Empowering European Citizens but Avoiding Illusionary Promises!
Sandra Seubert (Goethe University Frankfurt)
Can European Citizens’ Assemblies (ECAs) bring European democracy forward? No doubt, they can offer a constructive response to challenges of representative democracy, in particular on a European scale. But electoral forms of democracy are not as worn out as suggested. The “democratic angst: do citizens care at all?” has not been confirmed in the last European elections. The increase in voter turnout since 2014 has not been reversed, but stabilised at a (relatively) high(er) level. However, the rise of far-right parties is alarming and indicates persistent need for reform. ECAs, if carefully embedded in the EU’s institutional infrastructure, can play a role here. Yes, they should be institutionalised as routinised events, but not as a permanent body, as Kalypso Nicolaidis’ proposal seems to suggest. There is a serious risk that a permanent assembly promises more than it can deliver and gets in destructive rivalry to caricature-like representations of electoral democracy.
A distorted image of electoral politics
Although Nicolaidis frequently stresses that a permanent ECA would strengthen progressive forces in the European Parliament, her text nevertheless shows a tendency of devaluating parliamentary processes and presenting assemblies chosen by lot as symbols of real (!) democracy. They are contrasted with a well-known image of electoral politics: out-of-touch elites that hardly represent the people. Representation is unavoidably aristocratic (Manin, 2010), elections produce social selectivity rather than political equality. Thus, parliaments and governments cannot pretend to represent the “whole society”. A permanent ECA is better in realising “descriptive representation” (Pitkin, 1972) in the sense of representativeness, i.e. mirroring society as a whole. It is supposed to make “non-elitist participation” possible.
No doubt, citizens’ assemblies can function as a tool to fight the enclosure of power (Landemore, 2020), open-up encrusted party structures, overcome selective non-participation and potentially increase inclusivity. But what does it take to make citizens’ assemblies chosen by lot really more inclusive than electoral procedures? How can they give equal consideration to all interests? These questions are not easy to answer. True representativeness would demand mandatory participation which is difficult to realise in liberal democracies. Nevertheless, representational inclusion can approximately be achieved if the procedure for drawing lots is arranged in a way that all affected social strata take part. In order to avoid that the problem of self-selection, which is observed in elections, repeats itself, special measures can be taken, e.g. over-representing minorities and disadvantaged groups. But there is a problem sneaking in here: according to which ascriptions, do we measure representativeness? This is, as Nicolaidis frankly admits, far from evident and itself a political question.
Much depends on the details of institutional design. Nicolaidis underlines the experimental character and suggests an itinerant body of around 300 members, rotating every six months and travelling around Europe, meeting with local actors, thus contributing to a pan-European participatory ecosystem. In her perspective, the strength of citizens chosen by lot is emphasised by the fact that they do not represent any party interest and do not pursue a party career. Due to rotation, “special interests, lobbies and factions do not have enough time to capture them”. Disconnecting politics from power is supposed to be a key to fighting corruption. But aren’t mediation of interests and gaining power as inherent to politics as reasoning and persuasion? Suggesting these phenomena should be completely excluded in the assemblies promotes a problematic image of “unpolitical democracy” (Urbinati, 2014). How are citizens supposed to get on an equal footing with the powerful players and gain the necessary professional expertise? How are citizens in the assembly supposed to be able to keep powerful interests in check? Professional politicians have an advantage here. “[I]f citizens can literally see power diffused, they might start to believe they own a share in it”, says Nicolaidis. But will a permanent ECA, so designed, really be a locus of power? I doubt it.
On a conceptual level, juxtaposing “electoral democracy” and “deliberative democracy” is misleading. In Habermas’ account (to which Nicolaidis refers), the concept of deliberative politics is overarching any specific institutional embodiments. Habermas explicitly includes parliamentary bodies – in fact, as “strong publics” they bear the main burden of mediating different interests. Nicolaidis’ justification suggests an unfortunate dichotomy and tends to promote a distorted image of electoral politics that is questionable and can finally lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy (a logic that e.g. Sebastian Haffner observed in the declining Weimar Republic: Once the contempt for elected politicians has become pervasive, one will hardly find anyone entering this contested business but precisely those despicable figures).
Concealing the power of experts
Equalising representation by introducing a sortition-based citizens’ assembly does not by itself lead to equalising voice and consideration. Providing equal access to information and moderating deliberation so that different perspectives can be articulated is a difficult challenge. That is why, in all experiments with citizens’ assemblies, the role of experts becomes a crucial issue.
It is generally agreed that in order to give a constructive response to the malaise of electoral democracy, citizens’ assemblies must meet certain criteria: apart from representational inclusion, this is above all, high-quality deliberation and systemic efficacy (Merkel/Milacic/Schäfer 2021; Abels et al., 2022). The particular legitimacy of citizens’ assemblies is linked to their presumed epistemic advantage compared to traditional representation: a form of deliberation that is distanced from party competition and political marketing. In order to achieve high quality deliberation, the internal communication process must be organised and facilitated in a way that all participants can interact as equals. Organisational committees, advisory boards, professional partners from the private sector – a whole range of actors come in here. These professionals are responsible for organising the procedures, prepare information, provide support in the selection of experts etc. It is striking that their role is hardly discussed in the proposal. If traditional representative democracy is accused of providing incentives for manipulation and control of information by the “elites” it would be fair to concede that this is an issue in citizens’ assemblies as well. A whole consulting business has emerged to support the organisation of participatory democracy (Krick, 2022, 2023). Professional advisors are not only responsible for the institutional set-up of citizens’ assemblies but also for producing effective results because this is what they are paid for.
