TOWARDS WORLD DEMOCRACY
PASCAL LAMY
Towards World
Democracy
In Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, I am often questioned about the future of Europe.
In the past, I would respond with assurance, with the conviction of the observer of a work
taking shape. Although the difficulties are evident, the European project has never been so
pertinent - for Europeans ourselves, but also for the rest of the world. What has been
created over more than 50 years is also what the world needs today: a democratic system
to tackle the enormous challenges that our societies face, and that states alone can no
longer tackle. This European experience, with its successes and its setbacks, must be – I
am convinced - our point of departure in search of a new global governance that combines
the effectiveness that states have lost with the legitimacy that international organisations
have yet to acquire. This new governance is what I call alternational democracy.
Pascal Lamy
Pascal Lamy is the former EU Commissioner for Trade and President of Notre Europe,
a European think tank based in Paris. From September 2005, he becomes the Director
General of the World Trade Organisation. He is the author of l’Europe en première ligne, (Paris,
Le Seuil, 2002).
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POLICY NETWORK
Copyright © 2005 Policy Network
PASCAL LAMY
TOWARDS WORLD DEMOCRACY
Translated by David Macey
Published in 2005 by Policy Network
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Copyright © 2005 Policy Network.
The English version is based on: Pascal Lamy, La démocratie-monde. Pour une autre
gouvernance globale, Paris, La République des idées, 2004.
All rights reserved
ISBN 1-903805-04-X Paperback
Production & Print:
Perivan, London
ii
About Policy Network
Policy Network is an international think-tank launched in December 2000
with the support of Tony Blair, Gerhard Schröder, Giuliano Amato and Göran
Persson following the Progressive Governance Summits in New York, Florence
and Berlin. In July 2003, Policy Network organised the London Progressive
Governance Conference, which brought together twelve world leaders, and
over 400 progressive politicians, thinkers and strategists. In October 2004,
Policy Network built on this success by organising the Budapest Progressive
Governance Conference, hosted by the Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc
Gyurcsány. Most recently, in July 2005, Policy Network has co-organised in
Johannesburg, with the Africa Institute of South Africa and the Presidency of
South Africa, the first Regional African Progressive Governance Conference,
which will be followed by the Progressive Summit in South Africa.
A Progressive Network
Policy Network’s objective is the promotion and cross fertilisation of
progressive policy ideas among centre-left modernisers. Acting as the
secretariat to the Progressive Governance Network, Policy Network
facilitates dialogue between politicians, policy makers and experts across
Europe and from democratic countries around the world. By providing a
forums that promotes debate and shares ideas, Policy Network strengthens
the hand of modernisers and the case for permanent renewal.
Our Common Challenge
Progressive governments and parties in Europe are facing similar problems and
looking for modern social democratic responses. There are increasingly rising
fears for security - economic, political and social – combined with the
contradictions of combining the traditional welfare state with employment
policies, rapid change in science and technology, and pressing global issues,
all of which should be tackled in common, as part of the need for fundamental
democratic renewal.
In the past, progressives worked independently to resolve these
problems. Today, there is a growing consensus that we must engage with
progressives from other countries, and to situate European and national
responses within a broader international framework of progressive thinking,
rooted in our social democratic values.
For further information, http://www.policy-network.net
iii
Contents
Foreword
vii
Introduction
9
World Powers and their Discontents
15
The European Laboratory
27
Towards an Alternational Democracy:
Contributions to the Debate
43
Conclusion - Towards a World Community
63
v
Foreword
Pascal Lamy's latest work, Towards World Democracy, is here published for
the first time in English by Policy Network, having first been published back
in 2004 in French when he was my predecessor as European Commissioner
for Trade in Brussels.
Although the text is over one year old, he has decided not to update it
to take account of recent developments such as the French and Dutch
referenda. Why ? Because although he is writing - unabashedly - from the
perspective of a European Commissioner, the lessons he draws have lasting
value and are still relevant. Clearly we are now in a new European situation.
Readers only loosely connected with the workings of the EU will still
recognise some of the basic fault-lines of modern Europe set out in Pascal's
original text. Indeed, if you read Towards World Democracy as a "pre-crisis
analysis", it shows that what happened in the Spring of 2005 with the French
and Dutch referenda has been coming for a long time.
But on the other hand, others outside Europe will recognise from their
own systems the need for legitimacy, the need for efficiency, and the need
to belong. Indeed the lessons are less about “Europe” per se, and more
about the nature of modern governance. Lessons about our collective failure
to recognise the global nature of our political life. Lessons about how
globalisation is starting to undermine our identities. Lessons about the sheer
sense of no longer controlling our own destiny.
In short, and not for the first time, Pascal Lamy challenges us, both
citizens and policy-makers, to re-think fundamental questions about the
way we are governed now.
Peter Mandelson
European Commissioner for Trade
Honorary Chair of Policy Network
vii
‘The sovereign nations of the past can no longer provide a framework for the
resolution of our present problems. And the [European] Community itself is
no more than a step towards the organisational forms of tomorrow’s world.’
Jean Monnet, Mémoires (Conclusion).1
1 Jean Monnet, Mémoires, Paris: Fayard, 1976, p. 617
viii
Introduction
The planet is unwell. The construction of Europe has stalled. Our
democracies are tired. I think the time has come to think in political terms
about the new reality that suddenly emerged in the twentieth century. It is
a single reality that hems in our lives. This reality is the outside world.
The world is no longer something that exists separately from our
domestic lives. It has burst into our everyday life, introducing new risks,
new forms of competition, new challenges and new fears. The social and
political arrangements of our societies have been turned upside down. We
are faced with a challenge, and the twenty-first century must take it up: it
must invent a global political life that is at once democratic and capable of
dealing with issues on a planetary scale. I say ‘invent’ because, even today,
it seems that only representative and national democracies can legitimise
collective action.
How did this great transformation come about? It came about thanks to
a threefold upheaval that was decisive for the whole of humanity and indeed
provided the initial impetus to construct Europe.
The origins of the first upheaval lie in war. Between 1914 and 1945, the
world reeled as it was torn apart by the convulsions of the old Europe and
its nationalistic and totalitarian passions. Verdun and then Auschwitz taught
us that our civilisations are mortal, as Paul Valéry put it.2 For the fathers of
the new Europe, the failure of the League of Nations – which represented a
first attempt to take collective responsibility for the international order –
and the ravages of two conflicts in the heart of the continent and the world
were disasters that had a fundamental importance. They taught a lesson
that struck them with all the force of the obvious: a union of the peoples of
Europe was the only thing that could provide the basis for a lasting peace.
The second upheaval occurred at the end of the twentieth century,
when the Berlin Wall came down, when the Soviet Empire collapsed and
when new geopolitical instabilities emerged. It also made what had been a
tacit project much more explicit: it meant acquiring the ability to act
outside the boundaries of Europe. In the rest of the world, the same
upheaval emphasised the need to regulate and take on global questions
collectively. Powers like the United States can obviously allow themselves
2 Paul Valéry,’ La Crise de l’Esprit- première lettre’, La Nouvelle revue française, no. 71, 1 August 1919,
pp.321-327. ‘Nous autres, civilisations, nous savons maintenant que nous sommes mortelles’ (‘We civilizations
now realise that we are mortal’).
9
10
PASCAL LAMY
the luxury of pursuing a unilateral logic, by resorting to force if need be. But
that logic cannot last. It cannot eradicate the major political reality of the
coming century: henceforth, the problems of the world concern us all, and
there are no more sanctuaries.
The global nature of an increasing number of phenomena – the growing
shortage of energy resources, the destruction of the biosphere, the spread
of pandemics, the volatility of financial markets, and the migratory
movements provoked by insecurity, poverty or systemic political instability
– is a product of a third upheaval: globalization. Globalization – by which I
mean the growing interdependence of all the people on the planet as the
distinction between ‘near’ and ‘far’ becomes blurred – now affects every
dimension of the life of our societies, and not only their economic
dimension. Globalization is already a reality, but it is also an on-going
process. Even though forms of proto-globalization did exist in the past, we
are now living through an unprecedented historical experiment. 3
Globalization must therefore not be seen simply as the rise of the
marketplace alone,4 but as the acceleration and deepening of a much more
general dynamic originating in the way market capitalism has developed
over many hundreds of years. This dynamic has now reached a stage of
expansion that is unprecedented both in geographical terms and in terms of
its social ramifications. It now extends to all human societies, and the logic
of its growth and innovation is developing on a planetary scale, as is the
logic of the social, cultural, environmental and political damage it is
causing. This is the force that, like some historical tidal wave, is shaping and
reshaping our world. These global issues are creating a new need for
efficiency that cannot be met by nation-states alone. The new issues raised
by global conflicts and crises, by political developments and by the crises
that appear to be affecting the planet’s democratic governments, make it
apparent that we need to contemplate new forms of governance.
Europe is directly concerned. In 1945, its geopolitical model was
exhausted. The destructive violence that had been inflicted upon Europe
was a measure of its failure. The new Europe was the result of many longterm processes and numerous visions of the future, some of which were
realised in the course of its history – plans for world governance systems –
3 See Suzanne Berger, Notre première mondialisation, leçons d’un échec oublié, Paris : Seuil’/La République
des idées, 2003; GEMDEV, La Mondialisation, les mots et les choses, Paris : Khartala, 1999 ; Immanuel
Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, New York and London : Academic Press, 3 vols, 1974, 1980 and 1989 ;
Fernand Braudel, La Dynamique du capitalisme, Paris : Gallimard, 2001.
4 Kark Polanyi, The Great Transformation, Beacon Hill: Beacon Press, 1944.
11
but it now had to invent something new. It had to invent peace. It had, in
other words, to be armed with a new utopia.
According to the fathers of the European project, shared prosperity was
to provide a concrete basis for that ambition. The European Coal and Steel
Community (ECSC) was Europe’s first incarnation. In their view, the pooling
of the two pillars of the European economy of the day, which were also
powerful elements of national sovereignty, would probably have the
strength to ward off the spectre of the impotence that had destroyed the
League of Nations. When it established the ECSC, Europe turned its back on
the logics of power. It was taking its first steps to what its founding fathers
realised would be a model for ‘tomorrow’s world’. This is the world in which
we now live. Because it was conceived as a long-term answer to the
disorders of both the world and history, and because it gambled on the
possibility that interdependence will succeed, Europe acquired the ability to
act on the logics of market capitalism and, now, to respond to globalization.
We live in a world that Europe’s founders foresaw when they created it.5
Some criticise Europe for its choice of origins. The classic sovereignist
discourse which defends the survival of the nation-state against
supranational ‘monsters’ is now overlaid by another discourse which accuses
Europe of being no more than a prelude to ‘neo-liberal globalization’. Europe
is, in other words, just another of the instruments of alienation. The way
these discourses are currently combined leads me to make two points. First:
is the conjunction of the two a historical coincidence, or do they stem from
common roots? Is it ultimately a product of a classic sovereignism, even if
means contradicting the universalist principles of some anti-globalization
movements? My second point is that, whilst Jean Monnet’s vision of the
future is now our reality, the way the world has burst into our societies has
transformed the European project. It therefore seems to me that the reason
why current debates are so confused is that we can no longer discuss Europe
without discussing the world, and vice versa. We need to clarify the nature
of the European project, and we cannot do that unless we also confront the
issues raised by globalization. And if those who would like to turn Europe into
an isolated fortress do not like it, that is their problem.
States are powerless against many aspects of globalization. They can no
longer hope to resolve problems that are now developing on a global scale
by acting alone. At the same time, the indispensable democratic legitimacy
that is essential if we are to deal with these questions is not migrating to
5 See Jean Monnet, Mémoires.
12
PASCAL LAMY
the international stage: it only operates within nation-states. This
contradiction has opened up a twofold fault-line in our political life; on the
one hand, the international institutions that are, in theory, responsible for
resolving global questions are suspected of being illegitimate; on the other
hand, national democracies do not have the ability to control global
mutations on their own. Basically, the institutions that work well lack
legitimacy, and those that are legitimate do not work well. In Europe, this
contradiction finds its main expression in the crisis in our democracies,
which are affected by the return of various forms of populism and by the
temptations of isolationism. How are we to resolve this contradiction in a
democratic way? How are we to respond to what public opinion increasingly
sees as a crisis in democracy?
A democratic government stands upon three pillars. First, elements of
legitimacy based on institutions and procedures. – A constitutional state
must be based upon the separation of powers and the political
representation of the people that guarantees its citizens the ability to
choose their representatives collectively by voting for them. But it also
relies on the political capacity of the system to bring forward public
discourse and proposals that can produce coherent majorities. In other
words, the political system must represent society, and allow it to see itself
as a whole because all its members use the same language and experience
the same feelings. The second pillar of a democratic government lies in its
efficiency, or in other words its ability to identify public problems, to find
solutions, to propose different options for a public debate and, ultimately,
to resolve these problems. In that sense, a democratic government is a
responsible government; it must be supported by a majority, but its must
also be accountable for its actions. The final pillar is a public space for
arguments and debates, a space where issues can be discussed and where
political solutions can be outlined. If that space is to be both visible and
comprehensible, it must be the arena for ritualised political battles
between competing parties or candidates.
