Year LVI, 2014, Single Issue, Page 67

INTERNET AND POLITICS: A DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD

The innovation introduced by the internet lies essentially in the fact that it has eliminated the factors of time and distance in the transmission of information. This is a change that hashad a profound effecton the natureof the economy, society and lifestyles, and also onthekind of challengesfacinggovernments globally.

A great deal has already been written on this topic, but there have actually been very few accurate analyses of the internet phenomenon. The tendency, often, is to try and evaluate its effectson the basis of simple impressions alone. One of the few scholars to have addressed this issue using scientific criteria is Eugene Morozov, and we recall, in particular, his book The Net Delusion: the dark side of internet freedom. According to the data he collected and the analysis that followed, the function of the internet, particularly in relation to participation in politics and in the evolution of democracy, tends to be interpreted from two distorted perspectives: Morozov calls these cyber-utopianism and cyber-centrism. Those who believe that the internet has the power tomake politics gradually more transparentand egalitarian may be defined as cyber-utopians, while cyber-centrism is a more radical category embracing the interpretations of all those who think that the internet has profoundly changed the nature of political participation and, above all, of political organisations. Their view is based on the idea that the internet, eliminating the costs of spreading messages and sharing ideas, also eliminates the differencesbetween large andsmall parties.

This illusion is further fuelled by ideological interpretations of the end of the bipolar world order and the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the 1990s the idea took hold, almost unchallenged, that the course of history, from that moment on, would be uncomplicated, with the market and science acting as automatic driving forces of peace and of progressive global democratisation. In this period, the potentialfreedom offeredby the internetto all citizensseemed to confirmsuch a trend. Subsequently, other factors — the difficulties that started to weaken the hegemonic role of the United States and the emergence of new powers in areas of the world that until a few years previously had been considered depressed — began to nourish the hope that the internet might become an instrument of liberation for peoples subjected to dictatorships that enjoyed, or had enjoyed, the protection of the Americans.

These utopian ideas are encapsulated perfectly in the iconic slogans (such as “drop tweets, not bombs”) that, spreading like wild fire, strengthened the hope that the internet could really prove to be a means of advancing democracy. The widely held interpretation of the role of social networks, Twitter in particular, in the 2009 uprising of the Green Movement in Iran provides an important example of this mystification. The popular view was that the protest had been made possible, and organised on a wide scale, thanks to a “spreading of the word” via social networks. In truth, however, the number of tweets registered in Iran totaled just 19,235, which means that the phenomenon involved, at most (assuming one post per person), only 0.027 per cent of the population. Therefore, the data to hand show that the “Twitter revolution” or “drop tweets, not bombs” revolution, was undoubtedly an exaggeration by journalists.[1] And its effects — as has since been seen — were not at all what they were trumpeted to be. Worldwide, tweets on the elections and protests in Iran numbered as many as three million — mostly celebrating the role of the internet in fuelling the uprising — and many politicians, including government members, were clearlyunder the illusion thatTwitterand social networkswould helpdemocracyto triumphagainst dictatorship. The failure of the uprising shows that these were, unfortunately, false hopes. Despite this, they had been shared by a number of prominent figures, including Hillary Clinton — then US Secretary of State —, all of whom fell into the trap of accepting, as true, sensational news that spreads before it has been verified.

Cyber-Utopianism, Authoritarian Regimes and Democracy.

Morozov’s book contains a large case series illustrating the strategies used by authoritarian regimes to control and monitor internet use, and thus to largely nullify the advantages of this apparently free, universal and egalitarian instrument that, with its blogs and social networks, many hope to see promoting radical changes in the direction of the principles of the liberal democraticstate.

In China, for example, contrary to what is commonly believed, the use of social networks is extremely widespread: many Chinese use them and are actually at the forefront of this field, both in terms of the way it has shaped lifestyles and in terms of the production of these networks. The level of connection to the online universe is strong in China. The world’s most popular social networks include RenRen (also linked to Chinese mobile phones and smartphones), which is used mainly by Chinese adolescents, and Kaixin which is more geared towards professionals. In Russia, too, theculture of online entertainmentis very prevalent; 82 per cent of the population is registered with the country’s most popular social networks (like odnoklassiniki, vKontakte and MoiMir) and for the most part rejects Western equivalents such as Facebook, even though these are available.[2] These are, therefore, two examples of societies that are interconnected, internally, thanks to the internet, while nevertheless remaining in tune with the authoritarian regimes that govern them and without, at least for the moment, showing any sign of a willingness to break with theexisting institutions. The same thing might be said of the BRICS and the MINT countries and all the other emerging countries. Therefore, in the absence of the classic elements that trigger economic and social crises, the internetper se does notappear to playany role in promoting democratisation. Even though we have moved from a situation, in the 1990s, in which the internet had several million users, to today’s situation in which it has several billion, the dynamics regulating political processes do not appear to have changed.[3]

