4. Democratic Institutions and Processes in Europe
Against this background of enormous complexity and uncertainty, how can democracy in Europe be made more responsive? To begin to answer this question, it is necessary first to examine existing democratic institutions and processes in Europe. Democracy in Europe functions in different ways and at different levels, depending on the country and context. There is a wide range of political systems in the region. The existence of the EU adds a further level of complexity, as the political systems of member states interact with the EU’s own structure in varying ways.
Patterns of democracy in Europe
European political systems range from what Arend Lijphart described as ‘majoritarian democracies’ such as the UK, in which power is concentrated in the hands of the majority, to ‘consensual democracies’ such as Belgium and Switzerland, in which power is shared, dispersed and restrained in certain ways.68 Lijphart mapped 36 consolidated democracies around the world to two variables: (a) the extent to which the state was primarily federal or unitary in structure; and (b) the relative importance of the executive compared to political parties and vice versa. On the ‘federal/unitary’ measure, European countries range from the extremely federal, such as Germany, to the extremely unitary, such as the UK (though the latter has become somewhat less unitary in recent decades). On the ‘executive versus parties’ scale, there is more uniformity: political parties in Europe tend to be powerful relative to the executive, though there are exceptions such as France and the UK where the executive is comparatively strong.
A comparison of the three most populous European countries illustrates in more detail the diversity of democratic systems in the region. Until recently the UK was the paradigmatic ‘majoritarian democracy’, which is also sometimes referred to as ‘Westminster democracy’. One-party government is the norm in the UK – though this may be changing as the party system fragments – and the cabinet is dominant relative to parliament. Members of the lower house are elected in single-member districts according to the plurality method (‘first past the post’). Government for the most part is extremely centralized, though this has changed to some extent in recent decades with devolution to the nations and regions of the UK. The upper house, the House of Lords, is relatively weak. The constitution – often described, not entirely accurately, as ‘unwritten’ – is flexible, though the UK’s central bank, the Bank of England, has independently set monetary policy since 1997 (central bank independence was one of Lijphart’s indicators of a more consensual democracy).
Germany is quite different on both measures: it is the most federal of the 36 democracies Lijphart surveyed, and parties are relatively powerful compared to the executive. Two-party coalition governments are the norm.69 Parliament’s power relative to that of the cabinet is greater than in the UK. Members of the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, are elected through a mixture of first-past-the-post returns and proportional representation. The upper house, the Bundesrat, is one of the most powerful in the world, and institutions like the central bank and the Constitutional Court are extremely independent. In the case of the central bank, Germany has successfully ‘uploaded’ this preference for independent institutions to the EU level – indeed, the European Central Bank (ECB) is even more independent than the Bundesbank was.
France is quite different again. Unlike both Germany and the UK, it has what is often described as a ‘semi-presidential’ system, in which the president is directly elected and powerful relative to parliament.70 Thus the executive is almost as powerful as in the UK. One-party government is the norm, though a president of one party sometimes ‘co-habits’ with a parliament in which another party has a majority. Members of the lower house, the National Assembly, are elected to represent single-member districts as in the UK, but in two rounds of voting according to a mixed majority-plurality method. Like the UK, France is relatively unitary. The Constitutional Council functions as a kind of supreme court but is relatively weak.71 On the other hand, since the introduction of the euro the country in effect has had an extremely independent central bank in the form of the ECB (again, an indicator of a more consensual system).
In general, European democracies have become more consensual over time. In part this has been because of the fragmentation of party systems, which has made multi-party coalition governments more likely. In part it is also because for countries that joined the EU, membership has introduced (in Lijphart’s terms) more constitutional rigidity – and, for eurozone countries, a more independent central bank – than was previously the case. This shift to a more consensual form of democracy could be seen as a good thing. Lijphart saw consensual democracy as a ‘kinder, gentler’ form of democracy than majoritarian democracy.72 However, because it diffuses power and may therefore create a sense of lack of accountability, it may also have played a role in undermining popular confidence in liberal democracy in Europe.
Over the past few decades, there has been a dramatic expansion of ‘non-political, or depoliticized, modes of decision-making’ as powers previously held by national legislatures have been ceded to courts, central banks and supranational institutions.
In particular, many analysts see the growth of independent or ‘non-majoritarian’ institutions in the context of hyper-globalization as a problem. Over the past few decades, there has been a dramatic expansion of what Mair calls ‘non-political, or depoliticized, modes of decision-making’, as powers previously held by national legislatures have been ceded to courts, central banks and supranational institutions.73 This has in part been a deliberate move by nation state governments to regulate highly technical policy areas and maintain price stability, and in part a consequence of the proliferation of international treaties and organizations during the past 40 years. The cumulative result has been a ‘creeping erosion of democracy’.74 This challenges the idea that the crisis of liberal democracy can simply be solved by shifting towards more consensual formats.
