Rhetorical surface- the language of experimentalism in the EU From - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
Rhetorical surface- the language of experimentalism in the EU From a noble to a doomed experiment: From an extraordinary experiment to a dismal failure From a beautiful folly to a Frankenstein
From a ‘noble’ to a ‘doomed ’ experiment: From an ‘extraordinary’ experiment to ‘a dismal
From a ‘beautiful folly’ to a ‘Frankenstein experiment’
Conception Character Long-term Consequences
Two interconnected features of testable novelty
Inauguration of a new and globally untested site of
Inauguration of a new and globally untested style of
Commitment to the experimental testing of this novel
‘scientific’ testing of a hypothesis; control over variables, careful measurement and establishing cause and effect;
The general ‘nested’ or two-level hypothesis of ‘European Union’, viewed as field experiment;
We achieve more effective and legitimate government in and across (European) states through the addition of a supranational regulatory framework and the construction of a transnational polity (Hypothesis one – new site) working according to a reflexive knowledge-based [ i.e. ‘experimental’] vision and method (Hypotheses two - new style) , than through state-based regulatory frameworks and political communities alone;
Meaning of ‘effectiveness’ and ‘legitimacy’ dependent upon and compatible with
different theoretical and political approaches
THEORETICALLY UNDERDETERMINED - Hypothesis supported by a range of different
theoretical frameworks - neo-functionalism, transactionalism, liberal intergovernmentalism, federalism (but not realism, traditional intergovernmentalism etc)
POLITICALLY OVERDETERMINED - Underpinned by a range of overlapping understandings
combination of consolidated democracy, well-functioning capitalism and social stability, and the claimed need for a supranational dimension to put these together again in the post-war period; but with different emphasis on the democratic, economic and societal- stability dimensions.
LEGAL – law as the primary agent and object of integration INSTITUTIONAL – acephalous (headless) political system CULTURAL- national and European citizenship and identity mutually dependent, mutually
constitutive (neither hierarchically layered nor merely contingently related) And also in pursuit of open-ended STYLE of developing jurisdiction and addressing problems within the new transnational SITE
Beyond Politics Beyond Nationalism
politically neutral or transcendent
Goals presented and defended
initially as manifest – even transcendent goals (peace, prosperity) and so politically non-contentious; in line with experimental method, policy should be based on instrumentally rational pursuit
means towards these manifest transnational goals. Open-ended hypothesis of ‘achieving better government’ disaggregated into a number of closed hypothesis concerning the achievement of discrete manifest ends ( e.g. creation of common market; abolition of public and private monopolies)
Later goals should also be responsive to evident and discretely identifiable
need in the policy environment (Freedom, Security and Justice Area, EMU etc)
Expression of a post-national polity
Required a governing orientation and sense of a polity able to curb and tame
national self-interest
In pursuit of this challenge there was a need to avoid offering a poor imitation
Rather than fixed and all-embracing teleology of the collective nation,
commitment to a flexible and selective set of interventions that modify that nation-centred approach, but do so in a way that is itself dispassionate
Again well served by an experimental temper - Commitment to rational,
questing governance sine ira et studio (without anger or bias)
EU as a meta-experiment (experiment in very idea of experimental
governance) – (STYLE)
Experimentalism of purpose (STYLE) Experimental forms and structures (SITE) Manifestation in political culture – epistocracy?
Philadelphian method – an experiment in (state)
Monnet method – an experiment in (supranational)
Alexander Hamilton, (Federalist Papers I) It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people
whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force
Schuman Declaration (proposing the creation of the European Coal and Steel
Community ) Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.
New STYLE continued
General Functional extension (microeconomic, social, security,
macroeconomic) across sectors
Within sectors, new methods of governance with cycle of open-ended
reflexive (re)specification of goals (so-called New Governance or ‘experimental governance’) in interaction with various implementation and user groups. Non-linear policy-making. Micro-experimentalism shadowing the macro-experiment of EU.
Ongoing orientation towards reconstruction of SITE
non-hierarchical normative ordering Non-uniform structural integrity Indeterminate territorial enlargement Institutional innovation Revisable organisational forms Evolving sectoral methodologies
(Social) Scientism Elitism National instrumentalism Disengagement, passive consumerism
Pioneering momentum and ongoing flexibility of the experimental polity;
prototype and globally resonant model of regional integration CAN GIVE WAY TO
1.
Categorically negative judgments (failure of experiment)
2.
Sense of an ending (redundant or exhausted paradigm)
3.
Critique of uncontrolled excess (the ‘Frankenstein’ effect)
4.
Dilution and fragmentation (the end of the ‘one big’ experiment)
5.
From prototype to remnant – from the future to the past
Experimental continuity and adaptation Freezing and consolidation Quasi-statist democratic refounding
The EU nevertheless retains a significant experimental legacy
Some of the original ideological and epistemic attractions of the experimental
approach – (the restless, unaligned search for ‘what works’) remain.
In terms of organizational culture, the approach of the EU polity retains epistocratic
tendencies - focused on policy knowledge and an instrumental rationality under bureaucratic guardianship, all geared towards an expert-centred ‘output legitimacy’.
In addition, the original macro-experiment of EU as the inauguration of a new site of
government and political community beyond the state has a broader popular affective significance. It stands as a solidaristic cultural achievement that is more than the sum of its ‘output’ successes
Yet the experimental legacy makes it difficult to consolidate (as the constitutional project sought
unsuccessfully to do a decade ago) around the present integrative achievement , esp. after the disintegrative Brexit precedent ‘Finality’ still sits uneasily with the probing, experimental legacy of the EU project.
Equally, however, the experimental method offers diminishing returns. The obvious manifest goals are
presumption and remoteness, and can provoke Eurosceptic reactions
Yet the option of a more democratically responsive ‘input legitimacy’ can also provoke Eurosceptic
reactions –against federalist over-ambition and state imitation, not least because the experimental approach has not nurtured the cultural resources required for such a democratic extension/relaunching
One option for the future, therefore, may instead involve more differentiation. The renewal of a less
Eurosceptic core Europe post-Brexit, or perhaps a more complex form of variable geometry with the partial fragmentation of the EU into a number of sector specific projects. In either case, scope for renewed if more fragmented experimentation. Yet more experimentation in terms of SITE reconstruction and STYLE of governance