Chien-Yi Lu Associate Research Fellow
C. Arrows “d” & “e” in Figure 3:
If the power of the European voters to remove unsuitable elected officials from either the EP or the Council exists only in theory, can voters hold members of national
parliaments responsible for EU policy output? One of the rationales behind increasing the involvement of the national parliaments in EU decision-making is to enhance the understanding of the national parliamentarians of European affairs. While this is a welcoming development, its positive impact on the understanding of European affairs by voters will only be indirect. National parliamentarians do not consider it worthwhile to put energy into European affairs. Given how little voters understand and care about European affairs, such efforts would not be effective in catching voters’ attention and winning votes. ‘No demand, no supply’ can largely explain the
‘it’s not my job’ mentality among national parliamentarians. When the media and the voters are not interested, the national parliamentarians have no incentives to pursue the task of forcing the ministers to disclose all their positions and decisions taken in the Council.
In theory, therefore, the chains of accountability work along the arrows in Figure 3, yet in reality, the chains are barely existent, as is illustrated by arrows a-e in Figure 5. Citizens are bound to be affected by policies made by the EU once such a shift of decision-making level takes place, yet with the tenuous empowerment of citizens in receiving information, obtaining relevant knowledge, assigning responsibilities, and throwing out the rascals, it is very difficult to find evidence that citizens are being
represented.
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Figure 5: Chains of Accountability and Representative Institutions under EU Governance in Reality
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election/
delegation policy making feedback
policy output
European Parliament The Council Commission
national executives national parliaments
voters a
b
e c
d
Ⅲ Increased Problem-Solving Capacity and Gain in Representedness?
.
The previous section established that, in terms of institutional design, the lingering threads of accountability have resulted in a sharp decrease of citizen representedness in areas where the EU now holds the policy-making power. If this loss in representedness is compensated by an equally dramatic increase in decision-makers’ problem-solving capacity, then the overall representedness of citizens has been maintained at a level that requires little reform measures. In the debate of democratic deficit, one of the most commonly cited reasons for objecting the notion that the EU has a democratic deficit is that through the role of a regulatory state, the EU’s lack of input-oriented or procedural legitimacy is compensated by its output-oriented or consequential legitimacy resulted from its capacity to solve transnational problems. The EU is at a better position than the member states to resolve many of the problems faced by the states because of the transnational nature of these problems. Among other things, the supranational institutions of the EU are able to eliminate the problem of low credibility of intergovernmental agreements by monitoring and enforcing policies in individual member states (Majone, 1994, 1998, 1999). Governments that are under the pressure of election have no long-term credibility. Hence ‘delegation to an extra-governmental agency is one of the most promising strategies whereby governments can commit themselves to regulatory policy strategies whilst maintaining political credibility’ (Majone, 1996: 4). Moreover, given that regulation is a highly specialized type of policy making that requires a high level of technical and administrative discretion, institutions such as the European Commission and the European Central Bank are better equipped to undertake the task at the supranational level (Majone, 1994, 1996, 1998, 1999).
From this perspective, delegating power to non-parliamentarian bodies such as the European Central Bank and the Commission is far from ‘undemocratic’ but is consistent with the practice of most advanced industrial democracies (Moravcsik, 2002: 611-613). In fact, these regulatory institutions fulfill their roles exactly through their independence and autonomy from particular group interests and the pressures of votes. This impartiality required to make the commitments of the Member States credible is the role the European Commission in particular and the EU in general was asked to play. The relative insulation of Community regulators from the short-run political considerations is exactly the comparative advantage of EU regulation (Majone, 1994: 94). It is therefore more reasonable to view the EU as a regulatory state and stop comparing it with a sovereign state. It is due to the problem-solving capacity of this European regulatory state that the publics of the member states were able to achieve goals that they otherwise would have been unable to achieve. Hence,
the EU’s power to impose checks, constraints and corrections on majorities that ‘are not well-informed, rights-regarding, or fairly represented’ must be justified (Keohane, Macedo, and Moravcsik, 2009: 15), as it helps to block the tyranny of majority. If the EU is nothing more than a cluster of regulatory agencies solving transborder externalities that emanate from the integration process, then the EU should be deemed to be performing identical functions as a fourth branch of member state governments.
