Collective Will Formation and Inter-Democracy Externalities

The study of collective will formation and of collective action problems have developed in isolation from one another. Yet the two are intimately interdependent. This is especially so in the case of two level normative games such as the European Union where what ought to be done within the state and what ought to be done beyond the state are two questions that cannot be answered independently of one another. Without means of dealing with collective action problems beyond the state, the idea of collective will formation within the state may not even be coherent at all. This paper explains the problem and sketches solutions. It starts by following Habermas in distinguishing between three irreducible dimensions of collective will formation: the fair and effective aggregation of interests; deliberation on ethical questions of identity and common good; and identification of any rights that are owed to all those affected by a policy. The paper then argues that, in the presence of certain kinds of externalities between democracies such as those of the European Union, individual member state democracies will find it hard to identify determinate answers along any of the dimensions of collective will formation. That does not just mean that individual national democracies will fail to optimize welfare without co-operation to manage externalities. It also means that they will fail in their most basic obligations to their own publics to secure rights and core political values of justice, freedom from arbitrary domination and democracy itself. So what is to be done? One thing that needs to be done is that individual democratic peoples need to be adequately represented in collective will formation over alternative ways of managing externalities between democracies. That, the paper concludes, has important implications for alternative ways of organizing parliamentary participation in forms of co-operation and law-making aimed at managing inter-democracy externalities. National, transnational and supranational forms of parliamentary participation are likely to differ in how they combine collective will-formation over the management of externalities between democracies with internalization of those externalities.