In authoritarian regimes or in oligarchiessuch as China, Russia, Venezuela and Vietnam, to mention the main ones, the internet is a tool also widelyusedby governments, which pour considerable resources, human and financial, into efforts to exploit its advantages to the full. The internet can be usedas a monitoring tool, as a meansof censorship, andas a propaganda instrument. In the first case, the web is used todetect and monitoranti-government movements. Whereas prior to the advent of the internet this task, carried out by the secret services, was very costly and required a considerable amount of time in order to get results, today a simple virus infiltrating the computer system of a single agitator is all it takes to control information, log onto his network, and gather information that can lead to arrests. Another possibility as regards the use of the internet for monitoring purposes is the recruitment of pro-government bloggers, or even simple citizens, who are then paid by the regime to identify individuals suspected of destabilising the state.

Censorship is already a more familiar issue, especially as regards the People’s Republic of China. It is known that, in China, many websites are blocked and replaced by domestic versions. China, however, is not the only country to make use of this practice. A regime can intervene at different levels, from social networks to blogs, search engine toolbars to websites, and can also control and censor websites that are very popular in the West such as Facebook or Wikipedia, ensuring that the amount of information reaching the citizens is limited. At the same time, the government can study citizens’ web searches, cataloguing them, by subject matter or user geographical area, so as better to exploit this information, again for monitoring and control purposes.

Finally, authoritarian regimes use the internet as a low-cost propaganda tool capable of reaching a vast audience. There exist, as mentioned, paid bloggers who peddle the government’s line and, at the same time, monitor blog posts generally in order to pick up on possible anti-government stances. The internet is also a vehicle for spreading videos, even ones seeking to justify conflicts. This was seen in the case of the conflict between Russia and Georgia; the video in question, widelypromotedby the Russian governmentat the time of theinvasion, is still accessible. One prominent figure, among those who have frequently used the internet for propaganda purposes (“spinternet”), is Ugo Chavez who, for a long time, wasthe personmost followedon social networks in Venezuela.

This instrumental use of social networks by governing regimes was also seen during the so-called Arab Spring. At that time, newspapers and television channels, in a propagandistic way, attributed the “success” of the Arab Spring to Facebook and the internet. In reality, however, even though there was, from the earliest stagesof the uprising, a certain use of social networks for the communication ofinformationand the exchanging offiles betweencitizens — especially on Facebook and Twitter —, an important role was also played by the pan-Arabtelevision stations. These were actually more influential than the internet, which, conversely, was used to a limited extent. The figures relating to the use of Facebook, which is the most popular social network among citizens of North African countries, are the following: at the start of the protests, membership of Facebook, expressed as a percentage of the population, was quite low: 5.5 per cent in Egypt, 4.3 per cent in Libya, and 18.8 per cent in Tunisia.[4] However, these rates increased during the course of the uprising, by 29 per cent in Egypt and by 17 per cent in Tunisia, whereas in Libya there was a decrease in the Facebook use. As for Twitter, the total number of users in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen is around 14,000: this must be considered in the context of a population that, in Egypt alone, amounts to around 80 million people.[5] It can thus be seen that the social network phenomenon, if we compare it to the number of insurgents on the streets, actually remained confined to an élite. The attempted revolution certainly did not stem from the internet; rather, the internet served as a sounding board contributing to the spread of information. This was particularly true following the public suicide of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian whoset himself alightinthe streets inprotestagainsthis country’s authorities. The fact thattheinternetwas closed downin several Egyptian cities,including the capitalCairo, is one of the reasons why the role of social networks was overestimated and overplayed; in reality the internet played a minor role; what is more, the circulation of information on the internet was exploited by the regime in Egypt in order to glean news directly from the bloggers who were helping to coordinate the protests. In this way it was better able to prevent and control the movements of the insurgents on the streets.

