Crisis of democracy and European crisis: Diagnosis and perspectives. The hypothesis of a civic instituting process to recast the European project
Calame, Pierre
Crisis of democracy and European crisis: Diagnosis and perspectives. The hypothesis of a civic instituting process to recast the European project - 2019.
19
The crisis of representative democracy, particularly visible in France with the revolt of the “yellow vests”, is merely one of the aspects of the more general crisis of democracy and governance as inherited from our history. In societies undergoing rapid change, an objective contradiction needs to be resolved: the institutions and cultures of power are part of the keel of society and, in this respect, their stability is important; but those that were forged in response to the challenges of the societies of past centuries, in particular the State and participative democracy, no longer respond to the challenges of the present and future society. The author sets out to resolve this contradiction in the least unsatisfactory way possible. He draws attention in particular to a blind spot in traditional thinking about governance; it is not a matter of governing an established community; communities established for all eternity do not exist or no longer exist. The first challenge of governance is to establish communities. The case of France, and this should be the object of a big national debate, and even more so that of Europe in crisis, illustrate this thesis. Hence the idea of thinking about civic instituting processes. The article then develops more particularly what could be a European civic instituting process that should be launched immediately after the European elections, and the reasons for which this process should not be organised by the member States but by the Regions, drawing inspiration notably from the web woven by the twinning between regions.
Crisis of democracy and European crisis: Diagnosis and perspectives. The hypothesis of a civic instituting process to recast the European project - 2019.
19
The crisis of representative democracy, particularly visible in France with the revolt of the “yellow vests”, is merely one of the aspects of the more general crisis of democracy and governance as inherited from our history. In societies undergoing rapid change, an objective contradiction needs to be resolved: the institutions and cultures of power are part of the keel of society and, in this respect, their stability is important; but those that were forged in response to the challenges of the societies of past centuries, in particular the State and participative democracy, no longer respond to the challenges of the present and future society. The author sets out to resolve this contradiction in the least unsatisfactory way possible. He draws attention in particular to a blind spot in traditional thinking about governance; it is not a matter of governing an established community; communities established for all eternity do not exist or no longer exist. The first challenge of governance is to establish communities. The case of France, and this should be the object of a big national debate, and even more so that of Europe in crisis, illustrate this thesis. Hence the idea of thinking about civic instituting processes. The article then develops more particularly what could be a European civic instituting process that should be launched immediately after the European elections, and the reasons for which this process should not be organised by the member States but by the Regions, drawing inspiration notably from the web woven by the twinning between regions.
Réseaux sociaux