

setter and regulatory co-ordinator, is widely perceived as a technocracy. The

that governments delegate to bodies such as constitutional courts, central banks,

REASSESSING LEGITIMACY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

exceed the most extreme constraints imposed in national systems by

Fiscal Constraints and the Emergence of a Regulatory Polity

REASSESSING LEGITIMACY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

Surmounting super-majoritarian and unanimous voting requirements is not

REASSESSING LEGITIMACY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

II. Democratic Control: Why the EU is not an Unaccountable

REASSESSING LEGITIMACY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002

REASSESSING LEGITIMACY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

III. Democratic Deliberation: Why the EU Cannot Expand

Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002

For an exception, see Weiler (1999).

Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002

REASSESSING LEGITIMACY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

is biased in a social democratic direction (see, e.g., Rabkin, 2001).

Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002

REASSESSING LEGITIMACY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

stitutional structure but in the precise nature of conflicts of interest among

REASSESSING LEGITIMACY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002

REASSESSING LEGITIMACY IN THE EUROPEAN UNION

Vogel, D. (1995) Trading Up (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press).

Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2002

JCMS 2007 Volume 45. Number 1. pp. 187209

Plurilateral Governance in the Enlarged

standards and tight command-and-control mechanisms, is slowly giving way

PLURILATERAL GOVERNANCE IN THE ENLARGED EUROPEAN UNION

similar things. Students of European integration need to use the insights

PLURILATERAL GOVERNANCE IN THE ENLARGED EUROPEAN UNION

PLURILATERAL GOVERNANCE IN THE ENLARGED EUROPEAN UNION

Table 1: Two Contrasting Modes of the European Governance System

Disassociation between authoritative

arrangement, having adopted many features of what we have identified as the

PLURILATERAL GOVERNANCE IN THE ENLARGED EUROPEAN UNION

international contracts. While large trade flows demand certainty in contract

PLURILATERAL GOVERNANCE IN THE ENLARGED EUROPEAN UNION

students and practitioners, the progress of European integration is measured

European space. Enlargement towards eastern Europe has represented the

PLURILATERAL GOVERNANCE IN THE ENLARGED EUROPEAN UNION

PLURILATERAL GOVERNANCE IN THE ENLARGED EUROPEAN UNION

subsidies, quotas and antidumping duties) with regard to low-cost locations

PLURILATERAL GOVERNANCE IN THE ENLARGED EUROPEAN UNION

continuous communication, co-operation and compromise between such

articulate and aggregate highly heterogeneous public preferences across an

PLURILATERAL GOVERNANCE IN THE ENLARGED EUROPEAN UNION

PLURILATERAL GOVERNANCE IN THE ENLARGED EUROPEAN UNION

Cerny, P.G. (1993) Plurilateralism: Structural Differentiation and Functional

PLURILATERAL GOVERNANCE IN THE ENLARGED EUROPEAN UNION

2007 The Author(s)

JCMS 2007 Volume 45. Number 1. pp. 2342

The Community Deficit

2007 The Author(s)

For more explanation of this definition see Etzioni (1996, p. 127).

2007 The Author(s)

THE COMMUNITY DEFICIT

Step I unions have a low level of transnational integration and a much

2007 The Author(s)

2007 The Author(s)