Understanding EU-citizens’ democratic doubts about European integration deepening Europe’s existential crises

Pro-European citizens increasingly doubt the democratic character of the EU. Eurosceptic movements have been able to capitalize upon these doubts to turn citizens against the European integration project. The Brexit and Hungary’s Fidesz government demonstrate the political success of this strategy. Their success has deepened the existing crisis of democracy in the EU polity. Political theorists of both analytical and critical schools have primarily engaged with the EU’s democratic deficit by developing normative institutional models to realize democratic ideals. Citizens’ concerns are often interpreted as a call for better democratic representation within EU decision-making. A wide range of proposal have been offered to solve this lack of representation. Yet, little philosophical research has recently been undertaken to understand the democratic doubts among pro-European citizens in relation to the current crisis of democracy. I aim to understand the EU-citizens’ democratic doubts by undertaking a pragmatic genealogy. A genealogy theorizes current concerns through a historical lens. A pragmatic genealogy analyses the function of concepts for our way of life. Such a genealogy starts from a fictional abstraction to theorize a core function of a concept for a group of people in terms of their most basic needs. Subsequently, a genealogist theorizes how new challenges raised by historical developments result in new functions for a concept and new interpretations. I argue that democratic citizens’ doubts follow from a commitment to the principle of popular sovereignty. Popular sovereignty functions to make sense of the normative authority of political systems in a modernity’s disenchanted politics. Political authority has as its core function guaranteeing safety. For democratic citizens, popular sovereignty links sovereign state power to democratic self-government. During the recent series of crises, an increasing number of core state powers have been transferred to the EU. This transfer makes sense to ensure the conditions of de facto sovereignty for Europe’s citizenries. The conditions for the de jure right to self-governance remain on the national level, while decision-making powers are exercised at the EU level. Democratic citizens struggle to make normative sense of political authority in the EU’s multi-tiered political order, because popular sovereignty results in contradictory assessment of political practice. Building on this understanding, I critique the claim that better democratic representation can fix the EU’s democratic deficit. Instead, the political authority of the EU regime and member states as one political order is the real conundrum contributing to the crisis of democracy on both levels. In the process, I draw out the critical potential of pragmatic genealogies. Genealogies play a central role in the critical political theory. In political realism, Raymond Guess drew upon this critical tradition. The other figure head of this school is Bernard Williams, who has become associated with the ordoliberal strand. Williams laid the foundation for my method, but his aim was to vindicate values in virtue of their functions. I show that a pragmatic genealogy does not have to be vindicatory, but it can also become a source of grounded critique.