From Practice to Principle and Back: Applying a New Realist Method to the European Union’s Democratic Deficit
| Published date | 01 May 2018 |
| Date | 01 May 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321717722355 |
| Author | Jan Pieter Beetz |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321717722355
Political Studies
2018, Vol. 66(2) 339 –355
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321717722355
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From Practice to Principle
and Back: Applying a New
Realist Method to the European
Union’s Democratic Deficit
Jan Pieter Beetz
Abstract
The prospect of a Brexit illustrates that the European Union’s legitimacy deficit can have far-
reaching political consequences. In normative political theory, realists take a keen interest in
questions of legitimacy. Building on Bernard Williams’ realist writings, I propose a two-step
method of normative political theorization. Each step contains both a practice-sensitive phase
and a practice-insensitive phase. First, the conceptualization of a norm should draw on conceptual
resources available to agents within their historical circumstances. Second, the prescriptions
that follow from this norm should take into account whether political order can be maintained.
Applying this method to the European Union’s democratic deficit yields, first, based on public
opinion research, the norm of European deep diversity and, second, a set of prescriptions for a
demoicratic confederacy. Thereby, I demonstrate that this realist method is able to yield political
theories distinct from other philosophical approaches. Moreover, I contribute a realist theory to
the normative literature in European Union studies.
Keywords
political realism, EU, legitimacy, Bernard Williams, demoicracy
Accepted: 5 June 2017
On 23 June 2016, almost 52% of more than 30 million British citizens voted to leave the
European Union (EU). This outcome created a sense of shock across Britain and the European
continent. Research clearly suggests that “regaining control” over the borders to stop immi-
gration was an influential reason to vote leave (Hobolt, 2016). The widespread perception of
the EU’s so-called democratic deficit is an (implicit) precondition for the persuasiveness of
this argument. If the EU were deemed a legitimate democratic decision-maker, then these
Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam,
Netherlands
Corresponding author:
Jan Pieter Beetz, Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam,
VU-Hoofdgebouw, De Boelelaan 1105, 1081 HV Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Email: j.p.beetz@vu.nl
722355PSX0010.1177/0032321717722355Political StudiesBeetz
research-article2017
Article
340 Political Studies 66(2)
arguments concerning the sovereignty of the Westminster parliament should not convince
the British electorate. EU laws would be authoritative whatever their content. The EU’s legit-
imacy deficit means that popular dissatisfaction with policies can much more easily translate
into a rejection of the political system as a whole. The prospect of a Brexit illustrates that this
legitimacy deficit can have far-reaching political consequences for Europe’s political order.
In normative political theory, political realists take a keen interest in questions of
regime legitimacy. In recent years, realism has gone through a revival. Many scholars
have written on its distinctiveness compared to other approaches in normative political
theory (e.g. Galston, 2010; North, 2010; Rossi and Sleat, 2014). A central realist claim is
that political theory cannot assume any unanimity on political objectives, let alone moral-
ity, because politics necessarily deals with permanent disagreement on these matters
(Sleat, 2016a). Realists assume that individuals will always disagree about political ends.
Coercive structures are necessary to prevent such disagreements dissolving into (civil)
war. For realists, political theorists should aim to theorize values that can maintain, or at
least not undermine, a civil order funneling these disagreements. Their central concern is
not that normative theory should either be plausible or feasible—the way “realistic” is
often used (e.g. Neyer, 2010). This concern is conceptual: political theory should take into
account coercion and persistent disagreement when theorizing political norms.
In this article, I theorize EU legitimacy using a new realist method, thereby seeking to
contribute to the literature on political realism and the normative literature in EU studies.
The realist literature was primarily embroiled in a Methodenstreit (Rossi, 2016). Recently,
however, realists have turned their attention to substantive issues (e.g. Jubb, 2015b; Rossi,
2017; Sleat, 2016b). These explorations offer little systematic guidance. Meanwhile,
methodological pieces provide important but general guidelines (Hall, 2015; Jubb, 2017).
Drawing upon the political thought of Bernard Williams (2004, 2005, 2009), I propose a
two-step method of realist political theorization that can inform realist studies on a wide
variety of substantive questions. Each step contains both a practice-sensitive phase and a
practice-insensitive phase. To demonstrate its potential, I apply this method to the EU’s
legitimacy deficit. Few political realists have contributed to this debate (e.g. Beetz and
Rossi 2017) even though it touches upon a central concern of realists: domination that is
coercion without widespread legitimacy.
The article also contributes to the normative literature on the EU. Its first contribution
is to propose a new norm of EU legitimacy: “European deep diversity” (EDD). I draw out
three widespread conceptual patterns from public opinion research in assessing EU legiti-
macy. Subsequently, I argue that Charles Taylor’s concept of deep diversity coherently
incorporates these patterns. Rather than a mere analytical description, I build on its inher-
ent normative logic to develop a contextualized norm. As such, it justifies the persistence
of distinct democratic communities in a single polity. National political orders remain the
locus of legitimate rule in the EU because they enable the pursuit of the common good. In
turn, the legitimacy of the EU regime relies on both its ability to secure the conditions of
meaningful self-rule for national communities in an age of globalization, and on having
itself democratic decision-making procedures.
From this realist norm follows, so I argue, that the EU should take the form of a demo-
icratic confederacy. The normative ends of EDD require an EU regime with integrated
judicial-administrative institutions. These autonomous institutions, however, raise con-
cerns about the regime’s democratic legitimacy. On the norm of EDD, national parlia-
ments remain the authoritative institutions. I argue that its members should take a central
role in EU decision-making procedures in a European Senate (ES). Moreover, and in
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