European economic constitution and the transformation of democracy: On class and the state of law
| Author | Werner Bonefeld |
| DOI | 10.1177/1354066115570158 |
| Published date | 01 December 2015 |
| Date | 01 December 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of
International Relations
2015, Vol. 21(4) 867 –886
© The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1354066115570158
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E
JR
I
European economic
constitution and the
transformation of democracy:
On class and the state of law
Werner Bonefeld
University of York, UK
Abstract
In the context of contemporary analyses of the Europe Union as a post-democratic form
of economic governance, this article explores the (ordo)liberal character of monetary
union as a regime of imposed liberty. The argument holds that rather than forcing the
member states into retreat, the economic constitution of Europe strengthens their
liberal foundation, securing their utility as the organised force of a mode of social
reproduction founded on free labour. It develops the character of the liberal state as
the political form of a free market economy with reference to Adam Smith’s classical
political economy and the German ordoliberal tradition, which calls for a rule-based
system of federated forms of economic governance to secure a free labour economy
in conditions of mass democratic aspirations for a freedom from want. It explores the
rationale of the ordoliberal distinction between the liberal character and the democratic
character of the state and, in this context, assesses the meaning of liberal democracy in
a post-democratic Eurozone.
Keywords
Capitalism, democracy, European Union, free economy, governance, member state,
neoliberalism
The ‘class character’ of the state ‘is not defined in national terms’. Rather it derives from
the world market, ‘the capitalist law of property and contract transcending national legal
systems, and world money transcending national currencies’. (Clarke, 1992: 136)
Corresponding author:
Werner Bonefeld, Department of Politics, Derwent College, University of York, York, YO23 1B, UK.
Email: werner.bonefeld@york.ac.uk
570158EJT0010.1177/1354066115570158European Journal of International RelationsBonefeld
research-article2015
Article
868 European Journal of International Relations 21(4)
A free market economy is a basic principle of the Treaty of Rome. Such a liberal economic
system … does not exclude state intervention. On the contrary, it presupposes that the state
provides a framework for the operation of such a system; for only an appropriate
framework allows each section of the economy to exercise its freedom of action, in fact
compels it to exercise that freedom. (Hallstein, 1972: 110)
To diminish national sovereignty is most emphatically one of the urgent needs of our time.
But the excess of sovereignty should be abolished instead of being transferred to a higher
political and geographical unit. (Röpke, 1955: 250)
A market economy is not a vaccination against [the democratic] disease.… Even if the
[Member] States have not succeeded in setting up a proper economic constitution
internally, one is imposed on them from the outside. The Member States come under a
regime of imposed liberty. (Engel, 2003: 431)
This kind of executive federalism of a self-authorizing European Council [is a] template
for a post-democratic exercise of political authority. (Habermas, 2012: vii)
Introduction
This article explores the argument that the Europe that has come to pass over the last
few years is an exception to the democratic idea of the rule of law. In this argument,
the Eurozone is governed by an unbound executive, that is, the European Council,
comprising the euro-club countries (on this, see Habermas, 2012; Jörgens, 2015;
Wilkinson, 2014). Within this identity, broad-based social movements, comprising ele-
ments of the political Left and an invigorated extreme Right, have come to the fore as
contestants to the ‘faceless exercise of rule behind closed doors by the European
Council’ (Habermas, 2012: 102). In distinction to what Habermas identifies as the
transformation of Europe into a post-democratic regime of economic crisis manage-
ment, I hold with Müller (2014: 251) that the process of European integration has been
characterised from its inception by the ‘inbuilt distrust of both popular and parliamen-
tary sovereignty’ and by the eagerness of cross-border elites to constrain mass democ-
racy to the liberal rule of law. This article puts Habermas’s diagnoses of a post-democratic
European Union (EU) into theoretical and historical perspective to give context to, and
explore the veracity of, his claim.
I argue that European economic governance embeds national systems of mass democ-
racy into a supranational structure of economic freedom, tying the democracies of mem-
ber states to a market-liberal foundation. Furthermore, I argue that this containment of
national sovereignty does not in any way curtail the state as ‘society’s [independent]
power’ (Marx, 1987: 438). On the contrary, it emphasises its character as the concen-
trated power of a free labour economy.1 In Europe, fundamental policy decisions are
made by a council of national executives, and the member states have the sovereignty of
politics, implementing EU policy. In the words of Vivien Schmidt (2006: 33): ‘while the
EU has policy without politics, the member state end up with politics without policy’
[emphases in original]. Schmidt’s notion, however insightful, is potentially misleading.
Her account implies that member states ‘end up with’ a politics that they would not have
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