Isabel Maria Estrada Local Associationalism and the path to a Post-National understanding of social relations in Europe.
(The role of Civil Society and State in the Project for a Radical Democracy)
We will start this paper from the assumption that a new model of society must be set in place - a society of deeper and wider democratic participation for all its members.
What distinctive features should that society have? First of all, it should be a society willing to engage itself in a serious process of self-criticism about all its instituted boundaries as practices of exclusion, questioning itself on the moral validity of their existence(1). Such a society therefore would have to be defined as a living space of wide-open and intensive dialogue between all its members, relying on the authentic practice of rights of communication and participation. The idea that everybody has always something to teach and something to learn, having no place for a priori certainties, would be the only unquestioned thought. As a result, all moral positions should have equal opportunities to show themselves to each other, and this would guarantee that all practices of exclusion were fully and equally evaluated in their moral pertinence.
And it would certainly be a more sharing and a more inclusive society. More sharing, because the exercise of rights of participation and communication enables us to know each other better, hence enables - by the use of our imagination and memory of previous own experiences - the capacity to understand the pain and desires of other people. More inclusive, because the sentiment of solidarity resulting from those intersubjective experiences allows us to better accept plurality and diversity. Besides, the very use of rights of communication and participation requires to be democratically valid the inclusion of all those potentially interested in its results. Thus, inclusion is not only a condition, but also a consequence of truly democratic participation.
In a society of this nature, to be a citizen would mean to be an active agent in its construction, thanks to the full use of these fundamental rights. At the same time, the intensive, open and democratic use of such rights would turn citizenship into an articulating entity of collective plurality and individual integrity. In other words, citizenship would become synonym of a political identity detached from the concept of national membership because based upon the admission of individuals and groups on the grounds of common rights of democratic participation. Considering that in our societies this set of fundamental rights are embraced by the sphere of political rights, the argument for a project of radical democratic participation can only be compatible with the argument for the widening of all political rights to all fully residing members of any society. The distinction between citizen and non-citizen would then be absolutely meaningless, because in the light of this project both would be citizens, as both would share the same capacity of using fundamental political rights (whether it was by suffrage or by political and civic association). Simultaneously, the only acceptable separation between a citizen and a non-citizen would be the one resulting from the latter's decision to remain outside of such a social and political engagement.
These are the basics of a post-national citizenship proposal - a citizenship democratically valid because grounded on principles of full communication and participation, above and beyond any national membership's constraints.
The major difference between the traditional model and the post-national model of citizenship lays on the fact that in the second one the individual is identified as member of a political association (the respublica), and not of a national or ethnic community. And because it has no particular national, ethnical or cultural content, the respublica reveals a non-essentialist nature that makes it compatible with the presence of each individual's collective and personal identity, and also compatible with his/her real actions for the accomplishment of various interpretations of the common good(2).
Taking this ideal project as one we would like helping societies to build for the sake of all people's rights and democratic values, it is understandable our curiosity about the European Community project of a Union Citizenship, since it appears to be the only one with a post-national potential so far conceived. In this context it is reasonable to ask how close is the project of a European Citizenship of making immigrants into active subjects of a renewed social contract?
For fifteen countries in Europe, citizenship must be thought close to a wider space, that of the EU. It is thus fundamental to question if and how the project of a Union Citizenship (UC) has been contributing for a post-national understanding of the concept. In other words, what treatment and what place does the EU keep for its immigrants in its redefinition as a more inclusive and reliable space?
These questions are undeniably linked to another one about the meaning of Europe itself, the one we think it has now and the one we would like it to have in the future. The idea of Europe follows the history of its continent and that of the World, being therefore made of ruptures, reinvention and restlessness. Assuming the idea of Europe as one that renews itself along the way, it is perfectly reasonable that a new idea of Europe will come out in the future. And considering as valid the democratic renewal project we have been arguing for, it seems obvious that the future European identity should be based on a shared culture of common solidarity among all its members. But, such a culture is only viable if backed-up by another one: a culture of full participation, lived as close as possible to the model of the ideal situation of speech described by Habermas, and as close as possible to the pre-conditions of an intercultural dialogue as defined by Santos(3)
(The truth is without participation there is no Solidarity, only parochial solidarities, imprisoned in their small spaces of action, running the risk of revealing themselves as mutually aggressive and destructive). Secondly, from all the possible fields of participation, the political field remains as the privileged one by which men and women guarantee the capacity to participate in the decision-making processes potentially affecting their lives.(4) As a result, (although not discarding the democratic potentialities of participation in other spheres of social action), political participation should be taken as central in the definition of a new European identity. A political participation yet shaped by a post-national character, assuming that only such a model would protect the plurality of all possible participants.
