Ambivalent universalization of democracy

Project leaders: Prof. Dr. Jens Steffek and Prof. Dr. Peter Niesen

The aim of this project was to systematically develop the concept of democracy with a view to the post-national constellation of political rule. The project was thus part of the cluster-wide research into global successor practices and institutions of state order formation, which were to be described and evaluated here from a democratic theory perspective. While the previous project “Transnational Justice and Democracy” was dedicated to the conceptual connections and tensions between transnational democracy and justice, this project focused on tensions and ambivalences within the ongoing universalization of democracy. The universalization of democracy has three dimensions: the worldwide spread of the democratic form of government (1), the development of democratic structures beyond the state (2), and the normative generalization of democracy as a standard of legitimate governance without alternative (3). All three understandings of universalization can point to converging empirical trends over the last two decades. The research question of the project focused on tensions and interactions between the three dimensions of universalization. It thus also challenged the position of Keohane, Macedo and Moravcsik, according to which national and international democratization are in a positive-sum relationship.

In our project, two particularly evident ambivalences of a universalization of democracy were examined: the increasing international spread and cross-border influence on the protection of democracy in individual states, as well as the increasing establishment of supranational control possibilities of national decisions. The first research question was the extent to which national and international mechanisms for establishing and maintaining democracy affect the democratic autonomy of the state populations concerned (Niesen sub-project). As in the nation-state context, the de-paradoxing of an authoritarian protection of democracy also poses great difficulties at the international level. In his own work, Peter Niesen has focused in particular on the universalization of past-political arguments in the domestic protection of democracy. The traditional paradigm of “militant democracy” proved to be insufficiently specific for diagnosing contemporary developments in different parts of the world. In contrast, the ideal type of “banning the former ruling party”, which could be derived from the post-war constitutions of the Federal Republic of Germany and Italy in particular, has since been implemented analogously in many countries around the world. However, the discussion of the case studies of Rwanda, Iraq and some post-communist states revealed that measures to protect democracy are often functionalized for both domestic and foreign policy purposes (Niesen 2010, 2012). In Sabrina Engelmann’s work, a distinction was established between democracy-protecting and state-protecting mechanisms, using the example of counter-terrorism (2012). On the other hand, Sabrina Engelmann examined the example of a binding protection of democracy under international law against the “resource curse” and discusses the theoretical foundations of democracy protection as a whole. She comes to a skeptical conclusion regarding the compatibility of repressive democracy protection with the principle of popular sovereignty. The monograph resulting from the dissertation was published in 2018 (see below).

The second research question was the extent to which individual rights of contestation in international organizations or courts can undermine nation-state democracy (Steffek sub-project). This sub-project thus investigated the triangular relationship between individuals, states and international organizations/courts of justice, which has been little analyzed to date and which becomes particularly problematic when international courts or arbitration tribunals reject democratically established national laws in response to a citizen’s complaint or suggest that the state amend the law. The work on this sub-project was divided into theoretical-conceptual work on the role of courts in a transnational democratic process on the one hand and an empirical study on the European Union on the other. In the theoretical part, transnational courts were located in the “editorial” dimension of the democratic process, drawing on the work of Philip Pettit. In this view, courts and comparable instances of conflict resolution without legitimation through elections (such as arbitration tribunals or ombudsmen) serve to confront a decision with its intended or unintended social consequences. These can, at least in the ideal case of the democratic theory model, be fed back from a court to the legislative democratic institutions in a kind of reflexive loop, so that the process of political deliberation ended by the authoritative political decision is reopened. At national level, this would be the case if a constitutional court were to declare a law unconstitutional and thus impose certain requirements on the legislature for a new version, without, however, being able to determine the specific content of the new regulation.

This common model of institutional interaction in a democratically constituted constitutional state, which can only be roughly outlined here, reaches its limits at international level due to the fact that in many cases there is no institutional counterpart to the national parliament and the intergovernmental “legislator” is usually restricted by the unanimity requirement and the enormous complexity of diplomatic package solutions. In the multi-level system of the European Union (EU), conflicts between European and national law that become evident through individual lawsuits are resolved by forcing national legislators to revise national regulations – but not by suggesting that European legislators revise the European legal order, which would also be conceivable in principle. Andreas Corcaci has examined this phenomenon in the EU in an empirical-analytical research study. His work shows that the establishment of “compliance” with ECJ decisions is a multi-layered process that is influenced by numerous factors simultaneously. On the basis of countless empirical research studies that are already available, Andreas Corcaci develops a new model of the establishment of compliance in the EU’s multi-level system as part of a meta-analysis. In normative terms, his empirical findings point us back to the precarious role of law in the post-national coalition. Resistance and protest against the perceived impositions of European legislation do not manifest themselves in a process of argumentative contestation that is as openly accessible as it is open-ended, but are instead discharged in avoidance strategies in which the affected states attempt to circumvent a literal implementation of European law wherever possible, which in turn often leads to lengthy processes of compliance production by the European institutions. As a result, this interplay does not manifest itself as an open political confrontation in which the European legislator would be confronted with the social consequences of its legislation (which would be a clear gain from a democratic theory perspective), but rather as a difficult-to-understand, decentralized negotiation and enforcement process that remains largely inaccessible, at least to citizens who are not directly affected.

The conclusion of this sub-project must therefore be that although the EU and a few other international organizations have granted citizens the right to take direct legal action, which in principle can be interpreted as a gain in the democratic nature of governance, these rights of action are primarily used to ensure national compliance with the law of international organizations. In contrast, the process of contestation triggered by citizens’ complaints is not linked back to the international level of legislation. This raises difficult questions regarding the legitimation of further juridification at the international level, which became the subject of a follow-up project in the second cluster phase (“Legitimation through international law and legitimation of international law“, Stefan Kadelbach and Jens Steffek, 2013-2015). The dissertation project that was started in this sub-project has also been brought to a successful conclusion in the meantime.

The project’s most important publications include
Engelmann, Sabrina (2018): Democracy and the protection of democracy. Dealing with a dilemma Frankfurt/New York: Campus.
*Engelmann, Sabrina (2012): “Barking Up the Wrong Tree: Why Counterterrorism Cannot Be a Defense of Democracy”, in: Democracy and Security 8(2), 164-174.
*Niesen, Peter (2012): “Banning the Former Ruling Party”, Constellations: An International Journal of Critical and Democratic Theory, 19(4), 540-561.
Steffek, Jens (2012): “Accountability und politische Öffentlichkeit im Zeitalter des globalen Regierens”, in: P. Niesen (ed.), Transnationale Gerechtigkeit und Demokratie, Frankfurt/Main: Campus, 279-310.
*Steffek, Jens (2010): “Public Accountability and the Public Sphere of International Governance”, Ethics & International Affairs, 24(1), 45-67.

The project included the following events: an international conference “Cosmopolitanism and International Relations Theories”, TU Darmstadt March 2-3, 2012 (Peter Niesen and Jens Steffek); a workshop “Constituent Power and Radical Democracy” with Andreas Kalyvas, TU Darmstadt May 9, 2011 (Peter Niesen) and an international conference “Theories of Territory beyond Westphalia”, Goethe University Frankfurt, October 25-26, 2012 (with Ayelet Banai) (Jens Steffek). In addition, three panels were chaired at the 52nd Annual Conference of the International Studies Association in Montréal, March 16-19, 2011 on the topics “Norms and International Governance”, “Democracy and Dictatorships”, and “Democracy and the Evolution of Global Governance”.