Given the heterogeneity of political systems in Europe, debates about reform also differ. In the UK, the debate focuses on further devolution to the nations and regions, the introduction of proportional representation in national elections, and further reform of the House of Lords. Each of these reforms would lead to a more consensual form of democracy. In Germany the Bundestag president, Wolfgang Schäuble, has sought to reduce both the size of the Bundestag and the power of the Bundesrat.75 In France, figures such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the far-left party La France Insoumise, have demanded the end of what they see as a ‘presidential monarchy’ and called for a new ‘Sixth Republic’ in which the president would be more accountable to parliament, and in which parliament itself would be elected by proportional representation.76
It is tempting to think there might be an ideal democratic system on which all European countries might converge. However, this temptation should be resisted. Each system is based on national norms that are the product of cultural preferences and historical contingencies. For example, the power of the French president is a response to the paralysis of parliament during the Fourth Republic (1946–58). In Germany the requirement that parties win 5 per cent of the vote in order to enter the Bundestag is a response to the failure of parliamentary democracy in the Weimar Republic, and in particular the fear that Bonn might in effect ‘become Weimar’ if parliament were similarly fragmented.77 In short, there is no one political system that is right for all of Europe.
In any case, whatever its political system, no country in Europe seems to be immune from the current crisis of liberal democracy. Whether seen through the prism of populism, democratic deconsolidation or ‘hollowing out’, the crisis seems to have affected all European countries, though variations in political systems may mean that the crisis takes a slightly different form in each context. For example, the UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system made it harder for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) to enter parliament, yet on the other hand the pressure UKIP exerted led indirectly to the referendum on British membership of the EU. National debates on reform of democratic institutions should of course continue. But there is no simple institutional fix for the problems currently in evidence.
The EU dimension
Even if the democratic processes of individual EU member states can be made more responsive, there remains the question of the extent to which the EU itself is or is not democratic. There has long been a debate among academics as to whether the EU has a ‘democratic deficit’.78 As European integration has continued over the past few decades and power has shifted from member state governments to the EU level, the fear has been that, as Alan Milward wrote in 2005, democracy in Europe might ‘slide slowly away through the interstices between the nation state and the supranation’.79 Even those analysts (usually pro-European centrists) who see the crisis of liberal democracy in terms of populism understand it in part as a response to the lack of democracy in the EU. For example, Mounk describes the EU as the paradigmatic case of ‘undemocratic liberalism’.80
The EU can be seen as an extreme example of a global trend within a regional context. The deepening of economic integration during the past 40 years – in other words Rodrik’s so-called hyper-globalization – has created the need for an expanded system of rules, which have to some extent displaced politics. Within the EU, the removal of barriers to the movement of capital, goods and people has gone even further than in the rest of the world during this period – thus requiring an even greater degree of ‘depoliticisation’ or ‘constitutionalisation’.81 This change has also been understood as an increase in the domination of the constitutional pillar of democracy over the popular pillar – or, quite simply, as ‘the triumph of law over politics’.82 Thus, questions about democracy go to essence of the EU.
In so far as the EU can be understood as a democracy in theoretical terms, it is as a ‘consensual democracy’ – which partly explains the particular difficulties that the UK, historically a majoritarian democracy, has had with it. But the EU does not neatly fit the model of a consensus democracy either.83 The European Commission is usually seen as a kind of European executive, but the European Council (which consists of the heads of government of EU member states) is also seen as part of the EU’s executive branch – a kind of ‘cabinet’. The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union (which consists of ministers from member states and is therefore sometimes also called the Council of Ministers) can be thought of as corresponding to the two chambers of a bicameral legislature, though if the Parliament is understood as the equivalent of the lower house, it is unusually weak.84
Within the EU, the removal of barriers to the movement of capital, goods and people has gone even further than in the rest of the world – thus requiring an even greater degree of ‘depoliticisation’ or ‘constitutionalisation’.