Seen this way, the lingering accountability threads that worried us in Figure 4 should no longer be a concern, since the EU is supposed to be independent and left alone by voters, just like any regulatory agencies in a democratic country. Instead of conceiving of the EU as an undemocratic supranational bureaucracy, the Union should simply be conceived of as one of the many independent agencies of the member states (Figure 5).
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Figure 5: EU as an independent agency of the member states.
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According to the regulatory/fourth-branch line of argument, what we thought to be a loss in representedness looking at the institutional design and tenuous accountability mechanism of the EU is after all not a real loss. Voters were meant to be bypassed in order for EU experts to do their jobs of solving collective problems for EU citizens.
These experts are in any case not concerned about input from citizens but rely on their expert knowledge to make policies. Moreover, the transfer of policy-making power from national to European level only takes place in issue areas where non-majoritarian, independent regulatory agencies were already heavily depended
election/
delegation policy making feedback
policy output
independent agencies (including EU)
executive parliament
voters
A B
upon to produce policies even before the transfer of the decision-making power to the European level took place.
Can the conclusion be drawn then that the representedness of citizens has been maintained when policy-making power is transferred to the EU the regulatory state? I demonstrate, by closely examining the EU’s role as the fourth branch of member state governments, that not only does the loss of representedness resulted from the weakened accountability mechanism still matter significantly, but the supposed gain in representedness through enhanced problem-solving capacity found in the European regulatory state is also very limited. First of all, there is little doubt that independence does not automatically results in better problem-solving capacity. Emphasizing expert knowledge and promoting non-majoritarian institutions or networks are seen merely as attempts to paper over the cracks in representative institutions (Bevir, 2010: 4) mainly because ‘…. it is based on the chimera of Pareto-optimal policies and presumes that EU policies always will be successful in achieving their aims’ (Katz, 2001: 58). Ober has pointed out that many well-known policy failures find their common root in the cloistered-experts approach: ‘Gather the experts. Close the door.
Design a policy. Roll it out. Reject criticism.’ This policy-making formula is ‘both worse for democracy and less likely to benefit the community,’ because it ‘ignores vital information held by those not recognized as experts’ (2008: 1). It is not based on normative reasons—such as the concept that all those who are affected by a political decision should have a say in its making (Hilson, 2006: 56)—that the cloistered-experts approach is considered bad for democracy. Instead, from a utilitarian point of view, relying too heavily on like-minded experts would simply blunt democracy’s competitive edge. In considering the capacity to solve problems, it is commonly presumed that experts know the best and voters are ignorant. When it is the life experiences of the individuals that define the so-called problems, however, it is the less often recognized elite ignorance rather than voter ignorance that poses a more dangerous threat to good solutions. “The practical problem arises precisely because facts are never so given to a single mind, and because, in consequence, it is necessary that in the solution of the problem knowledge should be used that is dispersed among many people” (Hayek, 1945: 530, cited by Ober, 2008: 17). It is in this sense that Hayek has argued that knowledge possessed by every individual, not just the experts, is useful. (1945: 521, cited by Ober, 2008: 17).
It is true that in the domestic context independent agencies often produce non Pareto-optimal policies as well. The EU, however, is not only significantly even more likely to produce non Pareto-optimal policies, but such policies would also have a more severe negative impact on citizens than those produced by independent agencies within a state. Decision-making in the EU is often characterized as the lowest
common denominator of the member states. Such a result is inherently and logically contradictory with Pareto-optimal policies. Lowest common denominator reflects gives and takes determined by calculation of individual member states. Pareto-optimal results, in contrast, require calculation based on the notion of a European collective good. The chances for the aggregated individual preferences to correspond with the Pareto-optimal results of the collect are extremely slim. The Nice Treaty, for instance, is a compromise aimed at resolving intense disagreements between large and small states. Provisions to the liking of each group had to be included in the Treaty, resulting in the clumsy institutional framework that needed reform shortly after the Nice reform (Tsebelis and Yataganas, 2002). In other words, the conferees in Nice
‘were involved in a collective prisoners’ dilemma game and it was individually rational to insist on their own preferred criterion. As a result, they became collectively worse off by their inability to compromise’ (Tsebelis, 2008: 267).