It is the combination of these three aspects that helps to give citizens
the feeling that they belong, that they can influence the choices made by
their society, that they can recognise themselves in their representatives,
and that they live, collectively, in control of their destiny within a space
that is both clearly delineated and familiar to them. In my view, this lived
dimension of democracy is its true and deepest inspiration. And it is by
investigating this feeling of democracy that we can now diagnose the crisis
affecting all democratic systems. For if citizens are no longer convinced that
13
they have a central role to play, institutional democracy’s finest mechanisms
and most beautiful formal arrangements are lifeless puppets.
There is no avoiding the conclusion that there is now a crisis. We need
to consider three key levels at which power operates: the international
system, Europe, and national democracies in respect of three key
requirements: the need for legitimacy, the need for efficiency, and the need
to belong. That is why the need to find a new and democratic way of
organising power that goes beyond the framework of nation-states is now a
matter of urgency. Once, with the exception of a few ‘continental
elephants’ (the United States, China and India), the nation-state is
beginning to fade away, the absence of any democratic international
governance raises a crucial problem for democracy. At this point, we can
neither abandon our pursuit of global common goods – which would mean
surrendering to the current world order – nor allow our democracies to
wither away because our fellow citizens increasingly feel that they are no
longer in control of their own destinies.
How are we to react? That is the question I propose to explore in this
book. Our starting point has to be Europe. Nothing else on the planet
provides such a clear example of how to create what I have described in
French, as an alternational and non-hegemonic democratic system of
government.6 If we analyse it in the light of the democratic contradiction
identified above, we will be able to pursue our quest for new answers.
These reflections draw upon my experience of both Europe and the world. I
would like to dedicate them to all those who wish to be witnesses to the
future and active players in the future.
6 Some authors are following other similar paths, such as David Held, ‘From executive to Cosmopolitan
Multilateralism’, in David Held and Mathias Koenig-Archibugi, Taming Globalization. Frontiers of Governance,
London: Polity, 2003, pp. 160-86.
14
PASCAL LAMY
Chapter I
World Powers and their Discontents
The new questions societies have to face today are to an increasing extent
posed in global terms. We are very familiar with these questions. They have
entered the sphere of our day to day preoccupations. They fuel new forms
of militant mobilisation. They give rise to diplomatic conflicts of a new kind
– consider, for example, the transatlantic trade frictions over genetically
modified organisms (GMOs). These are not simply disputes between
competing powers; they are also disputes between different social choices
and collective preferences. They can even lead to open conflict: since
11 September 2001, an embattled America has been at war with a new
international terrorism. In short, they are the basso continuo that runs
through our collective life and our public debates.
These questions come into two categories. First, there are those that
pose a direct threat, in both the medium and the long term, to the survival
of our planet as an ecological system (soil-erosion and the destruction of
water resources, the greenhouse effect, threats to biodiversity, atmospheric
pollution and so on) and to the well-being of humanity, particularly the rapid
spread of pandemics and the continued existence of poverty and insecurity.
These issues cannot be ignored as they now affect all territories and all
societies, and pay no heed to political boundaries. Some States may well
choose not to share the transnational responsibility for these problems, but
one day they will have to explain to their citizens, or to future generations
why they have not done so. By refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on
climate change and cutting emissions of greenhouse gases,7 the United
States has chosen to keep going down a road that will lead to a dangerous
hyper-consumerism. But how long can the US go on pretending to ignore the
implications of that model, given that it too is affected?
The second category of questions is more directly related to the
economic and political interdependence brought about by globalization.
This interdependence is made particularly obvious by confrontations of
various kinds: economic and trade disputes arising out of collective
7 United Nations Framework Agreement on Climate Change (UNFACC), adopted by the United Nations at the
Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) in June 1992.
15
16
PASCAL LAMY
preferences that are a priori divergent, rivalries over access to energy
resources and natural wealth (oil, gas, uranium, minerals etc.) or
ideologically-motivated armed conflicts. These tensions reflect, however,
no more than one of the scenarios made possible by globalization. In the day
to day life of our societies, globalization also takes the form of transnational
links of a very different kind. Such links, as those established by trade and
economic interests and underpinned by the geographical ubiquity of giant
multinational companies or by the reorganisation of the international
division of labour. Other and more painful links are those unleashed by new
social forces grounded in the spectacular inequalities of wealth, forcing
despairing and distressed populations to emigrate. But there are also the
links established by the multiculturalism of our open societies, and by
access to other cultures, information and far-away places. The world is no
longer an unknown quantity. Our home is no longer defined solely by
reference to one particular region or nation.
States that once defined themselves as the legitimate, although
essential voice of general interest) have to some extent been dispossessed.
Globalization reveals a new sphere of common interests. We are seeing the
gradual emergence of a second horizon of general interest that has no
political basis because it transcends States, cultures and national histories.8
The appeal to a general interest that has no people or to a common good
that makes no reference to any established political community: that is our
contemporary reality.
Societies no longer exist in a vacuum – always assuming that they ever
did. Indeed, given that all societies are affected by globalization, an
increasing number of serious questions no longer pertain solely to the
internal sphere of states, to their ability to address them or to their capacity
for decision-making. The private domain of national governments is
shrinking as their links with their global environment become closer. What
were strictly national questions increasingly tend to become global
questions. To take only one example: the international context of greater
instability characteristic of the 1990s gave a new urgency to the debate
about security. In Europe, this took the concrete form of the 1999 Treaty of
Amsterdam, which ratified the de-compartmentalisation of two fields of
action that were traditionally distinct: internal and external security. The
impact of September 11 and its aftermath simply confirmed this political
8 Thierry Pech and Marc-Olivier Padis, Les Multinationales du coeur. Les ONG, la politique et le marché, Paris:
La République des idées/Seuil, 2004, p. 53.
17
choice: the legal competence that was once the sole preserve of the
sovereign states must now be shared on a European level.
The conclusion seems obvious: for better and for worse, globalization of
the issues increases, on a daily basis, the need to organise democratic, global
forms of governance that are both legitimate and efficient. In other words:
democratic. And yet, even though it means flying in the face of the evidence
and ignoring the urgent issues of the day, many people reject this argument,
even refuse to discuss it seriously. There is a whole strain liberal thought, for
example, sings the praises of competition between norms, between different
levels of governance, and powers and denounces the project for global
governance on the grounds that it will force us to lower our ambitions and
involve us in a sort of political ‘Dutch auction’. It is true that competition
between States and their citizens is now so profitable that preserving the
status quo is in the interests of its beneficiaries. Another school of thought,
which can be described as ‘sovereignist’ associates all global governance
with a dangerous loss of state autonomy, or in other words a loss of
sovereignty. Rather than asking how the competence of states can be
complemented – and at the same time reinforced – by a global policy that
would allow them to make a collective response to the main challenges of
our times, ‘sovereignists’ believe this world only weaken states and look at
history through a rear-view mirror. They would rather have states that were
powerless but fully sovereign than see competences being shared by states
on the one hand and supranational powers on the other.
To take stock of what is now expected of governments, and of what this
implies – the need to construct governance that can operate on a global
scale – is therefore a political choice. I have made that choice. If humanity
fails to realise that its only salvation lies in an international approach to
problems that make a mockery of our frontiers, it is doomed in the long
term. And in the medium term it will be faced with an increasing number of
conflicts, inequalities and ‘imperial’ security solutions that will lead to
endless armed interventions in every theatre that is deemed to pose a
threat to the internal order of the state.
Although there are those who reject the notion, there is a growing
awareness of the problem. Paradoxically, every conflict heightens it. The war
in Iraq in 2003 is the most recent example. The same awareness is heightened
by globalization itself. National identities are being undermined by migration,
access to cultures, the rapid circulation of information by transnational actors
(NGOs, multinational companies), and by the growing political
interdependence of states and the emergence of supranational powers, the
18
PASCAL LAMY
European Union being the most successful example to date. Of course these
phenomena also lead us to fall back on national identities: they become the
focus of fears and they fuel nationalism. But they still have a considerable
ability to break down barriers – between value-systems and loyalties.
The implications of this awareness have yet to be translated into clear
and coherent political terms. This is also a linguistic issue: we have yet to
find a way of describing in political terms the way the world has burst in upon
our hitherto private, national lives. The global questions and problems that
are transforming our daily lives have come up against a form of democratic
aphasia. Our societies no longer live inside one-dimensional spaces but we
have no common way of talking about this, unless, perhaps, we use the
language of Kofi Annan, who is a UN Secretary-General of unrivalled stature.
The explanation is that the only grammar available to us at the moment is
that of nation-states. To that extent, the existing nation-state model that
structures the system of international relations has become a trap. It is
obvious to citizens that maintaining the fiction that state powers provide an
adequate basis for the discussion of world issues has become a lie. It is not
so much the lie itself that is the problem as the gap between the promise of
power and the regular admissions of failure. This discrediting of politics and
the consequent dramatic decline in democratic participation in so many
countries are a direct cause of this feeling of remoteness and dispossession.
The failings of inter-national governance
Is inter-national governance or, in other words, the current system capable
of responding to these difficulties? The system is cacophonous. The
international institutions that structure it are profoundly flawed, not least
because of their lack of coordination and coherence. They in fact constitute
a sort of political archipelago that functions like a set of ministries with no
government to organise them, or like a group of soloists with neither a
conductor nor even a common set of music to play from. As a result, it is all
but impossible to put forward common policies and what has been built with
such difficulty in one place is regularly torn down in another.
Specialists in international law have a simple explanation for this
constitutional failing. They say that the international (inter-national) system
is based upon Westphalian logic, and that is enough to give it both
legitimacy and coherence. Basically, this means that there is no need for any
governmental function at the international level because international
19
institutions and organisations are made up of States which ‘naturally’, or
thanks to some sort of transitivity, give them their own internal coherence.
Because France, for example, is in legal terms, a unified and sovereign
state, the positions France adopts in any international institution,
organisation or assembly are, of necessity, internally consistent: they are so
many declensions of the same noun. And as the same is, in legal terms, true
of every sovereign state, it is obvious that that the positions adopted by all
state in any international assembly will eventually produce a faithful,
indeed symphonic, representation of the state of the world.
The argument may be valid in theory, but this beautiful music is rarely
heard in the real world. Bringing together a variety of sovereign nations, or
national sovereignties, within an assembly of nations has never produced a
coordinated policy. It tends, rather, to produce a plastic monster that takes
on a new shape in every organisation or institution to which it is admitted.
Ultimately, the attempt to find a world political motor that can coordinate
the actions of international institutions never provides an answer that is
satisfactory in legal terms. Indeed, the way it distributes institutional
legitimacy on an international basis is an obstacle to the emergence of any
form of world governance that is both coherent and legitimate.
For some thirty years, a second mode of governance, which might be
described as ‘declamatory’, has been attempting to remedy this lack of
overall vision in international summits. It has indeed allowed civil society to
put a number of systemic questions on the agenda at international
conferences: the environment, population, development, core labour
standards and the rights of women. To what effect? What results have been
achieved after all the decades of meetings, statements of good intentions
and all the declarations that are made at the end of summits? The
declarations are stirring but they do not usually translate into anything
concrete. They are gestures made for the benefit of public opinion rather
than signs of any commitment to taking global responsibility.
And yet, the declamatory approach may prove useful in the long term,
as we can see from past declarations: the 1948 Universal Declaration of
Human Rights now has a legal value. ‘Declamatory governance’ has
promoted certain conceptions of how the world should be organised, even
though many states regularly flout its principles. It now looks like a
programme: witness the United Nations’ ‘millennium objectives’.9 This is
9 These are concrete objectives (such as increasing the amount of development aid supplied by the richest
countries to 0.7 per cent of GDP by 2015), designed to put the question of development at the centre of the
debate. The basic assumption is that the pressure of public opinion can force countries to make a combined effort.
20
PASCAL LAMY
why the declamatory approach does have a certain legitimacy: it helps us to
express collective expectations on a world scale. At the same time, it comes
up against its own limitations because it is disconnected from the
organisations that implement policies, it is difficult for it to produce
concrete results.
These modes of governance lead nowhere. Either the institutions
concerned simply preach the good word and lose credibility because they
have no power, or they take decisions and act independently of one another,
and therefore expose themselves to the accusation that they have no
legitimacy.
As a result, the NGOs, the various lobbies, the political alliances, the
trade-unions are beginning to occupy what was once an empty space. They
represent an emerging and fragmented world public opinion that is not
properly in the full sense of the word, representatives but which can have
certain indirect effects. This third mode of governance is, therefore,
developing within the private sphere, thanks mainly to the emergence of
information campaigns and pressure groups designed to influence the
choices of states or other private actors – primarily multinational companies
but also consumers or shareholders. British and American-inspired ‘name
and shame’ campaigns give NGOs or independent agencies the task of
evaluating and making public the social and environmental performance of
multinational companies, or the degree to which states are corrupt. The
same privatisation of action and the establishment of codes of good conduct
(companies’ ‘social responsibility’) can also be observed in the way that
many multinational firms guarantee their customers that products are
manufactured in accordance with certain standards (‘social labelling’,
‘green labels’). Other associations are trying to strike a new balance by
investing in ‘fair trade’ and by guaranteeing the producer a decent income
in exchange for higher than average prices. Some spheres of activity, if is
true, are regulated in ways that are totally independent of national
structures. This is especially true of the Internet. It is managed by private
bodies and is one of the most effective ways of disseminating information
within the new global public space. In the same way, international
accounting norms evade the sphere of public regulation.10 Finally, different
forms of public action, albeit distinct from that of the state, deserve
mention here: notably, one come to mind: cooperation between local and
10 Philippe Crouzet and Nicolas Veron, La mondialisation en partie double. La bataille des normes comptables,
Paris, En temps réel, Notes, n.3.
