Erik Oddvar Eriksen

Democracy through Strong Publics in the European Union

This article explores the democratizing role of strong publics, which are institutionalized bodies of deliberation and decision-making. Strong publics are important to modern democracy as they subject decision-making to justificatory debate. This article evaluates selected aspects of the institutional nexus of the EU in order to see if they qualify as strong publics. The focus is on comitology, the European Parliament and the Charter Convention. These bodies vary in their status as strong publics, but to various degrees they all inject the logic of impartial justification and reason-giving into the EU system.

An emerging European public sphere

The development of post-national democracy in Europe depends on the emergence of an overarching communicative space that functions as a public sphere. But can there be a public sphere when there is no collective identity? Despite the fact that the European Union (EU) is neither a state nor a nation its development as a new kind of polity is closely connected to the formation of a common communicative space. In this article it is argued that European cooperation and problem solving create public spaces but has not (as of yet) produced a single, general European public sphere. Rather what one finds are transnational, segmented publics evolving around policy networks constituted by the common interest in certain policy fields. They are found wanting with regard to political justification intrinsic to the democratic principle that requires a general non-exclusive public sphere. The EU also harbours many legally institutionalized discourses - strong publics - that are specialized on collective will-formation close to the centre of the political system and which have been promoters of democratic reforms.

Europe in Search of Legitimacy: Strategies of Legitimation Assessed

In this article, we assess three explicit strategies (based on three logics of political integration) as possible solutions to the European Union’s legitimacy problems. The first strategy amounts to a scaling down of the ambitions of the polity-makers in the European Union (EU). The second strategy emphasizes the need to deepen the collective self-understanding of Europeans. These two modes of legitimation figure strongly in the debate on aspects of the EU, but both have become problematic. The third strategy concentrates on the need to readjust and heighten the ambitions of the polity-makers so as to make the EU into a federal multicultural union founded on basic rights and democratic decision-making procedures. Taking stock of the ongoing constitution-making process, the authors ask how robust such an alternative is and how salient it is, as opposed to the other two strategies.

The unfinished democratization of Europe

There is a tension between democracy, which is limited to the nation-state, and human rights, which are universal and point to the ideal republic. The Charter of Fundamental Human Rights of the European Union is an important step in the process of institutionalising a framework of a cosmopolitan order where violations of human rights can be persecuted as criminal offences according to legal procedures. The principle of popular sovereignty is on its way to be transformed into a law for the citizens of the world. But as the process of Europeansation is tainted with juridification and executive dominance the EU is in need of democratization. The citizens have obtained rights but they have not been able to give these rights to themselves. The protracted Constitution-making process of the EU testifies to a promising yet unaccomplished mission of democratization.

Developing a Constitution for Europe

Prologue Bruce Ackerman Chapter 1 Introduction: A Constitution in the Making? Chapter 2 Why Europe Needs a Constitution, Jurgen Habermas: Chapter 3: On the Right to Self-Government, Erik O. Eriksen Chapter 4 Human Rights, Constitutionalism and Integration: Iconography and Fetishism, Joseph H. H. Weiler Chapter 5 Treaty or Constitution? The legal basis of the European Union after Maastricht, Dieter Grimm Chapter 6: A Polity without a State? European Constitutionalism between Evolution and Revolution, Hauke Brunkhorst Chapter 7 Three Conceptions of the European Constitution, Agustin Jose Menendez Chapter 8 The Politics of Law and the Law of Politics - Two Constitutional Traditions in Europe, Christoph Mollers Chapter 9 Wille zur Verfassung, or the Constitutional State in Europe, Massimo La Torre Chapter 10 Law, Economics and Politics in the Constitutionalisation of Europe, Christian Joerges and Michelle Everson Chapter 11 The Convention Method and the Transformation of EU Constitutional Politics, Carlos Closa Chapter 12 Deliberation or Bargaining? Coping with Constitutional Conflicts in the Convention on the Future of Europe, Paul Magnette Chapter 13 Still a Union of deep diversity? The Convention and the Constitution for Europe, John E. Fossum

The EU – a cosmopolitan polity?

Abstract The parameters of power politics have changed in Europe and the EU exports the rule of law, democracy and human rights worldwide. The criteria for judging the politys normative quality may be derived from cosmopolitanism, i.e. whether it subjects its actions to the constraints of a higher ranking law. The author establishes this criteria, its theoretical and institutional underpinnings, and provisionally assesses whether the EU in fact complies with it. We may question whether the EUs external foreign and security policy is actually consistent with cosmopolitan tenets but we need an approach that does not rule this out as a logical possibility. We thus need a theoretical approach that does not predetermine the answer to the question of what order is possible as do realism as well as idealism.

Reflexive Integration in Europe

Integration may occur through coercion and intergovernmental bargaining - through blackmail, tradition, functional adaptation, copying, diffusion or exit - but it may also occur through reflexive reason-giving and entrenched commitments. The usefulness of such an approach to transnational and supranational systems of governance is due to the fact that such entities lack compliance mechanisms such as majority vote and a collective identity. I find however that deliberation has to be supplemented with law and trust as resources for collective action. Problem-solving as a decision-making mechanism needs to be complemented with institutionalised forms of collective goal attainment and impartial conflict resolution. This constitutes the basis for delineating four stylized polity models of the EU.

Leadership in a Communicative Perspective

In analyzing a reform process at a Norwegian hospital, a central finding was that successful leadership depends upon actors assuming a communicative mode of interaction. This contradicts the instrumental view of leadership underlying the New Public Management approach, whose emphasis is on efficiency and goal achievement through employment of external sanctions. How can it be that leaders who give priority to reaching common understandings rather than on realizing specific goals are more successful? The unique feature of communicative leadership is its focus on legitimacy, which is achieved through rational conducted deliberation aimed at solving problems and resolving conflicts. This article depicts the varying organizational conditions favoring communicative leadership, such as decentralization, co-decision-making, and team-leadership. More specifically, delegation, reduced span of control, and dispersion of power are among the factors that contribute to a communicative mode of coordination.

The classical and relativistic concepts of mass

An elementary presentation is given of classical and relativistic collision dynamics based upon the principle of conservation of momentum. The concepts of mass are shown to be implicitly defined and their basic properties are rigorously derived and discussed. Luxons and tachyons are treated on the same footing as material particles.

Properties of Higher‐Order Commutator Products and the Baker‐Hausdorff Formula

The element z = log exey, which is known to be an element of the Lie‐algebra generated by x and y, is expressed as a commutator series in x and y with coefficients given in terms of certain fixed polynomials. The result is given explicitly to sixth order. Useful recurrence relations are obtained. The method is based on certain properties of higher‐order commutator products, particularly their idempotent character.