David Beetham - Legitimacy and the European Union

DAVID BEETHAM AND CHRISTOPHER LORD

First published 1998 by Addison Wesley Longman Limited

Published 2013 by Routledge

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David Beetham and Christopher Lord 1998

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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-30489-5 (pbk)

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The decade of the 1990s has been associated with a series of key changes in Europe that have raised major issues for European integration at the start of the new millenium. Some of these changes the end of the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and German unification have occurred, of course, outwith the established processes of the European Union. But, in parallel to these changes, the European Union has itself embarked on a major project of both widening and deepening, with its agenda dominated by the policies of enlargement and of Economic and Monetary Union. The deepening of the integration process has, in turn, provoked a public backlash in some member states of the EU, as evidenced in the ratification debates on the Maastricht and Amsterdam treaties. In short, the EU faces a period of external challenge, internal reform, and public uncertainty of an unprecedented magnitude.

With this in mind, the emphasis of this new series is very much on the dynamics of the European Union. Together, each of the volumes will analyse and reflect on the implications of such changes for the European integration process in the next decade.

The series also seeks to encourage undergraduate students to reflect theoretically on the implications of these changes. Just how adequate are different analytic frameworks for understanding what is happening in a given area of integration? The series will usefully complement more descriptive and institutionally-based accounts of European integration. At the same time the editors avoid imposing a single theoretical approach on what they recognize to be a wide-range of varying experiences across different areas.

In addition to encouraging theoretical reflection, the series seeks to give a strong empirically-grounded content to each volume in the form of brief case studies, which are designed to illustrate important aspects of the phenomenon under investigation. These case studies focus in particular on the theme of power: of where power lies and of how it is exercised.

Finally, the series encourages authors to reflect on scenarios for development in the policy field or issue area with which they are concerned. In this way, the theoretical and empirical foci of the volumes are brought together.

It is appropriate that the first volume of the series should be about legitimacy and the EU. In the wake of the Danish referendum of 1992 this issue has taken on added significance. The negotiations leading to the Amsterdam Treaty of 1997 focused, in particular, on institutional reform and the promotion of citizenship rights. The transition to Economic and Monetary Union in 1999 raises questions about the accountability of monetary policy and the political direction of economic policy. The issue of legitimacy is central to an EU that is in a period of flux. It is linked to a range of policy debates. Yet, it is a subject that has been tratitionally neglected by the literature on the EU. The volume by David Beetham and Christopher Lord thus fills an important gap in our understanding of legitimacy in the context of the European Union

Professor Kenneth Dyson
Professor Kevin Featherstone
University of Bradford

From at least the time of the ancient Greeks onwards political philosophers have debated about what it is that makes government rightful or legitimate, and what criteria have to be met if those subject to political authority are to have an obligation to obey it (Pateman, 1985; Horton, 1992). The strongest is never strong enough to be master, wrote Rousseau, unless he transforms strength into right and obedience into duty (Rousseau, 1963: 6). But what exactly is it that creates right and duty? Philosophical arguments in Western political theory about this key issue have rarely been a merely academic matter; they have usually been symptomatic of some profound dilemma or crisis of political order, and have reflected much wider debates and disagreements about its legitimacy within society itself. The rich tradition of normative political theorising, in other words, which we read now as a self-contained academic exercise, should properly be seen as a mirror for real and live political debate about the grounds, the forms and the limits of governmental authority in different historical periods.

Since the beginning of the twentieth century this concept of legitimacy, of the moral or normative standing of political authority, has been appropriated by social scientists for a rather different purpose from that of the philosophers. They use it, not so much to define or justify some ideal criteria for rightful government, but rather to help analyse and explain the different forms of government that actually exist, and why political order and obedience are sustained or break down as the case may be (Weber, 1978: 21215). Thus, through a comparative analysis, different legitimating criteria can be shown to validate and underpin the various kinds of political system, together with their respective legitimating institutions and procedures. Likewise the degree of legitimacy of a political order can help explain the depth of support a government can call on, or its relative vulnerability, when under stress. And the concepts of legitimacy deficit and legitimacy crisis can be used to analyse a growing gulf between principles and practice, or between legitimating norms and societal support for them, which heralds a process of political upheaval, renewal or transition (Habermas, 1976: 18).