21
urban communities (such as transnational associations of twinned towns in
border areas).
The legitimacy of such approaches may seem dubious when measured by
the standards of the model of national representative democracy. It is easy
to criticise them on the grounds that they represent no one and have a
narrow social base. But, in the world of our ‘second modernity’11 and
cosmopolitanism, and given that coordinated action is impossible because
there is no basic political language to discuss issues that concern us, the rule
of private actors in some aspects of globalization can be regarded as a way
of ‘redistributing national sovereignty’12 towards the market and civil
society, and as an embryonic world public space.
Elements of governance on an international scale do, then, exist but, at
this embryonic stage, they do not possess the attributes of true democracy.
Two criteria are enough to reveal the inadequacy of the present
international system: legitimacy on the one hand, and efficiency on the
other. In that respect, today’s international governance seems to be
profoundly paradoxical. On the one hand, we have institutions and
organisations that are legitimate but inefficient; on the other, we have
institutions and organisations that are efficient but illegitimate. If the irony
were not so cruel, we could formulate a law with a basic axiom: if a
supranational institution is effective, it is not legitimate, and if it is
legitimate it is not effective! And, to exaggerate a little, we could use the
twin criteria of legitimacy and efficacy to paint a strange picture of
contemporary international governance.
To begin with the UN. The General Assembly lies at the heart of the UN
system, and it looks like a monument to legitimacy. All, or almost all, the
states on the planet sit around the same table. At first sight, it seems that
we could not hope for anything better. The principle is similar to the one
Noah used to organise his ark: all states appear to be guaranteed
representation. Whether or not the Assembly is effective is another matter.
I have already said that ‘declamatory governance’ may have its virtues in
the long term. But it is pointless to maintain the fiction that this Assembly
of Peoples has any influence when it comes to the concrete issue of solving
the world’s greatest problems. Its resolutions are at best ignored, and at
worst openly flouted. The real power of the UN lies in the Security Council
and, more specifically, in the right of veto. That is the exclusive privilege of
11 See Ulrich Beck, Macht und Gegenmacht im globalen Zeitaller, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2002.
12 Zaki Laïdi, La Grande Perturbation, Paris: Flammarion, 2004, pp. 29-48.
22
PASCAL LAMY
its five permanent members, whose legitimacy (based on who won the last
world war) is, to say the least, 50 years out of date.
The fate of the UN’s many agencies varies. When their action is
restricted to the visible domains of the social and political sphere, the High
Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), UNICEF or the World Health Organisation
are recognised as legitimate. Their stated objectives give them a certain
legitimacy, but they have neither the resources nor the coherence they need
to be effective. Similarly, the legitimacy of the International Labour
Organization is well established. The organisation was founded just after the
First World War, and it brings together the representatives of the
governments, employers’ associations and trade unions of every member
state. Its charter and numerous conventions have allowed it to construct a
real system of reference in terms of labour protection and workers’ rights.
Yet it has no way of implementing its decisions or making them binding. The
lack of adequate links with the legislation introduced by other organisations
and institutions mean that it is rather like a general without any army.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO) is, for its part, a Janus-faced
entity. It plays an effective role when, in the form of Dispute Settlement
Body, it acts as the supreme arbiter of world trade. When, however, it
functions as a negotiating forum, its legitimacy is challenged by sections of
world public opinion – in whose name and in the name of what does it lay
down rules and jurisprudence? – even though its voting system is the same
as that of the UN (one State = one vote). When it functions as a court, it is
a uniquely effective player on the stage of contemporary governance and
places the WTO in a position to oversee other international institutions and
organisations. The DSB can therefore resolve trade issues which sometimes
affect different juridical realms (the environment, labour law, food safety
and so on) Being the only effective court in the current system, the WTO
stands out like an island that is cut off from the machinery of international
regulation. It is therefore often suspected or accused – in symbolic terms –
of dealing with global problems of all kinds because the tools international
governance really needs are not available.
The so-called ‘Bretton Woods’ international financial institutions (the
International Monetary Fund and the World Bank) are effective in the sense
that they do have policies and can implement them. But as they are
regularly criticised by antiglobalization movements and are poorly
supported by public opinion, they obviously lack legitimacy. Almost all
countries are indeed represented in their general assemblies, but their
actual policies are decided by executive boards made up of members
23
nominated or elected by the General Assembly on the basis of how much
they contribute to the finances of these institutions. Five of the seats on the
IMF’s Board are held by the United States, Japan, France, the United
Kingdom and Germany; the other one hundred and seventy-nine members
share the remaining nineteen seats.
To complete this rapid survey, we should be looking at the dozens of
‘technical’ international organisations within the UN system. Most of them
remain completely unknown. Many of them are old, having been founded at
the end of the nineteenth century or the beginning of the twentieth. Their
main purpose is to improve intergovernmental cooperation so as to ensure
the continuity of the infrastructures and services they manage in a world
where borders are being opened up and where flows of all kinds are
increasing. Their objectives, however, do not appear to tackle issues that
are vital to the whole of humanity or political questions about collective
preferences or social choices. This is true of the Universal Postal Union, the
World Meteorological Organisation and the International Civil Aviation
Organisation. All these organisations are effective, but citizens see
absolutely nothing of what they do. They look after the ‘technical side’ of
globalization and act, so to speak, as its ‘back office.’ When they do venture
into the arena of active regulation, their effectiveness is much less obvious;
witness, for example, the last general meeting of the International Maritime
Organisation, which resolved to eradicate ‘dustbin ships’. Some technical
organisations are, finally, effective at managing collective preferences that
concern citizens directly. They are, on the other hand, alarmingly shadowy.
One example is the UN’s Geneva-based Codex Alimentarius, which is
responsible for food safety and consumer protection.
Is Democracy Impossible?
Observing the archipelago of contemporary world governance raises a stark
question: are legitimacy and efficiency incompatible? Will we ever be able
to devise a system of democratic governance that can combine the two
dimensions, or do we have to resign ourselves to the following alternative:
a governance that is declamatory but incapable of assuming its
responsibilities towards its citizens, or a form of more or less enlightened
despotism which, in the name of efficiency, expertise and competence,
would address world issues without the support of citizens? Is governance
without power the only alternative to governance without a heart?
24
PASCAL LAMY
In contemporary international relations, and in the institutions that
structure them, power can be legitimised only at the level of the state.
Once its legitimacy has been established and validated within the nationstate, we then make the hypothetical assumption that it can be
automatically transferred to a higher level. We reproduce the fiction of a
transitivity which, as I have already said, assumes that political coherence
can automatically migrate from one level to another. If we make that
assumption, we ignore the real underlying meaning of legitimacy, the feeling
of citizens that they can debate the issues; the sense that their role in
determining collective goals is not restricted to voting in elections. When,
in other words, it comes to international governance, the only possibilities
open to them are the unfamiliar and very indirect processes whereby the
general will can be delegated. But in a democracy, a legitimacy simply based
on procedures is not enough.
The second element in the democratic validation of power is efficiency.
Citizens expect governments to be able to identify the problems that have
to be solved, and to be capable of solving them. Citizens expect results from
institutions with political responsibilities. The ability to transform the real
world and to influence the course of events is the raison d’être of a public
power. It is the presence or absence of results that convinces its citizens
that they should support it or reject it. But quantifying efficiency in
concrete terms is not easy. Doing so becomes even more complicated as we
move away from the seat of power. It is easier to hold the mayor of a town
or village accountable for his actions than a national government. When
power is remote and when there are multiple levels of government, as is the
case with Europe or complex political systems, the task becomes even more
complicated. In that respect, evaluating the effectiveness of political
measures in terms of international governance may look like an impossible
task. How, given the complexity of different levels of government, how can
we devise an effective way of evaluating efficiency? In a democracy, this is
a crucial issue.
The picture becomes even gloomier when we observe that the principle
that gives structure to contemporary international relations takes little
heed of truly democratic demands. The principle in question assumes that
the UN’s model of democracy gives States equal representation: one State =
one vote. Now that principle is a long-standing fiction dating back to a
distant period when democracies did not exist. It was a useful fiction in its
day, but it is completely out of step with contemporary geopolitical
realities. It can represent neither the diversity of the world nor the variety
25
of its actors. What is, perhaps, still more important is that it does not allow
us to take collective responsibility for global issues. All it allows us to do is
juxtapose national forms of legitimacy. There is therefore a danger that it
will,at least de facto, abandon the pursuit of a common interest that is both
broadly defined and of crucial importance to all. For good measure, we
might add that, in many cases, this national legitimacy itself is only
distantly related to democracy…
Although the overall picture is gloomy, there are still some rays of hope,
such as the elements of what we might call ‘communitarisation’ that we see
at work in international law.13 The UN Charter is obviously a step in the right
direction, as are the International Criminal Tribunals for the former
Yugoslavia and Rwanda, or, very recently, the International Criminal Court.
They are designed to deal with forms of international criminality and nonrespect for the new provisions of international law. Jus cogens is a further
step in the right direction. It removes a number of international legal norms
from the domain of state sovereignty; these are now norms that states
cannot ignore in the name of sovereignty. The seeds of an embryonic
community have been planted in the international system, and they will
help us to build a platform of collective preferences that can be shared by
all actors. But given the urgency of certain contemporary issues, they are
growing too slowly.
Do we therefore have to conclude that democracy and international
governance are almost incompatible? No, because all democratic systems
are confronted with the same crisis: national democracies must respond to
their citizens’ need for signposts, for road maps to help them find their way
around this new world. The navigational aids provided by domestic
sovereignty are no longer adequate. The emergent supranational powers are
caught in a dilemma: do we have to turn our backs on the national
democratic sphere which provides the basis to the legitimacy of a
government in order to resolve global questions? Is it possible to
democratise the upper storeys without destroying the foundations of
representative democracy? This contradiction is contemporary international
governance’s blind spot. It is also Europe’s blind spot. This blind spot is, to
some extent, the reason why democracies are ‘in crisis’.
As the reader will have guessed, I support the view that the construction
of an ‘alternational’ democratic system is an unavoidable political necessity.
13 See Alain Pellet, ‘Mondialisation du droit international?’ in Serge Cordellier, ed., La Mondialisation au-delà
les mythes, Paris : La Découverte/Poche, 2000, pp. 93-100.
26
PASCAL LAMY
An “alternational power, via revitalised institutional procedures, gives
states effective means of wielding power, and clearly identifies common
objectives and the means to construct a worldwide democratic stage. In my
view, world governance and democracy are inseparable. The existence of
one is a precondition for the success of the other. Without democracy, world
governance cannot exist. That is not just an empty slogan. But the danger
that we will simply maintain the fiction that currently prevails in
international relations is not just a theoretical possibility. It is a very
concrete and immediate danger. If we imitate the way nation-states interact
at a supranational level, as we did in the past, there is a danger that we will
deny democracy the means to establish itself. There is a danger that we will
‘de-democratise’ democracy.14
In our Western democracies, we can see what is at stake in a very
immediate way. They stand by helplessly while extremists get more votes
and as all kinds of populism grow stronger. The threat to democracy is that
a growing number of citizens will turn away from politics. The threat is also
from the increasing influence of critics whose denunciations may be
justified to some extent, but who offer no real alternative means of tackling
the crisis in the system. We have to respond in political terms.
Thinking about how we construct a democratic system of power broking
is therefore a matter of urgency. Now that the forms of national
representative democracy have become a trap, we now have to invent an
alternational democracy.
But in any case, it is not true to say that we have no models and no
experience. We have been constructing Europe for fifty years now. The
founding fathers of Europe knew that what was going on in one corner of the
planet would have global implications.
14 See Ulrich Beck, Macht und Gegenmacht.
CHAPTER II
THE EUROPEAN LABORATORY
To create a supranational democratic system is what we have been trying to
do in the European laboratory, since the middle of the last century. If I am
to believe the evidence of the endless questions I am always faced with in
Latin America, Africa and Asia, the whole world knows all about this
experiment. I sometimes feel that these questions are an expression of
hope. But in any event, they are always the expression of curiosity.
For many years, I answered in positive terms. I shared the convictions
of the EU builders, who were inspired by the future implications of what
they were constructing.
For some time now, I have been less confident. The weather has
changed. I can see clouds gathering, and they may be a sign that a storm is
brewing. And I see the barometer – what we call the ‘Eurobarometer’; a
high-quality poll that regularly monitors the opinion of citizens of all the
member states of Europe15 – is falling ominously. In late 2003, only 41 per
cent stated that they had any faith in the European Union.16 There is
another bad sign: only one on two citizens thinks that his or her country’s
membership of the European Union is a good thing.17 When compared with
earlier surveys, these figures indicate that we have hit a pocket of
turbulence: they tell us that in the 25 countries of Europe, over 20 million
people probably changed their opinion from positive to negative in the
second half of 2003.
If we compare these figures with those recorded during the last
European elections (in both 1999 and 2004), when there was a high rate of
abstention and when various populist forces performed well – we have to
face the obvious: a democratic crisis is looming.
Why? Why is public opinion no longer supporting an unprecedented and
unique enterprise which has changed the face of our continent by banishing
the spectre of war, by allowing democracy to take root and by building up
15 It can be consulted at http://www.europa.eu.int/comm.public_opinion/
16 This represents a fall of three points since the first semester of 2003. The rate of distrust had risen to 42 per
cent according to Eurobarometer 60, Second semester 2003.
