Grounding ‘democratic innovations’ in wider decolonial movements within and beyond EU borders
Alvaro Oleart (Université Libre de Bruxelles)
Progressive ideas and movements have been travelling beyond national borders for a long time. Movements such as #MeToo, Fridays for Future, Black Lives Matter or the ongoing movement for solidarity with Palestine illustrate the increasingly transnational flow of politics. This process contrasts with the national anchoring of formal institutions. In this sense, Kalypso Nicolaidis’ proposal of a European Citizens’ Assembly (ECA) as a complement (rather than as a substitute) to the European Parliament is interesting in its attempt to connect democratic innovation with broader collective actors and movements. It aims to break from the ‘disintermediated’ logic of previous EU citizen participation experiences and combine sortition “with politicians to enhance political buy-in, as well as representatives of civil society organisations to enhance societal and activist buy-in”.
So far, contributions have mostly questioned the democratic legitimacy of such an ECA, and the extent to which it would contribute to (or worsen) the quality of existing electoral democracies. Cristina Lafont and Nadia Urbinati argue convincingly that an ECA would structurally empower an exclusive group of citizens selected through sortition and not articulate a relationship of accountability to the wider public. Similarly, Svenja Ahlhaus and Eva Schmidt argue that an ECA should be reconceptualised as a “counter-opacity, counter-hegemonic” arena that would make more visible how the EU works, in a way that contributes to “bolstering a justified sense of democratic ownership among EU citizens”. Sandra Seubert and Richard Bellamy raise further objections. They outline the risks that such an ECA would have by potentially creating unrealistic expectations and not improving the main arenas of democracies: elected parliaments. While these critiques are valuable, I also agree with Kalypso Nicolaidis and Yves Sintomer that we should look for new ways forward. This entails avoiding the idealisation of existing electoral and parliamentary democracies due to, for example, their responsibility for fostering neoliberal capitalism and maintaining the structural oppression of the Global Souths by Global North countries. Thus, there is a tension between criticising the legitimacy of ‘democratic innovations’ and championing the existing electoral democracies in the EU.
This is a timely debate, particularly since it coincides with the start of the Democratic Odyssey project in September 2024, but also the transnational movement of solidarity with Palestine. Why does Palestine, and the ongoing transnational activist mobilisation, matter for the debate on an ECA? When thinking of renewing democracy, I argue that we should encompass a global perspective that does not focus uniquely on the EU territory and on EU citizens, and that incorporates anticolonial struggles and movements.
The EU’s ‘citizen turn’ and the private industry of ‘deliberative democracy’
The past five years have been marked by the emergence of democratic innovations in the EU oriented towards establishing a ‘direct’ relation between EU institutions and EU citizens, which I have characterised as the ‘citizen turn’. The European Citizen Consultations, the Conference on the Future of Europe (CoFE) and the post-CoFE citizen panels illustrate this process, in which the EU is increasingly attempting to use sortition as a way to bring together a ‘representative’ group of ‘everyday citizens’ from across the EU to put forward their views on the future of Europe. However, the track record in terms of democratic outreach is poor, as only the political bubble working on EU affairs actually learned what was happening and collective actors were broadly sidelined. Moreover, political conflict was heavily neutralised – as I have empirically scrutinised in my book Democracy Without Politics in EU Citizen Participation.
This is not to say that citizens’ assemblies are inherently a depoliticising and undemocratic tool, but rather that the underlying philosophy with which the EU has deployed them poses fundamental problems. There are alternatives to this approach that include democratic innovations in a way that is coherent with an agonistic democracy logic. The Palestine encampments are a relevant example, as activists have innovated in mobilisation to find new ways to channel the energy of this movement. But is it possible to put forward these alternatives in a highly institutionalised body that would complement the European Parliament? What would be the specific relation between a potential ECA and the EP?