Many experiments have proven that in order to achieve effective results citizens’ assemblies must not only follow a precise design, but should also feature a binding, transparent set of targets. In order to avoid frustration, an ECA’s mission must be precisely defined. In Nicolaidis’ proposal the ECA’s tasks seem very wide and at the same time rather restricted. They reach from “contributing to agenda-setting for the EU”, via “translation of debates taking part in the European Parliament” to “scrutiny-related tasks to monitor the implementation of decisions”. The assembly has above all a “monitoring role”; it is supposed to complement the European Parliament but there is no clear interinstitutional connection.
The talk about of the monopolisation of power by “elites” obscures power asymmetries between and within European institutions. There is a huge discrepancy between legislative and executive competencies when it comes to political decisions on a European scale. The real malaise of European democracy lies in the dominance of national executives. When it comes to veto power and majority decisions in the Council, the alleged national interest, unfortunately, often consists merely of powerful domestic interests (e.g. national key industries). This tends to be concealed by the generalising diagnoses about “elite” politics.
The problem of legitimation rivalry
If citizens’ assemblies are associated with a myth of directness and as apparently unmediated deliberative institutions are contrasted with the supposedly alienating logic of electoral democracy, they are likely to enter into a legitimising rivalry with the parliamentary process. Such a rivalry can further de-legitimise parliamentary procedures and encourage the executive branch to employ ECAs as top-down, technocratic modes of governance. Quasi-publics selected by lot bring a new logic into the representative system. This creates tensions which might well be productive. Nevertheless, there are two dangers lurking here: if citizens’ assemblies are too smoothly embedded in the institutional system, they can easily be instrumentalised and merely serve as a legitimacy-producing tool. On the other hand, if they keep a clear distance from power, the prize to be paid is the lack of influence on politics. In order to keep their promise, European citizens’ assemblies must navigate between these two poles. They should be embedded in the institutional architecture as an autonomous and influential factor and connect very clearly to the EU policy-making process.
In Nicolaidis’ proposal ECAs are promoted as a “radical democratic innovation” and tool for “systemic change”. But they can only capitalise on this opportunity if they are embedded in other institutional reforms. “Transnational societal empathy” needs strong institutional safeguards. In this respect, giving European elections a truly European character would be a real game changer (Alemanno, 2024; Plottka/Müller, 2020)! European-wide election lists would be a breakthrough for European democracy. Transnational lists have been put on paper in several reform proposals (e.g. by Guy Verhofstadt, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Philippe van Parijs), they have been debated for years, they were on Ursula von der Leyen’s agenda for her presidency for the European commission in 2019, at the core of the latest EP proposal for revisions of the Direct Elections Act (2022) and a key claim of citizens in the Conference on Future of Europe’s Final Report. But we are still waiting for this important step forwards. Isn’t it weird? We can set up a European Company (SE) if we want to do business across borders. We are asked to build up a European consortium of researchers when applying for European research funding. We can even donate money to parties in other EU member states (in national elections in which we do not have a right to vote!). But when it comes to the voting procedure in European elections we are forced back into a national container: we are voting on national lists with 27 different legal requirements. Recent attempts to further europeanise European elections have failed, a European association law for organising European civil society that could support transnationalisation is still missing. A permanent European citizens’ assembly with an unclear mission would do little to change this.
Conclusion: Routinisation without permanence!
But how would non-permanent ECAs change this? Their strength lies in the potential for civic education and opening up of public space. Especially in a transnational context this is an important effect and already a good reason to introduce them. To make their effects sustainable, citizens’ assemblies should be organised on a regular basis so that interaction between traditional and new forms of representation can become routine. They should be connected to political agenda-setting and legislative processes. There must be something at stake in the political arena to attract citizen’s attention. As Lafont and Urbinati point out in their intervention, ECAs democratising effect depends on their mediating role between political system and the wider public. It is therefore important to connect them to the policy cycles in the European Parliament, first of all to the political work programme that the candidate for president of the European Commission presents to the European Parliament when applying for office. Connecting ECAs to the European Commission’s work programme might look like a very tight co-optation. Other proposals for routinisation connect them e.g. to the president’s annual “State of the Union” address and suggest an annual open call mechanism (Abels et al.,2022). However, I am sceptical and would predict that these assemblies will nevertheless run parallel and unconnected to the conventional legislative process, which should be avoided at all costs. Since Parliament plays an important role in co-determining the president of the Commission as well as the topics of the work programme, ECAs connected to this programme would ensure public attention and increase legitimacy.
Take for instance, Ursula von der Leyen’s agenda for her candidacy 2019 (“A Union that strives for more”): for all six bullet points (“The European Green Deal; An economy that works for people; A Europe fit for the digital age; Protecting our European way of life; A stronger Europe in the world; A new push for European democracy”) a citizens’ assembly could have been set up to concretise proposals and drive implementation forward. Is it implausible to assume that the main pillar of her agenda, the European Green Deal, would have gained more legitimacy and resisted the aggressive disinformation campaign with which her own party group, the EPP, gave it a hard blow?
An important pillar of the Green Deal is the Nature Restauration Law. The law survived the vote in Parliament by a razor-thin margin, after the EPP had announced to block it completely (and only passed the final hurdle of a qualified majority in the Council on June 17, 2024 after Austria’s u-turn). Interestingly, a survey conducted from 1 to 9 May 2024 by Savanta, an independent research agency which investigated European citizens’ opinions on nature and biodiversity in countries whose governments blocked the Nature Restoration Law, brought clear results: a large proportion of the population is in favour of the EU Nature Restoration Law, even though the respective governments oppose it. An ECA could have helped to draw attention to a central pillar of the Green Deal at an earlier stage and bring the issue to the public’s attention. When political dynamics are moving in one or the other direction, ECA’s recommendations will make a difference.