The Democratic Deficit

by Kevin Carey

G21 Staff Writer

To read this article in Deutsch, Francaise, Italiano, Portuguese, Espanol, copy and paste the complete URL("http://www.g21.net/do186.htm") and enter it in the box after you click through.

Kevin Carey

KEVIN CAREY says that after the violence at the Gothenburg summit he still fears the respectable citizenry more than the anarchists.

Just as poverty in extreme cold always seems much worse than poverty in extreme heat, so pointless violence in Lutheran-chic Gothenburg somehow seems worse than a riot in a polyglot metropolis. The idea of Swedish policemen being forced to use their guns in self-defence was as odd as policemen in Chicago not doing so.

Ostensibly, the demonstrators were protesting against the capitalist conspirators of the European Union (EU.) They were not, let it be noted, demonstrating against the presence of what one commentator described as the "Global village idiot" who had left for Poland. They were, instead, in a collectively anarchistic show of disarray, objecting to the very people who had just chided Bush for his behaviour over the Kyoto Protocol and the military-industrial complex.

It is perfectly understandable but equally inexcusable that the media, not wishing to render itself unpopular with its paying audience, should aggrandise such violent behaviour into a sociological icon.

What we Europeans are apparently suffering from is "disconnectedness" -- a milk and water version of Marxist alienation -- because our European politicians are taking no notice of us and are plotting our ruin behind closed doors. Wonder, then, that 12 nations, mostly from the former Soviet bloc, are so anxious to get into the EU. Less wonder that what is going on is either being misunderstood or misreported.

The European 'democratic deficit' arises because the politicians of EU member states do not want to render greater legitimacy to the European Parliament on the spurious ground that it would reduce the legitimacy of national parliaments.

Moreover, journalists seem not to notice that in matters European our politicians play the oldest trick in the book; they pass extremely desirable but unpopular measures at the European level and then blame the EU for them. Herein lies a clue. The European Union, in pursuing enlargement, is embarked upon a calculated act of generosity to its poorer neighbours, an historical reflection of Germany's own generosity in the earlier years of the Union.

When the people of Eire [Ireland} voted against the Treaty of Nice in their referendum, thereby blocking the proposed enlargement, they were not "disconnected" from the European process, but were deliberately, lazily indulging in a collective act of selfishness which will deprive millions of people of the kind of benefits that no country in the EU has enjoyed more than Eire.

Commentators try to explain this away by saying that in referenda people never answer the question that is put but, rather, register all kinds of discontents. If this is true then selfishness is gilded with stupidity; I might as well, in replying to a civil enquiry after my health, opine that the price of houses is deplorably high.

It's a journalistic cliche that politicians should but do not answer questions put to them. In which case, so should the people.

Notice, too, that nobody seems to think that a voter might at some point want to register content.

Another journalistic cliche is that the people are fed up with politicians who are, allegedly, all the same and only in it for what they can get out of it.

These shallow generalisations, if they are to be taken seriously at all, much better describe political drop-outs than politicians.

Which brings us back to the protesters at Gothenburg. Here are some curiosities.

• A great many protesters who objected to the EU democratic deficit turned out to be Americans.
  
  
• The violence is supposed to have been triggered by police brutality when the ratio of police to protesters was one to 25 and nobody can remember the last time that the Swedish police were driven to use a firearm.
  
  
• The Swedish Prime Minister, Mr Goran Persson, had actually taken the trouble to meet and listen to the leaders of the protest and was rightly proud of his country's record on, to pick a few examples at random, advancing the cause of world peace, leading the move which culminated in Kyoto and regulating international capitalism without stifling it.

There are a great many reasons why a socially progressive person might choose Sweden over any country on earth as a model; but not the anarchists. They are said to represent, even though by their very nature they don't vote, the disconnectedness between voters and politicians but what they are actually disconnected from are reality and responsibility and it is irresponsible to explain their behaviour in lofty but empty language. This is yet another chapter of the post-modern street theatre of personal gratification smeared with random political rhetoric

The European Union is right to ignore the protesters and even its own voters even though the risks are high.

Most unthinking people -- and that, sadly, encompasses most journalists -- respond to the normality of politics by demanding leadership and statesmanship. In the leaders of the European Union that is exactly what they have got; people who are prepared to lead public opinion instead of following it, people who are capable of taking the long term view, people who recognise that generosity is an essential element in political calculation. Yet they are greeted with insult or indifference.

Perhaps, after all, we don't want leadership or statesmanship but prefer people like George W. Bush who has not caved into global capitalism but has, rather, become addicted to it. To equate Bush with Sweden's Prime Minister is to abdicate from judgment altogether.

It is not, however, the violent anarchists that I fear but the respectable citizenry. They tut at George W. as they did at Ronald Reagan but this is merely a cover under which they imitate that which they purport to despise.

Europe's leaders wish to preserve the "social model" in the face of global capitalism; they wish to demonstrate, not just to assert, that you can be competitive without being brutal, that the interests of the European club are best met by opening rather than locking its doors. The disjunction between the people and their leaders is that, in spite of the ritual pillorying of politicians, they are far ahead of the people and those unblemished intermediaries, the journalists.

Meanwhile, In Warsaw President Bush was extolling the virtues of a very different club for a very different reason; NATO is to superpower America what the Senate was to Imperial Rome. The new Members from the East will matter even less than the old ones from the West. Given the choice of the two clubs I would choose the ritually reviled EU over the ritually revered NATO; and that is the virtuous choice of Mr Persson.

KEVIN CAREY is social entrepreneur, economist and Director of the UK's humanITy. He can be reached via e-mail at "humanity@atlas.co.uk".

| THE PREVIOUS DAY ONE | THE NEXT DAY ONE |