Europe’s Triangular Challenge: Dominance, Differentiation and Democracy

• In Event: Differentiation and Dominance in Europe

Abstract

It is widely noted that the European Union that emerged from the pluri-crises has become more differentiated. What is also noteworthy is that the crises are associated with increased concerns about dominance. The crises exposed the EU’s vulnerabilities, and some of the measures taken to deal with the crises were associated with repression and/or increased arbitrariness. The relationship between differentiation and dominance is complex and contingent. Some forms of differentiation engender dominance, others do not. In this paper, I take as my point of departure that the EU post-crisis has clear traits of a segmented political order. The first part of the paper spells out what that entails and a brief assessment of the extent to which such a depiction captures post-crises EU. A segmented political order represents a distinct type of differentiation. In institutional terms, a segmented political order combines supranational and intergovernmental traits in a distinctive manner. From a governing perspective, a segmented political order is imbued with pathologies associated with the privileging of certain distinct forms of professional expertise; and/or certain distinct world-views and ideologies; and certain distinct situational depictions. Each segment is closed in the sense that it defines away or excludes alternative world-views, forms of expertise, situational depictions or frames, ideas or participants. Pathologies pertain to lack of coordination, systematic biases in problem conception that produce suboptimal outcomes, and various legitimacy fallouts pertaining to exclusion and alienation. In the second part, I discuss whether or the extent to which such a political order is marked by dominance, by drawing on two conceptions of dominance, associated respectively with Philip Pettit and Ian Shapiro. In the last section, I draw on the findings from the previous parts and present and assess different democratization strategies.

Author

• John Erik Fossum, University of Oslo