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Democratic Deficit and Its Counter-Movements: The Eurocentric–Eurosceptic Divide in Times of Functional Legitimacy

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Anti-Europeanism

Abstract

Euroscepticism is increasingly characterising the political systems of European Union member states. While Euroscepticism has been classically framed as a reaction to elitism and to a project of integration that has never really been supported “by the people”, recent studies have also started to think about Euroscepticism as the “Europeanised” apparition of a wider cosmopolitan–communitarian cleavage. Building on this body of literature, this chapter develops a theory of functional legitimacy that suggests that not only Euroscepticism was a long-predicted outcome of the process of integration, but also that it is an avoidable one. As the process of institutional integration advances, new competences and authority are acquired by the new centre; such a transfer of competences necessarily creates the condition for a shift-up of the well-known centre–periphery cleavage, generating a re-alignment in domestic political systems.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    But in this chapter, we refer, more broadly, to “core state powers”.

  2. 2.

    In the scope of this chapter, a sufficient conceptualization of political legitimacy can be obtained by combining Weber, Scharpf/Easton and Dahl’s understanding of legitimacy. The input/output legitimacy distinction proposed by Scharpf and Easton represents a starting point. Input legitimacy, however, does not equate with democratic rule. Following Weber’s (1919) conceptualization, input legitimacy can be divided into three subcategories: constitutional, traditional, and charismatic legitimacy. Finally, we can define democratic legitimacy as the sub-subcategory of constitutional/legal legitimacy delivered by constitutional systems that correspond to Dahl’s (1989) definition of polyarchic democratic systems. One shall note that polyarchic democratic legitimacy is the only form of input legitimacy that ensures that failures in delivering output legitimacy do not necessarily imply opposition “to the system”, as widely discussed later in this chapter.

  3. 3.

    For instance, the setting of technical standards may constitute an example of pure regulatory competence, while decisions on income tax rates would be pure redistributive competence.

  4. 4.

    A typical case, in the European context, has been monetary integration (Nicoli 2017a: 391). For a very long time, monetary policy was considered and implemented, as a redistributive policy. European integration in the field was possible only in a (historically narrow) window of time when, due to the failures of neo-Keynesian monetarism in the 1970s and 1980s, a shared belief concerning the regulatory nature of monetary policy (i.e., only regulating the rate of inflation) emerged. Such a consensus disappeared less than 20 years later, but the institution maintains its insulated characteristics.

  5. 5.

    While there is not a lack of works on the “winners and losers” of globalization, its application to European-wide, longitudinal electoral data sets in the context of the European crises is relatively recent [see for instance Hernández and Kriesi (2016), Nicoli (2017b), Nicoli and Reinl (2018)]. Furthermore, socioeconomic factors are perceived as “uniting” elements: the Euro crisis has led to a process of convergence of both identities (Nicoli and Merler 2018) and preferences for integration (Nicoli 2018a).

  6. 6.

    By l-end of the territorial axis, Lipset and Rokkan mean “regional and local oppositions” to the established national élites (ibid., 10).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Francesco Nicoli

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  1. Francesco Nicoli
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Correspondence to Francesco Nicoli .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. The European College of Parma Foundation, Parma, Italy

    Marco Baldassari

  2. Department of Law, Politics and International Studies, University of Parma, Parma, Italy

    Emanuele Castelli

  3. Department of Humanities, Social Sciences and Cultural Industries, University of Parma, Parma, Italy

    Matteo Truffelli

  4. Center for Studies in European and International Affairs, University of Parma, Parma, Italy

    Giovanni Vezzani

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Nicoli, F. (2020). Democratic Deficit and Its Counter-Movements: The Eurocentric–Eurosceptic Divide in Times of Functional Legitimacy. In: Baldassari, M., Castelli, E., Truffelli, M., Vezzani, G. (eds) Anti-Europeanism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24428-6_2

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