ABSTRACT
Recent and dramatic events in Ukraine support the assumption that the fundamental crisis of democracy we face cannot be defined and confined by the boundaries of the nation state and national politics. Accordingly, the nation state cannot be considered the exclusive unit of analysis or framework for civic participation any longer. Furthermore, national governments prove to be increasingly less capable of delivering on their promises to their national constituencies, and do not have the capacity to defend, protect or support their societies vis-à-vis robust and uncontrolled global markets, environmental catastrophes, legal and illegal migration or organized international crime. As a consequence, people feel less and less safe in the world. There is, therefore, much need for what is called regional and global governance. The weakness and ineffectiveness of international and global organizations is well known. The EU was seen as a model and solution for regional governance up until it, too, came under pressure from severe, multilevel and interdependent crises. Instead of creating new frames and enabling institutions, including civil societies at the regional and transnational level, the EU, by its very nature an elite-driven project, has undermined and emptied out national democracies at least since the outbreak of the financial crisis. Paradoxically, it has remained a magnet for outsiders, especially in its southern and eastern peripheries where people identify a better, more dignified life with ‘Europe’, as Ukraine’s second revolution within a decade has proven. Ukrainians were protesting, marching and dying for three months against their corrupt, tyrannical and ineffective post-Soviet state, seeing in ‘Europe’ the antipode of their past and an alternative to their present and future.
