ABSTRACT
At the beginning of this book the question was raised whether the diagnosis that governance has extended beyond the state into society (at the global as well as at the domestic level) can be interpreted positively. Or more precisely: can democratic self-determination be redefined and extended into society beyond the limited realm of statehood? This question leads inevitably to a challenge of one of the fundamental premises or common ideas of democracy: that democracy is strongly linked with a concept of statehood which is in turn associated with territoriality. In other words, territorial units stand out due to the characteristic that, within them, individual people are able to see each other and themselves as equals in determining the binding co-ordination of their (inter)actions. This is the essence of territorial interest intermediation based on voting and elections as well as the option of co-ordinating (inter)actions by majoritarian decisions. Through voting, majoritarian decisions can be either taken on factual issues directly (direct democracy) or indirectly through the decisions of elected representatives or representative bodies. The results of majoritarian decisions lead to tangible policy contents and procedural rules of self-determination which programme the legitimate use of physical force by the state in order to secure the co-ordination of (inter)actions. This co-ordination is enacted by the legitimate use of physical force in hierarchical form through the actions of public administration and the judiciary. There are two essential elements of the contents and procedural rules for the co-ordination of (inter)actions to be secured by legitimate use of physical force. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain the opportunities for self-determination as an individual right; on the other, it is equally important to grant individuals the right to control the agreed hierarchical coordination of (inter)actions by executive and judicial bodies. Because (i) elections to representative bodies take place periodically and (ii) direct majoritarian decisions can be taken (where they exist) whenever it is seen as appropriate by the affected community, self-determination is open to change. This is the image of both representative and direct democracy – as well as of democratically bound political domination. Despite the familiar problems of representation – already defined by early representatives of elite theory (see Mosca 1939; Pareto 1991; Michels 1999) and illustrated by recent empirical studies (see, for example, Norris 1997a; 1997b) – this image still prevails in political
discussion as well as in the scholarly debate. In addition, fundamental objections have been raised about direct democracy – both conceptually (as already in the ‘Federalist Papers’, see Hamilton et al. 1989) and empirically (for overviews, see Möckli 1994; Abromeit 2003). It should also be emphasized that the ideas of democracy discussed above are grounded in a demanding precondition – namely that minorities (or the minority) accept the decisions of the majority. In the past two decades there have been several examples of ‘failing states’ where the sector of territorial interest intermediation has been eroded because minorities defined by ethnic, cultural and/or religious characteristics were no longer willing to subordinate themselves to decisions of the majority underpinned by the state. However, it is not only in such ‘extreme cases’ that the precondition that minorities should accept the decisions of the majority turns out to be problematic. The same applies in a number of Western European countries in which regionalist movements are questioning the legitimate use of physical force based on the democratic decisions of the majority of citizens (see Keating 1998). An effective and historically demonstrable means to solve this problem is the formation of a federal system (see Dahl and Tufte 1973: 37). In this system, territorial sub-units acquire self-legislation and self-administration powers in particular policy areas and at the national level a second parliamentary chamber is introduced for which the principle of ‘one person – one vote’ for the allocation of seats is not followed. This breach of the strict majority rule in federal systems goes hand in hand with a strengthening of bargaining-based forms of co-ordinating interactions emerging from veto points created by federalization (see Abromeit and Stoiber 2006: 79, with reference to Tsebelis 1995).1 These critical reflections on the prevailing model of democracy, as well as the common criticism of political parties as the essential mediators in the sector of territorial interest intermediation, are not taken further in this chapter. Rather, prevailing assumptions about conditions and limits of the model of democracy outlined are analysed in order to address them constructively and to avoid the conclusion that the ‘golden age of democracy’ is over and that of a ‘postdemocracy’ is dawning. The next sections refer to assumptions about conditions and limits of effective self-determination linked to the territorial notion of democratic selfgovernment as well as of statehood (Section 6.1). These have been the central reference points for the debate on ‘size and democracy’. Furthermore, based on the debate on ‘size and democracy’, key characteristics of a flexible political geometry in the context of multi-level systems are outlined and contrasted with structures of democratic self-government based on territoriality. The challenges for effective and at the same time legitimate forms of governance embedded in a flexible political geometry are then discussed with reference to metropolitan governance (in Section 6.2). Referring to Wirth’s (1956) definition of ‘urbanism as a way of life’ a picture of democratic self-governing is sketched out linked to the images of what makes up the distinctiveness of the city (or polis; Section 6.3). By defining ‘a city [. . .] as a relatively large, dense, and permanent settle-
ment of socially heterogeneous individuals’ (Wirth 1956: 116; see also 117-18), density, heterogeneity, the ‘number of population’ and durability of interactions can be seen as key characteristics of the city as an ideal type of community to which a particular notion of democratic self-governing is related. Based on these reflections the question is addressed if such a conceptualization of the city and its specific forms of community formation can be helpful in thinking further about forms of community formation beyond the city and, in particular, beyond the nation state. To clarify specific political structures linked to statehood, the views of Nullmeier are taken (in Section 6.4) to separate the notion of statehood from territoriality and to contrast ‘territorial statehood’ with ‘functional statehood’. At the end of the chapter, this analysis is applied to the EU as a particular political unit characterized by a multi-level structure.
