PART I
Theory and History of EU Citizenship
CHAPTER 1
Towards a Critical History
Introduction
The growing importance of citizenship within the EU political arena has been paralleled by a surge of academic interest in its subject matter (see e.g. Rosas and Antola 1995; Wiener 1998; Bellamy and Warleigh 2001; Bellamy, Castiglione and Shaw 2006; Maas 2007). What stands out within this wide-ranging, and ever-growing, body of literature has been the diverse range of social scientific fields, from philosophy and sociology to industrial relations and gender studies, that have grappled with the extension of EU supranational (or as some would have it “post-national”) competencies in the realm of citizenship, and the implications this has for contemporary European societies. Yet for all this diversity in disciplinary terms, the study of EU citizenship is still dominated heavily by a narrow set of theoretical frameworks which take the current political parameters of EU citizenship as given, either endorsing it as a progressive model or seeking to correct what are regarded to be more or less surmountable institutional deficiencies in citizenship practice. Drawing inspiration from van Apeldoorn, Overbeek and Ryner’s (2003) critique of mainstream integration theories, we argue here that although these approaches are not necessarily uninterested in issues of power and legitimacy, their very conceptual designs render them inherently unable to explain the contradictions between citizenship practice and principles of legitimacy which are at the heart of the EU’s currently unfolding legitimacy crisis (see Introduction).
Accessing these dynamics, we suggest, therefore requires that analyses of EU citizenship go beyond narrow concerns with normative prescription and institutional problem solving, and instead take up the central problématique that unites a varied set of approaches within the theoretical tradition of critical political economy: “to understand the nature of power in the EU, including its organization and distribution, and to access the implications of a given set of power relations for legitimacy” (van Apeldoorn, Overbeek and Ryner 2003: 17). In attempting to historically uncover the “social purpose” of EU integration, who benefits from it, and what kind of polity it seeks to promote, critical political economy has the potential to contribute unique insights describing not only how EU citizenship has been limited in securing legitimacy, but also to explain why this has been the case (Holman 2004; van Apeldoorn 2002). Essential to this explanatory critical-historical framework is the examination of capitalist market structures in engendering asymmetrical power relations, which crucially shape the content of citizenship politics.
To this point, however, save for a few book chapters and conference papers, there has been no systematic attempt to develop a critical political economy approach to EU citizenship. In this chapter we aim to begin filling this void in the literature by outlining the ways in which critical political economy contributes to our understandings of citizenship politics in the EU. In developing what we prefer to call a “critical history”—shorthand for this book’s application of critical political economy insights to the long-term history of citizenship in the EU since the early 1950s—the central purpose here is to intervene in the existing literature by rendering explicit the social purpose of EU citizenship within the EU as a hybrid, but nevertheless capitalist, form of statehood (Jessop 2002). Before proceeding to outline this alternative approach in detail, we begin by first fleshing out our conceptual critique of what we broadly identify as the predominant theoretical approaches to EU citizenship. Considering the enormous body of work already existing in this area, any attempt to review and critique this literature in its entirety within the space allocated here would tend toward caricature. We choose here to focus on the debates and issues surrounding two theoretical perspectives that we argue to be most significant in regards to EU citizenship: namely, the moral philosophical approach known as “post-national cosmopolitanism,” and the legalist-institutionalist approach with affinities to the “multilevel governance” approach to EU integration.
“Post-National Cosmopolitanism” and EU Citizenship
Is it desirable, or even possible, for legitimate and democratic citizenship to function outside the confines of the nation-state? Should EU citizenship be endorsed as the basis for a progressive post-national European identity? These are the main questions that have concerned approaches to EU citizenship falling within the moral philosophical tradition, which involves competing interpretations of the European “demos,” its possibilities, ethical implications, and consequences for traditional political concepts associated with the nation-state. By far the most influential theoretical perspective on EU citizenship within moral philosophy has been “post-national cosmopolitanism” (hereafter PNC), also referred to as “cosmopolitan democracy”.1 As a normative theoretical perspective located within the tradition of “Kantian-Habermasian critical theory” (Patomäki 2006: 116), PNC seeks to advance an academic and political project of an “international system based on the rule of law and democracy” and respect for universallyrecognized human rights (Archibugi and Koenig-Archibugi 2003: 273). PNC holds that in an era of “globalization,” defined as the “transcontinental or interregional flows and networks of activity, interaction and power” (Held, interviewed by Guibernau 2001: 427), new constraints have been placed on the nation-state, which increasingly serve as barriers to, rather than as facilitators of, effective political cooperation and democratic participation.2
As a result, PNC prescribes the establishment of new democratic institutions at the local, regional and global levels, to accommodate and politically harness the diffusion of power across the different levels at which it is exercised. Crucially, the formation of a multilayered democratic world order would require the establishment of a universal form of political membership based upon “global citizenship” (Falk 2000; Carter 2001), with the rights and obligations of global civil society and global institutions being based on civil, political, economic, social, and reproductive rights (Held 1991; see also Held 2006). PNC scholarship has been engaged in efforts to assess existing regional and global institutions to serve as prospective “models” for the establishment of an alternative world order.
According to the criteria set by PNC, the EU represents “the last politically effective utopia” (Beck and Grande 2007: 2), and the “the only normatively satisfactory alternative . . . an alternative that points to a cosmopolitan order sensitive to both difference and social inequality” (Habermas 2001a: xix, cited in Manners 2007: 81). In this way the institutional setup of the EU serves as a nascent cosmopolitan polity, and a blueprint for further development:
The first international organization which begins to resemble the cosmopolitan model is the European Union. Its members are in fact sovereign states which have voluntarily transferred increasingly broad tasks (from coal and steel policy to human rights) to the Union. . . . The centripetal force of the European Union is even greater than that of the United States, which has extended geographically without absorbing culturally heterogeneous communities. From the constitutional point of view, it is extremely significant that intergovernmental institutions such as the Council of Ministers are now backed by technical institutions such as the Commission, and even by a body directly elected by citizens, such as the European Parliament. The principle of subsidiarity has allowed European institutions to intervene in selected policy areas of member countries. Seen from a global perspective, the European Union is an experiment of great importance. We can only hope that it will be imitated by other regional organizations, be it the Union of African Unity or the Organization of American States. At the same time, the European Union offers interesting cues for a possible reform of the United Nations and the setting up of new institutions (Archibugi 1998: 219–220).