One aspect to consider, in order to understand why social networks continue to play an only marginal role in revolutions, is the nature of the bonds that are created between insurgents. The bond created through the shared experience of a demonstration on the streets or through a personal relationship forged within a political organisation is a strong one, especially when it is based on a mutual belief in the importance of the cause, or when it is underpinned by a sense of a considerable common risk. Social networks lack this feature, which isindispensablefor cementinga revolutionarypoliticalforce. Generally speaking, social networks are more likely to contain light-hearted language and content; they often encourage narcissistic tendencies (appearance and attractiveness are core elements in Facebook and they are systematically exploited), and they favour the development of rather shallow relationships. While it is certainly true that the immediate, bold and sensationalistic type of expression favoured by the internet is capable of stirring up waves of intense excitement and hope, as well as alarmism, it is also true that these are often transitory “mobilisation” phenomena. Subsequently, when analyses and indications turn out to be wrong, it remains incredibly difficult to ensure that the necessary denials and corrections are spread at the same rate and achieve the same level of penetration.

Use of the Internet in Democracies.

In democracies, too, the internet is used more for advertising, commercial and entertainment purposes than for political purposes. The internet and, above all, the social networks are a sort of huge container of information used by a myriad ofsubjects — often commercial entities — to bombard the web’s countless users with information or propaganda, seeking to influence them. Citizens thus find themselves faced with animmense amountof data andmessages from which to choose, and it is inevitable that those that are more prominent in society are also more present and visible online.

When used as a vehicle of political propaganda, the web carries some specific “user warnings”: the highly simplified nature of online communication encourages messages that are appealing (at the expense of content), answers that are offensive rather than thoughtful, and the intervention of those who want to provoke rather than encourage reflection. The internet certainly does not foster rational and in-depth exchanges of ideas. What we see, therefore, is a behavioural regression which, manifesting itself as so-called flaming, encourages an immature tendency to posture, to be too ready with insults, and to interact, narcissistically, with computers.[6] These attitudes have become entrenched precisely because, in this form of communication, there is no face and nosimultaneity, but instead an anonymity that removes all sense of responsibility, anuncontrolled desireto appear, and the possibility of communication that is entirely one-way.

This explains why political campaignsmounted on the web are often linked to the pursuit of quite simple and direct objectives. They may be organised, for example, to promote petitions on issues that have a strong emotional impact, or serve as awareness-raising instruments generally. Instead, the battles undertaken to bring about major political-institutional change, or that accompany profound clashes of cultures, are not ones can be won thanks to the internet or in which the internet can play a decisive role. The internet, in such battles, can play only a subordinate role; contrary to what the cyber-centrists like to think, the web cannot replace political parties or political organisations. Morozov, in this regard, recalls Kierkegaard's view of the café debates that became fashionable at the start of the twentieth century: he considered them a frivolous, empty form of communication, because they addressed all issues, and always in a superficial way. Being willing to talk about anything is the same as being willing to engage in prattle. The parallel with what we see on the internet is clearly evident. Even though cyber-centrism tries toequate online debatewith real debate, they are not the same: in the former, there is no structure and everyone communicatesin one direction, without beinginclined tolisten. Furthermore, online debate is punctuated by all kinds of messages, for advertising or purely recreational purposes, which divert attention away from the issue in hand. Finally, the political issues most likely to take hold online are those with a strong populist appeal and a high emotional impact.

The success, often cited, of the internet campaign mounted by Obama and the Democratic Party in the run-up to the 2012 presidential elections, confirms this assessment. The campaign was considered a great success for two reasons: because it contributed to Obama’s victory and because of the funds that it raised. But the real strength of Obama’s electoral campaign was actually the mobilisation of tens of thousands of volunteers who were prepared to go from house to house, knocking on the doors of citizens who were undecided, or not planning to vote, in order to speak to them individually and try to convince them. A study[7] has shown that the effectiveness of efforts to convince voters can vary greatly and depends on the method chosen: one citizen in 10 for door-to-door campaigning and around one in 100,000 for campaigning using flyers and e-mails; the effectiveness of telephone campaigning was found to be controversial and the use of electoral posters did not seem to have any influence. Most (80 per cent) of the efforts of Obama’s team were devoted to the first of these methods and it is specified in the campaign report[8] that the primary objective of the campaign was to mobilise people who had expressed their support on social networks, getting them to become active volunteers in the field.

From the funding point of view, the electoral campaign was undoubtedly a huge success, made possible by the web. The campaign waspaid forentirelyby voluntary online donations, each of up to a maximum of $200, from ordinary citizens. This strategic choice allowed Obama to avoid relying on large loans from business tycoons who could have imposed conditions that might have influenced his future choices. The overall figures are impressive: 3 million donors, 13 million e-mails sent, 5 million “friends” and contacts on social networks (especially Facebook), 8.5 visits to the website MyBarackObama.com and 80 million official electoral video viewings. But the fact remains that this remarkable success was possible because there was not a single American citizen who had not already heard of Obama; indeed, Obama’s popularity was absolutely crucial.