17 This represents a fall of six points since the first semester of 2003.
27
PASCAL LAMY
28
societies which, in comparison with the rest of the world, are free, open,
prosperous and mutually supportive. Has the construction of Europe been hit
by the same illness as the international system – which it was trying to
transcend – and our national democracies – which it was designed to support
and complement? Let us try to answer the question without lapsing into
complacency, by taking a lucid look at the successes and failures, the
promises and results of this attempt to invent a new form of governance.
Europe: towards governance
After the Second World War, having learned from the failures of the
international system over the previous one hundred years, Europe’s founding
fathers made a ‘technological’ jump towards governance by developing
innovative tools that we have been perfecting over a period of fifty years.
It was not so much the stated objective of the European project – ‘to lay the
foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe’18 – as the
means of achieving it that allowed us to leave behind the only formula
available at the time: namely, states have an exclusive monopoly on
sovereignty. From the very start, we had things that, even today, cannot be
found anywhere else in combination: effective tools and democratic
procedures. We gradually learned how to use these innovations, and we
have learned to make better use of them, though not without debates,
clashes, quarrels and crises. But the transition was successful and
completely new principles of governance did take root. These new
principles have made it possible to move from an international (or
‘intergovernmental’, as we say in Europe) system to a ‘Community’ system
(based upon autonomous institutions and common policies). They are
generically described as the ‘Community method.’ They are: the preeminence of European law, subsidiarity, a re-worked principle of majority
rule, and by granting of a monopoly of legislative initiative to the
Commission.
The fact that European law takes precedence over national laws is the
first building block. It was gradually established through jurisprudence. This
supranationality is guaranteed by the European Court of Justice, whose
rulings are binding on national legal systems. To a large extent, this
transgresses the principle of classical international law.
The principle of subsidiarity, which has always figured in federalism’s
18 Preamble to the Treaty of Rome (1957).
29
tables of stone, divides legal competence between the level of the Union
and the level of Member States. It is intended to ensure that the
competence of the Union remains ‘subsidiary’ to that of its Member States
or constituent parts, such as regions, and that it applies only when
efficiency requires it to apply. Europe has, for example, a high degree of
competence at the economic level: control over competition, rules
governing the market, internal common negotiating position in international
trade. Education and social security policies, in contrast, are within the
remit of national competence.
The third characteristic, namely, a renewed principle of majority rule
has gradually been applied within both two institutional sources of
legitimacy: the Council, made up of EU Member States and the European
Parliament. In the Council, where States have relinquished their sovereignty
in favour of a population-weighted voting system, decisions are usually
taken on a ‘qualified majority’ basis (about two thirds of all votes) rather
the ‘simple majority’ system used in the European Parliament (half of all
votes plus one). The upper house or Council has gradually come to share
legislative power, budgetary power and political control with the lower
house, or the European Parliament, which has been elected by universal
suffrage since 1979.
Giving the European Commission a monopoly of initiative was perhaps
the most innovatory principle of all and yet, even today, few people know
about it or still find it very obscure. Contrary to the idea that still prevails
even in distinguished academic circles, it has nothing to do with the
executive nature of the College of European Commissioners, though it is
true that the creation of a supranational executive did give birth to a new
species: the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community
(ECSC), then the so-called ‘executive’ commission of the European
Economic Community (EEC), which was the daughter of the ECSC and finally
the modern EU’s European Commission, which is the ECSC’s granddaughter.
In fact, the monopoly of initiative stems from a recognition of the need to
give an exclusive monopoly on policy initiatives or on ways of implementing
policies, to a ‘third party’ independent of the States, which trust it (in a way
that they do not trust each other) to draft the policies required by the
general interest of the Union. This is the technology described as a
‘monopoly of initiative’, though the term is as off-putting as it is ugly. In
concrete terms, it means that a proposal can only be made by the European
Commission (for example, a legislative proposal) cannot be amended
30
PASCAL LAMY
without the unanimous agreement of the Member States. They can refuse to
agree to it. But without unanimity, they cannot amend it unless the
Commission agrees. The Commission has the power to act as a force for
integration and to act as an honest broker: it takes initiatives that
encourage integration and amends them in such a way as to make them
acceptable to a majority. This, as I know from personal experience, was
probably the EU founding fathers’ greatest stroke of inspiration. After two
fratricidal wars, curbing the logic of nation states required a great deal of
imagination. Trust is the cement that gives all forms of integration the
solidity they require. It is that trust that made possible major advances in
the construction of Europe: the market, which represented a compromise
between liberalisation and the drawing up of common rules; the Euro, which
is a compromise between the different monetary ideas held by different
Member States, and; the common European policy on external trade – one
of the most integrated within the Union – which is a compromise between
liberal and protectionist views on trade. The key to all this lies in a system
that can capitalise on trust. In Europe, that function has been granted to the
Commission. Its role is to guarantee the European project and its dynamic,
to understand the various parties involved, to turn their expectations into
possibilities, and to make them concrete in ways that promote the interests
of all. Its role is, in a word, to construct a general European interest. This
makes it a ‘trust catalyst’, and it is indispensable if we are to move ahead
with the construction of Europe.
Because it is driven by this completely novel set of institutional drivers,
the European Union possesses, a priori, the attributes of efficiency and
legitimacy which, as I have shown, the international system lacks.
Montesquieu would have been delighted: separation of powers (legislative,
judiciary and executive); a “parliament” with two chambers, Council and
European Parliament, that are legitimate because they are made up of
representatives elected by those who gave them their mandate; and finally,
an executive that can be censored by the second chamber of the people.
And as we discovered in 1999,19 that possibility is not longer just based on
academic theory.
Then why is public opinion so negative? Have we once more, and not for
the first time in history, fallen victim to a fiction that makes us take dreams
for realities? Have we been given ten out of ten for the theory, and zero out
of ten for the practicalities?
19 The date of the resignation of the Commission chaired by Jacques Santer.
Bringing the machinery to life
31
I think that the basic answer lies in the truism that today’s Europe lacks
political excitement. The machinery is there, but it has not been brought
to life.
That machinery is full of positive elements. There is, for example, a
public debating chamber and it exists at the European level. It is a
structured, sophisticated space and many of its actors can readily identify
with it. All forms of representation – whether of states, national,
parliamentary, trade-unions, associations (such as charities) and business –
coexist within it and help to bring it to life. Yet this space remains
stubbornly invisible to the citizens of Europe.
Ever since it was first elected by universal suffrage, the European Parliament
has been given more and more powers, and the draft Constitutional Treaty would
give it an even greater role. And yet even that would not give it the magic that
might be expected of an institution representing the peoples of Europe.
There are also places where civil society, and specific interests – such as
business interests – can be brought together. Lobbies, NGOs, European
federations representing various branches of activity and society (such as
European trade-union federations) are all represented in Brussels. They are
active, put forward proposals, take part in formal and informal consultative
processes which continue throughout the drafting of policies, and they
cooperate closely with European institutions. And yet there is still a feeling
that decisions are taken ‘in Brussels’ without any consultation, and that
they do not relate to the active, living forces in European society.
One thousand journalists are accredited to the European Commission’s
press room, which gives a daily ‘Midday Express’ press conference that
allows journalists to review the latest EU developments and to put questions
to those responsible in the Commission. European institutions have imported
the rigorous transparency rules of the Nordic democracies, despite a few
clashes with more ‘Latin’ concepts. Brochures designed for both specialist
and non-specialist readers are published. The web sites of European
institutions explain what they are doing. There are many regional sources of
information in Member States. There are associations committed to
improving our understanding of Europe. There are countless departments of
European studies in the universities. Every year, doctoral theses are
submitted on European subjects, and in every conceivable European
language. The list goes on and on, and yet the citizens of Europe still feel
that this political system is both invisible and incomprehensible.
32
PASCAL LAMY
We have, then, good machinery but it has yet to come to life. Why? If
we are to find the right answer, and draw the right conclusions from it, we
must, I think, begin by sorting the wheat from the chaff.
On the wrong track
Arguments about the famous ‘democratic deficit’ at the institutional
level will get us nowhere. That is the first mistake. As I have already said,
even though it can (and must) be improved, the European institutional
system offers all the guarantees one could wish for to ensure that its
powers are, in procedural terms, independent, separate and subject to
checks and balances. What is more, the Union’s self-imposed
transparency criteria are stricter than those of many European States.20
And given, finally, that the European Union is neither a nation state nor a
federation, criticising it on the basis of criteria elaborated with those
systems in mind is simply bad faith. The Union’s citizens are, as it
happens, under no illusion about this: a significantly greater number (46
per cent) have more faith in the European Commission than in their
national governments (31 per cent).21
When it comes to political debates about Europe, the supporters of
two conflicting conceptions – the sovereignist or Eurosceptic discourse, and
the federalist discourse – clash over the institutional issue. According to the
sovereignists, who are opposed to the building of a supranational system on
the grounds that some elements of sovereignty will be transferred and
shared with other states, the nation is the only framework that can
guarantee democratic legitimacy. In their view, the debate is closed, or
almost closed: the construction of Europe cannot be other than illegitimate
and anti-democratic. According to their opponents, who support federalism,
the idea that marginal institutional adjustments can improve things is just
an illusion. The only thing that can remedy the deficit is a leap in the
direction of federalism, or in other words an executive that is accountable
to a parliament with greater and more extensive powers. And if the
governments of Member States that still have constitutional powers do not
like it, that is their problem. All that is needed to establish a constituent
assembly of the peoples of Europe is an ‘international coup d’etat’. They
are therefore denouncing a ‘federal’ deficit rather than a ‘democratic’
20 See especially, A. Moravcsik, ‘Le Mythe du déficit européen’, Raisons politiques, 10, May 2003, pp. 87-105.
21 Eurobarometer, n.60.
33
deficit,22 but they also have democratic ambitions as they want equal
representation for both peoples and states, whereas the present system
gives states the advantage,
So there is, ironically, one common theme between both sides, namely
that there is a ‘crisis in Europe’, a theme throughout this on-going ideological
warfare.But this theme displaces the question of legitimacy on the one hand,
to the point that we cannot really discuss it. Yet even if we reject both the
sovereignist hypothesis and the ‘come the federal revolution’ hypothesis on
the other – because one is suicidal and because the other threatens to sacrifice
the Europe of today for the sake of an ideal and unreal Europe of the future –
the feeling that there is a democratic deficit still persists. If the institutional
solution cannot provide the right answer, we have to look elsewhere.
The second mistake is to bury our heads in the sand and deny that there
is a real problem. To argue that Europe is, by definition, a long way away
and that we can never change that de facto situation borders on the
tautological. Yes, European institutions are far removed from Europe’s
citizens, or at least further removed than local or national governments.
Yes, their remoteness is structural: a supranational government cannot be
transformed into a local government. That is a fact. But this fact does little
to promote the feeling that we are living in a democracy.
This argument jumps to the wrong conclusions: it claims that the crisis
in Europe is no more than a long shadow cast by the problems encountered
by national democracies. In fact, it is quite obvious that the crisis in
democracy is affecting all political actors and political interests, including
the press and the political parties. There is, in our democracies, a widening
gulf between the apparatus of power and society. Society feels that is no
longer adequately represented and no longer believes that a political
response can resolve its difficulties. It is equally obvious that distance,
which makes Europe look less familiar to its citizens, also acts like a
magnifying glass. But the fact that the crisis has becomes generalised does
not mean that we have to abandon the attempt to resolve it. If my analysis
is correct, and if the crisis does in part result from citizens’ feeling that
politics cannot solve the new problems confronting our societies and that
they themselves are therefore powerless to influence our future choices,
part of the solution lies in our ability to put together a European and world
system of governance that is legitimate, effective, and recognised as such.
22 See Alexi Dalem, Les Discours de légitimation de l’Union européenne, Mémoire de DEA, Institut d’Etudes
Politiques de Paris, 2001.
34
PASCAL LAMY
The third mistake is to take the view that, given that there is no such
thing as the ”European people”, it is not possible to create a ‘Europe’. This
has always been a recurrent theme throughout the history of the
construction of Europe. Any fool knows that the impossibility of finding the
‘European people’ is a cliché in discussions about both the Europe of today
and the Europe of tomorrow. To summarise it briefly: the opponents of
European integration claim that, because the diversity of its nations, the
people of Europe is nowhere to be found, hence the subject is closed: if the
people does not exist, democracy cannot exist and, if there can be no
democracy, then Europe is a mirage, a blind alley and an impossibility. That
is all there is to it!
This argument overlooks the fact that we have, sometimes with
unprecedented success, been constructing Europe day by day for the last 50
years and finding ways to unite its various peoples. For those who recognise
only one possible form of democracy – a perfect match between one nation
and one state – there can be no democracy outside the framework of the
nation state. Democracy’s ability to invent truly alternational forms, or in
other words to allow democracies to participate in international political
life, is not even a legitimate hypothesis.
The fourth mistake is the assertion that there is no desire for Europe,
or that public opinion is hostile to Europe. The fact is that modern Europe
has synchronised political, social, economic and demographic cycles. Most
Europeans see the future in broadly similar terms. These ‘expectations’ of
Europe definitely have an unrealised potential to lend democracy a new
magic.
All our political societies are now faced with the same evil, namely the
rise of extremism. Sovereignism and nationalistic isolationism, often
combined with xenophobia and a rejection of others, are its most obvious
signs, as is the rising rate of abstention in elections from the 1990s onwards.
This crisis in European democracies reflects the long demographic cycles
characterised by the structural convergence of European societies: the
ageing of the population, and the falling birth rate are two examples.
