Normative Perspectives on International Institutional Reform - Assignment Example

Normative Perspectives on International Institutional Reform 1. Which normative considerations should affect the design and assessment of international institutions? When it comes to assessing the democratic legitimacy of an organization or institution, two normative considerations are taken into account. Any proposal aims at improving the legitimacy of an international institution must be pragmatically viable and philosophically coherent. Philosophically Coherent The proposals should be based on basic normative conception of a democracy which is easily applicable. There should be a mix of few fundamental values such as equality, solidarity and liberty. Democratic legitimacy of International Institution can be looked on upon with a libertarian, pluralist, social democratic and deliberative point of view. Pragmatically Viable The proposals should be practical and applicable to the real world situation that is they must rest on a set of largely empirical judgments. In doing this there is a problem of difference between applied and ideal theory that arises. The way nation states find solutions to various problems depends highly on the amount of authority that has been vested in them. This depends on the design and manner of administration of the international institutions. One of the ways in which constitutional systems manage imperfections is by delegating to political authorities and insulating policy-makers. There are three structural circumstances in which this often occur, which form normative considerations helpful in assessing international organizations: The role of expertise and Social complexity In this case citizens delegate in order to assemble more skillful decision-making in areas where expertise is required. Any kind of involvement in the complete range of government policies will impose costs much beyond the readiness of any modern citizen to bear. Be it environmental policy, criminal law, or medical drug authorization, citizens do not expect complex technical, medical, or legal decisions to be made by direct popular vote. The role of rights and Political uncertainty The citizens of a democratic society normally favor policies which reduce the risk to any given individual or tragic loss of life. (Louis Henkin,1999) In fact, in democratic systems, majority decision-making is also constrained through already existing individual and group rights which protect individual welfare and culture against the potential demands of the majority. Most of times it is the constitutional courts who as an authoritative body, enforce individual or minority rights against majority opinion. Because of this there is exists a tension occasionally in constitutional orders between rights and participation. (Stephen Holmes, 1984) This phenomenon has increased over the past few years and has given rise to the number of governmental functions that have been recognized as human rights which are administratively enforced, mostly at international level, and against political authorities. This has led to an ‘on the margin’ participation in majoritarian decision-making rather than being the compulsory characteristic of all democratic decisions. And it is for this particular reason why many Europeans view the tendency to elect state and local judges with abhorrence. The role of linkage and Underlying differentials in social power In national democratic representation biases occur due to consistent under-representation of diffuse majorities. One of the most common causes of this arises due to capture of government policies by small but powerful interest groups as against the interests of majorities which have longer-term and less self-conscious concerns. The solution to this is found in insulation and delegation of political power. (Hardin, 2000) 2. What is the meaning of "democratic accountability" in supranational and transnational institutions and is it necessary or sufficient to legitimize them? Accountability, defined in simple words is the responsibility for someone or something and the responsibility to be able to justify one's action with respect to social norms or law. An increase in demand for accountability, is inextricably linked with a greater impulsion towards a larger democracy and hence a larger responsibility. However, only when the decision makers by the constituencies that create the fundamentals of a polity are in authority, does the theory of accountability hold true. In this case, accountability is supposed lead to legitimacy which in turn forms the foundations of a democratic society. When agents or executives are responsible to the principals or people for their actions and decisions, it leads to a situation of accountability, which can occur in two types that is internal and external accountabilities (Keohane, 2003). IN situations where the principal and the agent reside in the same community, there is an application of Internal accountability. However, the situation is much more complex in the case of external accountability where the agent and the principal do not live in the same polity or community. In this case people, who are considerably affected, generally in an adverse way, are far from each other without having a choice to close the accountability gap. This results in the formation of a political framework with the help of which there can be internalization of external sources of local problems. This is referred to what is commonly known as global governance, which leads to global accountability. Democratic responsibility talks about means by which citizens control its government and the mechanisms for doing the same. In a representative democracy the central arena of democratic accountability is the political assembly. However, usually the citizens do not envision the elected representatives to be the lone accountability holders. They also believe that administrators and professionals share the responsibility and should also be held accountable for policy implementation. From the perspective of a citizen, democratic accountability is performed in two different ways, which is the direct and the indirect way. Except for voting in elections, citizens can take direct accountability action by discussing directly with a responsible politician or write to a newspaper in order to bring attention to bad performance, for example. The indirect way is when public reviewers scrutinize the elected representatives and the administration on behalf of citizens. However when the nation-state framework is extended to its supranational and transnational aspects, it leads to complexity in carrying out the policy of democratic accountability. For example, in case of the European Union, its civil order can hardly be contained when it comes to maintaining a relationship between national principals and community agents. Not only are there a number of methods available to the principals to manage the agents, but there also exists several levels of governance, a situation that can confuse any democratic theorist. It is understood that though there are certain European Union bodies which are bound by democratic values such as the European Parliament, but