The European Post-Democratic Crisis

How to think EU in times of crisis? The paper addresses the call by forging a new concept: ‘post-democratic crisis’. It serves a two-fold purpose: theoretical and empirical. The theoretical ambition is to substantiate the post-democratic crisis. The empirical part aims at testing the new concept to the case study of European and Bulgarian migration/asylum politics and policies. The paper builds on the author’s research within two Horizon 2020 projects: “Representation of the crisis and crisis of representation” and “Evaluation of the common European asylum system under pressure and recommendations for further development”. The paper substantiates the idea of a post-democratic crisis – a new type of political crisis characterized by its growing dissociation from ontological reality – the political crisis over migration is reaching white-hot peaks today despite the substantial decline of migration flows. The post-democratic crisis is liquefied – it depends less and less on external manifestations and determinants, and more and more on the voluntaristic strategies of political leaders. The new crisis is examined in the analytical triangle of post-democracy (C. Crouch) – post-truth – mega leadership. This challenging interpretation of the crisis is articulated in four parts. The first one argues that the crisis is not (only) a problem of inefficient governance but, rather, a fundamental self-definition of contemporary society and politics. The analysis combines conceptual history a la Koselleck, looking at the evolution of paradigmatic ideas and value systems over time, with discourse and political analysis of the concepts, narratives, images and imaginaries of the crisis. The second part analyses the paradox between the decrease of migration flows and the increase and exacerbation of the political migration crisis. This is an emblematic example for the author’s thesis that “If the migration crisis did not exist, post-democratic leaders would have invented it”. The third part asks the question how legitimacy, borders, politics and security are reshaped in times of post-democratic crisis and examines four major trends the latter interfere with: from a crisis of legitimacy to legitimacy of the crisis; from migration crisis to rebordering; from party politics to symbolic politics; from managing (in)security to mainstreaming securitization. The transition of the refugee crisis from a classic to a post-democratic one is analysed in the last part on the base of the Bulgarian political and media debates on responsibility sharing. The conclusion delineates the trend from polarization to mainstreaming and hegemonisation of anti-relocation, anti-responsibility discourse which culminates in de-responsabilisation and de-Europeanisaton of asylum policy in which government and opposition, left-wing, right-wing, and far-right converge.