Throughout Europe, these developments are producing, in various forms,
the same questions, the same worries and sometimes the same plans for
reform: how are we to guarantee that the young will support the elderly,
that we can pay for pensions and go on providing adequate social welfare?
European societies are all caught up in the same economic and social cycle:
growth, the jobs market and the ‘offshoring’ of industry are no longer
simply matters for domestic policy at the state level. Similarly, the quality
35
of the environment and of the products we consume has become a
transnational issue. Civic activism over common issues at a European level
is a recent phenomenon, but it was startlingly obvious in the demonstrations
against the war in Iraq in 2003. The war and, in more general terms, the
present American government’s policies, have given Europeans a more
explicit awareness of the cultural specificity of Europe, even though it still
remains somewhat vague. The citizens of Europe are well aware that they
are Europeans. We now find the same sequences, the same cycles and the
same preoccupations throughout Europe. And that is precisely when
democracy begins: when people are all talking about the same thing.
If we were trying to create a huge new state, the question of a European
society would obviously be an issue from the outset. The federal project also
comes up against the same difficulty. But it all depends on our vision of Europe.
We should we see it as something quite new, but also as something that has its
roots in the history of its people and that can transcend them so as to enable
a new democratic and political framework that can strengthen governance at
every level of public action.23 At that point, respect for, and celebration of,
multiple loyalties could be a powerful foundation belief because it has deep
roots in the reality of the diversity of the peoples of Europe. The problem
cannot, however, be avoided: if there is no such thing as European society, does
that mean that we have no common identity? I think not. So what is this feeling
that we belong, and there can be no viable democracy?
The European identity we have been constructing over the last 50 years
is a day to day identity: European policies now have a direct impact on our
lives. This European identity does not contradict the logic of belonging. It
complements that logic: half of all Europeans state that they belong to both
a nation and Europe.24 It is because this identity is grounded in day to day
life that it is a powerful cohesive force. For the younger generations, it is
self-evident that the future is European. Europe is an integral part of how
they view their own lives. Freedom of movement across Europe, educational
exchanges, transeuropean educational programmes, European financial
backing for innovatory projects – including research and regional
development – and, of course, the Euro are all examples of the policies that
are making membership of Europe an important part of everyday life.
23 From the local level to the national level, and then the supranational level.
24 47 per cent of Europeans state that they feel themselves to be both nationals and Europeans; 7 per cent feel
themselves to be purely European, and 40 per cent feel themselves to be just ‘nationals’. Half of all French
people feel themselves to be French and European; 9 per cent feel that they are European and French. Ony 3
per cent feel that they are purely French.
36
PASCAL LAMY
Debates between Europeans obviously reveal a European identity too.
When disagreements do arise, all the parties involved are aware of the
shared destiny that binds them together. Conflict is obviously not the best
way to bind a community together, but a political community never speaks
with only one voice and the fact that debates occur demonstrates that our
destinies are now linked, for better or for worse. And we should not be
afraid of debates: there have been many crises in the course of European
construction. But we also have to find ways of finding common ground, or,
in other words, sharing our convictions and listening to those of others. That
requires a political will that the European policy of Member States has all
too often failed to display in recent years.
Thanks to the upheavals of the 1990s and globalization, Europeans are
discovering that they have a lot in common. Our common identity is
revealed by the great moments of the history we share. Ten new Member
States have now joined the European Union. We watched with emotion as
most of them freed themselves from the Soviet yoke at the end of the 1980s.
In some Member States, a majority is in favour of the enlargement of
Europe.25 In others, fear is the dominant emotion, mainly because the
authorities have failed to explain the meaning and historical reality of the
process.26 Whilst they are worrying, these divergent positions also tell us –
in negative terms – that Europe is a reality. These differences of opinion will
no doubt fade, and the historians of the future will speak of the
‘reunification’ of Europe rather than of its ‘enlargement’.
Our European identity is also, finally, a product of the way others see
us. The construction of Europe was not a reaction against ‘the barbarians.’
It took place at the height of the Cold War, but its membership of the
‘Western bloc’ was not seen as a preliminary to a confrontation with the
Communist bloc. Europe does not need to construct an ‘other’ in order to
understand itself. It is, on the other hand, influenced by the way others see
it. Others give Europe a role and capabilities of which it is often unaware.
From the outside, it looks more united than it does to those who live inside
it. Its colours are also more clearly perceptible: a particular sensitivity to
the questions of development and sustainable development, the desire for
better collective control over globalization, a willingness to establish
25 Denmark is the great champion of expansion, with 63 per cent in favour, followed by Spain, Italy, Ireland,
Sweden, Finland, Portugal and The Netherlands. Source: Eurobarometer 60.
26 France, with 55 per cent of the population opposed, leads the opposition to expansion, followed by Belgium.
In Germany, Austria and the United Kingdom, 40 per cent of the populations is opposed to expansion. Source:
Eurobarometer 60.
37
partnerships in the pursuit of common goals, the prioritising of peace rather
than war. All this has recently been theorised by certain conservative
intellectuals in America. Europe, they tell us, is the world of Venus and not
Mars. It is the world of Kant and not that of Hobbes.27
These elements indicate that the construction of a new and
unprecedented identity is under way. It is an identity that takes different
forms, and it is based upon universal values and mature political choices.
The fact that this identity is still under construction must not be allowed to
become a problem: the feeling of belonging, without which no democracy
can be constructed, is already there, even if it is still a matter for debate.
This debate helps to reveal what its citizens are beginning to expect of
Europe. And Europeans’ doubts about the real Europe are, in my view, a
symptom of ‘European breakdowns.’
On the right track
The first real reason why Europeans have fallen out of love with Europe
lies in what I would call its failure to produce results. In recent years,
Europe has put the emphasis on certain types of mechanisms and has
concentrated on procedures rather than on getting concrete results. The
citizens of Europe are well aware that a change of emphasis has taken
place. They are not holding forth about Europe. They are asking an
important question: what is Europe doing for me, and what can it do?
A distinction has to be made here between Europe as a means, and
Europe as an end in itself. If we look at it in its historical context, the
legitimacy of the process of European reunification stems not from some
attachment to the European or to federal integration, but from what has been
achieved. Common policies (the ‘actual solidarity’ and ‘concrete
achievements’ of the 1950s) were developed in response to common concrete
problems. The outcome, or in other words the criterion of efficiency, is an
essential element in the legitimation of what Europe is about. If it is to be
legitimate, three conditions have to be met: Europe must be a way of
resolving or dealing with the pressing questions and major contradictions of
the moment; those problems and contradictions cannot be dealt with
appropriately and efficiently within a national framework; they must be
common to all Member States and the ‘European response’ must be linked to
27 See Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power: America versus Europe on the New World Order, New York:
Knopf, 2003.
38
PASCAL LAMY
concrete proposals that can be implemented. The European Coal and Steel
Community (ECSC) was seen as a first step towards the economic integration
of France and Germany. In a similar way, consider the example of Jacques
Delors’s proposal to do away with external frontiers and to create the Euro.
The signs that the expectations of Europeans and what the European
Union is doing are out of step are now increasingly obvious. Europeans are,
for example, in favour of greater European integration in terms of foreign
policy and defence, but governments are as reluctant as ever to share their
sovereignty in these areas.28 The same question arises when we turn to
economic policy. Although we have both a flat rate of economic growth and
a powerful instrument that could promote growth – our single currency – we
refuse to exploit all these possibilities to the full for fear that we might
actually succeed in coordinating our economic and budgetary policies. This
has serious implications: if we go on ‘looking after number one’, we will
sacrifice growth and therefore the ability to reduce the level of
unemployment or to ensure, in budgetary terms, that we will make choices
that safeguard our welfare systems.
Ultimately, Europeans have identified Europe’s second failure: the
failure of the project. It was the future that gave Europe its original
legitimacy. In that sense, Europe was a progressive development. And then
the price of the future suddenly fell in the 1990s. The economic crisis,
globalization, the end of upward social mobility – it was at this point that
parents stopped believing that their children would have a better life than
the one they had had – and the end of communism, which put a sudden end
to the notion of progress. All of these factors had an impact on Europe. The
price of Europe was – and, I think, still – is indexed to the price of the future.
Because it relates to the future, the European project has still not recovered
from this blow. From this point onwards, institutional and procedural
legitimation became a substitute for the European project. It was, at first
sight, easier to reach agreement over procedures than over policies:
procedural neuroses became, so to speak, a substitute for policy neuroses.
From where does this blockage come, this breakdown? Let us recall our
common history, starting from one clear point: the process of European
integration has, at least to some extent, unfolded in a non-explicit fashion,
in a way that was not visible to Europeans. The pooling of certain elements
of sovereignty has gone ahead without a real and strong commitment by
28 64 per cent of the citizens of Europe are in favour of a common foreign policy, and 22 per cent are against
it. 70 per cent of the citizens of Europe are in favour of a European defence and security policy, and 19 per
cent are opposed to it. Source: Eurobarometer 60.
39
either national or European policy-makers. In other words, Europe has rarely
been the central focus of public debate.
What began as the economic integration of Europe became a political
issue, but the nature of debate now began to change. What had been an
open debate became more closed. The introduction of the Euro as a single
currency was preceded by 30 years of open debate. The technical debate
about the single currency began in the late 1960s, and was transformed into
a political debate in the 1970s and the 1980s as a result of the upheavals
caused by the economic crisis. It was the need to regain a certain autonomy
at the level of economic policy as well as to control inflation that began to
confuse different views as to the role the single currency could play in
shaping a European identity. The symbolic relationship with monetary
sovereignty thus gave way to a more material relationship. Having long been
dominated by ‘being’, the currency gradually came to be dominated by
‘having’. ‘The Euro in your pocket’ proved more important than big words
about monetary sovereignty.
The debate became still less open when the Single Act of 1986 extended
European policy and allowed the establishment of the internal European
market in which we have been living since 1993. Designed as a space in
which people, goods, capital and services could circulate feely, it not only
encourages trade but affects whole new areas of policy relating to the
environment or social policy, for example. Europe has gradually moved into
new territory. It now affects our social choices and our choice of identity, or
in other words our collective preferences.
From that point onwards, the debate about European policy gradually
became less open, and more secretive. This happened almost without a
word being said, not that it has proved to be an obstacle to further
integration, but it has had a great impact on our shared values. The example
of the recent introduction of a European arrest warrant is testimony to that.
By doing away with procedures for extradition between European states, the
European Union has acquired the legal means it needs to be able to act
within its own sphere. As a result, the ability of states to say, within their
own territories, what is right and what is wrong in legal terms, is now shared
at a European level. Similarly, the fact that the European Commission has
been given legal powers to regulate competition is not without an impact on
our collective values and choices when it comes to regulating certain service
activities that are in the common interest.
The delicate balance of European construction has been upset as a
result: there are fewer debates and more gradual progress, fewer great
40
PASCAL LAMY
political ambitions and more technical norms, and less autonomy of action
and more procedures. A ‘governance’ based essentially upon norms has
taken over from a ‘government’ based upon more discretionary choices.29 In
a number of cases we have, without always realising it, crossed the symbolic
frontier that divides what we have – experience, the sharing of what can be
exchanged and what can be touched – from what we are: identities, values
and symbols. But when it acts in normative fashion, ‘power’ does not
acquire the visible signs, the explicits criteria that citizens expect in seeing
political power exercised.
In my view, this explains why Europe is finding it so difficult to cross
more symbolic barriers by committing itself to new policies. Europe has come
up against a stumbling block. It is a symbolic stumbling block: power. States
refuse to share power because doing so might, they believe, cost them their
identity. The citizens of Europe are, I believe, ready to cross this frontier.
This is the case when it comes to, for example, foreign policy and defence.30
In both these policy areas, where there is a strong element of ‘being’, there
is still a very high threshold of political and symbolic resistance: it is the
political strong room that is at stake. States are putting up resistance and
trying to avoid the political choice involved by evoking norms and
procedures. The best illustration of this is the decision taken at Maastricht in
1992, which saw a unanimous decision to eventually reach majority decisions
on a common foreign and security policy. The same resistance is slowing
down all attempts to coordinate economic and budgetary policies, and yet it
has already been agreed that we cannot fight inflation unless we have
economic growth and unless the Euro is fully taken up.
We therefore have to go back to an open debate if we are to find a
satisfactory balance between governance and government. Of course the
establishment of norms allows a degree of arbitration between collective
preferences. But if we are to return to the path that leads to democracy in
Europe, we have to give collective political choices a new role and a
new meaning.
We must, then, relaunch the stalled project. Within the nation state, the
question of the project is not posed in the same terms: having developed
over a period of centuries, the will to live together is in a sense taken for
29 The same distinction is made by Jean-Paul Fitoussi, in La Règle et le choix. De la souverainté économique en
Europe, Paris : Le Seuil/La République des idées, 2002.
30 64 per cent of Europeans are in favour of a CFSP (22 per cent are opposed to it) 70 per cent are in favour of
a Common Foreign and Security Policy (19 per cent are against it). Source: Eurobarometer 60.
41
granted. But when we are dealing with a group of states that have decided
their policies and frontiers on a voluntary basis, the question of the project
is crucial. That is why, when we raise the issues of legitimacy and efficiency,
further questions arise: what is the goal we want to give to the institutions
we have established? What society are we building together, and what society
do we want? In Europe, we stopped debating these questions a long time ago.