Crucial to my claim that domestic independent agencies are less likely to make detrimental mistakes in comparison with the EU is the fact that, in spite of their independence, domestic non-majoritarian regulatory agencies are nonetheless ensconced in their own society. In the EU context, the secrecy of the Council, the weakness of political parties, the strength of special interests, and the distance of ordinary citizens from policy networks all render the decisions of independent agencies more detrimental when they are not Pareto optimal. Independent regulatory agencies are the fourth branch at the national level because they are an appendix to
the other three branches. No democratic systems have ever gained legitimacy based
on output legitimacy alone, and neither would the EU (McCormick, 1999). While the strengths of independent agencies are dependent on the isolation from voters, they are also dependent on the quality of the institutions of representative democracy (Bekkers et al., 2007). In fact, too many outputs may even serve to decrease rather than increase the legitimacy of the Union (Jolly, 2007).Even though independent agencies are independent, such independence takes place within, and is related to, a demos. As much as this demos defines the parameters of the powers of the other three branches of state, so it should form the reference group for whom the independent agency makes decisions. In other words, independence does not exist in a vacuum; a relationship still exists between the insulated agencies and the demos. When the executive or legislative branch of a state delegates regulatory power to an agency, such delegation is deemed legitimate because it does not involve any modification of the demos. The agency responsible for maximizing the interests of the people has an unambiguous concept of who the people are. In assessing whether such agencies have achieved effective regulation, the questions ‘effective for whom’ and ‘Pareto efficient from whose perspective’ have
clear answers. Apart from well-functioning representative bodies, the existence of a lively public sphere is also crucial for keeping independent agencies abreast of the concerns of citizens and what comprises their ideas of the best interests of the nation.
The same conditions do not exist within the EU (Figure 6). The EU is neither equipped with well-functioning representative bodies nor a working public sphere to inform the EU (cum independent agencies isolated from voters) what constitutes the
best interests of the EU. Rather than relieving European voters of the anxiety with
regard to the democratic deficit problem, the interpretation of the EU as functioning just like any other given independent agency can raise a new alarm: Maximizing the interests of Europe as a whole (as defined/understood by a group of experts) may run counter to the interests of individual countries. Who is there to decide when and how one country’s interests should be sacrificed in order to achieve the greater good?Individual citizens’ interests are now determined by a group of experts who somehow – even in the absence of a European public sphere and a well-functioning representative body – just know where the best interests of these individuals – whether German, French, Slovenian or Polish – lie. The EU-as-fourth-branch thesis, in other words, fails to take into consideration that in democracies, even independent institutions ‘are anchored in the legitimacy of democratic mechanisms which link institutions to the public’ (Ward, 2004: 3).
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Figure 6. Independent agencies and Demos—contrast between Member State and EU
Even though independent, domestic agencies are ensconced in a demos and in touch with the public
While functioning as an independent agency, EU is not embedded in a demos. From citizens’
perspectives, therefore, EU rules are externally imposed.
The seemingly reasonable argument that the EU is but just one of the independent institutions of the member states as is shown in Figure 5 becomes problematic once we are reminded that these independent institutions are simultaneously shared by 27 countries. If making policies that reflect the long-term preferences of the governed can be challenging even for domestic independent institutions, the representedness of citizens is bound to fall dramatically when these institutions become transnational or supranational, shared by 27 societies but anchored in none. The loss of representedness resulted from weakened chains of accountability in the representative institutions is therefore not gained back by the creation of even the most uncorrupt, benign, ambitious, effective, and competent Eurocracy that is remote from the citizens.
What about the argument that the transfer of policy-making power from national to European level only takes place in issue areas where non-majoritarian, independent regulatory agencies were depended upon to produce policies even before the transfer of the decision-making power to the European level took place? The competence of the Union has continually expanded over the past decades. With the increased number of issue areas where qualified majority voting is the norm in the Council, only issues of taxation and foreign policy are now left exclusively in the hands of member state governments. It is, therefore, not true that the EU only intervene in areas where independent regulatory agencies were heavily depended upon to produce policies even before the transfer of the decision-making power to the European level took place. Still, Moravcsik insists that if an issue falls within the competence of the Union it must be because the issue is not salient for voters. Hence the EU is active in producing Europe-wide, binding policies only in the areas of trade, industry, standardization, soft power, foreign aid, and agriculture. In contrast, as far as fiscal, social welfare, health care, social security, and education policies are concerned, the member state governments continue to be the main policy-makers (Moravcsik, 2002:
603).
