Richard Youngs

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3001124.html

Richard is probably the best thinker on the nuts and bolts of comparative democratic practices in Europe and the Middle East, so it’s a Good Thing that he has turned his analysis to the EU as a whole. His analysis is similar to Ivan Krastev’s, but a bit more detailed, a bit less despairing and a bit more solution-oriented. He starts by looking at the problems, the “poly-crisis” as he calls it, including Brexit, the refugee problem, the euro (unlike Goodhart, putting it properly in context) and populism. He then devotes a chapter to false solutions, in particular the inadequacy of just muddling through, let alone more classical Euro-integration and the failure of austerity.

The most interesting section for me is his analysis of Europe’s democracy problem. As well as looking at the ways in which the EU’s democratic structures don’t deliver as they should (‘output legitimacy’, in the term introduced by Scharpf) he also recommends looking at more participative methods for policy-making, including concepts like the Citizen’s Assembly. I actually wrote about this in a European context as long ago as 2006, so I’m glad that someone with more weight than me has picked up the concept and run with it. I think that the Citizens’ Assembly in Ireland has more than proved its worth, and it’s interesting that this is one of President Macron’s big ideas as well.

His other two points, less worked out, are that the EU should tolerate more internal divergence and should also deliver in terms of security for its citizens. The first is still debatable (though interestingly it’s the one suggestion also made by Ivan Krastev), the second should go without saying.… (altro)