BackThe European Union’s democracy deficit
EUhasbeenanelite-driven projectthatnevercaptured the imagination of people who felt no need to go beyond their home towns
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In June 1953, construction workers in the country formerly known as the German Democratic Republic, or East Germany, went on strikes to protest working conditions. The following day, Soviet tanks rolled into East Berlin and the uprising was crushed. Bertolt Brecht wrote a poem in which the secretary of the writers’ union goes about distributing leaflets that say that the people had lost confidence in the government and it would require a lot of effort to earn back the confidence. The poem then added:
Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?
Many dictators have felt that elections are inconvenient. Many among the elite believe that empowering people is a bad idea. There is the famous scene in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel, The Remains of the Day, when Lord Darlington’s friends, who admire Hitler and Mussolini, deliberately humiliate the butler Stevens by asking him complicated questions about economics and geopolitics, only for Stevens to state, gently, that he is unable to assist them in the matter.
The aristocrats are mightily pleased—the butler’s hesitancy proves to them that he knows his place, and therefore the idea of letting Stevens have a say in grave matters concerning the nation is naïve. Stevens conceals his emotions, and only when a slightly embarrassed Darlington says, “thank you, Stevens", does he quietly leave the room.
Darlington’s aristocratic friends are supremely certain that someone not as well educated as they naturally are would have a sensible view. The cataclysmic British vote to leave the European Union (EU) is a wake-up call to that complacency in Britain and beyond.
From the beginning, the EU has been an elite-driven project. While open borders for goods, services and people within the bloc of 28 nations is a great idea, it has never really captured the imagination of people who have felt no need to go beyond their home towns. For the mobility-minded, the EU is fantastic. For those who see no need to learn a new language or go abroad except to lie on a beach, the EU is an unwelcome intrusion. Someone in Brussels decides how large a catch a fisherman can have; someone in Derby realizes he cannot hire that promising lad from his town as a manager but may have to advertise. And most can’t name the politician who represents him as a member of the European Parliament.
And so we had the paradox, where parts of Britain (like Cornwall and Sunderland) that benefited from EU’s grants and subsidies voted to leave by large margins, and parts of Britain that are polyglot and multicultural (like London) where you see foreigners whichever way you turn, voted by big majorities to remain.
That paradox is perplexing for those keen to build the case for greater, closer union. And the reason is the EU’s democracy deficit. Whenever EU states have turned to voters with an expansive (and expensive) idea, they’ve lost. The Danes turned down the Maastricht Treaty in 1992; the Irish rejected the Treaty of Nice in 2003 (they accepted it on a replay) and the Treaty of Lisbon of 2008. To override such uncertainties, the EU elected what Brecht would call “another people"—national parliamentarians, to affirm treaties without seeking popular mandate.
That’s not outrageous. In representative governance power is delegated; governments can’t take all decisions by going to the people. Whether the UK should remain part of the EU—an existential debating question among the Conservatives—was too complex to be put to a referendum in a binary, yes-no format. The right answer was “it depends". The Brussels bureaucracy is cumbersome and often wasteful; at the same time, the ideal of preventing wars and enhancing mutual understanding through free movement of people is noble and terrific.
The British voted to leave because the EU had no emotional appeal for voters. Leading campaigners of the Leave campaign ridiculed “experts" who predicted what has happened—collapsing stocks and currency, and frozen investment. But some naysayers are telling journalists, I have no investments, I don’t go abroad—why should I care about the market or currency collapse?
In The Republic, Plato called for a philosopher king, without whom “there can be no cessation of evils... for cities, nor, I think, for the human race." Eurocrats aren’t philosophers—their bureaucratic language is soporific. And they must worry—it is possible that other European nations might choose to leave too, if their voters get the choice. The Greek collapse and the refugee crisis have made many Europeans reluctant to bear the increased burden. Narrow nationalism is rising. In his poem, The Second Coming, W.B. Yeats wrote
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
For the European project to succeed, Brussels has to listen to the discontent. Stevens won’t leave the Darlington Hall quietly when told that he may now leave; he wants to smash the china on his way out.
Salil Tripathi is a writer based in London.
Comments are welcome at salil@livemint.com. To read Salil Tripathi’s previous columns, go to www.livemint.com/saliltripathi
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