Furthermore, rather than actually disintermediating the political debate by articulating a direct relation between EU institutions and EU citizens, what is taking place is a redefinition of what mediation looks like. The EU citizen panels organised during the last five years illustrated this process, as they were operationally organised by a consortium of private consultancies subcontracted by the EU. These actors frame themselves as neutral brokers, yet in fact their depoliticised approach has a tendency to omit structural inequalities operating in society, as Maarten de Groot has argued. Thus, the same actors that largely drove the CoFE (Commission, EP, Council and private consultancies) would likely steer any future democratic innovation, such as an ECA, in a similar direction. If the same actors that have driven the EU’s ‘citizen turn’ are also in the driving seat of the new ECA, would the results be different? Can the same actors that are part of the problem become part of the solution? Same same, but different? There is a risk that deliberative democracy in a newly formed ECA is conceived by EU institutions as a way to claim democratic legitimacy without actually questioning the structural power relations that are at play.
The Palestine encampments and the “decolonial project for Europe”
If EU institutions and private consultancies are badly suited to improve democracy, who should we turn to? Here is where the ongoing movements on Palestine are exemplary. Against the background of the Eurocentric imaginary of democracy that situates its inception in ancient Athens through sortition and deliberation, we should turn to anticolonial movement struggles as a way to reimagine democracy. Indeed, as Kalypso Nicolaidis and Richard Youngs have argued, the EU should reverse its democratic gaze by unlearning its Eurocentric way of making sense of democracy, and opening itself to learn from the Global Souths. For instance, while democracy is most often described in the literature as relating to elections, representation and deliberation, the Palestine encampments – democratic innovations in themselves through their capacity to bridge Global Souths movements with those in the Global North – that have emerged across the world remind us that we can’t circumscribe democracy to national (or EU) borders, and that if democracy is to be transnational, it is incompatible with colonialism and apartheid.
This might entail revising the starting question when thinking of new institutions. Rather than aiming for the ‘descriptive representation’ that sortition aims at as a horizon, we should be thinking about the kind of institutions that can channel the existing structural conflicts that exist in society in order to reverse material inequalities. In turn, such material inequalities are inherently related to epistemic injustices. In other words, how can we empower the social and political groups that are structurally absent from most institutional spaces? Perhaps a way forward is to construct spaces designed for under or non-represented groups to have a voice. Indeed, democratic innovations should articulate the ‘prefigurative politics’ of social movements: Putting forward an ECA without the explicit backing of social movements and civil society is likely to merely reproduce mainstream institutional narratives. It follows that my institutional proposal emphasizes process and purpose. Before launching a full-fledged institutional design proposal, EU institutions should first rethink their own understanding of democracy and responsibility for fostering a highly unequal world by engaging with civil society and movements in the Global Souths. Second, they ought to orient new EU institutions towards the dismantlement of colonial legacies that unfortunately do not only concern the past, but also the EU’s present. From the deadly EU migration and refugee policies to trade, the EU’s impact goes much beyond its member states on multiple dimensions. It seems only logical that civil society and social movements in the Global Souths should play an important role in the democratisation of the EU.
The need to rethink democracy is also based on current challenges, the climate emergency being the ultimate illustration of the difficulties of holding multinational corporations accountable. While some of these companies have a large share of responsibility, it is actors in the Global Souths that suffer most from it. Certainly, an ECA should make sure to connect to the European public spheres, but also beyond EU borders, and contribute to the “decolonial project for Europe” proposed by Bhambra (Bhambra, 2022), which begins with acknowledging that the inherited (capitalist) material structures are linked to colonial relations and opening windows to contest them. The democratisation of transnational political institutions will require venues for movements and organisations to mobilise across borders with a democracy beyond the nation-state perspective, and a strong decolonial understanding of the underlying material structures. The broader point is that, without reversing the unequal distribution of wealth within and between countries, EU democracy will not be democratised. Institutional design changes can contribute to channel the energy emerging from social movements, but there is no design that by itself will significantly democratise democracy.
Thus, democratic innovations will need to be grounded and rooted in social movements and collective actors striving for social justice, decolonisation and transnational democracy. It is difficult to imagine that a factory worker or a refugee fleeing from war as an individual citizen participating in an assembly can have as much political weight as a banker who has the social, cultural, economic, political and symbolic capital to shape EU politics. Rather than aiming to ‘represent’ European citizens as a whole via sortition, any proposed innovation should contribute to amplifying the voices of movements and collective actors that are (mostly) invisible and lack representation in institutional spaces.