For far too long, we have just been talking politics amongst ourselves.
Unless we have a clear project, we will find it all the more difficult to
recover from a third breakdown. It concerns Europe’s public debating
chamber and representation. The legitimacy of any government is based
largely upon the fact that its citizens recognise themselves in the way it
signals its own existence, in the way it stages its policies so as to make them
intelligible and in the light it throws on the issues it raises. It is becoming
apparent that the European stage is dark, that we do not have the means to
project our collective preferences, or to identify a political space. It is as
though we were just beginning to realise that Europe is a political project,
and that we have yet to invent the language it needs.
Political violence is not ritualised on the European stage, as it is within
the national spaces. Political battles are not fought by clearly identified
champions supported by distinct political sides. The conflict is, at best and
for a few feverish moments, restricted to a clash of national interests. And
the reason why it is so difficult to ritualise political issues is that they are
not yet associated with clearly identified political forces.
European political forces have not (yet) emerged. Why not? Firstly
because the European parties (the European Socialist Party and the
European People’s Party are the most important) are, as yet, no more than
remote outposts of national parties, and have been slow to establish
themselves as autonomous trans-European political forces. The second
reason is that political labels do not travel well – and partisan loyalties
cannot be accurately reproduced on all European chess boards. The final
reason is that Europe has for a long time been the product of a consensus
between social democratic forces and Christian Democratic forces. It has
made no attempt to dramatise the issues that are at stake. The audience is
a long way from the stage, and it needs better lighting.
What is more, the way democracy functions varies greatly from one
country to another does nothing to facilitate or encourage the ability to
project and identify with the European debates that take place in the
European Parliament (the ‘Chamber’, so to speak) and the Council of
Member States (the ‘Senate’, so to speak). What is more, not all Europeans
42
PASCAL LAMY
structure the way they debate or represent political issues in the same way.
Europe is dominated by two great structures: the coalition-based model on
the one hand, and the binary-opposition model on the other. Democratic
debates in, for instance, Britain and Germany do not use the same codes.
The British have traditionally had head-on clashes between two clearlyidentified sides, whilst the Germans sing the praises of their coalition
culture because it promotes compromise. A parliamentary system that
inevitably has to borrow from both models therefore looks very unfamiliar
to the citizens of Europe.
These very different functional logics, systems of representation and
political languages mean that the citizens of Europe cannot identify
European political issues. The absence of any script that can be read by all
Europeans makes it difficult to identify and understand the signals European
powers are sending out.
The lessons of Europe
In Europe, an innovative ‘technology of government’ has now gone far
beyond the nation-state paradigm by introducing elements of a
transnational government and by building a shared living space – and
therefore a shared destiny – for the hitherto divided people of Europe. The
model we are looking for is indeed democratic. Yet, despite the undeniable
institutional progress that has been made, the citizens of Europe neither see
it as democratic nor feel that it is democratic.
We can learn two great lessons from the experiments that have been
carried out in the European laboratory. The first is that there is an urgent
need for Europe to produce tangible, quantifiable and concrete results that
meet its citizens’ expectations; the second is that we need to make the
political issues comprehensible to all. Both these great lessons teach us one
thing: the European stage must be lit up by debates, compromises, and
forms of arbitration that embody choices that have been made collectively
and that facilitate a European project. The same lessons also apply to world
governance.
CHAPTER III
TOWARDS AN ALTERNATIONAL DEMOCRACY:
CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE DEBATE
The European experiment is therefore not a perfect model that can simply
be exported to other continents in order to build the global political life we
need so badly. Far from it. But it is the most successful attempt to-date to
transcend national democracy. Both its successes and its failures can
therefore guide us in our search for an ‘alternational’ democracy, or in other
words for ways that allow democracies to exercise a different type of
transnational power that can, democratically, visibly and transparently,
address questions that concern the whole of humanity.
Why have global questions become issues for democracy? In practice,
the question of democracy arises only when the decisions taken by
international actors oblige countries to act in ways that go against their
national collective preferences. It arises in a much more acute form when,
for example, the internationalisation of the economy means that we have to
arbitrate between interests and values within the same country. Yes, we
want cheap t-shirts, but not if they are made with forced labour; yes, we
want smart, practical garden furniture, but not if it is made teak taken from
a primal forest. The consumer and the moralist who lie dormant within us
come into conflict. This is even more so when the values of one country
come into conflict with the interests of another, as it can lead to potential
trade disputes. This was, for example, the case when developing countries
strongly opposed the inclusion of social norms in trade negotiations and
argued that the developed countries wanted to use those norms to deny
access to the producers of poor countries’ to their markets.
In my own view, the objective is clear: when globalization in all its
aspects makes arbitration between interests and values necessary,
democracy has to be the arbitrator. The challenge is to identify common
values that can prevail over conflicting identities. The emergence of a
fragmentary and evolving ‘community’ based upon the idea of a common
good and brought into existence by collective actions with respect to global
public goods we have identified together is a way of giving democracy more
power and a new meaning.
43
44
PASCAL LAMY
I do not propose to discuss institutional mechanisms. I am as tired of
listening to the same old discussions of technical improvements and
marginal changes to the present system as I am of listening to the
speculative talk that would have us build a Frankenstein’s monster by
borrowing from every existing system without bothering too much about its
deformities. I am just as tired of listening to the same old discussions of
utopia. I am therefore not going to outline yet another version of the
universal polis, which is a sort of world democratic chimera. We are not
starting from scratch. On the contrary, we have raw materials we can use.
We can also capitalise on both the present archipelago of world governance
– fragmentary as it may be – and 50 years of European construction.
In my view, five elements provide the foundations for a democratic
world governance. First, values. Values allow our feeling of belonging to a
world community, embryonic as it may be, to coexist alongside national
specificities. Second, we need actors who have sufficient legitimacy to get
public opinion interested in the debate and who are capable of taking
responsibility for its outcome. We need to define areas in which power can
be exercised. We need mechanisms of governance that are truly effective.
And, finally, we have to rely on the principles of transparency and solidarity.
I offer a series of contributions to a debate that will allow us to
construct each of these elements. Whilst they are mutually consistent,
these suggestions do not constitute an “off the peg” system. Each of them
is worth debating, and they do not necessarily all have to be implemented
at the same time. I am not proposing an institutional revolution but, rather,
a combination of global ambition and pragmatic suggestions. If we take this
path we will be able not only to address the urgent questions facing the
world, but also, perhaps, to breathe new life into our national democracies.
To paraphrase Ferdinand Buisson, who was writing at the end of the
nineteenth century, as we are all in the same boat, we cannot save ourselves
individually.
Values
We now live in a global arena in which there are no shared values, except
perhaps, ‘human rights.’ And the geometry of their interpretation is so
variable that even they are surrounded by uncertainty. Now if we wish to
construct a collective dimension, we have to want to live together. If we
wish to build the ‘community’ we talk about so much, but which we find it
45
so hard to construct, the lesson of the European experiment is that the way
to forge permanent links between nations – with different visions, cultures
and social realities – is to project ourselves into a common future. It was the
definition of such a project that has sustained Europeans up to now. How are
we to create such a vision within a global arena? Can, in other words,
diversity be transcended in such a way as to allow the ‘community of
nations’ to become, thanks to a series of political measures, an
‘alternational’ community?
I: Global collective preferences
Globalization brings into contact peoples who have not always taken the
same social choices. And when states state what they expect from the
world-governance system, they have different priorities. There are many
reasons for this: their history, their country’s level of development, the
incompatible political and social projects they have drawn up, and so on.
The only way to construct goods common to the whole of humanity and to
give a meaning and a future to our policies and societies is to debate a
‘common’ project – even though anything that is ‘common’ on a global scale
can only be ‘common’ in a limited sense.
The controversies surrounding genetically modified organisms (GMOs)
are a good illustration of these debates over different collective
preferences. Some believe that they will improve the quality of the produce
and the productivity of agriculture. Others insist that the spread of GM seeds
poses a threat to the environment. So long as different countries imagine
different risks, there will be contradictions between them. The GM question
is therefore not so much a question of trade as a debate about risk
management at both the national and the international levels. This debate
cannot be avoided or evaded by technical measures. Debate must take place
in public and must result in the expression of political choices. In this area,
social concerns are intense and we must find a way of meeting them. Is this
an illegitimate debate? I think not. Asking a state or people to abandon its
collective preferences means its de facto exclusion from the international
system. Assuming that they have been formulated in democratic terms, a
preliminary recognition that such demands are legitimate is a precondition
for any debate.
And in the absence of any functional world government, we have to find
other ways of identifying shared values. In the framework of a national
46
PASCAL LAMY
democracy, citizens take an interest in the issues at stake because of the
way the relationships between different sources of political power are
brought to life on the stage. As we have seen, this does not happen at the
international level: there is no equivalent debate. A debate about collective
preferences is the only possible substitute. It will allow us to identify
common goods in the strongest of senses.
How are we to promote this debate? The vast majority of humanity has
adopted values such as the right to health and education, and core labour
standards. It is beginning to agree on how to identify common goods relating
to concerns that cannot be addressed within the framework of national
frontiers. This is true of environmental goods or, to take another
contemporary issue, the question of migration and the global impact this is
beginning to have: purely national responses are no longer considered
adequate.
A whole range of procedural devices could be used to stimulate the
debate about our collective preferences – and I will mention some of them.
But procedures alone are not enough. We have to decide which preferences
are most important to us, where they sit in a hierarchy. And the hierarchy
itself has to be a topic for debate; it too pertains to our choice of values.
II: Minimal norms
Given that we cannot achieve harmonisation in many domains – always
assuming that harmonisation is needed in all domains, (and I am not
convinced that it is) – we must first translate our common preferences into
norms which, although their ambitions may be limited, are applicable to all.
We then have to gradually raise the normative ceiling as our collective
awareness of what is at stake becomes more heightened. The method used
in Europe – to regulate working hours, for example – does not lead to a
levelling down. It is a first step that makes it possible for collective
preferences to live in peaceful coexistence as the threshold of expectations
gradually rises. The ratchet effect of such norms guarantees that there can
be no going back on the choices that have already been made by this or that
society. The risk of backsliding can thereby be averted. The possibility of
making further progress can thereby be maintained.
Whether or not these different norms can be reconciled in the event of
conflict remains to be seen. Reconciling them requires strict political
arbitration, and not just technical competence on the part of some
47
international institution. In doing so, we cross the boundary between the
norm-based governance that is now common practice at the international
level, to choice-based government. Deciding how to reconcile two norms
takes us to the very heart of political choice: arbitrating between different
values. Let me give an example to illustrate my point: giving developing
countries access to patent-protected drugs. How can we reconcile a medical
emergency and the need to protect intellectual property rights, when we
need them to finance future research? More to the point, how can we
reconcile the two, given that in 1994, an agreement was reached on
intellectual property that defined the exceptions too narrowly?
In this case, the hierarchy of norms which prioritised intellectual
property had to give way to a hierarchy of values which prioritised human
life. As a result of the pressure brought to bear by the developing countries,
with the support of the European Union, members of the World Trade
Organisation (WTO) adopted a more supple interpretation of the intellectual
property agreement in the summer of 2003: developing countries that do
not manufacture drugs but have to deal with major pandemics (AIDS,
malaria and tuberculosis) are now allowed to set aside pharmaceutical
patents and to import generics. It did, however, take two years of bitter and
technically obscure debates before that agreement could be reached.
Pessimists will see that as proof that it is impossible to make significant
progress towards a better regulation of globalization. I do not share their
view: the discussions were certainly difficult, but the outcome
demonstrates that is possible to make collective choices at the global level,
provided that we have the will power and the means to do so.
III: Collective world goods
Globalization can no longer be controlled by national institutions, and
compensating for the failings of markets and states is therefore less
important than it was. The goods that we choose to promote and defend
collectively must therefore be defined in fine by a debate about shared
values. These collective world goods provide the basis for world governance.
Their systemic nature means that they are very different to the other
objects of international cooperation: we have to appeal to the enlightened
self-interest of all rather than to individual altruism. Collective global goods
are defined by two criteria: the absence of consumer rivalry (whereby the
amount I consume does not reduce the amount consumed by my neighbour)
48
PASCAL LAMY
and the non-exclusion of potential consumers (whereby once the good has
been produced, I cannot be prevented from consuming it).
If, however, a collective good is to be ‘produced’ on a global scale, the
need to produce it on that scale must first be demonstrated to be both
useful and desirable; in short, the collectivity must express the appropriate
collective preference. A collective good such as defence may, for example
be pertinent at the national level, but it is much less pertinent at the world
level because it does not meet both the above-mentioned criteria: we do
not actually need to defend ourselves against extra-terrestrials (or perhaps
I should say ‘not yet’). The capacity to produce the good in question must
exist, preferably within existing institutions. This obviously raises the
question of how to build collective trust. We then have to decide which
collective goods are to be prioritised, and whether or not they have to be
given greater priority than other goods.
In environmental terms, protecting the ozone layer is one such
collective good. In 1987 an international agreement was reached to ban CFC
gases within 15 years;31 15 years after that agreement was reached, it was
having discernible effects. The reduction of global warming is another
example with the implementation of the Kyoto Protocol – an international
agreement on ways of reducing global warming. I take the view that we
must, however, gradually identify other goods. Examples include: the
reduction of acid rain, atmospheric pollution, desertification, and soil
erosion in the environmental domain; access to water and to global fish
stocks in the domain of access to resources; access to navigable waterways
and maritime transport networks in the domain of shared transport
infrastructures; preventing financial crises and halting the rise in organised
crime in the financial sphere, and in health, the fight to stop the spread of
infectious diseases (AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis).