Given that EU competence expanded over time and citizens’ perceptions of issue salience change over time, the claim that the EU will always only deal with non-salient issues is questionable. Even if the observation that the EU deals only with non-salient issues is accurate, policy-making regarding these issues should still be subjected to democratic scrutiny. In fact, having excluded all salient issues, the only thing left to be scrutinized necessarily concerns these issues. To what extent is the EU capable of being responsive to citizens’ needs in these areas? In order to gauge the extent to which member state societies realize that the context of policy-making in such issues has now become European, I analyze media reports on these issues.
Figures 7-12 are comparisons of contexts (national or European) in which the British, Irish, and French media report the stories on the so-called non-salient issues. As these figures show, the contexts in which the non-salient, EU-in-charge issues are reported in the media continue to be national rather than European.
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Figure 7: Contexts of Stories relating to Trade and Industry in The Times in a 3 month period
"trade and UK" "trade and EU" "industry and UK"
Fi
gure 8: Contexts of Stories relating to Foreign Aid and Agricultural Policy in The Times in a 1 year period
The Times: Foreign Aid and Agricultural
Figure 9: Contexts of Stories relating to Trade and Industry in The Irish Times in
a 3 month period
The Irish Times: Trade and Industry
"trade and EU" "industry and Ireland"
Figure 10: Contexts of Stories relating to Foreign Aid and Agricultural Policy in The Irish Times in a 1 year period
The Irish Times: Foreign Aid and
Figure 11: Contexts of Stories relating to Trade and Industry in Le Figaro in a 3
month period
Le Figaro: Trade and Industry
"trade and EU" "industry and France"
Figure 12: Contexts of Stories relating to Foreign Aid and Agricultural Policy in Le Figaro in a 1 year period
To sum up, the above analysis challenges the belief that the overall representedness of citizens has not decreased due to the increased problem-solving capacity of the EU. Among other things, independence and expertise do not automatically translate into problem-solving capacity. Twenty-seven societies sharing one independent agency not embedded in any of them also creates a big problem even for the most capable, uncorrupt, and benign bureaucracy. Finally, good problem-solving capability hinges on good communication with citizens and effective scrutiny, elements that are conspicuously missing from the picture of EU governance.
Ⅳ. Voter Competence and Representedness of EU Citizens
The concept of representedness helps to direct our attention from the
container-centered approach to a subject-centered one in understanding how well EU
citizens are being represented. We can thus refrain from placing blames on either the European or the national level. Concerns over democratic deficit are no longer about whether there is or there isn’t one. The concept of representedness allows us to compare the degree to which interests of citizens are reflected in public policies before and after decision-making power is transferred to the European level.
Abandoning the either/or dichotomy, the representedness approach highlights the importance of focusing on the room for improvement in designing institutions and making policies that can better represent citizens.
The previous sections have established that in the absence of conditions mechanisms/conducive to the working of accountability, the degree to which citizen interests are reflected in public policies has decreased due to the reduced possibilities for citizens to hold policy makers accountable once decision-making power is transferred to the European level. Treating the EU as an independent regulator meant to be insulated from voters is equally problematic because, unlike in the domestic context, the superimposed EU is not ensconced in a corresponding society. Yet it is important to note that the loss of representedness may not have been caused entirely by European integration per se: it is quite possible that globalization would have created an even greater hiatus between interests of citizens and policy outcomes had the EU not stepped in. This is not to say that however the current design and practices
The previous sections have established that in the absence of conditions mechanisms/conducive to the working of accountability, the degree to which citizen interests are reflected in public policies has decreased due to the reduced possibilities for citizens to hold policy makers accountable once decision-making power is transferred to the European level. Treating the EU as an independent regulator meant to be insulated from voters is equally problematic because, unlike in the domestic context, the superimposed EU is not ensconced in a corresponding society. Yet it is important to note that the loss of representedness may not have been caused entirely by European integration per se: it is quite possible that globalization would have created an even greater hiatus between interests of citizens and policy outcomes had the EU not stepped in. This is not to say that however the current design and practices