The End of Democracy as We Know it? The Legitimacy Deficits of Bureaucratic Social Policy Governance

Abstract

New modes of governance and, in particular, the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), have attracted considerable and often unduly favourable scholarly attention since 2000. Learning from best practice and increased policy effectiveness are often assumed to be the main outcome of the OMC. In contrast, this contribution seeks to assess the democratic legitimacy of the OMC by using a research design that integrates criteria both from the liberal and the deliberative theories of democracy. In analysing the OMC inclusion and its implementation in France, Germany and at the European level, it is shown that the democratic benchmarks that can be derived from either theory are not met. By way of conclusion, the potential consequences of the obvious democratic deficit of the OMC are discussed briefly.