ABSTRACT
What about normative theory, and how does it work alongside these usages? As mentioned, this has not been the main motivation in the existing literature. However, exceptions exist and are qualitatively important. There are those who see the OMC as an invariable mechanism of EU political renewal based on deliberative democracy and experimental governance (Sabel and Zeitlin 2010), and those who see it as being problematic because it is intrinsically undemocratic (Kro¨ger 2007) and ineffective (Idema and Kelemen 2006). But, we argue, the OMC has to be rescued from this polarized debate, which offers only somehow rather fixed views and appraisals, without considering variation in usages nor the different normative principles of democratic theories. The role of the OMC in EU governance is related to the multilevel nature of
EUs constitutional order (Bolleyer and Bo¨rzel 2010). Demoi-cratic theory takes this multilevel governance dimension as a starting point, and reasons about the need of balancing the rights of statespeoples and of individual citizens by respecting their respective constituent powers, and by not discriminating one against the other (Cheneval and Schimmelfennig 2013). The recognition of demoi-cracy as a third way (Nicolaı¨dis 2013) also pushes towards the reinforcement the demoi-based channels of representation and participation (Bellamy and Castiglione 2013). This, however, is a difficult balancing act, navigating in the hard democratic dilemmas in a multilevel order (Hurrelmann and DeBardeleben 2009). Yet, by recognizing different interlinked usages, we immediately face a chal-
lenge for the analysis of the OMC contribution to the development and consolidation of this multilevel order and, most importantly, its demoi-cratic nature. This is so because these different usages tend to put some more emphasis on one aspect or another. In turn, this affects the balance between state-level autonomy and EU-level citizens’ rights and, in particular, in terms of strengthening or not the third-way dimension of demoi-representation (Bellamy and Castiglione 2013; see below). The question of the democratic and demoi-cratic credentials of the OMC is
crucial for two reasons. Firstly, the method was created outside the traditional framework of legislative procedures as a pragmatic response to actual needs and problems and to handle sensitive redistributive areas. These needs and problems could not be addressed through traditional means of the Community method owing to the lack of political willingness to transfer further legislative powers to the EU. Put differently, the creation of the OMC has to be seen as the fruit of executive politics, rather than of legislative politics, when searching to co-ordinate the solution of national problems at the national level. Secondly, the open method was created as an explicit attempt to introduce more participatory procedures in cross-national policy-making in the EU. The ‘openness’ of this new open method referred to its aspirations to govern in a direct relation/ interaction with those being governed. These two features, its executive anchorage at the national level and its direct-participatory aspirations, earmarked the optimistic views on this method when it was created. It was not shortly after its creation that critical voices pointed at these two features as being intrinsically
complex (multi-level, multi-sector, horizontal) forms of political interactions in the EU as a composed political order. For that reason, they are our analytical yardstick to assess the actual demoi-cratic credentials of the EU polity. This is particularly relevant for our current endeavour to study the extent to which the OMC has contributed to fulfil this demoi-cratic perspective in the EU polity, as well as its own aspirations to bring EU policy-making closer to its citizens without transferring further legislative powers to Brussels.
