A Post-National EU? The Problem of Legitimising the EU without the Nation and National Representation
| Author | Andrew Glencross |
| Published date | 01 June 2011 |
| Date | 01 June 2011 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9248.2010.00856.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
A Post-National EU? The Problem of Legitimising
the EU without the Nation and National
Representationpost_856348..367
Andrew Glencross
University of Aberdeen
This article explores whether the supranational EU polity can be legitimised without the nation state. It claims that
modern political representation depends on establishing a tripartite distinction between state, government and civil
society.This is contrasted with competing notions of the moder n state,notably Rousseau’s idea of popular sovereignty
and the Jacobin notion of ‘immediate democracy’. The tr ipartite system, it is argued, enhances three crucial
components of democratic legitimacy: governing, sanctioning and mandating accountability.Within this framework,
the idea of the nation and the associated national narrative is shown to benefit democratic legitimacy by providing a
trans-generational concept of the common good to which government can be held accountable.Since the EU does
not fit this model, twoapproaches have been touted to legitimise this supranational polity in a post-national manner:
democratic governance and constitutional patriotism. Yet both are highly problematic forms of engendering legiti-
macy.Governance offers no guarantees as to how and why citizens will be better represented and does away with the
idea of a common good. Constitutional patriotism presupposes the prior acquiescence of nation states to EU
integration without problematising how such acquiescence is mandated. Thus the maintenance of a genuinely
post-national polity – one that does not recreate the division between state,government and people – depends on the
ability to incorporate EU integration into evolving national narratives.
The modern liberal democratic state is based on the principle of representation in order
to render the exercise of political authority legitimate. Representative democracy as it has
developed in the Western hemisphere since the nineteenth century relies on political
parties to form governments and represent voters (Duverger,1965) as well as other for ms
of citizen mobilisation such as social movements (Tilly, 2004). Traditionally associated
solely with the nation state as a form of political organisation, it is now an open question
as to whether such democratic practices are only possible within this context (Held,
2006). In particular, post-nationalism suggests that the scope for citizenship and demo-
cracy is not confined to the nation state. In the context of contemporary Europe, post-
nationalism posits a form of democratic politics in the European Union without recourse
to a national bond between citizens. However, this ar ticle discusses whether doing away
with the nation is appropriate for solving the problems of legitimacy and accountability
that bedevil the EU. In an EU political system founded on indirect representation and
accountability (Majone, 2005; Moravcsik, 2002), the nation is a still a highly useful means
of legitimising a supranational authority that, as post-nationalism recognises, is not a
replacement for the nation state.
The post-national turn in EU studies is understood here as the advocacy of a form of
democratic political organisation that is un-beholden to the notion of the nation state
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2010.00856.x
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2011 VOL 59, 348–367
© 2010The Author.Political Studies © 2010 Political Studies Association
(Eriksen and Fossum, 2007; Haber mas, 1998; 2001a) and its rigidly bounded sense of a
congruent community, territory and political authority (Gellner, 1983). Theorists of a
post-national EU separate the construction of this supranational polity from the creation of
a nation state on a continental scale (Habermas, 1998). They further sever mechanisms of
democratic accountability and legitimacy from the existence of a shared national identity by
putting their faith either in the ability of novel governance networks to represent citizens
(Schmitter, 2007) or in the ability of constitutional rights to generate a shared political
identity, known as constitutional patr iotism (Cronin, 2003; Habermas, 2001a; Lacroix,
2002). In both cases this explains why neither citizenship nor political participation is
believed to depend on the nation state. However, the ar ticle argues, both accounts of the
post-national features of the EU find it difficult to recreate the conditions for democratic
accountability and thereby to legitimise a supranational political system in the complete
absence of the concept of the nation. Indeed, imagining a legitimate supranational polity
beyond the nation state – the goal of post-nationalism itself – may only be possible by virtue
of grounding this political project in a national setting.
To make good this argument, the article first examines how political representation
functions in the nation state. The focus is on the complex relationship whereby the state
claims to pursue a general interest that exists separately from the decisions of the govern-
ment of the day and that is not identical to the periodic, democratically expressed will of
the political community. It is claimed that government’s representation of the people is
conditioned by the state’s ability to act in the name of a trans-generational political
community – the nation. Having a trans-generational narrative of a political community to
draw on enhances the state’s democratic accountability understood in three ways: sanc-
tioning, governing and mandating. But in the EU supranational system that defies charac-
terisation as a state (Abromeit, 1998;Caporaso, 1996) and eschews the cultivation of a sense
of nationhood, legitimisation currently functions indirectly through national governments,
as represented in the European Council and the Council of Ministers.Within this institu-
tional context, which post-nationalism – unlike advocates of a federal superstate (Morgan,
2005) – does not seek to overturn, overlooking the contribution of trans-generational
nationhood to political legitimacy is unfortunate.
The belief in the potential for a genuinely post-national form of supranational authority is
premised on the argument that the atypical non-federal and non-state EU polity can
overcome its dependence on the legitimacy mechanisms of nation states by a largely
complementary strategy of developing democratic governance and fostering constitutional
patriotism. The former seeks to reinvent representation in a post-national fashion that does
not mimic the parliamentary mechanisms of the nation state. The latter makes the case for
the plausibility of a shared political identity based on rights already conferred (or that could
be conferred in the future) by the EU as well as its procedural norms of deliberation and
dialogue between a plurality of political cultures (Cronin,2003; Habermas, 2001a;Lacroix,
2002). Yet a closer analysis of both these post-national approaches reveals,in an overarching
EU institutional context of enduring indirect legitimacy, significant limitations to their
notion of accountability, leaving them unable to provide a substitute for the contribution
the nation – as a trans-historical community – makes to holding political authority to
THE PROBLEM OF LEGITIMISING THE EU 349
© 2010The Author.Political Studies © 2010 Political Studies Association
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2011, 59(2)
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