the fact remains that the EU is still a set of supranational and intergovernmental institutions which is constituted of publics of the member countries without much loyalty (Pollack 1997). Therefore, though it has completed a long duration of 45 years, the European Community till date lacks a broad sense of mutual support and collective identity. The capability for legitimate and effective European action can be improved simply through strengthening of its own role in the legislative. The Council and the European Parliament must reduce their levels of participation in formulation of essential principles and should leave the onus of the specification of details to the Commission in order to help the Union grow in its capacity to act. Commission should not be required to go through the burdensome Comitology procedures which justify that the European Union has moved from a `diplomatic' to a `democratic' stage. Ensuring socially authorized obligations that fulfill government policies is the role of legitimacy. Certain policies have a greater impact on life or differ from the strong belief of the governed. These policies will have to be justified by much stronger legitimating arguments. Until lately, legitimating arguments were based on a variety of definite categorical premises. These premises were religious, traditional, legal or ideological. However recently, legitimacy is believed to depend upon the trust in institutional arrangements which ensure that the governing processes are responsive to the preferences of the governed. This is input legitimacy, or `government by the people'. Policies which encompass in them practical and effective solutions to the regular problems of the governed lead to output legitimacy. As such it is believed that the legitimate government must serve the `common good' of the respective constituency. A sovereign national site is generally accepted as a ‘natural’ site according to the political-science literature on legitimacy. Hence there is no reason why supra-national `’polities'’ cannot have their own normative basis of authority. However, the problem in case of EU is that there is a need to legitimate also the regime that should govern it, except for just the unit (Europe). Since not all citizens of the EU are members of it they are not entitled to participate in its government. These citizens are situated in polities who do not have definite roles within the EU institutions and the degree of social interdependence is also low. This is why they do not have extra legal support to resolve disputes peacefully. The basic idea is that the European Community has no need for democratic legitimization. Hence there should be an extra effort in simplifying the movement of goods, capital, services and persons by doing away with the national barriers through means of European integration. By a different line of argument, since EU is primarily a `regulatory state', and it also lacks significant taxing and spending powers, it should not be legitimized. However there has been a broad support for European regulations of competition and of product standards among member governments. The European policy, owing to its politically uncontroversial nature, was not in need of precise political legitimization. But this state of affairs has been changing after the Single European Act which expanded the range of European competencies and hence gained in political salience among member states. This is the reason why the legitimacy of EU civil order has become an issue of great political concern. 3. If there is a "democratic deficit", what can be done about it? When institutions or organizations are unsuccessful in the ensuring the manifestation of their principle of democracy in their operations or practices, it is referred to as a `democratic deficit'. Be it the United Nation or the European Union, all have been for some or the other reason, been criticized for suffering through this deficit. There are many indications which point towards an existing democratic deficit in the framework of the EU. There is no parliamentary scrutiny at the EU level of the working of the Council of the European Union , which meets in secret while arriving on a decision on legislation. Also, many eleventh-hour negotiations are performed by diplomats. It is not obligatory for national parliaments to examine the performance of their respective government ministers from the Council. Even today, for certain policy areas the European Parliament does not apply codecision. It has a say only when council wants to discuss a proposed legislation with it. Otherwise it has the authority to reject or approve a particular proposed legislation. As in the case of an ideal democracy, the members of the European Commission are not directly elected by the citizens. Rather, they are first proposed by national governments and then approved by the European Parliament. Though the responsibility of the commission is to draft legislative proposals, and it does not have any legislative power. It is also believed that politicians who fail in their native countries are sent off to the Commission. However, this problem was taken into account and there have been numerous efforts to increase the power of the European Power in order to decrease the democratic deficit. In order to bring about some imperative changes in the working of the EU, the ‘Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe’ was set up. Though the treaty failed, it pointed out various measures that can be adopted in order to deal with the democratic deficit. To begin with, almost all policy areas would entail the power of codecision which means that the parliament and the council will become equal legislative partners in terms of all institutional-level decision making. The council has to meet in public, whenever any discussions are being taken on legislations. Any new information related to EU legislations must reach various national parliaments early enough which would allow them to discuss with their ministers on their strategy of how to vote in the Council. Another marked authority given to the national parliaments was that they could return a proposal back to the Commission for reconsideration, if they thought it was not in the EU’s framework of competence. Finally, if there was a proposal for legislation which has the support of 1 million EU citizens, then the treaty would make it mandatory for the Commission to consider it. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel as there still are some bodies under the EU which does not suffer from democratic deficit. One such example is that of the European Central Bank. It is one body which is free of political pressure as against any other national example. Bibliography: 1. Wikipedia Democratic Deficit [online] available from [ February 2, 2007] 2. Fritz W. Scharpf Problem Solving Effectiveness and Democratic Accountability in the EU [online] available from [ February 2, 2007] 3. 3. Robert O. Keohane Global Governance and Democratic Accountability [online] available from [ February 2, 2007] 4. Eichenberger, Reiner & Bruno S. Frey, 2002, “Democratic Governance for Globalized World”. Kyklos, vol. 55, no. 2,pp. 265-87. Read More