Consociational Interpretations of the European Union
| Author | Markus M.L. Crepaz,Matthijs Bogaards |
| Date | 01 September 2002 |
| Published date | 01 September 2002 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1465116502003003004 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Forum section
Consociational
Interpretations of the
European Union
Matthijs Bogaards
University of Southampton, UK
Markus M.L. Crepaz
University of Georgia, USA
1 A critical appraisal
Matthijs Bogaards
The European Union has been studied from many different angles. Recently,
consociationalism has come to the fore. In 1996, McCormick still complained
that ‘despite its value to helping us understand the EU, it is rarely mentioned
in any discussions of European integration’ (1996: 91). Only three years later
consociationalism has made it into textbooks on the EU (Hix, 1999; Chrysso-
choou et al., 1999; Rosamond, 2000; Archer, 2000). Full-fledged consociational
treatises are rare. More often, scholars draw on the consociational literature
to discuss particular aspects of European integration and decision-making as
part of a broader, theoretically pluriform, approach. The aim of this paper is
to evaluate these attempts at applying consociationalism to the EU and to
assess the usefulness of consociational theory for our understanding of
European integration.
The purpose is not to determine whether the EU is a consociation,
ultimately an ontological question, but to evaluate the theoretical, empirical,
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SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks CA,
New Delhi
normative, and prescriptive implications of an analysis of the EU as a con-
sociation. The paper is divided into sections on decision-making in the EU,
Europe’s plural society, and the future of European integration. The con-
clusion points out the conceptual pitfalls involved in the ‘consociational
analogy’ of the EU.
EU decision-making and politics
Consociationalism was developed by Lijphart (1968, 1969, 1975, 1977) as a
theory of political stability in plural societies. Lijphart posited that democ-
racy and social peace could be secured in deeply divided societies if elites
engaged in accommodative behaviour and forsook centrifugal competition in
a self-negating prediction. The prototypical West European consociational
democracies are, or were, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and Austria
(Steiner and Ertman, 2002). This section discusses the applications of con-
sociational democracy, as well as the related concepts of the politics of
accommodation and consensus democracy, to the EU. It examines how well
these types fit decision-making in the EU and describes to what purpose they
have been used.
Lindberg (1974: 223) observed a ‘striking resemblance’ between European
Community decision rules and the seven ‘rules of the game’ identified by
Lijphart (1975) in his study of the ‘politics of accommodation’ in the Nether-
lands. These are: an agreement to disagree, pragmatic tolerance, summit
diplomacy, proportionality, depoliticization, secrecy, and the government
governs.
Many scholars have noted how, in the words of Hix (1999: 202), ‘the EU
policy process possesses all the classic aspects of the consociational model of
interest intermediation’. The first characteristic of consociational democracy
is a grand coalition of segmental elites. The consociational grand coalition
resides in the executive, which raises the question of which institution quali-
fies as the EU’s executive power. Most scholars have refrained from answer-
ing this question directly, preferring to talk in general terms about a European
‘cartel of elites’ (see Taylor, 1990; Hix, 1999). The Council comes closest to a
European-level grand coalition (Gabel, 1998). The second characteristic, pro-
portionality, is ensured by the system of representation in EU institutions and
in the allocation of jobs and resources. Thirdly, segmental autonomy in the
EU takes the form of national sovereignty and subsidiarity. A mutual veto,
finally, was guaranteed by the Luxembourg Compromise of 1966, which
allowed a member state to exercise a veto when it perceived a threat to a ‘vital
national interest’. The Single European Act of 1986 introduced qualified
majority voting in a number of areas and this number is growing.
European Union Politics 3(3)
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