The case of the Five Star Movement (M5S) in Italy, too, highlights the fact that it is actually a person’s popularity that increases his or her visibility on the web. Despite efforts to paint the success of the M5S — especially in the February 2013 elections — as a resounding victory for online communication, heralding an alternative, web-based, democratic model, the truth is that much of the consensus won by the M5S, as well as being linked to political factors typical of times of crisis, like the emergence of forms of populism, was due largely to the media and to traditional methods of communication. Through public rallies and extensive media coverage, on television and in newspapers, the success of the M5S was, in reality, strongly driven by the “old media”, which frequently quoted and extensively diffused Beppe Grillo’s blog posts. Instead, the weaknesses and limitations inherent in the idea that a political force can be built, without an organisational structure, on the basis of the “free” online participation of citizens very quickly became apparent and the whole enterprise turned out be a dismal failure, in terms of internal democracy at least.

What the case of the M5S shows, however, is that cyber-utopianism and cyber-centralism can become tainted with populism. And while the internet has yet to prove able to undermine the structure of traditional political organisations, what can be said of it is that it has the capacity to promote charismatic leaders and contribute to the spread of chaos in periods of crisis. Without the development of a strong critical and civic awareness, which is necessary in order to be able to adopt a selective approach to the content available on the internet, the internet mayprove toa double-edged swordthatfurther distances the citizens from democratic life, leaving them at the mercyof private entities that are not always easilyidentifiable and thathave an interest inconveying highlydestructive messages.

Nelson Belloni

[1] Eugene Morozov, The Net Delusion: the dark side of internet freedom, New York, Public Affairs, 2011, p. 15.

[2] http://www.demnet.eu/it/l82-dei-russi-usano-social-network-scopriamo-quali/.

[3] http://www.parlamento.it/application/xmanager/projects/
parlamento/file/repository/affariinternazionali/osservatorio/
approfondimenti/PI0040App.pdf.

[4] ibid.

[5] ibid.

[6] http://users.rider.edu/~suler/psycyber/holland.html.

[7] Guillaume Liegey, Arthur Muller, Vincent Pons, Frapper aux portes - ou comment mobiliser pour les prochaines élections,Laboratoire des Idées du Parti Socialiste, October 2010.

[8] Barak Obama and Joe Biden, 2012 Obama Campaign Legacy Report, http://secure.assets.bostatic.com/frontend/projects/legacy/legacy-report.pdf.

Year LV, 2013, Single Issue, Page 126

THE DEBATE IN GERMANY ON DEMOCRACY

AND EUROPEAN UNIFICATION:

A COMPARISON OF THE POSITIONS OF HABERMAS

AND STREECK*

The existential crisis of the process of European unification is an issue that is generating a broad debate, one very important aspect of which is the question of the relationship between democracy and European unification. The contribution, in this regard, provided by the debate, in Germany, between Wolfgang Streeck, a renowned European sociologist,[1] and the philosopher Jürgen Habermas,[2] which has attracted considerable media attention, deserves close examination, both because it involves two highly esteemed intellectuals, and because Europe’s future is, essentially, in Germany’s hands. In this note, I therefore recall the main lines of Streeck’s argument and the critical considerations of Habermas, which, on the whole, I deem valid and enlightening, albeit with a limit that needs underlining.

Streeck is deeply critical of European integration, adopting a stance (widely supported in many left-wing circles in Europe) that culminates, ultimately, in the idea that Europe should be dismantled to allow a return to the national sovereignties. This position fits into a broad and well-articulated critical appraisalof the strategy introduced by the capitalist ruling class in the wake of the Second World War, which was pursued increasingly successfully from the 1970s onwards. This whole strategy hinges on the concept of the revolt of capital against the mixed economy regime that became established in all the Western democracies after World War II. The term ‘mixed economy’ denotes public intervention in the market economy through strong economic policies (and also through nationalisations, although this is only one aspect, moreover not central), used as a means of tackling the social, territorial, sectorial and (from the 1970s also environmental) imbalances produced by the natural interplay of economic forces that are not governed by a political will oriented towards pursuit of the common good. The capitalist ruling class worked systematically to replace the mixed economy regime (also known as the Keynesian system, being based essentially on the teachings of Keynes) with a neoliberal regime (also termed neo-Hayekian, given that Hayek is its main point of reference[3]), whose aim is, through rebalancing policies, to limit state intervention in the economy as far as possible. Basically, this equates with unchallenged domination of free competition and, therefore, with systematic removal of obstacles to the pursuit of profit, in the mythical belief that this will lead to the creation of a balance that will naturally be accompanied by generalised wellbeing.