Places
If we are to organise these debates on a democratic basis, we must also
create and have places where power can be exercised and asserted.
31 For an extended discussion, see Laurence Tubiana and Jean-Michel Sévérino, ‘Biens public globaux,
gouvernance mondiale et aide publique au développement’, in P. Jacquet, J. Pisani-Ferry and L. Tubiana,
Gouvernance mondiale, Rapport de synthèse, Rapport du CAE, 37, Paris : La Documentation française, 2002.
IV: On regionalism
49
Regional structures that bring together a number of nation states are a first
step towards alternational democracy. And yet there is nothing natural
about regionalism: history is not a product of geography. Geography cannot
transcend the long history of conflict between countries. But it does allow
us to identify a collective living space, and it is probably easier to do so at
the regional level than at the global level. ‘Actual solidarities’ are easier to
identify and construct at the regional level. As I have already said so often,
there was nothing obvious about the European project immediately after
the Second World War. It required great will power to make the leap of faith
involved. Europe had to devise mechanisms to promote a rapprochement
and mutual trust based upon tangible elements such as common policies
that could define concrete common interests and a new body – the European
Commission – that could define and defend a European general interest.
Many countries are, like the Europe of the ‘common market’ established
by the Treaty of Rome, using trade as a vector for regional integration. It
was the desire for a commercial union that brought the countries of SouthEast Asia together in ASEAN. The fight against terrorism has heightened the
feeling that they share a common regional identity, as has the new
omnipresence of China.
Africa took a different path long ago. As it emerged from the ruins of
colonialism, West Africa found itself in the novel situation of establishing a
monetary union in the absence of any economic or commercial union. The
CFA franc was a single currency that circulated in many countries long
before Europeans succeeded in giving birth to the Euro. Attempts to create
the corresponding economic or political structures have so far ended in
failure, partly because France, as the former colonial power, acts as the
ultimate guarantor of regional stability. The recent establishment of an
‘African Union’ and the clear assertion of its economic and commercial goals
mark the beginning of a major project. And a new energy is being invested
in the establishment of regional African sub-structures that are authentic
intermediary stages.
Outside Europe, Mercosur has been the most successful experiment to
date. It was a product of the fall of the region’s dictatorships, and its stated
ambition is to prevent war between nations that have all experienced the
excesses of nationalism. Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay are now
trying to get beyond trade agreements by achieving a real political and
economic convergence. The fact that Mercosur has had discussions with the
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PASCAL LAMY
European Union about an ambitious partnership agreement is sign of its
ambition. Successful negotiations between the two regional structures
would represent a major step forward, and would demonstrate that
regionalism is an essential component of global governance.
In the same way that Jean Monnet began to build the Europe of
tomorrow’s world, the future projects of these embryonic regional
structures already transcend their actual frontiers. They are a response to
the new order created by globalization. Any structure that wishes to play a
role on this stage must achieve a certain critical mass; states such as the
United States, China and India, which already have a continental dimension,
are the exception. Sharing sovereignty is a way of meeting the challenge
together.
It is obviously easier for states of the same region to effect
rapprochements – even though that truism does not have the validity of a
general rule: we have only to think of the extraordinary popularity of the
political slogan of ‘pan-Arabism’, and of the complete shipwreck of the
project. We have only to think of the difficulties faced by Canada or
Australia as they attempt to regulate relations with their immediate
neighbours. We have only to think of the bloody wars that are tearing
apart central Africa. But, because states in the same region share a space
that has determined their history and because they share some elements
of a political culture and, in some cases, economic features, demographic
trends and linguistic similarities, they can be expected to make easier
progress towards a rapprochement, common policies and joint
sovereignty. Assuming, of course, that they are willing to do so. It is
easier and quicker to build such structures when they are based upon a
common culture: the Chinese diaspora of South-East Asia has, for
example, established a closely-knit mesh of economic, human and
cultural networks that takes no notice of the notion of frontier between
the region’s states.
Regional structures also provide raw materials that can be recycled at a
world level. As they converge, their members begin to adopt a common
stance, and that is a helpful first step in the direction of a global debate.
These regional groupings allow the work of synthesis to begin. They are
laboratories in which collective preferences can begin to be compared,
where collective choices can be put to the test, where compromises can be
reached and where suspicions can be overcome. Their position will become
clearer and better defined when the time comes to discuss global issues at
the international level.
51
Regional structures therefore make it possible to begin the political task
of effecting a rapprochement between societies and their choices (which
clarify the collective preferences of their peoples). When transposed to the
international stage, it will allow them to clarify and strengthen their
positions. The positions adopted by the European Union with respect to
external trade policy – a policy adopted when the Treaty of Rome was signed
– are the products of 50 years of debates and internal convergence; that is
why the EU is now united and, in this domain at least, capable of adopting
clear international positions that all its partners can understand.
V: Subsidiarity
The debate about values must also look into the pertinence of levels of
political intervention in a world where power exists at so many levels. The
signing of the Maastricht Treaty made the principle of subsidiarity fashionable
again. Europe was facing a growth crisis and had to demonstrate that it was
not trying to abrogate all the competence of its Member States. But, as
historians know, subsidiarity is a common-sense principle with a long
genealogy: policies are implemented at the level where they are needed and
where they can be effective. The principle of subsidiarity is based upon a
compromise between democratic proximity to citizens and political
efficiency. The same applies at the world level. A world regulatory system
with a strong centralising element would be alien to the spirit of democracy.
The adoption of the subsidiarity principle makes it possible both to resist the
temptation to concentrate power at the level of the State, and to meet the
expectations we have of legitimate and effective political action. In a system
based upon subsidiarity, power is wielded at the appropriate level, and
interventions are therefore more likely to be effective. What is the
appropriate criterion for subsidiarity? Action taken at the international level
is legitimised by the emergence of questions to resolve at that level. Its
legitimacy is then obvious because action has to be taken and because the
need for action is then obvious to all. The example of European environmental
law is a good example of this principle of emergence. It came into being
thanks to Europe. Faced with environmental questions on a global and
continental scale, the European Union began, from the 1970s onwards, to take
responsibility for them at a time when environmental policy was not a central
issue for national governments. Isolated and often powerless to influence
their own governments, the ministers for the environment met in Brussels in
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order to devise the appropriate tools and define a field for legislative action.
A policy was worked out and laws were devised at the appropriate level of
governance, or in other words at a level where it was possible to identify
problems that were not visible at lower levels. The legitimacy of action taken
at the European level was therefore based upon the emergence, at that level,
of questions that were not part of any national grammar, but which, when
raised at the appropriate level, trickled down to the national level. No one
would now challenge the importance of the political position ministers of the
environment have within national governments. But it was action at a
supranational level that gave them that position.
VI: Sites of coherence
Having more authoritative rules is not enough if the institutions that
produce them and instil respect them for remain fragmented and if citizens
cannot understand the “architecture” of such rules. There is no place within
today’s system of global governance that has the coherence we need or that
can facilitate the arbitration we need.
Institutions remain isolated from one another, and do not have the
ability to act together in the pursuit of common objectives. If we assume
that the coherence of a national government can simply be transposed to
other levels, we fail to realise that the positions of the ILO are not
consistent with those of the WTO. Hence our collective inability to reach a
satisfactory compromise between trade and social norms.
The ‘horizontal’ question of relations between institutions goes hand in
hand with that of achieving a more satisfactory ‘vertical’ consistency
between the global level, the level of regional unions and the level of
states. This is not a matter of turning international institutions into superministries that can intervene at every level – global, regional and national –
but of finding a satisfactory way to articulate these levels so as to ensure
that government-approved European and international rules are taken into
account, are adopted inside national political systems.
We also have to fill in the strange gaps that exist within the global
system. The most obvious need is for a World Environmental Organisation
and for an International Migration Agency.
As Jacques Delors has suggested on so many occasions, we also have to
establish an Economic Security Council, or what I would prefer to call a
‘World Council on Sustainable Development’. That Council’s mission would
53
be to resolve disputes that arise between ‘sectoral’ international
institutions, to launch global initiatives and to ensure that they are
implemented if and when agreed. There would be no permanent members
with a right of veto; but such a Council should be made up of
representatives from all continents (ideally, they would be designated by
structured regional bodies). The heads of ‘sectoral’ international
institutions would have observer status.
Actors
Once we have drawn up the project, identified the need for norms and
applied the principle of subsidiarity, one essential decision remains to be
made: do we want world governance to be the prerogative of diplomacy or
the prerogative of politics? In my view, the answer is obvious: we need a
common and representative debating chamber because there can be no
collective appropriation of political will without it. We will not succeed in
creating a real international ‘community’ unless we make a determined
effort to create such an arena.
VII: Global actors
Big international meetings – the famous summits – are not places for political
action. They are a theatre for delicate negotiations, for the ambiguous
amendment of texts prepared months in advance, for advances that can be
measured in millimetres and for stealthy retreats dressed up in formulae
that are supposed to let everyone go home feeling victorious. The heads of
state and government, and the ministers or ambassadors who address them
are defending the legitimate interests of those who mandated them. They
are not actors who deal with global issues.
The traditional political countervailing powers – parliaments or
representatives of civil society – are not represented at summits, except in
informal fashion by groups of delegates or observers. Even when they do
attempt to structure themselves at this level – as the trade unions did when
they formed the European Confederation of Trade Unions or the International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions – these actors are not adequately
represented in either the debates or the decision-making process.
The first, and relatively simple, steps that we have to take towards a
more balanced representation of the world would be to encourage the
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PASCAL LAMY
establishment of parliamentary structures at the international level in order
to bring together representatives from various national parliaments, and to
admit representatives of civil society to an economic and social council
capable of functioning as an effective UNECSOC.32 Various formulae have
been suggested. In the framework of negotiations towards agreements
between Europe and the countries of Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific
(ACP), a joint parliamentary assembly was established; and debates with
representatives of parliaments and civil society have been organised at WTO
ministerial conferences. These experiments have all proved positive. They
should be extended to other institutions,
We also have to go further than this by helping to build a stage on
which both the terms of the debate, and the issues can be seen by all. As
in Europe, the absence of any clear and deliberate way of staging the
debates that have to take place, or the failure to dramatise the collective
choices that have to be made, is detrimental to international life. There
are no well known actors on the stage, and no clearly identifiable symbolic
figures who can present the political issues to the citizens of the world. The
issues need faces. They need to be identified with men and women who,
thanks to the way they look, their language, their personal credibility or
their speaking ability, can represent interests that are so general as to
verge, at times, on the abstract. I think Kofi Annan succeeds in this respect.
Gro Harlem Brundtland did so during her term as the WHO’s Director
General. The ILO’s Juan Somavia, Sadaki Ogata and Alpha Konar, who
chaired the Commission of the African Union were able to do the same.
World democracy needs more faces like these.
VIII: Results
We judge trees by their fruit, not by their leaves. The information society
in which we live overrates the short-term and likes to see the emergence of
green shoots, even though there is a danger that they will quickly turn into
dead leaves. It took over 10 years before we could evaluate the first effects
of the measures taken to preserve the ozone layer, and the effect of trade
policies has to be judged on the same time-scale. The effects of the
measures that must be taken against global warning will be quantifiable in
100 years. And the issues surrounding storage and reprocessing of some of
33 UN Economic and Social Council.
55
the waste products from our nuclear power stations will take us well beyond
the next millennium.
We therefore have to find ways to demonstrate that some interim
results have been achieved, and to draw up scenarios that will allow public
opinion to judge the effectiveness of the measures taken. This type of
approach was successfully used when Europe established a single market
and introduced the single currency: an objective based upon a common
interest was clearly identified, a calendar was drawn up from the start, and
a system of incentives and sanctions was introduced to guarantee the
collective dynamic. Tools were gradually designed, and developed to
embody the objectives, to evaluate the achievements and to transform
statements of intent into planned concrete interventions. This is what Kofi
Anan is gambling on with his ‘Millenium objectives’, and what African
leaders are gambling on with the NEPAD benchmarks (New Partnership for
Africa’s Development).33
Mechanisms of real governance
Distance reduces legitimacy. A mathematician would say that legitimacy is
inversely – and probably exponentially – proportional to the distance
between a government and its citizens. We must therefore compensate for
this distance by proportionately increasing its political recognition factor
and visibility. This is what our day to day experience teaches us: the closer
we are to power, the more easily we can identify it. The general perception
is that power is in the hands of local politicians and those who wear the
insignia of national unity and state power. When we move up the scale, as
in the case of Europe, the need for legitimacy increases as we move further
away from its source. In the context of the present discussion, this “law”
tells us what we need to do: to find ways of making alternational power all
the more legitimate because it is, by its very nature, so far away. If we want
democracy to be the organisational principle behind world governance, we
will have to build it.
33 Jean François Rischard, Vice-President of the World Bank for Europe, has also drawn up a convincing battery
of indicators in his most recent book. See his High Noon: 20 Global Problems, 20 Years to Solve Them, New
York: Basic Books, 2003.
