Gallowglass

EU once again

I spent yesterday at a workshop organized by Jim Caporaso at the University of Washington on whether or not international institutions such as the EU needed to be democratic. It was an interesting conversation, all the better for only lasting one day (conference fatigue tends to set in rather quickly at these things), and for involving non-EU specialists such as Jeff Checkel and Jennifer Mitzen, both of whom had takes on EU level democracy that were interesting, and new to me. The memoes we prepared for the workshop ought to be up on the web soon - I’ll link to them when they become available. Jim spoke to the more general problems of figuring out the “nature of the beast” : what the EU was, and how this affected the possibilities for EU level democracy. Jeff Checkel examined how the new rights discourse within the EU might threaten the Council of Europe, and thus have negative implications for states in the former Soviet Union that had little hope of EU membership. Joe Jupille had a good piece on the complexity of decision making in the EU, and how this made it harder for citizens to identify with it. Jennifer Mitzen talked to the awkward relationship between theories of democracy and the realities of the international system. Finally, Rey Koslowski examined whether there was scope for a global civil society - and came to disheartening conclusions.

Some interesting themes emerged. Nobody had had an opportunity properly to reflect on the draft constitution; but it was more or less clear that the Commission was having its wings clipped, and becoming something more like a traditional civil service, as the Council and Parliament came to resemble a two house legislature, with the Council representing the member states, and Parliament, the citizens. The problem of disaffection of citizens from the institutions was raised, but not fully addressed. Nor was enlargement, although there was some interesting discussion of how increasing democracy within the EU might affect its near neighbours in both positive, and less than positive ways. More on all of this later, I’m sure; now I’m off to Stockholm to give a paper with Adrienne Heritier on codecision and democratic legitimacy