Rhetorical surface- the language of experimentalism in the EU From a ‘noble’ to a ‘doomed ’ experiment: From an ‘extraordinary’ experiment to ‘a dismal failure’ From a ‘beautiful folly’ to a ‘Frankenstein experiment’ And so the spectre of disintegration
Beneath the rhetorical surface The experimental ‘imagination’ tells us something deeper about Conception Character Long-term Consequences of the European integration project
Significance of experimental motif 1. CONCEPTION Two interconnected features of testable novelty confronted the European project . Inauguration of a new and globally untested site of governance Inauguration of a new and globally untested style of governance in the European context Commitment to the experimental testing of this novel and untested site and style of governance
Experimental method ‘scientific’ testing of a hypothesis; control over variables, careful measurement and establishing cause and effect; The general ‘nested’ or two-level hypothesis of ‘European Union’, viewed as field experiment ; We achieve more effective and legitimate government in and across (European) states through the addition of a supranational regulatory framework and the construction of a transnational polity ( Hypothesis one – new site ) working according to a reflexive knowledge-based [ i.e. ‘experimental’] vision and method (Hypotheses two - new style) , than through state-based regulatory frameworks and political communities alone;
Experimental project theoretically under determined – politically over determined Meaning of ‘effectiveness’ and ‘legitimacy’ dependent upon and compatible with different theoretical and political approaches THEORETICALLY UNDERDETERMINED - Hypothesis supported by a range of different theoretical frameworks - neo-functionalism, transactionalism, liberal intergovernmentalism, federalism (but not realism, traditional intergovernmentalism etc) POLITICALLY OVERDETERMINED - Underpinned by a range of overlapping understandings of a particular historical matrix – the precariousness of the European 20 th century combination of consolidated democracy, well-functioning capitalism and social stability, and the claimed need for a supranational dimension to put these together again in the post-war period; but with different emphasis on the democratic, economic and societal- stability dimensions.
Two initial motivations for experimental approach Epistemic motivation Ideological or expressive motivation
epistemic motivation (SITE and STYLE) Experimental approach guided and legitimated innovative manipulation of independent variables in transnational SITE construction LEGAL – law as the primary agent and object of integration INSTITUTIONAL – acephalous (headless) political system CULTURAL - national and European citizenship and identity mutually dependent, mutually constitutive (neither hierarchically layered nor merely contingently related) And also in pursuit of open-ended STYLE of developing jurisdiction and addressing problems within the new transnational SITE
Ideological motivation Double transcendence Beyond Politics Beyond Nationalism
Beyond Politics politically neutral or transcendent Goals presented and defended initially as manifest – even transcendent goals (peace, prosperity) and so politically non-contentious; in line with experimental method, policy should be based on instrumentally rational pursuit of optimal means towards these manifest transnational goals. Open-ended hypothesis of ‘achieving better government’ disaggregated into a number of closed hypothesis concerning the achievement of discrete manifest ends ( e.g. creation of common market; abolition of public and private monopolies) Later goals should also be responsive to evident and discretely identifiable need in the policy environment (Freedom, Security and Justice Area, EMU etc)
Beyond Nationalism Expression of a post-national polity Required a governing orientation and sense of a polity able to curb and tame national self-interest In pursuit of this challenge there was a need to avoid offering a poor imitation of a national project Rather than fixed and all-embracing teleology of the collective nation, commitment to a flexible and selective set of interventions that modify that nation-centred approach, but do so in a way that is itself dispassionate Again well served by an experimental temper - Commitment to rational, questing governance sine ira et studio ( without anger or bias)
Significance of experimental motif 2 distinctive CHARACTER of the EU EU as a meta-experiment (experiment in very idea of experimental governance) – (STYLE) Experimentalism of purpose (STYLE) Experimental forms and structures (SITE) Manifestation in political culture – epistocracy?
CHARACTER - Meta-experiment Philadelphian method – an experiment in (state) government by prior design Monnet method – an experiment in (supranational) government (new site) by open-ended experiment ( new style )
Philadelphia V Paris Alexander Hamilton, (Federalist Papers I) It has been frequently remarked that it seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force Schuman Declaration (proposing the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community ) Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.
CHARACTER - Experimentalism of purpose New STYLE continued General Functional extension (microeconomic, social, security, macroeconomic) across sectors Within sectors, new methods of governance with cycle of open-ended reflexive (re)specification of goals (so-called New Governance or ‘experimental governance’) in interaction with various implementation and user groups. Non-linear policy-making. Micro-experimentalism shadowing the macro-experiment of EU.
CHARACTER -Experimentally innovative forms and structures Ongoing orientation towards reconstruction of SITE non-hierarchical normative ordering Non-uniform structural integrity Indeterminate territorial enlargement Institutional innovation Revisable organisational forms Evolving sectoral methodologies
CHARACTER – Epistocracy? (Social) Scientism Elitism National instrumentalism Disengagement, passive consumerism
Significance of experimental motif 3 CONSEQUENCES - Fragility in maturity Pioneering momentum and ongoing flexibility of the experimental polity; prototype and globally resonant model of regional integration CAN GIVE WAY TO Categorically negative judgments (failure of experiment) 1. Sense of an ending (redundant or exhausted paradigm) 2. Critique of uncontrolled excess (the ‘Frankenstein’ effect) 3. Dilution and fragmentation (the end of the ‘one big’ experiment) 4. From prototype to remnant – from the future to the past 5.
The TRILEMMA of the experimental legacy Experimental continuity and adaptation Freezing and consolidation Quasi-statist democratic refounding
The trilemma of the experimental legacy(continued) The EU nevertheless retains a significant experimental legacy Some of the original ideological and epistemic attractions of the experimental approach – (the restless, unaligned search for ‘what works’) remain. In terms of organizational culture, the approach of the EU polity retains epistocratic tendencies - focused on policy knowledge and an instrumental rationality under bureaucratic guardianship, all geared towards an expert-centred ‘output legitimacy’. In addition, the original macro-experiment of EU as the inauguration of a new site of government and political community beyond the state has a broader popular affective significance. It stands as a solidaristic cultural achievement that is more than the sum of its ‘output’ successes
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