However, the European scenario now being modelled doesn't seem to be getting close to such an ideal. The Treaty of Maastricht has brought the concept of European citizenship, act of undeniable symbolic weight, for it was as postulating the existence of a popular sovereignty at least common to all citizens of the member-states, hence disconnected from national constraints. But, a closer look to this promising picture and one finds several imperfections and doubts as far as its democratic features are concerned.
First, not only the amount of rights granted to the European citizens is small, but also too far from efficient establishment and protection. Second, and far the most important in our present analysis, the new space of participation has been conceived as an open space only for the already citizens of the member-states, excluding third-countries's resident communities from its (at least theoretical) virtues. In our minds, that space should be open to those communities too, because only by accomplishing the inclusion of all its different groups, and returning to the rights of participation their true status of rights and not privileges of a certain European elite, would the Union Citizenship reveal a true postnational nature. Yet, when we look to the European Law as a reliable source of the political wills and institutional practices of the European actors, we easily realise that third countries's nationals are still very far from acquiring the status of full European members.
Let's take for instance, the kind of distinctness given to the immigration policies. Obviously, it is not the interest in those policies per se that gives proofs of the kind of relationship that Europe has with its third-countries's nationals, but the terms in which that interest is revealed and the chosen actors to perform it. The fact that immigration policies are still mainly a State's matter; the fact that these policies are still the basis of the relationship between states, immigrants and the EU are in our point of view reasonable indicators of how in the light of a Union Citizenship, the national paradigm of citizenship built upon multiple exclusions is still being protected and even implemented.
It is undeniable that the continuing of the intergovernmental approach to immigration issues reveals the strength of the states in a traditionally dear terrain of their sovereign power, but it also reveals the lack of political will of the EU itself. And if in the case of states one can understand their attitude considering the historical meaning they have been building about themselves, in the case of the EU its inefficiency cannot be excusable only on the basis of the particular wills of each of its member-states. An entity such as the EU is more than a mere sum of states and sovereignties; it is above all a unique institutional entity that exceeds national assertions and lays its essence on a transnational and even supranational relationship with the people it gathers. Having this in mind, one would expect that this relationship could also be by its initiative a postnational one. Nonetheless, its action on this matter has been quite disappointing, insecure and ambiguous.
The main causes of this ambiguity are far too complex to be here fully exposed. Still, one point must be underlined: the utilitarian character of its action and thought. This character, in many ways fed by the continuous absence of a tradition of institutional democratic accountability - is quite obvious in the selection of decisions and behaviours, often guided by the Union's position in the international capitalist system. Well, it seems that an institution whose interest in the development of certain processes is merely instrumental cannot be taken as a source of credibility and reliability for the continuing of those processes. Therefore, when the Union talks about Union citizenship as a fundamental means for the accomplishment of the principle of free circulation, one can't help seeing, on the one hand, an interest shaped by the ambition of an economic project that demands for its attainment such principle without showing similar concern for the attainment of the well-being of all European people; and, on the other hand, an interest shaped by a dangerous notion of contingency. This means that only insofar as the European economic project demands the Union citizenship, can this one have some certainty about its development. It seems then the Union's commitment in recreating democracy depends highly on whether it is appropriate or not to its economic project, fact that could help us to understand why its capitalist dimension is so well developed in contrast with its political and social dimension.