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PASCAL LAMY
IX: Majorities
The basic majority principle is ‘one citizen, one vote’, ‘one State, one
vote’. The representativeness guaranteed by this principle has established
the least unsatisfactory of all the systems that coexist within the
international sphere. It is this principle that gives the WTO, for example, a
certain comparative advantage. But this does not necessarily means that the
system is democratic, or that it works well. If democracy presupposes the
ability both to produce a majority that is in favour of a given policy and to
ensure that voters accept that majority decision, it is clear that we have yet
to solve the problem of democracy in this context. We therefore have to
agree to the following premise: if we are to avoid the danger – and it is
considerable – of vacuity, we have to take a new look at formal democracy.
We have to consider this if we are to improve the inefficiency of world
governance at a time when social and social demands are rising, and when
these institutions look less and less legitimate to a public that is quite
entitled to demand results.
Steps are being taken to ensure that the representation of actors is
weighted more effectively. I am thinking of, for example, the current
discussions about admitting India or Brazil to the UN Security Council. If,
however, we wish to get out of the usual rut and ensure that voters actually
agree to abide by majority decisions, we have to envisage making a
qualitative leap: if the simple majority principle is inadequate, we have to
look at it again and devise other types of majority. When it was faced with
that question, Europe, at its start, did make such a leap. And with the
constitutional treaty drawn up by the Convention, it is proposing to follow
through this logic: decisions will be taken by a majority of states
representing at least 60 per cent of the EU population. Revised voting
systems that abandon the principle that all States are mathematically equal,
or which combine it with demographic or geographical weighting, are two of
the ways in which we may be able to persuade all actors to take a new
interest in the international sphere.
Taking the initiative
Setting the system in motion and reducing the level of suspicion means
making the ability to take initiatives central to the international system.
Until now, the principle governing the way sovereign states act on the
57
international stage has been the principle of suspicion. International
diplomacy could take as its slogan the phrase ‘your country has no friends
for ever, and no enemies for ever’. Elements of collective trust have of
course developed within the international relations system. International
law has, in some cases, been able to police the brutality of state-to-state
relations. Yet we cannot avoid the conclusion that suspicion is still a
structuring factor in international relations. If we want to live together, we
have to reduce the level of suspicion.
What could be done on a regional scale in Europe when the Commission
was established would, as things stand, be difficult to achieve on a world
scale. For the foreseeable future, the world unlikely to become as fully
integrated as the European Union. We have to advance one step at a time
and ensure there is a basic level of trust in every international organisation
that can put forward initiatives, reach compromises and propose solutions.
The UN Secretary-General can play that role, assuming that the permanent
members of the Security Council allow him to do so. Similarly, the Directors
of the World Bank have the power to kick start their institutions. So, to a
lesser extent, do the Directors General of the ILO and the WHO. The
Director-General of the WTO, on the other hand, does not have that power
because the consensus principle – however important in terms of the ethos
of the WTO – makes it formally difficult for him to take real initiatives.
XI: Mechanisms for the arbitration of disputes
These could also be described as mechanisms that guarantee that the rules
are respected, or as a form of international justice. Debates about the
humanitarian right to intervene and about the repression of war crimes and
crimes against humanity in the 1990s led to the establishment of
International Criminal Tribunals (ICT) for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda.
The International Criminal Court will make this a permanent development.
In the area of trade, we now have several years of experience. It was in fact
only the establishment of the WTO in 1994 that gave states a mechanism to
make the settlement of disputes binding. This mechanism is an essential
part of the trade system’s credibility. It gives all members a guarantee that
their rights will be protected against abuses and infractions of the common
rules. Any state can have the United States or the European Union, for
example, condemned for breaking those rules. In 2003, Europe forced the
United States to withdraw the measures it had introduced to protect its
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steel industry because they were detrimental to companies and workers in
other countries. Peru has forced the European Union to revise what was
ruled to be a protectionist definition of sardines. These mechanisms are
essential if we wish to improve the system’s efficiency.
They do, on the other hand, raise some delicate questions about
legitimacy. What legitimacy does an expert sitting on an arbitration panel
have, when compared with an elected representative of a sovereign state?
Why should an ICT be in a better position to judge a war criminal than a
national court? How can national authorities be made to accept the
decisions of an International Criminal Court?
There is one simple answer to these questions: it all depends upon the
legitimacy of the rules that are being applied. And if they are to be
legitimate, three preconditions must, I think, be met: the mechanisms
whereby the rules are adopted must be democratic; the rules must be
observed at the national level; they must pertain only to the areas in which
the international organisation concerned is competent. If these
preconditions are met, we can ward off the spectre of ‘government’ by
international judges and, at the same time, retain the ability to compel
nation states to respect accepted norms.
On Principles
XII: Transparency
I am not one of transparency’s ayatollahs. Globalization, which is based
upon the increasingly rapid dissemination of information, creates the
illusion of transparency. All too often, the prevailing impression is that a
mere knowledge of the facts is enough to create checks and balances and to
ensure that democracy will function properly. Let us be quite clear about
this. The spread of information, transparency of action and the ability of
checks and balances to play their role are a sine qua non of democratic life.
Without them, there is too great a danger that the executive will become
too powerful, too autonomous and will lose touch with reality. We cannot,
however, leave matters there. To do so would be tantamount to endorsing a
purely liberal view of public action. As long ago as the nineteenth century,
Guizot was arguing that the main reform that was needed was to make the
state ‘more public’. In today’s climate, transparency must be associated
with the bigger role given to checks and balances. This is not to say that
they should take the place of the executive: democracy means that
59
responsibilities have to be identified and shouldered, and that the executive
must not merge into the legislature or civil society, as that would undo all
the good work that has been done. Transparency must therefore exist at
every level of the decision-making process, and the counter opinions must
be taken into account at every stage. Before mandates are given and before
positions are adopted within the international arena, national parliaments
and civil society must be consulted on a systematic basis. Detailed
information must be made available during the main stages of the
negotiating and decision-making process. And finally, the relevant
watchdogs must voice their opinion or, in the case of parliaments, ratify the
outcome. This permanent link with representatives of states or society is
essential, if we are to convince our fellow citizens that they should have
greater faith in the international system. At any given moment we have to
make choices in the full knowledge of the facts, and be answerable to public
opinion. Clearly defined choices, without any a priori judgement, will
gradually reduce its legitimate suspicions of ill-defined powers.
XIII: Solidarity
Democracy cannot exist in the absence of solidarity. A system based upon
universal suffrage implies universal involvement in the outcome of
collective actions.
Unlike some, I do not regard globalization as a machine that is designed
to destroy all solidarity. Globalization is not destiny; it is a force to be made
to serve the common good. From that point of view, the governments of the
day reacted to the ‘first globalization’ that emerged at the end of the
nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth by reconciling trade
with solidarity. They abandoned protectionism so as to encourage growth. But
they also used every means at their disposal to ensure that growth promoted
the redistribution of wealth. Progressive taxes on income were introduced,
together with an inheritance tax. Similarly, the first social legislation emerged
when Germany passed a law on industrial accidents in 1884, and when France
adopted laws on the 10-hour day in 1900 and on pensions in 1910. Critics were
already complaining loudly that these laws jeopardised the stability of the
currency and the competitiveness of the economy. Their objections were
overruled – rightly so, as we now know from experience.
We now have to go back to that philosophy. We must also have an
element of redistribution on a world scale and mechanisms to promote
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solidarity at a national level, as they are still of vital importance. The
principle of subsidiarity obviously means that we do not have to develop
mechanisms for education, pensions or housing at the supra-national level,
but we do have a responsibility to see that the management of global public
goods is based on solidarity.
Taxation is not the answer to everything. In terms of the environment,
it would be more appropriate to establish a link between liabilities and
capacities. Given their wealth and technological capabilities, the developed
countries have a special responsibility for cutting emissions of greenhouse
gases, mainly by changing the way they consume energy. That would allow
poorer countries to develop without upsetting the global environmental
balance.
When, however, we turn to the fight against poverty and disease, forms
of financial solidarity are needed. Some already exist. The fight against AIDS
is funded globally. At every summit, heads of state proclaim the need to
make more public funds available for development. Every natural disaster
gives rise to humanitarian relief operations that are widely publicised in the
media. Whilst they are positive, we should have no illusions about the
importance of such initiatives. They are sometimes influenced by the
colonial past. State development aid is also sometimes used for political and
diplomatic purposes, though that practice is beginning to die out thanks to
the European Union’s attempts to change some of its member states’
political habits. More serious still, such actions follow the logic of charity,
rather than that of a truly resolute solidarity involving all countries.
We will have to go beyond this logic in the future. And it is well known
that democracy has the means to do so: taxation. Taxation has always been
closely associated with the democratic idea and with solidarity. Taxation
provides the basis for a self-defined collectivity which wishes to act as a
community. Thinking about the question of world taxation has made great
progress in recent years, thanks largely to the debate about the Tobin tax.
Attractive as it seems in theoretical terms, it seems to me that such a tax
will get us nowhere as a low level of taxation will have no impact on the
movement of so-called speculative capital so long as hopes of making a
profit remain high. That is why I would rather see a tax on capital gains – in
the form of a levy34 – than on foreign currency transactions. The European
Union could lend such a tax greater credibility by introducing a European
company tax; it could replace national company taxes and put an end to the
34 Jacquet, Pisani-Ferry and Tubiana, in Gouvernance mondiale, speak of levying a company tax.
61
way European companies use ‘fiscal tourism’ as a form of competition.
Taxes could also be raised from other sources, and perhaps more easily.
There have been proposals to tax the arms trade, or income from minerals
and raw materials extracted from regions that belong to no one.35 The
suggestion box is full. All we have to do know is to make use of it.
Getting rid of structures that undermine solidarity from within would be
a first step. Over a long period of time we have, consciously or otherwise,
allowed black holes to develop. They pose a financial threat to solidarity at
the national level. I think in particular of the tax havens that promise tax
exemption to savers or companies who are concerned only with profit, and
of the tax immunity guaranteed by the banks’ code of confidentiality. The
capital they attract avoid national systems of taxation, reduce the resources
of states and transfer the burden of financing public services to labour. In
recent years the Financial Task Force (FATF) has helped to improve the
situation by publishing a list of ‘non-cooperative’ states and territories, and
it now plays an important role the fight against the laundering of dirty
money. The FATF, which was established by world economic summits,
demonstrates that the present system is, slowly and painfully, beginning to
generate some elements of governance. There is still a long way to go.
Removing the secrecy surrounding some banks would be a good way to
begin. If that cannot be done, a levy on capital gains could be introduced.
It could either be paid to the state from which the capitals originated, or
used to finance a development fund managed by the World Bank.
If we can make the redistribution of wealth amongst peoples – on even
a minor scale – a central aspect of international action, we can get back to
the sources of what anthropologists call the economy of the gift. The
developed countries have received a lot in the past and have accumulated
many financial, technological and human assets; they should now take
responsibility for financing development in a real sense. At the moment,
there is a soft consensus, punctuated with a few statements of good intent.
We have to break that taboo.
35 See the suggestions made by, for example, President Lula, Michel Camdessus, Jean-Louis Bianco and JeanMichel Sévérino.
CONCLUSION
TOWARDS A WORLD COMMUNITY
These suggestions do not constitute a global plan. But they certainly do
contain an overall vision: that of the common good and of community. The
building of a community is, in my view, the fruit of democracy.
Democracy is probably the most precious of all human achievements.
Democracy is a freedom that we can experience together. As we know, it is
a precondition for reducing poverty, ending armed conflicts and fighting
injustice. But it will not survive unless we can completely rework the forms
history has given it. I believe that we must devise new forms and give them
a concrete meaning as a matter of urgency if we are to stop a haemorrhage
that, in the age of globalization, poses a threat to the very existence of
democracy.
Some will object that this is a frighteningly difficult task. I agree, and I
am well aware of the dangers, the complexity and even the incongruity of
this undertaking for both our European societies and other forms of society,
and for the very different political, cultural and religious visions that have
to be mobilised.
We must, however, try, in the full knowledge that building the complete
edifice will be no more than an ambitious dream for a long time to come.
If we are to advance, we have to accept that we can advance only one
step at a time, that we must enter the debate and be prepared to
compromise. We have the raw materials. They cannot be overlooked and
must be invested. The most important is the UN system of governance. Over
half a century after the Second World War, the UN and the family of nations
it brings together is the only available agora on the planet. Although it is
incomplete, imperfect, open to criticism and shaken by regular crises, the
‘UN system’ is our starting point. We now have to take a new look at its
foundations and structures and, most important of all, involve the greatest
possible number in making it the capital of world democracy. I offer these
suggestions. I leave it to others to make others. But we cannot ignore this
building site: it belongs to our generation of men and women, both in
Europe and throughout the world. And it is a matter of great urgency.
63
TOWARDS WORLD DEMOCRACY
PASCAL LAMY
Towards World
Democracy
In Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, I am often questioned about the future of Europe.
In the past, I would respond with assurance, with the conviction of the observer of a work
taking shape. Although the difficulties are evident, the European project has never been so
pertinent - for Europeans ourselves, but also for the rest of the world. What has been
created over more than 50 years is also what the world needs today: a democratic system
to tackle the enormous challenges that our societies face, and that states alone can no
longer tackle. This European experience, with its successes and its setbacks, must be – I
am convinced - our point of departure in search of a new global governance that combines
the effectiveness that states have lost with the legitimacy that international organisations
have yet to acquire. This new governance is what I call alternational democracy.
Pascal Lamy
Pascal Lamy is the former EU Commissioner for Trade and President of Notre Europe,
a European think tank based in Paris. From September 2005, he becomes the Director
General of the World Trade Organisation. He is the author of l’Europe en première ligne, (Paris,
Le Seuil, 2002).
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