In recent years the EU has taken some steps towards becoming more democratic in conventional terms. In particular, the powers of the European Parliament – the one EU institution that is directly elected – have increased. Partly as a result, it can be argued that European Parliament elections are no longer the ‘second order’ elections they once were.85 In 2014 the EU introduced the Spitzenkandidaten process, in which party groupings in the European Parliament nominate a lead candidate for the position of European Commission president. In the 2019 election, turnout increased to 51 per cent.86 Nevertheless, awareness of the Spitzenkandidaten remained low even in Germany – despite the fact that it was a German term and one of the leading candidates was German.87 After the 2019 election, the EU abandoned the Spitzenkandidaten process – at least for the time being.88
Despite these changes and the increase in turnout, the structure of the EU means that debates in the European Parliament continue to take place along largely national or geographic lines on the one hand – witness the debates between Germany and France, or ‘north’ and ‘south’, on the euro, for example – and along pro-European versus anti-European lines on the other. What is still missing is the sort of debate between left and right, for example around questions of redistribution, that, at least historically, has defined national elections. The rise of Eurosceptic parties has increased tensions between member states. And it has prompted centrist parties to join forces in response, which in turn has strengthened the perception – particularly among Eurosceptics – that the EU is run by a kind of ‘cartel’.
In part because of this tendency among ‘pro-European’ parties to close ranks against Eurosceptic ones, there is no rotation between parties following elections in the way that is familiar at a national level – not just in majoritarian democracies like the UK but also in more consensual democracies like Germany. It is almost as if the EU is permanently governed by a grand coalition without an opposition except for the ‘anti-Europeans’.89 It may be that citizens of some member states – such as Austria, where grand coalitions have been the norm in post-war history – are more comfortable with this arrangement than citizens of other EU states are.90 But the danger is that it gives voters the sense that they cannot vote out the government – a key precondition of democracy, at least in the common-sense use of the term.
Although there is a relatively wide consensus about these problems with the EU, there is little agreement about how they can be solved. There are two basic views. The first is that the only way to make the EU more democratic is to ‘complete’ European integration. According to this federalist view, the European Parliament must be given greater powers so that it more closely resembles the lower house of a typical bicameral legislature.91 In this model, the Council would become a kind of upper house representing the ‘regions’ of a post-national Europe. But however desirable in principle such a new settlement might be in the eyes of its advocates, it is difficult to imagine national parliaments voting to give up much of their own power and in effect turning themselves into regional legislatures.
The opposite view is that EU member states should be re-empowered by repatriating competences back to the national level. Advocates of this approach have often pointed to the difficulty of creating a legitimate democracy at the EU level, in the absence of a common European language and therefore of a European public sphere and by extension a European demos.92 (Interestingly, however, the extraordinary development of translation software through machine learning may mean that the absence of a common language becomes less of a problem in the future.) Some even see it as a mistake to have introduced the direct election of members of the European Parliament (MEPs) in 1979. In this alternative model of a democratic EU, legitimacy would come from national parliaments rather than from the European Parliament.93
There have also been attempts to find a ‘third way’ between these two diametrically opposed views. Such attempts focus on various ways of bridging the gap between national parliaments and the EU institutions – Milward’s ‘interstices’ – and in particular on combining the greater domestic legitimacy of national parliaments with the more transnational approach of the EU institutions. Various proposals have been made about how to improve the representation and participation of the parliaments of member states in democratic institutions and politics at the EU level. For example, a group of French thinkers including the economist Thomas Piketty has recently proposed the creation of a ‘European Assembly’ that would include both MEPs and members of national parliaments.94
Updating democratic institutions and processes
Reform of democratic institutions at the national and European levels would be enormously challenging and complex. But even in the absence of such measures, much can be done to improve democratic processes. In particular, digital technology can be used to make such processes more accessible, responsive and transparent. The debate around the impact of social media obscures the way in which many democratic institutions and processes in Europe have scarcely been touched by technology that has transformed many other aspects of life. For example, speakers are still required to be physically present in debates, and there is little use of digital information and data sharing during parliamentary sessions.95
The debate around the impact of social media obscures the way in which many democratic institutions and processes in Europe have scarcely been touched by technology that has transformed many other aspects of life.
Perhaps the most obvious way in which technology can be used to update democratic processes is to introduce the option of voting online in elections – assuming, of course, that this can be done securely. Estonia has been a world leader in what it calls ‘i-voting’, which it introduced in municipal elections in 2005 and in parliamentary elections in 2007. In the 2019 parliamentary election, 44 per cent of votes were online. The option of voting online could help to increase turnout in elections. It might also particularly benefit one specific marginalized group: disabled people.96 However, there is little evidence so far to suggest that it would help include alienated voters of other kinds – for example, those who vote for populist parties. After all, in some cases older people, who may be less likely to vote online, disproportionately support such parties.