We can conclude that the concept of Union citizenship is still rooted in a national paradigm, which leads to an obvious unsuitableness to the real cultural and social ground. It leads also to its affiliation to a certain restrict idea of what is Europe and what is to be a European. Indeed, in the reinvention of a citizenship model shaped by a postnational philosophy, the Union could have in its citizenship a very promising instrument. Yet, it has been showing a conservative essence that turns the words of Percy Lehning irrefutably real: "... when we talk about of excluding others, the Union as Union tries to keep a very clear boundary between members and the rest of the world"(5). Even the negocial spaces adopted for the treatment of the citizenship of the member-states' nationals and the third-countries' nationals is a good indicator of such truth. While the first find treatment at a supranational level, (articles 8 to 8-E of the European Union Treaty granted a common understanding of the European Citizenship to all EU members), the second are comprehended by the intergovernmental sphere, precisely the one that has better promoted the resistant forces to a post-national citizenship model.
· Civil society: the fundamental key to a more authentic view of democratic participation. We are here defending the utopia of a high-intensity democracy(6) - what others have been calling model of radical democracy. A high-intensity democratic model is a society-ruling model where communication and participation are not privilege but true rights for all human groups without exception.
Analysing the Union space, we have just concluded that, although possessing a project of citizenship that could be developed in a post-national sense, and despite being a space with a transnational and even supranational vocation, that has not been the chosen path. A post-national citizenship implies the settlement of a new social contract of a more embracing and plural nature, quality not yet assumed by this Union citizenship. On the contrary, it seems closer to a neo-nationalist model which, taking the exclusion rules typical to the national models, looms out to invent new boundaries between new conceptual spaces: the space of the nationals of the member-states vs. the space of the nationals of third-countries(7). But, if that space that seems to be the ideal one fails in the achievement of a postnational model, what other spaces could make it successfully? The answer lays (but does not run out) on the development of local spaces and civil society. This statement raises several questions, among which is to know to what extent in a basically local record can cohesion and solidarity be reached in order to embrace the entire European Union space. First of all, it is important to note that the argument for the democratic potentialities of the local space does not suggest the denial of the European space nor of the national space democratic viability.
Second, the argument for the democratic potential of local space relies on the assumption that democracy gets better if different democratic institutions are admitted, functioning at different spatial scales, without making the apologia of any one in particular. There is no unique valid institutionality for the making of democracy. (Actually, democratic legitimacy as a basic principle of social organisation can only be valid insofar as it does not presuppose any democratic formula in particular.) Civil society at a local dimension appears as indispensable to the development of a post-national citizenship, due precisely to its exceptional capacity to create a plurality of free associations that enable groups and persons to a full and free participation in the setting of their social relations. In fact, the plurality of associational forms, more than a characteristic, is an imperative of a civil society's integrity, considering that to fasten on a certain institutional rigidity would be to deny its very own essence: voluntary, dynamic, creative, open. Civil society must therefore correspond to a necessarily plural space regarding its associations, creative regarding its functioning forms, inclusive regarding the admission of individuals and groups, and democratic regarding their kind of participation (free and voluntary).
Having this definition in mind, a society which knows how to conciliate its political sphere (on which a representative democracy has been set) with its civil society sphere (set on forms of democratic participation generated mainly at a local level closer to groups and individuals), will be a society closer to the achievement of a high-intensity democracy as far as the level of inclusion of its members is concerned.
But, there are two conditions without which one cannot guarantee neither the viability of this society's plan or the quality of its democracy. The first condition says that political rights must be granted to all members of a society politically organised by a State. The second condition says that the articulating and co-ordinating presence of the State is fundamental in order to prevent civil society from possible less democratic features that it might contain.
a) The organisation of a strong civil society implies the public recognition of the right to political and civic association to all individuals.
Being the right to associate an eminently political one and being the political rights still exclusive to the citizen status, that means any person who has not been admitted to the citizen's sphere set by a State cannot enjoy political rights such as the right of free political association. In the post-national proposal, however, every mature rational person should possess the right to political participation, whether by the right to vote, or by the right to free association. It is important to underline the inseparability of these two rights, since that the right of association is not enough to complete the capacity of participating in a society. When looking at the immigrants, for instance, one realises the right to associate is almost useless if not followed by a) the right to participate in the public sphere by means of suffrage, since it is there where the main decision-making processes occur; and b) by the right to political association in order to enable more than a passive role in the public sphere.
b) Civil society presupposes not only the existence of democratic institutions, but has been historically quite important for the democratisation of the representative democracy itself.
