Disequilibrium and Disconnect: On Weiler's (Still Robust) Theory of European Transformation

Abstract

A revised and abbreviated version of this paper will appear in the forthcoming collective volume, The Transformation of Europe -- 20 Years On (Miguel Maduro and Marlene Wind, eds., Cambridge University Press). The argument of this contribution is quite simple: Weiler’s equilibrium theory is not just a creature of the past but remains a fundamentally robust explanation of certain core characteristics of the European system that persist to this day. Integration scholars would do well to take heed of the theory’s central insights, both descriptively and normatively. This is so not least because they serve as a healthy corrective to the widely-held but mistaken idea that European legitimacy is somehow simply a matter of legal and institutional engineering, particularly in the direction of greater transparency and participation rights and greater powers for the European Parliament (EP). Reforms along those lines may well be attractive for all sorts of instrumental and normative reasons. But we should not confuse them for genuine “democratic” legitimation in the proper sense of the term. This I take to be one of the central lessons of Weiler’s equilibrium theory with continuing relevance for today, and it is certainly one that I share.Faith in legal and institutional engineering alone, as if more complex challenges of legitimation did not exist, is indicative of another widely-held but mistaken notion: that Europe’s legitimacy challenge is best described as a “democratic deficit” when, in fact, the real problem is a “democratic disconnect.” The deficit view places its hopes in an increase in “input legitimacy” but ignores the deeper problems of “demos legitimacy” in the EU. By that, I mean the missing sense that the European technocracy and courts constitute a form of self-government “of the people.” To see Europe’s legitimacy challenge as a “disconnect” is not to deny the instrumental value of formal improvements in transparency and participation, or even increases in EP power. Nevertheless, very much consistent with Weiler’s writings on the topic, the idea of the democratic disconnect keeps the categories of formal democratization and democratic legitimacy distinct. Instead, this alternative view stresses that integration, to be enduring and successful, must maintain the connection to democratic and constitutional legitimacy on the national level in a realistic sense, either through delegation constraints or national oversight, whether executive, legislative, or judicial.