Another straightforward application of digital technology could be to increase transparency and access to information about democratic processes. A world leader in this area is e-Democracia, a Brazilian portal that aims to make the legislative process more transparent and improve citizens’ understanding of it.97 Similar attempts are under way in Europe. In 2015 the UK parliament set itself the challenge of being ‘fully interactive and digital’ by 2020, including providing more information in real time and using digital communication to explain law-making.98 Volunteer organizations such as Democracy Club also seek to provide information about democratic processes. Elsewhere in Europe, websites such as asktheeu.org and fragdenstaat.de make it easier for citizens to use freedom-of-information laws.
However, further efforts are needed to engage the public more deeply in democracy, beyond online voting and informing citizens about democratic processes. Much of the remainder of this paper examines two particular ways in which it may be possible to improve democratic engagement. Chapter 5 explores how political parties, which historically played a crucial role in mediating between citizens and the state, could be revitalized. Chapter 6 explores a range of experiments in direct and deliberative democracy that involve citizens in debate and decision-making and thus have the potential to complement and perhaps even move beyond representative democracy.
68 Lijphart, A. (1999), Patterns of Democracy. Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries, New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
69 The Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union, its Bavarian sister party, are considered here as one party.
70 A ‘semi-presidential’ system is one in which a president exists alongside a prime minister, who is dependent on the confidence of the legislature as in a parliamentary system. The term was developed in particular to describe the French Fifth Republic, established in 1958. Among European countries, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal and Romania also have semi-presidential systems.
71 The Constitutional Council has existed since the creation of the Fifth Republic in 1958. Lijphart writes that its original function was to ‘protect executive power against legislative encroachment’ – in other words, the opposite of the function of a constitutional court as normally understood. Since 1974, relatively small minorities can submit questions of constitutionality to the court, though lower courts still cannot refer cases to it. Lijphart (1999), Patterns of Democracy, pp. 213–14.
72 Ibid., Chapter 16.
73 Mair (2013), Ruling the Void, p. 19. See also Mounk (2018), The People vs. Democracy, p. 59; and Zielonka, J. (2017), Counter-Revolution: Liberal Europe in Retreat, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 43–46.
74 Mounk (2018), The People vs. Democracy, p. 60.
75 See ‘Dem Bundestag gelingt es nicht zu schrumpfen’ [The Bundestag fails to shrink], Die Zeit, 3 April 2019, https://www.zeit.de/politik/deutschland/2019-04/wahlrechtsreform-bundestag-wolfgang-schaeuble-scheitern; and Spiegel Online (2019), ‘Schäuble verlangt Bundesratsreform’ [Schäuble demands Bundesrat reform], 4 May 2019, https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/bundesrat-wolfgang-schaeuble-fordert-abstimmungsregeln-zu-aendern-a-1265762.html.
76 Mélenchon, J.-L. (2017), L’Avenir en commun. Le programme de la France insoumise et son candidat [Common future: The programme of France Insoumise and its candidate], Paris: Seuil, p. 26.
77 Graf, F. W. and Meier, H. (eds) (2018), Die Zukunft der Demokratie. Kritik und Plädoyer [The Future of Democracy: Critique and Plea], Munich: C. H. Beck, p. 9.
78 See, for example, Majone, G. (1998), ‘Europe’s Democratic Deficit’, European Law Journal, Volume 4, Issue 1, pp. 5–28; and Moravcsik, A. (2002), ‘In Defence of the “Democratic Deficit”: Reassessing Legitimacy in the European Union’, Journal of Common Market Studies, Volume 40, Issue 4, pp. 603–24.
79 Milward, A. S. (2005), ‘The European Union as a Superstate’, The International History Review, Vol. 27, No. 1, pp. 90–105, here p. 105.
80 See Mounk (2018), The People vs. Democracy, Chapter 2.
81 On depoliticization, see van Middelaar, L. (2019), Alarums & Excursions: Improvising Politics on the European Stage, Newcastle upon Tyne: Agenda Publishing, Chapter 7. Van Middelaar distinguishes between three types of depoliticization: ‘technical’, ‘constitutional’ and ‘procedural’. On constitutionalization, see Grimm, D. (2015), ‘The Democratic Costs of Constitutionalisation: The European Case’, European Law Journal, Volume 21, Issue 4.
82 Bickerton, C. (2018), ‘Beyond the European void? Reflections on Peter Mair’s legacy’, European Law Journal, Volume 24, Issue 4–5, September 2018, pp. 268–80, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/eulj.12287.
