The Future of Democracy: Could It Be A Matter of Scale?

Social Research, Fall, 1999 by Philippe C. Schmitter

Representation: Here, the basic assumption is that the larger scale the polity, the greater the reliance on mediated linkages between citizens and rulers. The sheer number of layers of aggregation, the more remote location of authorities, and the higher threshold costs for mobilization all translate into greater autonomy and need for professionalization of the role of representatives. Levels of individual participation are likely to remain lower than at the national or local levels where candidates are going to be better known and constituencies more proximate. So far, this has been translated into a limited role for the European Parliament and markedly lower (and diminishing) turnout for elections to it. Contrary to most programs for democratizing the EU, I do not envisage increasing the powers of the European Parliament at least, not until a European party system with a viable set of constituencies exists. Hence, most proposals should aim at providing incentives for increasing the finances and enhancing the role of Euro-parties in candidate nomination and list formation. It can be assumed that, whatever their labels and programs, the emergent Euro-party system will eventually be organized along different lines of cleavage than at the national level and that the individual parties will have less formal memberships, greater dependence upon public finance and lower levels of voting discipline, i.e., they will be even more "catch-all" and "cartel-like" than existing national parties. Another way of putting the point is that they will come to resemble American parties in their internal organization and cluster around two poles: the one in favor of more integration and the other in favor of limiting (if not rolling back) regional integration.

The Euro-polity is already surrounded by a numerous set of interest associations and social movements, but these are even more skewed in class and substantive issue content that those surrounding national polities. To correct for this, I propose the creation of a system of "secondary citizenship" in which voters in European elections would, in addition to choosing candidates for territorial constituencies (hopefully, on sub-national lists), distribute vouchers to those European level associations and movements that they believe can best defend their interests and passions. These organizations would subsequently receive public subsidies out of EU funds in proportion to the vouchers they received.

Finally, given the multiple layers of aggregation and remoteness of access not to mention, the inevitably larger constituencies--the introduction of regular referenda in each Euro-election would provide citizens with an opportunity for individual participation-even if the results would not be binding and would undoubtedly demonstrate initially the diversity of Europe-wide public opinion. Over time, however, I suspect that such referenda would open up much needed public space and eventually produce evidence of the emergence of transnational clusters of interests and passions.