This design has been pursued, essentially, through the internationalisation of trade and production systems, a phenomenon that the revolution in information and communications technology and the end of the Cold War have helped to render increasingly global. And the increasingly effective and incisive implementation of the neoliberal line has had devastating consequences: on the economic and social level it has produced growing inequality linked to a clear weakening of the welfare state, increasingly harsh economic and financial crises, and increasingly severe environmental degradation. Moreover, this economic, social and environmental decline is being accompanied, on a political level, by an alarming decay of democracy.

In addition to the fact that inequality makes democratic participation increasingly asymmetrical, it is also important to note the progressive voiding of the democratic system, which can be attributed to the fact that the nation-states are part of a supranational economy and a supranational society, both of which are governed by technocratic bodies. In a setting in which democratic states are forced to submit to markets over which they have no control (the most striking aspect of this subordination being their desperate need to finance their growing public debts, given that national fiscal resources, diminished by transnational competition, are less and less able to cover government spending), and to the decisions of technocracies essentially controlled by the capitalist elites, democracy has become a hollow term. “TINA” (there is no alternative) is the slogan of the moment, and it reflects a situation that is inevitably leading to growing disinterest in elections on the part of voters and to increasingly widespread protest demonstrations. The ultimate objective of the neoliberal strategy pursued by today’s capitalism is to get rid of democracy once and for all, establishing a supranational government inspired by Hayek’s idea of support for the free market and subject to no conditions.

European integration, in Streeck’s view, fits into this process and in fact represents its most advanced aspect. Europe, in fact, in creating the European Economic Community, realised a particularly profound form of supranational integration of the markets and of production processes. The introduction of the single market, which, following the removal of non-tariff barriers (physical, technical, fiscal), brought the elimination (admittedly still incomplete) of customs and quotas, was followed by the creation of the single currency. Throughout this journey, what has been implemented is, essentially, a negative form of economic integration (meaning the elimination of obstacles to the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital), while the initially declared commitment to positive integration (supranational policies designed to address the imbalances in the market economy) has not been honoured. All this has resulted in the systematic emergence of the neoliberal forces that want to see an end to the mixed economy, and of the rigid submission of the states to the markets.

It is important to underline the strategic role in this setting of the single currency, which, of course, embraces both strong and weak countries. By depriving the weaker countries of the possibility of devaluing their currencies — “external devaluation” was a protective mechanism that had previously allowed them to compensate for their lower levels of productivity and competitiveness —, it has obliged them to fall back on the neoliberal instrument of “internal devaluation”, in other words to seek to increase their productivity and competitiveness through more flexible labour markets, lower salaries, longer working hours, and commodification of the welfare state.

At the political-institutional level, the voiding of democracy that is the general objective of the neoliberal strategy has been reflected in an evolution that has seen the fundamental powers of economic government transferred to supranational level, where they have become concentrated in the hands of undemocratic or technocratic organs, such as the European Council, the Commission and the European Central Bank. Ultimately, this is where an attempt is under way to structure a new type of supranational political system (hinged on technocracy instead of democracy), which aims to spearhead a global evolution in this direction.

If this is the situation as regards European integration, what the federalists propose, as an alternative, is engagement in the struggle to create a democratic European federal system (that might serve as a model and as a key incentive for a global democratic federal evolution), as this is the indispensable framework for creating positive economic integration, and thus for returning to democratic forms of economic government. But Streeck does not see it this way. Indeed, quite apart from the difficulties that a struggle of this kind presents in the current setting, he believes that a supranational democracy is not a valid solution for Europe and puts forward four arguments to support his view.

The first concerns the inefficacy of European territorial rebalancing policies aimed at boosting the competitiveness and productivity of the EU’s more backward countries, in other words at modernising them. Areas cited as key examples of this inefficacy are the former GDR after German reunification and southern Italy; in both cases, the results of regional policies implemented by the nation-states and of European regional policy clearly leave much to be desired. Actually, Streeck believes that a return to national currencies, which could then be devalued, would be a far more effective solution, and also quicker to implement than a European solidarity policy, because it would not require the agreement of public opinion in the countries providing the aid.