83 Lijphart (1999), Patterns of Democracy, pp. 40–45. For an illuminating discussion of the evolution and role of the various EU institutions, see van Middelaar (2019), Alarums & Excursions, Chapter 6.
84 See Lijphart (1999), Patterns of Democracy, p. 41. To complicate matters further, the Council of Ministers also has executive functions. See van Middelaar (2019), Alarums & Excursions, Chapter 6.
85 Reif, K. and Schmitt, M. (1980), ‘Nine Second-Order National Elections – A Conceptual Framework for the Analysis of European Election Results’, European Journal of Political Research, Volume 8, Issue 1, pp. 3–44.
86 European Parliament (2019), ‘Elections 2019: highest turnout in 20 years’, news release, 27 May 2019, http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/headlines/eu-affairs/20190523STO52402/elections-2019-highest-turnout-in-20-years. On the 2019 elections, see also Youngs, R. (2019), ‘Democracy after the European Parliament elections’, Centre for European Policy Studies, 17 June 2019, https://www.ceps.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/PI2019_10_RY_Democracy-after-the-European-Parliament-elections-1.pdf.
87 YouGov (2019), ‘Europawahl: Jeder Zweite kennt keinen der deutschen Spitzenkandidaten’ [European election: One in two voters does not know any of the German Spitzenkandidaten], 24 April 2019, https://yougov.de/news/2019/04/24/europawahl-ist-fur-wahler-deutlich-weniger-wichtig/.
88 However, two Spitzenkandidaten, Frans Timmermans and Margarete Vestager, did become vice-presidents of the European Commission following the election.
89 On the absence of opposition in the EU, see Mair, P. (2017), ‘Political Opposition and the European Union’, Government and Opposition, Volume 42, Issue 1, 2017, pp. 1–17, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/government-and-opposition/article/political-opposition-and-the-european-union-1/7C9AEB444CBFE3FF85AE655C9CD4DD93; and van Middelaar (2019), Alarums & Excursions, Chapter 7.
90 Grand coalitions – that is, coalitions of the two largest parties – have governed Austria for over half of its post-war history. Grand coalitions have also been frequent in Belgium, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Switzerland. On the ‘democratic dysfunctions’ that can result from the extended use of grand coalitions, see Jacoby, W. (2017), ‘Grand Coalitions and Democratic Dysfunction: Two Warnings from Central Europe’, Government and Opposition, Volume 52, Issue 2, pp. 329–55, https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/government-and-opposition/article/grand-coalitions-and-democratic-dysfunction-two-warnings-from-central-europe/DA79E0E2EBB11CD8A11E2EF93306A875.
91 See, for example, Guérot, U. (2019), Warum Europa eine Republik werden muss! Eine politische Utopie [Why Europe must become a republic. A political utopia], Bonn: Dietz.
92 See, for example, Miller, D. (2015), ‘A Plea for Pluralism’, in van Middelaar, L. and Van Parijs, P. (eds) (2015), After the Storm. How to Save Democracy in Europe, Tielt: Lannoo, pp. 181–88, here p. 186.
93 See, for example, Jörke, D. (2019), Die Größe der Demokratie [The size of democracy], Berlin: Suhrkamp.
94 Henette, S., Piketty, T., Sacriste, G. and Vauchez, G. (2019), How to Democratize Europe, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. The book was originally published in French as Pour un traité de democratization de I’Europe [For a treaty to democratize Europe], Paris: Seuil. See also the authors’ ‘Manifesto for the Democratization of Europe’, available at http://tdem.eu/en/manifesto/.
95 See Simon, J., Bass, T., Boelman, V. and Mulgan, G. (2017), Digital Democracy. The tools transforming political engagement, London: Nesta, p. 8, https://media.nesta.org.uk/documents/digital_democracy.pdf.
96 See Chowdhury, A. (2018), ‘Online voting: fantasy or future?’, Commission on Democracy and Technology in Europe, Chatham House, 24 October 2018, https://demtech.chathamhouse.org/online-voting-fantasy-or-future/.
97 See Simon, Bass, Boelman and Mulgan (2017), Digital Democracy, pp. 19–23.
98 Digital Democracy Commission (2015), Open Up! Report of the Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy, 26 January 2015, p. 7, http://www.digitaldemocracy.parliament.uk/documents/Open-Up-Digital-Democracy-Report.pdf. For updates on the progress towards this goal, see Speaker’s Commission on Digital Democracy (undated), https://www.parliament.uk/business/commons/the-speaker/speakers-commission-on-digital-democracy/.