The Europeanization of Citizenship: Between the Ideology of Nationality, Immigration and European Identity by Fiorella Dell'Olio

Author:Fiorella Dell'Olio [Dell'Olio, Fiorella]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781351890175
Google: VgokDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 35196068
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2005-05-30T00:00:00+00:00

Democracy, Representation and Participation

The problem at hand is not so much to find out whether a European demos exists and if it resembles that of the nation-state, but to understand the nature of this heterogeneous conglomerate of people who are ‘invited’ or ‘obliged’, depending on one’s point of view, to be part of a supra-national polity. What is more important, in other words, is to understand who is Europe rather than what is Europe. While the concept of democracy ‘derives’ from the word demos, democracy as a process evolves from it. The challenge is therefore to understand the changes in democracy in this new context. Democratic theory is intimately associated with the form it has assumed in modern societies within the boundaries of modern nation-states. The identification of democracy with national representation obscures a conceptual problem. As long as representation is restricted to the nation-state, the political subjects are nationals. The idea of national representation is merely one historical construct in which democracy has transformed itself and still does.

According to Dahl, it is possible to identify three ways in which the representation process was transformed in Europe. The first transformation resulted in the advent of the Greek city-state, followed by subsequent incarnations of the city-state in Roman antiquity and the later middle ages. The second form has been representative democracy within the nation-state. The third transformation is currently taking place through the introduction of supra-national governance, which affects citizen’s daily lives at the same time that it restricts their ability to influence decisions (1994: 25–27). In this third model, representation is no longer restricted exclusively to the nationstate and political subjects therefore are not necessarily nationals of a particular state. With European citizenship, political subjects are indeed the nationals of the European Union. At the EU level, this has led to the reconsideration of the concept of political subject.

There is no reason to believe that representation at the EU level is not a means for political participation. Representation is nevertheless an indirect mechanism that enables large populations to participate in the political process. At the EU level, citizens are represented not only directly through the European Parliament but also indirectly by their governments in the European Council and in the Council of Ministers. Both the principle of representative democracy and the principle of participatory democracy as embodied in the Treaty and more recently in the EU draft constitution establish the right for every citizen to participate in democratic life.4 The issue of participation is one of the key areas of dispute for European citizenship. In general, all the EU treaties provide for limited electoral rights in local and European parliamentary elections, and for other forms of non-judicial access to political institutions through petitions. At the moment, the only direct form of participation to the decision-making process of the EU is through the ratification of new Treaties and the Constitution, for example by means of referenda at the national parliamentary level.5 The Danish referendum on European citizenship and the Irish referendum

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