Isabel Maria Estrada Local Associationalism and the Path to A
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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 post- national 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.