The existence of a State that organises and runs the legal, military and administrative apparatus means obviously the existence of limitations to popular sovereignty. But, thanks to civil society, regional and local structures contribute to the enforcement not only of direct participation in the public sphere, but also of democracy in general, since it conditions the representative institutions to be necessarily more receptive to a dialogue with other democratic institutionalities, hence to be themselves more democratic in their functioning. But, democracy is more than a regime by which citizens control governments. It is necessary that a society democratically organised by a state, be itself a democratic space as far as its social relations are concerned. That only seems possible if the state is able to assume the role of a co-ordenating system of civil society's behaviours.
Not only we're stating that civil society might not be democratic in itself, as we are also introducing a new element to our proposal: State doesn't have to be civil society's public enemy.
Regarding the first statement, there is an obvious anti-democratic risk now being run by civil society. That risk derives, among other things, from the increasing importance of the market principle, and from the very nature of civil society's organising principle- the community principle. The explanation to this lays on what has been called the crisis of the vertical political obligation principle. The crisis of this principle has lead to the neoliberalist idea that only the private sphere can accomplish the well-being, substituting the State in its failed promotion of non-mercantilist relations. This current idea relies on the false assumption that private sphere equals market and therefore civil society is only another way to name the market run by citizens. However, neither does civil society mean market, nor does the market dry out the entire private sphere. Civil society is instead a place for both private and public relations, since individuals are simultaneously engaged in private relations ruled by the community principle (e.g. family & friends), and by the market principle (mercantilist relations), as also in public relations such as the ones typical to free associations(8). The antinomy between State and civil society (less state, more civil society and vice-versa), as Giuseppe di Palma stresses is then a false antinomy: 'a mere slogan without connotations'.(9)
Nevertheless, the idea that civil society and market are indeed synonyms has been widely spread by the neo-liberalist thought, dwelling in there many of the anti-democratic dangers now being faced by our societies. Those anti-democratic dangers reefer to the increasing difficulty in creating non-mercantilist relations due to the hegemony of mercantilist principles. In other words, the equalisation of civil society to market has been creating a sort of progressive illegitimacy of all relations that do not obey to the mercantilist logic. However, a society that limits itself to the reproduction of mercantilist logic and that turns its citizens into mere consumers of its private goods and services, is no longer a civil society in the true sense of the word, but instead a place for the trading of its own citizenship, a place where only buyers are survivors. That is the essence of this social fascism we are about to live in many places: the discrimination between individuals on the basis of their consumption performances in the marketplace. Still, the risk of giving too much anti-democratic features to our society derives not only from the market principle's overestimation, but also from the very nature of civil society's guiding principle: the community principle. In fact, the 'public sphere' of a civil society constituted by the associational voluntarism does not grant by itself the existence of democracy, because, although its horizontal obligation principle recognises values identical to the vertical obligation principle that defines citizenship, it also has other features(10) such as the non-recognition of the principle of reciprocity of rights and duties, or the principle of equality of treatment(11).
Considering all this, the only way to keep civil society safe from a pure mercantilist reading, and to assure that solidarity resulting from horizontal relations might be equally distributed by all, is to take an already existing institution - the State - as a democratic system of co-ordination to the actions of civil society. What consequently distinguishes this conception from a liberal or a neoliberal conception of the state, is that in the arguing for a more democratic society, the state is not dismissed and the traditional separation made between private and public spheres no longer makes sense. In this new conception, civil society doesn't come out as a hayekian market with a spontaneous order capable of self-regulation, but as an order jointly recreated with the State's participation. The liberal fear of a by nature predatory, authoritarian and bureaucratic state is here faced with the fact that: a) the separation of public from private sphere (corresponding the first to state and the second to civil society) is after all a false question since civil society too has its own public sphere; and b) that vicious separation is only an obstacle to the conception of mutual accountability structures between society and the state. In other words, the standing for a separation of civil society and state as if they were natural enemies equals the standing for a reproduction of the anti-democratic genes that civil society holds, as well as this continuous unaccountability of the state towards the social anti-democratic processes now happening. The state cannot then be dismissed. It must be challenged to change its relation with society, not to cease it for good. It is therefore a question of arguing for de despolitisation of State in its traditional reading, but by means of a repolitisation possible by this new conception.