EUROPE
The flaws in Europe’s democracy
Autumn 2007
Europe’s economic model may not be highly exportable, but its democratic values are widely appreciated. Jerzy Baczynski, Editor-in-Chief of Polityka in Warsaw, looks at the reality of democracy in the EU’s formerly communist countries and assesses both the democratic “deficit” and democratic “fatigue”
Democratic values, Javier Solana said recently, are our collective DNA. Or at least that’s how we like to think of ourselves. An attachment to democracy is a part of the European self-image if often a somewhat idealised one.
The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) published a ranking last year of 167 countries that set out to measure the quality of their democracy. It took into account not just the reliability of elections, but also the functioning of the administration, citizens’ participation in politics, the scope of civil freedoms and their different political cultures. Europe came out well on the whole, but with very different national variations: Sweden won the top world ranking, Germany was in 13th position and the UK 23rd. The European Union’s newcomer countries scored only in the forties and fifties; Poland was at 46 alongside Italy, which although a founder of the EU was generally acknowledged to be a country where democracy is both incomplete and defective.
But against a global background, the EU may justly regard itself as a mainstay of democracy, civic freedoms and human rights. This is a component part of the European myth, and of European efforts at self-promotion. It does so effectively enough for the European Union to appear to nations outside the EU − especially those aspiring to membership − as a model of democratic politics and social order. Hence the popularity of the EU’s enlargement to embrace the countries of central and eastern Europe that have emerged from the shadow of authoritarianism. The region’s new political elites saw not just an opportunity to win economic assistance, and access to markets and investment, but also the means to consolidate and protect their infant democracies. The whole process of accession, including adoption of the EU’s acquis communautaire, created a heaven-sent opportunity to copy and transfer to the post-totalitarian reality many of the institutions of liberal democracy.
All of these post-communist countries based their new political systems on the model of “imitating the West”. Their political continuity and traditions had been disrupted for many decades, and once they had truly regained their sovereignty, democratisation quickly came to mean westernisation that was often chaotic, arbitrary and divorced from the country’s psychological and cultural roots. It may well be that there was no other way to transform a significant part of Europe from communism to democracy and the market economy in a dozen years, but there is a price to be paid for such haste.
The situation in Iraq has driven home to us the lesson that democracy takes poor root in places where there are too few local resources to nurture it. Post-communist Europe was not a democratic desert of course, it still had some surviving traditions of former statehood and the few quasi-democratic institutions that had sprung-up during the declining years of communism. These numbered dissident movements and organisations, of which Poland’s Solidarity proved the strongest, that were more or less ready to take up the reins of power. But lacking a sound base in civil society, the new democratic institutions in most of the post-communist countries were quickly seized and held hostage by political parties and then fell victim to ills ranging from incompetence to abuse of power and corruption.
In many post-communist societies, “European democracy” was also associated with the welfare state, so the economic difficulties of transition were all too easily blamed on the advent of democracy. Disappointment with the new system of democratic politics was generally reflected in falling electoral turnouts across the whole of central and eastern Europe, a widespread disenchantment with politicians and the growing strength of the various populist groupings.
The upshot was that in many of these former communist countries the political elite began to look to the EU and the European institutions as substitutes for their own troubled and inefficient national politics. A poll conducted shortly before Poland’s accession referendum revealed that barely 12% of respondents trusted their own democratic institutions, while the EU and its institutions enjoyed the confidence of over 60%. More than 50% of those polled believed in the efficiency of the EU’s bureaucracy, but only 7% had a kind word for their own civil servants. Opinion polls in other countries of the “new Europe” yielded similar results, chalking up a considerable image success for the EU. Yet British historian and political analyst Timothy Garton Ash, who is a well-known commentator in Poland, also observed that although the EU is perceived as being an exporter of democracy it is itself not very democratic. “Were the EU to apply for membership of the EU, it would not be accepted”, he remarked. This concern about the Union’s own democratic deficit was partly soothed by the constitutional treaty, with polls showing to be far better perceived in the new member states than in those of the old 15. When the first draft treaty was blocked by French and Dutch voters, that was seen as a signal by many eurosceptic and populist parties in the newcomer states that the process of EU democratisation had been halted and that a return to national politics was under way.
Society in the new member states was for the most part enthusiastically well-disposed towards the EU, with support for the Union in Poland sometimes reaching as high as 86%. But the newcomers found themselves in the uncomfortable situation of being faced with the older members disinclination to pursue further EU enlargement and closer integration, and also a degree of hostility towards the idea of making the EU institutions more responsive and efficient. For political parties and other interest groups that had pressed strongly for EU membership, their sense of disappointment was all the keener, because they sensed that the safeguard of EU democracy for their own fragile post-communist democracies was now crumbling.
Now that intergovernmental negotiations on the EU’s new “reform treaty” are under way, the key question is whether the EU will want to define its “democratic minimum” and whether the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, containing guarantees of democratic rights and civil freedoms, will become a binding legal document. It’s something that is needed by the new Europe especially, as a sort of greenhouse to help nurture the delicate plant of democratic culture and ensure that it takes root.
The 27 countries of the European Union do not, of course, have a single model or standard of democracy, they practice it in their different ways. Perhaps some Europeans, though, might accept as close to ideal the Swedish model, which scored so well in the EIU’s survey. But in general, with the Iraq experience firmly in mind, Europe has no ambitions (if it ever had any) to export democracy. Rather, Europeans seem more inclined nowadays to accept that there exist other forms of non-liberal democracy, such as in Russia, China or the Arab world, where even basic human rights need to be seen as an internal matter.
Democracy, then, is today an integral part of the EU’s image and a source of jealousy tinged with respect for other less fortunate nations that are looking for avenues along which to escape to the European paradise. Within the EU itself, though, the dominant mood instead seems to be a sort of democratic fatigue after all the arguing over institutional reform. But is this just a passing tiredness?
After the German presidency, and thanks in part to the élan of France’s new president, the EU is again moving forward. Once the Union manages fully to include its several hundred million newcomer citizens in the European community of values after half a century of authoritarian quarantine, it may then be possible to think of the further expansion of the European model to new territory, with Georgia, Ukraine, the Balkans and of course Turkey already waiting. Europe no longer has inside track on economic growth now that China, India, Russia and others are finding their feet industrially, but in the 21st century the EU will clearly remain an attractive model for society. It is something that is much harder to emulate than economic growth.