ABSTRACT
This contribution has brought the demoi-cratic perspective into the analysis of the OMC. We argued that demoi-cracy is particularly well suited to examining how a given mode of governance respects or violates principles concerning the rights of statespeople and individual citizens in a multi-demoi polity. To gain analytical leverage from the theory of demoi-cracy, we have matched
four normative principles with three main interrelated usages of the OMC; that is, to converge, to learn instrumentally and to explore. This has allowed us to provide a nuanced appraisal of whether the OMC violates demoi-cratic standards or respects them. We have drawn on some exemplary studies that (at least indirectly) provide information on what we called ‘demoi-cratic channels’ to populate the cells of our typology. It is frankly impossible to draw broad conclusion across the three usages. This is because the studies we reviewed were carried out in different periods of development of the OMC and their research designs were not informed by the perspective of demoi-cracy. Future research should bring demoi-cracy to the forefront of research design and overcome the limitations of our approach.We offer two broad conclusions. First, to paraphrase Theodor Lowi, the nature of strategic interaction in individual policy domains (and arguably even within a given domain, see Harcourt [2013]) generates its own politics when it comes to demoi-cratic criteria. The configuration of policy arenas is key to understand demoi-cratic politics in theOMC. In this contribution we have identified three different OMC usages in policy areas. Our argument is that these OMC policy usages need to be seen in relation to the demoi-cratic criteria. Second, the demoi-cratic quality of the OMC hinges on the demoi-cratic quality of domestic institutions. Facilitated co-ordination alters the domestic opportunity structure – e.g., in some policy areas NGOs can exploit new opportunities for domestic influences – but cannot generate democratic quality when domestic institutions perform poorly on this dimension. Thinking of the likely evolution in the future, the emerging architecture of
the Eurozone poses two challenges to facilitated co-ordination. First, the current emphasis on hardening the euro’s economic governance skews usages towards what we called ‘convergence’ – our most hierarchical, push-down type. This usage is suitable only when the ‘solution’ to collective problems is known. However, the nature of the current crisis has shown that these ‘solutions’ are far from being pre-given or known ex ante, and that there are important differences across eurozone countries in terms of the nature of ‘their’ crises. Consequently, to abandon or to reduce the interrelated usages of ‘exploration’ and ‘instrumental learning’ is in our view premature and counterproductive. This is so because the high levels of uncertainty as to the way out and the future direction of the financial and economic crisis, the social impact of the measures taken (Barnard 2012), as well as of the needed structural reforms at the domestic level. Here lies the second challenge: demoi-cratic legitimacy. Increased condition-
ality and sanctioning mechanisms put pressure to the demoi-cratic nature of
More complex is the issue of demo(i)cratic credentials in convergence OMCs. First of all, we found only a few empirical studies on democracy in this type, and second, they implicitly see the democratic credentials as related to output legitimacy. In the following we examine both issues. Early studies on multilateral surveillance discussed variables such as consensus-building and peer pressure, but those are not necessarily democratically anchored (Hodson 2004). More recent research argues that the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines did not work because the mechanisms for peer pressure were not well organized and had limited acceptance in domestic political arenas (Hodson 2011). Since peer pressure failed, some participation of national stakeholders may be a precondition for effectiveness and legitimacy. Turning to the parliamentary involvement, the jury is out on how effective-
ness of parliamentary exchanges and legitimacy standards blend in the European Semester (Hallerberg et al. 2011). The latter provides ex-ante guidance to (and monitoring of) member states, so that they can gradually align fiscal policy and structural reforms. National Members of Parliaments’ (MPs) views on whether or not to involve the European Parliament in the definition of the European Semester depend on their own strength in the national context – weakly involved national parliaments wishing more the European Parliament involvement at the EU level (ibid.). To understand these findings, we recall that in the convergence OMCs,
decisions have a high degree of relevance and consequences for those being governed because the targets are very clear and quasi-mandatory. This is a type of cross-national co-ordination where convergence becomes a goal to be achieved through a combination of relatively voluntary processes and strong sanctioning mechanisms, all of them operating in a context of deep macroeconomic interdependencies and exposure to the mood of financial markets. In this case, the exercise of democratic interdependence of the different demoi ‘calls for a focus on the responsibilities that peoples owe one another without turning those into statist-type obligations’ (Nicolaidis 2013: 356). This is naturally quite difficult to achieve, as typified by the current political turmoil around the eurozone management of the economic and financial crisis. These crises have exposed structural weaknesses in the state capacity of more than one eurozone country, as well as the vulnerability and synergetic aspects of the democratic interdependencies in the EU (Nicolaidis 2013). But above all, they have revealed that the decisions taken by OMC convergence processes in the area of macroeconomic governance have legitimacy problems, especially when the demoi perceive the costs and benefits of these decisions in very different ways. The increased conditionality of the emerging eurozone architecture since 2010 aims at improving these structures, but will not diminish the differentiated views among European demoi of who takes the pain (Begg 2013). This puts the legitimacy of the eurozone at the forefront of demoi-cratic order
of the European Union, especially considering the increased role in economic governance accorded to EU-level institutions.