His second argument concerns the fragile social integration of “imperfect” nation-states such as Belgium and Spain, even though, more broadly, he also cites the separatism rampant in many EU member states, including, in particular, the micronationalism of the Northern League in Italy. Streeck maintains that if problems of integration deriving from regional differences and disparities are difficult to resolve at national level, they will clearly be even more so in the framework of a Europe that Europeanists would like to see united through a political federation, which would inevitably lack structural stability.

Whereas Streeck, in these first two arguments, questions the workability and stability of a closer political union, in the other two he questions its desirability. He points out that politically imposed assimilation of the economic cultures of southern Europe into that of the northern part would result in an unacceptable standardisation of their respective ways of life, and also that the “egalitarian ethos of constitutional democracy” can be based only on a sense of national belonging and solidarity, otherwise minority cultures would inevitably be marginalised and eventually eliminated.

Streeck concludes that the objective to pursue is not European federal union (unworkable and, on principle, undesirable), but rather the re-establishment of the national sovereignties, as these represent the only framework in which social democracy can be attained. In economic terms, this means dismantling the European monetary union, going back to flexible exchange rates, and thus to the possibility of using currency devaluation as a fundamental instrument for tackling territorial imbalances (a system of protectionism that has been dubbed “enlightened”, on the basis that devaluations should not be implemented too frequently, in order to prevent the possible development of nationalistic forces).

With regard to Streeck’s ideas, Habermas advances a series of considerations that coincide with the federalists’ vision of European unification. Like Streeck, he opposes the neoliberal current that would like to see market justice taking the place of social justice. It should be underlined that this is a stance adopted by the federalists since the time of the Ventotene Manifesto; indeed, the federalists argue that democracy (a value whose full realisation depends on the presence of peace), to be real, must be both liberal and social (which implies a structural commitment to overcoming disparities between people and regions).[4] Habermas also shares the federalists’ firm belief that interdependence beyond the confines of the nation-states is an irreversible phenomenon (that, moreover, associated with that of market expansion, potentially has great progressive value) and that the predominance of neoliberal trends in the process of European integration (essentially negative integration) is structurally linked to the inefficiency and democratic deficit that characterise Europe’s supranational institutions.[5]

The way to overcome the inefficiency is to equip the European institutions with the fiscal and macroeconomic powers and competences needed to mount a common European endeavour (with the relative transfers of economic resources and joint and several liability on the part of the states), as only such an endeavour (as opposed to the abstract idea that the nations can boost their competitiveness by themselves) would have the capacity to sustain, in addition to general social progress, modernisation of the European countries currently presenting problems of backwardness. Overcoming the democratic deficit, on the other hand, means switching from the current “federalism of governments”, where the formation of political will depends entirely on compromises laboriously reached between representatives of national interests that are always ready to veto each other, to a situation in which MEPs (deciding by majority) and governments have equal roles in the co-decision procedure. What this means, basically, is not returning to national sovereignties that are structurally impotent in the face of supranational interdependence, but rather creating a federal and democratic European political union, as only this can create the conditions for a return to a mixed economy at supranational level and thus allow democratic politics to regain control of the markets. For this reason, it is time to press ahead rapidly (overcoming the phase of gradual advances which is clearly no longer adequate for the challenges faced) with a serious reform of the Lisbon Treaty, albeit initially applicable only to the eurozone countries.

Starting from this approach, whose convergence with the federalist one we note with great satisfaction, Habermas responds, point by point, to the arguments used by Streeck to justify his preference for a return to the national dimension over the creation of a democratic European Union.

He argues that a monetary union, to remain intact, must be capable of balancing, or at least permanently containing, the structural imbalances in competitiveness between the national economies, and that it is not the historical heterogeneity of the European economic cultures that makes it impossible to conduct this supranational policy efficiently, but rather the weakness of the fiscal and macroeconomic powers attributed to the European institutions and the absence of adequate democratic legitimacy at supranational level. Moreover, the idea that currency devaluations represent the way to make up ground is a fanciful one that fails to take into account not only the disastrous economic fallout that dismantling the single currency would have, but also the consequent and disastrous political fallout, which would include, most seriously, a re-emergence of competitive devaluations and other similar forms of nationalism.

