Would a European Citizens’ Assembly Justify a Sense of Democratic Ownership?
Svenja Ahlhaus (University of Münster) and Eva Schmidt (University of Münster)
In her thoughtful and innovative contribution, Kalypso Nicolaidis argues for the institutionalisation of a European Citizens’ Assembly (ECA). While we agree with many of her diagnostic and constructive points, we want to investigate her idea of proposing an ECA as a strategy for “radically bolstering the sense of ‘democratic ownership’ of the EU’s institutions by its citizens”. In our view, this idea of a “sense of democratic ownership” merits more critical attention.
Nicolaidis has high hopes for an ECA, connecting it to debates about democratic inclusion, political representation, and legitimacy. An additional – and less often discussed – purpose is to enhance the sense of democratic ownership that citizens feel towards the EU institutions. It builds on the idea that “if citizens can literally see power diffused, they might start to believe they own a share in it”. What strikes us about Nicolaidis’ proposal is that she seems to understand the idea of a sense of democratic ownership as a purely empirical concept that does not include a normative dimension. She aims to bolster citizens’ sense of democratic ownership so that they “might start to believe they own a share in it”. But shouldn’t we insist on distinguishing between a justified and an unjustified sense of ownership?
A sense of democratic ownership: justified or unjustified?
Let us introduce our point by way of an analogy to other debates about political concepts with an empirical and a normative dimension. Take the example of legitimacy. While empirical scholars ask whether an institution is de facto seen as legitimate by citizens, normative scholars ask whether it should count as democratically legitimate (Lafont, 2020). The same bifurcation arises when we turn to political representation (who feels represented vs. who should feel represented) or belonging (who has a sense of belonging vs. whose sense of belonging is normatively justified). In Nicolaidis’ proposal, the focus seems to be on whether citizens feel a sense of ownership and how that feeling can be bolstered. While this is an empirical question not without merit, we want to ask the normative question of when a sense of democratic ownership is justified. We will investigate the concept of a sense of democratic ownership from a normative standpoint to determine whether and how Nicolaidis’ proposal of an ECA might enhance a justified sense of democratic ownership.
Generating a sense of democratic ownership “requires us to think of ourselves as participating in a form of collective agency” (McBride, 2015). We understand sense of ownership as an affective-experiential reaction that is based on a particular interpretation of the relation between citizens and institutions. This interpretation can be evaluated as justified or unjustified. Feeling a sense of democratic ownership is not merely the result of outcomes that necessarily align with one’s preferences (substantive dimension), as these outcomes may come about arbitrarily without the preference-holder having any share in the collective agency (procedural dimension). Especially deliberative institutions can be seen to facilitate “a form of collective agency which allows citizens to reasonably see themselves as sharing in ownership of the political institutions which shape the contexts of their lives” (McBride, 2015).
To provide an intuition of what we mean by an unjustified sense of democratic ownership, one can turn to the literature on democracy-/citizen-washing (Lacelle-Webster and Warren, 2023) or cooptation (e.g. Holdo, 2019), a question Nicolaidis is concerned with herself: “How can the ECA be more than a form of cooptation and ‘citizen-washing’ and contribute to transforming Europe’s civic culture and citizens’ sense of civic ownership of their institutions?”. The worry here is that participatory institutions such as, for instance, mini-publics, only feign an improvement on the participatory opportunities of citizens, all the while their efforts end up going nowhere.
We see two normative problems: First, citizens might feel they had a chance to be part of a political decision-making process, even though their contributions were not actually taken into account. This could lead to an unjustified sense of ownership as citizens feel connected to an undemocratic institution. Second, they might be disillusioned by the supposedly participatory process. They experience a lack of ownership, which, while justified, can be problematic for the institution that requires citizen support. Bolstering a justified sense of ownership would mean avoiding both of these problems: we need democratic institutions that generate and deserve the citizens’ sense of democratic ownership.
The idea of a sense of democratic ownership plays a role in many democratic theories focusing on the citizens’ perspective. Understood in this way, the idea of a sense of democratic ownership is closely related to ideas mentioned in previous contributions to their forum, such as alignment (Lafont and Urbinati) and disconnect (Bellamy). As Lafont puts it: “Once they understand their function and significance, can citizens take ownership over these institutions?” (Lafont, 2020).
A re-focused ECA: Three ideas
Our idea is that the danger of a lack of a (justified) sense of ownership needs to be addressed by taking into account the background diagnoses. Why is there a lack of democratic ownership in the European Union and how could it be “bolstered” by an ECA? We distinguish three potential reasons for a lack of democratic ownership of EU institutions. These diagnoses are non-exhaustive and well-known in the literature about the EU’s democratic deficit (cf. for example Bellamy and Kröger, 2016), but we think that they merit attention in the debate about democratic ownership and the ECA.