As regards the rise of forms of micronationalism and separatism, Habermas remarks that “conflicts always arise along these historical fault lines when the most vulnerable sections of the population are caught up in economic crises or historical upheavals, become insecure, and process their fear of a loss of status by clinging to supposedly ‘natural’ identities, whether it be ‘tribe’, region, language, or nation.” The way to respond, in such cases, is to bring about economic and social progress, fundamentally through a policy addressing territorial imbalances and the need for modernisation — a policy implementable only by an efficient and democratic European political union. Obviously, it is not a question of eliminating the sociocultural diversity of the different European regions and nations — this diversity is a valuable aspect of European heritage that distinguishes Europe from other continents and is by no means a barrier to integration. What is needed, rather, is efficient and democratic multilevel federalism (basically, supranational federalism supplemented by internal federalism, in line with the federalists’ idea) and not the creation of new microstates.

Moving on to Streeck’s view that closer European political union is not desirable, Habermas criticises, in particular, his assumption that the “egalitarian ethos of constitutional democracy” can be based only on a sense of national belonging and solidarity, and can therefore be realised only within the territorial boundaries of a nation-state, using two arguments to support his case.

The first takes up an idea that he began to develop systematically more than two decades ago and that, stemming from the teachings of Mario Albertini, has actually been a key part of the theoretical heritage of the MFE since as long ago as the 1950s. Essentially, nation-states are founded on a highly artificial concept, namely the legal construct of the status of citizenship. Indeed, national consciousness, even in societies that are relatively homogeneous in ethnic and linguistic terms, is anything but natural. Citizenship, valued and exploited at administrative level, is actually a product of historiography, the press and the practice of military conscription. The national consciousness present in heterogeneous societies where there is a large proportion of immigrants provides a demonstration of the fact that any population can, collectively, become a nation-state capable, against the backdrop of a shared political culture, of forming a common political will.

It is therefore mistaken to think that Europe’s problem is the impossibility, in the absence of national homogeneity, of creating a political union able to express a united political will. Europe is a profoundly interdependent setting with an advanced level of economic and institutional integration (the primacy of European law being the most advanced aspect of this integration), but where the status of citizenship has still not been fully created. This can be achieved only through the creation of a democratic federal political union in which decisions are taken jointly, and on an equal footing, by the body representing the national governments and the body representing the European citizens, i.e., the European Parliament. This solution would allow compromises between national interests to be accompanied, through decisions taken by a majority of MEPs elected on the basis of party preferences, by a transverse sharing of interests, overcoming national boundaries. This, in turn, would require the parties to gather consensus across the whole EU territory, both in the advanced areas and in the more backward ones, and would therefore strengthen the general notion that European citizens may one day be able to refer to themselves collectively as “us”, allowing it eventually to assume the power of an institutionalised concept. Such a shift in outlook is crucial if the common rules, currently used to coordinate the activity of states that have the only the appearance of being sovereign, are to be replaced with the shared formation of a united political will, in which national interests are bound up with and relativised to the European interest.

In his second argument, Habermas specifically takes issue with Streeck’s concern that a supranational democracy would have unitarian-Jacobin traits since, moving in the direction of permanent marginalisation of minorities, it would inevitably result in a “levelling of the ‘economic and identity communities’ founded on geographical proximity’.” On this point, Habermas’s argument is valid only up to a point.

On the one hand, he recalls that federalism is born of a synthesis of unity and diversity and that it therefore constitutes a guarantee for smaller states. In particular, he recalls the principle of the “double majority” of member states and voters and the weighted composition of the European Parliament which, precisely in the name of fair representation, compensates for marked differences in the size of the population in smaller compared with larger countries. On the other hand, however, he regards the idea that a deepening of the European Union would inevitably lead to a sort of European federal republic as a false assumption. For him, the federal state is the wrong model, given that conditions of democratic legitimacy can also be met by a supranational “but transstate democratic political community”, that, too, would allow shared governance. In such a community, he argues, political decisions would be legitimated by the citizens acting in their dual role as European citizens and citizens of the various member states. In a “political” union of this kind, which must clearly be distinguished from a true state, the member states would continue to be the ultimate guarantors of law and freedom, and would therefore continue to play a role far more important than that of the subnational entities comprising a federal state.

Habermas develops these affirmations more fully and in more detail in The Crisis of the European Union,[6] to which he makes explicit reference in his review of Streeck’s book.Basically, when he argues that the nation-states in a non-state European federation would have a more prominent role than the subnational entities comprising a federal state, what he means, in concrete terms, is that a democratic European Union must not have competence for deciding on its own areas of jurisdiction (kompetenz-kompetenz), and must therefore decide unanimously on constitutional amendments, whereas the European Council, which should act in a co-decision procedure on an equal footing with the European Parliament, should, on essential issues, decide by unanimity. At this point it must be underlined that the federalists, while affirming that the European federal state will be different from the federal states that have existed up to now, given that it will be founded on historically consolidated nation-states (in other words, compared with existing federal states, it will be more decentralised and will allow the member states more room for intervention — in short a “light federation”, but a true federation nonetheless), categorically reject the maintenance of any form of right of national veto, which is the essence of the confederal system. As regards the link between the decisive role that the nation-states should, according to Habermas, retain in a democratic European Union and the fact that they are the guarantors of the rights and freedoms of the citizens of the single states, he points out that the nation-states, being constitutional democracies are not merely actors playing a part in the long historical process of eliminating the violence at the heart of political power, but rather constitute permanent achievements and living figures of an existing justice (this is a reference to Hegel). Thus, they are something more than the mere embodiment of national cultures deserving to be maintained: they are the only guarantors of the level of justice and freedom that the citizens want to see preserved.

This position contains two contradictions. First, it is impossible to create a democratic supranational system (seen by Habermas as indispensable in order to guarantee uniform living conditions, i.e. to defeat neoliberalism) as long as there remains a national power that can veto and not simply weight the majority decisions taken by the European Parliament. After all, what kind of democracy allows one state to impose its will to avoid a decision on all other states and on the majority of the European Parliament? And isn’t the right of national veto the structural ally of neoliberalism? Second, the immortalisation of the nation-states (and thus the retention of their right of veto in a democratic European Union) is not consistent with the argument, absolutely valid, that nation-states are unnatural, artificial constructs. In particular, it is not adequately appreciated that, unless the process of European unification is carried through to completion, the nation-states’ capacity to maintain a viable democratic system will inevitably be undermined.

These limits in Habermas’s argument in favour of a democratic European Union weaken his final appeal (made in his review of Streeck’s book), in which he urges Europe’s left-wing parties not to repeat the mistake they made in 1914, in other words, not to flinch from choosing European democracy out of fear of the populist currents rampant in European society as a result of the ongoing severe financial and economic-social crisis.

By way of a conclusion, it must be said that in the difficult struggle for European unification, the federalists must, as part of the decisively important task befalling them, strive to overcome not only the reticence of the Europeanists, but also the logical inconsistencies in their arguments.

* This is text is based on a talk given by Sergio Pistone on 20 October 2013 in Salsomaggiore Terme at the meeting of the MFE’s Ufficio del dibattito.

[1]See Wolfgang Streeck, Die vertagte Krise des demokratischen Kapitalismus, Berlin, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2013.

[2]Habermas’s criticism of Streeck can be found in Demokratie oder kapitalismus? Vom Elend der nationalstaatlichen Fragmentierung in einer Kapitalistisch integrierten Weltgesellschaft,Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, n. 5 (2013), his review of Wolfgang Streeck's book Gekaufte Zeit (Berlin, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2013).

[3]On Hayek — whose key writings to be recalled here are Monetary Nationalism and Industrial Stability, London, Longmans Green, 1937 and Individualism and Economic Order, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1939 — see Fabio Masini, Lezioni della storia del pensiero economico, Il Ponte, n. 2-3 (2012), special issue entitled Federalismo. Proposte di riforma della convivenza civile, edited by Fabio Masini and Roberto Castaldi.

[4]In this regard I refer the reader to my own works: L’evoluzione della riflessione riguardo alla tematica economico-sociale e ambientale in seno al MFE, Piemonteuropa, n. 3 (2011); Il federalismo e la questione degli squilibri territoriali, Piemonteuropa, n. 1-2 (2012); Federazione europea subito come risposta alla crisi esistenziale dell’integrazione europea e per superare gli squilibri fra paesi forti e deboli dell’Unione Europea, Piemonteuropa, n. 1-2 (2013). See also the excellent text by Massimo D’Antoni and Ronny Mazzocchi, L’Europa non è finita. Uscire dalla crisi rilanciando il modello sociale europeo, Foreword by Roberto Antoni, Afterword by Stefano Fassina, Rome, Editori Riuniti, 2012.

[5]According to the federalists, the advance of neoliberalism in the framework of European integration has been facilitated by nationalist resistance (present in both conservative and liberal governments) to transfers of sovereignty to a supranational level.

[6]Jürgen Habermas, The Crisis of the European Union. A Response. This book, published by Polity Press, UK, 2012 is the English translation of Zur Verfassung Europas. Ein Essay, Berlin, Suhrkamp Verlag, 2011.

Year LII, 2010, Single Issue, Page 72

Year LI, 2009, Single Issue, Page 51