We propose to start by identifying the core political problems an ECA is supposed to mitigate and to design it specifically with this problem in mind. There are three potential constellations an ECA might be supposed to respond to: A first diagnosis is opacity. Citizens might lack a sense of democratic ownership because they do not understand the complex interplay of EU institutions and the process of policy-making at EU level. A second diagnosis is capture. Here, the problem is that citizens do not have a sense of democratic ownership because they are not convinced that they actually have democratic control over decision-making as it is controlled by others. A third diagnosis is stuckness. Here we mean that citizens lack a sense of democratic ownership because they feel that EU institutions are stuck and not changeable by citizens.
Depending on our background diagnosis of why there is a lack of a sense of democratic ownership, we can propose different remedies. While it might not always be the first and best idea to tackle these problems with a randomly-selected assembly, we want to outline how we might refocus an ECA in three directions. The idea is not that these three proposals will lead to legitimate or responsive or participatory EU decision-making but rather that they might help to address three underlying challenges. This goes in a similar direction as Lafont’s and Urbinati’s idea to reconceive the ECA in a “mediating role” – but we focus more directly on the lack of a justified sense of democratic ownership.
First, if our diagnosis is that EU institutions are opaque to citizens, an ECA could be reconceived as a “counter-opacity” institution whose goal would be to promote transparency with regard to their functions, processes, and policies. Members of an ECA would learn about EU institutions and policies in depth and explain their learnings to other lay citizens. The idea is that there is an epistemic advantage in learning from “people like you”. Participants might be more capable of explaining to other lay citizens what they have learned, because they are not entrenched in the processes or were not part of designing the policies and probably do not have the same education as policy-makers. Therefore, they can empathise with non-participants better than professional spokespeople and anticipate where misunderstandings might come from. This could motivate citizens to engage more with the EU, as they understand it better, even if they disagree with the contents presented to them. Nicolaidis alludes to the importance of a connection between the ECA and the wider public and calls for more creative “interface channels between the assembly and the broader public” for instance “through platforms and actors like NGOs or civil society organisations that have particular target audiences.” Connecting the normative function of counter-opacity with creative channels as she proposes might make it more likely that citizens feel a sense of democratic ownership over EU institutions.
If we hold instead that the sense of democratic ownership is lacking because citizens think that the EU institutions are captured by particular groups and elite interests, enabling a sense of democratic ownership could involve reconceiving the ECA as a counter-hegemonic institution. It is important to keep in mind Seubert’s remark that the complex EU structure does not make it easy to say who should be seen as “the elite” that has captured decision-making. Of course, the ECA is already envisaged by Nicolaidis as composed of ordinary citizens who do not have vested interests. But if we hold that the key problem preventing a sense of democratic ownership is capture, this would also mean that the institution’s primary role should be contestatory. If citizens are supposed to overcome their sense of capture, they should be able to see that their interests and positions are not easily overlooked or brushed aside. It is important to note that this does not automatically require an empowered ECA. Randomly selected assemblies are not free from the problem of capture themselves. As Bellamy puts it in his contribution: “Non-professional politicians may also be more susceptible to lobbying and the influence of conspiracy theorists and the like due to a lack of general information” (cf. Landa and Pevnick, 2021). This means that the interplay between ECA and other EU institutions would need careful calibration. But we might consider potential veto powers or powers to delay decisions, or reconceiving the ECA more in the direction of citizen oversight juries (Bagg, 2022).
If we think that the lack of a sense of democratic ownership stems instead from the fact that citizens feel that the EU institutions are “stuck”, the ECA might be an option for re-opening the institutional debates about the European Union. As Nicolaidis points out, institutional innovation could lead to a sense of renewal and openness. Our “democratic imagination” is sparked by rethinking the EU’s institutional interplay from scratch. Here, it would be important to focus on fundamental (or constitutional) issues. Citizens might regain a sense of democratic ownership once they see that it is possible that EU institutions, their competences and interplay can change and even accommodate a new randomly-selected institution (Patberg, 2023). The experimental spirit prevalent in many debates about democratic innovations could lead some citizens to feel more connected to the EU institutions. It would be a justified sense of ownership if citizens actually had effective paths to initiate and influence debates about the future of the European Union.
Conclusion
We have argued that political theorists should look more critically at proposals to bolster citizens’ sense of democratic ownership of EU institutions. From a normative perspective, we can distinguish between a justified and an unjustified sense of democratic ownership. This means that not only the lack of a justified sense of democratic ownership but also the existence of an unjustified sense of democratic ownership might be problematic. We propose a more limited role of an ECA in reaction to three diagnoses of why there is a lack of sense of democratic ownership. Reconceived as an institution whose function could be described as counter-opacity, counter-hegemonic, or counter-stuckness makes it more likely that the ECA might contribute to bolstering a justified sense of democratic ownership among EU citizens.